Off to a New Home

No..........We're not going anywhere...........yet.

It has been a chaotic 32 hours around here. I even had trouble sleeping last night. I have NEVER had a beef with a neighbor, especially not ones that I considered friends. Our home is bordered by streets on three sides and an alley on part of the 4th. Our one adjacent neighbor has a koi pond in their backyard. For months, a predator was eating their fish one by one. Before this past Sunday, we had only witnessed a raccoon on our property once, on Superbowl Sunday.

We feed our cat in the morning, mostly so that the neighbor's prowling cats don't eat his food. We also do this to keep the skunks and possums away. So I was appalled when I received a phone call from my boss (the City Manager) from his vacation at the beach. He was telling me that my neighbor had complained about us and said we were harboring raccoons and had been feeding them illegally for months, leading to the demise of their beloved koi. (I am thinking that maybe it was the koi and the other neighbor's loose lid on the outside cat food container that might have attracted the raccoons) They had gone to other neighbors to garner support and turn them against us as well. They certainly didn't ever say a word to us directly.

My boss had a solution....send a humane wildlife trapper to come get them and relocate them. Due to the uproar, I was perfectly happy to see these guys move onto a safer habitat, so I signed a release and agreed to allow the trapper to put baited cages in my yard. Within an hour, we had our first capture, the neighbor's (you know which neighbor) cat. The neighbor came over and was angry and rude and called my husband a liar and almost knocked our gate over as he slammed the fence. This man is supposed to be a professional, but he stooped to childish and boorish behavior.

You would think he would be grateful that we allowed the trapping of the raccoons, but instead he went into a tirade about the city trapping these animals for me as a special favor since I am an employee of the city. He was angry that the city was picking up the bill for the trapping services (to remove the nuisance HE was complaining about).

He didn't stop there. He called the Mayor, the Chief of Police and every other person he thought he could influence. He told the Mayor that he will sue the City. Apparently he is also mad because the city pruned a tree in the alley that he thinks I should have paid for. I had no idea he was so angry. This man and his wife were pillars in the community, participating in service clubs and volunteering at the Police Department. I am mortified and puzzled at how we have become the objects of his angry rampage. I guess this can be one example that life in a small town isn't always better than the big city. How did this man forget that when we moved in, we spent thousands and thousands of dollars to remove the overgrown ivy that was a haven for rats? We have done a lot of improvements to our property that have positively influenced the value of his.

I am trying to keep this a little vague, as the girls' blog isn't really the right soapbox to vent about an individual when half of my coworkers read this occassionally (whoops!). Anyway, we caught the whole raccoon family the first night. They cried in our yard all day until the wildlife trapper could come pick them up. Here's wishing them all a safer home.

I hate Koi.