Shower prowler stalks tiny Australian town

She said her house was hit last week when the prowler crawled under her house and started banging on the floor in the early hours of the morning. "It was pretty scary," she said.

Another of the town’s 1,700 residents, Judy Hubner, said the mystery man recently pelted the local policeman with oranges. "He also runs up people’s front stairs and bangs on the door, then runs off, or bangs on windows," she said.

Tieri’s only policeman, Senior Constable Bill Napthali, described the man as "a real pest". "He pelts the police car with sticks and berries, and before you can react, he’s disappeared in the dark, and you can hear him laughing as he goes." Napthali, who suspects the man has Army training, recently called in a police dog and officers with night sensitive video cameras.

"When I set up the police dog on the prowler’s regular trail, he operated 100 metres away. When I quietly shifted the dog to where he was, the prowler turned up from where I had moved the dog from," he said.

The assailant also avoided officers sitting under targeted houses with video cameras at the ready. "Somehow, the prowler knew they were there," said Napthali, adding that he has stolen food from some homes and taken showers in others. "When he’s preying, he’s very quiet. When he wants to play, he makes his presence known before just disappearing silently into the thick bush that surrounds the town," Napthali said.

"When the residents chase him into the bush, he teases them by throwing stones behind them, then he pops up somewhere else laughing. He moves so silently you just don’t know where he is."