Nice People Doing Annoying Things

My next-door neighbors are probably two of the friendliest people I know. I couldn’t ask for better. How can I tell them they’re driving me crazy?

I lived in a nice house that is built on land that is next to a marshy area. My neighbor’s house was about 30 feet away. We both were proud owners of close to an acre of land upon which our respective houses were built.

In its infinite wisdom, the township dedicated the adjoining 25 acres as open space, land that will remain Pennsylvania woodlot in perpetuity. I’ve come to realize it was dedicated as such for no altruistic preservative reason but because the water table was so high any construction on such an unstable base would only cause headaches for the township.

It meant a certain type of natural beauty to be enjoyed by my neighbor and me for as long as we lived there.

It also meant bugs.

The township stopped DDT spraying in the early 1970’s. It stopping all spraying in the 1980’s. I found that a mild positive because it bothered me seeing the neighborhood children, including my own, chasing the tanker truck around gleefully experiencing the fogging like it was the most pleasurable they could be doing in such a boring place.

Thank God for the video games that soon replaced the dangerous past time indulged by the wee ones.

The bugs became more more plentiful, as Earnest Hemingway would say in his reference to going bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises: first slowly, then suddenly!

One night I was awakened by a sharp crackling.

Now what could THAT be?

The strange sounds were coming from the neighbor’s house- more specifically the back of the house, from the deck that overlooked the township’s open space.

There appeared to be a long blue light. The light itself was not offensive but it appeared from time to time it would flash and make odd crackling noise. There was no uniformity in the sounds. The frequency was totally random.

I determined that the noises didn’t appear to pose a danger to the neighbors or the neighborhood. No raging fires or the ground opening up swallowing houses

I tried to get back to sleep.

Those of you who’ve tried to sleep around a person who snores know its not the snoring itself that’s usually the crux of the annoyance, its the randomness of the snorts.

Well, this was like that!

Only the noise was more like:

Snap! Zap! Crackle! Zap! Snap! Crackle!

Pause:

Crackle! Snap! Zap!

Pause:

Zap! Snap!

I groggily recalled that:

I’d seen one of those damn things at the Exxon Station in the Square. It fascinated me at the time. Bugs flew into it and were immediately dispatched by 120 volts and 150 watts delivered by the old blue light Zap N Trap. It attracted so many insects the thing was lighting up like skyrockets at a 4th of July church picnic in a small Alabama town.

Once fixated on the sounds, sleep eluded me for the rest of the night.

The next day was somewhat miserable because I’d not had much sleep the night before plus I kept thinking about the possibility of a repeat of the experience the coming night.

I realized I had to take some type of action around 1:00 am when I came to the conclusion that my neighbor’s back yard was like the City of New York for arthropods; it never sleeps.

Crack! Snap!, Zap! All night.

I waited until 10:00 in the morning to give my neighbor a call, got voicemail and left what I considered a pleasant, please get back to me, message not mentioning the intended topic of the morning phone call.

After work, just as I was sitting down for dinner, the phone rang.

It was Melvin (Mel) the husband next door.

Hey Brian! Wha’s happening?

Let’s see, I’m going to have to be diplomatic about this.

Hey, Mel! Thanks for calling me back!

What can I do for ya Big B? His term of endearment in reference to me.

Well Mel — did you guys just buy a bug zapper?

Yeah, set it up a couple of nights ago, working like a charm, love it. Kills ’em all.

Hmmm — this may be more complicated than I first thought.

Does it keep you and Mel (Mel’s wife’s name, short for Melany — cute, huh Mel and Mel) awake with its snapping at night?

Nah! We sleep through thunder storms Big B. Not mentioning that thunder storms come, maybe once or twice every summer. The bug zapper is forever.

It was then that I made my crass misstatement.

Mel, I realize that you and Mel just bought the zapper. How much did it cost and I’ll give you the money you spent if you take it down?

Briiiian! No longer Big B, I noticed. When Mel was in high school, she was stung by a bee and damn near died. She’s allergic to bees , you fucker, are you trying to kill my wife?

Well, Mel, I lodged my protest, you know my feeling on the zapper.

As I pushed the little red button I was planning my little speech to the cops to whom I was going to appeal.

I got no satisfaction from law enforcement.

Everything was legal and they’d had no other complaints about Mel & Mel (no priors) and could I just try to get along with it?

And yes, Mel had contacted them and mentioned his wife’s problem. He said he’d talked to me about it already and I might be calling the township.

Great.

The snapping and zapping went on for 2 weeks. In no way was I getting use to it. I’d fall asleep for an hour then a great hoard of bugs would commit hari kari on the blue light and I’d be awaken by series of zapples like fire from an automatic weapon.

Then a miracle or curse, depending on your point of view:

About a week prior to this mess we had adopted a rescue cat.

We named it Puff N Snuff.

He was pretty wild, scratched one of the kids and killed damn near the whole local population of birds with a couple of squirrels thrown in.

Well — one morning, in her juice ball zeal to get to work ahead of everyone else, Mel ( the female) roared out of her driveway in her recently purchased Audi,

and

rolled over Puff N Stuff.

I wonder why I slept so well that night. After all we’d lost a family member, if only a far distant one.

It was the next night I realized that the Mels’ had retired the bug zapper. It was no longer lighting up the Southeastern Pennsylvania sky or the disturbing quiet nights like an amplified bowl of Rice Krispies.

It was gone. I could sleep.

We went back to being neighborly and didn’t ever again mentioned this brief departure from our friendship

Mel (the wife) survived, without the bug zapper as far as I know.