I Would Rather Face a Wolf at the Bus Stop than a Neighbor with a Tennis Raquet

The other morning I loaded our small, but getting embarrassingly larger, dog and daughter into the car and headed for the school bus stop. It was 6.45 a.m. and just getting light. As I rounded the corner I saw that we had been beaten to the spot by a large silver majestic "dog". The long tail was wagging and he seemed to be very enthusiastic about the arrival of the yellow vehicle. Without thinking too much about it I let the daughter leap from car and onto the bus, I parked the car and watched as the silver animal circled us once and then galloped off into the woods. Oreo leapt about wanting to follow. I didn't want to frolick in the woods with the wild things so we took our usual route around the tennis courts searching out half eaten picnics and old tennis balls.

When I thought about the "dog" at the bus stop I began to wonder if it was a "dog" at all. Our gated neighborhood is quite new and when it corralled the land for 149 very large homes suitable for rather pretentious owners it also managed to enclose a number of deer, a pack of coyotes and a multitude of rabbits. I am not very good at recognising American wildlife. Sure, I can recognise a rabbit and a deer but a coyote? I am used to the English country side with badgers and foxes and mice. I thought I must have met a coyote at the bus stop and made a mental note that this coyote was not as ragged and scabby as I had been led to believe they could be.

Later a good friend of mine, a neighbor, called me to tell me of a timberland wolf that had been captured in the neighborhood. It was behind with homeowner dues and was sent packing to a neighborhood down the road that is less picky about its community or its pinestraw.

Living in the neighborhood had become even more dangerous than I thought. Before the wolf I had only been frightened of the homeowners with tennis raquets and spandex.

Lakeside is relatively new being built about five years ago in three phases. Half of the homeowners come from the local area whilst the rest of us were shipped in from all corners of the country and globe. Everyone was keen to become friends and rather like when you start school you become friends with everyone throwing good judgement to the wind until suddenly on a Friday night after your second glass of wine, bag of chips and jar of salsa you realise you have little in common with the people around you and you have heard all the stories of their youth and career moves three times already.

This cold awakening happened to most of us at the same time. We all took steps backwards and regrouped into collections of people with the same interests. Clubs began to form to help the process. Goodhearted people became fundraisers, people with very elaborate homes began to host cocktail hours, other people discussed books, their religon, how to bring up children and the state of the Union. Ladies enjoyed glasses of iced tea in the morning. For a more active past time you could roll dice, play cards or indeed play tennis. In the beginning many people did a lot of these. However, the group you joined did label you and limit future optons. Not many people were able to break through barriers and be accepted into more than one group. It has become rather like the High School Cafeteria where certain people are only really welcome in certain areas. We don't seem to have progressed from our late teens, it does not matter how big the paycheck,how big the home or the amount of pinestraw it takes to cover your weeds we can still be real shits to each other.

The most amazing thing about it is that I can drink and joke with a neighbor whose company I enjoy, whose opinion I respect on a Friday but come Saturday if that same neighbor is carrying a tennis raquet I might as well be invisible. I am sure that sports equipment is impregnated with a toxic material that turns the owner into a very unpleasant person with an over inflated ego and an unfriendly nature. I am told that the problem is rife amongst Southern communities.

In short, I would much rather deal with a wolf at the bus stop than a neighbor with a tennis raquet.