I had managed to leave my house keys on the floor next to my bed when I left for work, so I called my mother and arranged for her to pick me up from the train station. The Great Pumpkin was looking out for me; if she hadn't given me a ride, I would have come home alone, less than twenty minutes after I did.
When we reached the house, we saw a razor scooter parked next to the trash cans. "Huh," I said. "I wonder what that's doing there?" But we dismissed it as having been left by one of the neighborhood kids, and kept going.
There was a large Aaron Brothers bag, and a backpack, in the front yard. "That's weird," I said. But we decided it probably belonged to my little sister, who will sometimes put things in odd places while she does other stuff, and we kept going.
Inside, the cats were in a state of high dudgeon—even moreso than normal for a weekday afternoon—and appeared to have expressed their unhappiness by knocking a bunch of stuff over. Mom scolded them amiably while I started for the fridge to get a soda, and saw that Alex's bedroom door was open. His room is one of the only places in the house the cats aren't allowed. I thought "wow, lots of mischief," and went to close it...
...only to find that his bedside table had been cleared onto the bed. And the door to the laundry room was open. And the door connecting the laundry room to the back was open. And the DVD player was gone.
Cue freaking right the fuck out.
Mom searched the house while I got the stuff out of the front yard. The bags proved to contain everything that was missing: the DVD player, Alex's computer (mine was untouched), a bunch of small electronics, a few DVDs. (Ironically, our thief only took Firefly-related material. So we're looking for an asshole Browncoat. Nice!) The Aaron Brothers bag was mine, which explains why my pictures were scattered all over the floor.
After a heart-stopping moment of not being able to find Lilly, we got ourselves calmed mostly down, and Mom went to the hardware store to get new locks while I called the police. An officer came out and took my statement; we walked the perimeter, and found that the hide-a-key (which I didn't know existed until I called Alex) was missing. So that's probably how they got inside.
We think we came home and surprised the thief in the process of going back in for another load. That's why we found all their stuff (and the scooter). Had I come home alone, they would probably have still been there. And I would have walked in on them, without a car to warn that I was coming.
Alex got home and confirmed that all his stuff was there. Mom changed the locks. Victor and Lara came and took me for dinner. The cats got fussed over. And I took a machete to bed.
So...
1. Nothing is missing.
2. In fact, net gain: I have the thief's scooter.
3. We think it was a teenage boy, based on the scooter, the things grabbed, and the fact that none of my girly things were touched.
4. Alex is working from home today, so the house is not empty.
5. The cats are fine.
6. I will be sleeping with a machete for the foreseeable future.
It's an ignite the biosphere kind of day.
August 5 2011, 19:24:05 UTC 5 years ago
When I was 16 someone broke into a house that I shared with my dad while he was away on a holiday. Nothing was taken but they dumped all the garbage out on the floor, which was awful to clean, and ransacked my filing cabinet. Which they also dumped out on the floor in complete disarray.
I think (my dad taught business at a small local school) that they were looking for test answers or something like that, and were very annoyed to find nothing but a bunch of Star Trek fanfiction and my notes from various classes I took, not realising that Dad kept all that in his office and I was the one who needed a file cabinet at home.
I can't believe a Browncoat did this.
But on the other hand when I was married and my husband had a car, they took the stereo, some Cantopop CDs--and a pair of pigs we had hanging from the rearview mirror. Weirdly, it was the pigs that hurt. We'd met in the year of the pig.
August 5 2011, 19:33:03 UTC 5 years ago
No, it must have been an Alliance guy.
August 6 2011, 04:55:30 UTC 5 years ago
August 6 2011, 15:24:34 UTC 5 years ago
August 7 2011, 23:42:30 UTC 5 years ago