Well.

One house I went to today was really remarkable.  And by "remarkable" I mean "if I was as explicit as I want to be, some of you would quit reading this blog because you didn't think I used language like that."

The small driveway and small front yard were both filled with potted plants.  Everywhere.  Sitting on the ground, hanging from the trees, hanging from the rafters, sitting on the porch.  I could barely find the front door, and when I did find it, it was standing wide open.  There was no gate into the back yard.  I rang the bell and did a very fast backing retreat because the sound of the bell brought me sound of more than one large dog going into full freak-out mode.  Out came this little old man, although I don't suppose he was especially old.  Fiftyish, sixtyish, who knows.  "I've been expecting you," he said.  My first thought was, "Jeez, what a flamer."

He had to let me through his garage, then into his house, into the back yard.  He opened his garage and I was overwhelmed with animal smell.  His garage was jammed with several cages holding about a dozen enormous parrots, the air filled with their stench.  Holy...I thought.  I kept one hand on my Nextel, so I could at least scream the address to someone so they'd know where to find my remains.

Inside his house he kept a Chihuahua and three enormous poodles.  Not the rinky-dink poodles that everyone makes fun of, but the big ones that make Great Danes look like wimps.  I have run into several of this kind of dog in the past few years and not one of them was friendly.  The smell inside his house made his garage seem like an alpine meadow.  He somehow managed to corral them into his living room so I could get through.  His tiny back yard was another maze of potted plants, with a narrow passage between them and an ancient pool filled with what I estimated was probably about a 50 hit dice green slime.  I read his meters, and as I teetered along the brink back to his house, something moved in the pool.  I tried not to look at it too closely.  The Chihuahua kept running under my feet so I had to keep from tripping over it and falling into something.  He had built a wall inside the original wooden fence of his property.  I couldn't tell exactly what the wall was made from, but it was about 10 feet high and could not be seen through.  His big dogs were still in freak-out mode, and he kept telling them "Oh, now you behave" with a mincing tone, like he was talking to some kids who he was afraid would eat with their fingers while company was over.

Since I'm writing this, it's obvious that I made it back out unscathed.  Someday he'll probably turn up on the news, having been found dead, buried under a pile of his garbage with his starving dogs eating what's left of him.  Man, I just don't get some people.