Puppy poop and naughty neighbors

This is Baxter. He is OMGsocutecanIHAVEhimPLEAAAAASE?! Boyfriend take note: I want one of these.

The Washington Post has been covering a story about a dog walker accused of not cleaning up her charge’s poop. Mostly, I think the Post was just wanted to make jokes about ‘stepping in it’ and encourage lots of poop puns, but someone deemed this newsworthy.

The neighbors sued the dog walker, and went so far as to stalk the dog walker and photograph the dog’s poop piles for proof. Ultimately, the dog walker was exonerated, and no one had to sneak any plastic baggies full of Baxter’s alleged poo through security.

But it brings up an interesting point: Neighbors can really suck.

When we lived in Austin, I’m fairly certain our upstairs neighbors had a trampoline they would jump on from about 11pm to 4 or 5am. They would only take breaks to have loud, banging sex against our shared bedroom wall, or drop heavy objects on the floor.

Sometimes, they would crank up the quintessential I’m-an-asshole-neighbor rap music while doing Tae Bo in high heels. *smashplate, kick, stomp, dropmicrowaveonfloor, punch!*

We would complain to the apartment management about them, only to come home and find retaliatory cigarette butts all over our back patio. Those cigarettes killed all my pretty flowers – had nothing to do with lack of water/attention/care, I swear.

I once collected all the butts into a plastic cup, filled it the rest of the way with water, and left it outside their door.

They tried to claim the cigarette butts weren’t theirs. Whatever. Even if they weren’t, you still deserved the stinky cup o’ butts.

I eventually took to keeping the Swiffer in our bedroom at night. The handle had a nice rounded end that wouldn’t put a hole through our ceiling, but could still be used to bang maniacally on the ceiling until they noticed and some of the noises ceased. Then I’d crawl back in bed, finally doze off again, and wake up to repeat the process.

Sometimes I would just stand by the vent and yell at them. “Are you a bunch of fucking elephants?!” “Stop having sex, you whore!” They never answered, but I avoided eye contact with most neighbors just in case they figured out I was the one yelling those things.

I refused to renew our lease for a second year until they told us whether or not those neighbors were staying. Fortunately they left.

Our upstairs neighbor here in DC is actually a very nice lady, but she has an awful habit of rearranging furniture while wearing stilettos at 8 o’clock in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays.

Thank you for always taking the shared trashcans out for our lazy asses, but pleasefortheloveofgod, stop dragging large, heavy objects across your hardwood floors at ungodly hours of the morning.

Though I do draw the line at trying to complain about/fuck with the possible meth dealers a couple doors down. I watch Breaking Bad – I know what happens to people who snitch.

Which is all to say … there’s no way in hell I’m ever buying a condo or a townhouse. I want at least a solid 100 yards between me and any noisy fuckwits living in our general vicinity. And I want my future puppies to be able to poop in peace.

So what about you guys – any neighbor horror stories?