Thursday, August 6, 2020

Just Another Day, Patrolling the Perimeter

After seeing an abandoned (empty) package along our gravel road on Tuesday, you can bet I was ever-vigilant in my travels on Wednesday.

There was nothing to see as I left for town at 1:00. I stopped to pick up our mail. Everything seemed normal. Not a Creacher was stirring. Not even a louse, sucking up water from the creek, pretending to dump sewage from a septic tank! It was a different story when I returned at 2:10.

I saw a bunch of trash along the Creach. Near Hick's bus-waiting shack, where Creachers park when they trespass. I pulled over there for a closer look. That wasn't trash!

IT WAS OPENED MAIL!

Of course I went over to look at it. The Pony has been expecting a new card from his financial institution, and also his diploma.

Here was a manila envelope (thankfully not for a diploma!), some ripped-up papers, and a white box like we'd gotten the day before (ours contained and un-asked-for A1C test from Hick's insurance provider. Further investigation showed a return address of The Lung Institute on the manila envelope. I was afraid it was somebody's medical results, or records. I took a picture for Hick to advertise on the Facebook page of our enclave.

Hick put up the pictures, along with: "Is one of us throwing out our trash at the mailboxes, or do we have a mail thief?"

A guy up past Buddy's (of Hick and Buddy's Badly Blacktopped Hill fame), said he was also missing a package. Hick only named the road address of the opened mail, not the number address. He said that all the mail there had the same address, but the box from the day before had a different address.

A lady said she, too, had been missing a package. That's she'd called the post office, and they said to call the county sheriff. The sheriff's office said to contact them any time we suspected our mail was missing. They would be stepping up their patrols in this area.

I think some ne'er-do-well knows what time our mail gets here, and comes to steal whatever looks good when the coast is clear. You never know... with the sightings I've seen of our mail lady sitting around talking with with folks in parked cars, they might even be getting tipped off. Not that I'm accusing a federal worker of inappropriate conduct, of course! All I know is that this most recent tampering happened between 1:00 and 2:10 p.m. A pretty narrow window of time for a random thief to show up, considering our mail is delivered between 11:00 and 2:00 most days.

So... we have not found our neighbor's missing package. Hick thinks he might have had something stolen, but since it was ordered by a relative with a spotty record of factual reporting, he's not all that concerned. He didn't pay for it, and was exacting a repayment for a year-old deal. If that merch is gone, it's skin off the supposed orderer's nose, and not Hick's. You can bet he won't write off the past-due payment over this alleged incident.

14 comments:

  1. Maybe the mail person was being used to get info and she did not know what was happening. I am just hoping she is not risking her job to steal. This is why I have a PO Box, people were getting into my mail box.

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    1. Yes, a government job may not offer the best pay, but it's steady work, and the benefits are good. A PO Box is awkward when we have to drive five miles to check it. We are usually in town every day anyway, but we CAN choose not to go in icy winter, or during the Stay-At-Home-Down.

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  2. I think all of you should now fix very large padlocks to all of your mailboxes and set up a lunch-party picnic area for the times the mail is due. Space yourself according to whichever rules apply in your area and just sit around gossiping, or yelling if you are far enough apart. Bring coffee and cakes and a portable Marquee.
    Or have someone set up a camera that takes a picture every few minutes, like wildlife photographers do and have it connected via wifi to all your computers.
    Or something else equally drastic. I'm rambling.

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    1. We can't use individual locks unless the mailwoman also has keys. I can picture a heavy chain with one giant lock, but I'm pretty sure the USPS won't go for that!

      Heh, heh! I can also picture us having a festival down there, with someone walking on stilts, and a guy juggling bowling pins, and Hick gnawing on a turkey leg and drinking a flagon of mead.

      I still think someone would steal the "hidden" camera!

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  3. I'm thinking your mail person was "getting used" for more than info. Every time you mention your mail person, the song "Afternoon Delight" starts playing in my fibro-fogged brain.
    Lots of stuff going on down in your little Creach area. There may be a body of two buried back there. Gee, I hope you'll post about it when they're found!

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    1. That's what I THOUGHT! Last year when I kept seeing the mail JEEP parked across the Creach, backed into a road with a locked metal gate, beside the same little SUV I see it dallying with now.

      The rock is too close to the surface for burying. Our telephone line lies in a shallow grave just inches deep, running from the BARn field to the house.

      Bodies? There are different ways to dispose of them. The last one found out here was less than a mile from our house, headless, in a septic tank. I'm pretty sure that was in the disclosure for the people who bought the house. I'm also pretty sure the perpetrators have made a NOTE TO SELF about using a better hiding place next time.

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    2. Whoa. In a septic tank. Headless. But when I think about it, if I were being put into a septic tank, I believe I'd just as soon be headless.
      Too rocky, maybe, but I just saw a picture of a truck that said something about Drilling right on your blog...

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    3. At least there is a truck on your road that advertises "Drilling" on its door. (In case, say, some Creach rock needs to be, ahem, "moved" to bury a body.) Just sayin'.
      Oh, thank you so very much for replacing "Afternoon Delight" with "Harper Valley PTA" in my 'music-box-brain'. I suppose I should run and listen to a Chopin "etude" or two to keep Jeannie C. Riley from keeping me up all night! Let the record show, (Sorry, had to borrow that...), that autocorrect changed the word "etude" to "studs" constantly until I put it in quotations! Apparently autocorrect is not musically inclined. I guess it likes "studs" more than "etudes". Well, you know -- to each his/her own.

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    4. As I recall, they found the head somewhere else, wrapped in gray duct tape. It was the handiwork of a local biker gang involved with a major meth ring out of Mexico. Let that be a lesson: always pay your meth debts, and if you're trading your tattoo services, make sure you're available when somebody wants a tattoo.

      I would rather they hired a drilling service to dispose of it elsewhere, rather than drive that headless body past my house in the middle of the night on the way to the septic tank!

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    5. I detest autorcorrect! It sometimes replaces my words with some that are a bit...um...off-color! I had a song stuck in my head last night, every time I woke up. "Heads Carolina, Tails California" by Jo Dee Messina.

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    6. I am saying a silent "Thank You!" to the gods of country music that I have never heard that Jo Dee Messina song you mentioned! Whew! I can sleep tonight...

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    7. Heh, heh! I should have provided a link!

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    8. Ah, no thanks, I'll probably live without knowing it Anyway, I'm still inside-brain-singing "..who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Junior Hi-igh!" and blaming Tom T. Hall. 😯 I haven't had a teenager daughter in way more years than I care to remember, however her junior high was a bit Harper Valley-ish. 😱 Aren't they all.

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  4. Don't do me like that! And I refuse to look it up all on my own. All I need is another random tune in my head when I'm trying to get to that elusive state some call "sleep". (Not even hoping for the "perchance to dream" bit! I'm not greedy that way.)
    As you can see, it is past 4 am and I'm still wide awake. Not unusual for me, really. And so far, the cause of my wakefulness is not from stray lyrics.
    Oops.
    Well, it wasn't the reason, but now, Tom has got me goin':
    "Don't do me like that! Don't do me like that; Baby, baby, baby, don't do me like that!"
    I'm doomed. 👀

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