Rats in the roof destroyed (and caused a few false alarms) the burglar alarm mum had fitted when she moved here. I replaced that with a wireless one which hasn't been armed in a long while. There is always someone at home and possible night time movements these days are such that the only thing I might reasonably be able to arm the alarm for at night is the main entrance via the kitchen.

I think we've had two possible thefts in the say 20+ years we've lived here.

With the first, dad feels sure a few token coins were taken when he was in hospital. It's an awkward one. I suspect he is right but his memory isn't 100% reliable and we can get a number of visitors (all trusted but I suppose you never know) who could casually pick something up. We didn't report the suspected incident or start a trail of questioning people but it did start me on the trail of installing cameras.

The second may have been an accident, I don't know. I'd left my step ladder outside my shed and it disappeared. I had (most of) the cameras then and there was a recording of someone who had done a couple of jobs here picking it up walking off with it. Mum dealt with it from there. I think she phoned and got the wife who she asked "did your husband mistakenly pick up our step ladder" to which she got a reply like "he's mentioned that and intends returning it tomorrow". The ladder came back and that was that.