By now those local residents complaining about barking dogs, garage bands practicing through dinner, bottle rockets, kids screaming at 11 p.m. on the sidewalk, soccer balls being kicked against their gates, moving political rallies with loudspeakers on wheels, and all the usual ambient racket of Mexico should have new perspectives this week.

As a “newbie” in Mexico, and raised in the wet Pacific Northwest, I was astonished when the librarian at the American School where I worked predicted the exact date of the beginning of the rainy season (St. Anthony’s Day). The rains actually began on that day! The downpours were so regular (every afternoon and again in the middle of the night) that picnics could be planned around them. This was definitely not the case in Seattle where nearly every picnic that I can remember was rained upon.

Seems like everyone is getting on the bandwagon to complain about local noise. For some it’s barking dogs (two nights ago I, myself, was looking for a flame-thrower to express my anger at dog owners who insist on keeping their incessantly barking dog outside at night). Sometimes the irritant is the local fighting cock using your window sill to greet the dawn, which for him is about 4 a.m. (I think one such creature ended up as stuffing at the neighborhood taco stand.) It can be the local “big time” musician who comes home on occasional weekends and plays the same chords and eight bars of music on his amplified synthesizer until about 4:30 a.m. One woman wrote about the terrible noise she endures when the neighbor’s garage band practices, although, in her case they only go until 9 p.m. She’s lucky. In 30 years I’ve never lived in a neighborhood where the racket stopped before midnight.