One Scary Moment!

You never really know who your neighbors are.  Tonight was a great example of that.

Every night, I walk Sadie in our little neighborhood.  We do a "figure 8" around our block and the next block over.  Our path takes us past the community swimming pool, and that particular area doesn't often have cars parked in front of it at 7pm.  Tonight it had a dark SUV parked facing the wrong way.  There were several other dark SUVs parked along the street and one of them was idling and beginning to pull away when we came walking past.  The driver put the vehicle back in park, and turned off the headlights.   Me being .... well, me.... I just thought to myself that  someone was having a party, or maybe a book club meeting.... some simple answer for all the strange cars in the neighborhood.

I kept on my merry way, walking along with Sadie, minding my own business.  I passed one, two, three houses, and was holding Sadie's leash tight as a flurry of headlights shown from behind, and two cars pulled out from in front of us.  "How odd..."  I thought to myself.  We rarely see traffic when we take our walk!!  and in the next 15 seconds...  BAM!  I heard this and then felt the percussion against my back, and said "HOLY FUCK! What was that?"  For some reason, I stopped then crossed the street because I heard birds overhead fussing in the trees:  they didn't seem to like this either!   I looked back and there were cars pulled up surrounding the driveway of a house, all undercover vehicles.  The same vehicles I had seen parked around the last corner, obviously.   Sadie and I watched for a bit, men running, more lights coming on, neighbors coming outside.  I approached one couple who were outside, we speculated on the flash grenade that was assumingly tossed into a house.  We could hear officers on a PA system asking someone to come out of the house.  Men were half crouched behind vehicle doors -- how surreal this looked, like watching live tv! -- and then a light pop, pop sound.  Me and the neighbors looked at each other, and immediately thought gun fire.  It was softer than I expected.  Perhaps it was something else, pellet gun?  paintball gun?  More men talking on the PA, and then 7 or 8 quick pop, pops in a row.  The neighbors decided to beat-feet it back indoors, and Sadie and I turned and headed in the opposite direction.

When we reached the corner, another neighbor was standing there watching from a distance, and we exchanged words for a bit.  Sadie and I circled back on a part of our usual walk route and headed home.

It just goes to show, you never really know your neighbors, do you?