A topic we heard and saw quite a bit about through out this holiday season is all the people stealing packages off of other people’s porches (aka porch pirates). We even saw this video about a guy who made a fake package complete with glitter, fart spray, cameras, and gps to catch all the action.  Most of these incidents appear to be in neighborhoods or less rural areas though.

Basically, when a package is delivered here I expect it will still be there hours later if I’m not home at delivery. We’ve had packages delivered to a neighbor’s house or a neighbor’s package delivered to our house, but we all make sure to get the packages to their right places.  So imagine my surprise a few days before Christmas when I saw on my phone I’d had two packages delivered only to come home later that night and see only one package by our door. 

Maybe the wind blew it a little bit? Nope.  Flashlight around the yard proved that. 

Maybe they just mixed up what was delivered?  Nope.  Amazon took a picture of both packages sitting in front of our door.

Well we were at a family Christmas, but Bella, our farm dog, is always running around.  I think I’ll let her tell you what happened with our very own country package thief since she was there.

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Woof!  I’m Bella, the farm dog.  I’m not like some other dogs that live in the house.  I live out in the barn with the cows.  It’s so warm sleeping out in the straw with my cow buddies and my people come play every day.  When they’re not around though I roam the farm and sometimes visit the neighbors (they give me treats).

You want to hear about the missing package though, right?  Well it was a cold night and all my people were inside one of the houses together.  I saw this car pull up into the driveway and ran to see who was here.  No one was home at the house, but sometimes people come to leave things and they have treats in their vehicles for me.

“Hi!  Hi!  Hi!”  I barked and jumped for the person. 

They must not have had any treats in their vehicle because after a quick pat on the head they left.  Now what do Ido?

“Ooh!”  *sniff, sniff*  “What is that yummy smell?  Oh, where is that coming from?” 

Suddenly I smelled the most delicious scent.  It was a new smell, not a normal farm smell.  I started following the smell closer and closer towards the house until… It’s coming from that thing the person dropped off!

This must be why they didn’t give me any treats.  My treat is in that thing!  Well, I grabbed that thing sitting by the house, the one with the yummy smell, and took off for the barn so excited.  When I got to the barn, I sat down to find out what was inside.  I tore at the paper on the outside trying to get to the smell.

Finally, I got it opened!… “Huh?  What is this?  I know I’m picky about treats, but this… this is NOT food!  How can something that smells so yummy taste so bad?”

“Hmm… Oh well.  I guess I’ll wander back towards the other house.  Maybe someone there will have better food.”

Well the next morning one of the farmers came to the barn and picked up that thing I’d opened with the good smelling, but not food, whatever it was.  I don’t know why, but he took some pictures with his phone and put it on a table inside the barn.

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A little later Mrs. Farmer came to the barn and picked it up.  When she saw me she asked if I took the package, she called it, and asked why I took it.  Did her soaps smell good, she asked me. Soap?! 

Why would you make soap that smells like food? I don’t understand people.  Cows and chickens, those I understand.

She told me I was a bad package pirate, but then she gave me a belly rub and a good scratch behind the ears.  She must not be that mad at me.

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So this Christmas I’ve learned a valuable lesson: Even out here on the farm we can have package pirates.  They just don’t look quite the same as the ones we’ve seen in all those surveillance videos other people have shared.