Strangely Naked

Currently there’s a chainlink fence between me and the neighbors behind us where there’s an apartment complex downhill. If we wanted to obstruct the apartment’s view of our house, our options are limited, but right now, the relationship between us and the apartment complex is untenable. Gross squirrels are dragging even grosser dumpster garbage fast food bags into our yard, we are constantly assaulted by their noise pollution, and our attention is sometimes diverted by “apartment drama.” (You know apartment drama, strangers yelling at each other, drunk people cavorting, people

with loud cars who work the night shift, generally the reasons people purchase houses, to flee from such awful nonsense.). These are bad hombres, some, I assume, are good people.

As such, we’re considering various options to prevent all of the annoying and horrific things that trickle over, because they aren’t sending their best, their sending their loud non-mufflered cars, their garbage, their sewer cats, not their drugs like I would prefer, their gross bonfire parties with the even grosser music. Again, some I assume are good people, but they’re mostly human detritus.

We thought about a larger fence, but since we’re uphill, a fence wouldn’t work to our satisfaction. What if we tried a natural border, planting trees or shrubs? But who has the patience or the attentiveness nature requires? Also, as a home owner, we’re already fighting nature at every moment. Part of the need for this wall is our general disdain for nature (did I mention we’re also in the middle of a migratory path for several endangered species?).

We wanted to brainstorm things that were more of a deterrent. Unfortunately, when you’re in a state of panic about strangers potentially invading your space, your imagination becomes limited. Now we’re stuck with a giant ugly wall. No thought toward aesthetics, or its effect on the ecology of our yard, just a stark, giant slab of vertical concrete. We can’t take any pride in it because it’s not that novel, nor does it really accomplish anything. We forgot that our neighbors had ladders and shovels and gross cats are still good climbers and anyone could still just chuck garbage into our yard. In fact, by removing the human element, we’ve made it easier for them to throw garbage into our yard because they don’t have to see the consequences.

Also, the apartments didn’t pay for it like we thought they would, so we’re now bankrupt. At the very least we could have kept what we had and added maybe a moat with piranhas or motion-sensor poison dart launchers or maybe just an audio system that assaults those who approach the border with a recording of  Jared Leto’s band.

Maybe we could ask a bunch of people to make some broken tile mosaics on the existing gross structure? Maybe plant landmines that erupt into fireworks, deadly deadly fireworks speckled with puffs of invader blood? Maybe I can add a feature that involves launching drones that shoot angry barracudas (ooooh barracudas) at approaching ne’er-do-wells (aka gross “others”). I mean, I’m already broke, so why not put some more features on credit?