Neighborly Give-n’-take

The Birds, the Dogs, and a Jingle…

And sometimes Sublime mornings

I was putting out the garbage by the curb when a middle-aged woman stopped by.

“Hi!” she said. “I’m your neighbor from the house behind yours.”

“The one with the dogs?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

This neighbor has two large dogs, but I don’t know what breed they are. I see them only as a series of long, brown, vertical lines through the gaps between the slats in our shared fence. And each time I step into my backyard when the dogs are in theirs, all hell breaks loose.

My four-legged neighbors hurtle toward the fence, place their eyes to the gap between the slats, and vociferously protest my presence on “their” property.

The ruckus brings their owners outside. “Hey, Reggie, Skye, let’s go!” And the dogs quieten down as suddenly as if they had been switched off.

“I’m sorry my dogs trouble you,” their owner said now. “I yell at them, but they keep repeating the exact same thing.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay… they’re just doing their job.”

“Thank you for understanding,” she said, then added, “I see so many birds flying into your backyard.”

“It’s because I feed them.”

“So… they eat at your place,” she mused, “and live and sleep in my crape myrtle.”

She has a giant crape myrtle tree in her backyard, a favorite nesting place for several birds that visit my feeders.

I looked at her, thinking: “Is she going to say, ‘I don’t like birds nesting in my tree because they poop in my garden. So, will you please stop feeding them?’”

I let out my breath when she said, “I love it! I love that you have all these birds in your backyard — because then I have lots in mine.”

I returned her smile in full measure. A popular jingle played in my mind, “Like a good neighbor…”

It was a sublime start to my day.

Do check out the amazing imagery in “Water’s Way” a sublime poem by John Barr.