The Mysterious Disappearance of Plants
Some of you must have heard me lament about the loss of a few potted plants. We would keep them within our compound wall, however, due to the wall's height it is easily scaled.
Things got worse when our neighbors moved away. Their house is now abandoned, and while there are some ... interesting occurrences to report, people treating the place as a casual flea market is getting more and more common. Each day and night, people with no claims to this house come with no masks, or any protective equipment. They clamber in and look through all the windows and pilfer all the wood, pots and other items that the owners must have left with the view of getting back to them.
You might say, well isn't it the neighbor's fault for leaving their stuff outside? And I say, why not? It's still inside their gate. It still is their property. What makes people think these things are theirs to take?
And these entries escalated when we lost some of our potted plants as well. My father spends around half of his day, tending to these plants. I lend him a hand as well.(Turns out I am capable of not killing plants I touch, yay)
Of these perhaps the ones he liked the most were two relatively young apple bushes he kept with the utmost care. These things took about a year to get to their current state and still look very young and unremarkable. He also had some decorative plants whose name I never bothered finding out. One morning he tells us the plants have disappeared. The whole day was spent moping and wondering who could have done it. A few suspects emerged.
One was a curious girl who kept asking my father everyday about all the plants that he grew. He told her about all the things he was growing. She was also heard asking the weird question of whether he wanted them. My only feeling at the time was saying 'Listen here, you lil **** we are trying to grow them. Obviously we would want them'. My dad however is much more kinder than I am and laughed and said, yes indeed we needed these.
The other group was a bunch of boys who were noisy, and general troublemakers. They enjoy pulling apart plants and trees, just because they can. They think the world of themselves.
With these two suspects, we continuously kept a lookout for them and moved our other pots as far away as we could. But short of keeping them inside there wasn't much we could do. One sleepy afternoon, my father yelled and we all heard screams from outside. One of the boys had climbed in and was in the process of picking some of the wood apart. He was terrified when he heard a disembodied voice (to him) yelling at him.
He ran away. My mother recognized him as the younger brother of one of her students. The same day she found her student roaming about. (In case you were wondering why were a bunch of children without PPE roaming around unsupervised - I can only presume the parents themselves couldn't stand their spawn)
My mother took him to task, mentioning the stolen pots and warned him about the perils of stealing. The boy was so offended and felt so wrong, he rounded up his cronies and went around looking for those pots.
In a surprising twist, it turned out the girl was some sort of a plant thief and had collected countless potted plants and had arranged all of them on her balcony. Cue the reports to my mom. My dad - for the first time in days showing signs of excitement, showed them a picture of his beloved apple plants. To be honest I never thought we would ever see those things again.
However, true to their word, the boys brought back the plants!
My dad rejoiced, and almost like a bonus they brought back one of the decorative ones as well. Hands were shook, sweets were distributed and we all went away happy. We later wondered how did they know which decorative plant to bring back and whether they were also involved in this stealing business. But this isn't a True Crime podcast - we let it be, happy that we got our pots back.
Until next time,
DragonRider
Things got worse when our neighbors moved away. Their house is now abandoned, and while there are some ... interesting occurrences to report, people treating the place as a casual flea market is getting more and more common. Each day and night, people with no claims to this house come with no masks, or any protective equipment. They clamber in and look through all the windows and pilfer all the wood, pots and other items that the owners must have left with the view of getting back to them.
You might say, well isn't it the neighbor's fault for leaving their stuff outside? And I say, why not? It's still inside their gate. It still is their property. What makes people think these things are theirs to take?
And these entries escalated when we lost some of our potted plants as well. My father spends around half of his day, tending to these plants. I lend him a hand as well.(Turns out I am capable of not killing plants I touch, yay)
Of these perhaps the ones he liked the most were two relatively young apple bushes he kept with the utmost care. These things took about a year to get to their current state and still look very young and unremarkable. He also had some decorative plants whose name I never bothered finding out. One morning he tells us the plants have disappeared. The whole day was spent moping and wondering who could have done it. A few suspects emerged.
One was a curious girl who kept asking my father everyday about all the plants that he grew. He told her about all the things he was growing. She was also heard asking the weird question of whether he wanted them. My only feeling at the time was saying 'Listen here, you lil **** we are trying to grow them. Obviously we would want them'. My dad however is much more kinder than I am and laughed and said, yes indeed we needed these.
The other group was a bunch of boys who were noisy, and general troublemakers. They enjoy pulling apart plants and trees, just because they can. They think the world of themselves.
With these two suspects, we continuously kept a lookout for them and moved our other pots as far away as we could. But short of keeping them inside there wasn't much we could do. One sleepy afternoon, my father yelled and we all heard screams from outside. One of the boys had climbed in and was in the process of picking some of the wood apart. He was terrified when he heard a disembodied voice (to him) yelling at him.
He ran away. My mother recognized him as the younger brother of one of her students. The same day she found her student roaming about. (In case you were wondering why were a bunch of children without PPE roaming around unsupervised - I can only presume the parents themselves couldn't stand their spawn)
My mother took him to task, mentioning the stolen pots and warned him about the perils of stealing. The boy was so offended and felt so wrong, he rounded up his cronies and went around looking for those pots.
In a surprising twist, it turned out the girl was some sort of a plant thief and had collected countless potted plants and had arranged all of them on her balcony. Cue the reports to my mom. My dad - for the first time in days showing signs of excitement, showed them a picture of his beloved apple plants. To be honest I never thought we would ever see those things again.
However, true to their word, the boys brought back the plants!
My dad rejoiced, and almost like a bonus they brought back one of the decorative ones as well. Hands were shook, sweets were distributed and we all went away happy. We later wondered how did they know which decorative plant to bring back and whether they were also involved in this stealing business. But this isn't a True Crime podcast - we let it be, happy that we got our pots back.
Until next time,
DragonRider
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