Coffee Cup Clobbering Delivers Dual Dings To The Cranium – November 21, 2012
After a reader asked what a “badger telegram” was, we out the question on our Facebook page. within hours, reader Prairie Johnston, the recipient of the BT, provided the answer via the photo above. (Note the folded Arcata Eye edition at bottom.)
Writes Prairie:
“The note above was left on our walk way (not the front door) it was the second one in a week. We called the cops because it had my name (which is not a common one) on it, and that was a bit creepy. Still no idea who it was from, or if they just got the wrong house. Sorry to destroy the mystery but it was labeled ‘badger telegram.’ I told my husband when he called that this was going to land us in the police Arcata Eye police log!!!”
• Monday, October 8 7:19 p.m. A 10th Street resident received a “badger telegram” written on the back of a flyer and stuck to his front door. In keeping with tradition, the letter was rambling and incoherent.
• Tuesday, October 9 9:27 a.m. A night shift worker called to complain that she had been “battling a barking dog” for five years.
12:42 p.m. An Ariel Way resident found a bag of marijuana and brought it to the station.
1:37 p.m. A Lynn Street resident reported a mountain lion with a broken ankle having knocked over garbage cans the previous night.
4:32 p.m. A $500 silver Trek mountain bike left unlocked in a driveway at 18th and H streets didn’t last long. Its serial number was WTU083C117oG.
7:22 p.m. A man at Larson Park argued loudly with himself as he dismantled a bicycle, throwing the parts around. Arriving a half hour after the initial report, an officer didn’t find the snitty one, but did retrieve the bike and a cell phone as found property.
8:12 p.m. After a storage yard employee confronted a woman on the adjacent train tracks about her barking dogs, she struck the business’s front door with an unknown object, causing no damage.
• Wednesday, October 10 6:43 a.m. Someone set up a tent in a downtown alley, with “unusual noises” emanating from within. An officer moved the camper along.
1:22 p.m. A youth reported that his aunt had given him some crack, but had not forced him to smoke it.
2:01 p.m. A Chester Avenue resident came home for lunch to find his sliding glass door broken and a laptop computer, cell phone and iPods stolen.
3:23 p.m. A resident on the corner of Beverly Drive and Buttermilk Lane came home to find a bag of marijuana trim and some “personal info” in front of his driveway. He figured it had fallen out of someone’s truck when the rounded the corner.
2:26 p.m. Someone broke into a locked Alliance Road barn and stole glassblowing supplies valued at $3,000 to $3,500.
2:40 p.m. A drunk-sounding woman called police asking why she had been arrested for public drunkenness the previous day.
• Friday, October 12 11:12 p.m. In what seemed like a role reversal, a 10th Street brewery complained that a neighboring yoga studio was playing music too loud.
• Saturday, October 13 12:54 a.m. “We know how to take care of people like you,” an unknown phone caller supposedly told a lower H Street resident. To him, it seemed like a death threat.
3:56 p.m. Travelers left trash strewn about 13th and F streets, which a resident cleaned up after having words with the slobs in question. The garbage filled two large bags.
5:43 p.m. After being struck in the head with a large coffee mug at 11th Street and Janes Road, a man sustained two 3/4-inch lacerations in the area of his right eyebrow. He was fuzzy on details, but believed the attack occurred within the past hour.
9:31 p.m. Someone somehow snuck into an upper G Street apartment and stole iThings valued at $700.
• Sunday, October 14 2:20 a.m. A roommate who was about to be evicted reportedly trashed the house and let the other occupant’s dog out.
9:18 a.m. You can’t shoplift from an I Street store, or any other for that matter, then go back later and pay for the stuff when you feel like it, then expect the workers to embrace your leisurely approach to retail. Banned.
11:07 a.m. A woman in pink pants and carrying a small dog placed luggage on the porch of a house in the 1300 block of H Street, then sauntered off downtown with her micro-pooch. The current resident said she thought the woman used to live there, but that didn’t give her luggage-storage privileges, and police were asked to remove the property.
12:14 p.m. The old guy with the cane was ambling around in traffic near City Hall again.
1:33 p.m. A Benjamin Court home was burgled via the garage door, with the house ransacked and property stolen.
2:10 p.m.
A Plazaland bongo upthrust
Left downtowners somewhat nonplussed
Cops duly responded
But drummers absconded
Averting one more bongo-bust
3:02 p.m. A dreadlocked woman wearing a colorful beanie went into a downtown yogurt bar and started scarfing directly out of the fruit toppings bar as her swain and dog waited outside. Confronted, the topping taker argued with an employee, then vanished.
4:27 p.m. The Benjamin Court burglary victim found a canteen, garbage and other items in the field behind his home, suggesting that the burglars might be staging their incursions into suburbia there.
• Monday, October 15 9:53 a.m. A grouchy, grouchy man came to the station to register his puppy as a service dog. He started out his effort by being uncooperative and verbally abusive to the nice ladies at the counter and wouldn’t even fill out the stupid form. An officer attempted to help him do so, but he was difficult, and finally the officer gave him the half-finished forms and advised him to find someone to help him complete them. This prompted more volleys of verbal abuse, so the man was asked to depart the premises. As he left, he pulled the puppy along by its makeshift choke chain/muzzling device, which consisted of the chain being wrapped around the little dog’s muzzle. The pup had to walk with its head turned sideways to not be pulled off balance by the chain. The man was warned no to be abusive to his puppy, so he slowed his pace but continued to bitch out the APD staff as he left.
11:18 a.m. A woman left her purse unattended at a Heindon Road diner for just five minutes, and when she returned… gone were the handbag and its credit cards, blank checks and meds.
11:24 a.m. Two drunks luxuriating on the sidewalk at a Valley West shopping center were reported “singing profanities.” The bibulous bellowers were moved along.
11:48 a.m. A witness named a suspect in vandalism at a Janes Road children’s center during which three windows were broken.
12:08 p.m. The most effort the user of a battered old lounger likely showed in quite a while involved tossing the clapped-out sitting device into a cow pasture at 27th Street and Alliance Road.
11:37 p.m. A Baldwin Street resident asked for help with her boa constrictor, which had been hiding underneath the sofa for three hours and wasn’t interested in emerging therefrom.
