Several years ago, my neighborhood changed drastically. Death took a majority, others downsized, and my favorite of all neighbors moved to another state to be closer to his children. Where I once had a hood of familiarity and friendships intimate enough to refer to the same as family, I now have strangers who want little or zero contact.
Major upheaval in life. Or at least in my life.
Because gone are the days of knocking on neighbor's doors for borrowed sugar. Now, according to one of the new neighbors, a knock brings a greeter carrying a gun.
Gone are the days of sitting in garages drinking coffee and chatting up those passing by. Now, the garage doors are tightly closed as soon as a car enters or exits. Gone are the days of dinner invitations, block parties, and general niceties. Now, we're lucky to get a smile, a wave, or a mumbled greeting, let alone a sentence or two.
Perhaps it is also my fault. While I did greet new neighbors as they moved in, I haven't gone out of my way to further a relationship, preferring to gripe instead of their lack of what I call, "Midwest neighborhood-ness." Meaning, as it was in my youth, welcoming neighbors and bringing them, or pushing them, into the fold. Making them a part of the established group.
Once, during one of our frenzied hurricane preparation periods, I remarked to a new neighbor about his parked boat having been moved.
Me: "I was holding on to hope that your boat would lead us out of the expected neighborhood flood."
I was joking, of course. We sit on a hill. There is little chance of flooding.
He, however, did not chuckle. He snarled and then went on a ten-minute rant concerning a letter he'd received from the neighborhood association board informing him he'd exceeded the seventy-two hour parking period. He commented on neighbors further down the street in error of the deed-restricted rules. I was treated to angry words and a tirade on "whatever busybody neighbor had turned me in."
Me: (to my husband later) "I assured him it wasn't us, but I wanted to respond with a dressing down on how if he spent more time interacting or exchanging hellos with the neighbors around him, they might not be so inclined to report him."
The next day the same neighbor invited me into his house to see his renovations. I was walking my dog, but he insisted I bring in Elliot, and as the two of us heading into the front door, I looked back into our hood, hoping someone was watching me entering this angry stranger's house in case Elliot and I were never seen again.
Yikes! If I think this about my neighbors, what must they think of us? I wasn't precisely channeling my "Midwest neighborhood-ness."
This whole introduction is leading up to a problem we are currently having with my next-door neighbor, who has started taking to throwing out chicken bones into his front yard. Or maybe it's a whole chicken, I'm not sure. All I know is that my dog really likes this new occurrence.
Now, back in the old days, we tossed out dinner bones for the neighborhood dogs. Because one, dogs roamed untethered, and because two, the damage bones did to animals' teeth, and stomachs hadn't been discovered yet.
But having had to take my dog to the emergency vet following his ingestion of a pork bone, we are very leery of giving Elliot any type of bone, dog-made or otherwise, and these bones next-door are making potty runs and walking trips quite tricky.
My dog is ten years old and does a relatively decent job of remaining in our yard without a leash. Others have pointed out that perhaps the neighbor doesn't agree with us on this, but seeing how the neighbor's yard is certainly not up to our association code, I doubt he cares a hoot about our playing loose and fancy with the leash law. Which I believe pertains only to dogs outside of their own yards.
Sure, the neighbor could prefer to not have my dog in his yard, but other than sniffing a rabbit under his bush, Elliot doesn't usually set foot in the yard because well, it isn't much of a yard. And even if my dog spent hours in this yard, throwing whole chickens or bones is a bit passive-aggressive, in my opinion. Having vast experience in the "Midwest neighborhood-ness."
The question is, how do I handle this situation?
My experience says to speak with my neighbor. Find out why he throws dead animal carcasses into his front yard and ask nicely if he could stop doing so. Or approach him another way and ask him if he knows a chicken died in his front yard. I've thought up several different approaches, but our friends and family members cringe at these, offering the other side where I'm a terrible dog owner, and while I admit some fault, I'm still good with hearing it from my neighbor's lips. As long as the communication is respectful and friendly.
This is how we always handled things before in our hood. We communicated. Granted, there was one incident that wasn't so friendly, and many feelings were hurt, but for the most part, we always spoke kindly with one another and came to an agreement we could all live with peacefully. Then we had a cocktail.
This new hood? These new neighbors? These tumultuous days of pent-up rage? I'm at a loss. Any suggestions?
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