This is Ridiculous--Part III of the Couch Chronicles

Okay. The first time--whatever. The second time--fine. It could have been a mistake. But the third time somebody drops a random couch on our property...Now I know they're doing it on purpose.

Not just one couch, this time. Two.

It was October 31st, Halloween night, and my Father and brother had a feeling the pattern of Sunday-sofa-surprises might continue without exception on his hallowed night of romping hooligans.

And thus they found themselves freezing in the thick of our woodsy front yard, crouched in the dried leaves and shrinking as much as possible into the shadows of the trees beneath the bright silver moon. Determined to catch the sofa-stranders in the dirty act, my father and brother planted themselves in different positions in the yard and communicated via two-way radio, attempting to keep the beeping to a minimum.

Ansel--who would have been up this late anyway--was chagrined to be outside. The long interval of no-activity was broken by the frequent sound of owls hooting. "It was quite eerie," Pineiro said.

But waiting in the cold darkness between 11:30pm and 12:45am somehow inspired a kind of primitive hunter instinct. It was as if my brother had made contact with his ancient Neanderthal impulses, and allowed them to take over. He was determined to wait out the night until his prey scuttled up the driveway with a fresh sofa.

After waiting in the chilled night air for almost an hour and a half, my father realized his fingers were frozen to his radio; he decided he needed a mug of hot chocolate--pronto. He gruffly radioed over and out to my brother, and retreated to the warm house for some chocolatey rehabilitation. Ansel went too, but only to quickly turn off a light he left on in the basement.

It was only a matter of minutes in which both men were inside the house. My father told Ansel to keep an eye out--just in case. As he was opening the bag of mini marshmallows, my dad glanced out the window--and is if by wingardium-leviosa--a couch had landed in our driveway.

I'm guessing my father let out some kind of yell, and then it was a mad dash out the front door and into the street. "I'm so out of shape I almost died," Dad said.

In the blur of running, Ansel could see that another couch was placed on top of the garage roof. They couldn't be far. Ansel sprinted into the dark dirt road and witnessed two shady figures dart into a get-away car, and screech off down the road, southward.

The Neanderthal spirit pulsed through Ansel's veins, and growing a metaphoric coat of fur over his body, he thirsted for blood and bounded after the car on foot.

"I was debating about [trying to] jump on the back of the car and punch through the window," Ansel said (completely seriously), with the hint of a primitive grunt.

Unfortunately, neither my father nor my brother were able to catch the speeding vehicle on foot, and it was too dark to get the license plate number.

But what we did get was two more couches. One is resting in my sister's typical parking space, and the other is obnoxiously on top of the garage roof.

Again, I was thoroughly shocked to hear the news of another strike. I can't help but feel a little helpless living in Grand Rapids with out a car and not being able to hunt sofa-stranders with my kin, or insist to the police officers that it wasn't my fault. I have resorted to leaving a public note on my facebook status, so that hopefully the perpetrators will get the message:

"Dear People Who Have Been Putting Couches on our Roof, please stop. My family is getting really upset and you are giving my father migraines. Why would you want to pick on the Pineiros? What have we done to you? I don't leave my furniture ontop of your garages..."