You never know what might be cropping up next door. Particularly when you have lots of trees and underbrush between you and the neighbor....
We were living on five acres of property in Douglas County. Beautiful, sweet acreage that gave our kids lots of entertainment as well as work to do. We built a lovely farmhouse on it that looked like it had been there for a hundred years. There was an old homeplace on the land, with an ancient stopped-up well and remnants of a rock fireplace and foundation still visible. We bred and raised charming and angelic Golden Retrievers, the best friends a child could ever have. Our kids and dogs had a heyday out there. We had kind neighbors all around, people who would give you the shirt off their back but who also appreciated their privacy. Why else do you buy a big parcel of land?
A young couple built a house on the lot next to ours and lived there several years, then moved down the road. A new neighbor moved in. I felt bad because I had been busy and had not walked over to introduce myself. One day, we were working on our fence, with four or five dogs and as many kids helping us, when a huge black dog with a massive head burst out of the woods on the other side of the fence. He was growling, snapping and foaming at the mouth, apparently irritated that he couldn't quite get to us. We all were relieved when a man followed quickly behind with a contraption that he clapped around the dog's neck, restraining him. As we made introductions to our new neighbor, I kept trying not to stare. He was the shortest man I had ever seen. Tiny bone structure, flawless skin, beautiful eyes. And a mass of dreadlocks that threatened to topple him over. They were wound on top of his head like a turban. I imagined they weighed as much as he did.
He was very nice. Articulate. Intelligent. I asked him about where he worked. He said that he had two homes, one in Atlanta and this one out here, and that he was in pharmaceutical sales.
That should have been our first clue.
Then we talked about our animals. I told him that we bred our dogs, and asked if that would be a problem. Even though we kept our females put up during their seasons, we often had male dog visitors who would park outside our windows and howl and cry for weeks on end. I asked him if his dogs were dangerous. He told me that he bred his too, and that his were friendly to people but that they might kill my dogs if they got loose. I told him this was definitely a dilemma, but that hopefully that wouldn't happen.
So when a different neighbor (let's call him Jake, just for fun) called me a few days later, asking if I'd seen two large Pit Bulls running loose, I went into panic mode. But here were Jake's words to me: "Rose, we've taken a straw poll with the rest of the neighbors. We are not abiding dogs like that who might kill our grandbabies, livestock or our pets. We've all agreed that we are shooting those dogs. If you see them, shoot them. If you don't want to shoot them, call me and I'll head over and do it."
We don't need Homeowner Associations around these parts.
Or maybe even sheriffs.
Mysteriously, those dogs never made it home. He kept a couple of his puppies and raised those up. A few years later, the same scenario occurred. But my encounters with him were always pleasant. You couldn't ask for a quieter, more polite neighbor. Except when it came to his dogs. I began to notice that newspapers were piling up at the end of his long, gravelled driveway and that he had puppies and dogs barking at all hours. I wondered about him, then heard that he moved away, but no details about where and why. Until the day I ran into a sheriff's deputy who told me the tale....
His house went into foreclosure proceedings and an official came to serve papers on him. When he knocked on the front door, no one answered and the door turned on its hinges, revealing a giant duffel bag of contraband on the stairs (that's what I was told). The cop called in reinforcements and they raided the place. Turns out it was a five-acre marijuana farm, with crops out back, growing rooms in the basement and all the paraphernalia you can imagine.
Never assume that all is what it seems. If I'd had half a brain, I should have wondered why he kept breeding all those Pit Bulls and why he let all the underbrush and trees grow up so big. Good night, he told me right then and there that he was into pharmaceuticals...
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