Thought some of you might find this story amusing.  I've had an interesting weekend with some troublesome kids.  I have two trail cams on my property as a deterrent to try and prevent kids from breaking stuff or just generally causing any trouble. For most of the past year it has worked great. 

I've been working on my bridge the last couple of weekends, and Saturday I had to pour some concrete for support. While I was out there I noticed that one of my cameras had a broken IR cover lens. I didn't think much of it. Changed out the memory card and thought maybe a rock from a mower hit it.  However, while I was thinking of it, I went to change the card on the other camera and found the damage you see in the pictures below.  Definitely no accident. 

I thought for sure that someone did something they shouldn't and broke the camera to get to the memory card.  Well, they definitely destroyed the camera, but they didn't think to take the card. Not the brightest of kids I guess.  So, I took both cards, and sure enough, pictures of a whole group of them. One kid was actually on camera with a log above his head getting ready to throw it at the camera.  I contacted the police, but I didn't know the kids so there wasn't a lot they could do. I didn't bother filing a report because I really didn't want anything more than their parents to deal with them. 

Next move was to figure out who the kids were.  After speaking with the police, I found out there was nothing wrong with me posting the pictures to find out who the kids might be.  In comes this handy site : Nextdoor.com .  I posted up an article to my neighborhood yesterday with all the pictures.  A few hours ago the mother of the boy holding the log contacted me.   All of the parents have been notified, and it turns out there is a stepdad cop in the mix somewhere. So he is going to bring the whole group by to apologize sometime in the week.

So now, I have two new cameras ordered with metal enclosures that will be lag bolted to the tree, and a group of kids that I believe will severely regret their decisions of the past few days.

 

 

 

Holy shit lol

Now they definitely know not to fuck with you.

Can't hide in this day and age.  Too many people connected now.  I was hoping they had heard the news from around here to keep them from messing with them.  A guy in eastern KY had been rigging his cams with explosives to prevent tampering. He got arrested of course, but I guarantee people think twice before messing with trail cams now. lol

Jesus, rigging a cam to blow? That's fucked up. lol

Yeah, no kidding. I don't think anyone was hurt. Just reported it to the police.  It is Eastern KY, so not that surprising.

I think it'd be great if the parents of the kids who destroyed your cams, gave them to you for a month to work on your yard. That's what I'd do as a parent.

I've actually been talking to the mother of one of the boys and that's very likely going to happen. 

Good for her. Glad to hear parents still do that. Gotta teach the kids about repercussions for their actions.

Yeah. She's embarrassed as hell and not 100% sure what to do, but she does want to do the right thing. It's refreshing to know there are parents that care.

I find  it very fascinating that kids these days, who GREW UP in this age don't stop to think about shit like that

I know! Just didn't think or didn't care. 

 

I get the pleasure of cold calling one of the parents today. Finally tracked the last one down. 

Make sure to rub your hands together in an evil fashion

I called his mother. She either knew I was going to call or was not surprised her son did it. She certainly didn't seem surprised when I told her.

What a great parent