November 11, 2006

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2006

Curb Appeal....

Last week I was coming back from Target after buying a new 5-point restraint car seat for my kid because I'd seen a truly disturbing video on YouTube. I was cruising toward home, sizing up the five or six homes for sale a couple of miles down from my own, when I noticed some large birds hovering nearly motionless over a spot further down the road. I just assumed that what looked like turkey buzzards were circling something squashed in the road, but as I came around the next slow curve, I noticed that, in fact, the birds (definitely turkey buzzards) were congregating around something dead and puffy (looked like a possum) lying on the front walkway of a Pepto-Bismol-pink house with a 'For Sale by Owner' sign stuck in the front lawn. The birds were HUGE! There must have been six or seven of them standing in a circle, pecking at the corpse as a half-dozen more waited overhead for their turn. That would have been amusing enough for me, but I was treated to an added bonus because I had my windows rolled down and was driving slowly enough to take in the whole tableau: The door of the house was wide open and a woman in a pink, J-Lo-style track suit was standing on the front step shrieking into a cell phone in broken English, "Jes, it's an emergency! What you mean you don't do this?! I need help, I got vultures on my lawn! How I'm going to sell my house if I got vultures?!" ...adding to the chaos was a small dog (looked like a Maltese) yapping madly at the buzzards and oblivious to his mistress's hissing at him to "Shut the Hell up!". I chuckled all the way home.
Early this morning, I was driving down the same street headed for the 'icky' Burger King, because the 'nice' BK had run out of Cinni-Minis and India was about to have a total melt-down and lately I'm just too frazzled to even attempt to explain the realities of morning junk-food to my 4 year-old. As I came up to the block where I'd seen the buzzards dining earlier in the week, I could see some neighborhood dogs crowding around a large overturned garbage container on the side-walk. I could hardly believe it. It was the same pink house. There were four large, seemingly well-fed dogs tearing apart the bags of trash that they'd dragged out of the container. I have no idea what this woman's trash was doing out on a Saturday morning, but the dogs had managed to spread cans, boxes, bags and rotting food all over her freshly mowed lawn and didn't look like they were anywhere near done making the mess. I honked once, half-heartedly, as I passed. The dogs just paused and looked up and wagged their tails. Then they went back to tearing up the trash. Her car was in the driveway so I guessed she hadn't yet seen the disaster unfolding in her front yard. Boy, was she gonna be pissed. Probably call the cops again. That little dog was gonna go nuts. I felt a pang of regret. Not because I hadn't made more of an effort to chase the dogs away, but because I simply didn't have the time to park the car across the street and hang out until Miss Track Suit opened her door and started yelling.
Yeah, I know, bad me! Admit it though...you would have wanted to see it too.