Whip-poor-will: Woodland Crime Stopper

The Scene of the Crime

We were lucky.

There are a lot of "ifs" to this story.

IF we didn't have the most reliable whip-poor-wills in New Jersey singing in our neighborhood that people come from all over to hear...

IF our friends hadn't rung our doorbell to let us know that they were outside listening for the whips...

IF Bob hadn't needed the whip for his year list...

IF Bob and Shari & I hadn't stood outside with our friends listening to the whip-poor-wills; the first one distant, the second one right next to the house at 8:29 (I had predicted 8:30)...

THEN I wouldn't have seen a glow coming from the WMA behind our house and I wouldn't have gone to investigate it, thinking it was another birder trying to get eye shine with a flashlight. Instead, I found a fire spreading in the undergrowth and a suspicious character moving around. The first thing I did was shout to Shari to call 911 and the second thing I did was to confront the young woman who was walking rapidly away from the fire. She told me she was camping and her camp fire got out of hand, which, had it been true, would have been bad enough since camping isn't allowed back there, but in reality she was making a fire because, not to put too fine a point on it, she was nuts. 

Or distraught, or on drugs, or just plain stupid, who cares? All I knew was that there was a fire burning in the woods a couple of hundred feet from my house. When I "asked" here if she was stupid she got very huffy and told me no, but then, as she walked away from me down the path from the WMA that runs along our property, she did say that it was stupid thing to do and that she wouldn't come back again. I briefly thought about detaining her, but then realized that arresting people isn't my job; the real problem was the fire. She disappeared up the street but not before one of my friends had the presence of mind to take her picture with a phone camera. 

I went into the house and got our fire extinguisher from the kitchen. Not that I knew how to use it but Bob, took a quick look at the label and went out to the woods to try to put out the fire though I didn't think we'd be able to. It had spread and was creeping up one of the pitch pines. Bob got that part of the fire out and was able to tamp down about half of it before the extinguisher was empty. By this time the fire department had arrived, along with the police.

Fortunately for us the conditions were not good for the fire--that area of the woods had been prescribed burned a couple of years ago so there wasn't much fuel; we'd had a lot of rain in the last day; and the winds, which were brutal during the day, had died down to nothing. Plus, the fire breaks they had dug would have acted as pretty good protection had the fire spread in some unlikely manner. So we probably weren't in as much danger as I had originally thought.  Probably. They quickly determined that the fire wasn't going to get out of hand and, instead of just putting it out, they let it burn as "evidence." 

The matches she used and tried to use

The police officers were extraordinarily thorough--I wasn't expecting a CSI investigation or a police dog sniffing for evidence--but as the forest warden who also responded explained to us, people who set little fires in the woods also set bigger fires in the woods, or trash fires, house fires, and eventually someone gets hurt. This woman, once we started describing her to the police--it was dark, obviously, so we couldn't see her feature but just the general description we could give (the women, I marveled, noticed way more about her, especially her clothes, then the men did) and how she spoke, told them that they already knew who they were looking for and where she lived (not far). This, apparently, wouldn't be the first time they were interacting with her.

When I told my neighbors across the street what had happened, the immediately knew who the woman was and were surprised that I didn't know her. But I spent 40 years in New York where you really don't spend much time worrying about other people--there are just too many to keep track of who's walking up the street at what time and what kind of car this guy drives when he passes the house at 4:15 and so on.

Later, the police came and asked us more questions and took a signed statement from me. They seemed to be building a case. Whether they've arrested the woman I have no idea. Whether I'll have to testify I also don't know, though I'll have no problem with it if I have to. 

And the whip-poor-will continued to sing through all of this, the whip-poor-will which drew us out of the house at just the right time to see a small fire and keep it that way. I have always loved hearing the whip-poor-will; unlike my neighbors, its song has never bothered me, even at 3 o'clock in the morning. I like the bird even more now.