Come on Baby, Don't Fear the Repo

Saturday we were getting ready for my brother's 30th birthday party when Picasso barked at the window. After throwing him in time-out (our dogs get sophisticated punishments), we realized he had barked at some men running up our driveway to steal our trashcan. We watched helplessly as they drove off in a Budget Rent a Truck. After staring for a second in disbelief, I called my brother-in-law who is a cop and asked him what I should do if my garbage can was stolen. He decided I should report it since it could be a ring of identity thefts. We let Picasso out of time-out and told him he was a good boy. Now we have a really confused dog. I then jumped in my car and tried to find the truck but it was long gone.

I called our local Sheriff who sent out a nice cute patrolman who liked our trashcan protecting dog. He explained that he had heard of missing trashcans before and couldn't remember the outcome but thought that the trash cans had not actually been stolen. I remembered that my neighbor had been looking for a trash can a few weeks ago and walked next door to see what the outcome had been.
My neighbor explained that he had chased down the garbage truck that day and found out they had accidentally dropped his trashcan into the truck. (I don't know why they didn't stop and tell him, but I would have liked to seen my seventy something year old neighbor face down the garbage man.) I mentioned our plight to the neighbors and they were discussing buying shredders for their mail when I left.

As I came back to my house to tell the Sheriff, I saw that he had pulled over a Budget rent a truck on my street. That's good police work! He came back to the house and informed us (quite nicely) that the driver was a repo man and had written authorization to take our trashcan since we had not paid our trash bill. This might be a good time to point out that my husband is in charge of the bills and never even knows what day of the week it is. I went next door and informed my neighbors that there was no need to run to Staples.

Karen and I promptly went to Lowe's and purchased a similar looking trashcan. They were fooled and took our trash that week. Jamey did, however, also send in the bill.