(no subject)

[gategrrl]

 

My previous post reminds me of a house in Tujunga that the Guy and I were looking at when we were house-hunting eight years ago.

The house was a 1940's beauty, with nice "bones", good lay-out, and needed some work on the inside. Who ever owned the house must have watched a lot of Home Network shows, the kind that show you how to apply paint in textures to your walls, because I remember the dining room was painted this vivid purple color, with bumpy textured stripes. I remember at the time wondering how the hell we'd scrape that crap off the walls. There was also a bathroom that must have been converted from part of the kitchen on the other side, because there was a square opening in the bathroom wall. Yup. That WAS weird. Anyone could look in while you were taking a poop or peeing. Okaaay.

It was a mixed neighborhood too. By mixed, I mean, there was a small three story apartment building a couple houses down, the house across the street had an abnormally high number of cactii in the front, and it was a funky street. At first, what seemed most attractive about this house's location and huge back yard, was the enormous empty lot right next to it. 

And then...we heard honking while we explored the minimally maintained back yard. Honking? What? And we realized we'd been hearing lots of honking every time a car drove down the street.  

Finally we saw the flock of ten white geese waddling around the back yard in a clump, honking at pedestrians, at cars, everything. Do you know how *loud* geese are? And there were a lot of them! I shrugged, but Guy frowned. We talked to the people who owned the cactii garden and they said the folks who owned that land refused to get rid of the geese. They'd tried for years. Lots of people had tried to get the geese out of there. But no go. The absent owner refused, and because Tujunga was zoned for multi-use and still had its agrarian background firmly in place (no matter there was a pink porn shop just down the street around the corner) the geese were there to stay.

That night, the Guy parked the car in the neigborhood. Honk! HONK HONK HONK HONK!

We passed.

I don't think I'll ever like another house, rejected mostly because of a gaggle of geese living next door, again. Just as well. The school system in Tujunga is pretty bad, and the neighborhood? Naw, wouldn't have worked out. But who knows? Maybe we could have had goose for Xmas dinner!

Comments

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

I once rented a house that had tiny little frogs in a pond in the backyard. I thought it was going to be so cool!

Then I spent my first night there. OMG, it's not like I haven't spent enough nights in the country to know it's so much louder than the city. But I'd never been around frogs. Those fuckers are loud AND nocturnal.

Geese, however, can be pretty aggressive, too, so I think they might win the Bad Neighbors contest.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Geese and swans are effing scary! They're big, strong birds that attack - I've heard (don't know if it's true) that geese have actually been kept as an alternative to gaurd dogs.

Yeah, the country. Why is it that so many writers, who love to set their stories in the middle ages, or the country at whatever time period, seem to think that country sounds are all tempered, mellow and soothing?

That's the furthest thing from the truth! Aren't those little frogs awful? The sound of hundreds of crickets outside your window can get pretty intense as well, and of course, if you're in the country, you've got tons of songbirds at the right time of year blasting their songs out like there's no tomorrow! It's *noisy*!

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

And cicadas, when they cycle through. Can't hear yourself think.

I think I've heard of "guard geese" too. I used to frequent a lake where ducks and geese congregated. This huge white goose was so bold he'd stand on my toes and stretch his neck until he was almost at eye level with me, demanding to be fed ahead of the others. And the Canadian geese just hissed and snapped if you got anywhere near them.

The ducks on the other hand were adorable. They can be insistent in their food-begging, but not aggressive - if you refuse, they accept it.