…because the hedge was moving.
Not from the wind. There wasn’t any.
A thin rope, almost invisible, ran from the box on my porch through a gap in the shrubs and into my neighbor’s side yard. The package hadn’t vanished. It had been dragged.
I followed it.
The box was sitting behind the hedge, tucked beside a wheelbarrow. And next to it was a golden retriever looking far too pleased with himself.
I just stood there staring.
A second later my neighbor, Mr. Jensen, came around the corner carrying a bag of dog treats. When he saw me holding the delivery notice, his face fell.
“Well,” he said quietly, “I guess we finally know where your packages have been going.”
The dog—Cooper—had figured out that delivery trucks meant interesting new boxes. Every time a package appeared, he’d squeeze through a loose board in the fence, grab the box by the corner, and drag it back to his collection spot.
That explained why my cameras never caught a thief. The motion alerts showed the package arriving, but the hedge blocked the view of the side yard where Cooper disappeared with his prize.
Mr. Jensen took me into his garage.
I couldn’t believe it.
There were dozens of my missing deliveries stacked neatly along one wall. Dog toys. Books. Kitchen supplies. A sweater I’d ordered six weeks earlier. Most had teeth marks, but many were still unopened.
The poor man was horrified. He’d thought the boxes belonged to different neighbors and had been trying to figure out where they came from.
Over the next week he paid for everything that had been damaged and repaired the fence himself.
My packages stopped disappearing after that.
But every now and then when a delivery truck pulls up, I still catch Cooper sitting by the hedge, watching hopefully, like he’s waiting for his favorite hobby to come back.