Thursday, January 29, 2009

I just learned something

Robbery is when someone takes property off your person. Burglary is when someone takes property from your home.

We were burgled today.

The domestic partner came home from the gym around 6:30 pm and noticed the locks weren't locked the way we usually lock them. When he got inside, he found muddy footprints everywhere. And a few things in the house were not where they normally are, which is a lot to say right now because our house looked burgled well before it was broken into.

Then he noticed his computer was missing. And his backpack. And $600 in cash, which we NEVER have in the house. And when he called me at work to tell me about it, I asked him to look for my iPod, which I'd last seen sitting right where any burglar could find it near the little speaker thing in our bathroom. Sure enough, it was gone too. But the speaker thing was still there.

Fortunately, nobody was home when it happened, so nobody got hurt. Because if I had been home, you know damn well I'd try to play the hero and my boneheadedness would have left someone injured. My biggest concern when the domestic partner called me was whether or not Thomas had been home. I can't even begin to imagine the outcome of him stumbling on a burglary in progress. But he wasn't, so we don't have to think about it.

The freakiest part of the whole experience is the fact that there's no sign of forced entry. No jimmied door locks. No broken windows. No dynamite residue. In fact, the muddy footprints all over the house aren't anywhere near any doors or windows.

Except.

There's a muddy footprint on the lip of the SINK. But there's no way you could break into our house by standing on our sink. So I'm thinking we were burgled by a muddy-shoed acrobat:


In any case, the police came, asked a lot of questions, took a lot of notes, left fingerprint dust everywhere, and even knocked on all the doors in our tier to see if any of our neighbors saw or heard anything. The verdict? Nobody noticed anything. Our stuff will never be recovered. And we should change our locks. Which we're doing first thing tomorrow.

Assuming we don't get murdered in our sleep tonight.

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