Man bulldozes home with stuff in it.

Just up the road a piece from me, in Middletown, a 48-year-old man bulldozed his home. Rented an excavator and took the entire house to the ground. While his wife was out running errands. And all their stuff was inside it.

She was entirely unaware of this development. 

So were the local authorities and utilities companies that would have required notifications.

In news reports, one neighbor said, "He bulldozed all her clothes in there. Washer, dryer, furnace, hot water heater, everything was still in there. In fact, her medication was still in there."

The bulldozerer, James Rhein, supposedly said the house was in such bad shape it could only be demolished. Even if this were the case, it still strikes me as something one wouldn't really do spontaneously. Even if the couple had been having an argument about how he never got around to the old job jar. 

The Rhein home in its happier, pre-annihilated state.

I think Mr. Rhein is in a heap of trouble, and as a friendly gesture from me, a fellow Hudson Valleyian, I thought I could offer some more plausible excuses for why he tore down the house without warning anyone. No one likes to sound completely batpoop crazy. So maybe he could say...

• "Moving is such a pain, you know?"
• "I left the keys in the excavator while I went for a sandwich -- it must have started up itself!"
• "I had this pirate map that showed buried treasure under the foundation."
• "I thought we could recycle the old place."
• "She kept telling me to pick up the room, so..."
• "I was gonna have the whole new house built as a surprise, but she came home too soon!"
• "I was aiming for my dadblasted neighbor's place but I missed."
• "Practicing to try out for a new job in Detroit."
• "My mother-in-law was supposed to move in and I was desperate."
• "I thought Ty Pennington would build me a new house."
• "That excavator was a Decepticon!"
• "Termites."
• "Just as I was about to dig the new well, a micro hurricane struck."
• "Too many Twinkies."
• "I call it Suburban Renewal."
• "I was gonna just take off one room, but it's like potato chips. Once you start it's hard to stop."
• "It's not destroyed. It's underinflated."
• "Ghosts?"
• "You mean my wife wasn't inside?"