Not the mixed nuts! Anything but the mixed nuts!

Until last week, the home intruders I was most concerned about were of the rodent variety. Long-time readers will remember the mouse graph of 2008, which documented a few rounds of mouse catching at our house. Even after the mouse graph, we have experienced additional breaches of our studio (to access a cough drop) and pantry (to get at a bag of dried porcini).

On Friday, however, we were intruded upon by a human. Unlike a mouse, the human didn't enter through an existing hole or chew his way in, but smashed the upper part of a locked double-hung window, opened the window, and climbed in. In doing so, he smashed a goblet, displaced a twig wreath, and left his boot print on the back of a Tacoma Is For Lovers poster. That poster is now in the hands of Tacoma Police forensics department.

I should note here that our neighbor saw a man in our yard while we were gone. This fact, and the large size of the boot print, suggest that the thief was male, hence my use of male pronouns.

You may be asking yourself, why does someone break into a house on the Hilltop? The number 13 bus runs to the North End many times a day. Surely the loot to be had in those homes is superior.

An investigation of the stolen items may offer some insight. The laptop, necklace, and video camera are obvious and not worth further investigation. Any thief would help him or herself to these portable and valuable items (though the value of that particular laptop is debatable; its cord adorned with blue electrical tape and latch long-since broken). From there, the plot thickens. A carton of mixed nuts from the counter. A bottle of Ketel One vodka from the pantry. And the pièce de résistance: a leg of organic, locally-raised lamb from the freezer.

Perhaps our thief was looking for liquor or valuables in the freezer, and just happened on the lamb. In the middle of the day on Friday, he wasn't sure how much time he had, so he wanted to make the most of each of his movements. As long as he had the freezer open, he might as well help himself to the largest cut of meat in easy reach.

Or maybe he was thinking that we looked like the type of people that support local sustainable agriculture and that we just might have a choice cut of grass-fed deliciousness stashed away for a future meal. We will probably never know whether he settled for the lamb or was excited to find it.

In the end, the bleeding heart liberal in me feels sorry for a guy who a) breaks into a house as lame as ours and b) steals food. I will probably always be haunted with the image of a large mysterious man rummaging through the most intimate spaces of our house. Did he weave a narrative about us as he moved my yoga blocks out of the closet and onto the couch, ran past the baby changing table to get to the jewelry, unpacked the bag that my breastpump came in?

But, as far as home tragedies go, it could have been so much worse. And thanks to Toast and Cereal, all our precious pictures of Viola that we would have lost on the computer are safely nestled on a server in Boston.