Went into my bathroom this morning around 7:30 and heard a lot of scrambling/noise on the carport just outside the window.  Thinking it must be squirrels, who are known to dig through boxes in search of cardboard for bedding, I dismissed it momentarily, until it became progressively louder and more intense.  Attempted to open the bathroom window, only to discover it blocked by boxes which had seemingly fallen from a shelf nearby.  Odd, I thought.  Those boxes were heavy and no squirrel should have been able to budge them, not even Old Hercules, who is the grandfather squirrel to rival all others.

As the window impacted with the boxes, a woman's voice said, "Hello?" from the carport.  Thinking perhaps the mailperson was lost (not unusual), I answered, "Who is it?"  No response.

Picking up my staff in response to a progressively increasing intuition, I headed to the door, calling out to Wendy to get up.  Living where we do, somewhat isolated, it would be easy enough for an intruder to kill or injure me, and no one would be the wiser for who-knows-how-long.  So I took my dusty staff - an icon from ages past in my martial arts years - and went outside to find a woman standing at the gate of the picket fence - and no, the symbolism wasn't lost on me for a moment.  Not waiting for an explanation, I asked in a neutral tone (intentionally neutral), "Mind telling me who you are and what you were doing on my carport just now?"

She launched into a cool and collected story about how she had been told I am a swap meet vendor, and that we sell the things on our carport for $50.00 per tub.  When I asked precisely who had told her this (none of it true, btw), she pointed to the workmen cleaning up after yesterday's flood, and said, "The guy driving the tractor."  Seemed unlikely.  The woman went on to insist that I should sell her these items.  Claimed she lived in a house on a nearby street - coincidentally, the street where Ellen lives, barely a block from here.  She told me her name (Charlene), and asked mine.  I did not give it, but continued to question her as to precisely what she thought she was doing.

Then the stories started to get REALLY weird.  When I asked why she didn't just come to the front door, she claimed, "I heard your dogs barking earlier and I was afraid."  Made little sense, as I had let the dogs out an hour earlier and they had not barked at all.  Claimed she was afraid to come to the door because of the dogs, yet when I pointed out that I could have simply turned the dogs loose on her, believing her to be the intruder she clearly was, she had no quick answer.  When I went on to say that I could have just as easily shot her, believing her to be an intruder - which she was, of course - she acknowledged that, yes, this was true, but said the dogs might have jumped through the window to bite her.  She was once bitten by a dog.  Perhaps not surprising if burglary is a way of life.

And yet... she wasn't afraid, even when I told her I could easily call the police and just let them sort it out.  Didn't seem to faze her - and, the only reason I DIDN'T do precisely that was because I would have had to go inside, make the call, etc., and in the meantime, she would be gone.  So I decided to simply stalk the situation for as much information as I could get out of it. 

She kept saying how nice it was to meet me, and how "nice" I was being.  Hah!  I wasn't being nice at all, at least not to my own perceptions.  I was grilling her up one side and down the other, though not in an angry fashion.  What would anger have solved?  Absolutely nothing.  I could have driven her off the property with my staff, but ultimately I couldn't see that that would offer any resolution either.   Her hand was in her purse, and for all I knew, she had a gun, and yet my advisor, Death, said it was not my time to die. 

The truly weird thing about it is that she had loaded up an entire tub of stuff, clearly with the intention to steal it.  Yet when I pointed that out to her by saying, "Hmmm, seems to me you have loaded up an entire tub of stuff with the intention of carrying it away, and if I hadn't caught you red-handed, that's precisely what you would have done," she just stared at me blankly, blinked stupidly, and told me I have beautiful eyes. 

At this point, I was beginning to be amused as much as annoyed.  Yes, this person was attempting to steal from me, yet the machinations were as bizarre as anything I have ever encountered.  She had no car, yet had loaded up a tub she clearly could not carry.  Conclusion:  there was Intent to return later with an accomplise, and so I set my Intent on finding out who THAT might be - and the only way to do that, seemingly, would be to let her go and see what comes back later. 

She kept insisting I should sell her these items.  For $55.00.  I quickly fabricated a story and said they were not mine to sell.  They belonged to a business partner who was coming by later to pick them up, I told her.  She said, "Cash money!  Let me come in and use your phone and I'll have someone come by with the money."  So, she was offering to pay for what she had originally planned to steal, but she had no money on her, and wanted to inquire if I might be stupid enough to allow her to use my phone to call up a male accomplise or two and have them drop by with a van and some weapons.

Hmmm.  No, I think not.

Gotta confess, I was on the verge of laughing despite the dark gravity of the situation.  Surely this had to be some strange manifestation of an ally, a walk-in from the world of the weird, or simply a woman on drugs who had no idea how strange the whole thing seemed to anyone with any degree of rationality.  When I told her I don't let anyone in the house, she suggested I should go in, get my cell phone, and bring it out for her to use.  At that point... I really did laugh out loud.  Started looking around for the Candid Camera crew.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.  I cannot begin to express the real degree of weirdness about this.  A woman scrambling around on my carport in broad daylight, making enough noise to wake the dead, as if she wanted to be caught, and when she IS caught, begins telling me how her six year old daughter collects dolls and therefore I MUST sell her the entire crate of things she has loaded up (worth hundreds, actually) for $55.00.  The guy on the tractor told her it would be okay.  She had no way to take the items with her.  She had emptied out at least 2 dozen boxes, including unwrapping the merchandise from its styrofoam wrappers (no easy task, and very time-consuming!), and all because she had heard my dogs barking and was afraid to come to the front door.   Non-sequitur, to quote Mr. Spock.

In the end, she gave me her address - undoubtedly bogus - and said that if I changed my mind about selling her these items she had packed up and loaded off the carport, I should come by her house.  Gee... maybe she'll invite me in for tea served on the dishes of that once belonged to my neighbors!

Just before our communication ended, she once again repeated that the tractor driver had told her we are swap meet vendors, and so it would be okay for her to come in and "look around."  She then met my eyes and, with the intensity of someone who knows precisely what they are saying, she inquired, "Do you think that man is stalking you?"

I did not look away.  "I think someone is," I replied, my meaning crystal clear.

So she walked away.  I was halfway hoping Wendy (who was watching from the window) would call the cops while I was engaging this strange person, but Wendy later said she was thinking I was going to come in the house and call them myself, and so... they were never called.  After the woman walked away, I got in the Suburban and went covertly looking for her - just to see where she would end up.  And as fate would have it, just as I turned off my street, I came face to face with a sheriff, whom I flagged down and told my weird, weird story. 

...and on the way back home, I saw "Charlene" walking toward the main highway, back in the direction of town, away from where she had claimed to live.  Called the cops to tell them I had found their criminal, but no one seemed particularly interested, even though I could tell them precisely where she was, and suggested they might want to go pick her up for questioning - for her own safety, if nothing else.  This woman was terminally weird despite her calm and collected exterior presentation.

On a strictly tonal level, this was perhaps just an attempted burglary, yet immediately upon hearing the noise on the carport when it all began, there was a sense that it was and continues to be something far more strange than that.  Most criminals do their dirty work in the dark of night, or when no one is home.  This woman clearly knew I had dogs - who never barked at her, even though they bark at every other living being on the planet - so clearly she must have suspected someone was home. 

She says I have beautiful eyes.

It's what I see that concerns me far more.  I do not feel this encounter was at all what it "seemed" to be.  And so I am waiting, stalking, waiting.

***

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