I sorta waxed profound on my commitment to positivity back when the year’s new still hadn’t worn off yet, back when my blog was so ripe with aspirations of splendor that you might actually have been able to sniff it in the air as you looked for something sweet and sugary left out on the kitchen counter, maybe. Well, all that was before the new neighbors arrived, or should I say the neighbors I thought were gone but are now back. Kyra wasn’t suffering from an ear infection then, either. Kyra, my 10-month-old who obviously doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand that if Mommy dies a horrible death from sleep deprivation, she will no longer have someone to blame for all the problems life will surely inflict upon her as she reaches the height of her angst-filled years. But back to the new neighbors. They are a couple whom I presume are about to start a family as I see them hauling building materials up to their new home right outside my window. I called in sick yesterday to care for poor little Kyra, and spent my free time watching these newcomers, as they were in and out, back and forth, up and down. Which in itself is FINE. I would have called it none of my business and even would have wished them well in their endeavors IF they hadn’t started tap-tap-tapping… who am I kidding, I mean KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCKING, on the side of my house at 6:00 in the morning. When I went outside to find out what the deal was, they stared blankly at me and then continued their tic-like rapping on my exterior bedroom wall as though they were merely construction workers I’d contracted to come over and fix the roofing. No fear. No remorse. No explanation.
And, if it weren’t illegal, I would have said no BREATHING anymore.
“But they’re having babies, Mom!” Jonah says as I explain that they need to go away. “They’re building a nest! We can’t MURDER them!”
“I have babies, too, Jo! And, by the way, these new neighbors are the ones murdering ME… VERY. SLOOOWWWLY.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never owned a gun and wouldn’t even begin to know how to kill a woodpecker, much less a PAIR of them. These woodpeckers are protected in this neck of the woods, anyway. AND, I realize this is just a by-product of living so close to the river. BUT can’t we find some middle ground?? My house was just painted and the damage they inflicted the last time they tried making a home in this neighborhood was only recently repaired. What to do!
I said, “Jo, we need to get creative about how to make them NOT make holes in the house.”
Jonah: “How about we thwow some ham out? Ham tastes bettah than wood. Or how about we vaccum them up and then empty them out by the wivah?”
Call me caffeine intoxicated, but his ideas are starting to sound halfway feasible.
"Throw some ham out."
ReplyDeleteThat is too funny.
And would SO get my attention, if I lived next door.