I've been robbed!

My house was in such disastrous state last Sunday that it took me a while to realize someone had broken in to it. Here's what happened.

On Sunday I set off at 10 am for a town nearby, where a friend--let's call her Dame X, because this is about to turn into a potboiler--was taking four of us out for high tea to celebrate her 60th birthday. She had decided to do this because some serendipitous segue at a previous get-together had led to a discussion of the joys of clotted cream. Prior to high tea, the five of us met at Dame X's place and staged a birthday ritual, which involved installing some mostly uncuddly handmade bunny art in her backyard. Dame X was born in the year of the rabbit, and we decided to go with a psycho/wacky bunny theme because she once noted that rabbits are so much more than cute furry things. I high-jumped outside the box and made her a Buddha beaver instead, which depicted a buddha on one side and a beaver holding a chewed stick on the other. Several years earlier Dame X had planted a magnolia tree, and in the second season of its tragically foreshortened life it was done in by a beaver. She wrote me an email with the subject line, “May all beings be happy...” and a terse message: “... except beavers.”

The Saturday night before we went to Dame X's I had been working on the birthday art project late into the night, having left it until the last minute. As a consequence, there was glue, sparkles, bits of fur, paper, and paints strewn all over, under and around the dining room table. The Friday before that Saturday Kingston had a record-breaking rain, and many properties were flooded. My basement wasn't, but in some of the lower-lying areas there were patches of wet, as if the ground water had risen to the basement level. So the basement too was in a chaotic state, as I had moved stuff from the wet areas to dry ones and flung down towels to soak up the water. There were mounds of cat litter here and there, courtesy of over-zealous cats; the mounds had ballooned into soggy mushy masses that, if you didn't know what they were, appeared highly suspect. There's a box on my back deck lined with strips of my mother's old fur coat for the cats to sleep in. That got soaked in Friday's rain too, so strips of soggy fur were hanging over the railing, making it appear as if I had recently skinned a bunch of animals. (When the neighbour came over to see if I was OK, she recoiled when she saw them. They broke in after seeing that? she asked.)

And I hadn't done the dishes for days.

When I returned from the psycho bunny/high tea event, I went to the front entranceway to hang up my hat. The neighbour's key was in the front door. (I have the kind of doors that require a key to open them from both the inside and the outside. My younger nephew is stupefied that anyone would devise a system where you can get locked into your own house.) The neighbour's key in the front door seemed a tad odd but didn't really register, because I do all sorts of odd things these days.

Then I went upstairs and started getting out of my flowery, flowing high tea-worthy dress. As I was doing that, it struck me that there was stuff strewn on the floor that I would have no reason for strewing at that point in time: my passport, my birth certificate, my chequebook... I then noticed that all the drawers were open and my jewelry was out on the dresser. Someone's been in here! I thought in disbelief. I looked over and saw my laptop on the desk. Someone's still in here! I thought in belief. I ran down to the back deck and called to the neighbour to go through the house with me because someone had broken in and I wasn't sure if they were still in there. She told me she would call the police instead. Literally less than two minutes later, two police cars arrived and four police officers got out. I explained the situation and then, as they approached the back door, started apologizing for the state of the house.

Stay outside ma'am, they interjected, not interested in hearing why my house looked like it had been through a flood and an earthquake and possibly several other natural disasters of some sort.

They came out ten minutes later and told me nobody was in the house. They asked if anything had been taken. I really couldn't tell at the time, but later discovered at least two things were missing: some US cash left over from my last trip, and a locket bracelet my mom had given me from her mother, that had a picture of her (my mother's) grandparents in it. It was the only piece of jewelry I had that looked somewhat valuable, although I think it was gold-plated rather than solid gold.

Several weeks ago, a detective phoned and asked if I knew of anyone who might have broken into my house. I told him I don't run with that kind of crowd. Then he mentioned there had been a few other break-ins in the hood, and that at one of them glass had been broken and there was some blood. They sent it away for DNA analysis, and with luck might find a match in their database. In six months, he informed me. It's not like on CSI.

The robbery was as low impact a one as you could hope for. They (or he or she) got in the house by pushing the bathroom screen in (I usually always leave the kitchen and bathroom windows slightly open). They obviously tried to leave through the front door, but, as prophesized by my nephew, got locked in, so went back out through the window. They could have damaged the bathroom window and screen, but didn't. They could have vandalized the place, especially once they discovered how little there was that was steal-worthy, but didn't. They could have stolen my identity by taking my passport and birth certificate, but didn't. (My personal theory is that once they saw my passport photo, in which I resemble a terrorist who is going through an acrimonious divorce and having a bad hair day, they decided the market for assuming my identity was going to be limited.) They could have stolen my laptop, which has lots of writing and financial details that I haven't saved elsewhere, but didn't. They could have left an insulting note decrying my shoddy housekeeping skills, but didn't. In fact, if I were to break into a place that was in the same state mine was when they broke in, I might have been tempted to clean up and do the dishes, just to mess with the mind(s) of whoever lived there. Sadly, they didn't.