u/gramps_ned

My neighbor across the street has gotten on my nerves for years. He nitpicks everything about the way we keep our yard, tells his guests it’s okay to use our driveway when they visit, has floodlights aimed at our house, etc. I could go on and on. I recently found a good way to repay him. When he and his family went to the beach a couple weeks ago, I took a photo of his house and had AI make it look totally engulfed in fire. Flames from the roof and windows, firefighters on ladders pickaxing away, hoses spraying water everywhere—the whole works. I texted it to him and asked if his alarm system had alerted him to the big fire. The picture clearly had the watermark of the AI service, but in his panic I guess he missed it. He called me all hysterical. I heard his wife in the background screaming about the dog they left at home with a dog sitter. I let him go on for a bit and told him at least he didn’t need to worry about neighbors’ houses because it looked like only his was being destroyed, but I eventually told him it was all just a prank. He didn’t take it well. At all. In the two weeks since this happened he’s telling everyone about it and has made me a pariah in my own neighborhood—in which, by the way, I have lived way longer than he has—all because he can’t take a joke. Anyway, I am now starting to feel I should try to make it up to him and am thinking of getting him a fruit basket or something like that. Any suggestions of a local place where I can get a decent gift like this for under $50?

Anyone know whether these exist and, if so, where I can buy one? With autumn not too far off, I’m feeling nostalgic and hopeful that, once fall finally arrives, I’ll be able to recreate childhood memories of smoldering piles of burning leaves around the yard. Big Brother Montgomery County uses the politically correct term “brush fires” to ban the real ones now, but I figure I can get pretty close to at least the look of these rites of autumn by burying fog machines in leaf piles around my yard. Ideally, they’d be cordless and weatherproof. Any recommendations where I might find some? Theater supply stores or websites?

Any recommendations for a service that will pick up two 12-foot Leland Cypresses I recently cut down? They must be dragged from my backyard after dark because, coincidentally, they look suspiciously like two Leland Cypresses that went missing from my neighbor’s yard a few evenings ago.

Can anyone recommend a discreet taxidermist in or near Bethesda? Time is of the essence.