Ever noticed that as soon as you leave home you feel you should go back? Even as you get off the plane on that much needed holiday to Hawaii, or Florida, or Timbuktu, you start to worry about home. Did you turn the stove off, leave food for the cats, lock the front door, cancel the mail, draw the curtains, put the lights on – because we all know that burglars are entirely fooled by the fact that you left a light on in the bathroom. Do you ever wonder what they think of the fact that you’ve been in there for a week? Burglar one to Burglar two “Better not bust into this place Jack – they’ve been in that bathroom for a week and must be mighty pissed by now that they still can’t go. Let’s do number 14 instead. They’ve only been in the front hall since Monday.” Of course if you really want to foil burglars you leave the TV on as well. Then they know that there are at least two of you in the house; one in the bathroom and one watching endless reruns of Oprah – in French.
We had a break-in at our house once. They took some cheap knock-off jewelry and a pair of no-name running shoes. They were obviously of a more discriminating nature however as the shoes were later found abandoned in the middle of the downstairs sofa. The burglars were either frightened off by something – maybe the light shining from under the bathroom door – or else they were high-class thieves and would take nothing lesser than Nikes. Which leads me to wonder why they didn’t just break into one of the posh houses down the street? You know the ones – they have tidy lawns and no rusty cars or old bikes anywhere on the property. They even have flowers that grow [taller than 2 centimeters] in lovingly tended window boxes and beds, untrammeled by undisciplined dogs or pooped on by cats. And not a hastily discarded beer bottle or empty cigarette packet in sight. Now I bet they have stuff worth stealing. Mind you they probably attract a better class of thief too. On our side of the street they are out for cheap stereos and DVDs that can be palmed off quick down at the local pawnbrokers while the ones across the street are probably out for real paintings and not those ones of Velvet Elvis. Mind you I don’t think we have any upper class thieves around here. I doubt if they would even know a Picasso from a Pizarro. They would more than likely just go for the one of the dogs playing poker or James Dean chatting up Marylyn in the all-night diner.
I worked for a large property developer once who was also an avid art collector. He used to furnish his model suites with expensive Eskimo art. Not quite Picasso but valuable nonetheless. One day there was a break-in. The thieves took the fake potted palms and the petrified candies in the cheap glass dishes and left all the soap-stone polar bears behind. Just goes to show that the art-appreciation classes down at Kingston Pen ain’t working.
In the days when real-estate developers used to actually build new houses you could look at instead of tacking blue-prints to the wall petty theft and the odd break-in was commonplace. Too bad that the average Canadian thief is somewhat, shall we say, dim-witted, and is apt to leave clues. Like the guy who parked the moving truck outside the model suite, took all the stuff inside and then unloaded it two streets down into his own place. He was fairly easy to catch – especially since it was daylight. Then there was the fellow who took all the flashing construction lights to put in his bedroom window but forgot to turn them off again at night. There was even the chap who took all the redwood siding off the skids to use to refurbish his deck. Unfortunately for him it had been snowing hard the night he pulled off his raid and he had to drag the sheets about a mile down the road. It didn’t need inspector Poirot to figure out where he took them.
So if you’re traveling anywhere this summer make sure to leave some lights and the TV on. And if you really want to be safe and secure in your mind as you trot around the globe just move to the posh side of the street and leave out some fake Rolexes and the broken CD player, secure in the knowledge that your limited print and your antique armoire will still be there when you get back. Mind you, the plastic apples in the wicker bin might not.
