Little Vandals?
I am beginning to think that there are some young vandals in my neighbourhood. Here’s why.
In May or June, I put out some solar path lights along the south side of my driveway. I had intended to line the walkway all the way to the front door, but never got all of them in — but I installed half of the twenty that I bought. My yard guy broke three of them, but I replaced them using some of the lights I’d never gotten installed.
Through the fall, we’ve come home every once in a while to find a light “decapitated” or missing. (The light fixture is a plastic diffusing globe affixed to a reflective base that is affixed to a short, plastic pole with a spike on the end of it. The spike goes into the ground to support the light. We keep finding the head knocked off of the reflective base.) It puzzled me, since the yard guy stopped coming in September. I just kept replacing them with the “extras.”
Tonight, as we arrived home a little after 9, I noticed a few kids roller-blading up the street …. it seemed like they were congregated at our house as I came down the street, but they passed us when I was about halfway to our house. Other than wondering why their parents allowed them to be out roller-blading in the freezing cold (it’s 17 degrees here, with significant wind chill) at 9:00 on a school night, I really didn’t think much about it.
Until we pulled into the driveway and saw another of the path lights decapitated. Suspicion reared its ugly head. Thing is, I cannot prove that the kids I saw are the ones who damaged the light tonight … or any of the other nights. But it seems awfully suspicious.
Thing is, these lights are not exactly cheap. Okay, they are not the fancy glass-and-brass style that sells for $25 apiece; they are the $80 set of ten plastic ones from Home Depot. But still, they are $8 apiece, and I’ve had eight destroyed so far this summer — only two of them by the yard guy. So the vandals, whoever they are, have cost me $64 dollars so far. I’m glad I didn’t install the glass-and-brass ones (which I really wanted)!
I wish I could figure out a way to catch whoever is doing this. But, short of installing security cameras, I’m not sure what I can do.
1 Comment
That is a dilemma …
Of course, if you know where they live, you can always go to their houses, and destroy their family’s lawn ornaments (just as the Bible teaches).
Either that, or build some sort of moat around your property … (also, as the Bible teaches)