Don't Look in Your Closet!

This is a weird little story. A single guy who lived alone started noticing that the food in his refrigerator was going missing. That's a weird theft, for someone to break into his apartment just to get some food and not take anything else. He's a pretty tech-oriented guy, so he installs some cameras in the apartment to send video to his cell phone if anything happened. Something did--there was somebody moving around inside there when he was out. The next step, obviously, is to call the cops. So they go to investigate, but there's no sign of forced entry. Now this is getting interesting. Just as there's no forced entry, there's no evidence that anybody's left, either, so they start checking around to see if the culprit is still inside. And wouldn't you know it, she is! In fact, she never left. She lives there. No, I didn't mislead you at the top of this post--he lived alone, or at least, he thought he did. But he had a squatter who's bee living in his closet for the previous year. She had a little mattress in there, and she sometimes sneaked food from the refrigerator when she was hungry. The article points out that she'd even shower--well, I hope so, if she was living there for a year. Even if you're not doing much of anything, you're going to get awfully grimy after a year.

There are a couple of things I want to point out about this article. First off, while this is a very weird story, does it seem to be a little less weird when you find out it happened in Japan? Maybe not less weird, necessarily, but not quite as unexpected? And second, this particular article includes a great feature. It's just an AP feed on Yahoo News, so there's nothing special about it, but accompanying the story is a file photo of a closet. No, it's not the closet the woman has been living in, it's just a generic closet with a guy's clothes in it, in case you don't happen to remember what one looks like. This way, we can all be sure we're on the same page.