Very creepy thing happened today and since I can’t stop thinking about it, figured I’d share…

Dale was taking some laundry out on our back porch when he found our neighbor and a police officer on the neighbor’s porch (it’s all connected). So he stopped and realized that our neighbor had been burglarized! Scary! And we also realized the screen to our bedroom window was pushed up…

Dale noticed that we had two strange marks on our door frame. It appears a dastardly burglar attempted to wedge a screwdriver into our lock to pop the door open! The burglar pushed the screwdriver (allegedly, heh) in the space between the door and the frame and gouged the weather seal, as well as the wood on both the door and the frame.

The small, blurry divots show where the thief attempted to pop the door open!

On the outside of the window was a big hand print! The burglar likely pushed up our bedroom screen and then tried to push the window itself up. The outside window is very dirty (oops). The officer attempted to get prints off the window but he said it was more likely that the thief lifted dirt off the window as opposed to left prints behind. I took this photo from inside the house with my flash on the camera to show the dirt/smudge marks. It WIGGED me out. Go away creepy thief!

Anyway, we’re VERY thankful the criminal did not make his way into our little home–and that I’m paranoid enough to keep windows locked (side effect of growing up in Flint, Michigan). Had the window been unlocked it would have been easy for the thief to get in–and our kitty cats to get outside! I’d be deeply upset if someone broke into our home but I would deranged if my baby kitties were roaming the streets due to some asshat that can’t make his own way in the world without trying to take our stuff! That said, we’re also very sad for our nice neighbor. The dirty thief broke the window out of his backdoor (we have a windowless back door) and made off with some money and his son’s X-Box. Boo! Hiss! I hate thieves!

To scrub that disturbing hand print image out of my head, I will close with this adorable picture of Monty snuggling on the sofa…safe and sound!

And don’t worry about us! Crime in our neighborhood is actually very, very low! All of the crime for the ENTIRE city in the month of September can be found on this map. And we didn’t have a single crime on our block last month. So while we are freaked out about this, we know it’s an unusual occurrence. We’re just going to be extra vigilant about locking doors and windows.

And Dale is considering high-tech safety options, of course.