Velveeta Vandalism

Recently reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Police Blotter:

Vandalism: Bradford Lane (Avon, OH)

A resident called police at 11:55 a.m. Sept. 18 to report that an unknown person had put cheese on his mailbox overnight. There was no further information at the time of the report.

No further information! No further information? What?

Inquiring minds want to know. So many questions in search of answers…

What kind of cheese?…packaged or naked?…Velveeta (is that cheese, really?) or Pule (look it up)?…are there any likely suspects?…was there any follow-up investigation?…and of course, did the police respond at all to this call?

I came across the blotter about the time Hamas attacked Israel, so my first reaction was, How trivial!

In this world of enormous hurt, who would call the cops because they found cheese on top of their mailbox?

But then I wondered: Does cheese left atop a mailbox by an unknown perpetrator mean something sinister? Is it a threat of some kind that other people—more in-the-know people-than-I—understand, maybe a message from some domestic Hamas aimed at an unsuspecting Avon-er?

Turns out, cheese on the mailbox is a thing, though apparently a relatively small thing. My in-depth Google search found the earliest recorded incident to be from February of 2012 when someone posted a photo somewhere captioned, “Slice of cheese left on top of a mailbox on Broadway.” Obviously, a theatrical act.

Nothing else came up until March of 2022 when someone on Reddit complained that they had found poor quality cheese on their in-laws’ mailbox. Ten years of after the first incident, quality had become an issue, and being concerned about the quality of in-laws’ cheese does merit attention. There is hope for peace in our world.

Another possibility: placing cheese on top of a US Postal Service-approved mail box may run counter to U.S. Postal Code Regulations. I have heard that it is illegal to put anything into a mail box that hasn’t come through true U. S. mails, so cheese on top of it may fall into that category of criminal activity.

After much pondering, my grand conclusions to the matter are these:

1. It appears that finding unexpected cheese on top of your mailbox is not unheard of. But as to what it means, or signifies, I, like the police, have no further information.

2. If the unnamed Bradford Lane resident called the Avon police to report a harmless incident because they wanted to get their story on the Plain Dealer’s Police Blotter thereby jump-starting their career as an influencer, I wish them all success. But they’ll have to come clean with who they are.

3. Calling leaving cheese on someone’s mailbox an act of vandalism seems a bit extreme, but the crime had to be stuffed into some category to seem worth reporting.

4. It was good for my spirit to mull over so trivial an event in the midst of the truly awful things the news constantly puts before us to worry about. For example, just today the Plain Dealer reported that Jewish graves in an area cemetery had been desecrated with spray-painted swasticas. Clearly, that is vandalism of the worst kind. So I am grateful for police blotter notices that spread a wondering smile across my face. My need for such amusement increases by the moment.