Still Smoking

You may recall the little incident that I wrote about in February, in which our adjoining neighbors’ garage caught on fire, yet they never managed to tell us about. 

I was really mad at the time.  I wanted answers.  Since Mr. & Mrs. Unfriendly next door were never going to tell us what happened, I called our townhouse management office that Tuesday.  And called.  Left a polite voicemail.  Called some more. Left another polite voicemail.  Called some more.  Left a rather unfriendly voicemail demanding an answer by the end of the day Thursday.  All to no response.

I wanted to find out what happened, make sure the threat of fire had been eliminated, and verify that we did not have to worry about our shared garage wall (which includes our gas water heater and electrical panel, if you were wondering what I was so worried about).  Since management here is clearly useless, I finally decided to take matters into my own hands – I Googled our neighbors address.  And came up with this headline:

“Two Small Alligators, Snapping Turtle, and Cat Survive Fire”

 

At that point, I don’t know what disturbed me more – the fire, our slacker property managers, or the fact that my neighbors are housing ALLIGATORS and a SNAPPING TURTLE.  I wonder how the cat likes them?

 

So that Friday, I was off work, and stomped down to our rental office to give them a piece of my mind.  “Hello, I am the girl whose calls you aren’t returning,” I announced.  They gave me a big story about how they had been out of town at their corporate office dealing with ‘fire stuff’.  That’s fine and dandy, but put that on your answering machine!  (Or, novel concept – check your messages remotely.  What if there was another emergency?  Or worse, another fire?). 

 

They then told me that the fire had been “user error”.  Cue blank look from me.  They elaborated, and it turns out that “user error” is code for “heat lamp over magazines”.  They also said that the damage had mainly just been smoke damage, and assured me that we had absolutely nothing to worry about.  YEAH, RIGHT.  Had they not heard about the alligators?

 

We got renter’s insurance later that day.  And promptly started looking for a new place to live.

 

ANYWAY . . . the point of this blog was not to tell you that story.  That story was just to catch you up on everything, so that I could tell you THIS story:

 

So this Monday, we had a beautiful one day reprieve from the endless rain.  Nathan took advantage of the lovely weather by washing his car.  While he was outside, a random unknown neighbor approached him and said, “Don’t mind my dog, he’s really friendly, he just runs away from me.” 

 

Nathan looked around and realized the guy’s dog was over by the fence that leads from our front yard to the back yard.  The neighbor asked Nathan to help him get the dog back.  Apparently this dog really did not want anything to do with its owner (a fact that I find rather troubling, but there isn’t much we can do about it as we don’t know who the neighbor is or where he lives).  Again, why are all our neighbors so weird?

 

Nathan was finally able to reunite dog and owner.  The guy thanks him.  And then looks around and says, “Hey!  Aren’t you the guy whose house caught on fire?”

 

Nathan: “NO.”

 

NO, we are just the idiots who live NEXT to the idiots whose garage caught on fire.

 

And always will be, until we can escape the nut job neighbors on this street.

 

I think we would both be great hermits.