I think the funniest story I have about neighbours dates back to when I was a young adult still living at home with my mother. We lived in a semi-detached housing commission home and the elderly couple in the adjoining house had been there since before we had moved into our home when I was nine years old. The old fellow was a rough diamond with a heart of gold. He had an enormous vegie garden. Our back yards were both big but his was even bigger because the elderly lady who lived behind him had allowed him to put in a stile and use half of her yard to grow vegies in for years. My mother also had a good vegie garden at that time, so they would often be out in their respective gardens at the same time. They would sing out to each other now and then - and he would sometimes throw over some vegies that she didn't grow herself.

One day Mum was out in the vegie garden and was pulling up some weeds along the cyclone-wire fence between the two properties when one of the old fellow's chooks (fowls)- which roamed freely in his yard - pecked at her fingers through the wire. Mum automatically picked up the first thing she found - a piece of wood - and threw it over at the chook. Having a history for not being able to aim terribly well, Mum was shocked when the chook dropped dead on the spot. She certainly would not have expected to kill it.

She got up and went and sat down out of sight to think about the situation, terrified of what the old fellow's reaction would be to her killing one of his chooks. He was inside, listening to the cricket at the time - but a few minutes later he came out into the garden.

Next thing Mum heard him say loudly, "Oh you committed suicide, did you, you b*!" Then he just went off and got his spade out of the shed, dug a hole and buried it, while Mum sat silently and unobtrusively out of sight, unable to believe her luck that he thought the chook had just up and died like that.

When she told me the story I laughed and asked, "Wouldn't he see the piece of wood that you threw at the chook?"

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. "He's got that much junk laying around his yard he wouldn't notice a bit of wood that wasn't there before!"

So Mum got away with accidentally killing the chook and neighbour relations remained intact.

Learn more about this author, Ruth Woodhouse.
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