Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Separation.
You never know what’s going on behind the walls, whether you’re on the outside thinking about the inside or vice versa. Last night, while we were having a Gathering and messing around with quantum physics, our neighbors had no idea what we were up to…and we didn’t know what was going on outside either.
Grendel, our little ADHD puppy, has a protective streak in him—and a ferocious, all-business bark that frightened my guests when they heard it. We couldn’t imagine what he was barking at. We weren’t even playing with the Ouija board and the only entities inside the house were definitely friendly ones!
Since one of my guests just had a bit of eye surgery done, I transported her to and from my house. Um…by car. I haven’t perfected the other techniques yet.
On the way to her house when the Gathering was over, we saw a couple of houses down the street with toilet paper hanging from trees, bushes, roof tops. It was the good kind, too—not that “lowest bidder” stuff they buy for the stalls at work.
This afternoon, the girls and I missed our showing of Tristan and Isolde, one of my favorite legends and my favorite Arthurian Tarot card for the 2 of Cups, so we headed home early. When the girls and I reached our street, we noticed most of the toilet paper had been cleaned up…but our next door neighbors had been snared in the random fun last night and their yard was still trashed. In hindsight, Grendel’s fearsome barking probably scared the vandals away from our house.
The elderly couple who had lived there recently sold the house. Busy as we are, we hadn’t seen a new neighbor move in, so I sent the girls to check on them and let them know the girls would clean up the vandalism. The girls happily obliged me, with nary a grumble.
Little did we know that the former neighbors had moved out, another elderly couple had moved in a few days ago, and they were too sick to get out and clean up the yard. Not only that, but they’d put up a Martin Luther King flag right be- fore the toilet papering had been done. They’d been worried that their flag was unwelcome in the neighborhood and they’d been vandalized because of it. They weren’t well enough to walk outside or down the street to see that the deed had been random.
The girls gave them a little nicer welcome to the neighborhood and were done cleaning up the mess in— seriously—about two minutes.
Definitely a feel-good moment for everyone. Me, I got a chuckle. The witch next door was glad to be of help, and very proud of her daughters, too. And Grendel, well, he got a treat.
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