Editor’s Note: Recently, the Daily took a look at Ames apartment life. The following four stories give an unconventional look at the places students call home.

Yes, that’s a cactus carved from plywood nailed to the overhang of 2621 Hunt St. The five guys living here found the cactus, it’s a good five feet tall, at Hilton Coliseum last year – don’t ask how.

Below the cactus is a swing supported not by a rope or chain, but a garden hose. The hose can take swaying back and forth but the back legs can’t. They aren’t really buried into the earth at all. No matter. This swing was made for Veishea. Beer drinkers don’t need to sway anymore than they already do.

They drink a lot of beer next door, 2619 Hunt St., and from time to time they’ll putt golf balls on the artificial green covering their sidewalk. And sometimes, they’ll take the blue mattress standing behind the front door and surf it down the living room stairs.

Between branches of the tree outside 2617 Hunt St., the other half of this duplex, a scarecrow slumped over in a lawn chair is clutching an empty bottle of Five O’ Clock vodka.

Actually, the scarecrow’s a rendering of Scott Niklawski, a tenant, given to him by his friends on his 21st birthday last semester.

Living between 2617 and 2613 Hunt St. was Jose the goat. One day recently he ran away and was caught by Animal Control grazing in another lawn. Jose has not returned to Hunt Street.

Also gone from Hunt is the rope swing tied to the tree outside 2613. One night last semester, some woman got drunk and swung herself over a cop car.

The cop didn’t like that. The rope swing was cut down.

Yes, Hunt Street is a party street, frequented on a Saturday night perhaps as much as the bars on Welch Avenue. That’s why the college tenants live here.

Ask Chris Martin, owner of Martin Property Management, the man charged with overseeing 2621 through 2613 Hunt St., about it. He’ll concede, though the lease forbids it, that parties is what this street is known for.

Ask Kay S. Craig at 2601 Hunt St. Craig teaches seventh grade at Ames Middle School and every weekend she hears the shouts coming from next door, or sometimes, next doors.

Or ask Dan O’Brien, Kyle Pieper or Dustin Mueller, the mattress surfers at 2619. They threw the keg Saturday night.

It wasn’t a successful party, as Hunt Street parties go. Last semester during Homecoming, close to 1,000 people gathered in the street, and if you believe some, the cops had to close the street. A van supposedly tried to pass and the masses converged on it, pushing it to and fro.

Saturday’s party was not like that. It was over by 1 a.m., though Pieper and O’Brien drank until 6 a.m.

But party streets are often dirty streets, and this is a problem Craig and her mother Irene Swanson, who also lives at 2601 Hunt, have with their block.

At 8:41 a.m. Sunday, one of the two overturned garbage bins next to 2613 had its contents, replete with broken glass, scattered across the road.

On the front lawn of the duplex next door, there was an empty can of Old Spice High Endurance, a trampled empty pack of cigarettes, various pieces of metal that in some circles could pass for modern art, a mangled lawn chair, the remains of a trampoline, more piping near or on the street, two empty bottles of Michelob’s Black and Tan, some sort of daily newspaper much too dirty to recognize the name of, an empty case of Busch Light over by the parked cars, a jug that one can only hope was filled with beer, the putting green and a shovel.

“This year is the worst year ever,” said Craig, who has lived with her mother for the past 12 years after her divorce. “It’s very trashy.”

By Monday, mostly everything remained on the lawn of the duplex – especially on the 2619 side. While, if you looked high enough, a baby stroller lay intertwined in the branches of the tree outside 2613.

Martin said his company removes snow and does lawn care work. It also repairs property when asked – though 2619 said you must ask repeatedly and 2621 said it’s easier to fix things yourself. Jeff Jordan at 2617 is pleased with Martin, and the guys at 2613 are indifferent.

Martin declined to comment.

Once a year, Martin said, he’ll inspect houses with the city. All tenants agree he doesn’t check in unless asked to, and this freedom leads to makeshift swings and a cactus and putting greens and scarecrows that Craig and Swanson find disagreeable and the other tenants find cool.

Lack of check-ins also allows a place to get sloppy. In fact, the only thing dirtier than the front lawn of the duplex Sunday morning was the living room of 2619.

A guy in a leisure suit slept on one couch while the surfing mattress and the table with no legs rested on another. Mud brought in Saturday night had turned the carpet into a welcoming mat no one would want to welcome a visitor with. Dried champagne blotched itself across the ceiling. There are shoe marks across the wall by the stairs, dirt on the tiled floor of the kitchen and beer cans everywhere.

2619 hasn’t seen a Rug Doctor since January, though the tenants promise it will soon. They suspect an inspection before summer.

The proof that not all houses are kept poorly comes from the other half of the duplex. Carpet gray, kitchen tiles as white as the walls – perhaps it’s not surprising Martin is quick to repair anything at 2617.

But even if all houses on Hunt were as clean as Craig’s and Swanson’s, the two women still view this year as the worst because of the stealing.

“Anything that isn’t tied down is taken,” Craig said. Chairs, plants, Christmas decorations – all have been swiped.

Cops were called and they’ve had limited success. Still, Craig and Swanson move everything on the porch inside every night.

Moving isn’t an option because Hunt Street is close to the school where Craig teaches and the church where Swanson prays.

And besides, Swanson has lived in this house since 1953.

All of their adult neighbors have moved away as Hunt came, ahem, into its own.

Yet Craig and Swanson remain, patient in the present, hopeful for the future.

They’ll need the former. Most tenants of this year’s Hunt Street will remain through next year.