full force response

I was sitting at my dining room table doing paperwork Saturday when I noticed a police officer in my back yard. "Interesting," I thought. So I called the dog and Daniel in and asked him to play in his room before going outside myself.
As I walked out front, I saw a police officer climbing the fence to my neighbor's yard. As I watched, he walked all the way around their pool - a popular place with myself and Daniel in the summer. As he was looking for a place to climb back out of the yard, I called to him that the gate was unlocked. "Thanks," he replied. And around the corner came the dad.
"Have you seen a little girl?" he asked. My heart skipped a beat.
"Blond hair, about this long, blue eyes, named..." and I had to reply that I hadn't seen her, but that there were a bunch of kids playing at the house on the hill behind me all day. So off he went, in the middle of a parent's nightmare.
The point is, he had backup. Lots of it. I continued to watch and I saw no fewer than eight police cars canvassing the neighborhood over the next half-hour. And I guess they found her, because then they all left.
So Daniel and I had a talk about why it's so important that, if he's playing outside, he stay in our yard. Longtime readers will remember when he ran away with the three-year-old next door, and the only reason it was funny to me then is because I found him before I even started looking. But, oh, was he in trouble! And he doesn't even remember it now.
So as the weather gets nicer and the kids spend more time outside, maybe it's time to have a little chat about boundaries and wandering off.
Either that or get a subcutaneous GPS. It'll come in handy when they're teenagers, too. (That's a joke, y'all)
--Misty