Message in a...

My building is an odd-shaped, ancient two-story storefront building with three upstairs apartments and one porch connecting us all. I've lived here for 5 years, and the next-door neighbors have been there for almost 2 now, and the woman on the end, N, has been there, well, since the dawn of time. Until recently, her two grown sons lived with her. N's a schoolteacher in the Chicago public schools, and she does acupuncture and massage on the side. She's - well, sorta crazy. Somehow, although three different sets of occupants in the apartment between mine and N's have had terrible relations with her, she and I seem to get along OK.

N is nosy, and odd, and a little know-it-all, especially when it comes to my care of Lois. When she sees me letting Lois out in the back yard to pee (early morning), she will say things like "When I had my Shanti (a beagle, natch), I would take her for walks," and shit like that. I shrug it off.

When I moved in I noticed that N would put old food out in the back yard, attracting raccoons, possums, mice, and - when I got her - Lois. We're talking half-eaten pizzas, whole bags of stale cheese popcorn dumped from the porch, cereal, bread loaves with mold, etc. It drove me nuts, and I complained to the landlords, to her, and even phoned her once about it when Lois ate something bigger than her head that I never identified. A few years ago, at the height of my mouse problem, I'd had it - and I bought her a bird feeder and bird food, hoping this would quench her helping-the-animals thirst. That didn't really help.

Recently, she's started throwing the food onto the roof next door to our porch instead of into the yard. And the middle neighbors, who've also fought the hard mouse infestation fight, have really gotten pissed about N's food-strewing habits. They started retaliating; leaving notes, and picking up the food and putting it back, in bags, at her door. Today, though, when I was outside, I saw their best move yet:


Happy spring!