People F'ing Suck

The Fourth of July this year was going to be a uneventful. It's our first with Misaki and we were told she didn't like explosions, so we figured we'd stay home and see how it went, since our neighborhood sounds like a bad day in a war zone on the Fourth.

That was the plan anyway.

Right around noon I'm sitting in the living room playing on the laptop. Wifey is upstairs. The fuzzy ones are all lounging in the sun.

All of a sudden, I hear this tremendous crash, the unmistakeable sound of glass shattering from behind me, in the direction of the sun room (which sits just off the dining room and kitchen on the way to outside).

"What the fuck was that?!" I yelled.

As I turned towards the sun room Moochie - our biggest Bengal cat - came streaking out of there with a horrendously guilty look on his face.

"What the fuck did you break now?!" I yelled at him as he tore up the stairs.

Now, why did I assume he broke something? Two reasons:

1 - Besides the obvious glass windows in the sunroom, there are other things to be broken. We have a side table with a heavy metal base and glass top. We also have a coffee table with a glass top, as well as a lantern that holds tea lights with glass inserts.

2 - Moochie - and all of our cats - have a history of breaking things. In particular, Moochie is the one who decided he did not like our toaster oven and shoved it from the kitchen counter to the hardwood floor, gouging the floor and completely destroying the appliance. We had just bought a new one but were deciding whether or not to donate the old one - Moochie apparently decided it should just go in the trash. Perhaps he thought he was helping out?

So I head towards the sun room, head on a swivel, looking for what broke.

All the windows in the French doors into the sunroom look solid.

The side table is still standing.

The coffee table looks fine.

The tea light lantern is still standing.

So what the hell? I head back into the dining room, still looking around.

Wifey comes downstairs. "What did they break now?"

I'm dumbfounded, still looking around. "I have no idea..."

We both go back into the sunroom, looking all around. Now, you would think trying to find a pile of broken glass in a room that is 12 feet square wouldn't be all that hard...you would think.

Finally Wifey found it. In the southeast corner of the sun room, one of the lower panels had a hole in it with glass pieces on the floor. The hole was about three inches diameter and it was hard to see at first because it was behind a couch and a potted bamboo.

Thankfully for Moochie, there was no way he could have done that. Even he's not that destructive. But what did make that hole? I couldn't tell from inside the house, so I headed outside.

From outside I could tell the hole in the glass was about two-and-a-half feet off the ground. It was directly in front of the potted bamboo, but there didn't look to be any impact chips on the pot itself. Then I finally saw what made the hole - again, because of the angles we couldn't see it inside. There, next to the pot, laid a two-inch metal ring. It's a solid ring, fairly heavy.

The hole, from outside

From inside, the ring on the floor

No, I have no idea what it could possibly be used for, or how it could have come through my window.

Should be fun to replace

Now it's time to play a little CSI (just conveniently ignore the fact we have never watched the show). I turned my back to the hole and looked around. Directly in front of me, about 15 feet away facing south, is a fence. Because the land slopes upwards to the south, the six-foot fence is actually about eight feet high. There is roughly zero chance of a metal ring coming from that direction, unless it was thrown at a tight downward angle from the top of the fence.

To the right, to the west and the front of the property, there is still fence, but any trajectory would be blocked by the neighbor's house and our dog kennel. There is a narrow area it could come through unless, again, it was thrown from the top of the fence.

It's not likely it was thrown from the fence. The neighbor kids are loud and obnoxious, but they aren't the most athletic nor that old, so I don't think they'd be capable of doing it. That rules out accident from them, and I seriously doubt they would do it maliciously. I mean, why? That doesn't mean they didn't, but I'd have no way of proving it and no one was around that I could see.

To the opposite direction, to the east, our other neighbors sit lower than our property. There were three of them in the yard, but they gave no indication of anything going on or that they were hiding something. Also, the angle to hit the window from their yard would be exceedingly difficult unless there was curve to the projectile. Again, this would indicate for them to have done it there would have to be malicious intent.

We don't really have issues with any of our neighbors - we keep to ourselves - so I find it highly unlikely this was done on purpose. The facts of distance and angle also make it unlikely.

Then Wifey had a good idea - maybe the ring bounced before it hit the glass. We have a pad of concrete pavers outside the sunroom. If it hit there, there would be a mark! So we decided to look for a mark.

Apparently our pavers have plenty of marks. Scratches from who knows what, heat marks from the patio fire pit - it's amazing what you see when you actually look. There may be a mark from a bouncing metal ring, but we have no way of knowing which one it was.

Of course, if it did bounce, that wouldn't solve any of the mystery. We would still have this metal ring that left a hole in the glass that came from who knows where.

And either someone did it on purpose and ran - which is crazy - or someone did it unknowingly (Dad suggested a lawn mower kicking it out, though I don't recall hearing one nearby at the time). We still have a hole in my window pane, and we still have to fix it. And since this is a sunroom window pane, it's probably a special size and a custom order, plus the fact they aren't set the same as a regular window. Oh joy to us.

Closeup - I liked the way the glass seems bent

I briefly thought about filing a police report, but really, what would be the point? I'm still going to have to pay for it and it's not like they have nothing better to do than track this down. I might as well just chalk it up to accident and mystery, choking down the price of the new window on my own.

Still, I did take plenty of pictures - and put the ring in a plastic bag without touching it! - and I couldn't let those go to waste.

More fantastic artistic work

Thankfully the glass didn't shatter into jagged shards; most of it is still in the frame. The vacuum cleaned up all the pieces pretty easily and no one got cut. The cat made it out okay and none of the fuzzies escaped to the outside.

It's just really, really, really damn annoying.

As for the rest of the Fourth, it went okay. Misaki didn't mind the explosions as long as she was in the house hanging out with us, so we watched a movie until the explosions died down. If not for this stupid metal ring being flung at an impossible speed at our sun room window, the Fourth would have been pleasantly uneventful.