Crime Watch Wednesday: Why Steal Valuables When You Can Just Eat Turkey?

This week's crime watch chronicles comes courtesy of my Mom. Yep, I now have the whole family involved. Mom wants to point out that she has stupid criminals where she lives too. She is right. Take a gander:

A woman was the victim of a hungry thief. Upon arriving home to her apartment, the woman found that someone had entered her apartment and ate some turkey and cheese out of her refrigerator. There were no broken windows. The door was locked at the time. The woman stated that she had lost her keys in the utility room several weeks prior and never changed the locks.

Okay, let's review. You come home to find all the windows and doors locked. The ONLY thing missing is some turkey and some cheese from your fridge. Do you immediately think it was a criminal? Or do you blame your roommate? Perhaps wonder if you ate too much the night before? I am pretty sure that leaving unmarked keys in a utility room is not going to give enough information for the thief to know which apartment you live in. Also, if you lost your keys and did not have your locks changed, how are YOU getting into the apartment?

You know what I think? I think it was the maintenance people. It is always the maintenance people.** I, too, have a similar, but entirely different story related to this one.

One time I lived in this mid rise apartment where my garbage disposal always smelled like something died in it. I used lemons. I used soap. I used special garbage disposal cleaner. Nothing helped. Finally I told the manager she had to do something about it. I was promised something would be done.

One day after that, I came home to my locked apartment on the 12th floor to find my refrigerator unplugged, and a set of tools lying on my kitchen floor. Clearly, the maintenance man had been there and left, without his tools, and without plugging my fridge back in. Your guess is as good as mine as to why he unplugged it in the first place. Regardless, my food was no longer cold and I was steaming mad.

So I storm down to find the manager. The woman proceeds to tell me that there is a new manager that has taken over and gives me his apartment number. Immediately upon him opening the door I angrily wonder why the maintenance people left before completing their job and, more importantly, left all my food to spoil.

Manager: Are you sure it was maintenance?

Me: Am I sure it was maintenance?

Me: I CALLED for maintenance.

Me: There are TOOLS on my kitchen floor.

Me: Who the f*** do you think it was?

Manager: It could have been thieves.

Me: Thieves?

Me: It could have been THIEVES?

Me: What the f*** were they stealing????

Me: And why were they attempting to fix my garbage disposal???

Manager: We have had a bunch of thefts of fire extinguishers lately.

Me: Have you lost your ever loving mind???

Me: HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?

Me: These were not THIEVES.

Me: Tell you maintenance people they have until tomorrow to get their tools or they are mine.

Miraculously the tools were gone when I came home.

The thieves must have been listening.

* I just realized there is no first asterisk. You may now proceed to the second asterisk. Do not stop. Do not collect $200. However, if you have $200, please give it to me. I am in Vegas you know. I am broke.

**My apologies to maintenance people who are not thieves. That is probably almost all of you. You are easy to blame though. So are cleaning people who eat lunches. Except they don't. WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE LUNCH EATERS. Ahem.

***I have a foul mouth. This guy did not. He was scared of me. I liked it that way.

Smooth Criminal

We have renters in our complex.  The people change yearly (except for the one legged lady but that's a different story), so their names just remain "the renters."  So the renters apparently decided to leave for a long 4th of July weekend.  Without their cat.  Without enough food.  

The renters have an adorable young cat (he is bigger than a kitten to me) that is kind of brown tiger striped with all white paws. Too cute.  We have seen him before and visited with him because they inexplicably let him hang out on the patio and he somehow never ventures away. We have stopped to pet him and say hi and tell the renters how cute he is.

Yesterday I mentioned to B that I felt bad for the kitty. He was all by his lonesome. We went up to the patio door and you could tell he was crying but we couldn't hear him.  That is when I noticed his two food dishes were empty!  I hoped they would come home early today.  No such luck.

So around 5 pm or so B informs me that he is going to go kidnap the cat. I thought he was joking, but he was not. A few weeks ago he noticed one of their screens had been pushed out and told them about it.  They did not fix it.  B expressed disbelief that the same people who could not be bothered to fix their screen would also lock their windows.  He was right - unlocked.  Of course, I had to follow behind him saying the whole time that this was NOT a good idea.  But, the cat came to the window, B scooped him up and brought him into our condo.

The little guy was purring like crazy in B's arms.  He did not like seeing our cats and was a little skittish, but he need not have worried as they fled for the hills, or in this case, under the beds. Despite the fact that our cats are about 5 times the size of this baby, they were petrified. It might have been the kitty pot B gave them right before his caper.

So, despite the fact that I yell at our cats every time they THINK about stepping foot on to our kitchen counters, here was this little baby on our counter and I am feeding it.  He ate a lot.  So much, in fact, that we stopped feeding him so he wouldn't get sick.  All the time I am saying "what if the renters come home?"  And just like that, we were putting him right back where we found him and replacing the screen.  Deed done. No one noticed.

Just in the nick of time. Right after that, B went to pick up some pizza and I hear the renters pull up.  Whew! I think to myself.  Next thing I know, B is back and walking by saying to the renters "we fed your cat."

Real smooth, that one.