The Neighborhood Trash Bandit

Every neighborhood has its characters. My neighborhood's most unsavory character is a mystery to me known more by his deeds than his actual face. He is a coward who travels my street by night going from trash bin to trash bin in search of something of value and trashing my front gate in the process.

This morning, the Cat was outside around 6:30am picking up the scattered trash from our front gate. This is not the first time this has happened, but at least this time, it was our trash. There have been occasions where I have found nasty trash that isn't even mine. We are not the only victim. Some French people down the street woke up to the same scene.

When we first arrived in Warsaw, I tried to adapt to my host country by really trying to use their products (it's much cheaper this way too). I bought the thin blue Paclan trash bags. These broke way too easily and made it easier for this a-hole to trash my entrance. I upgraded and bought fortified, heavy duty GLAD trash bags in bulk, but apparently this did not stop the littering.

I really don't care about people looking through my trash. Most people know from our car tags that we are foreigners and diplomats to boot. Being a foreigner in any country opens you up to people trying to find information on you if only to make sure that you are not some national threat, being a diplomat even more so. I don't know what they are looking for exactly, but they are unlikely to find anything of interest since we shred all of our personal or financial information on a regular basis. Maybe this is why he trashed my entrance - all that work for nothing!

What really gets to me about all this is that our trash area (located outside our gate) is gated itself. However, someone failed to give us the key when we moved here. Most of the time, I just keep my trash cans in my courtyard and move the trash out the morning of. My housekeeper is usually here the day before trash pick up and she tends to move the trash out to the gated trash area. This guy must have figured our strategy out because he struck on the night before pick up. I don't like bugging the Embassy maintenance people, but enough is enough. I had them make a key to keep this perpetrator out. It was either that or overnight surveillance and I figured that a key would be more cost effective and less time consuming. However, I am not beyond using surveillance if necessary.