Noisy Neighbors

It seems like ever since Greg and I moved out of our parents' houses 7 years ago, we've had noisy neighbors.

In college, I lived down the hall from some Nepalese exchange students who got special permits to keep live chickens in cages on their patio, since they believed in slaughtering their own meat. Greg's roommates were "gangstas" who were always playing rap and having loud "relations" in their common room.

When we moved to Washington, our living room windows were separated only by a narrow sidewalk from a major four lane highway. Our bedroom windows bordered two sets of train tracks, and said train would blow it's warning signal without fail twice a day outside our windows, knocking pictures off the wall. Not to mention the people living above us who were busted for possession with intent to distribute.

In Minnesota, one of our neighbors would drive his car, lacking a muffler, down the alley that was outside our bedroom windows - at 2 a.m. The foghorn at the lake would emit a loud tone on foggy nights (almost every night in Duluth) that was just enough to keep us awake.

Now, we still have noisy neighbors. Geese call out to the sunset as they begin their travels south. Turkeys put us to sleep every night, gobbling in the pasture across our lane. Coyotes decide to party in our front yard at 2-4 a.m. every morning. Our big white oak drops acorns on our roof and deck all night and day. We have a very vocal chipmunk that chirps around 5:30 a.m. when the sun comes up. Blue Jays scream at each other all morning long. However, this is the first time I wouldn't trade our noisy neighbors for quiet ones.