Like CSI, but without all the killing

My house was broken into last night. More specifically, I walked in on a burglary.
R was out with friends, and I was on my way home with a baguette, a bottle of wine, and an intention of sitting back and maybe watching a few Family Guy episodes on DVD. I opened the screen door, and dropped everything I was carrying. The inside door had been bashed in. My stomach got all knotted up as I imagined the possibilities. I was about to go in and survey the damage, when I heard someone thumping around upstairs (normally, this is just my fat cat, but with the state of the door, I suspected this was something bigger, and more dangerous). I dialed 911 on my cell phone and slowly backed out onto the driveway and discussed with the police how best to proceed.
The robber was in the upstairs bedroom … my bedroom. He was rummaging around up there, and I caught a brief glimpse of the person as they sent clothes flying around the room. Just before the police arrived, the perp looked out the window at me, then immediately started moving downstairs. He fled out the dining room doors into the back yard, and over a fence (the tall one). The police searched the house, then started searching the neighbourhood. They called for a K9 unit, but it never showed … and they were unable to find the person.
Interestingly/luckily, nothing was stolen — at least nothing that I noticed after making several runs through the place. They were probably at the phase where you pile all the loot up on the main floor, before taking it all away, since R’s guitar case was in the middle of the living room.
All our clothes were strewn about the place. Never in a decade’s worth of being a slob would I ever leave a mess like that. As the stress level dropped, my humour level rose a little. I joked with the police about how the robber was after my art, and they, in turn, commented on all the skulls and weird-looking stuff. They said they were glad to have guns while around me. That made me smile a little. We also joked about all the expensive stuff they could have stolen, and even the not-so-expensive stuff. We joked that they could have at least grabbed a bottle of wine on their way out the back door.
The CSI guy showed up and started dusting for prints. Unfortunately, not much of my house is print-worthy, so I’m not sure how much they got. I asked them about the infamous CSI “blue light thing,” and wondered why they weren’t shining it around. The guy pointed out that it’s only for semen stains, then asked if we really wanted him looking for semen stains in the bedroom. That made me smile a bit more.
The cats weren’t hurt, and didn’t get lost, despite the temptation of an open patio door. Usually, this attracts them like a teenager to a late-night Italian soft-core porn movie on Channel 4. China re-appeared maybe 2 hours after things quieted down, and got covered with fingerprint powder.
Despite the scare, and the obligatory heightened paranoia that goes with it, I didn’t bother too much with locking the door when we went to bed. Hell, a locked door didn’t stop anyone from getting in. Kids, let this be a valuable lesson to you. Never lock your doors. They’ll only get broken when someone robs you.
I took a half day off from work, and made an attempt at repairing the door. I got it so that it would at least close and lock properly. I’ll probably be buying a new door, since the damage (looks like he used a crowbar) is pretty serious. An interesting note about door repair places in KW. Either they don’t do 24-7 service, or they only do garage doors, or they’re only commercial resellers, or they only sell doors and want you to get a contractor … or all of the above.
All in all, a pretty exciting time. I’m second-guessing a lot of things today, since I don’t want to let this make me paranoid. It’s kind of difficult to do, since it could have been much worse. R could have been at home when they broke in; I could have tried to play hero; the guy could have vandalized my house (more than he already had); I could have lost everything. But none of that happened. My timing was impeccable, as usual.
This makes for a particularly bad couple of weeks: training, RRSPs, server crashes, a late night kernel upgrade … now a burglary (sorry, “attempted burglary”). I hope the weather is nicer next week, at least.