The Klopeks

We have another new neighbor.  Only this one remains a mystery.  It’s on the street that goes north and south along the side of our house.  It’s four doors north, so we have a very clear view of it from our north-facing home office window. 

The curb-appeal is nothing special.  It’s painted a not-too-attractive faded lime green.  The front yard landscaping is rudimentary at best – one tree and one shrub.  The inside pictures on Zillow show neutral colors except for one of the three bedrooms, which is bright purple and has a matching purple bathroom.  Some of the kitchen cabinets are the same pukey lime green, others are white.  But someone must have liked it because it was on the market for less than a week and sold for $22,000 above the asking price. 

A couple of days after the For Sale sign was removed, Bill was up at five o’clock in the morning and he noticed a moving truck as it backed up the driveway.  It didn’t stay long and only a few boxes were unloaded and moved into the garage.  This was the first weekend in March.  Then, four or five days later, a large, Budget Rent-a-Truck backed into the driveway mid-morning and more boxes, plus furniture, was unloaded and disappeared inside the house and garage.  We also noted the backend of a white SUV parked inside the garage. 

The Budget truck left later in the afternoon and there was no further activity.  The drapes were closed on all the front windows and the porch light was turned on.  The only indication someone might live there was the next day, when a large, homemade dog ramp magically appeared at the end of the driveway.  The handwritten sign on the ramp said, “Free to a pet loving home.”  That was the end of the first week of March.

It’s now going into the last week of March.  The porch light remains on 24 hours a day, the dog ramp is still in front of the house except it was blown over by a wind storm the evening of the 18th and is now laying broken across the sidewalk so pedestrians have to go into the street to get around it.  No one has come or gone from the house, at least in the morning while Bill and I mess around in our home office until lunchtime. 

I put a note asking them to please remove the broken ramp into their mailbox and almost couldn’t insert it into the opening because there was so much mail piled up behind the mail slot.

Maybe they’re night people.  Maybe they only go out after dark.  Vampires?  Werewolves?  Oh wait, is there a full moon tonight?

I mentioned to Bill that I had put a note into their overflowing mailbox, asking them to please get the dog ramp off the sidewalk and out of the front yard.

“Okay,” he commented somewhat skeptically.  “But just be prepared for the Klopeks.”

“Who?”

“You know, The Burbs?  The mad doctor and his crazy son?  The Klopeks.”

“Oh, right.  That’s such a great movie,” I said with a grin.  “So, you think they’re burning bodies or making Frankenstein monsters in the basement?”

“Umm, no, because none of the houses here have basements.  But maybe they’re doing something else nefarious.”

“Like cooking meth?  Or making fentanyl pills?”

“Or baking illegal Girl Scout cookies,” he quipped.  “You just never know.”

---