Monday, June 14, 2010

Poison (NOT the 80's Hair-Band)

Yesterday, I returned with Greysen from Kimmy's house for breakfast (and lunch, as it turns out). I pulled up and next door was parked a Nutri-Green truck with a loud generator running. I looked down into my yard and there was a man clad in a white lab-looking coat and a mask spraying a liquid substance into the trees right next to our yard which is right next to our house which had all the windows open because it was the FIRST NICE DAY OF THE YEAR!

As an aside, our house is situated in an area of Helena that is threatened each year by the pine bark beetle infestation. Our street borders the forest and if we don't do something about it, we could have all of our pine trees (11 in ours) dead in one season. As such, we purchase packets of verbione that are supposed to keep pine bark beetle at bay annually. They are an alternative to spraying that is non-toxic, natural and won't cause our children to be born with two heads. Our neighborhood has banded together and purchased these packets so that they are cheaper and then we all know that we are doing what we can to keep pine bark beetles from getting onto Strawberry Drive.

Except my neighbor. The neighbor that didn't bother to walk the 25 feet to my door and talk to me isntead of calling animal control when he had a problem with my dogs running through his yard the 1.2 times they did it over the course of 2 years living there. Also, the same neighbor who throws dog poop into our yard when he KNOWS it's not our dogs over there pooping because we've TOLD HIM that it's not our dogs but the neighbors dogs who we've witnessed pooping there. Oh and also the neighbor who snowblows his driveway right up to the INCH next to ours WHILE I WAS OUT THERE shoveling with a HUGE pregnant belly and an absent husband. Yeah, that neighbor.

So, that neighbor decided ON A SUNDAY, ON the ONE nicest day of the year so far, to have the most toxic variety of treatment, RIGHT NEXT to my house, WHERE I have a 3-month old baby who presently happens to have a respiratory cold. This was the first I knew about the spraying because, per usual, my neighbor couldn't walk the 25 feet next door to pay me the courtesy to tell me that we will have toxic substance spraying into our windows that are WIDE OPEN BECAUSE IT'S NICE OUTSIDE!

You can imagine how mad I was; livid, probably. So I marched right up to the white lab-coated fella and YELLED (because the generator was LOUD): I LIVE RIGHT HERE AND HAVE A THREE-MONTH OLD BABY WHO IS SICK RIGHT NOW. DO I ALSO HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HIM BEING POISONED? That's paraphrasing though cuz I really can't remember exactly what I said through my anger. I also mentioned something to him, in response to his assurance that the substance is natural, that arsenic is natural too. And I also mentioned something like the fact that it would have been nice to be TOLD about this before I had to come home and get sprayed with it. Just paraphrasing though... But I do recall being loud enough for my whole neighborhood to hear me. AND CERTAINLY loud enough for my neighbor to hear me. BUT I would BET that he wasn't in his house because he wouldn't want to be there when a toxic substance is being applied to his trees right outside his window.

I have kept my eye open for my neighbor's appearance outside all weekend because I will have a word with him. I wouldn't want to walk the 25 feet to my neighbors door to talk to him because apparently it's something one would NOT want to do in ANY circumstance.

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