[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I bet the neighbors just loved that smell in the summertime. Nothing quite as refreshing as rotting garbage simmering in the sun.

The smell would be bad enough but can you imagine the flies and rats and other assorted pests that would come with this kind of dump?

Talk about a health hazard.

[grellis]

Last summer (2003) I had a neighbor with two kids in diapers who didn't want to pay for trash pickup. She piled her garbage bags in her stall of our shared garage.

It wasn't just her and her kids, either. The woman had nine of her closest friends (can you say "crack house"?) living in her one-bedroom apartment with her. Some of them had kids in diapers as well.

Halfway through the summer, they destroyed the plumbing in the bathroom. For a week, they would walk a few blocks down to a convenience store to use the public restroom. After that, they decided to use their backyard. In broad daylight. Nice.

After they were finally evicted, the city sent a cleanup crew to take care of over one hundred garbage bags full of rotting filth from the garage. One of the city workers threw up in the driveway, and he does this for a living. I spoke with him after they were done. He said he'd never had a job as bad as that one. It took us until winter to finally be able to drive out all of the rats and raccoons who had been enjoying the feast.