Door-To-Door Dingbat’s Garden Hose Aiguillete Foils Fence Ascension – July 1, 2012
• Wednesday, May 23 11:55 a.m. A man who left his wallet in a Uniontown store went back to get it, but by then it was gone. He had a suspicion about who stole it, and went and argued with that person outside the store.
1:42 p.m. A woman left her purse in her car at the Fickle Hill entrance to the Community Forest, and it was stolen. Treacherous cretins have figured out that trailheads and beach parking lots are where people leave flimsily protected fungibles.
9:53 p.m. Something known only as “Pickles” was said to be drunk and vomiting up the area around a Tavern Row social establishment. The woozy hurler wandered before police arrived.
• Thursday, May 24 6:23 a.m. A red-bearded man with something tied around his head yelled at himself outside a Plaza bistro, then roamed off southward.
7:33 a.m. A woman attempting to park her car in a space in Isaac Minor Alley aroused the ire of three scrounge lizards who had been clumping there. One of the displaced loungabouts reclaimed his dignity by spitting on her car.
9:30 a.m. The man who denies leaving his morning newspaper and coffee cup on the bench outside City Hall every morning to blow around the lawn reportedly did so again, and also created a road hazard by walking in traffic.
12:53 p.m. A man was reported acting “strange,” even for Arcata, and possibly meditating at 11th and M streets. The worst was confirmed when the man admitted to the alleged meditation activity, though it was redeemingly coupled to a more conventional All-American pastime. He said he was meditating after running.
2:31 p.m. Leaving fungible items, or just shiny objects of any kind on view in your car, even in an isolated Weott Way parking lot in broad daylight, only ensures that the interior will be devoid of anything except granulated safety glass when you return.
3:37 p.m. A crime-riddled Valley West lodging establishment exercised its vestigial standards for comportment overnight, and a trespasser was arrested. Not even his returning drunk the next day made him any more appealing, and he was again arrested.
4:33 p.m. From ’neath the black hoodie, a gray beard jutted, and from a location just north of that emanated a succession of guttural peals directed at the wall of a building in the 900 block of H Street. “Crazy” was a witness’s diagnosis. An officer give him direction in life, basically consisting of going anywhere else, immediately.
5:27 p.m. Alfred got into a tangle with a guy near his Northtown lair.
5:40 p.m. With cooped-up, 55-driving motorists getting cabin fever after spending literally minutes in each others’ vehicular company, the Safety Corridor frequently acts as an incubator for road rage incidents that trail off in Arcata. One such encounter took on a nightmarish dimension when an angry man threw a cup out of his car window.
8:53 p.m. Left unattended for an hour and a half, a car parked on the Sunset Avenue overpass was broken into, with a cell phone and housekeys stolen.
• Friday, May 25 8:55 a.m. A reported man/woman fight involved her making a plan to leave him, and him preventing her from using any services to complete her plan. She is in the process of getting a restraining order, and he was persuaded to leave peacefully. She was then able to proceed with her plan.
11:01 a.m. A woman found two kittens abandoned in the forest. One had a disabled leg.
11:06 a.m. A drunken woman said rude things to a lady and her grandmother.
3:17 p.m. A house on a redacted street has different numbers on the mailbox and house itself. The windows are covered over, and though the cars in the driveway never move, a rental trailer shows up in the middle of the night, stays a while and leaves. An officer went and detected no odor, but heard fans running. The report was forwarded to Special Services.
• Saturday, May 26 3:35 a.m. A woman returned home to her H Street apartment to find a door open and suspects with flashlights running away.
8:35 a.m. A woman who had parked her car at the Fickle Hill Road entrance to Redwood Park for an hour came back to find the passenger-side window broken and her purse missing, along with her cell phone, wallet, ID, credit cards and $500 cash.
2:06 p.m. A man hung his camera on a Janes Road fence while he watched his child play for 15 to 20 minutes. That was the last he ever saw of it.
3:40 p.m. A woman hired a Eureka roofer, but when things went awry he threatened to “shred her roof.” He told police he hadn’t threatened her personally, but had said he would put a hole in the roof even though he wouldn’t do such a thing.
6:15 p.m. A Villa Way resident complained about the travelers who gather in the field behind her house, with concern for the children who play in her yard. She said the problem seemed to be increasing.
6:32 p.m. A door-to-door dingbat was reported wandering Palomino Lane wrapped in a white rope. That turned out to be someone’s garden hose, apparently a vital accessory for peering into people’s mailboxes. The hose-toter then shambled over to an adjacent diner for more slithy tove action, looking into cars. With police en route, he attempted to jump a fence, but encumbered by his garden hose aiguillete, failed and was arrested on a public drunkenness charge.
11:17 p.m. An employee finally looked inside a backpack left in a Valley West store for several days, and of course encountered the inevitable illicit brain-conditioning substances. He called police to pick it up.
• Sunday, May 27 12:18 a.m. A streetlight buzzed at 27th and Susan streets.
11:33 a.m. Two loose pit bulls killed a cat in Karen Court.
2:12 p.m. Three loose dogs at the Marsh attacked a man, but he suffered no bites.
5:27 p.m. A jacket containing keys and a wallet disappeared from a storage closet at the hospital.
• Monday, May 28 12:23 a.m. A delusional man reported three men in camouflage fatigues shining a laser at his window, because special forces death squads surely regard the resident of a student apartment complex on Union Street in Arcata, California as a high-value target. He claimed that the three had scurried away when the police arrived, but the officer had parked with lights off there for a while, with a clear view of the whole place and hadn’t seen anyone running away. Also, the guy’s curtain was heavy, dark fabric impenetrable by laser pointers.
