Monday November 14th, 2022

The exercise:

Not excited to bring back this one, but here it is anyway - write about: thieves in the night.

The office was broken into last night. Quite a lot was stolen but nothing from my desk, as far as I've been able to tell. They smashed in the door to the kitchen, which is on the other side of the building, and seemed to hit the desks nearest there the hardest.

Thursday October 22nd, 2020

The exercise:

Write about: a long night.

Thursday July 11th, 2013

The exercise:

Write about: thieves in the night.

I'll get to that in a second.

Sandwiched around spending time with Max and his cousin Natalie, I used a weed trimmer to clean up some of our sprinkler rows in the garden (they can't be tilled because the irrigation pipes run just under the surface) and pruned and tied tomatoes.

The temperatures have suddenly become quite comfortable after the heat wave we experienced last week. I think everyone is rather relieved, Max perhaps most of all.

Right, on to the prompt.

Mine:

This morning a rather unpleasant discovery was made in the orchard. Apparently someone (likely someones) came in the night and picked all the cherries off the lone Lapins tree. At a guess, there were probably a few hundred dollars worth of fruit on that guy.

No longer.

There have been fruit thefts before, but nothing quite like this. It's fairly common to have people stop their vehicles at the edge of the orchard and pick a few apples off the trees before driving off. It's almost expected when there isn't a fence around the property, though it still pisses me off.

But this? To steal all of the fruit off of a single tree? When that single tree isn't even visible from the road? In the middle of the night, which surely required flashlights?

Brazen doesn't even begin to describe it.

The thing that bothers me the most though, the aspect I find most unsettling, is the fact that the Lapins tree is nowhere near the road. It is three or four rows down from Kat's parents house, maybe fifteen rows up from our place, at the end of its row, facing the vineyard next door.

There is absolutely no way someone could find that tree at night if they didn't know exactly where it was.

I have always felt completely safe here. Totally secure, no concerns about trespassers. I feel like that feeling has been lost.

Tonight I sleep with one ear straining to hear movements in the night.