Gah!

k_crow, who lives across the street, called to tell me that there was a car in my front yard.

Yes, a CAR in my FRONT YARD. Oh, and the big locked mailbox that was bolted to the sidewalk just south of our driveway had migrated to the driveway. (The driveway, btw, is south of the front yard.)

So naturally I headed home to check out the carnage. As it happens, there really wasn't much by the time I got there. What appears to have happened is:

1. A neighbor's car was parallel parked on the street, south of the mailbox.
   
2. A big silver PT Cruiser heading south tried to do a U-turn, miscalculated, and hit the neighbor's car.
   
3. Neighbor's car popped its clutch and sprang forward. It knocked the mailbox into our driveway. The car itself went across our driveway and landed in the yard.
   
4. Several neighbors heard it and called the cops.

Fortunately, no one was in the parked car. No houses were hit. None of our vehicles were hit. The PT Cruiser died in the road and had to be towed. One neighbor thinks the driver was going to drive away (?) but also said the driver wanted to pull to the side of the road. There's some speculation that the driver may have been under the influence. I mean - it's a cul-de-sac. There's loads of space to make a U-turn.

The post office sent someone up to get the remains of the mailbox and the cop gave him the PT Cruiser's insurance information to pay for a new mailbox. Oh, and here's what the mailbox looked like before the excitement (courtesy of Google street view). It's made of sheet metal and was bolted to the sidewalk. Yeah...suddenly I'm glad we have a rockery-type thing in our front yard; if the car hadn't stopped on its own, it would've hit the rocks before the house. By the time I got home, the PT Cruiser had been towed and the owner of the other car had re-parked it and swept up a bunch of the debris. I did chat a bit with the post office dude and the cop and determined there wasn't really anything for me to do. So...excitement in Redmond. I'm back at work, trying to let the adrenalin wear off.