home invasion
Last night we went to dinner in the next town over. There was food, fun, and [Wii] fitness. A good time was had by all.

In the meantime, our home was being invaded by the neighborhood punks.

We live upstairs behind a Plexiglas-paneled door, and I've taken care to ensure that there is no trace of our living there visible from the street, not wishing to entice the curiosity of the sort of person who wanders our down-at-the-heels neighborhood. Our backyard is completely enclosed by buildings, and though there had been evidence of people climbing those buildings before--the Dunkeldeutsch had scared the hell out of one climbing near our front window one night--we thought we were safe, because nothing untoward had happened in nearly a year.

The punk or punks scrunched down the chickenwire fences we'd built to keep the cats in the backyard, and snuck up the stairs, then ambled through the kitchen, grazing. A box of raisin bran was savaged open and stripped of its raisins. A bag of tortilla chips was gleefully devoured. As a final touch, at least one invader went partway down the front stairs and shat on them. We didn't know anything was wrong until we got home and trotted up the stairs in the dark as usual (one of the DIY electrical system's quirks is that the stairwell light can only be turned on at the top of the stairs), then turned on a light to discover that we'd tracked raccoon shit all the way from the landing to the back door.

Time to rent that steam-cleaner like I've been meaning to...