Hail to the thief

I had a nice little visitor late on Saturday afternoon.

I was in my living room with my music turned up loud, as I tend to do often, and had the back door open to let in some light (my house is really dark! it needs more windows) and some fresh air, when I heard a rustling noise at the back. At first I didn't think much of it, but it went on for a bit too long to be anything innocent, so I went to check it out.

The next thing I saw was someone scrambling up the embankment behind my house, heading for the trees. He was carrying a box and a plastic bag with something large in it. When I yelled out "who's there?" at him, he dropped everything and continued up the slope. But then he stopped and waited at the top, watching me. I could see his outline clearly in the trees, but he thought I couldn't see him! He sat there for a while, so I yelled out (in my very crappy Bahasa) "I can see you!!" and "what do you want?". I couldn't quite understand his answer but what I heard was that he was looking for food.

Yeah right. He would have to have watched my place for some time, from the back, to know how to get in. You can't access the back yard unless you come over the steep hill behind the house (it's cut into the hillside) and climb through the barbed wire fence. It's the same way he got out as well. The fence was damaged a few months ago after some heavy rain, where the soil collapsed from the hillside and slid down into the back yard, taking some of the fence with it. It was this breach in the fence that he utilised.

Anyway, I couldn't get hold of anyone to come and help me - my boss was in Medan and mobile signal was crap - so once I was sure he had gone, I climbed up the hill and retrieved what he had dropped. Inside the box was nothing valuable, just odd bits and pieces left behind by a previous delegate, and in the bag a blow-up mattress. Strange. Our premises manager went and followed his track up the hill the next day, and found a tool box that he had abandoned as well; a bit more valuable than the other crap!

Most creepy though was the fact that he would have to have come inside the house and into the room right next to the living room to steal those things. I didn't even hear him come in. Let's just say I won't be leaving the back door open any time soon. And I'm getting that fence fixed!