Peanuts
by Molly-Ann Leikin

Any of you who used to read my columns in the Musepaper, know that for seven years, I was plagued by the non-stop barking of a Doberman named Cocoa Watanabe in the condo next door. Dr. Mortimer Watanabe and his fifth wife were childless, and couldn't understand why such pedigreed barking bothered me. Dr. Mort was a marathoner's marathoner, and ran several races per year, usually finishing first. But after years of that dog tormenting me, God intervened, gave Wantanabe cancer and killed him rather rapidly - in three months, to be exact.

His teen queen widow, Maree Angelique, after whom the character of Roller Girl in "Boogie Nights" was undoubtedly modelled, was also very fond of Cocoa's barking, which came to a sudden end one morning at 5 when Cocoa up and died. I know I was a suspect, but Dobermans, apparently, up and die.

Since The Cocoa Watanabe Syndrome, I've been very unfond of animals.

So imagine how I felt when sweet Maree Angelique next door remarried, moved away, and her unit was reposessed by the Sumitomo Bank, which sold it for back taxes to a large, nasty lesbian named Marilyn, with a small dog named Bogie. Bogie's mom had a girlfriend I referred to as White Truck Woman. She was a dog sitter, and rolled by every evening in a white Isuzu pick-up, unloading five Dalmations, who raced into Marilyn's condo to spend the evening howling with Bogie while Marilyn and White Truck Woman went to sensitivity training at the YMCA.

This did not make me fonder of dogs. But I did decide to move.

Okay - so I'm looking for real estate. I find a house I love, and immediately hire a private investigator to comb the neighborhood for potential puppy problems.

Nribotiban Botswana made an eighteen page report verifying there were a few dogs, of course, in the neighborhood, but their owners were very conscientious about keeping pets indoors and away from open windows. I met everyone in the area, and their dogs, and finally coughed up the big bucks for my new house.

As I walked around my property twenty minutes after escrow closed, I heard a weird snorting sound, coming, I realized, from the lot across the street, where, if I'm lyin' I'm dyin' and I ain't dead, there was a large, black, potbellied Viet Namese pig, named Peanuts.

(This was fun when my former publisher from Chappell arrived drunk as a skunk at ll in the morning. The pig started wheezing, while poor, drunk Roger wanted to know what that noise was.)

"Noise? I don't hear anything," I said, looking Roger straight in his bleary eyes.

"Sounds like snorting."

"Snorting?"

"Yeah - snorting. Like a pig."

"A PIG? Roger, this is a NICE neighborhood."

Okay - so here I am - in a dog-free environment, albeit with Peanuts. Occasionally, a stray, grey cat would sit on my red, saltillo-tiled walk to sun itself. The cat didn't seem to have a home - and I didn't shoo her away because I wanted to be a person who was nice to animals.

Having made peace with Peanuts, and the Unknown Kitty, I set out to design my new garden. That wasn't so easy, either. Thirteen gardeners quit, citing my budget as unworthy of their CEO-level time. So I planted $1500. worth of Morningglories to keep a nice, neighborly distance between me and that pig.

I watered my flowers twice a week, talked to them, sang to them, played them Mozart and Britney Spears, not necessarily in that order. And they bloomed into the most beautiful blue and purple flowers I've ever seen. Then they all up and died.

Luis the fourteenth, my most recent gardener, was summoned. He found gopher holes. Gophers, he said, were eating the roots of my flowers.

They couldn't snack on something that comes with a coupon? Like Ding Dongs?

Gutenu.

Marje, my 77 year-old neighbor across the street, who is Peanuts' mother, was sorry about my flowers, but wouldn't allow Luis the Fourteenth into the pig pen to set gopher traps because they would endanger Peanut's snout.

Excellent.

Couldn't we move Peanuts to another pen, say in Oregon, until the gopher was caught? No, Peanuts would be unhappy with a transition this late in her life. Just how late was it, I wondered, thinking maybe Peanuts and Cocoa Wantanabe might have the same karma.

But Marje, who rode off doing wheelies on her John Deere, wouldn't even discuss transplanting the pig. Peanuts stayed put and I was hysterical, losing my self-esteem entirely from coming in dead last on the priority list to a fat, black pig.

I raced to my support network for help.

Composer Jimmy Di Pasquale told me to re-think this disaster as a good thing. Instead of focusing on dead plants, I should celebrate the fact that I had the opportunity of feeding the gopher a sumptuous, $1500. meal over the holidays. (Jimmy had a bad cold and felt my priorities were out of whack.)

Sandra Block, whose daughter is an environmentalist, nooged me to look on the internet for humane groups to relocate the gophers.

Carol Caruso, who produced the T.V. movie for which I got my Emmy nomination, told me I'd better make peace with the fact that like it or not, animals were part of my life.

Joanna Roselinski, next door, age nine point three, made a special trip to the library on her bike, bringing me an armful of books about gophers.

The police, who were down the street on a "domestic matter", told me, unofficially, to get a 22 and kill everything in sight.

We went with Rebecca Dru Eptstein's logical, detached and good idea of just plain gopher traps on the other side of Peanut's fence.

But somebody yanked them up.

And now I was really out there.

Like in Uganda.

Luis the Fourteenth set more traps. Then more. When I'd given up and was spending my days under full-body ice packs, he triumphantly announced that the gopher was dead. Luis felt it would be good to leave the body in full view of the other members of that species to show them the consequences if they tried any of this shit again. In my neighborhood, we all watch "The Soprano's".

So we left the gopher's body right where it was. But damned if the Unknown Kitty didn't eat it.

So I throw up my hands. I absolutely throw up my hands.

Silk flowers aren't an option. The pig would eat them. But I'm looking into a 60' by 10' laminated, panoramic photo of Monet's garden.

I don't think he had a dog, did he?

© 2000 Molly-Ann Leikin

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