Relative Something

While I was mowing down by the road yesterday, an Ellsworth police vehicle pulled over to speak with me. He got out of his SUV and walked toward me, so I shut off the lawn tractor engine. He asked me to assist in watching for a missing 16-year-old girl walking on the road. After he provided a description of what she might be wearing, I asked if she wanted to be found.

He said, “No, she doesn’t want to be found.”

If I spotted her, he just wanted me to call the non-emergency number to report it and hopefully keep an eye on where she goes.

The next few times I was in a position to view the road from my seat on the lawn tractor, I saw no walkers, but I did notice several vehicles moving very slowly along the road and the police SUV making a return pass from the opposite direction.

While I was showering before dinner, Cyndie reported there was a man in our yard asking if we’d seen his daughter. Cyndie said he had come out of our neighbor’s woods and was disoriented. He didn’t add much detail to indulge our curiosity except for the fact she had been missing for three days, plus the interesting morsel that there were about 30 volunteers currently searching the woods who may also pop out onto our property.

A short time later, a couple who live up the road showed up at our house with a little more detail. The girl had been reported in a camping trailer on the property of the neighbor whose woods border our land on two sides.

The police showed up and saw her run off into the woods.

That is why all the attention is in the woods around us.

The neighbor couple urged us to secure our outbuildings. Cyndie locked our shop but not the barn.

I don’t know what to think. I feel for both the girl and her family, but not knowing anything about the circumstances, it’s difficult to frame how I want to respond if she turned up on our property.

We now have both the father’s contact information as well as the police.

If this girl decides to hide somewhere on our property, I’m pretty sure Delilah will sniff her out long before we would notice. We will be paying more attention than usual for a while to all the times Delilah starts barking for reasons that evade our perceptions.

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