A Colorado woman is getting revenge on so-called “porch pirates” — that is, thieves who make off with packages left on porches by delivery people — by stuffing bait boxes with garbage, Colorado Springs’ KKTV reports. It may not do much to deter porch piracy overall, but Christine Hyatt says that she’ll take whatever small bit of satisfaction she can get.
Hyatt says she’s had freshly-delivered packages stolen off of her porch probably 20 times. Besides costing her money — or at the very least, causing her headaches with her credit card company or the merchants or deliverers responsible for the packages — the porch pirates were legitimately jeopardizing her family’s safety. That’s because her daughter has diabetes and relies on insulin, which Hyatt has delivered.
“She can’t afford to have her own medication stolen just because people are jerks,” Hyatt says.
One day not long after Thanksgiving, after she had forgotten to take the trash out, an idea occurred to her: put all the trash in unused boxes and leave them out on the porch. That addressed two problems in one: it gave her a way to get rid of her excess trash, and it was a measure of revenge, however small, that threw it right back in the faces of the porch pirates.
Last Wednesday was the third time one or more porch pirates made off with one of her bait boxes filled with junk. And since that original round of Thanksgiving trash-stuffed decoy boxes, Hyatt has upped her game: her decoy boxes now include even grosser stuff, like cigarette butts and used cat litter.
“My daughter told me that it was gross. But they [porch pirates] deserve it,” she said.
Hyatt is not the only American to get back on porch pirates via some subterfuge. YouTube scientist Mark Rober went viral last year with his video about his own brand of revenge against porch pirates. Only instead of trash, Rober, being a scientist, booby-trapped his decoy packages with a device that sprayed glitter all over the pirates and recorded their reactions.
It does bear noting, however, that Rober has been accused of faking some aspects of the video.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , the problem of porch piracy may be more widespread than you think. One-in-three Americans will have at least one package pilfered by porch pirates during any year. And of course, Christmas is the busiest time for porch piracy, especially considering how much of our holiday shopping we do online.