New Neighbors?

Our city has a homeless population problem. It is pretty big, and no one seems to know what to do about it. Usually, the transient crowd stays on the west end or in the middle of the old downtown by the fountain in the park. So, we were pretty shocked to look up to Graysen's tree house yesterday and see towels hanging out to dry from every window! 

He ran up (I was behind him, calling out so we didn't startle anyone) and peeked around the side where he cut the hole in the wall for the unsuccessful slide addition attempt. Thankfully, no one was in the treehouse at the time. However, a backpack, clothing, a stuffed animal, vaping gear, take-out food containers, etc. were all laid neatly about the space. Also, from somewhere, the person found a ladder and tied it to the tree with a rope. All of this had to have been done very recently--Graysen didn't remember seeing the towels when we left for church that morning. Plus, all the neighbors keep a look-out, knowing all the things we've had stolen out of there.

I had my phone, so I called the police non-emergency number. About 15 minutes later an officer came out and hiked up the hill with us to look things over. She climbed into the treehouse and threw all of the trespasser's items out onto the ground (well, there were a few things she missed). She bagged them up with the large, black trash bags our "camper" had left, and then carried it all down the hill to her waiting police vehicle.

Our neighbors were out and aware of what was going on, because they were having a big garage sale. The guy next door found Graysen a heavy slide-lock which he securely fastened to the trapdoor with a padlock. I helped G$ put some boards across the side opening and removed the rest of the trash from the treehouse. He carried the mystery ladder down the hill and stashed it out of sight--all of these things were recommended by the officer and are things we likely *should have* done a long time ago. She said to give them a call if we saw anyone else up there.

Buck was not happy that all of this was happening while he was not home--especially because there was a loaded gun in the officer's pile (which Graysen immediately identified as airsoft; he saw the jar of bbs roll out of the backpack when it hit the ground). But by the end of the night, we were starting to feel some concern that this person (I suspected a woman) would return to find all of her stuff in the world gone and would be sad and afraid. Buck walked up and left a note at the treehouse that said we didn't take the stuff, but the police have it because it was left on private property.

Today I saw on the local police scanner website that there is a whole group of "campers" reported in our woods (which is city property). That's way too close; I'm sure our uninvited "neighbor" was one of that crowd--who decided to upgrade themself to a luxury suite. 

On the lighter side of things, my brother-in-law texted asking about availability at our new, rustic-themed Air BnB . . . but if the scanner site is right, it sounds like we may have more "bookings" than we can handle! And anyway, the pool he asked about won't be finished in time for his family's visit ;) Lol! I'm glad we could laugh a bit about an unnerving situation!