So the dawg is fed and I’m just about to throw on some clothes and take her for the morning doggy walk. It’s around 6:30.
Right. Sure.
Ruby is chowing down; I’m looking for a pair af marginally presentable jeans. And…ohhhh yeah:
R-R-R-O-O-O-O-A-R-R-R-R….
Cop copter flyover.
Round and round and round he goes. He’s looking for someone, and that someone is within a few blocks of the Funny Farm. The police dispatch website says nothing about it.
Based on past experience, the someone will be…
- an ordinary burglar (not likely: they’ve been up there almost 40 minutes…they wouldn’t waste that much fuel on a workaday prowler);
- a wanted criminal on the run from some other neighborhood;
- somebody who actually did break in to a house here and raped or otherwise engaged the resident;
- a bum who picked a fight with a homeowner trying to evict him from a garage or a backyard; or
- a criminal, probably of the violent type, on the run from the cops, who chased him here after some other incident.
WhatEVER: it put the eefus on the Morning Doggywalk.
Fortunately, the weather has cooled dramatically. So, we can afford to wait an hour before setting out to defile the neighbors’ lawns.
😉
Yesterday the neighborhood association had its annual Giant Shindig in the Park, so we weren’t able to go over there during that. And now I”m not so sure about taking her into the park anyway, at least for the nonce. We’re enjoying a parvo plague. This fine and often fatal disease can be picked up off the ground. And Ruby, like any dawg, loves nothing more than sniffing every stink she comes across. Especially if it’s associated with a pile of feces.
Ruby has had her parvo shots, of course. However, I don’t get her shot up every year, because…a study showed that most of the routine vaccines last up to a decade. The researchers shot up a passel of dogs and watched them to see how long the initial rounds of shots worked. The vaccines were still protective nine years after the study began. At that point, the researchers ran out of funding and so dropped the study.
Thus we don’t know for sure how long the shots last, but apparently it covers the dog for as long as most dogs live. And also thus: I’m less than thrilled about taking her to our park, which everybody and their little brother uses as a de facto dog park. Not only are their little furbabies running around off-lead (some of them looking for a fight), but lead or no lead, any dog that’s been exposed to parvo is dropping viral particles everywhere it goes.
***
Hmmmm…. And this may have something to do with this morning’s Copter Flyover:
…the intersection of [Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South] is closed in all directions this morning and will not open until much later in the day. Please seek alternate routes. #PHXTraffic
Probably some idiot drove or walked out in front of the train.
Y’know…I love my neighborhood and all the wonderful young people who are moving here with their kids. I like being centrally located. I love the greenery and the park and the fancy houses in the Richistans and the cute little tract houses in my parts. But I sweartogawd, sometimes I think what AM i doing here?
My son is adamant that I should not move out of this house. But the truth is, there are safer districts, and they’re not all in the Sun Cities.
Fountain Hills is the most attractive of these. Problem is, it’s about as far away from everyone I know and everything I do as the Moon is. It’s halfway to Payson! Close to the Mayo Clinic…but otherwise, I know no one out there and have no great desire to get to know anyone. Sun City is quiet, if you enjoy the silence of the tomb. And mile on mile on mile of houses that look so much alike you can’t tell the difference between them.
Most areas in north Phoenix and Scottsdale do have fewer bums…we get inundated because we live at the end of the lightrail line. The bums and the indigent mentally ill climb on the damned train, ride it up here to the end of the line, get out, and fan out into the neighborhood. Of course we always had some crime before that thing was built. But we didn’t have a bum in every yard, and we didn’t have to be extra-cautious about taking the trash out in the alley (I have two sets of padlocks on the back gates!), and we didn’t have to walk around spaced-out bums sleeping off their latest fix in the park. These are largely functions of the idiotic lightrail project and the insertion of several drug clinics in the immediate vicinity of the neighborhood. So in theory one could escape some of the crime and ickiness simply by moving to a different district.
One of the magnets that calls the transients in: the FIVE drug treatment centers within easy walking distance of the lightrail stops at Main Drag South and at Gangbanger’s Way. One of them is right down the street from a grade school!
Drug abuse is pretty much endemic here. And it spans all social classes. So unless you live in a gated community such as the Biltmore or the Phoenix Country Club, you are going to have drug addicts wandering your neighborhood streets and sleeping in your yard.
Welp, Ruby is lobbying for a doggy-walk. I haven’t had anything to eat and am starved. And so, awawayyyy….to breakfast and then to brave the day’s outdoor adventure.
And tonight? HALLOWE’EN! Armies of cute little kids trucked into the ‘Hood from lower-income districts, here to collect the loot. We always sit in the WonderAccountants’ driveway to hand out candy…so that will be fun.