Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Crime Wave at the Brave Astronaut Launchpad

Loyal readers may recall that Brave Astronaut was a crime victim shortly after moving into our great little town. We rebounded from that and have had no incidents since. Until this weekend. In the Brave Astronaut backyard, we discovered that two of the trees planted by our predecessors were plum trees and were bearing fruit this year (evidently it takes plum trees three years to decide to fruit). There is also a sour cherry tree, but I missed those, as they had all become dry, shriveled black dots.

I had been enjoying the fruit with my lunch and LBA had great fun plucking plums off the tree to eat in the yard on a comfortable summer evening. My neighbors were beneficiaries as well, as I shared with them a bag of the bountiful plums. I enjoyed the last of the ones I had picked on Monday with my lunch and Monday evening went out to pick a new bowlful of plums.

Much to my aggravation, every single plum was gone off the trees. Ripe ones, unripe ones, a few that had fallen off the trees to the ground, not one plum remained. There was no evidence of animals having done this (broken limbs, a gnawed plum on the ground, nothing) - it was clearly a human culprit. My neighbors did not see anything, but this clearly took place during the daylight and if only one person, they were in my backyard for at least 15-20 minutes. Yesterday evening, I emailed the Chief of Police to inform him of the situation. I didn't necessarily need to file a police report, I just wanted to let him know what was up.

Then this morning, I looked out on to my back deck and noticed a propane tank, which I had on the deck awaiting a fill up from a propane delivery service was missing. There were three tanks total and now there were only two. This obviously happened between 12:30am and 7:00am. I emailed the Chief again and received a very nice phone call from him.

I guess it's time to install a surveillance camera and perhaps an invisible electric fence. That might work. I'm aggravated by the whole thing, but I'll get over it. Sometimes, however, I feel like Nate Fisher from HBO's Six Feet Under, "I hate the living."

UPDATE: Mission Control has learned that my neighbor was confused about the delivery date for the propane and took back his tank early this morning. So no extra propane for him. Unless he gets on the Propane Taxi bandwagon.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is distressing. I guess they'll steal anything that isn't nailed down. Hope you brought those other two tanks inside!

stinkypaw said...

People have no respect whatsoever! The nerve of them to go in your back yard and pluck your tree - that sucks! Hopefully this will stop.

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Lana Gramlich said...

I can sympathize. Mom used to have a garden in her yard up in Canada. She also had some bad people renting the back house, who took every single thing the second it was ripe. I ended up having to take them to court to get them evicted (because mom couldn't handle it.) Some freaking people. I've been fortunate in not having many theft issues in my life. I think nothing pisses me off more.
Glad to hear the propane tank was explained, however.

Brave Astronaut said...

Just another day in Gorgeous Prince Georges!