a visit from our local police dept. (or: our neighbor needs a naughty mat)

on saturday night around dinner time, our doorbell rang. it's pretty unusual for us to have unexpected guests, so the hubby and i gave each other the "who could that be" glance, and i got up to get the door. when i rose from the couch, i could see a squad car parked out in front of our house.

i answered the door, and sure enough, a police woman was on the other side.

rewind to thursday night....the hubby went out to our front porch when he arrived home from work to get the newspaper. he brought along with him a plain white envelope with a printed sticker on the front that read something to the effect of: large brown dog loose in neighborhood.

we opened the letter and found a detailed breakdown of dates, times, and information based around our next door neighbor's experience with another neighbor's dog. it seems that this dog has been loose in the neighborhood and has charged at people, including our mail lady, who has not been able to deliver out mail on several occasions because of it. it seemed like your basic, concerned (and mildly angry) neighbor informing his other neighbors of a potential danger. that is, of course, until you got to the final, completely capitalized, paragraph detailing the angry neighbor's sharp shooting skills that he acquired in some prison training. ummmm....yeah. 20 out of 20 shots within the size of a grapefruit from 100 yard to be exact. ummmm......double yeah.

so we decided to throw the note away (which i now regret) and move on with the agreement that we would keep our distance from said neighbor.

so back to saturday night....i open the door to greet our lovely, local police woman. she asks if we received a letter from a neighbor in the past couple days. we said that we had. she then asked if she could come in and talk to us about it a little further. we happily let her in and she began to ask us questions about the note. you could tell that she was being very vague about her questioning as to not lead us into any answers. things like: "what was your impression of the letter?" and "if the letter was about you, would you have called the police?" and "if you would have called the police, what would have been your reason?" you could tell she pretty much wanted us to say that the letter was threatening and crazy....which we did.

she then asked if we would be willing to provide a written statement about our opinions of the letter. i asked her if our name and address would be associated with the statement and if it was open to the general public to view. she said yes to both. i politely told her that i didn't feel comfortable making a statement that contained our personal information....especially since we live next door. she completely understood and said that some other neighbors felt the same. i felt really bad not providing the information in writing as i think the situation definitely needs some attention, however, at the same time, i don't need to be this guy's next target. she said that she would make a note of it in her statement that certain neighbors didn't feel comfortable in providing written statements. i'm hoping that will be enough.

it's strange how things like this come about. we had briefly met the man in question this past winter when the hubby helped clean snow out of his driveway because his snow blower was broken. he actually came by with a gift certificate for us as a thank you. (it was for an oil change or something like that). he seemed nice enough. it's funny how certain situations change people and/or their actions. i'm hoping he's normally more like the man we met, than the crazy man in the letter.....for the safety of everyone involved.