Our mailbox or how to listen

You may remember me talking about the mailbox at our new house a few years ago. Although it's just a plain white mailbox, it sits inside a fancy brick column at the end of our driveway, with a palm tree on one side, and a pretty purple-flowered bush on the other. The whole contraption looks so beautiful, that I at times have forgotten we even own a mailbox ("oh, look at that little set-up by the street, the tree, the flowers, the bricks, so beautiful). Well, lately we've been having suspected mailbox issues.

It started about two weeks ago, when one evening I happened to look out the front window, and noticed a pick-up truck, lights off, sitting by our mailbox. As I love to narrate my life, I turned to husband-dear, and said, "There's a pick-up truck sitting by our mailbox."
"What?"
"There's a truck sitting out by our mailbox."
"Oh."Husband-dear was obviously not as intrigued as I was by this entire phenomenon.
A few moments later I peeked out again, "It's still sitting there. That's it. I'm going out there."
Now I did have husband-dear's attention, "You're going to do what?"
But I'd already opened the front door, and just as I stepped out on the front porch, the truck, lights still off, drove away.
"They drove away" I reported to my husband, who was shaking his head, "Let's say they were up to no good, what would you have done?"
"I don't know, asked them to go do it somewhere else."
"Because that would have worked, how?" husband-dear was still shaking his head, "You can't just go outside and talk to possible criminals, dear."
"Sure you can, I mean, they drove off, didn't they?"
"You need a gun."
"No I don't. I need a gun like I need a hole on my head."
"If you're going to go outside in the dark and address a possibly dangerous situation, you need a gun."
"No, I don't. I am very much of capable of scaring people off without a gun."

Anyway, needless to say, there are still no guns in our house, and we didn't see the truck again. But the idea of someone messing with our mailbox kept nagging at the back of my mind. After all, that's OUR stuff, thankyouverymuch. US mailboxes, unlike their Dutch counterparts, can't be locked, and so anyone could technically take your mail. Although American mailboxes are considered federal property, as indicated by oh-so-scary"property of the US government" stamp on the front of the box, and mail theft is treated on a par with an armed robbery, I'm fairly certain that that does little to scare away potential postal thieves. In my opinion, all it does it scare your neighbors into leaving notices about parties on your front porch, make you too freaked out to close a neighbor's box if the mail carrier accidentally left it hanging open, and very little else.

But I digress.

Now I don't know what it is about our mailbox, but this morning it was once again the center of someone's attention. It was barely 7am, I had just gotten up, and was reveling in the fact that I would not have to drive to work today, when the dogs just about lost their heads barking at something outside. I turned towards the front window, where I thought I saw someone on our driveway. When I opened the front door, the person was flying down our street, into a neighbor's yard.
My first thought was, I should chase after him. My second thought was, I'm in my house shoes, jammies, and wearing a robe, and that's probably not happening. My third thought was, it's probably one of the high school kids who needs to catch the bus and just realized he left something at home. And I went and made myself some tea.

Once caffeinated, I realized that the high school bus had left half an hour earlier, and that that kid looked way too old to ride the elementary school bus which was leaving in ten minutes. Hm. Maybe I'm not American enough yet, but even the thought of him possibly stealing our mail could not really get me worked up. I know most Americans have a coronary at the thought of someone stealing their mail, and the best I could do was get irritated at the thought of having to call our mortgage company and our water company and asking them to please send their bills again. Other than that, my main thought was something like, hey good luck reading those Dutch letters, have fun with our birthday cards, oh, and while you're at it, would you mind paying our electric bill? Thanks.

Husband-dear, however, disagreed. When I told him what had happened, and asked him if he'd left any outgoing mail in the mailbox, he told me I should probably call the sheriff's department.
"Why? I was thinking we should just install a webcam upstairs and keep tabs of what's going on that way, if anything."
"Well, because what if someone was robbed or raped down the street this morning?"
"Then we would move RIGHT NOW."
"Yes, but before we'd move, you'd call the sheriff's office."
"And get a webcam."
"Sure, dear."

So I did. And that's where the second part of this blog's title come in. You know how I complain about how my students don't listen? Well, apparently it's part of a wider epidemic, as my conversation with the Sheriff's office front desk went something like this:
"Hi, I'd like to report some suspicious person hovering around my mailbox earlier this morning."
"Ma'am, you need to hang up right now and call 911."
"No, the person isn't there anymore, it happened earlier this morning. At around seven."
"Oh, OK. Well, let me transfer you."
"Sheriff's office investigations."
"Hi, I'd like to report a suspicious person hanging around our mailbox earlier this morning around seven."
"I can't transfer you to 911, but you need to call them right now."
"No, he's left, it happened earlier this morning."

Really, people?

Anyway, the important-sounding man in "investigations" told me he would "notify patrol", which I take to mean that some poor officer in a car is going to get a call that goes something like, "Yeah, some lady called about someone hanging around her mailbox. Just FYI.", and patrol saying, "Oh crap, like I have nothing better to do", and then asking, "What's the address?" and the man having to admit that he forgot to ask (as he did).

So my plan was to go out and buy a webcam. No guns, no police, just a webcam to see what's going on.  If nothing else, we can use it to keep an eye on our puppies while we're at work.