I get so MAD!

March 24th, 2005 at 12:45pm Posted by Bill

Hero of the day

This happened about 6 years ago at our old place in Lafayette. Kathy wasn’t feeling well, so she went to bed about 9:00. I came to bed at 10:00. At about 10:10, our motion sensing floodlight came on, and the dogs started barking. I figured it was just a cat walking on the van, but I got out of bed to check, and to quiet the dogs. As I got out of bed, through the blinds I saw three people walking between our house and the neighbor’s house, coming from the neighbor’s backyard, going toward the street. They came right next to our driveway, where the kids keep their bikes and helmets.

The first thing I thought was that they were stealing something from our driveway or the neighbor’s backyard. I grabbed my pants as I ran for the door. I looked down the street, but they were nowhere. I slowly walked down the street, looking in driveways and yards, trying to see where they were hiding. When I got past our neighbor’s house, I heard sounds coming from the backyard, it sounded like the chainlink fence being rattled. I walked back between the neighbor’s house and the vacant house next to them, trying to see anything in the dark. Right about this time, Kathy called 911.

As I peeked around the corner, I saw two people standing next to the fence, but I didn’t see the third. Without even thinking what I was doing, I shouted “What the hell are you doing back here?” The two turned to try to see who was talking, but they couldn’t see me in the dark. One of them said that they were trying to hop the fence, it was a shortcut to their house through the field behind our neighborhood. I said “Well stop it. Take the long away around. You’re waking up my kids.”, and he said O.K.

I started walking back out to the street, and stepped on some sort of spiny weed or plant (it hurt to put weight on my left foot for days afterward). As I was walking back to our house, I saw Kathy on the phone in the front yard, and a Sheriff’s deputy pulling up to her in his cruiser. I explained to him what happened, and he went into the back yards to look around.

He said that he saw an area behind the chainlink fence where the blackberry bushes had been trampled down over time, as if this shortcut had been used many times before, and he saw some fresh broken branches through the extra thorny part of the bushes. We figure that they were in fact just trying to find the shortcut, and had wandered into the wrong backyard, setting off our motion sensor, which made the dogs start barking. It wasn’t until later after the cop left that I realized just how stupid I had been. I went out in nothing but my pants, barefoot even, with no weapon, to confront three people that I thought had just robbed us.

Entry Filed under: Memories