Why You Should Get to Know Your Neighbors

Our neighbor Mona moved to Vietnam last summer. We threw her a going away party, a potluck supper on Kathy's screened-in porch. Tom made ribs. So there's one reason right there to get to know your neighbors - if you move halfway around the world, we might throw you a party before you go.

Mona had turned her house over to a management company to rent out in her absence, and after a little while it did get rented. Three young women and a dog named Bosley moved in next door - although I met the human occupants a couple of times I never got the names-emails-phone numbers that nowdays constitute "knowing someone." Bosley's name I knew because Bosley's owner would call his name sometimes.

A few days ago Tom was talking to one of the young women who lived next door. Her name was Sara, and he got her last name and email address and phone number written down. I emailed her and asked if it was okay if I passed the information along to Lynsley, who actually keeps the Excel spreadsheet that is our Wessyngton Road directory. I hadn't heard back, yet, but added her to the distribution list I use to send out emails about car break ins and block parties.

This morning I woke up at 5 a.m. I got up to finish some work I hadn't gotten done yesterday. It was raining hard outside. I fed the dog, put on a pot of coffee, checked email quickly, and then let the dog out. When I opened the back door, someone was calling Bosley. It was later in the morning that I got Sara's email, that Bosley had gone outside at 2 a.m., without his collar which had been irritating his skin, and then the storm had started. She thought he got scared by the storm and had taken cover somewhere, but there was no sign of him, and she was frantic. Could I let the neighbors know? She sent a picture, too, that I could forward to help identify the missing dog:

So I forwarded the message, and 33 minutes later Lynsley responded that one of her neighbors had told her he had found a pug sniffing around the trash last night. Although he didn't have a collar on, he obviously was someone's pet, and he was safe with Lynsley's neighbor. Sara had him back soon thereafter.

We now have the names and email addresses and phone numbers for Sara's roommates. We are glad to have them as neighbors.

News from the Back Yard

I have had backyard bird feeders off and on for years, but a year or so ago I got a little more serious about it. I got a couple of new feeders and hung them from the privet tree in the back yard. (Iain and I spent several hours cutting privet in the Morningside Nature Preserve yesterday morning with Trees Atlanta. I am no longer sure I want privet in my back yard.) But it was making me crazy, seeing the squirrels emptying the feeders. I put a feeder on the ground, by the back fence, with food that the squirrels and the chipmunks could get to easily, but I did not want them on my bird feeders.

So last fall I got a so-called "squirrel-proof" bird feeder from Droll Yankees. They have 4 different ones. The one they had a video for at the stores is equipped with a motor that is activated by the weight of a squirrel. If a squirrel gets on it, it will whirl around at high enough speed to hurl the squirrel off. It's funny to watch on the demonstration video, but I wasn't sure how durable it would be, in the long run, so I got the Yankee Dipper, which deters squirrels by its physical size (it is too wide and long for them to climb down it) and by hinged perches, that collapse even under the weight of a larger bird, much less a squirrel.

It worked really well for 6 months or so. The squirrels tried, but just couldn't get to the small openings at the bottom where the sunflower seeds are. Then, about a month ago, I found the feeder lying on ground, with seeds spilling out (and feasting squirrels). I assumed the wind had knocked it off and put it back up. Then the next day it was on the ground again. The squirrels had figured out, somehow, how to knock it off. I thought maybe they all jumped on it together. So I attached it more securely with a carabiner and it has not come off the tree (except when I removed it for refilling) since. I did see a squirrel on top of it, trying to push it off by pushing against a higher branch. For having brains the size of peanuts, they really are pretty devious.

So now they have learned a new technique. They sort of slide down the tube, and when they get to the bottom, hold on to it by wrapping themselves around the bottom and putting their feet in the openings where the seeds come out. I have seen them do this several times and will be on the lookout to catch it on video. When I do, it will be here.

The other news is better. The blueberry plants that I got from the plant sale sponsored by the Virginia Highlands group that was raising money for the new park actually have blueberries on them. The apple tree is doing well, I think, and a few of the bareroot strawberry plants that spent too long in a plastic bag before they got planted also appeared to have survived.

