Follow up on Barking Dogs

The barking has stopped!
Peace for two nights and one day.
Last night, we took a few little presents
To 9 year old Ariel, next door.
His parents Marta & Aron
Asked how it was going with the Dogs
We told them we had spoken with Eutimio
Who agreed to think about it
Marta said oh, he took the dog to his rancho
Of course – he has somewhere he can take it.

Marta then tells us that many years ago
(probably about 10)
The neighbor 3 doors from us had a bunch of pigs
As did someone up the street
Along with chickens and goats
She said the smell was so bad
You couldn’t stand it
And in summer, the flies!
Maybe dogs barking aren’t so bad!

Aron, thinking about other noises,
Asks about Ramon’s car
Ramon is Petra’s son in law
They live across the street.
Recently his car has a really bad muffler problem
Aron says he made it that way on purpose
Just for the noise.

Then he mimicked the day for us
6am, Nabor across the street guns his engine
7am Ramon starts is mufflerless car
He warms it up for 10 minutes,
Playing loud music on the radio, and leaves
7:30 – Jokingly, Marta says, then I wash my dishes
As loud as I can so you can hear it.
Then at 8am, Aron says “I bang my gate
Getting my car out to take Ariel to school”

We jokingly say back that we
Are going to buy Christmas songs
That are sung by dogs barking
And play it from 8 foot speakers
From our roof until we can’t hear anyone else.
Then we all barked Jingle Bells and laughed.

Ariel in the meantime is playing
The toy chicken we gave him
And banging his large marble ball toy
In our faces.

We go home to a second night of peaceful sleep
Meantime, we are hearing all the other dogs
All over the place, feeling a little hypocritical
About bothering our neighbor about their’s
When every other dog on the surrounding streets
Aren’t any different than their’s

This morning, the garbage truck comes
John meets Juana on the street
With the garbage cans,
He thanks her for the quiet nights
She says ‘bajo’ meaning that her dog
Is down off the roof
Maybe it’s at the rancho
Maybe it’s in the patio below
She doesn’t quite say,
But we’ll take the quiet
For as long as it lasts
And we’ll remove our dog machines
From the terraza.