What the...???

I was proud of myself this morning. I as up and going and heading to the post office to mail a package and FINALLY get some of the $.44 cent stamps and then off to a meeting for my 20th high school reunion. As I exited the house around 10:30am, heading to the garage, I turned and saw a man emerging from the bushes at the back of the yard. Excuse me? Did I miss my yard becoming a thoroughfare or something?

I hustle to the car in the garage and lock up everything in the car except my phone, then head into the yard to find the man. Yeah, I know. Maybe not the smartest idea, but he appeared unarmed and I wasn't going to get too close. I walk out and see him coming out of another part of the bushes. The conversation goes like this:

Me: Excuse me, what are you doing in my yard?

Man: *holding his hands up in the air* I lost my driver's license and I'm just trying to get away. I don't mean any harm.

Me: Ok, then please leave my yard. (I'm nothing if not polite.)

Man: Ok.

I start walking around the front of my garage assuming he is going to walk down the other side, beside the neighbor's fence. What he does, however is hop the fence and go into the neighbor's yard.

By this time I'm already locked back in the house and calling the police. They say they will send someone out. We've had a lot of robberies in the neighborhood in the past 4 or 5 months, so no way was I not calling the cops about this.

The cops arrived within maybe 3 to 5 minutes, which is awesome. I love that. I talk to the officer and show him where the guy was, he goes to the fence and finds footprints and broken branches indicating that the guy jumped into the neighbor's yard and then he tracks him across that yard and into the next one.

I told the cops that the other house has been vacant for about 5 or 6 months and in the end, there were 4 of them checking out that entire house to be sure he hadn't broken in and was camping out there.

So my Saturday morning consisted of finding some fool in the bushes of my backyard and me calling the cops. There were no less than 6 police cruisers on my street. One of the neighbors across the street came home and went to the cops to see what was going on. I'm glad they didn't find any trace of the man and it's good that they responded so quickly, but I'm going to be a little creeped out for a few days about this. To say the least. I mean, if some dude is running around in my bushes in BROAD DAYLIGHT, who the hell knows what might be going on at night.

The moral of the story is, however, that if you mess with me, I will call the cops on your stupid ass in a heartbeat.