Posted by
JAMES T. KANE on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 3:00:00 PM
Hi. I have not blogged for a while, but I was inspired to write this because of my experience of the last hour.
I was walking with Franklyn, my Boxer mix when we came to house #281, just down the street from our home at #284. A very little dog was in the street barking away. A second slightly larger dog was in the driveway barking as loud as it could. [In my neighborhood, a little dog who runs away becomes a predator's lunch.] My Franklyn does not like loose barking dogs so I brought him home and returned to #281. A service truck had just pulled over because the driver had seen the dog in the middle of the road. I said to the driver that I would take care of the dogs. I noticed that the door was wide open. I ordered the barking dogs to go in their house and they did, but they never stopped barking.
The door was all the way open with a single key in the lock. (The key was not on a key chain.) I closed the door and noticed that there was a red, four door pick-up off to the side of the driveway. The garage doors were all closed.
This was a strange situation .Since there was a single key in the open front door, I assume that the door was opened from the outside. I assume that the door was not opened by a resident since a resident would enter from the garage, not the front door, and in any case, a resident would not carry a single key with no chain. The red pick-up truck was not the type of vehicle driven by the residents of #281, but is the type of vehicle driven by a service worker.
I called security and asked that someone be dispatched to the home. No one was dispatched. I called again. A few minutes later, security called and said: "I reached the resident and she said that everything was OK and she had the dogs."
It does not add up. Do you remember The Hound of the Baskervilles?
A) The resident did not open the door for the visitor; we know that because of the key. After the door was opened, the key was not removed and the door was not closed. Any resident welcoming the visitor would have closed the door, especially if there were barking dogs involved.
B) The resident and visitor could not have failed to hear the dogs barking wildly out on the street because the door was wide open. The visitor would also have known that the door was wide open. For at least six minutes, the visitor and resident did not act on the barking dogs. Also, after I put the dogs in the house, the dogs did not go to find the resident or visitor but instead stayed at the door, looking out from behind the glass and barking for at least another few minutes.
Question: What were the visitor and resident doing that they did not go back to the door, retrieve the endangered dogs, and close the door?
Question: When security called the house, is it possible that security talked to the visitor, who pretended to be a resident in order to cover up the fact that she had entered the house, let the dogs out and did not retrieve them or care?
The Hound of the Baskervilles Question: Why were the dogs not barking at the stranger?
Your comments are welcome.