Pop Goes the Reindeer

Last night Mark was locking up the house and garage and putting the doggies to bed for the night when he heard a loud popping sound from outside and then running footsteps and a car driving away. He ran out the front door and saw that someone had popped our reindeer blowup. Needless to say, he was beyond angry.

Mark spends an entire two days getting the outside of our house ready for Christmas and now, twice in the same week, someone has stolen/destroyed part of our display.

Mark stood inside the gate of the courtyard for a while just watching outside. A few minutes passed and a car drove up with its' lights off and a kid jumped out with a camera. Mark bolted out of the gate and the kid stammered that he wanted to take some pictures for a "school project" (at 11PM mind you). The kid then proceeded to stand about two feet off the sidewalk and take one picture. With his flash.

Now, when we take photos of our lights, in order to get the entire yard in the photo, we have to stand across the street and zoom as far out as our camera will allow. and, if you're taking photos of Christmas lights, you wouldn't typically use a flash. The entire thing seemed quite fishy. Like he was the vandal coming back to take a picture of his work. Mark got the license plate number off of the car while he was standing there.

We decided just to call the non emergency number of our local police department, thinking they wouldn't really do anything, but we had a license plate number, so why not call. We did and they sent an officer TO OUR HOUSE! The officer was there within 15 minutes!lol! Slow night in the suburbs I guess! The officer took the information and said that they were going to run the plates and go to the house and talk to the parents and kid about what he was doing out taking pictures. Now, maybe the kid really was taking pictures for a school project, but my guess is not. And my guess is he also knows what happened to Baby Jesus. And that the police showing up and waking his parents at 11 PM is hopefully going to scare him enough that he stops vandalizing property. Because we can't be the only ones he is doing this to.

And it's so hard to understand why someone wants to destroy the property of others. So, while we feel kind of foolish that the police came out, if we saved just one Baby Jesus or reindeer from the same tragic fate, it was worth it!