More tales of the house: thieves

Petty theft is rather common in the suburb I live in. The crime rate is high in general, including violent crime, but there are also plenty of chancers wandering about that will steal washing off the line or any other salable items they find in the yard. My house is not easily accessible from the road, which protects us from housebreakers and other violent, gun-toting criminals that are known to frequent the area. Instead, there are opportunists who wander the hill.

One day I noticed that my hosepipe was no longer around. "Oh well!" ...off to buy another and make a mental note not to leave it in the yard any more.

Early one morning last year, I woke up and went outside. I noticed someone's back moving away from the gate but I assumed that it was one of my tenants just leaving. In those days, there was also a massive bush of jasmine that obscured the view of the gate.

I have cleared away a lot of the bushes since then

I went around the side of the house for a few minutes, leaving my front door open. On my return, I saw someone walking out of the house holding my power tools, which were in the entrance, because I was renovating the bathroom at the time. I shouted at him and he ran out of the yard and started making his way over the the rocks. I called for my tenants, in the hope that one of them might be around and gave chase. At the time, I had my arm in a sling because I had separated my shoulder, that is: torn the ligament that joins the shoulder blade to the collar bone so I was pretty much useless anyway but I was so angry I started chasing the man. He dropped my drill and one of the basin taps when he had to clamber over some razor wire but still had my angle-grinder, heavy duty extension cord and one of the basin taps.

Next to the neighbour's house

I lost my shoes (flip-flops) fairly early on but continued chasing him anyway and yelling for my tenant. This part of the chase was though the grass, over the sharp rocks. Eventually, after running about 200m over rocky terrain I lost sight of him and decided that it was pointless to continue and made my way back home. It was then that I realised that my feet were lacerated and bleeding from running barefoot. The sudden running in the very cold early morning air brought on a bout of exercise-induced asthma and I spent the rest of the day coughing and had to soak my feet repeatedly in hot water with epsom salts for the next few days to prevent infection.

Back home, I got a new lock for the gate and told the tenants to use it because we had gotten rather careless about that. A few weeks later, I also removed the jasmine so that the view of the gate is unobstructed.

A week or two later, some irate men brandishing a cricket bat turned up at our place, they were hunting petty thieves and claimed to have put one in hospital after they caught him. I really hoped it was the one who stole my tools although a couple of months later, I came out of my house one morning and saw another unkempt character outside the gate. I asked him his business and he replied that he was "just passing by". I told him to remove himself and noticed that he left by the same route the previous thief had taken. I didn't get a good look at the original one's face although I'm pretty certain that it was the same one.