Jaci Dawn

Don and I have long discussed getting a NO SOLICITING sign for our front yard. The problem is (aside from the fact that most solicitors ignore such signs) that we do not want to discourage young people from coming to our door to solicit for their fund raisers. We support as many youth-related fundraisers as come to our door: we like our youth and who can turn down a chubby-faced Cub Scout asking for canned goods to donate to the poor? Or the local soccer team offering to take our refundable cans and bottles off of our hands to raise money for uniforms? I love it when the local high school marching band rings the doorbell and asks if I could spare any change for their trip to where ever (I was in marching band).

But we absolutely agree on the door-to-door adult sales people.

I am better at repelling them than my husband is. He’s a sap and he knows it. He has learned to not even answer the door when they come calling. It’s not rude: it’s our door and we do not have to open it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that knocks on it. Not answering the door is the equivalent of reading the 1-800-number on Caller ID and letting the telephone go to Answering Machine. If it is important (and it never is), they will leave a Voice Mail.

Occasionally, I will answer the 1-800 calls. I take a perverse pleasure in flummoxing the caller on the other end. Recently, we had a rash of telephone calls on our new phone number for our adult son who has never been associated with this phone number. The first one that called, I laughed at. “Are you freaking kidding me? He hasn’t lived here since he was seventeen!” I was very amused. the caller was not.

Once, I picked up a rude one that called here at 7:30AM.

“Do you know what time it is?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am. It is 7:30AM PST.”

“Well, I don’t know about your mother, but my mother taught me that it is rude to call a private residence before 9:00AM.”

“Hey! Don’t be insulting my mother!” He was truly offended.

“You called ME. I did NOT call YOU. Therefore, I feel quite free in insulting your upbringing.”

He hung up on me. The jerk. 🙂

Yesterday, we had yet another unsolicited door-to-door salesman. I was in the back yard with the dogs. He knocked on the door and Don ignored him. He came to the back yard and ignored the barking dogs. “Do you live here?”

(No, I’m just scoping the place out to burglarize it!) “Yes. why?”

“I’m promoting our pesticide…” (That isn’t really what he said. He was, however, promoting pest control.)

“We’re entirely organic here,” I replied, calmly, clutching Murphy’s collar.

“Oh, our pesticides are entirely organic!” He paused to open his folder.

“No, you do not understand: we don’t have any pests here” Except unwanted solicitors.

“Oh. But I have been speaking with your neighbors and they all have mentioned an ant problem.”

The thing is: ants are an unknown factor in peonies. No one knows if they are actually beneficial or not. Everyone knows there is some symbiotic relationship between ants and peonies, and the Peony Society recommends you do not attempt to kill the ants.

Furthermore, all pesticides are general. We are trying our hardest and our darndest to encourage pollinators in our yard. I do not have my Xerces Society sign up in my yard yet, but I am a paid member. We harbor several varieties of bees: mason bees, bumble bees, several kinds of sweat bees, and we grow plants that encourage the honeybees to come into our yard. Twelve years ago when we first sat in our backyard, we noted that there were no insects at all in the yard. We vowed then and there to turn that around and now our yard is a haven to invertebrates as well as to birds. I don’t care how organic your pesticide program is, it is not organic enough.

Behind me: my vast peony garden in full bloom. “So? Ants are beneficial to my peonies.”

“Oh. Uh. have a nice day.”

I chuckled the entire time he backed away from me and ran to the street. I wonder if he googled ants and peonies when he got back to the office?