The sun was just starting to rise over Ahwatukee, casting that perfect golden glow across the desert. It was early June, one of those rare mornings in Phoenix when you could actually enjoy being outside without feeling like you’d stepped into an oven set to broil. My twin Havanese dogs, Barry and Jasper, were already wide awake—well, Jasper was. He was my alarm clock, climbing on my chest and nudging me like a furry drill sergeant. No snooze button, no mercy.
By the time we stepped out the back gate, they were vibrating with excitement. As usual, they crashed into the gate like tiny, over-caffeinated linebackers before sprinting to the end of the driveway. I let them enjoy their moment of freedom before clipping on their leashes and heading out into the neighborhood.
The morning crowd was out. We passed Clarence, the neighborhood legend, in his usual all-white getup—white shoes, white pants, white t-shirt. At 95 years old, he still made his daily pilgrimage up the hill to the shared mailboxes, cane in hand, moving with a determination that made me question my own fitness level.
“Morning, Matt! Beautiful day!” he called out, like he did every morning.
And he wasn’t wrong. It was one of those mornings where you could have slept outside and been comfortable. But as we rounded the next corner, that peaceful, predictable routine took a hard left turn into the bizarre.
A beat-up, greenish Honda Civic sat idling on the side of the road. It looked completely out of place—rust spots, peeling paint, front windows down. As we got closer, I noticed the radio was ripped out of the dash. No one was in the driver’s seat. No one was in the back. Just a hollowed-out car, humming like it was waiting for something… or someone.
The hairs on my arms stood up. A stolen car? Abandoned by someone lurking nearby? My instincts screamed get out of there now. I tugged on the dogs’ leashes, trying to hurry them along, but Barry and Jasper were nose-deep in a rosemary bush, oblivious to my rising anxiety.
That’s when I spotted Janice.
Janice had been through hell. About a year earlier, her husband had gone out for a quick bike ride up Warpaint Trail, clutching his chest and collapsing into a bush. He was gone in twelve minutes. Just like that. Since then, Janice had become a regular on these morning walks with her little white dog, Ben.
“Janice,” I said, “you might want to turn around. There’s a car idling up here, and it’s giving me a bad feeling. Walk with me? The dogs can play.”
She nodded, turning back with me, and we started chatting. But then, out of nowhere, she hit me with something I was not prepared for.
“Is the car near the dog fighting house?”
I froze mid-step, glancing around still leery we were being followed. “The what now?”
Janice pulled out her phone and showed me a video recorded by the next-door neighbor of the dog fighting house. Janice knew just about everyone in the neighborhood—she was the go-to for all the local gossip.
The video showed big, mean dogs barking at each other in a backyard. The sound was enough to make my stomach twist. I winced as one lunged at another, teeth bared. I barely made it three seconds before looking away. I hated that kind of thing.
“Wait,” I said, trying to process. “You’re telling me there’s a dog fighting house in this neighborhood?”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said, like we were talking about someone keeping their Christmas lights up too long. “You should hear what happened when the Humane Society came.”
She told me that after the video surfaced, one of the neighbors called the Humane Society. An officer showed up and knocked on the door, but the people inside refused to open it. The officer turned to leave, saying there was nothing he could do.
That’s when Janice and the neighbor intervened. They asked him—why couldn’t he do anything? These were dogs, clearly in distress. Shouldn’t he be able to force his way in?
His response was so absurd, so completely insane, that Janice actually made him repeat it.
“Well, if it were the guy in the neighborhood selling monkeys, I could. But for dogs, my hands are tied.”
I blinked. “Hold on, Janice. You’re telling me there’s a black market monkey ring… right here? In our neighborhood?
She nodded, belying her concern.
I looked down at Barry and Jasper, who were happily sniffing Ben’s ears, blissfully unaware that we had just uncovered a Netflix documentary in our own backyard.
“This,” I said, shaking my head, “is not how I expected my morning walk to go. I feel like we are on a bad episode of Tiger King.”
I’m never looking at the HOA emails the same way again. And honestly, I wish I knew the dealer—because who wouldn’t want a pet monkey?