* You hear a low, whistling sound up above accompanied by a large shadow.

* Sweet Thang begins a sentence with "We need to talk."

* A politician or public official says, "We satisfied all the legal requirements."

Some residents of Raleigh's Boylan Heights neighborhood abutting Central Prison discovered what the latter phrase means only after they heard the bulldozers uprooting trees and knocking down buildings so the state can expand the prison and build a five-story hospital to treat mentally ill inmates.

In a recent news story, Raleigh Planning Director Mitchell Silver said that "we did what we are legally required to do" in terms of notifying residents near the prison. Uh-oh.

For people such as Carrie Knowles, that's the problem.

"I don't doubt that the city did what it was legally required to do," she told me Wednesday, "but sometimes the 'required' is not enough. Why didn't they put us in the loop?"

Is it possible that, since many of the properties closest to the prison are rented, only the landlords received notification?

Not in Dan Wilson's case. Wilson, who owns a building just across the railroad tracks from the prison, said he has received no correspondence from the city about the expansion.

"Not the first word," he said.

None of the residents with whom I spoke was opposed to the prison hospital. "Our biggest complaint is that we weren't notified," Gayle Stott Lowry said. Lowry, an artist and former 10-year Boylan Heights resident, rents a studio in Wilson's building.

Knowles, a 23-year resident of the neighborhood where many yards have "Obama for President" or "Ron Paul for President" signs, said, "We're all in favor of better mental health care for the inmates."

Speaking of better mental health, could somebody explain why the state is constructing a five-story mental health hospital in such tight quarters at the same time the state is -- get this -- fixing to close the expansive Dorothea Dix mental hospital right across the boulevard?

I'm no shrink, but I think the medical term for that would be "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."

No wonder they tried to slip this past residents: Would you want to explain the reasoning behind that decision?

You don't have to live in or near Boylan Heights to cringe at this unilateral expansion that keeps the prison industrial complex big and profitable.

Heck, yeah, a lot of the dudes in prison need mental health treatment. If they didn't when they went in, they will after being confined in a 70-square-foot cell with a cellie named Big Sam.

The solution is not more and bigger mental hospitals -- unless, that is, you own a construction company that gets state contracts. Far better it would be to address mental health issues of inmates before they become inmates.

Of course, politicians know they won't get any votes touting such a sensible approach.

Jake Freeman, director of engineering for the Department of Correction, sought to assuage residents' fears by assuring them that the prison would be "aesthetically pleasing."

Call me mental, but the only aesthetically pleasing prison I can imagine is the one you see in your rearview mirror as you're leaving it for the last time.

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