The Sheriff of our alley.

We live on the first floor. This is awesome for a few reasons. The stairs do not cause any issues when bringing groceries into the house. When my legs are sore after a good workout, I am able to get in the house without falling down (something that was MUCH more difficult when I lived on the third floor). I can patrol the delinquents in my alley better because I can see them and give them looks to GET OUT OF OUR PARKING SPOT WITH YOUR DOOBIES. (OK, so this only happened once. But I felt like a really old grouchy man.)

Of course, living on the first floor is a problem because of safety reasons. There's the whole robbery thing that now causes us to have bars on all of our windows. (It really is like living in a minimum security prison.) We also cannot sleep with our windows open because of the noise in the alley and because our window is right on the alley. It feels unsafe. We also cannot leave home without all of our windows being shut and locked. (You see, having them shut isn't enough. Apparently, according to the forensic expert, the burglars could see that our window was UNLOCKED from the street and that was how they were able to get around our minimal bars on the windows.)

On the rare occasion we are home and can really open up the windows, we get a wonderful cross breeze going through our apartment. We also get to take in all the neighborhood activity. Living along the alley, we get to see and hear some colorful things. There was the time after Christmas when I learned why you should dispose of your knives via Salvation Army or Brown Elephant when I saw a homeless man with our former kitchen knife slicing open people's garbage bags. There was the aforementioned doobie-smoking going on in our parking spot two weeks ago (before work.) Then there was last weekend. The dog barking episode.

P.I.C. and I had the windows open to get some fresh air in when we first heard it: a tiny dog incessantly yapping. That's annoying from the get-go, but add to it other bigger dogs that would join in sporadically. Anyone who's read me for longer than a few months knows my feeling on tiny shrieking dogs. They annoy me.

Apparently, they annoyed my neighbor too. I was whining in my rather passive-aggressive fashion to P.I.C. when I heard a loud outburst from one of the guys that lives across the alley.

"SHUT YOUR FUCKING DOG UP!"

Things were getting interesting. I looked out my back window and saw this guy on his second floor balcony with his dog that had been occasionally joining in the bark party. I noticed that the little yippy dog was in the window directly next to his. The guy walked back into his house. He comes out with a squirt bottle. He squirts in the window of the little dog's apartment.

It was as though there was instant silence.

"Didn't like that, did you?" The guy patted his significantly bigger dog on the head and proceeded to walk around his balcony. I hear him holler into his apartment, "ONE SQUIRT and the dog shut up." He sounded so proud of himself.

He continued to walk around his balcony, holding the squirt bottle, just waiting for that yippie dog to start barking again. He looked like a patrol man. Nope. He looked like the Sheriff. Working hard to fight against yippie dogs that get all the other dogs facing the alley riled up. Fighting to end the constant barrage of dog barking. I could get on board with this. Consider me a deputy, neighbor man!

Yep. That's how one of our neighbors got the nickname of Sheriff. I wouldn't mess with him. Once he has his squirt bottle, he means business.