Should I be worried?

You know those campy horror flicks? You know, the ones where there's something out there. None of the characters know just what IT is, but IT's getting closer. They hear noises at night and they find evidence (e.g., animal corpses) the next morning. Most troubling, the "evidence" keeps getting closer and closer to the camp! Okay, I can't think of a specific movie, but you know the type, right? Well, I've got a similar, but much less sinister (I hope), situation.

Though I now live in Decatur, I still subscribe to the Huntsville Times. It is a better paper than the Decatur Daily, but the primary reason I still "take the Times" is the NY Times crossword puzzles. Regardless, I've long noticed something odd about the delivery of my paper as opposed to my neighbors who subscribe to the DD. My Huntsville paper is delivered much closer to the house. Let me explain.

When I go out to get the paper in the morning I've noticed that the neighbors' papers usually lie about the middle of the sidewalk. My Huntsville Times, however, usually is right up against the porch. The same pattern even holds on Sunday when I get both papers -- DD out around the sidewalk, the Times much closer to the house. I just assumed the Times delivery guy had a much better throwing arm. Several weeks ago, though, I noticed a small change. Not only was my Times closer to the house, it began to be placed with almost surgical precision. This is going to be hard to explain without a picture, but I'll try.

I have a rather large front porch and there's a sort of carport attached to the side. The porch steps lead down from the back of the porch and when my car is parked under the carport, the back third or so of the car ends up almost blocking the porch steps. Basically that means there's a very small "alley" of sorts between the car and the end of the porch. A couple of months ago, that's where my copy of the Times started showing up. True, a VERY accurate newspaper tosser could deliver a paper there from the street. In fact, the usual newspaper spot wasn't all the way up in the little "alley", more like just behind my car. Still, it would be a hard spot to consistently toss the newspaper from the street and it was eerie how close the paper was to the same spot each morning. I had toyed with the idea that someone, an early morning walker perhaps, was tossing my paper from its landing spot to the more convenient spot right next to the porch steps. Recently, though, I've begun to question just how my paper is delivered.

A week or so ago, we had a good, long, all-night rain. Those rains usually wreak havoc on my newspaper because, invariably, the paper ends up lying in a puddle a couple of hours or there's a rip in the plastic sleeve or something else happens. The usual Times spot is pretty sheltered, but it was wet the morning after the all-night rain. When I went out that morning, though, my paper wasn't in the normal spot; it was actually resting on the porch steps. I know most of y'all aren't familiar with the layout of my house and porch, but that's even farther from the street and almost completely blocked from the street by my car. There is (virtually) NO WAY the paper could have been tossed right there from the street. If that's not enough, a couple of mornings later, I found the paper lying right on the welcome mat in front of my door!

I don't really care if someone is coming up on my porch uninvited, but it did kind of give me the heebie jeebies. The unknown person was not only lurking around my porch, he was getting closer. Outside of physically coming in the house, he couldn't get much closer. Again, I wasn't really "scared" that someone might have been coming onto my porch, but it did seem odd. Still and all, I'd pretty much written it off as the effort of a friendly neighbor. I did wonder why this unknown person felt compelled to move my paper, but not the neighbors'. [I did consider whether Porch Cat had decided to start earning his food by fetching the paper, but that seemed a little far fetched, even for me.] Still, I didn't think too much about it, until this morning.

For some insane reason, Gumbo (the demon cat) decided that waking Daddy at 5:30 or 6:00 was not sufficient. No, this morning Gumbo threw her wakeup party at 4:08 a.m. After attempting to ignore her (yes, laugh at the prospect of ignoring a cat), I gave in and stumbled to the kitchen and tossed some food into her dish. As I started back to bed, though, inspiration struck. I knew the Times often was delivered very early in the morning, so I thought I'd check whether it had arrived yet. Surely, I thought, the hypothetical friendly neighbor will not have gotten to it yet, not at 4:08 a.m. It was still very dark outside, but when I opened the door, there was my paper, right smack dab in the middle of the welcome mat. Honestly, I couldn't even open the door without scooting the paper away. AND this was at 4:08 a.m.!

That kind of has me freaked. I'm certain the Times guy cannot make such an accurate throw from the street and I can't imagine the friendly neighbor is out walking or whatever at 4 in the morning -- and if he is, why is he creeping around on my porch at that hour? So how the heck does my paper get delivered with such precision? The only thing I can come up with is that the Times delivery guy is vying for WORLD'S BEST ALL-TIME DELIVERY guy, so he's actually getting out of his car and bringing the paper up to the porch. Why, though, would a newspaper route guy do that?

The whole thing has me flummoxed. Any ideas? Would this creep anybody else out or am I just being a tad too paranoid?