STRANGER THAN FICTION: YARD WORK MAKES ME PINE FOR APARTMENT LIFE

There's a lot to be said for the life of a multi-unit apartment dweller.

When you live in one of those huge, sterile places with three floor plans, a staff of five and a laundromat, you don't have to worry when the little stones from the bottom fish tank somehow make their way into the garbage disposal. You just call the maintenance dudes.

There's a residents' party every season. You bring the appetite, your $550 a month brings the chicken wings.

And when a big storm blows down a couple hundred dead tree limbs onto the yard, you just walk around them. They'll be gone when you come home -- that's what you're paying for.

After living in a house for two weeks, The Other Half and I have determined that we'll be getting none of those amenities.

Tired of parking two miles from the our front door, dealing with neighbors with odd tastes in music and trying to remember the code for our irritating and pretentious front gate, we rented a house. Great location, great landlord, perfect size.

But we're responsible for the yard.

When I say "we're," I mean "I'm." Mr. Half informed me long ago that his allergies would prevent him from engaging in any kind of plant-related activity. They also apparently prohibit any kind of vacuum-related activity, Palmolive-related activity or kitty litter-related activity. Luckily, he's not allergic to spending money on CDs by bands named after body parts.

So when a large storm blew about 100 tree limbs down into the yard, they were all mine to deal with.

All of our neighbors are retired, so they had their lawns cleaned up immediately. Our lawn had to wait for the weekend. Unfortunately, I met our new next-door neighbor before Saturday arrived.

"Well, you must be my new neighbor," she said, leaning on a rake.

"I must be," I said.

"That storm was really something," she said. "Knocked down a lot of limbs."

"Sure did," I said.

"I'm cleaning mine up right now, as you can see. Got all my leaves bagged up, too."

"Looks that way."

"I think it's good to get right on your yard work and not let it pile up, don't you?"

Being trained in the art of observation, I knew where she was going right away. I cleaned up my limbs at the crack of dawn on Saturday.

Of course, I might not have been so anxious to get out there if I'd interviewed a certain snake bite victim before the cleanup instead of afterward. He got bit as he was cleaning limbs out of his yard.

"At first, I thought I'd just got poked," he said. "But then my hand swole up to 'bout twice the regular size."

Yep, that'd have tipped me off. My interview subject spent four nights in the hospital.

I called an emergency room doctor to get some tips for the snake bite story. The best one: Don't hunt snakes down to kill them.

"A lot of my patients were bitten while trying to kill snakes," he said. "Many times, alcohol has been involved."

Imagine that.

The grass-cutting part of my weekend lawn care was considerably easier. We don't really have grass. Just groups of weeds sticking up here and there. The rest is dirt.

Another neighbor came pep-stepping by during the mowing process.

"Just mowing my dirt, heh-heh!" I said, attempting to be friendly. He looked away quickly and increased his pace by about 10 miles per hour.

If he thinks THAT'S weird, wait until I drag out the sprinkler. If he passes by again while I'm watering, I'll say, "Just watering my dirt, heh-heh!"

Wonder when we'll be invited to our first block party?

~Heidi Nieland is a former staff writer for the Southeast Missourian who now lives in Pensacola, Fla.