Old Yelper

I live next to the neighbor from hell. I live in a modest dump of a house that has a total of five other lots backed up to it. Four out of the five neighbors have dogs, one of which is a deplorable, wretched little creature that never stops barking and yelping. None of the other neighbors cause any problems. They all follow the basic rules of dog ownership. Dog barks. Owner opens door and lets dog in. But this one neighbor does things differently. Dog barks for 23 hours straight. Owner does nothing.

And it’s not just a barking dog. I’m overly sensitive to any noise that shouldn’t be there, I’ll admit. I spend most of my time waiting to be irritated by some audible invasion, which is the result of living next to a long list of the worst imaginable neighbors, from crack-heads to a sixteen year-old kid repeatedly beating up his own mother. Seriously. I have a keen and unwanted ability to be annoyed by the slightest twitch or whisper.

But this dog goes far beyond that. It doesn’t so much bark as it does yelp. It sounds like a cross between Catherine Hepburn hailing a cab and a blast of an air-raid siren. If Ross Perot is ever executed by way of electric chair, this is what it will sound like. It’s a tiny dog. It probably weighs about thirteen pounds. But the noise it makes cuts through solid walls and travels lengthy distances so that it’s yelp sounds like it’s coming from a spot just inches from your ear.

The first time I heard it, which was about six months ago, I had no idea what it was. When I saw the tiny dog through the slots in the half-rotted fence, I laughed. It yelped again. I laughed again. It sounded ridiculous. This wasn’t a dog. It was a pig being slaughtered after forcefully being jacked up on meth.

Day two, and it still made me laugh. By day three, I was ready to puncture my eardrums. And it’s gone on like that ever since. Try to imagine scraping the outer edges of your upper teeth over a dusty chalkboard. That’s the sensation I’m experiencing right now while writing this. He’s out there now. I can hear him.

Things improve for a week or two after I call the cops or animal control, but it just jumps right back to the start after a handful of days.

And I love animals. I really do. I have two dogs of my own, and I name each and every random animal before I run over them in my car. “I’ll call that one Hoppy” (thump). “That one is Mr. Fuzzle” (squish).

I don’t run over animals intentionally. That’d be pretty horrible. But, if there’s no possible way to swerve and change direction before crushing a squirrel beneath my tires, I make sure to name it something adorable before robbing it of its last breath on my way to grab a smoothie. Seems like the right thing to do.

Anyway, it’s about time to insert my earplugs and crank up the volume on the TV to an inhumane volume to drown out the miniscule beast. I gotta get some sleep somehow.