Years ago, both Caroline and Sarah built bird houses at a Girl Scout meeting. At home, they painted them gray, and they sat around for years until last fall (around the same time that I put up the bird feeders) I decided to put them up. There weren't great places to put them in the back yard - since the two dogwood trees died, we don't really have any real trees in our back yard - but I used wire to attach one to a small tree of unknown variety (probably something nasty that we shouldn't be encouraging) in the back yard, and the other to a Japanese maple that Tom had planted just beyond the back fence. During the fall and winter, I did occasionally see a bird exploring the one in the back yard, but of course it wasn't nesting season, and as I understand it, bird houses are really nesting boxes, that birds only use - and need - for eggs in the spring and baby birds in the summer. So I didn't expect to see any birds actually using it.

Well, this morning a pair of chickadees were moving in and out, with one or the other frequently visible in the round opening on the front. I haven't seen them this afternoon, but I hope they are napping or out hunting for furnishings. It would be great to have a chickadee family in the back yard.

Crime on Wessyngton Road

It was week before last that someone broke into my car. I had gone outside to put something I didn't want to forget in the car before heading to work, and on the front passenger's seat was a pile of shattered glass. I have had stuff taken from my car before, when I left it unlocked, but never had it broken into before. A few weeks before someone had taken the little bit of money I had left in the armrest compartment between the two front seats - it wasn't much - maybe $12 - but whoever had taken it had left the compartment open and the other contents scattered.

So this time, there was no cash in the car, and nothing else that anyone would want to take - but the compartment was open again. Nothing else seemed to have been touched, except of course for the window, which had been reduced to a glittering pile of tiny geometric shapes, at the curb, inside the door of my car, and on the sweater I had left on the passenger's seat.

I had to go to work, so I took the Cavalier. Tom said he supposed insurance wouldn't cover it; I said I had no idea, and asked him to call. It turns out that not only was it covered, but that State Farm it down to a fine art, the business of fixing cars that have been broken into. Two guys with a van and a vacuum cleaner came and replaced the window, and got rid of almost all the broken glass that was inside the car.

I called 911 to report it, just to get it on the record that it had happened, and a police officer came by to take my report. By the time I called, the window was fixed, but the pile of broken glass next to the curb in front of Sally's house and the bent place on the window frame was left as evidence. She looked at the car and said, they popped it, they put a tool in right there and pried the glass, which shatters it without making any noise. She pointed to the plastic disk on the dashboard and asked if I had a GPS. Yes, I told her, but it wasn't in the car. As far as I know, they didn't take anything at all. I told her about the $12 that had disappeared a couple weeks before, that I hadn't bothered to report. She thought most likely they were looking for the GPS. Maybe I can take that off the dashboard and stick it to the windshield, I said. She said it wouldn't help, that the suction cup would leave a circle on the window that would be visible, and that is what they looked for. Crackheads, she said, this is a crackhead kind of crime. Only crackheads would break into a car looking for a GPS that they can hock for $10. Had we seen anyone suspicious on our street? No, I told her, but I would let the neighbors know to call 911 if they saw anything.

I am not completely sure what a "suspicious" person would look like - on our street, I guess it would be someone walking who didn't have a dog. I suspect crackheads who break into cars for $10 GPS units (or $12 cash) do not have dogs. So I sent out an email to my neighbors, and I don't keep cash in my car anymore. Tom took the car to the body shop last week, and the bent frame around the window got fixed, so you can't tell by looking at the car that anything ever happened.

One good thing did come out of this. About a year and a half ago, I hit the brakes and my Ray-Ban sunglasses flew off the passenger's seat next to me and I never saw them again. I really thought they were in the car, but maybe they ended up in the Alon's bag that was sitting on the floor on the passenger's side, and got thrown out inadvertently. I looked several times and never found them.

But the guys who replaced my car window did find them. When they left, there they were, sitting on the passenger's seat.