The Mysterious Raking Incident
So, here’s what happened: last fall, I woke up one Saturday morning to find my front yard completely raked and spotless. And I mean spotless. All the leaves that had been covering the lawn the night before were gone, neatly piled up in bags by the curb. I hadn’t asked anyone to do it, and I certainly hadn’t done it myself.
Confused, I asked around the neighborhood, thinking maybe one of the kids had done it as a school project or something. But nobody claimed responsibility, and my neighbors were just as puzzled as I was. For a moment, I thought maybe it was some kind of “random act of kindness” from a mystery Good Samaritan. But things got even weirder the next day when I found all the bags gone, and my backyard also cleared of leaves.
That’s when my neighbor Jim showed up, looking annoyed. “Hey,” he said, “was it you who raked all the leaves onto my lawn?”
I stared at him, baffled. “No, Jim, I thought someone else had done my yard.”
“Well,” he huffed, crossing his arms, “the wind’s blown a ton of leaves from your yard right into mine. Now I have to do twice the work!”
I tried to explain that I had no idea who’d done it, but he didn’t seem to believe me. And that’s when I decided to do a little investigating myself…
Determined to find out what was going on, I set up a security camera on my front porch, aiming it toward the yard. That night, I kept an eye on the footage, expecting to see either the wind or maybe even Jim himself pulling a prank on me. But just after midnight, I saw a figure appear on the screen. It was a person in a hoodie, slowly raking up leaves in the moonlight, working their way meticulously across my yard.
The next morning, I ran into another neighbor, Susan, who seemed just as annoyed as Jim. “Are you behind all the leaf piles suddenly appearing everywhere?” she asked. Apparently, the mystery raker had “helpfully” added leaves to everyone else’s lawns as well, creating a trail of extra work for each of us.
After days of piecing together clues from the neighborhood, I finally caught the mystery raker in the act—a well-meaning teenager trying to “help out” for a school project on community service. The poor kid had gotten overwhelmed with all the leaves and didn’t realize he’d made things worse.
In the end, we all pitched in to finish raking the neighborhood and set him up with a much simpler project: delivering groceries to the local seniors. As for the leaves, well, let’s just say I still rake my own lawn…