Thieves in the Night

A couple of weeks ago, our farm down the road was burglarized. Twice.

The first time—either late on a Friday or early on a Saturday, the thieves raided my husband's junk piles, which contained mostly junk but also some useful stuff.

The scumbags took tire rims, several long bars of angle iron, aluminum lawn chairs, a vintage cast iron sink that we'd salvaged from my mother's house in Roanoke, an iron wood-burning stove, etc. Metal stuff that they could sell for cash.

Now, most of this stuff, except for the 60-year-old sink and the old stove, was covered in leaves and sometimes other debris. The thieves had to root around for it:

How did they know this metal stuff was there? My theory, since this happened a couple of days after Appalachian Power Company sent some Asplundh workers to butcher the environment clear any limbs even remotely near their power lines, there just might be a connection. 

Now our "trash pile" is downhill from the road. It isn't visible from the road. Unless, you're someone who is hired to destroy trees:

The above picture was taken from the road. It used to be bushy. The grayish area just above the middle of the ground is our cottage roof. Before the vegetation was removed, you couldn't see the cottage from the road.

 But maybe, while you're destroying trees,  you feel the need to answer nature's call while doing so, and you maybe walk a little way into the woods. Maybe you notice some things worth stealing. 

Maybe you come back at night and park your truck down the farm's driveway. Way down, so no one passing by can see the truck from the road. So far down, you have to open the pasture gate to pull your truck far enough down. 

And maybe, while you're loading up the metal you're stealing, you leave something that probably falls out of the back of your truck. Something that maybe looks like this:

And maybe, while you're traipsing about in the leaves, you maybe take away a bunch of ticks. That leaf-pile is full of them. Six of the little critters hopped on me during few minutes I took these pictures. You were in that pile a lot longer than I stood beside it. I'll bet those ticks stayed on you a lot longer than they stayed on me.

Now a little over a week later, on a Sunday night, the thieves burglarized our cottage. They didn't try to get in the door. The door is right under a dusk to dawn light, so they'd be seen if anyone came along.

Here's the window. When the thieves went through it, the posted sign wasn't nailed to the shutter and the plastic lawn chairs weren't there. My husband added those the next day. You can see the path they tromped through the greenery, though.

They broke off some of the rose-of-sharon growing in front of the window, then they jimmied the window open, pushed out the screen which was on the inside, and climbed in. They stole a few wooden chairs, a 1950s aluminum canister set, a 1980s microwave, and a radio. They didn't take the old TV set (it's analog and didn't have a converter box) or the small refrigerator.

Now, what I can't understand, is why—if they took the trouble to break the rose-of-sharon—they didn't remove the large clump of poison ivy from in front of the window. They obviously had to go through it several times.

Maybe they're itching to get caught.

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