Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Robbed!

The nerve of some people still gets me! After learning, two weeks ago, that our favorite breakfast spot had been robbed, along with 2 other restaurants in town, we strove to do a better job of locking up our own stuff by cable-locking the generator, putting the tools away in the shed which is normally padlocked and separating the keys to our equipment from where it is normally located.

Never the less, upon arriving at camp, this past weekend, we discovered that we had been robbed! (pictures to follow) The villains had kicked in one of the panels of our cabin door and unlocked it from inside by reaching through the hole they had made. From here they stole John's new $80 fish-finder, Dad's tripod and a battery-operated lantern. Fortunately, they were either too busy or too stupid to lift up the air mattress that was on the downstairs cots, or they would have gotten his $1250 brand-new .3006 rifle.

Next, they took one of our own axes, and chopped through the half-inch cable holding the generator to the cabin and made off with that -- about a $500 piece of equipment -- but anyone who runs a raw camp like ours will tell you, a nearly indispensable one!

We found that they had lifted the tarps on the four-wheelers, but never noticed the keys in the cabin, so we were fortunate there, as well. However, they took our sledge-hammer, which I was using to hold the tarp down on my four-wheeler, and smashed the lock on the shed hard enough to take the lock and the entire bracket assembly completely off. From there they had a bonanza. 2 $200 chainsaws, 1 air compressor and 2 air-nailer guns all worth over $1000. plus several other power tools we are still attempting to identify.

They even managed to break into the back of the old pickup we keep on the property and tried to take Dad's table saw, which we were storing in there until later, but apparently, it was too cumbersome to carry off with them so they dumped it into the weeds near the end of the driveway.

Altogether, we figure, in equipment alone, we've lost over $2500 in goods and suffered damages to the tune of roughly $500. Of course, there is always a silver lining. As it turns out, these thieves have hit many, many places in the area recently, and their standard modus operandi (method of operation) is to vandalize and sometimes even burn, which thankfully, was not the case for us.

We have, of course reported the theft to the authorities, who will be sending out a loss-list to my home to report all the missing items and their values and to issue us a blue address tag for our property to make it easier to locate us in the event of another emergency. We also gave a preliminary list to the local pawn shop in the area. And we contacted our neighbors, only to learn that some of them, too have experienced similar assaults on their camps recently. And now having exchanged contact info, we can get in touch with each other in case something like this ever happens again.