A Dog, Some Chickens, a Hose, and the Police: a Middle-of-the-Night Incident

So although our new house is beautiful and in a quiet part of the city, it is pretty lively in the middle of the night what with the roosters, chickens, and geese the neighbor across the street raises and his neighbor's yippy dog.  Two nights ago I realized that the two noise sources are connected.  One neighbor's chihuahua was chasing around chickens and roosters in another neighbor's yard--right across the street in front of our bedroom windows.  After being awakened at 4:30 and listening to it bark for an hour (when I just gave up and got up for the day), I decided that next time I'd take action.

Last night turned out to be next time.  In fairness to the yip dog, it all started with another neighbor's house alarm going off at 3:30 in the morning.  After the alarm stopped the dog barked for about 20 minutes straight, and no ear plugs or white noise could quite block it.  So I decided to go for my extremely long hose.  (Owen had told me to get a long one, but apparently he didn't mean it should wrap the whole way around the house.)

I first woke up Owen (who had of course slept through all of it) for a "crazy check."  I find it's always a good idea to get a second opinion with desperate middle of the night, spur of the moment decisions, I find.  But he told me to go for it.

So I went out in my pajamas and dragged the hose into the street--hissing and quietly shouting in Spanish at the dog all the while.  I couldn't quite see the dog, but judging from the aggravated noises it made I think I may have hit it at least once.  It ran around behind the house and came out on the other side barking, so I dragged my hose over there and sprayed.

Eventually it hid behind the chicken house, but I waited for a while because I was hoping to chase it back to its house.  Then I saw the flash of lights as a police truck pulled up our block and decided to get my hose back over into my yard.  I didn't try to run hiding into my house, as that seemed inadvisable, so of course the police stopped next to the crazy gringo in PJs and asked me how I was.  I told them.

To their credit, they did not mock or give me a hard time at all--they actually parked next to the chicken house and listened for a while.  In a country where anything goes and no one seems to care about things like nighttime noise, I found it gratifying to be taken at least somewhat seriously.  Of course, the dog didn't bark then.  But that was OK by me.  It was actually quiet (except for a few yips) the rest of the morning.