…or is that “pause”? No: decidedly paws.
Wherein, after staying up half the night doing battle with the damn computer, I decided to excuse myself from choir this morning (it was after 9 a.m. before I re-established contact with the earth — the dogs hadn’t been fed, I hadn’t been fed, I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee, and I most surely had not bathed, painted, and combed myself). So that indeed did create a pause, about a morning’s worth.
During this moment or three of relative quiet, I decided to clean off the garage cabinet tops, which have been piled high with clutter, so that I could stack the leftover carpet tack strips up there and get them out of my way. In the course of that chore, I happened to notice some bird dew had dropped on the car’s hood, so went off and soaked a paper towel by way of cleaning it off.
The hood clean, I start to walk around the car wiping off other specks and smudges. And at the back end of the car, what should I find but big, greasy black pawprints all over the white paint on the car’s back gate. Obviously, my hands get dirty now and again…but with garden dirt, not with black grime. And the handprints are bigger than my mine, by quite a bit. Pretty clearly someone has tried to figure out how to break into the back lift gate.
You can manually open a Venza’s lift gate. But it’s a real PITA. You have to know exactly where the button is to open the thing (it’s a button, not a latch-like thing), and you have to push it just right. And of course the car has to be unlocked, which it was not.
So I wipe that mess off and proceed on around the car, where I find still more paw-prints around the driver’s-side passenger door.
He must have seen the satchel that holds the Scottsdale Bidness Association stuff — a basket for our weekly drawing and assorted such junk. I’d put it in the back of the car but then ended up not going to the east side last Thursday. It was hidden in a crate under a blanket, but I had to take it out so as to load up the crate with Costco junk, and I’d forgotten to put it back in its secret place. So he probably thought that thing was a woman’s purse.
Charming.
If that’s the case, then the prowler visited either in the Walmart shopping center or the church parking lot. Since WM has a couple of armed security guards prowling around, it’s likely the perp visited the church. People’s cars have been broken into there…which makes sense. If you were looking for a car to rip off, wouldn’t you select one in an affluent church’s parking lot rather than at a Walmart in a low-income area? 😀
Image: DepositPhoto, © domnitsky.yar
Is there no trunk cover? Every hatchback-ish vehicle I’ve owned (4 and counting) have had some sort of cover for trunk items–either a retractable cover or a cover that lifts when I lift the trunk. Does your car not have one?
It came with a plastic thing that looks and works a lot like an old-fashioned roller shade. This object takes up space, and it also gets in the way of putting the dogs in the back of the car.
It’s unclear if this object is supposed to lift when you lift the rear hatch — if it did, it would need to attach to the inside of the door. There’s nothing on the door that you could secure it to…so it appears you’re supposed to pull it out and manually lay it over anything in the “trunk” area behind the 2nd row of seats. This comes under the heading of n.u.i.s.a.n.c.e. It’s really much easier to have a light blanket in back to toss over stuff.
Also, the car came with window tinting that’s SO dark it may be illegal here. (It was auctioned to Bell Road Toyota in Las Vegas, where just about anything goes.) So far no cops have bothered me…but I suspect if I bothered them, they’d use the dark windows as an excuse. Anyway, until they do…the window tinting is dark enough that you can barely see what’s inside the back part of the vehicle. You have to get right up there, shield your face with your hands, and peer in hard. The satchel was visible, but you had to work to see it.
Whew! I’m grateful that you did not wind up with a busted window. Arkansas miscreants have no qualms about busting windows for a handful of change or a pack of cigs.
Entirely possible. If they were at the Walmart Neighborhood grocery store, though, they may not have wanted to make that much noise. One of the things that makes that store feel a little safer than others near my house is that there are a lot of family people around — the area is part of what was once a small town and it still has a kind of small-town feel to it. They’re likely to report an obvious break-in to the store or to one of the security guards. Plus those guard guys make themselves highly visible…and they do carry pistols.
So in that parking lot, if the guy didn’t find the doors unlocked, he probably would move on. At the church, especially at night (when we rehearse), it would be another matter: it’s quiet and after dark there’s no one around. There, it would make sense to break in.
Oh, that is creepy! I was remembering your bad dude in the garage episode. Hopefully this was at Walmart. Do folks walk together to their cars after choir?
No problem after choir — 50 people pour out into the parking lot.
Probably was at Walmart. Which is especially charming, because we’re told the other day ADOC let a “dangerous” “violent” sex offender out to roam around for awhile with one of those electronic shackles on his ankle. He dropped the thing in or near the Walmart shopping center and took off. But I gather this happened in the evening, long after I was around.
They’re apparently still looking for the gent. This morning two cops went slinking down the street by the Funny Farm; at mid-day, shortly before I left for a shopping junket, three of them were circling the ‘hood. So I imagine the figure he’s hiding out here.
I mean really. Think about it. You’re a desperado. The idiot authorities have given yhou permission to go out on your own, as long as you have this geolocating shackle on your leg.
You say, “Yassah, yassah!” Then you get on the train, ride as far north as it will take you (that would be about three blocks from the Funny Farm), walk a half-dozen blocks to a Walmart. There you walk in and buy, with cash, a throw-away phone and a few minutes. You call or text a friend to come pick you up.
S/he arrives and meets you in the parking lot, a pair of tin snips in the back seat. you cut off the tracking device and toss it on the ground as your friend is driving you away. As we scribble, the guy is either in Flagstaff or Nogales. Or waypoints. If I were him, I’d be in Guaymas by now, with a fine fake ID in hand.
Jayzus.
P.S. You wonder why I have a Ruger that will drive a slug through a solid-core door?
Any thoughts of reporting the incident? Maybe should have saved one good print.
Nah. It’s so commonplace that reporting it would be like reporting the neighbor’s cat is meowing.