5am on a Friday

Before I start this story I would just like everyone to know that Mr A and I are moving. We are selling our house and this was the plan even before last night. So no worries on that. Now, on with the chaos.

5am this morning I woke out of a dead sleep to "BOOM!....BOOM!...BOOM!"

Our neighbor to the side has a crazy son we call Pupule who used to sniff paint and is now a vagrant who collects garbage around the neighborhood and, on occasion, will bring it back to Dave's house. Although he used to live in their shed, they have since cleaned out the entire yard, Pupule included, and he doesnt come around much. They also have a large dumpster that sits on the sidewalk (excellent for us because we only have our garbage collected once a month).

I heard this noise and thought that Pupule was slamming the lid down on the dumpster. Then I thought, no, someone was trying to blow up the dumpster because that was much too loud to be the lid. Mr A woke up and I asked groggily, "what was that?" He waved his hand at me "shot gun".

He crawls over the bed and peeks out the window and I hear someone yelling. Mr A crawls back over to me and whispers that there is a K-9 unit with full gear on standing in our yard yelling "Stop Police!" and that he saw a car leaving the intersection followed by a police vehicle. We have no clue what is going on.

Eventually Mr A tells me that he prefers me to be on the floor because there is a police convoy parked outside our house and God only knows why its there. I get on the floor with my blanket and pillow and we lay there for awhile all Boyz N Tha Hood style.

As we lay there Im wondering where our neighbor Dave is. Hes always awake and outside at night. I grew up with a dad who stayed awake at night and I feel safe that way, which is why I like living next to Dave so much. So in this pandemonium I cant help but wonder where Dave is and if something is wrong with him.

I also noted how unusual it was that no dogs were barking. We have at least 3 or 4 "barkers" in our area, our dog Hapa included. Hapa wasnt barking, which is unlike him because he will bark at a mother with a stroller walking on the opposite side of the sidewalk. Heres a stranger in our yard yelling at someone and Hapa isnt even whimpering. Weird.

Then (about 20 min later) we hear four or five more shots. Smaller shots. Mr A dials 911 and puts his phone on speaker and Im like "ahh! turn the volume down!" I dont know exactly what Im worried about. Maybe someone running into our house taking us hostage or stray bullets or whatever. Mr A tells the 911 guy what he heard and we come to find out that "the police are in the area conducting a search warrant" so what we are hearing is probably flash grenades or something of the like.

Now this is all making sense. The house directly behind us has long been known to be the bad apple of our block. In fact, if it werent for that house we would live in what I would consider to be one of the better pockets in Lents Neighborhood. This house behind us is just methed out scum dump. As other meth houses have fallen in the last few years, Mr A and I have always wondered when they were going to do something about these people behind us. Well, theres your answer.

About 20 minutes after our 911 call I hear the hose being turned on. Mr A goes outside and tells me that he talked with 3 cops who were washing their boots off with our hose and he could also see people with flashlights in the house behind us. They didnt give him any information but did let us know that they broke one of our plastic lawn chairs accidently. They gave us a number to call if we wanted it replaced (it doesnt matter, chair was old anyway).

Needless to say, my poor husband didnt get a wink of sleep after that. The back window of our house is 20 yards max from the back of this house so everything thats been going on sounds like its happening inside our back room!

In the daylight, when we got up to go to work this morning, Mr A and I sort of inspected around the property. Hapa was going crazy sniffing everything in sight! So many interesting smells and people and dogs had been there since the night before! There were still some cops roaming around the front yard of the house behind us. I took this picture from my back porch and you can see where the windows and doors were all shot out and busted open.

Im glad the police finally did something about that house and I understand the element of surprise makes 5am a good time to do such a thing. But, holy shit, that was crazy!

Oh and this morning when we went out to investigate, Mr A found this lovely parting gift left on our bench in the backyard.