In case you’re ever walking around in my neighborhood and you’re wondering which building is mine, it’s the one with the handwritten apartment for rent sign specifying NO DOOGS ALOWED.
The same day I first noticed that sign, I went out for a walk, because the weather was nice and I needed to procrastinate about a lot of things, and on the parkway grass of this kind of tatty little house near the elementary school, I saw another sign. This was also handwritten and dog-related. It was very hastily scrawled. It said:
your DOG P
is not here
I wondered what it meant. I thought it had something to do with a missing dog. Then I had this idea that somebody around here must own a flaky itinerant dog who roams around and crashes with neighbors, one of whom was just trying to be helpful. Or else this house ran some sort of strange dog tavern (maybe they play poker or pool there?) and wanted to let whoever else know, truthfully or otherwise, that the dog they call “P,” son of a bitch that he is, wasn’t there.
But then I kept walking and saw more signs, placed at 5′ intervals along the parkway (it’s a corner lot), all written in Sharpie in the same crazy lopisded script. I took out a notebook and very carefully wrote them down. I think they’re about cleaning up dog litter:
P Your Dog Bathroom
and then:
Pick up ofer
Your dog
TANk you
and finally:
Pick Up
Keep Dog
P P P P
pick up
Eventually you can guess at what needs to be picked up, but jeez.
Of course, this is still the best dog-related sign ever.
