My Neighbors are pigs

They say that fortune favors the bold, so here goes. Over the years, I have lived next to a variety of types, some kindly, neighborly and some a little on the nutty side.  But never have I been subjected to the kind of neighbors who now reside right across the concrete block fence where I first met Doris.

Pigs.  There's no other way to say it.  Slovenly, noisy, smelly, cantankerous pigs.  The whole lot of them.  Inevitably present.  As if they are members of a cult called Pig Dynasty.  They squeal and snort and bang against the fortress that keeps them from my side.  And so do their animals.

Just kidding.  I feel sorry for Doris, now having to live over there full time.  Something happened.  Either I came on too strong for her, or the priggish neighbors (I said priggish, not, well, you know) decided enough was enough.  They seem the overly OCD type. I can visualize them up in their room, counting up the eggs at the end of a long cackling day and finding, always, that  they are one oblong prize short. 

They staked out a spy and her name is Guinevere, or at least that's what I've named her.  She looks harmless enough what with her hoe in one hand and her GPS monitor in the other.  But it's always the harmless looking ones who turn out to be the ruiners of a good time.  And why, I ask you, does she not speak Spanish or Kichwa?  It's either one or the other or both here.  I suspect she's a plant and do you know why?  Because Doris no longer comes to visit.  That's why.  No clumsy winged entry into my yard.  No feverish search for the right bugs. No gifting me with the missing egg from the count next door.  Nothing.

So here I am, without  my favorite feathered visitor, without eggs, without, practically, the will to live. I do not take this sudden neighborly challenge lightly.  I have friends in the business too, you know.  Dennis has already asked me to go to Venezuela to work out a deal and Kirk says he's in.  I am not without resources. 

This just in: Forget what I said about the neighbor's 007-type hire.  Apparently the reason she cannot speak Spanish or Kichwa is that she is brain-damaged after suffering a fall in her youth.  I need to apologize.  To her and to the pigs, who are, after all, only being themselves.  Besides, I have now discovered the positive benefits of the plant called The Caballero (or gentleman, in Spanish...I don't know what it is in Kichwa, but I can tell you that while riding the bus today I did understand my first interchange in Kichwa.  It was, and I quote: "Goodbye, Hernando.  Goodbye, Luisa." It won't be long now until I'll be fluent in a practically extinct language. 

Where was I?  Oh yes.  The caballero is a plant that only blooms at night, similar to the infamous Dama de Noche (or lady of the night) in Spain.  When the pigs are at their quietest, but also for some strange reason, their smelliest, The Caballero, in a very gentlemanly manner blooms and produces one of the plant kingdom's most intense colognes to cancel out anything those pigs want to throw my way.  So there, piggies.  Be  my neighbors.  Be the pigs that you are.  I don't care.  I have The Gentleman to help me out.  So I don't need to call on my undercover agents after all.  But worry not, Dennis and Kirk, I'm still going to Venezuela.