It started last night, the wee hours of August 8th. An unknown perpetrator destroyed our happy little fish pond… could be the owls or that racoon that’s been around a few times. Plants knocked over, the aerator fountain knocked sideways… half outside the confines of the pond thus essentially draining the pond. The cleaning filter hoses and pump shoved aside and disconnected. This afternoon when I got up to get ready for an overtime shift, I went out to feed them and found my biggest goldfish DOA. The other 3 were skittish and none too happy in 5″ of water. So… the hour i was hoping to spend rising to Rox71′s Sketch Challenge was spent saving the pond.
The fish however, are used to this. My late dog, Neuman, loved to jump in and toss the water plants around. I chased a racoon out once. Somehow, though, the goldfish seem to know I’m the one who rebuilds their home and feeds them. Because of this, I don’t subscribe to the common belief that they only have 3 second memories. They see me, they swim up to the top to say hello, they hover around whatever plant or hose i’m working on. They eat from my fingers. And they let me pet their little underbellies.
Fast forward to my shift tonight. A 15 hr shift, 2nd one in a row. (And i can’t even stamp til Sunday now because we have a tenant in the granny unit now- where my ”studio” is. she’s a friend, so i can bug her but really don’t want to abuse my landlordness! but i digress). It was one of those weird nights. Not the usual stuff. Actually… far from it. We had an attempt child abduction in a quiet, family neighborhood. Truly, this is not as common as the media would have you believe. The happy ending is that we caught the jackass. (that’s being nice). We had an entire neighborhood surrounded, cops and dogs going through yards, dispatchers (me) telling people who’re calling 911 about the commotion to watch for the bad guy and lock their doors. After about 45 minutes of playing hide and seek with him, he finally took a wrong turn down a street right into a few of our finest. How cool is that? The girl is safe at home. Jackass is in jail. I hope she can recover from the fear of what could have been.
We also caught a car burglar prowling around with his slim jim, gloves and other miscellaneous burglary tools. We caught a thief that stole a wallet from a woman getting into a car ON HER WAY TO THE HOSPITAL… except he ditched it before we found him, and therefore couldn’t arrest him without that key item on his person. I still count that as a catch, even if we couldn’t actually arrest him. We know he did it. We’ll catch him next time. We know who he is… where he lives… who his probation officer is… heh heh…
Most nights, we get traffic arrests, loud parties, civil problems, child custody disputes, domestic fights, warrant arrests, shoplifters… in these incidents, the suspects are known, usually arrested or problems resolved (for now). On the calls we get that the suspect is unknown… well. Maybe we can, in time, solve it and catch him. Sometimes we do get lucky. This was one of those times. The freaks came out tonight and… we caught ‘em!!
