Drama Week

In our little neighborhood, usually something weird or funny happens about once a month, but you would only get it if you knew the players. This week was different.

For several days in a row, Tracy (lives in guesthouse) and I heard a kitten mewing and it sounded like it was coming from under my house. Every time I went outside to see where it was coming from, it would stop. One late afternoon I heard Tracy try for almost 1/2 hour to track it down, calling and maybe even using tuna -something smelly anyway. Then we found out that both the next door neighbors and those two doors down were also looking for a kitty in distress. Guess what it was? A mockingbird. I didn't believe it at first, but yesterday I heard the bird do a whole series - a little birdie symphony, and the kitten crying was somewhere in the middle, a middle kitty movement.



Then two days ago a man, who turned out to be the estranged husband of someone close by (won't mention any names) wandered drunkenly into my back yard and encountered Ms. Ferocious Dog of the Century, my 13-year old Bella, who proceeded to alert ALL the neighbors, and then bite the big guy squarely in the ass. Needless to say, he left. I missed the excitement because I was hiking, and when I got home was greeted by a neighbor with - "the police want to talk to you." Usually that sentence causes me to hike. So now I may have to testify about this guy, and here I was worried I was in trouble b/c the dog bit him. Go Bella. She got extra treats that night when I heard the story. Since then she has gotten up 2 or 3 times a night to check the perimeter. Report back: no drunken assholes but some really cool smells.



Have probably mentioned this before, but this is kind of a 'dog park'. Out of 45 families there are probably 35 dogs. There's a lot of barking. One neighbor has two Labs, chocolate and black (Irma and Jackson), who are ferocious watch dogs but love me because I throw the ball over their fence, and love Bella because her butt smells terrific. Right around the corner another neighbor has a cockatoo, Dookie, who was a rescue bird. I'm walking Bella and Bella (did I mention Tracy's dog is Bella too?) from the Lab house to the Cockatoo house, when Dookie starts squalking like crazy, which made the Bellas really stand up and take notice. Then, the bird started BARKING, just like the Labs, this deep, pissed-off rant. So now we had 4 dogs barking, and one bird.

Check out the You Tube on the right - apparently lots of cockatoos bark.