Dopers, meet Mister Mom.
Mister Mom lives across the street from me … really, next door to the nice family that live across the street from me. I don’t know his real name, but it’s probably something like Percy or Elmer. While his wife goes to work, Mister Mom apparently stays at home all morning and afternoon.
About a month ago, I came home, checked my mail, and found an envelope from the City of *********, Ohio Police Department. The Police Department? Huh? I don’t have any outstanding warrants against me – never got a misdemeanor, anyhow, and I don’t think I blew off any parking or speeding tickets. So … I opened up the letter, and read something like this:
Huh? My dogs doing “excessive barking?” Naaah … that’s got to be impossible. I’ve had Bailey for over four years, Guinness for about two, and the only thing I’ve heard from neighbors is how amazed they are that they sit in the window all day and seldom let out a peep. From the time I get home from work, to the time I leave the next day, the most I hear out of them, if they’re not playing with each other, are quiet talking when they want attention.
I’ve mentioned Guinness and Bailey before in other dog threads. (Here they are again, if you haven’t seen them.)
Anyhow, I was at a loss to explain to myself what happened. Nobody has ever complained about me – or my dogs – to the authorities before. This has to be a mistake.
The next day, I call the police department, left a message for the officer – from work, so when he calls back, the first thing he’ll hear is “County Planning Department” – and wait.
About 30 minutes later, my phone rings. It’s Officer Caccazzo. “Officer, I’m glad you called. I got a letter from you, saying that a neighbor was complaining that my dogs were barking? What’s going on?” The cop explains that a neighbor who stays at home all day called the PD, to complain about Guinness and Bailey; apparently, the unidentified neighbor said that from the time I left to go to work, my dogs start barking … so loudly, he can hear them from deep inside his house. Apparently, they continue to bark non-stop until I get home.
“Uhh, that’s impossible. I know everybody probably says that their dogs are quiet – I worked as a code enforcement officer in a past life, so I know how it is – but every place else I ever lived, my neighbors have said that my dogs are quiet. Are you sure they’re my dogs? There’s barking dogs all over the neighborhood!”
The officer said that he stopped by the house to confirm the complaint. When he got out of his vehicle, he went up to the house, and saw that my dogs were in the front window. He said they were quiet at first, but they started to bark when he approached the house. He followed by saying that one of them was sort of loud, and if they barked like that all day, it could be considered a nuisance.
“Are you sure? Have you gotten complaints about other dogs in the neighborhood?” Nope … just mine. “Well, I find this hard to believe, but what am I supposed to do?” He told me to keep my front curtains shut during the day, so they’re not distracted from passing kids going to school, or other paople walking dogs down the street.
“Are other people with barking dogs going to be made to tdo the same thing?” Apparently now; the officer said that it was just my dogs the neighbor complained about. On that note, I promised the officer I’d close my front curtains and leave the television on so they woudn’t be distracted by sound from outdoors, but I couldn’t do much else, and left it at that. Bailey and Guinness get so much joy from looking out the front window during the day – PWDs need intellectual stimulation to be happy – and I felt terrible that I’d be depriving them of an experience they treasure so much.
I spent the rest of the day at work upset, wondering just what the **** was going on. After I got home, I saw some neighbors out and about, and casually started to question them.
“Uhh, I want to be a good neighbor even though I’m renting. I’m gone for about nine hours a day, and I’m wondering if my dogs bother anybody when I’m at work.”
“Nope … haven’t heard a thing.”
“I’m gone during the day, but when I’m home I don’t hear anything.”
“Your dogs? They just sit in the window and look out. They’re silent. They look so cute!”
“If your dogs are barking, I probably wouldn’t hear them over my dogs. Besides, I’m gone during the day.”
“If they are barking, I don’t hear them. They seem quiet to me.”
“Oh man, they just sit in the window and bark non-stop from the time you leave to the time you get home. I work from my house, and can’t get anything done because they’re barking so much!”
The one who said that Guinness and Bailey are barking machines … Mister Mom. Now, there’s a couple of big dogs in the house behind mine that bark a lot. There’s the family who lives next door to Mister Mom with three dogs that bark quite a bit. There’s other people nearby with loud dogs. Later polling of those neighbors revealed that they had no complaints from any neighbors.
Anyhow, a week later, a day after the snow melts, I left for work, and found a City of ********* vehicle marked ANIMAL CONTROL parked in front of my house, a police officer milling about the front yard. What. The. Fug. I step out, and ask what’s going on? Apparently, it was the dog cop I talked to a week earlier. The person that was complaining about my barking dogs was now complaining that my front yard was covered in dog feces, and that he wanted to check it out. There were three poopies on the lawn, revealed that morning from the melting snow.
I told the cop that, yes, the dog feces is probably from my pooches, but there was six inches of snow in the yard, it melted down to the grass only yesterday. Why was I letting my dogs out in the front yard to poop, instead of the back? Because, like every house on my block, there’s hardpan clay soils in the back, and it’s a muddy swamp. Everybody on my side of the street lets their dogs out in the front yard. I told the officer I’d clean it up, and keep it clean like I always do, but I’m not going to go trouncing through the snow to hunt down buried poops; I have to wait until the snow melts until I see them to clean them up.
I was festering. WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS GUY ACROSS THE STREET HAVE AGAINST ME? As a homeowner and renter, I have always gotten along fantastically with my neighbors – as in everyday-low-prices-at-Wal-Mart always.
Even worse, instead of being a man and coming to ask me about my dogs – much less introduce himself to me, like all my other neighbors – Mister Mom runs to the cops first when he has a perceived problem with them. When I was working code enforcement, and got a complaint regarding someone’s neighbor, I always asked “did you approach them about it first?” If the answer was no, I told them that their neighbor would probably resent it if they found out a neighbor complained, possibly starting a fued – “Now, you don’t want that, do you?” – so they should talk it out first before they come to me. Mister Passive Aggressive Mom didn’t.
Anyhow, Cleveland warms up, the masses head out of hibernation, and folks start milling around outside on my suburban street; gardenign, cleaning out the garage, waxing their cars, or, in the case of Mister Mom – REVVING HIS MOTORCYCLE. Yup, this nocturnal planner, someone who struggles to get up early on weekends, is thrown awake in the single digit hours on a Saturday morning to the sound of a little Japanese bicycle revving, and idling, and revving, and idling, and revving, and idling.
Oh – there were also lots of dogs in the neighborhood barking, too. Not mine, though.
Now, I’m pissed. I’m not going to return the assholishness call the cops on this guy, because to be honest revving a bike is really part of the normal background noise one would encounter in the 'burbs. However, here’s a guy complaining about my loud non-barking dogs, while he’s blasting unleaded-powered decibels through a poorly muffled exhaust.
Now, when the guy is outside, I head outside – with my dogs. Always.If the sound of barking dogs permeates through the air, I loudly say “NOT MINE!” When I let my dogs in, I loudly say “GOTTA’ COME IN, BEFORE YOU GET THE COPS CALLED ON YOU!”
Today, I said “eff this,” and opened the front curtain before I go to work. Today, when I got home, Mister Mom is outside with his yuppie motorcycle buddies, revving and idling their little 50 cc rice burners.
In response, I decided to pit the turdburgling asshat in the Pit.
Percy, Elmer, Aloysius, whatever your name is … well, the expletive I want to utter can’t be said in a civilized place like The Pit, so I’ll leave it to your imagination. I’ll just say it involves some English language profanities regarding copulation, genitalia, bodily waste functions, your mother, your wife, and your ancestry.
- Not the officer’s real name, but it was something really, really Italian. The cop wasn’t a bad guy, so I don’t fault him.
