Christmas Lights 2022 – Monsters?

What kind of a monster goes out and cuts the wires on folks’ Christmas lights?

For each of the last two years we’ve had at least one set of lights with wires that have been cut through. (FWIW, I don’t remember it ever happening even once in over 25 years at the old house.)

I had written it off to an accident if maybe the gardeners hit it with a weed wacker by mistake or something like that. That’s tougher this year, since with the drought and the yard turning brown, the gardeners hadn’t been here when this wire got cut.

And then the next day…

Those are nice, clean cuts, through two wires, and with them tied off like that you can see where the angle of the cut on one wire matches up with the angle on the next. This wasn’t an accident, this was someone with a pair of wire cutters.

I think…

…but.

These lights are right in front of the door, and there’s a security camera there 24/7/365. We have those videos for something like 90 days, so I can and did go back and review them.

Nada. Zip. Zilch. No one at all seen either nights in the area around these lights.

There are some bushes there, so in theory if someone knew where the cameras were they could crawl along the lawn like they were going under the barb wire with machine gun fire just over their heads and reach out to cut those wires. But, c’mon, isn’t that a little bit far fetched?

So who or what cut the wires?

The only other thing out there, which the cameras might or might not catch, are birds and bunnies. No way that a junco or even a crow could cut those wires. The bunnies eat the grass there – could they bite through the wires by accident? But wouldn’t that deliver a significant jolt to them if the electricity is on?

So it’s a mystery. Saturday I spent some time on the ground, splicing wires, restoring connections, getting the candy cane lights back on line.

I also pulled out my trusty motion-activated, high-def trail cam and buried it in those bushes to watch these lights from just a couple feet away. We’ll see.

Because really! What sort of freakin’ monster cuts the wires on Christmas lights??!!

Any bets?