So.  The neighbors.  Again.  Yes.  One of the many reasons I'm not sad that Nikki pushed the moving idea. 

I have a trick for large item trash to avoid paying fees.  I put the times out the day AFTER trash pick up, so they have roughly a week until the next one.  And only once has it failed me and the item did not 'just wander off on it's own!".  So we found out that Yuriko had been peeing behind the filing cabinet I had for years to organize.  She died of brain cancer, but no one knew she had it until the day we had to put her to sleep, but in the last six months or so of her life she had developed some strange behaviors as the cancer was changing her little brain.  My poor kitty.  But anyway, she had taken to peeing behind the metal filing cabinet, and apparently on this ancient pressboard bookshelf I've had since I was 16.  That is 1988 for those who really wanna know the age of this thing, and no, I have ZERO idea how it lasted that long, it's the kind where they sorta glued sawdust together and called it wood but this thing really didn't wanna die.  So pretty much unsalvageable, so I put both out on a Friday afternoon and resolved not to think about it unless they were still there by Wednesday, in which case I would call the trash company and arrange for the Thursday pickup to take them.

Saturday morning I am started out of my bed, at FIVE IN THE MORNING.  By the sound of grown men arguing LOUDLY just under our bedroom window.  I am exceedingly confused why it seems two random strangers chose to have some sort of what sounded like a deeply emotional conflict on my yard at that hour, so I hauled myself out of bed and reached for the curtain, and pulled it aside just a wee bit to see.  And yup, it's the neighbor son, fighting with some random dude who was loading the filing cabinet into his pickup.  Which I suspected would go easily, it's metal and metal salvage is big here among the poor now . But the neighbor is yelling at him his mom saw it first and it was theirs.  Dude was finally like then you should have taken it, finished loading, and left.  Yes, there were two people who argued for nearly a half hour over my TRASH.  We have reached the point where people are actually fighting over peed on, trashed furniture that really isn't usable anymore. 
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So I figure that's the end of it, the bookshelf will sit, and I'll have to pay a coupla bucks to get rid of it.  Or Nikki can take the hatchet to it and we can burn it in the fire pit out back.  Whatever.  I got back to sleep, and we get up a few hours later and go out to run a few errands.  As I'm standing by the car, something is bugging me for a minute, and I can't figure out what... and then I realize, yup.  The creepy neighbors actually took the ancient bookshelf that had finally begun to disintegrate and was so soaked in cat urine that no amount of the enzyme cleaner I tried to use to salvage it made a difference into their house.  Where they have cats, who are going to take that as a challenge and pee all over my cats pee. 

Some days the crazy just won't let me not look at it and contemplate how we got to this point on this street.  Here's hoping future battles over my trash occur at reasonable hours at least.  Do you think it would be taken amiss if I put out a sign that reads "All battles over our trash must occur in this corner of the yard, and only between the hours of 1pm and 6pm".  LOL