Dublin is the barky one.
She's tighter strung than her sister Paris, more alert to the routine incursions of mail carriers and newspaper chuckers. Sometimes in the early hours she will bolt from her place beside the bed and launch through the dog door to cry havoc in the backyard if she hears a neighbor stir. Sometimes Paris reluctantly follows, sleep-eyed and dutiful. (Audi lies on her back in the bed and contributes a soft yip. No need to get up.)
If Dublin goes on for more than a few seconds, I will get up and make my way down a hall that doesn't feel so long during the daytime, turn left past the kitchen, flip on the outside lights and pick up a flashlight as I walk outside. I call to her--softly, lest she think I'm joining in and redouble her efforts--and paint the perimeter of the fence with torchlight. Dublin does not bark without reason, and sometimes I'm horrified to discover a possum hanging in the trees, or a broke-neck squirrel intact and breathing with that horrible slowness that testifies to the nitrogen cycle to which we living things belong.
Usually there is nothing my human senses can detect.
Good girl, I say, for I only want to stop her barking, not to discourage it. Then I grab a shovel if necessary, or go back inside and sit in the dark and wait for the girls to flap through their door. Paris, having decided there is nothing to see, is invariably first. Dublin comes reluctantly, and depending on how I read her mood, I may close off the dog door behind her. Our neighbors are patient people, and they understand that there's an upside to Dublin's vigilance.
We don't have much crime, but every so often someone rummages through a car. Residential burglaries seem to have slowed, at least in our microhood, but some of us are still watchful for strangers. Back in the spring a man wandered into the condo complex next door to us and sat for a long time by the pool. When he was approached he smiled and said he was thinking about buying the place and building an office on site. Then he got back on his scooter and putt-puttered away.
It was an odd encounter, but the man seemed harmless. Just confused. Maybe embarrassed to have been caught lounging on someone else's private property. In his defense, nobody had put up a sign.
On Nextdoor, the new hyper-local social media site a lot of my neighbors have signed up for, I read about all kinds of things--about yard sales and lost and found pets. People give and ask advice on contractors and other services--"I'm looking for a craftsman/ woodworker/weekend warrior who would be interested in building a California king-sized platform bed. I would love your recommendations!" is a typical post. Someone else wants to make a map of houses that will be giving out candy this Halloween (the old porch light protocol has somehow become obsolete). Another bittersweet post announces the passing of a beloved pet, and offers to given away his uneaten dog food.
It's not hard to see the utility in the site, which was started in San Francisco five years ago and has now spread to more than 70,000 communities in this country and established a toehold in Great Britain and the Netherlands. (So far it hasn't turned a profit, but the company is valued at more than $1 billion.) If you want to let the residents of a specific neighborhood know about a zoning hearing that might impact their commute, it's great. And in theory, it's a way to spread the word about anything that happens in a neighborhood.
Like if there's a dude sneaking through the alley trying shed doors, it's probably good to let folks know.
But Nextdoor is a tool, and like any tool it's subject to misuse. It's worrisome when my neighbors start posting about "suspicious characters" who somehow don't look like they belong in the neighborhood or that groups of teenagers on bicycles are roaming the streets, looking bored. (I'm reminded of the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 when Crow T. Robot reminded a fist-shaking grump that "people have the right to use the street, old man.")
It's disturbing to open the site and see--in response to one of these "suspicious person" posts--a cellphone photo of a person doing nothing more remarkable than walking down a public sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon. No, it's not the guy in question. He's not even the right color.
Dublin is the barky one; when she senses a disturbance in the field she finds familiar, she tenses into 20 pounds of furious terrier until she determines there is no threat. But that's her nature. Not ours.
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Editorial on 10/09/2016