The wood was stacked by Tuesday morning. Not my wood, not exactly. The top three rows—the visible ones, the ones facing the shared fence line where Karen had been reaching over for 11 months—were real firewood. Split oak, properly seasoned, stacked with the careful alternation of a person who has been splitting and stacking wood in Western Colorado for 22 years, and does it correctly because doing it correctly is the only way worth doing it. The bottom rows were also split oak, also properly seasoned, also stacked correctly.
The difference was invisible from the fence line. The difference was inside the wood. Each piece in the bottom 16 rows had been drilled through with a 1-inch auger bit, packed with a commercial non-toxic wildlife deterrent compound, the kind used by licensed wildlife managers, and sold openly in agricultural supply stores across the state, and plugged with a wooden dowel that I had sanded flush and touched up with exterior stain to match the surrounding wood surface. The deterrent compound was not harmful. It was not dangerous.
It was the same compound used to discourage deer from orchard trees and bears from grain stores, a bitter, intensely unpleasant organic material that produced no lasting effect beyond the experience of the moment. Which was, I had been informed by the agricultural supply specialist who sold it to me, a memorable experience. I had documented the purchase. I had documented the application. I had photographed every treated piece before stacking.
I had photographed the complete stack from four angles before the sun came up Tuesday morning. Then I went inside, made coffee, and waited. Karen came over the fence at 2:17 that afternoon. I know the exact time because the trail camera I had installed on the woodpile in month three, after the seventh confirmed theft and after my neighbor Theodore had witnessed Karen reaching over the fence with both arms and walking away with four pieces, had been running continuously since installation and had, in 11 months, produced 467 photographs of a woman systematically stealing firewood from her neighbor. 467 photographs, each one timestamped, each one backed up in triplicate.
At 2:17 on Tuesday, the 468th photograph showed Karen reaching over the fence and selecting three pieces from the top visible row. Real wood. She got real wood from the top row. At 2:19, she reached back for two more pieces. She selected from the second row.
Still real. At 2:22, she reached for two more pieces and selected from the third row. Real. She was being thorough. She always was.
I had documented that, too. Karen did not take casually. She selected. She examined the split faces, assessed the density, chose the best seasoned pieces. She had been taking my best wood for 11 months and she knew how to identify it.
At 2:24, she reached down to the fourth row. The camera logged the moment. And then Karen Whitmore Aldridge, who had been stealing my firewood for 11 months, who had ignored two written requests, who had told my neighbor Theodore that she believed the wood was communally accessible because it was stored