In 1983, a rash of lawn ornament thefts was taking place throughout the Rogue Valley. Garden gnomes, lawn jockeys, plastic fawns and rabbits, and pink flamingos. Scores of pink flamingos. If I recall correctly, even the Dari-Mart cow disappeared one foggy night.
I was a senior in high school at the time. There were rumors that a couple of my classmates were involved in the nighttime shenanigans that resulted in dozens of police reports about missing yard decor. It's been 25 years since the thefts took place, and I don't know if there's a statute of limitations issue at play here. But just to be safe, I'll let them continue to bask in semi-anonymity. I'm still not absolutely sure they were involved, because they never really admitted to any involvement, at least not to me, but I had a pretty good idea Mouse and the Attorney were part of the gang.
There was one particular yard on Oak Street that suffered a greater loss than most. Everyone knew him as PJ, an eccentric (which is sort of redundant when speaking of anyone who's lived in Ashland for more than 10 years) propmaster at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He had a menagerie of pink flamingos on his front lawn, about a dozen of them. Well, maybe 5 or 6, lining the walk up to his door. Then one evening they disappeared.
It made front page news in the Daily Tidings. In English class, there was a lot of snickering. But no direct confession from Mouse and the Attorney. But we all knew. Well, we all suspected.
Months went by. PJ's lawn was still barren, the flamingos never recovered by the police. The ring of lawn ornament thieves must've moved on to other things, because I don't remember hearing about them again.
Until they showed up on the front lawn of the college next Easter.
Bright and early that Sunday morning, dozens of pink flamingos showed up on the campus lawn in front of Britt Hall. A huge flock of them. Not just PJ's 5 or 6. More than several dozen. And they were dressed in Easter finery. Little dresses and shirts, and bonnets. Once again, it made front page news, this time with a photo. The police took the entire congregation of birds down to the station, and a police spokesperson was quoted in the paper encouraging people who had reported stolen flamingos to come down and attempt to claim their recovered property.
Apparently not many people bothered to try to identify their flamingos, but PJ did. In fact, he ended up with the entire flock, wardrobe and all. For years you could still see those flamingos, all dressed up, populating his front yard. For all I know, they're still there, two blocks off of Main Street.
Meanwhile, Mouse, the Attorney and I all graduated from high school. At the last minute I ditched my plans to go to the UofO and instead signed up as a Psych major at the college in Ashland. That first semester I broke up with my high school boyfriend of 3 years and started dating Camo-Boy, a tall, skinny Sophomore in combat boots who hailed from another town and lived in the dorms. He took me to a Wall of Voodoo concert in SF on our first date. But he was quiet, very shy, and didn't talk much.
One winter day in 1984, Camo-Boy was off studying at the library. I was sitting in his dorm room, awaiting his return. I was alone in his personal space for the first time. I don't recall if I just got snoopy, or if I was looking for a pen in his desk drawer (okay, so I was just being snoopy), but what I found was an envelope of photographs. I thought maybe I'd found pictures of his ex-girlfriend, but what I found absolutely shocked me. I couldn't believe my eyes.
There were flamingos in various stages of undress. Naked, piled in a bathtub, metal legs askew. There were hands, prophylacticated in rubber dishwashing gloves, washing and rubbing down each flamingo. Then photos of flamingos being fitted with little bonnets and frilly dresses. What followed next were photos of a breaking dawn in Ashland, taken from a spot I knew all too well. Across from 7-11, the green lawn of the college campus, dotted with flamingos, dressed in their Easter best.
When Camo-Boy returned from the library, I held up the envelope of photos and with one eyebrow raised, I said, "Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do." And finally, the dam broke. He started talking, and never stopped. He told me how he'd been roomies the year before with a mutual friend from high school that had graduated a few years ahead of me, but surprisingly not Mouse nor The Attorney. In fact, he never mentioned their names at all. I still think they were involved, but had been enlisted as minions, and not masterminds of the Easter Flamingo migration. He told me how they'd spent their nights prowling yards throughout a 2 county area, and how they'd planned to return the flock en mass to a public place. How they'd washed and wiped them down to remove any fingerprints. And how he'd sifted through the bins of baby clothes at Goodwill for weeks to find the right garments to outfit an entire flock of pink plastic flamingos.
Then he confessed to a few more nighttime ninja escapades that shocked me. Not simple lawn decor thefts, but stories that involved air conditioning vents and computers. Stories that made my jaw drop and kept me enraptured for hours. Stories like this one. He was far sneakier and interesting than I'd given him credit for, and suddenly much sexier after the realization that was a prowler who stole from the rich and gave to the propmaster, and not just a member of some simple flamingo liberation group, like these guys. He was so cool. I moved out of my parent's house and followed that guy all the way to the east coast. Didn't last long though. The last I heard, he'd joined the Army. Special Ops. Or so I imagine. I'm sure it's something covert.
The flamingos, so I understand, all still reside with PJ, and now their outfits change with the season, but it hasn't been without continuing fashionnappings. A friend says she kidnapped one of his flamingos in '85, and outfitted it with a sombrero and poncho before putting it back. Some of the other absconded lawn ornaments continued their journey around Southern Oregon for a few years. The porcelain cow ended up passing hands a few different times, once ending up in an encriminating photo smoking a cigarette in bed with a companion, and as late as 1986 was still moving around town; once chained to a tree (see evidence below) in a yard near Lithia Park.
There's a company now that actually sells pink flamingo lawn ornaments (see below) with a complete set of 8 different outfits for various seasons and holidays for less than $25. I'm tempted to get one, but I know it'd just be a matter of time before some teenage gang of ninja flamingo thieves swoops in and steals it under the cover of a warm summer evening, and then months later, after I'd moved on and replaced it with a less attractive ceramic gnome or a Chia-bunny, I'd be pressured to go down to the police station to identify my bird when it ends up on the lawn of city hall with a bunch of its buddies.
