CLINTON — Joel Mooney might have wanted a different type of phone call from his employee when she called him to tell him his store, Wild Birds Unlimited, had been broken into.

For Mooney, this is a road he’s traveled before. A year ago, someone tried to get inside the store by damaging a plate glass door on the side of the building, cutting himself in the process.

“When they broke out the glass, it just shattered and cut them all to heck,” Mooney said. “There was blood everywhere around the door, but they were unable to get inside the store.”

After replacing the door last year, however, the latest break-in was successful. The thief got away with a minor amount of cash only.

“This door had bars over the glass portion. The thief broke the glass out and reached his hand inside to undo the dead-bolt. But you need a key to do that,” he said. “When they could not find that, they took some sort of device and kicked in the whole door.

“They came in and went right to the till. We had some money in there — petty cash, $100 or so. They looked through other things but nothing else was damaged,” Mooney said.

Mooney, who has owned the bird feeding supply store for almost four years, is not surprised by the crime. He said he will add additional security measures at his store.

“None of our products were taken, so the target was the money. It was very neat — very clean. They didn’t know exactly where the money was but they found it,” Mooney said. “We’re probably going to put in an alarm system since this is the second time, and we’ll secure the doors better.”

Mooney said he doesn’t expect that police will find any additional evidence to locate a suspect.

“It’s not life or death — just money. It is a sad statement but what can you do?” he asked. “We will be removing our petty cash from the building every night. We already were doing that with our sales documents and credit card receipts.”

“It has been an expensive lesson learned that we hope other businesses will learn from our mistake,” he said.

The Island County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the break-in.