Ever since this whole period of inflation began, burglaries and break-ins have been at an all-time high. For this reason, I’ve kept my house locked up more securely than Fort Knox.
In fact, there is so much “dead air" in my house because I haven’t opened any windows since 2019, it probably smells like a place where a forensic pathologist is performing an autopsy.
But I can’t tell the difference anyway...because I haven't been able to smell much of anything since I had Covid last year.
Actually, in my particular neighborhood, burglaries have been popular for years – long before the pandemic. I even suspect that if someone did an online search for “best places to commit a burglary in New Hampshire,” a Google map of my neighborhood would pop up.
I remember way back when I first moved into my current house and I was taking a walk around the area at dusk to check things out. A man who lived on the next street over greeted me and then added, “Not to scare you or anything, but we were burglarized the night before last.”
Scare me? Why on earth would he think that telling me about a burglar lurking somewhere in the neighborhood when it was nearly dark out and I still had to walk past a quarter-mile of nothing but thick woods before reaching my house would scare me?
I’m pretty sure I actually broke a few Olympic speed records as I ran back home.
And more
burglaries followed – one on a property adjacent to mine. The woman had a fancy
alarm system, yet the thieves took everything but the wallpaper…including the
alarm system, which they’d disconnected before breaking in.
Another day during another walk, I talked to woman who was out raking leaves and she told me about how, while she and her husband had been at work the week before, someone had leaned a ladder against the back of their house, then climbed in through the second-floor bedroom window. She said all of her precious jewelry, including several family heirlooms, were gone.
A sense of panic overcame me, certain I had to be the next target on the “to-be-burgled” list, even though I had nothing much to steal. I mean, my three jewelry boxes contained about $100 worth of jewelry, most of which was tarnished and turned my skin green whenever I wore it. Also, I’d bought my TV on sale for only $499. My computer was so old, the company didn’t even make parts for it any more. And the loose-change jar had cobwebs in it because there was no such thing as loose change any more. I was spending every penny.
But the worst burglary I heard about in my neighborhood involved this poor, unfortunate woman who came home from work one afternoon to discover her house had been ransacked. She, terrified the culprits might still be hiding inside, dashed right back out and ran across the road to the safety of her neighbors’ house. She knocked, then didn’t wait for them to answer – she just barged inside…and startled their Great Dane, who promptly bit her.
Talk about having a bad day.
When I first tried to get homeowner’s insurance for my house, I was rejected over and over again because I had two Rottweilers, which, I repeatedly was informed, were second only to pit bulls on the “do not insure” list. Finally, one agency said they would insure the property if I posted signs.
“You mean ‘beware of dog’ signs?” I asked.
“Sort of…but I advise you to find something that sounds scarier,” the agent said.
I had no idea what he meant, so I did an online search until I came across something I thought was perfect: “WARNING! SECURITY DOGS!” I bought several of the signs and hung them along my driveway.
Granted, one of my dogs back then would have given sloppy wet kisses to any thug who broke in. But the other would have enjoyed de-pantsing him and then shredding every inch of skin all the way up to his eyebrows. So my message to any potential burglar was, good luck finding out the hard way which dog was which.
One wintry day. I walked out to get my mail and happened to notice fresh tire tracks in the snow in my driveway. They halted abruptly at the first dog-warning sign I’d hung, then the tracks backed out of the driveway.
The next day, the police contacted me and said the house on the far side of my property had been broken into and they wondered if I’d seen anything suspicious. I thought about the tire tracks and told them about them. The police came over to check things out and said they believed my house had been the intended target, because the same tire tracks were found at the house that was robbed. But apparently my sign had scared them off.
And not long after that, a tax assessor for the town contacted me and said they were reassessing the homes in my neighborhood and had come to my house to take outside measurements, but they’d noticed my security-dogs signs and had decided not to chance it.
Bless my insurance company.
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
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