Trash can drama

I had planned to post about the lake house today, but first I need to tell y'all what happened yesterday. I have two sets of trash cans to put out at the curb every Tuesday evening for service on Wednesday. Quite often it's just one or two of the four cans that's full. However, it's been all of them since we started prepping for and bought the lake house. Last week we trailered home quite a few empty boxes and packing materials that have to slowly be broken down and hauled away. So it's times like this that I'm glad we've got four instead of just two cans.

Anyhoo, one service always comes earlier than the other. So by the time I left the house at 9:30 am yesterday morning to run some errands in town, two of my cans were already emptied and placed right inside our open gate. The other two were still sitting there, waiting their turn. I don't usually have the gate open that early, but I had buzzed in the guys delivering the pretty 10x14' rug I bought for the lake house family room. Since I generously tipped our hardworking garbage service guys at Christmas, the man who rides on the back of the truck pushes our emptied cans right to the gate, or inside if it happens to be open.

When I pulled back up to the house around 12:30 pm, I thought to myself that I needed to walk back to the gate and wheel the trash bins back to the house before I closed my overhead garage door. And then it dawned on me... where were my other two trash cans? At my age, I knew better than to panic. Did I even put them at the curb the night before? Were they knocked over and camouflaged in the ditch grass? After checking all of the usual places, those two trash cans were nowhere in sight. 

At that point, the only logical conclusion I could reach was that someone had taken those two trash cans that were left outside our gate. I got in touch with the husband, who checked our gate camera. We were able to rule out the Fed Ex driver, which was comforting. Whoever took the cans, they were smart enough not to trigger the gate's camera while carrying out their trash can heist. Seriously, y'all, what kinda weirdo steals those big rolling trash bins, especially when they're full of someone's trash?!

After a call to the trash company and sheriff's office, it seems trash can stealing is more common than I realized. I can't imagine being so hard up for money that I'd take someone else's cans and put them out at the street to try and get free service. But it seems others are willing to give it a go. Even when there's a camera's red light blinking on the gate that may be recording you. The silver lining to this odd little story is that new cans were delivered today, bright, shiny and sweet smelling. Now I just need to spread the word to our neighbors to be on the lookout so their cans won't get lifted, too.