Invasion Of The Guitar Snatchers

So this happened:

The other morning--at 7:30 in the morning, mind you (i.e. it's light out, people are up and about), my in-laws were lying abed sleeping. They live in a fairly small town in a cozy respectable safe neighborhood. So they're sleeping in bed but for some reason my mother-in-law opens her eyes. Doesn't stretch real big, roll over, yawn loudly....but just opens her eyes. And there in the doorway of her bedroom she sees a big shadow of a person. Just then the shadow takes the really nice guitar belonging to my father-in-law which is propped in the corner and then takes off out of the room. She ponders why her husband would be taking his guitar somewhere right at that moment when she realizes that he's actually sleeping next to her. Hmmm. This doesn't bode well.

Anyway, she tells Pops, he pops out of bed and decides he should trail the guy. (The consensus has been that this was a really dumb idea. Sorry, Pops.) He discovers that the guy broke their back gate. Their house is backed up to a lovely creek which has a trail beside it. People regularly walk, run, ride their bikes along this trail. Well, guitar-snatcher clearly came this route, broke the lock on their gate and then invited himself inside their house. Because it's a small town and oh-so-safe, they don't always lock their doors---at least not the back slider, etc. It's been so hot and seemed reasonable to leave the slider open.

So Pops hops on his bike and takes off down the trail. His aim is just to catch a glimpse of the guy, see where he is, where he's going, call the cops while he has him in view. While he's taking off on his quest, he passes a lady walking who claims that yes, she did just see someone running down the path lugging a guitar. (Hello? Steal a guitar? It's so easy to stuff in your pocket. It's so inconspicuous. NOBODY will notice.)

He never sees the guy, he comes back home after a bit, the lady who saw the guy is gone as well. THEN he calls the cops. Now it seems to me that maybe they shoulda called the cops immediately and then there might've been a better chance of catching said guitar snatcher. Who knows. At any rate, this kind of thing makes a person feel vulnerable. It makes you mad! How dare you come in MY home and take MY stuff. (This happened to us once when I was a kid, though we weren't home at the time, but that's another post). Pops then went out for reinforcement---new locks, some lights in the back, etc.

It was a strange event and they were very lucky. They could've been shot in their beds---it happens, even in a small safe town. I figure the guy came in because there was easy access, maybe assumed no one was home because it was so quiet, looked around quickly for something valuable he could grab, got as far as their bedroom and saw that the house wasn't vacant after all and grabbed the nearest thing. That's my theory.

I hope the guitar gets recovered, though that seems a bit unlikely. More than that, I hope they stay safe and the boogie men stay AWAY.