Wood burglar caught red-handed!

OK, I have a pretty good and relatively long story about firewood filching. We live at the end of a dead-end road, and the house next door is rented out on a daily basis as vacation lodgings, sleeping about 10-12 people. We never know who might be there from week to week and now refer to the renters as "The Randoms," as in "The Randoms just arrived for the weekend."

Couple weeks ago, I had a 2-cord load of black locust rounds dumped in our yard, in full view of the Randoms' front door. Been gradually splitting and moving it into stacks, and I was about 75% done with the job when the latest Randoms showed up last Thursday... on Friday night, I noticed that they had a bonfire going in the riverside fire pit, and that the resulting smoke smelled remarkably like... Black Locust.

This latest party was typical: a group of dudes from a neighboring state, in town for a wedding, and in full bachelor-party mode. When they left the house on Saturday, I strolled over to the pit and found incriminating evidence: black locust splits, still smouldering. It seemed highly unlikely that these party-dudes had brought BL with them or had purchased it locally, so this was almost certainly our wood fueling the festivities.

I told my wife about the situation -- which is not the first similar incident, since I have a couple of seasoning stacks in full view of the Randoms. We decided not to call their landlady and complain since it would be more satisfying to actually catch them in the act for once!

So-- on Saturday night we attended a concert, returning home about dusk. The Randoms were nowhere to be seen, with no cars parked outside. An hour or so later they arrived, and I observed action in their yard, with signs of a fire being kindled. Shortly thereafter, it seemed like an appropriate moment to survey our grounds, so I slipped quietly out the door and approached the firewood staging area. Sure enough, out of the darkness there appeared a dude laden with a freshly filched armload of our wood!

When he saw me, his immediate response was to say "Oh hey, can we buy some firewood?" I'm not a trigger-happy type and prefer to keep such encounters as non-confrontational as possible, so I replied, "You want to buy some firewood, huh?" He immediately started apologizing and spouting excuses --"We're here for a wedding and have been pretty drunk" -- and offered "twenty or forty dollars" for a night's worth of wood. I then pointed out that the wood he was stealing was green and not truly fit for burning, and that if he wanted some *proper* wood we could come to an arrangement, suggesting that he return with payment in a minute or two. When he did so, I led him to a seasoned pile and loaded a recycling bin with some prime splits, and we carried those over to the pit area and dumped them.

He said "I really appreciate this, how much do I owe you?" He then added that it would be nice if I didn't bring this incident to the attention of the landlady... I said that since he'd offered "20 or 40 dollars" for a load we could split the difference and call it $30.00. He handed me $40.00 and repeated that it would be really nice if the landlady didn't hear about this, and I said "Dude, you don't have to bribe me but can give me as much money as you want; I just want to keep this aboveboard. " He then gave me another twenty bucks and asked for assurance that we were *cool* on the deal and wouldn't involve the landlady.

I said that it was OK and my only request was that the next time he was in a similar situation it would be wise to ask first before raiding a woodpile, since there are plenty of guys around who might be considerably more aggressive in protecting their stashes than I was. He agreed, and that ended the encounter.

I related all of this to my wife this morning, and we both gloated and laughed over the satisfaction of finally catching one of these pilferers red-handed. I'm not in the wood-selling business, but sixty bucks for a recycling bin of prime wood (plus a relatively negligible amount of green stolen the night before) works for me. If I'd pressed harder he would have given me more money; he still had another twenty in hand when we settled.

All in all, made for an interesting weekend in this burner's life! I'll call the landlady in another week or two and complain (again) about her clients' habit of raiding our woodpiles, but will refrain from specifically incriminating this particular bunch.

So, am I too reasonable?

Just a quick follow-up on that story: I grew up in Alaska, and in my mid-late teens we had a party shack with a primitive fuel-oil fired stove for heat. On more than one occasion, my partners in juvenile crime and I would stealthily siphon fuel from various sources, ranging from governmental to residential, in order to warm a weekend's partying. So, since I survived such shenanigans un-arrested and unshot, I do have some sympathy for similar youthful follies.

I offered to split a purchased cord with the landlady, and even volunteered to stack her portion. She said that she doesn't want to buy party-bonfire wood for her clients and that it's their responsibility to obtain their own wood... considering that that house rents for between $250.00 and $400-plus a night, depending on season and days of the week, I think that's kinda cheap, especially since a cord would probably last a couple of years or longer over there. And the whole "responsible for their own wood" concept hasn't been working out too well, as I described!

At this point I'm thinking about offering to directly administer the firewood for her: I'd put a couple of full bins over there under the deck near the pit, with a sign saying that the wood is $25 or whatever per bin, and also provide a box for honor-system payment. I'm sure that the majority of people would pay up, and it'd be easy to monitor anyway. If clients abscond without paying for wood, she does hold a deposit and would be willing to dock them... I think. I haven't been eager to get into the wood-selling biz, but the profit margin on small amounts like that would be worth my while-- and a lot less hassle and stress than having to guard my stacks with vicious dogs, alarm systems, motion-detecting lights and heavy artillery!

It wouldn't amount to much wood relative to what I already process annually, and I'm certainly far enough ahead now to swing it. Just about convinced that this is the answer, so I'll email her with a proposal soon.