Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

Brookland
Nature was definitely up to something in Brookland this past Saturday. Just what that was, however, remains a mystery. “Our cat has not wanted to go out in the mornings which seemed pretty strange,” writes Debra. “Then today there was a ‘fox-looking’ animal sitting on the back steps when we opened the door.” The fox-looker booked before ID could be taken, but another ominous animal was soon spotted biding its time inside some guy’s bushes. Possibly. “My dad claims that he saw a deer running through our yard at 12th/Lawrence early this morning,” writes Julie, sounding a little skeptical of Pops, “and insists that the deer is hiding in our neighbor’s brush.” Later in the day, the locals were visited by another exotic creature—preliminary reports suggest a sneakius contractorus. “So we are new to the neighborhood and making some basic repairs to our New home… and today we got a call that the alarms were faulted on several zones,” writes Jess. “I raced over and discovered that apparently no one made it into the house… so they stole our front downspouts? Downspouts.”

columbia_heights
Jane chews her e-nails over a group of young men who appear at night in a nearby vacant lot—”and they ain’t playing checkers,” she writes. So putting on her thinking cap, she proposes some solutions: “How about a fence at the back of the empty lot, how about lighting in the direction that these guys hang out, work with the police to address loitering.” But Dave isn’t taking any Proactivil today. “We can’t act on rumor and innuendo from people in the email shadows,” he writes. “[B]low it out your ear.” “That’s nice: ‘Blow it out your ear’ to the lady who offers some helpful advice about improving security,” responds jhorvatsr. And Michelle’s got something to say about aural wind, too: “You’re going to have to start blowing it out your ear yourself and start listening to your neighbors…bc those observations can save somebody’s life one day if they were the victim of a crime on those grounds.” Dave refuses to budge. “I don’t respond to McCarthy like tactics,” he writes, reiterating, “yes, I say, blow it out your ear.”

MPD-4D
“C1 REPORTS THAT S1 APPROACHED HER AND SAID ‘HI’ AND C1 REPLIED ‘HI,’” reads a police report, regarding a June 3 incident between Subject 1 and Complainant 1 at 5007 New Hampshire Ave. NW. “S1 FOLLOWED HER INSIDE AND YELLED ‘I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU BECAUSE I’M AFRO-AMERICAN’. S1 THEN SNATCHED THE LISTED PROPERTY FROM AROUND HER NECK AND THEN STATED ‘THANK YOU MA’AM’. S1 FLED IN AN [UNKNOWN] DIRECTION.”