(from the email sent folder)
This morning I left the bedroom windows open when I left to take the kids to school. They are on the 2 sides away from the street, open. I come home and go into my office and start to work.
3 different times, after having been more or less quiet in my office for an extended period of time, I go out into the kitchen / family room area and hear a distinct and not-quiet noise in the front bedroom / corner bathroom area. I ignore it once (I have toys stored in there so figured they could just have shifted / settled whatever. I know that I am, in general, paranoid about these sorts of things so I try to not overreact. The second time, I am nervous but continuing to ignore. The third time, I close up the house and leave as I’m now convinced that someone is in there and is trying to leave but when I come out to the living area (which they’d have to go through to get out of the house) they are rushing back into hiding and making a noise. I drive around for a bit thinking of what to do. I feel like a jackass calling 911 but DH is in an all-day meeting so not answering his phone and my neighbors aren’t home. I tried a couple other people on the phone thinking I’d keep them on the phone while I investigated the rooms. Nothing.
DH calls back, finally. Still in the meeting but since I’d told him I would only call in an emergency and he probably saw my number 3 times I guess he figured it was an emergency. He told me to just call 911 – “that’s what they’re there for”. So I did. Feeling like a total jackass. Cop comes. Checks out the house. Nothing, although the corner of one of the bedroom screens is not in right. I don’t know whether it was like that before or not – DH will probably know. However, he did say that he heard a distinct noise in that area while inside the house too. He suggested I have DH check the attic to make sure we don’t have critters up there.
Now that I think about it, I’ve heard noises a few other times recently in that corner. but it was always when the windows were open so I assumed it was the blinds banging around in the wind. I would’ve thought that this morning too except that I hadn’t gotten around to opening up the house like I normally do.
The mystery of what the noise was went unsolved then, for several months.
So, I just realized I never told you guys the conclusion of the story when I was hearing noises in the bedroom and left the house and called the cops….
Well, we kept hearing the noise periodically and DH intended to get up in the attic and see if something was living up there but never got around to it. So… one day, I’m in the closet in the bedroom (turned playroom). And I hear it right by me. I look up on the shelf, and there’s this @#%!-ing Hummer that my inlaws got DS1 for Christmas. It had been banned to the high closet shelf for some infraction by its owner. Well, you know how some toys are possessed and just “go off” randomly? That’s what this one was doing. One wheel was spinning randomly. And it’s a hard plastic nubby tire (you know, macho tires like you’d find on a Hummer) sitting on the ventilated wire shelving. Voila – intruder impersonation by the possessed battery-operated toy.
I take consolation in the fact that the cop didn’t realize what it was. How embarassing could that conversation have been??? “Woman afraid of RC Hummer, calls 911″ “Cop searching for dangerous intruder finds only possessed toys”.
