About an hour after I posted my last article, at approximately 3 am local time, I walked into the third bedroom on the second floor and looked outside. I do this periodically at night because I always hear dogs barking, hens cackling, and roosters squawking for whatever reason. Sometimes I spot my nephew, who lives in house to the right of us, walking his dog (still a puppy really) so the dog can do his thing behind my house. He keeps him chained up at night for some odd reason.

This time I spotted a movement in the area where two block walls, still under construction, meet in toward the left of our house. One wall is the side of the creek. At first I thought it was my nephew squatting in the corner (it's dark there without the back light on). When the guy started moving in stealth fashion, I knew it wasn't him. I watched him walk along the left side of my house until he disappeared from my view. Then I ran to the master bedroom, which is opposite and facing the front, opened the sliding door onto the balcony and to a spot where I could look around the front right corner of the house. I looked down and saw a man trying to slide one of my bottom windows open.

I yelled, "Hoy!", and the guy turned around and took off like he'd seen a ghost and ran and heaved himself over that wall and into the creek. He had to have hurt himself, it's at least 10 feet and the creek has rocks in it. I then spotted an accomplice who had been hiding on the outside of the wall near the street light take off running down this trail toward the slaughter house who was joined by the guy I scared off. From the time I yelled, to the time they were both running down that trail, couldn't have been more than 15 seconds. I swore at them as they ran, "Putang ina mo!" My Filipino readers will know exactly what that means. Anyway, my wife who had been sleeping until I yelled, woke up and was frantic, asking me what was going on. I responded with "magdanakaw" (thief/thieves). Within 30 seconds, my brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law appeared on the street. I had woken them all up.

Some of them went down the trail looking for the guys that fit my description, but these guys were long gone by the time they got there. They scouted the whole neighborhood looking for these guys to no avail.

I didn't come back into the house until about 5 minutes before I answered a comment on a post, so we were out there for more than two hours.