Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The Case of the Missing Sprinkler

Let me start by saying that I know I am the easiest person on earth to mess with.  I know how little it takes to get me all worked up.  And I know that weird people take the strangest satisfaction in watching that happen.

But yesterday was truly a case for Encyclopedia Brown.  Remember him?  I loved those books!  LOVED every single one of them!

And I found myself right in the middle of a humdinger that I don't even think he could have solved.

In garden #2, I don't have the drip irrigation that I have in garden #1, so I have to use a sprinkler.

Yes, that is some astonishingly high quality lawn you're looking at.  I'm working on it!

Yesterday morning, I went out early to get the garden watered before I went to ride.  When I got there, a whole 100 feet from the back door, the sprinkler was GONE!  Impossible!  First, who would even see that sprinkler in the lawn in the first place?  Second, it's a very quiet one, not the tsk-tsk-tsk-pllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll kind that rock back and forth.  And third, who in a trailer even needs a sprinkler?

I came back, accusing k-ster of putting it somewhere when he pressure washed the patio.  That's a post I'm coming to very soon, but here's a teaser.

So, I came storming in fussing about where he put my sprinkler.

You had already taken it off and put the hose on the patio because you watered your plants before I got home.

Oh yeah.

So, I went back out and tore the place up.  It was gone.  Really gone.  Not in the greenhouse, not anywhere on the back 40, not under his boat, not on the patio, not on any of the stuff we moved off the patio.  It was gone.


I asked my father.

I asked my mother.

I asked k-ster again.

I asked myself quite a few times.

I asked Gwenstopher.

I almost called the police.

And had to make do with my fake sprinkler that I make by taking the nozzle, clamping it down and laying it on the ground so it sprays up.  And then I have to move it a few times.  Which I didn't have time to be doing and thus, wanted my effing sprinkler.

I guess someone took it.

Who takes a $3 sprinkler???  One that can barely be seen?  It's not like the garden is on a street with people passing by.  Someone had to deliberately go get it!  But first, they had to find it!

All day, I puzzled over this.  I was so irritated.  Who the eff takes a sprinkler?  And if someone was playing with me, how is this funny?  It's not like there was a crowd of people watching me self destruct, hooting and hollering over my foolishness.

Just before supper last night, I was taking the clothes off the line, clothes that no one stole, mind you, and I turned around to see that my sprinkler was back.  I was apoplectic.  Someone really had taken it!  And someone really had returned it!

Now, I know it's easy to assume I just overlooked it.  But how do I know it wasn't there earlier?  Because in order to start the whole ordeal, I had to drag the hose out to the garden.  When the sprinkler was returned, the perpetrator put it ON TOP OF the hose in my garden.  ON TOP of a hose that wasn't there when he/she stole the sprinkler in the first place.

So, we have a neat, tidy thief.  One who wants to make me feel better about my things be stolen.   And then returned.   One who also made the mistake of being too neat.  Had the thief simply thrown it back on the ground in the approximate location in which it was found, I would have declared myself blind and assume I just hadn't seen it.  This would have all blown over with me coming up with a master plan to put things where they belong so they don't disappear.  But to put it back so blatantly out in the open.....

And this brings us back to the question:  why would someone in a trailer need a sprinkler?  It's the only solution I have.  There were some people staying in the campground kind of near the garden.  They saw me water the garden the other day.  They were close enough to just borrow it and put it back.  BUT WHY?  A hose?  This I can understand.  There are many reasons to need a hose while camping.  But a sprinkler?  We don't allow open fires.  No one washes their pets with a sprinkler.  Where they were camped was actually pretty lush so they didn't need to "help" by watering the lawn.

And I also wonder if they stole a can of cat food out of my refrigerator.  I'm only sort of kidding.  Because not 5 minutes before I went out to start the sprinkler episode, I had opened the refrigerator to feed the cat and the can of food that I had put in the night before was gone.  I know, you say "well, it was night, you were on your way to bed, maybe you imagined it" except I remember 2 things.  One, that I got a green cover to put on the can and 2 when I went to put said cover on the can, I got gravy all over myself and had to wash it off and worried that I'd smell like beef-entrails-n-gravy all night.

I've checked the trash, the cabinets, the freezer.  No can.

Of course I don't really think they came in and took only a half used can of cat food.  But two things disappearing over night and only one being returned?  Definitely a project for a super sleuth.

Linking here:

1 comment:

  1. Maybe it was so hot they wanted to frolic in the sprinkler :)

