Last night, looking out over the mishmash of shacks and yards and fences behind our house, I noticed two men with a ladder.

They propped the ladder up against a shack right behind our house, deliberated a bit and then apparently changed their mind, taking the ladder down and walking off with it.

An hour or more later, around 1 am, I heard noises outside so I looked out the window again. Someone was moving around in the yard behind the abandoned house nearest to our place, right by the shack the men had been preparing to climb earlier. Seems they had come back.

They made quite a bit of noise, but it was so dark it was impossible to tell what they were up to. They weren't carrying flashlights.

I debated with myself whether to call the cops. If they were just looking for a place to squat, I don't really feel that's a wrong thing. If they're just exploring, as I might be tempted to do on one of my sillier days, that's also fine. No cause for alarm. But it didn't sound like they were trying to break into the abandoned building. And why no lights? Very odd indeed.

What if they were planning to set the place on fire for insurance reasons? That would endanger the whole neighborhood.

As this occurred to me, and I was coming to the conclusion that I should call the cops, the men climbed out of the yard and up onto the roof of the shack behind it. At the same time, a group of slavic-sounding men from the house next to the abandoned one switched on bright lights and came out into their yard to see what was going on.

The two men crept unseen across the roof, climbed down the ladder and walked away with it.

A couple of minutes later, I saw them reappear in an alley a bit further away. Without the ladder. They'd left it behind. Were they planning to return a third time?

At this point, far too late, I called the cops and told them what I'd seen.

Then I went to bed.

...

I don't know if they came back a third time, but I think I'll go see if that ladder is still there.