Stop Me Before I Joke Again….
I’ve got a county roadsign at the bottom of my driveway. SOUTH CAMANO DRIVE one side, TIMOTHY WAY on the other. Not much I can say or do about it, and really, who cares? Other than me…. I have to mow around it, look at it, landscape it. I guess you have to put em someplace until we all have GPS in a circuit board implanted in our heads at birth.
A friend gave me a plastic heron years ago. She stuck it down my my pond where herons at the time were snacking on my goldfish. Goldfish, for you non-yuppies, are baby koi. Pretty bottom feeders. This poly-tri-hex-styro heron showed up one morning and I spent five minutes throwing rocks at it to scare it away. Plastic herons, in case you are as dumb as me, don’t scare easily.
So a month ago I took this very life-like facsimile of a heron and roosted him at the top of my unwanted, unasked for, roadsign. Got a ladder, some Captain Kangaroo materials for affixing the bird, and hauled up to the top of this 10 foot signpost. Which, having rotted beneath ground, snapped right off —- and me, the bird and the sign all tumbled not so comically into the highway. No one was killed, no real birds were harmed, no passing cars were struck by a highway sign and I was only treated for a twisted ankle. An hour later, pissed off, humiliated, somewhat discouraged, I had the heron atop a shorter sign in its new hole, no charge to the County.
For awhile passersby would do a doubletake over that heron perched above them as they whizzed by at 50 mph. I started to LIKE my county sign. Neighbors mentioned the bird, we all had a good laugh. At least until the county sign guy, and yeah, there’s an officially designated one, took the bird down, no doubt a violation of RCW 367-15B, No Flamingos, Herons or Owls Can Be Affixed to County Signs, Whether Plastic, Cardboard or Dead. My first inclination upon discovering my bird purloined was to remove the road sign too. No heron — no sign. Easy equation. Two can play this game without a sense of humor.
But you know — and I sorta know — I was taking a chance messing with government property. Probably lucky the Sheriff didn’t follow up with a fine or a warrant. ‘We’re gonna let this one go, kid, but don’t pull this stunt again….”
My friend who gave me this bird in the first place went down to the county sheds to retrieve her gift. They made her promise the scofflaw who put it up on their sign wouldn’t do it again. And she made ME promise too. So if you’re cruising by Timothy Way where it hits South Camano Drive and you see a heron perched like a Pterodactyl on the sign — for god’s sake slow down! That’s going to be a real bird. One that’s ready to swoop or poop….
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