On the Inside Looking Out

It seems like a lot of people have home security cameras these days. According to Strategy Analytics (whoever they are) 16% of U.S. households have video doorbells. That’s an estimated 20 million homes and growing. We have a video doorbell at our front door, and a video only camera at the back of our house. I can’t remember now what our motivation was to get them, other than MOH’s desire to keep an eye on things.

Have you seen the videos on the news, or social media, of home security cameras catching people stealing delivered packages off front porches? We live in what I consider to be a low-risk area, but I found myself hot on the trail of a porch pirate a couple weeks ago.

While I was at work one day, I received an alert that a person was at our front door.  When I reviewed the video, I saw the Fed Ex man leaving a package.  Since my son was expecting a package (he gets his stuff delivered to our house – that’s a whole different blog) I texted him to let him know it had arrived.  Since he had already been over to the house earlier in the day, he said he’d pick it up another time.  I carried on with my day and forgot about it.

The next morning when I woke up, I realized I hadn’t brought the package from the porch inside.  And when I went to retrieve it, the porch was empty!  My first thought was that my son was going to have a cow I had been negligent with his delivery.  My second thought was, ‘oh well, maybe he should have his stuff delivered to his own front porch.’  And my third thought was – I’m going to catch a porch pirate!

I hurried to my phone to review the video storage, ready to catch a porch pirate and call the police.  Alas, the culprit was just my son who had decided to come back and get the goods after all.  Both relieving and anti-climatic at the same time.

We receive three different kinds of alerts from our doorbell. The most common is ‘vehicle detected’. These alerts pop up on my phone whenever vehicles drive past our house. For people who live on a dead-end street, we get a lot of these. I can’t imagine how many we would get if we lived on a through road. We receive ‘person detected’ alerts, whenever anybody comes to the door (whether they ring the doorbell or not) and, my favorite, ‘animal detected.’ I like these alerts as I’m entertained by the critters of the neighborhood, that mostly come out at night. I admit though that my nose was bent out of joint one time when I opened the front door to retrieve a package from the porch and an ‘animal detected’ alert came across my phone.

We’ve come to refer to our front sidewalk as the Critter Superhighway.  There is a surprising amount of activity at the front of the house while we slumber, and I am continually amused by the menagerie that travel up our driveway, follow our front sidewalk all the way to our front steps, and then cut into the mulch bed before continuing on apparently between the houses.  We often see them on their return trip as well, coming back through the mulch from the side, stepping onto the sidewalk beside the porch and then trotting down the pavement, and back out the driveway.  Regular visitors up and down the Critter Superhighway include black cat, grey kitty with white paws, various raccoons, opossums, and last night – a fox.   

Oh, and we have bunnies too, but they are not interested in the Critter Superhighway.  They are interested in the Hosta plants that we have against the house.  Despite their evil Hosta eating intent, they are absolutely adorable hopping to and fro and chasing each other back and forth across the Critter Superhighway. Unfortunately, although I would classify my technology skills as intermediate, I was unable to figure out how to post the video of them doing a springtime celebration dance in the Hosta bed, in hopes that the sweet green sprouts will be poking through the mulch very soon. Their antics keep me coming back for more.

I’m also interested in the time stamp on the videos, and I’d love to know the rest of the critter stories, as I only get a snippet.

2:34am Black cat saunters down the superhighway toward the house. Stops at the front step and looks over his shoulder before turning onto the mulch exit ramp.
2:35am Grey kitty with white paws comes toward the front door and follows black cat down the side of the house.
2:37am Rocky raccoon ambles toward the house, takes the same mulch path.
2:40am Black cat leaps out of the darkness, onto the Critter Superhighway, and high tails it away from the house and down the driveway.
No further activity that evening.

There really isn’t a lot happening on the backyard camera… other than me in my jammies at 3:30am taking out my pup who can’t make it all night anymore without a trip outside. If I was more attentive, I might catch a peek of ‘somebody’ coming off the superhighway. One morning when I checked the video, I caught Rocky Raccoon coming toward the house at 4:33am and Sunny and I were on the back camera at 4:34am. Glad we didn’t have a collision.

So in closing, as home security systems go, I’m not sure if I’m any safer or more secure. But I’m definitely getting a return on investment as far as entertainment goes.