Hey, you forgot your rock!

The BBQ Pit
1

Somebody forgot and left their rock in my dining room! It must have just slipped out of their hand as they were throwing it through my window, possibly at one of my cats. I’ll just feel awful if I don’t make sure they get it back!

Seriously, I don’t even know if I can muster Pit vitriol. I went home yesterday after an unbelievably shitty day at work to find the cops there - my cell phone must have rung from the security company right as I was gathering up my stuff to go home, and I didn’t hear it. The officer was just about to leave the scene when I happened to drive up - she had, luckily, noticed the hole in the window. I couldn’t even muster up any rage or fear or anything but just, damn, tired. I mean, seriously? A rock? Through my window? Why? Who the fuck throws rocks through people’s windows?

Some serious asshole has also, recently, been trashing the lattice under my porch and thus letting my dog out. I knew vandals had broken the lattice the first time, but I figured maybe the dog was demolishing my repairs himself. Now I’m quite sure that some fuckwad is attacking my animals - first the dog “keeps getting out”, and now there’s a big hole in my window right where my cats like to sit. In the middle of the fucking day, no less. Lazy Sunday afternoon.

I keep trying to work up some fury, and my boyfriend did an excellent job of it, but I just can’t. It just makes me so damned weary. There is glass all over the fucking dining room - I keep picking it up and vacuuming but there keeps being more of it. EVERYWHERE. All the way to the other door, seventeen feet away. In the cats’ water bowl. On the table. On the chairs. In my feet, of course. In the kitchen, just for fun. I can’t let the dog out by himself, because they’ve probably fucked my lattice again and who knows, maybe the fuckers would try to feed him rat poison. That window was put in the house when it was built in 1928 and survived just fine until some fucking asshole decided to throw a chunk of cement through it.

Camera system with DVR: $680. Replacement windows that meet historical district requirements, might as well replace all three together there because they’re all kind of one unit: $1800. No kidding. (Insurance deductable: $1000. The window that’s broken is, of course, less than a grand.) Time it took some goddamned underparented teenager to tear up shit at my house: less than 5 minutes, and I’m including every instance of lattice vandalism there.

My dad thinks I should put up signs telling them I now have cameras. Fuck that noise, Dad! I want to catch them! (After all, I have their rock to give them.) The boyfriend is seriously considering catching all the people who steal shit off the porch by putting bait out there now that we have cameras. We are going to go all The Wire on this sumbitch. We have already started taking pictures of the teenagers who go up and down the road on the way to the park - we’re going to put up a board just like they do on The Wire and find out who they are and where they belong and who is doing this to us.

I’m considering handing out flyers to the wandering teenagers offering a reward to any information leading to an arrest - I bet somebody’s obnoxious little friends would rat him out for fifty bucks. (I did tell the security manager here at work about it, just in case it’s some library patron following me home or something.) It just offends my sense of decency, is all. Makes me damned tired.

2

I don’t know about “obnoxious little friend”- you’ve got to deal with The Code there. Obnoxious little sister, though, might be just the ticket.

Seriously, though, that’s a lousy situation. You’ll have to keep us updated on how it turns out.

3

I hope you catch those little bastards and they get the scare of their lives. It sucks to feel unsafe at home- your castle, your private space!

4

I mean, I was planning on replacing the windows this year, because of the tax incentive. I wasn’t ready for almost two grand right on the spot, though. When I first moved in I swore I wouldn’t replace them because they’re old and interesting - that was before I started paying for the heating and air, of course. So I don’t mind replacing them. But damn, the money!

5

Before going medieval, perhaps a little profiling is in order. Is there anything that makes you, your pets, house, or property stand out in your immediate neighborhood? What is the makeup and climate of your hood? How well do you get along, and more importantly, fit in with your neighbors? Is there vandalism frequently in your hood? Is it random or does it seem targeted?

6

We can’t think of a thing that would bring this down on us, specifically. We do call the cops on Bad People who Ring the Doorbell at Midnight, but we haven’t had one of those in a while. I’m on a corner, and the street along which all this has happened is the less busy one that leads to a pretty shitty neighborhood, so that’s no surprise. The dog isn’t even outside much and rarely barks, so he’s not a target for being annoying. Stuff gets stolen out of my yard, all the damned time (because of the nearby bad neighborhood - our neighborhood is nice, and gets really nice maybe three streets in the other direction, but you know) but never outright vandalism before. I definitely didn’t expect the rock vs. window action.

