My next door neighbor's first words out of his mouth after the attack was "Its the liberals who done this letting in all them furners , bringin this country down from within". All I could do was think of the inscription on the Staue of Liberty and leave him to grieve as all us must do in their own way.

This man is a Viet Nam Vet divorced tow truck driver with two trained Rotwielers (Harley and Lady) in his back yard ,as he says ,to guard his ammunition shed and Harley motorcycle shed. He legally sells guns on the side but I don't see him brandish them.

Last Christmas I got one of those Hilshire Farms salami logs I knew I would never eat so I tossed it over the fence for his dogs. Awhile later he was complaining about other dogs and perhaps a neighbor that were inciting his dogs to howl and bark every night well past 3 AM. I told him as a musician I know exactly which dogs are doing the barking and that I have to sleep downstairs with the TV on to get some sleep. This evidently invited him to accuse me of trying to poison his dogs with a sausage and possibly poison the rabbits that he finds dead near his dog pen.

Should I escalate tensions and tell him that I do not discriminate between his dogs behavior and him? Should I deliver an ultimatum that he is either for me or against me?

As it turned out I found out what his favorite car was and I just happened to have a replica in the basement that I gave him for hiw birthday. Surley this man has legally killed fellow human beings. He has no relish for war and is not a meglomaniac to my knowledge.

You can finish the story any way you like by imagining the turn of events had I taken a tough stand or decided upon retalliation of some sort over something as simple as barking dogs and no sleep.

Today I had to smirk to myself when I saw 3 industrious roofers remove his old roof and re-shingle his house in one day. They were non english speaking immigrants.