Who Dat?
You may recall that several years ago, soon after we moved to this hilltop on a full time basis, we had a middle-of-the-night encounter with something crawling around on the rood in the living room. We never figured out exactly what it was (I insisted it had to be a bird of some sort, Kim thought it was too heavy and noisy to be a bird), but I installed a Ring camera on the roof to have a way to monitor things up there. I am a big fan of Ring cameras because I use battery operated units combined with small solar panels to keep the batteries fully charged, In four years I have never had a charging problem with that combination for any of the multiple cameras I have around the property. Also, Ring has features that allow you to turn on a light on the unit, to both listen and speak through the unit and to be able to let lose a very strident siren to fend off transgressors. The only problem with my rooftop camera, which I had placed by the roofing guys who were repairing my roof a few years ago (Neither I nor Handy Brad will climb up a ladder to get on the roof), is that it shows the entirety of the living room roof, but is then blocked in its view over to the Master Bedroom area by virtue of the parapet walls that define the various areas of the house and continue through to the roof. Never in the time I have had that roof camera have I seen anything troubling or even the least bit active, other than a flying insect.
Well, that all changed two nights ago. We had gone to one of our regular performances at the LaJolla Playhouse. They were premiering a new musical called Johnny & June about the musical life and times of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, sort of a live version of the movie Walk the Line. It ended later than we expected so we decided to leave Buddy at his day care place for the night and pick him up in the morning. That proved to be a prophetic choice. Buddy will bark at the slightest sound in the middle of the night, but he was not there to alert us to what ended up being a very noisy time up on the roof over our heads in the bedroom. It was a louder and more proximate version of what we had heard several years ago. I woke up first and got my flashlight out to see what was up. My moving around woke up Kim and she got very scared based on the load noises that were well beyond small varmint noises. After going through my flashlight investigation and outdoor lights on/off cycling, the noise continued and had a decided sense of movement and disruption on the roof overhead. Kim finally tripped the alarm (we don’t usually turn it on) and had the alarm company send out the Sheriffs Department in our direction. The Sheriffs office called Kim and stayed on the phone asking about what was going on and whether we were armed. I was ambivalent about calling in the troops, mostly because I felt like it made me feel less than manly.
The process underway, I turned on some lights and put on pants and shoes and felt driven to go outside and look around (I am not sure why that is more appropriate than going out before the police were called). It was a misty and windy night, which doesn’t help the sense of mystery doing a home safety inspection in the dark. I went out on the driveway when I heard the police arrive. They parked on the street and then I saw three officers coming up the driveway in Delta Force fashion with flashlights sweeping the landscape. When they got to me I briefly described the disturbance and property configuration and they suggested I go inside. I dutifully complied convincing myself that I would better off not getting caught in whatever crossfire might ensue. I walked around the house and watched the Sheriff deputies go thoroughly around the property. I watched both through the windows and via the Ring app and all the cameras I have. When they finished, they came to the door and told us that they had been startled by a large owl flying off from the bedroom roof. They also noted that my back hillside metal animal sculptures were also pretty unsettling to them as they encountered them (especially the bounding ram). We all laughed and thanked them and off they went to their next raccoon hunt.
We went back to bed, but not before hearing more noise on the roof, assuming that the large owl had returned for whatever it had left behind. I was convinced then and there that I needed another Ring camera for the master bedroom side of the roof. I will admit that like most people who set up critter cams, I am curious to see the nighttime offender, but mostly I want to be able to use the lights, speakers and siren to chase off any big birds of prey that my roof attracts.
I got on the task right away in the morning and lined up Handy Brad for the installation. I went to my local Lowe’s for another Ring camera and solar panel. That would make my seventh outdoor Ring camera (one of which is my Ring Doorbell), all of which are visible live and activated live on my Ring app. Handy Brad brought his 16’ extension ladder and then realized that it was just shy of being tall enough to comfortably get to the top of that section of roof and stay within the safety standards of the ladder. That sent him off to Home Depot to rent a 24’ ladder while I set up the Ring unit to link it to my WiFi and the online app. By the time he returned it was all set to go. When we got the bigger ladder up, I could tell that Handy Brad was not feeling good about the whole ladder to the roof program. He says that climbing up the ladder is no problem but that getting off and back on the roof is just too risky for him. I have a hard time disagreeing with that since lots of seniors do damage to themselves from ladder falls. This was a job for Omar, who Handy Brad called and who came right over. Omar is Mexican and a very hard worker. He practically bounded up the ladder to the roof and took the activated camera with him. It was great because I could see everything he could see on the roof and use the microphone/speaker to guide his steps while siting calmly on the patio. There were no signs of the owl. No nest, no half-eaten prey, not even any feathers or other kind of mess from the prior nights’ ruckus. In any case, Omar put up the camera and solar panel and we agreed on the exact positioning to maximize keeping track of activities on the bedroom roof. Even though it had become a three-man job, I felt reasonably effective in having quickly enacted a viable solution to our midnight security disruption.
I checked the roof camera several times during the day and saw nothing but an occasional flying insect just like on the living room roof camera. After dark I checked again and…nothing. We had Buddy with us in the bedroom last night and he slept like a log and we all slept straight through. I did wake up at one point and used my iPhone, which I had left at my bedside to check out the roof cam at the same time as the prior night’s activity. Again…nothing. Maybe it was a one-time incident or maybe all of my roof activity and preventive measures has made my roof less owl-friendly. All I can say is that so long as the disruption stops, who cares who dat?