Red-eye tour

Enlarge this picture by clicking on it for full effect, go on I dare you....

I am slowly meeting my neighbours. They are a colourful lot, but I am coming to expect that from Florida residents. Aside from the consistant droning of the nightly ( well ok maybe not EVERY night) vector control truck that passes through the neighbourhood (Mosquito fogger) the other sound I am getting used to is the colourful language being yelled at each other as the neighbour's mower hits yet another rock or stick in his yard and his cigarette chewing, big haired, wearing a bra-as-a-shirt, wife bellows at him to shut the F*** up. But this is not really fair. This is just one neighbour and they live two doors down from us.

The neighbour on our immediate right ( facing the house cuz I have yet to figure out where north, south, east, or west is) packed up her house in the middle of the night one night and moved out. Come to find out she is walking away from her house facing foreclosure. The neighbour across the street is nice and has two little doggies that I hope my doggies can become friends with. These neighbours are the type that take every last piece of junk they can find and store it somewhere in or outside of their house. I figured this out when my husband and I put out a very old rickety dinning room table with four chairs on the street with a "Free for the taking" sign on it and said neighbours came running up with unabashed glee on their faces asking if they could have it. Trust me, this was no great find, in fact I told Mike he should chop it up into kindling - if we had a fire place.

The neighbours on the immediate left seem nice enough, they are New Yawkers, transplants and they like to take little tours around the neighbourhood on their riding lawn mower. (bare in mind their yard is about the size of perhaps 10 square feet so having a riding mower is rather over-kill of you ask me) They have 2 perfectly nice cars in their drive way so I am not sure what this "lawn-mower touring" is all about. Maybe they have designated themselves the lawn mowing police and if they see any offenders they go ahead and do the job themselves. We live in a somewhat loosely governed HOA, so I am sure that there is a convenant that says you must manicure your lawns on a routine basis...or the lawn mower police will do it for you, and you WILL BE CHARGED.

So we were out talking to the neighbours the other day - the ones who collect, erm...antiques...and of course I asked all the appropriate questions and was duly informed of every excrutiating minutae of all manner of detail concerning most of the people that lived within eye sight. "Becareful of "them"" she warned pointing at the neighbour kitty corner to me "they have about 10 big dogs that like to roam the neighbourhood" and "those people over there they have a huge backyard and have loads of parties that keep us up all night" "Oh you see her? that one down the block around the corner and 4 miles up? ...." well you get the picture she is the neighbourhood busy body.

Still she has some awfully cute doggies, and her husband is very nice...the quiet type that is always over shadowed by his more outgoing wife. So we finished out "get to know the new neighbours" chat and were parting ways when she managed to yell over her shoulder at us "watch out for the alligators!"

I stopped dead in my tracks and glared at my husband. The one thing that scares me most is that we will have to deal with alligators coming out of the lake, and apparently my fears are not unfounded. My husband always poo-pooed me saying no way, its to residential here. So I called her back over and I asked her to tell me more about this and she was, of course, happy to. "oh dont be too concerned, they pulled the big whopper one, out of the lake last summer. You remember that one dont you Doug ( speaking to her husband) I think he ate a kid or something, but anyway there is still a smaller one that has been seen now and then patrolling the lake looking for unsuspecting poopy ducks to feast on, and dogs and cats and small children..."

Great. My dogs have been IN that lake. True not by choice, but they still like to go to the edge of the water and have a good sniff.

"But dont worry too much" she goes on, "mating season just finished so they are more docile now, and they make noises too"

I guess this would be the sound of slurp and yum as they are swallowing their dinner.

So now I am going to great lengths to keep myself and my dogs as far from the edge of the lake as I can and at night time I take a flash light out scouring the waters edge for the red glowing eyes that indicate I or my little dogs are being hunted....I learned this from a red eye tour we took one vacation to florida. We were taken to the everyglades on one of those airboats in search of alligators and the eyes do glow a very crimson red when you spot one with a flashlight.

Handy knowledge to have here in swampland.