I am beginning to think that we live in a pretty tough neighborhood. It is no exaggeration to say that there has not been a day in at least two months when a siren has not gone off. That is unnerving, especially in the middle of the night.
At first I thought it might just be that we could hear the sirens from the fire station about a mile away, but that theory was soon put to test, and to rest. Stepping outside made it clear that it was not fire trucks. But it seemed not to be police cars in the neighborhood, either. As the King in "The King and I" said: "Is a puzzlement!"
No one likes the idea of a neighborhood crime wave, but we recently joined a neighborhood . . . oh, digital group that exchanges useful information about what is going on, and there have been several posts about criminals posing as utility workers, who talk their way, or break their way, into houses; in onc case armed with a knife. That guy apparently did not get into a house, but was scared off by a dog, or something.
We are more-than-usually concerned because a day or two a week we take care of a two-year-old grandson, and even he recognized that the siren was a police car: "Plee caw!", he said, of something like that. Jao loves "cawz" and "tucks". We regularly go outside to watch the big trash company trucks pick up the curbside cans and hoist them high overhead and dump trash into the trucks.
And that, of course, finally solved the problem! Somewhere in this house, in a box somewhere, there is a police caw with a working battery and a bad switch that is having automotive nightmares, and pursuing criminals, and running into farmers' market carts, heaving beets and melons and geraniums all over kingdom come!
I do not mind admitting that, as irritating as it was, and still is, and even if there might be phony utility workers with knives and shovels and wire strippers somewhere in town, we have heaved a great sigh of relief. We have taken the house off the market, and I now only check the yard for rattlesnakes and scorpions and pack rats. I no longer ask to see the postman's credentials, and he is relieved about that, too: he has absolutely no credibility, anyway. Even worse, we seem to be at the tail end of his route. Or maybe he is just a slow sorter.
At first I thought it might just be that we could hear the sirens from the fire station about a mile away, but that theory was soon put to test, and to rest. Stepping outside made it clear that it was not fire trucks. But it seemed not to be police cars in the neighborhood, either. As the King in "The King and I" said: "Is a puzzlement!"
No one likes the idea of a neighborhood crime wave, but we recently joined a neighborhood . . . oh, digital group that exchanges useful information about what is going on, and there have been several posts about criminals posing as utility workers, who talk their way, or break their way, into houses; in onc case armed with a knife. That guy apparently did not get into a house, but was scared off by a dog, or something.
We are more-than-usually concerned because a day or two a week we take care of a two-year-old grandson, and even he recognized that the siren was a police car: "Plee caw!", he said, of something like that. Jao loves "cawz" and "tucks". We regularly go outside to watch the big trash company trucks pick up the curbside cans and hoist them high overhead and dump trash into the trucks.
And that, of course, finally solved the problem! Somewhere in this house, in a box somewhere, there is a police caw with a working battery and a bad switch that is having automotive nightmares, and pursuing criminals, and running into farmers' market carts, heaving beets and melons and geraniums all over kingdom come!
I do not mind admitting that, as irritating as it was, and still is, and even if there might be phony utility workers with knives and shovels and wire strippers somewhere in town, we have heaved a great sigh of relief. We have taken the house off the market, and I now only check the yard for rattlesnakes and scorpions and pack rats. I no longer ask to see the postman's credentials, and he is relieved about that, too: he has absolutely no credibility, anyway. Even worse, we seem to be at the tail end of his route. Or maybe he is just a slow sorter.
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