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2006-06-10 @ 10:05 p.m.
the real weapons of mass destruction -- gardening shears


Have you ever seen something that made you angry and tried to do something about it and been thwarted? Okay, the thing I was angry about was not, in the grand scheme of things, THAT important. I mean I may try to pass myself off as a flippant smart ass, but I do care about certain things. Especially when they involve nature. I don�t like seeing nature being screwed around with. Animals. The air. Trees. I�m rather fond of them. They give me pleasure. I find spiritual comfort in them. When I go hiking, its one of the few times, I�m at peace. I love hearing the wind blowing through the trees. I love seeing the first greenery popping out in the Spring, especially in a place with such rough winters.

So what made me so angry today? Well, when I walked out the front door of my apartment, which opens to a very lovely view of a flowing creek, lush green bushes and several large trees, I saw the most hideous sight imaginable. The Creek Freak Guy was over across the creek with a saw. He had sawed off about 2/3 of the tree branches of the stunning crabapple tree, leaving nothing but a few desolate sticks. And then he was deep into cutting this beautifully lush bush that gracefully drapes over the creek. Its a rather large bush. Its actually so large it reaches up to the second level where I live. In the Spring it had been a large beautiful mass of yellow flowers. Now it was sawed off to the ground with just sticks poking up from the bare earth. I felt my chest tighten when I saw all this. It was like seeing your child get hit by a car. Too dramatic a description? Well, that�s how it felt to me, damnit. I felt sick. Creek Freak didn�t even look up. He was too busy madly sawing away at branches.

I walked out to my car and immediately called the landlord. It took a couple of minutes to get through to him, but I told him what the Creek Freak was doing...cutting down trees and such and the landlord just sort of snickered and said, �Well, he�s certainly civic-minded.�

What the fuck does that mean? ...�Well, he�s certainly civic-minded.� He�s, in essence, destroying your property asshole. Aren�t you going to do anything? He then finally said he�d talk to him the next time he saw him. Wow. How totally efficient of him.

So I went and got my groceries. When I got home, it looked even worse. He was way deeper into our beautiful bush that overhangs the creek. I walked into my apartment and just started sobbing. I just could not stop crying. I felt helpless. I knew from my last �conversation� with this nutball, that there is no talking to him. He�s obviously mentally disturbed. My guess is that he�s bipolar (a subject I know well) and that he�s in a manic phase and that he�s totally out of control. And nobody is calling him on it. And I�m wondering....am I the only one who thinks this is unusual? A guy who stands in a creek every day for 2 freakin months, fucking raking it? Hello??

So once I got my crying jag under control, I called my landlord again. I told him the Creek Freak was still at it, destroying everything in sight. And you know what the landlord said to me? �Well, you don�t have to look out THAT window. You can just look out the window on the other side.� WTF??? I mean WTF???? One of the reasons, I chose this apartment was because of the natural setting. The creek. The trees. The lush greenery. It certainly wasn�t for the apartment itself. My last apartment was next to a fucking dental building. I had dentists looking in my fucking windows all day. And plus there was like not one single plant in the whole yard. No bushes. No trees. There were only the flower seeds I planted when I lived there. I hated it! And then I found this place and it was like nirvana. So he once again said like, meh, yeah, I�ll talk to him, the next time I see him.

In the meantime, I could still hear Creek Freak outside going snip-snip-snip and than branches dropping. I was really upset so then I looked up the phone number for the police. I didn�t want to call 911, since this wasn�t really an emergency. So I called the cops. I explained that a mentally unstable guy was out cutting down trees in an apartment complex. They asked if he had permission and I said No and they said they�d send someone over. So then I stood in the middle of my apartment frozen in anxiety. I wouldn�t give the police my name because I didn�t want them coming up to my apartment and Creek Freak seeing that. Because frankly, I�m starting to feel afraid of the guy. I nearly bumped into him the other day going down the stairs, and he had what can only be described as a crazy wango-wango look in his eyes. And I work with mentally ill people. I know about this stuff.

So in about 10 minutes I heard the snip-snip-snip stop and some talking. And then when I looked out the back window about 5 minutes later, the cop car was driving away. And the snip-snip-snipping continued. Fuck! The cops obviously didn�t do a damn thing or he must have told them he had permission to destroy everything prune and they bought it.

I did later peek out at the carnage that was once a beautiful leafy, idyllic, bird-filled oasis and it was hideous. I live behind an old factory and now I�m looking at this big ugly wall (shades of the dentist building). All the beautiful greenery overhanging the creek is nearly gone and its just an ugly metal culvert with rocks. And how I�m just wondering...what is left to hack up? If you guessed the chick who called the police...

BINGO.




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