What a weird situation this could blossom into.

My son is over there yammering away to The Neighbors From Hell, and he has been, for a good long time.

We hate TNFH. They're the Devil. They're Legion. Picture this: Something like 4-7 kids, all related somehow, living together, with a sometimes parent on the premesis. They're all older now, and honestly things have gotten better, but about 4 years ago, it was sheer hell. They ranged in age from 7-15. But, there were no PARENTS LIVING THERE. The dad would pop by occasionally, but besides that? I'd see them lugging groceries home on foot, and riding their bikes to the laundermat. Yeah. I should feel sorry, right? I would, I tried, but shit, they're such animals. Where should I start?

They killed my rabbit, and maybe one (possibly two) of my dogs. The younger kids would throw a bunch of shoelaces tied together with a huge fishing hook at the end, over the stockade fence into my yard. Once, they hooked it in my rabbit hutch. My rabbit ate it, and died. I'd be sitting in the yard, and *woosh* over the fence would come this long string, with a hook. Sometimes into the dog pen, sometimes right into the fish pond. In that time frame, two of my dogs turned up dead. One would eat ANYTHING, seriously. She was youngish, only 6, but she chewed on everything. There was bits of string in the pen, and my dog was dead :( one can only assume. Another of them died, but he was older, about 10. It was just *poof* he wasn't sick or anything, but we had no evidence.

They used to throw all manner of garbage out of their second floor window, on to my house (we live about 10 feet apart), anthing from used feminine hygene products, to old food (dishes and all, know how many forks I hit with the lawnmower?), to toy parts, to once, a used condom. Every time we'd notice something new, we'd go bang on their door, and make one of the kids clean it up. Turns out, it was just this one girl doing it, the sloppy bitch, rather than clean her room, she'd chuck everything out the window.

They have two dogs and about a billion cats. One dog is fine, cute little bugger. The other one is a vicious nightmare. It's a boxer. They built this ridiculous enclosure that gave the dog a 3 ft. width of run up and down the stockade fence bordering our yard. All the dog would do was bark and bark and bark all day long. It had a thing for our clothesline, too. It would go NUTS, when we would put clothes on the line (we don't own a dryer). Our stuff kept dissapearing, too, and, I chalked it up to our carelessness, misplacing stuff whatever. Till one day, I saw one of our towels hanging over the fence (now, our clothes line is about 10 feet high, and 2 feeet away from the property line). I went to go grab it, thinking the wind had knocked it over there. The dog climbed up the fence, and went after me, ripping the towel from my hands. I got a stepladder, and peered over the fence, and FUCKING LO AND BEHOLD a heap of our stuff out there. Roughly two loads of laundry, this asshole dog had snatched off the end of our clothesline. The damn thing climbed up this bowed section of fence, and ripped clothes off the line. So, I go get the husband, he looks, and puts a hand on the edge of the fence to steady himself, and the dog bites him. Bites him. Yes. Tore three fingers open, and a nice puncture wound on the knuckle. He's livid, at this point and goes banging on their door, yelling about the laundry, yelling about the dog, screaming at the top of his lungs. No one came to the door. He pounded and pounded, and ranted and raved. He left bloody smears all over the door, the front window, everything. He hit one windowpane so hard, he broke it. Yeah, mister temper. One of the kids finally came to the door, the boy. All my husband said was "I'll pay for that window, if you want, but, then I'm gonna call the cops about the vicious dog, and where's your dad, anyway..." The kid mumbled, "Don't worry about it"

Since then, the dog has been on the other side of the enclosure, with three feet of space seperating. They didn't clean the blood off the front of their house for weeks. Weeks.


That was all a few years ago. Since then, the boy's dissapeared, I'm guessing he's in his late teens, now, the oldest one, a girl, has a kid of her own, a baby, and she's maybe 20. Some of them drive now, thankfully, and we had about 6 different kinds of "authorities" come banging on our door, looking for the father. Get this, FBI, Union Beach cops, county sheriff, NYPD (that one floored us), DYFS, and someone else, some other bureau. The father has totally dissapeared. Those were just some of the more major problems, but I assure you, there have been literally hundreds, over the years. We don't hate, we just ignore them, mostly, and once in awhile the mister will go off on who ever answers the door. They apologize, and fix whatever it is. Their dogs occasionally get into our yard, and we throw bricks at them, or baseball bats. No biggie. Things have been quiet, mostly.




Now all of a sudden, my son, the politician, everyone's friend, this boy, is talking to the youngest of them through the fence. I eavesdropped. He told them he's afraid of their dogs. She invited him to come over and play. I shuddered. But hey, he can talk to whoever, I guess, it wasn't hurting anything. I'm not letting him go over there, nohow. I'm afraid of the dogs, and of what diseases he may contract...plus, they're just skaaaanky.