Anyone remember my post where I ranted about our neighbors next door who thought it was perfectly acceptable to have band practice (complete with microphone and amplifier) from 11pm till midnight? Well, thankfully, they moved out (or perhaps were kicked out- we don’t know for certain).

The new neighbors are nice-ish. They don’t talk to us, we don’t talk to them, it’s all good. And even though there seems to be a lot of them (teenage girl has about 6 friends over often, 20-something guy has a handful of friends over, and older couple- assuming parents- 20-something guy seems to have a wife and a baby and a toddler), we’re not really sure who all actually lives there, and who just visits a lot. Thankfully, someone in that house seems to be 3rd shift so we hardly ever hear them after whoever leaves soon after we come home.

This story is not about them, however. I’m just happy to have neighbors that we can live with. No, this isn’t about the Jamaican family that used to live across from us either, who would have loud wailing chants at midnight during full moons (and once on Friday the 13th). This is a story about a relatively normal neighbor across the way.

There was a bird. An insomniac bird. Possibly an insomniac bird with turrets. This bird, for God-only-knows-why would wake up about 9 pm and sing incessantly until about 4am, at which point all the other birds would wake up. Oddly, however, all the other birds combined managed to not be as loud as this one bird. Seriously, we hear big rigs and trains going by our house that this bird drowned out.

Several times we considered killing it. Sometimes we considered asking the landlord to rip out its favorite tree. One night, our sort-of-normal neighbor was out having a smoke just as we came home. We did the fake half-smile-just-in-case-he-notices-us-and-we-have-to-be-polite thing. But he didn’t notice us. Instead, he sauntered over to the tree and stared at it for a moment. And then suddenly shook the hell out of that tree! We, of course, started laughing and got out of the van.

Not-so-normal-neighbor sees us, shakes his head, and says “Bloody bird. I shut him up before and he’s already back at it! I may have to shoot him.” (sounded a lot funnier with his accent and body language).