7

Nothing to add except to say that really sucks.

8

Sorry to hear about your trouble, and I don’t mean to add to your worries, but if your cats normally sit in that window, please give them a good brushing down. If there is a little peice of glass in thier fur, they can hurt themselves trying to get it out.

9

Christ, one more thing. A good idea, thanks - I’d been worried about the animals’ feet, hadn’t thought about how the cats groom themselves. Just sittin’ here watchin’ the security cameras - man, they have come a hell of a long way with these things. I need to clean the windows, though, if I want tos ee out of them. :slight_smile: Other than window glare and specifically window dirt, these things are amazing. It can be quite dim outside and still get a fantastic bright picture from the cameras.

10

If there’s any truth to the idiom, the perpetrator can’t be far.

11

One only hopes that he will return to the scene of the crime. (And that Jeremy Brett will appear as Sherlock Holmes to sex me up while we review video footage. Alls I’m sayin’.)

12

You might find he’s a bit scattered.

13

Are any of your neighbors getting hit with the vandalism, too? It seems like quite an effort to destroy the latticework for just random vandalism, as opposed to the random rock through the window. Have you made any enemies lately, maybe at work? If no one else is getting hit in the vicinity, maybe you’re getting singled out. Not what you want to hear, probably, but it might help you catch the bastard(s). Good luck.

14

I keep trying to talk to the neighbors but they’re never home - I should write notes. I don’t know if anybody else has had trouble or if it’s just me.

An amusing side note to the whole camera business - the cops assured me they’d step up patrols. Only we’ve been reviewing our camera footage and we haven’t seen a single cop car.

ETA - that sweet little black kitty that I thought had disappeared is evidently hanging out on our porch at night, though.

15

I had at least had the notion that it could be my Evil Half Brother, but he was out to dinner with my parents at the time. (Good thing, because it would just kill my dad.) Security at work is keeping an ear out. It isn’t beyond imagining that a public library patron could follow me home and try to hurt my pets, of course. But I think the smart money is on fuckwad kids. (Suspiciously absent on the street yesterday, by the way.)

16

You should write notes especially if your neighbors have the same crimes happening. Get together and write them down. If you can afford a camera outside your home that would be great.

Never forget that what is happening to you is a crime. You are at risk, your pets are at risk. Make sure the police know this. Make sure they know this. You have a right to be safe in your home.

17

Zsofia - that really sucks. I can absolutely picture everything you wrote happening to me (complete with having to replace historically-accurate windows at thrice the price). Absolutely horrifying. I hope everything calms down and this clears up for you.

18

I hope you catch them on camera doing something illegal so you can get the law on them.

That situation really sucks. I try to put myself in your shoes and imagine the anger I would feel if I came home and found something like that had been done to my house.

And like you say, the money! It’s hard enough making ends meet these days, floating a mortgage, paying utilities, etc without having something beyond your control invariably set you back a bunch of c-notes.

How frustrating for you. I hope you get them, although unfortunately, these are probably juveniles, and the punishment for petty vandalism is probably akin to a slap on the wrist.

19

I don’t really understand the lattice thing. Does your dog live under the porch? :confused:

20

He has a fenced backyard, which adjoins my porch. The lot slopes in back, so the porch is quite high - you can stand up under it if you’re careful, and it has a concrete floor in there. There’s lattice enclosing the under-porch area. We had a dog door into that area for my previous (small) dog, so that he had a nice cool place to get out of the weather if need be. When he died and we got Captain, we just cut out the dog door and made a big hole for him to have access to that area. In other words, his back yard is mostly bounded by fence, but under the porch it has this lattice that somebody kicked in. When we discovered that (by the dog whining and scratching to get in at the front door, which will give you a start) I just blocked off his access to the hole he gets into there from, since I haven’t got any spare lattice and haven’t been to Lowe’s. Everything I’ve blocked the hole off with ends up torn down, either by the dog now that he knows there’s a Way Out through there or by some asshole going to great lengths to hurt my dog.

Of course, since the window thing Captain doesn’t go outside unsupervised.