Update: It is not, in fact, the Richards, who don’t actually have the surname Richard, that’s just the name of the eldest boy that I hear screamed over the fence all the time. Richard is probably nine, maybe 10 and his younger borthers are twins of seven becuase I happened to run into them on thier birthday. They pointedly refused to tell me thier names, instead giggling ominously after I introduced myself and running away. This is the gang of boys that I’ve had to stop from torturing small animals on more than one occasion, and whose mother is the one that gets crying-drunk on the front porch late at night.
Lovely family.
Around this time last year thier grandmother came to visit and gave them honest-to-goodness home-made black-powder Cherry bombs direct from Texas, which the boys immediately took to the most flammable patch of chaparral in the neighborhood and set off six of them at once, resulting in a small wildfire, seven emergency response units and a helicopter, a Long Stern talk from the fire department and Karen getting in a screaming match with Child Protective Services and a sizeable crater in the middle of the field.
At least according to Olivia the ER nurse and neighborhood gossip. I was out of town at the time and believe about 80% of that becuase I saw the crater where there had not been a crater a week before, and becuase karen threw a shoe at me the one time I asked if she was alright when she was having her weekly drunk-cry on the porch.
But I Digress.
The Airhorn in fact belongs to one of the ladies at the Old Folks Home. Diane is very excited about the upcoming NBA playoffs and was having a bit of a pre-celebration in the park with her family and hadn’t realized the noise would carry. She’s rooting for Golden State becuase that’s where her grandson goes.
We gon need more stories on that crazy ass family
I don’t have more stories about the Richards specifically, but now that I’ve moved out of that Extremely Strange Neighborhood, I feel free to relate some more of the Wierd Shit that went on there. Some anwers to commonly asked questions:
1. It’s been pointed out to me that Golden State is an NBA franchise and not an institution of higher learning. To be fair, Diane is 84 and in an Alzheimer’s unit, and I know fuck all about sportsball. Perhaps her grandson lives in San Francisco. Regardless, we all had a good time and I was sent home with leftover bean dip.
2. I sometimes misspell things becuase I have multiple learning/reading disorders and Public Education in the US is terrible. I’m funny anyway.
3. Last I heard, Richard had gone to live with the other, less pyrotastic set of grandparents, so maybe there is hope for them yet.
(As always, all names have been changed to protect people’s privacy):
The neighborhood consists of a 206 pallette-swapped versions of the same three houses surrounding the largest hospital in the next six counties in any direction, surrounded immediately by three ranches on one side and roughly 100 miles of uninterrupted rocky mountain wildreness on the other. It’s seperated from the main city (If you can call a city with only the bars and Denny’s open after 9PM a city. Which you can’t) by a large mountain ridge and connected via a small canyon highway. Hence, the neighborhood consists primarily of:
Middle-Class Suburban White People ™
People who’d be too poor to afford this neighborhood normally, but are subsidized by the hospital. Olivia the ER nurse, for instance. They’re terrific.
People with Major Medical Conditions and Their familes, who live nearby, also subsidized by The Hospital.
Old Rural People who remember when Durango had only the train track and no paved roads and was mostly populated by cattle and will tell you they were present at the Alamo if you let them keep talking.
Wildlife that was here first and has no intention of moving.
This is a story about the first learning about the last.
Staci-With-An-I-From-Ventura-California introduced herself to me as that while I was walking the dog by the playground, as I tried to keep her preschooler twins (there are SO MANY goddamn twins in the neighborhood. I mean, we’re right next door to an IVF clinic BUT STILL) from jamming thier fingers up Charlie’s nose but fortunately he thinks children are hilarous and decided to lick what I sincerely hoped was jam off thier faces.
“Hi I’m [Gallus]. Hey, kids, be gentle with dogs-”
“Do you live here?” She asks in what I would find out later is her normal interrogative voice, but sounded to my untrained ear like a member of the spanish inquisition had reccived operatic training then took up chain smoking.
This is just. The wildest shit. How do you not know that bears are not in fact extinct??? How does that even happen???
Also looking at the comments I will just say this. I’m a Dutch guy who only ever has to worry about looking at a swan or geese wrong. The things mid West Americans live with is fucking insane yet also weirdly admirable?
1. My best guess, from talking with Staci more is as follows: she was home-schooled until about 15 and then dumped on the CA Public education system, which is notoriously terrible. Furthermore, the CA flag features the California Grizzly/Brown Bear, which WAS hunted to extinction by white settlers, so she may have gotten confused and extrapolated from there, and then it never came up again until that conversation. Somehow.
She’s actually a very kind and gernous lady and is doing her best to get acquainted with Natural History and Biology now.
2. Colorado is decidedly in the American WEST, and Durango proper can be rightfully be called the Southwest, which is culturally and ecologically distinct, and not even in the same time zone (midwest ends where MST starts)
The rest of America is not over-fond of the Midwest.
3. But Durango proper is High Desert (like regular desert, but on top of the mountains, so it’s also COLD and there’s no oxygen), so the list of wildlife I lived with included:
Geese (canada geese aren’t as bad as swans but will still kick your ass)
Really Stupid Mule deer (comparable to european roe deer, but dumber and fond of having sex in traffic)
Rabid skunks
Feral cats that I was always worried were going to get rabies from the skunks
Feral dogs that would come kick your ass for a sandwich
Prarie Dogs. Adorable! You might say. But actually vicious, and the colony near me carried Black Plauge. Yes, that Black Plauge.
a pack of Coyotes, probably about 9 of them total, but 6 that I saw frequently enough to recognize on sight.
Jackrabbits, which are gnerally inoffensive, except they like to stand up on thier hind legs and stare at you at night, which isn’t so bad except THE EYES REFLECT A NICE DEMONIC RED IN THE LIGHT.
Great-Horned and Screech Owls which are also mostly inoffensive except for looking extremely cursed by flashlight and making noises that should never come out of organic creatures, let alone birds.
Raccoons that are two evolutionary steps away from being people. One of those steps is Pockets. The other is Shame. They will probably skip step 2.
Wapiti (comparable to european Red Deer, but angrier)
Bobcats, which are like smaller but ballsier lynx
Mountain Lions, which are basically extra-stealthy leopards. So stealthy i forgot to put them in the first time.
Rattlesnakes
Tarantulas
Tarantula Hawk Wasps, which you can goolge if you never want to go outside again.
Bears.
and on one particularly terrifying occasion, Javelinas.
They’re not as big as European boars, but they come on packs of roughly a dozen. -666/10, do not meet on a contry road on a moonless night.
Absolutely none of these things were worse than the humans I had to deal with.
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