police raid at dawn

Did anyone else have their house searched for hostages in the wee, small hours of the morning? Just me then. Here's how it happened.

It was early morning, in the still-dark when shift workers are dreaming of breakfast and the sane among us are fast asleep. I was fast asleep. I could hear someone yelling and as I came to I was confused because it the yelling person didn't sound angry and the two usually go together. I thought it was neighbours complaining about a barking dog which made sense until my sleep-addled brain remembered that we don't have a dog. I was conscious enough to hear "Excuse me sir, could you step outside please" and decided it was time to get up and investigate who was talking to my Dad in the middle of the night and why.

When I got to the door there were three police officers, uniformed and much more awake than I. Never let it be said that I don't show my parents exciting things when they come to visit. It turns out that my landlords had very nearly be the victims of a crime. Someone had stolen their car keys while they were off camping, used them to get into the car, checked the insurance papers for the address and come on over to the house, keys in hand. According to officer Too-Early-In-The-Morning-Catch-His-Name, this is very common. So next time you go camping kids, watch out for your keys.

My landlord has a job that requires some extra security measures and it turns out that when the thieves opened the car on the driveway here they set off some of these measures. When the police responded to the summons, they found the car with the door open, keys in the ignition, no one home. They came to the suite to investigate and that's how I ended up with the kindly officer explaining that he had to check my apartment for hostages. I'm not even kidding. They went through every room in the place, opening doors and turning on lights (and scaring the tar out of my Mom who had stayed in bed.) I have never been searched for hostages before, I'd be happy not to do so again although they were very polite about it, it was awfully early to be entertaining.

Within 10 minutes or so, they were off stomping through the house upstairs. I hope they were able to get in touch with Mr. & Mrs. Landlord and I am thrilled that nothing was stolen. I'm sure at some point it will all seem very exciting, but for today, I'm tired. I'd be quite happy not to repeat my police raid at dawn.