The Reverse-Burglar

There is something weird going on at my house, and it seems to be happening at night, while we are asleep. Although it could also be happening during the day, I have no legal evidence either way.It happens like this:

It is 12 midnight exactly. He dresses carefully, all in black. This is his hour after all, nearly every night. He curses under his breath, while he dressing . "It's like going on the night shift " he thinks. "But I can do this only at night, or when nobody is at home; if they catch me I am doomed."He folds the black balaclava neatly and puts it in his pocket. Gloves comes next, he doesn't want to leave any fingerprints. He wonders what his neighbors are thinking, him leaving the house every night.

He drives the car out and hooks on the full trailer. He smiles, this is the good part. He locks all his doors and windows, after all he doesn't want the same thing happening to him, he knows all too well there are others doing the same thing.Sometimes he sees another one in the silent streets and they greet each other.They are colleagues, so to speak.He drives off to his"job". He already has a house in mind, he has "cased " it for a long time.

We tidied up our garage a couple of months ago, in order to finally paint it. We must have thrown out at least 6 trailer-loads of useless stuff. Of course it always happens: the moment you throw something out, you're going to need it, and so you spend hours looking for it. But the garage looked about twice the size especially since we painted it a fashionable off-white. Everything has a "home" now, in plastic containers with lids on them and labels telling us what's in there.

But all of a sudden it started looking like the "old" garage again. We tripped over stuff, we found unfamiliar things, that we certainly never owned. I know, because I have asked my family, and they claim that they don't make this mess. So I discussed with them, as you do in families, when there is a mystery of this magnitude going on.My husband came up with a solution: we have a so-called Reverse-Burglar.

There is not a lot known about these mysterious criminals, I don't even know if they can be prosecuted if you catch them.Apparently they do break into your house but do not take things out;instead they bring things into your house! They do it slowly, they bring stuff every night, so you won't notice it. Sometimes they even bring new things! Haven't we all had the conversation:" Where does that new dress come from?" "I don't know, I found it in the wardrobe". And: How come we have a new lawnmower?" "I don't know ,I found it somewhere in the garage" . This is clearly the work of the Reverse-Burglar.

We didn't get anything new from our burglar for a while, so we had another family-conference. We decided to leave the garage-door wide open at night, so that a real burglar can take all that stuff and leave our garage tidy and especially empty. But although it has been open night after night, it is still a mess. So if you have these mysteries going on in your house: now you know.