Had a thief try to make off with our snowblower which we had fastened to the front porch rail. It was about 10:30 and dark out there.
Seishi alerted to him, which alerted me to something his ears had heard outside, and I scared the malefactor off by a sudden bang on the window: he went running off across the intersection down the street with an alacrity and body language that says to this former teacher of teens: ‘about 5’7″, about 140 lbs, between 16 and 20, and plays sports.’ My greatest regret is that he didn’t hit a patch of ice on the exit.
He’d done it with forethought, but the cable lock we had on it was tough: he’d cut most of the way through it, but we brought the snowblower in and called the cops, who took the description. It’ll go into the shiny new police computer and factor into where they assign assets.
Did he use a hacksaw on the lock? If it’s like bicycle cables we have used in the past to lock up our mower, you can’t use a bolt cutter on them, they just bend. It does sound as if he had scoped out the problem before, and knew what tools to bring. It would have been poetic if he had gone tail-over-teakettle from a patch of ice. Seishi gets extra lovin’ and treats! Good kitteh!
Another thing that works on both fighting cats and prowlers is the sudden application of bright light: motion-sensitive outside lights or a very bright flashlight. I recommend either a Q-beam (hand held spot with ridiculous candlepower) or the old standby, a Maglite. The Maglite can double as self-defense item if required (one hopes not!)
Oh, he made a mangled mess of it. He was close to getting it all the way through, though. I am indeed contemplating a spooklight on that porch—if nothing else, for the pizza delivery guy.
As long as you don’t have free-range chickens in the area, you should be good. We once lived in a rural part of the islands, where cock-fighting is traditional but illegal. As a result, whenever the police raided an area, the chickens often ended up in the wind. There was one persistent rooster in our neighborhood who would doodle-doo any time the quality of the light changed. We had one of the energy-saving street lights at the top of our drive that would intermittently cut in and out. Cue the rooster, every 15 minutes or so, all night long. He was chicken non grata! Threats were made to turn him over to KFC, etc. if we could only catch him, but he was a wily bird. Eventually one Sunday morning, DH snapped and went after the rooster with a paintball gun, and chased him all over the block to the cheers of the aggrieved neighbors. The rooster left permanently after that.
Howl!
As a child, we decided to get my grandmother a small flock of chickens as a birthday present. Somehow they arrived a few days early and we were obliged to keep them temporarily in a makeshift cage in the livingroom for that time. EVERY time a car passed with headlights, the rooster would crow the dawn. You will never realize how busy a residential street can be until you’ve had that experience. I have no idea how such a logically dysgenic trait could survive.
Motion sensitive lights are called for. We have them front and back because you can get into our yard from 2 directions.
We have them in the back. They make very pretty overhead and side-mount porchlights that do that, and it’s no big deal to do that on the front porch. I think I’ll put a 6500 k bulb in it—a sudden flood of noon sunlight would startle late visitors.
Personally, I’d prefer land mines…..or autotracking devices that have laser pointers on them, one of those hits his chest, he’s going to be moving quickly. Another thing I would consider, a game camera if you don’t want to go to a full blown video surveillance system. Heck, even a dummy camera mounted with a flashing LED on it might help serve as a deterrent. It’s why I keep my stuff in the garage, out of sight, and you have to go through the house to get at it…..noisy venture, at least, and at night, I’m home, and Ohio has a “castle doctrine” law.
I do love the notion of a paintball gun. Sending the rascal down the public street dyed pink and purple does have a certain appeal. This particular desperado was thwarted by a fluffy kitty-cat.
I think we live too close to a ‘troublesome’ area to have too attractive a thing sitting out.
We’re not dealing with Napoleons of Crime, as Conan Doyle used to put it, but with dunces who don’t get new ideas until they see them right in front of them…
The viewscreen-licking, short-shuttlecraft-riding variety of dum criminals?
If you decide to get a paintball gun, I or probably several other people on this list can give you suggestions. The older style of paintball pellets stained and was hard to wash out, I’d suggest that variety for ‘home defense’, if you can find any 🙂
If only you could rig the paintball gun to the motion trigger… best of all, this time of year, the individual paint pellets would freeze! Some friends used to play paintball wars, and one particularly impractical joker used to freeze his, um, balls. They caught him at it pretty quickly (the ‘impractical’ part). The punishment was summary and just–they held him down and expended every frozen pellet on HIM! Which cured him of that quirk for good.
They bruise like crazy, too( which would be richly deserved in such a case!)—I used to play as a young teen when it was popular back in the early 90s and no bare skin was a pretty strict rule—I got shot at a weird angle that went under my facemask once and had a nearly numb fat lip for rest of the day.
So the young lad spends his spare time planning to steal snowblowers and other similarly portable items. He might not have been checking yours in particular, though it sounds like he’d wandered by. And has some prior experience at it.
He could’ve been studying, or working part-time, so he could buy his own snowblower.
He could’ve been with a friend or a date doing anything more mutually friendly and agreeable and a lot more fun, surely.
It would’ve been better than risking life and limb with someone whose opinions on hearth and home, kith and kin, he did not know.
Bright light: good idea. Paintball gun: appealing. Something fluorescent and perhaps glow-in-the-dark. An appealing pink or lime….
I live in a state that takes the view that one’s home is one’s castle, and one may take reasonable steps to defend anyone and anything thereupon.
I’m generally live and let live, and would greatly prefer never to have to test the theory in practice.
There’s great appeal in seeing him chased ’round the neighborhood with the paintball game, much like the wannabe Chanticleer.
One is quite happy to hear all are well and Seishi’s guard-cat training is in excellent shape. How would na Seishi look with a voyage-ring in his ear? Something with classic taste.
(No, not actually advocating he gets an earring, though the Egyptians would’ve thought it handsome too. Young na Seishi can have a virtual literary e-earring instead. 😉 Heh. To go with the spacer’s breeches.)
Motion sensor lights out front are a good idea. But be aware that lots of things set them off. Ours get tripped by javelinas and the neighborhood cat. There’s a guy around the block that a car driving by sets it off. So hope neither of you has a bedroom window within range.
And most certainly I agree that Seishi deserves a voyage-ring! Great bravery was shown. Course so was just smacking the window. But then I probably would have opened the door and said lots of bad words. Scotch all around!
It should be possible to set the sensors where they’ll only trigger if something over 3 feet high goes past within about 10 feet.
We had someone, back in the mid-60s, steal our wagon right off the front porch one night. It wasn’t locked up, but it also wasn’t in clear view of the street. I hope whoever took it appreciated its qualities (including automotive steering – couldn’t tip over without a lot more work than even kids would go to).
Rum. It was rum.
Good kitteh, nice kitteh, catch me some burglars kitteh!
Side note: like the cover art for Peacemaker. Just wish I didn’t have to wait til april for it! 🙂
A Hero Kitteh indeed. A virtual ring is definitely in order!
And now for something completely different, how is Jane doing with blog repair? One hopes that it will be up and running again soon, since we haven’t yet received the ‘all-clear’.