Oh my gosh you guys, I was so sleepy last night when I posted, I forgot to tell you about the horrible discovery I made about my next-door neighbor!!
Actually, let me backtrack, because what I learned also helped me solve a mystery that had been driving me nuts. Ever since the weather got a little better and I’ve been keeping windows open, I’ve been hearing this random, occasional “pok” sound. Like a very, very slow ping-pong game. I could NOT for the life of me figure out where it was coming from, though it was obviously nearby.
Though sometimes it sounded farther away, and sometimes it sounded really close. I actually almost peered into a fenced back yard down the block last week, because I thought I heard it coming from there, but when I walked by, there were people in the yard, and, well, I wasn’t going to peer through their fence when they were back there.
So the mystery continued. I started thinking I was going to have to move away, just to preserve my sanity. POK…. POK……….. POK.
POK.
But then yesterday I was out in the yard, puttering around as I do, and I saw my next-door neighbor in his yard. He had a bag of peanuts, and he was filling a couple of little container-device-things that he had nailed to trees.
And as soon as he filled one, a squirrel ran up, lifted the lid, got a peanut, and scampered off, leaving the top to fall back down with a little “pok”!
MY GOD, MY NEIGHBOR IS FEEDING THE LITTLE BASTARDS! (in fact, probably lots of neighbors are, which is why the sound gets closer and farther…)
And of course they leave the peanut shells all over my yard. AND BURY THEM IN MY POTS.
Because of course the little bastards aren’t satisfied with peanut-feasting all over the neighborhood: they still have to come into MY yard and dig up my pots and chew on my plants and kill seedlings and generally wreak mayhem.
I still may have to move. This neighborhood is not safe! Who would have thought my very NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR had gone over to the dark side?
Oddly, now that I know what the POK sound is, it bothers me both less and more. At least I’m not crazed with wondering any more. And I suppose I could silver-lining it and tell myself that every POK I hear is a squirrel not at that moment in my yard, but I’m not quite that Zen yet. I just imagine them writing all their friends all over the country: “Hey, free peanuts in southeast Portland! Right next door to a bunch of juicy plants and freshly dug soil! Come on down!”
Little bastards.