Here’s a story that hopefully will provide a chuckle or two.
So my birthday is right around the corner, and my son, bless him, had my gift sent by UPS to our home. Unfortunately, we were at the office and couldn’t accept the package in person. When we returned home, he noticed the package was nowhere in sight.
He knocked on the neighbor’s door, and they did not see the delivery truck or any other vehicle in the driveway for that matter. He texted the delivery source and they return messaged with a photo of the box in front of our door. The thought that he could recover his money, or that the package had been misplaced was disproven by the photo evidence.
So where did the package go? Were the neighbors being truthful? Did the delivery driver take the package? Did the wind blow the package in to a snow-covered drift or did someone sneak on to our covered porch and take the birthday gift? I was inclined to believe the latter, because Facebook was full of photos of masked and covered individuals stealing packages from porches. It seems to be a major problem nowadays.
We lamented about it for several hours. We live in a rural area, and it would be very easy for an unscrupulous individual to walk up on our porch and take the package. We criticized ourselves for owning a security camera that was inoperable. We searched the expansive yard in the freezing cold and snow in hopes of finding a glimpse of the package. Nothing, nada was found.
The next morning as we are pulling our vehicle out of the garage, a mixed husky that belonged to a neighbor across the street, came to greet us. This was normal each time the vehicle’s engine was started. The dog was one of the friendliest canines I had ever encountered. After accepting a perfunctory pat on the back, the dog made its way to the neighbor’s garage and promptly grabbed a boot and ran across the street to its home with boot clutched in his mouth.
My son quickly exited the car and ran after the dog to retrieve the boot. There in the snow-covered yard were remnants of the package that we assumed a human had stolen. The t-shirt that was inside the package, which had been a monogrammed shirt from one of my favorite college sports teams, had been shredded. Along side it were several items, apparently the dog had heisted from other neighbors and a broom we had left outside our door to brush the snow from our porch. Talk about a thief in the making- this dog was it.
We recovered the boot and the broom, but the shirt was chewed to shreds. My birthday gift was in tatters. I’ll never understand why the dog’s owners hadn’t noticed the pile of thievery in their front yard. They always say a dog is a man’s best friend, but in this case, the neighborhood thief, is a friend to no one.
