Okay, I don't have a backyard. I live in an apartment complex, and the grassy area between buildings are referred to as the "commons". Directly across from my balcony, which is as backyard-y as it gets here, is a building housing the loudest seven year old terrorist alive.
Every night, about this time, she'll come out, and start calling to the two-year-old girl who lives in the apartment below me.
"Na-ya!"
Naya will hear her call through the screen slider and run out on the porch
"Yilyi!"(Or Lilly)
Then Lilly will ask if Naya can come out to play, and when she does, she will torture that poor little girl until she runs home crying to her mother, screeching in the same pitch as fingernails on a chalkboard. Lilly will chase after her, apologetic, afraid that Naya's moms won't let her play with her no more.
Sometimes Lilly will be playing with Shauna, a girl roughly the same age whose voice is set in a perpetual whine, and always seems on the verge of throwing a tantrum because no one will let he have her way. Shauna lives with her dad, and if she has a mother, she never shows her face. Lilly doesn't have a mom either, but she does have a Tammy, who sits on the patio late at night, obviously intoxicated, talking to somebody on her cell phone about whomever she has decided she doesn't like (usually Shauna)
But if you ignore the drama, and look beyond the garbage that never makes it into one of the ten dumpsters on site and over the trees, the view is splendid.
This is what I consider my backyard-Huff Park. About a mile down the road, it's where I take my boys for walks when they come visit me. The park, located within the city limits, is brimming with wildlife. If you go right before sundown, you can see some of the herd of deer that live there. And if you're extra lucky, you might see the fox and her two kits that live there as well.
(Posted in response to Fred's backyard terrorist challenge)
3 comments:
Na-ya. That's such a terrorist name.
Screaming kids can be a nuisance. A few months ago we were staying at a noisy motel. Most of the noise was coming from little kids running up and down the stairs and back and forth on the walkways, and shouting to their friends across the courtyard or at the pool. This went on 'til about midnight.
The next morning I happened to notice in their brochure that they had a no-pets-allowed policy "in order to provide a quiet pleasant environment for our guests."
Backyard terrorists? Does Bugs Bunny count? I have some of his relatives in my backyard and they're doing a number on my garden. Where's Dick Cheney when I need him?
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