REALLY?!

An article, from today's "Briefing", thrown by the Dallas Morning News to convince us we NEED a daily paper:

"Charge dropped after serial pruner spends nine hours in jail for thinning thickets in city park"

I would LOVE to meet this lady, based on the following quote about her arrest and time in jail:

Ms. Sandra McFeeley, a 67-year-old attorney, said "I met some neat people. I'd never been in a perp walk before. It was cool."

Now that's my kind of senior citizen!! Totally embracing her racy, criminal pruning ways.*

It seems this woman has a little OCD with trimming bushes and left the confines of her yard and began grooming the greenbelt.

Can't you hear the astonishment from the city park maintenance manager at Ms. McFeeley's obvious, law breaking scheme?

"She was going out to the greenbelt area and trimming it as she saw fit. We asked her to stop because she didn't have a work agreement with the city."

GASP. No work permit? Forty years ago this was called BEING NEIGHBORLY and TAKING CARE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD. Now it's a crime.

Another person in this story whose hand I'd love to shake is neighbor Mary Ann Jenkins. She shows her penchant for good, old fashioned sarcasm with this gem:

"It's hard enough to keep that neighborhood nice without having the police haul people off for felonious gardening."

HA. Felonious gardening. PLEASE, we beg you, come do some felonious gardening in OUR YARD. PLEASE.

The police incident report alleges $4500 worth of property damage for "vegetation" and "clean up/removal".

Um, isn't that EXACTLY what the hell we pay you to do ANYWAY, park department people? Shouldn't you be writing her a check for her illegal work?

The biggest chuckle in the whole article was in the two final paragraphs. It was the government doing what they do best: talking out of both sides of their mouth.

Assistant park director Dave Strueber said the park department never intended to have Ms. McFeeley arrested. The next sentence says "A park department employee accompanied the arresting officers."

Then, surprise, surprise, the article ends with this news: it turns out that the park department is "no longer pressing the case".

If you happen to know Ms. McFeeley, will you please.please.please send her number our way?

We need a good outlaw to keep our lawn looking tip-top.


*Unlike the rest of her totally uncool crowd of friends around the same age who only know how to use prune juice.