So right in the middle of all the houses and apartments, there’s these three houses and more outbuildings and all these cows. Two of the houses have pretty normal people in them- a family with two sons in one, and the mother-in-law in the the other. But that third house, the one with the barn-looking building and all the plants?
Gotta be crazy people. There’s probably four of them, maybe five- sometimes a boy, maybe in middle school, is there for several days in a row, but other times he isn’t there for a whole month. There’s an older woman and man and a younger woman and man. One family, probably, but hardly any of them ever talk to us.
The older woman acts like she’s in charge, and yells at her family to do all sorts of stuff. Not angry yelling, though- I guess they’re inside and she’s outside?
They come and go at all hours of the day and night- often on weekdays the car isn’t out of the driveway until at least 10:00am, and then the truck leaves at any time from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm with no rhyme or reason. The car comes home some days at lunch, somedays at a normal commuting time, and sometimes at midnight or later. The truck doesn’t usually get back 'til dinner time or well past midnight. But even with two vehicles, you often see people walking down the ridiculously steep driveway to catch the bus.
Sometimes other trucks, loaded with hay, show up, and then all the cows moo like crazy. What’s worse is those few times a year when everyone involved is yelling at each other, running down the hill, waving sticks at the cows. Sometimes that ends up with a pen full of cattle pretty much screaming their head off for a few nights.
And the dogs! Don’t get me started on the dogs! They bark at all the neighbor dogs, but not in an aggressive way, and they’re obviously plotting something. That, or they’re complete idiots: More than once, one of the people have yelled, “Ruby, your leg was broken and dislocated because you chased cows, haven’t you learned?”
Very rarely, the younger woman takes the dogs out for a walk- she keeps the darker one, Griz, I guess, on a leash, but lets Ruby free. Usually she does this at like 10:00 at night, and even though we’re all in bed, she talks to the dogs. And she doesn’t even bring a flashlight! She just uses her iPod to light the way!
Otherwise, even though Ruby goes out on her own all the time, you only see Griz outside on a dog run, except for the very occasional times when he gets out and everyone screams his name at him to get him to come back. When he crosses the road, he stops and looks both ways first, so at least they’ve trained the dog a bit.
Sometimes, you hear the younger woman talking to herself, or maybe to the dogs, when she’s out hanging up the laundry- did I mention they still use a clothesline set-up? How old fashioned! She says things like, “In my day, I wasn’t allowed to scream unless I was bleeding or being kidnapped,” while staring at a neighbor’s house, and “You know, Ruby, when our barn was over there, you could have a conversation without yelling from the house to the barn, so I wonder why those folks don’t just shut the hell up,” and “No, you eat the BLACKBERRIES,” to her dogs.
And the younger man? Everyone knows he smokes, but he still skulks around well away from the house like it’s a big secret.
Sometimes the older man goes outside and talks to his cat and if the cat gets out of sight you can hear more people saying, “You’re going to be eaten by a coyote! Where are you? Stupid freaking cat.”
And if we mow our lawns, all the cows show up at once, except for a few who skulk around looking dejected, no matter how much we spread the clippings so they can all reach it.
Cows are dumb, and those neighbors of ours are weird.
