Bin Laden’s neighbors had had enough

There was a limit to their patience.

Finally, it was the water slide that did in Osama bin Laden. For months, the neighbors in Abbottabad had been grumbling about the construction noise, and the profane workmen who played Aerosmith at top volume and occasionally wandered over to pee on neighboring lawns. Residents were even more incensed when that 18-foot wall went up, obstructing their view of nearby Costellobad. But when they saw the water slide going in, with its ostentatious wave pool, lazy river and half-pipe ride, it was too much. All agreed there was no way bin Laden should have gotten that permit.

Countless meetings, letters to the editor and petitions to the zoning board hadn’t accomplished anything. The neighbors met for one last time. Afterward, the vice president of the Abbottabad Homeowners Association made a couple of phone calls.

“Look, we aren’t real happy about ratting him out to the U.S. Navy Seals,” said one neighborhood resident who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But a water slide? I mean, Christ.”

Other residents said said they had been willing to work with the terrorist mastermind as construction of the luxury compound progressed. But they said bin Laden kept adding things: the lighthouse, the bowling alley, the 28-car garage, the go-cart track.

“What the hell did he need a water slide for?” the resident asked. “That was just rubbing our nose in it. I don’t even think the man owned a pair of swimming trunks.”