It’s often nice to enjoy nature, even the simple aspects of it. Green parks, proud and majestic trees, meandering streams and rivers – they’re all examples of the outdoors that can be admired within the confines of many urban and suburban environments. The great part is that it doesn’t take much money at all to simply appreciate some of these parts of nature.
There are some individuals, however, who try to take matters into their own hands, and are a bit too “overzealous”. In this 14th edition of Squirreling Gone Wild, I’ll share a recent scene that I encountered where some people tried to take frugality just a bit too far when enjoying nature.
The experience I had with these characters started innocently enough. I was driving down a suburban boulevard on a recent warm, summer day. This was a four lane road, with a median in between both sides of traffic, and was not heavily trafficked. The median, as the road approached the traffic light, was very nicely landscaped. Highlighting the landscaping was a nice arrangement of flowers that was on a slightly elevated grade. I’m not a flower expert (don’t know too many guys that are), so I couldn’t tell you what kind they were. What I do know, however, is that the flowers were yellow, red, and very vibrant.
So, as I approached the stoplight, I met a yellow light about to turn red. Naturally, I stopped at the light. Then, to my left, I saw a car pull up. Immediately, the passenger door next to me open, as did the backseat door on the other side of the car. Two women scurried out of the car, and made their way to the median. One looked to be in her 50’s, the other in her 20’s. Perhaps a mother and daughter.
In the blink of an eye, they were furiously pulling flowers. I sat there amused and stunned. They just pulled and pulled and kept on pulling. I kept the window rolled down, and could hear them speaking to each other in excited, hurried tone while they accumulated flowers. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, as it didn’t appear to be English. Regardless, they clearly getting a kick out of this. They had these mischievous grins on their faces as they kept pulling flowers.
Finally, a man in the car waved to them as the light was about to turn green. They each carried an arm full of flowers to the car, tossed them inside, then got in. At that point, the light turned green, and they took off.
It all happened so fast.
I drove off after that, and chuckled at how sneaky those people were. Then, my humor turned to a more realistic view of what these clowns did.
They took flowers that were intended to be for the public, paid for by taxpayer dollars, and took them for themselves. They had absolutely no regard for the right thing to do in that situation.
So, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that these people absolutely knew that they were doing something wrong. They had those naughty smiles as they accumulated flowers at a dizzying rate.
What could I have done differently? This was the thought in my mind as I kept on driving. Maybe I could have used this new smartphone I bought, and taken a video of them along with their car’s license plate number. Perhaps the local police would have liked to have seen it? I would guess that it’s against the city’s ordinance to take public property like that. Or, maybe I could have just gotten out of the car and asked them to stop doing it.
Alas, I was just sitting there stunned as I had previously watched them, so they got away.
I wonder what they did with those flowers. Did they put them in a vase in their home? They could have filled several vases the way they were going. Or perhaps they’re going to some function and want to take a bouquet of flowers. Maybe someone they know had a tragedy and they wanted to brighten the person’s day?
Regardless, it was frugality run amok, what those frugal flower bandits did!
Have you ever seen someone do something so blatantly tacky? Have YOU actually done something tacky like this? As you know, it’s safe to confess here:)
