Neighborhood watch

So, this is weird. I think.

A couple of months ago, I was walking out of the ‘hood when I noticed an owl fly to a tree. I stopped, pulled out my mobile and aimed. Because: owl.

A woman was standing in front of her house across the parking lot, talking with another woman; she interrupted her conversation to shout pointedly at me, “Can I help you?”

Now, I was coming from the interior of the cluster, not from the street, but she was challenging my right to be there. Or perhaps my right to shoot photos. I pointed toward the owl.

“Tree,” she said, with astonishing brilliance.

“Bird,” I replied.

The noise disturbed the owl, which flew off, and I went on my walk.

Naturally, every time since, when I walk past her house, I mutter, “Asshole” at it. (I refrain from using the word “bitch” because it kind of connotes that a female asshole is somehow different from a male one.)

Well, yesterday I was headed out when I caught another bird in my peripheral vision, in the general vicinity of her house, followed by a raucous squawking. I stopped to try to see what kind of bird it was. And who should approach, from the street, but Mrs. Biddy Officious. She said she always listens to birds, too. I made some brief response and continued my walk.

Well, blow me if she didn’t pull a 180 and follow me into the corporate campus next door to ask me if I live in that cluster. Like—whiskey tango foxtrot?

I replied in the affirmative and kept on walking. Eventually she branched off my path, like that’s what she’d intended to do all along, and I went over to watch the arborists grinding up the big tree that fell over last week.

Here’s the thing, dear readers—I’m White; like probably 97% of the cluster residents. Like Biddy. (And I recognize that if I were not, she'd probably have called the cops on me, given her bolshie approach to a perceived interloper.) I’m probably in her age range. I’m walking on the sidewalk, not peering into people’s windows or rattling their doors. I'm a little scruffy looking after 14 months of lockdown, but I certainly don't look any more suspicious than the other residents who walk around the property several times a day. And while the cluster does have signs warning that this is private property, where in the almighty fuck does Biddy get the unmitigated nerve to challenge my right to put one foot in front of the other?

She can kiss my California ass. I’m pretty sure I can take her in any fair fight.