Thursday, May 24, 2012

Our Poor Fence

You, dear readers, may recall that a few years ago, our fence was the victim of a hit and run. Well, it happened again. Yup ... we're now facing another new fence, or as I've dubbed it "fence 3.0".

This morning, Eric wheeled the garbage cans out into our alley. In order to do so, he clicked the remote for the gate to open said gate. As he walked back toward the house, I noticed the gate was closing. I said, "Why did you close the gate? We're leaving in just a minute." To that, he replied, "I'm in the middle of the driveway, how could I have closed it??" Umm... good point. So, we opened the gate again and it closed ... again. I decided the gate was possessed ...really, what else could possibly explain our gate mysteriously closing all on its own?

We opened the gate AGAIN and I quickly backed the van out into the alley and that's when I saw it.... my possessed gate theory was quickly debunked when I saw that someone had plowed into our fence ... AGAIN!! Unlike last time, the perp (yes, I'm calling the jerk who hit our fence and then took off a "perp") didn't leave behind a license plate to help us track 'em down. Jerk!

I called the police so we could get a report number in case we decide to file a claim with our home owners insurance company. A very nice officer arrived at our house to look at the damage and file the report for us. He said something very interesting; he told me there's a chance that the person who hit our fence might contact them to file a report. WHA?!?!?! He further explained that people are often quite stupid and will contact the police claiming to be the victim of an accident when they weren't just so they could file an insurance claim to get a vehicle fixed. I so don't have a criminal mind!!

I found it funny that when writing up the report, the officer asked for my name and date of birth. When I gave the information to him, he said, "Oh! You're already in the system." Yup ... from when the same thing happened to our fence a few years ago. I have a feeling I'm going to be "that lady with the unlucky fence" amongst Seattle's fine police force.

The car hit our fence so hard that the cement holding the corner post in place moved over 2 feet and the fence is partially embedded in our tree. (That poor tree has seen better days!) The debris field is 3-4 feet big, so we have some cleaning up to do when we get home tonight. There are pieces of bumper, headlights, turn signals, and random pieces of plastic that need to collected and tucked away just in case we can use it as evidence.

Next step: get quotes from some fence companies so we can figure out who to fix it and whether it is worth making an insurance claim...

The silver lining? Our family was safely tucked away in the house when the perp blasted into our fence and none of us got hurt. Thank goodness for that blessing!

Poor fence (this part used to be straight)

Owie!

It didn't look like this when we went to bed last night

No comments: