Apple Thief

I have this strange neighbor.  I guess he could be called an, “Illegal Alien.”  At the very least, he is an undocumented resident of the neighborhood.  He enters my backyard from time-to-time.  It bothers me that he climbs our 6-foot tall privacy fence and makes himself comfortable in our backyard.  The dogs used to chase him away; but now, they ignore each other.  I don’t know what to do. My wife, Mary, says I’ve become obsessed with him, and I should just leave him alone.

But what bothers me more; he is stripping my apple tree of ripening, Red Delicious apples.  He doesn’t care that it has taken me over 15 years of nurturing this tree to have it become a strong producer of apples.  He just takes what he wants whenever he wants.  And I can’t do anything about it.

You see, Colorado is a sanctuary state.  So long as he doesn’t enter my house, I have to let him be.  If he broke in, I could shoot him under Colorado’s make my day law.  But so long as he does what he does, I have to leave him alone.  It also bothers me that he continues to take my apples without even asking.  If he is that hungry, I guess the right thing to do is let him eat.  But often, he takes a few bites and throws the rest of the apple to the ground.  It seems rather wasteful to me.

I talked to the police about him and they said there really isn’t much they could do, either.  The officer I spoke with suggested that I take the perpetrator’s picture and send it to them.  They’d keep an eye out for him if I could get a good photograph.  Well, I caught him in the act of eating one of the apples from my tree.  I figure if we spread his picture around social media, maybe we can shame him from continuing his life of crime.

Here he is: