Flower Thieves

A couple of Sundays ago, I was drinking some coffee and reading news on Yahoo. Then I hear Sarah calling to me, "Hey Josh, there's some guy with a knife climbing over our wall!"

Needless to say, I was alarmed. I bolted out in my bathrobe, still clutching my coffee mug, and ran toward our back wall. Sure enough, there was some guy standing on our back wall, taking a machete to our Yucca plants. These plants are commonly known as Spanish Bayonet due to their dagger-like leaves.

For the past few weeks, these plants have been pushing out these amazing flowers, and here was some stranger cutting them off.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He froze.

I scrambled onto the wall so I could get a better view of things. That's when I saw a nurse running away and into the nursing home that's across the alley.

The guy who was hacking my plants slowly climbed down his ladder and started folding it.

I thought about throwing my coffee at him.

"What makes you think you can climb over somebody's wall with a knife and not get your head blown off?"

"I'm sorry."

"This is stealing! You can't just reach into somebody's yard and start hacking up their plants."

I flashbacked to the time (as a kid) I snuck into a neighbor's yard and ripped out all her flowers.

"I'm very sorry."

"Look, all you have to do is knock on my door, and I'll give you the flowers for free."

He nodded as he continued to back away from the wall.

"You work at the nursing home?"

"The lady wanted the flower."

I started picturing some old lady staring out the window of her sickroom and fixating on my Yucca plant. Maybe it rekindled a distant memory.

I crawled down from the wall and started researching the plant. Turns out the flowers are edible. So my "old lady wanting a pretty flower" idea was totally off the mark. Somebody was hungry.

Next year, when the flowers start to pop again, I'll try cooking one.