You might be wondering why we've taken the extreme step of installing a security system at our house, especially since the TP'ing ended years ago.
Here's the story.
A few years ago, we started noticing some strange characters coming and going from a house across the street and four down from us. Which was strange because, as far as we could tell, the people who lived there looked like fine, upstanding citizens, perhaps public servants or business professionals.
I'm just funnin' ya. They were strung out meth tweakers. People who visited the house looked like the cast of Oz, without the warmth.
One day, my wife and daughter were driving home and saw one of the tweakers walking down our driveway. They drove slowly and watched him walk back to his house, then they called the police.
Initially the police didn't want to come out to warn the guy about trespassing, but once they did they realized they were dealing with some very bad people. They came back to our house, and let my wife know they had a very long rap sheet that included drug dealing and firearms charges. They also told us to call them anytime if we noticed anything odd going on over there.
The thing is, there was always something odd going on. And as a result, the cops were at the house about twice a week, at all times of the day and night, for over a year. Sometimes it was one police car, and other times it was four or five screaming up to the house, guns drawn. It was very entertaining, and we could almost set our clocks by it.
The house was owned by a sleazy lawyer. We figured out the deal was he got them out of jail when they got busted, and he got a cut of their drug money.
By the way, I forgot to mention that neither our house or our neighbor's house (our former great neighbor and friend Sebastian - come back Sebastian!) was broken into when he was coming out our driveway. We figured the tweaker was probably window shopping both houses, but then heard Max - the world's greatest German Shepherd - start barking up a storm and high-tailed it out of there.
Right after the driveway incident, we got the closed circuit camera system for the house. We have several cameras covering the whole property, and can tune in and watch the show no matter where we are. We have a lot of footage of the FedEx guy delivering packages from Amazon, but so far no more meth heads.
Eventually, the police department called to tell us the sleazy lawyer couldn't afford the house anymore and had decided to sell it. Which, thankfully, turned out to be true.
Now, a nice family with two young kids live there. They've been renovating the house since they moved in over a year ago, and it's looking good. I'm not sure if the renovations included an exorcism, but I think it's worth considering.
As for the closed circuit camera system, together with Max and our alarm system it brings us a great deal of peace of mind.
I just have to remember not to take out the trash in my underwear.
