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Thanks so much, and enjoy today’s Ailantha!
THE PINK FLAMINGO MAFIA
My initial reaction was that I really wished someone would flamingo me. My second reaction was that I really wanted to flamingo someone else.
Then I was hit with the inspiration: I would pink flamingo The Posse! The Posse - aka The Panera Posse - is my girl group that meets every Wednesday morning, formerly at Panera,
The only consideration was that there were, beside myself, nine active Posse members. That would mean that I would have to procure 18 flamingos. That was a lot of flamingos. And where, I wondered, does one go in these parts to buy large quantities of flamingos? Where does one to go buy anything at all that one might wish to acquire? Amazon, of course!
So I proceeded to Amazon where I learned that I could buy pink flamingos in bulk parcels of 12 each.
The following morning Tommy called me to ask if I knew about the birdies, and I instantly fessed up. Tommy was glad to hear that I was the pink flamingo perpetrator as neither he nor Emily quite knew what to make of the mysterious birds perched on their lawn. Was it a friendly gesture, they wondered, or perhaps something of a more sinister nature, akin to the marking of a victim's house for identification by a hit man, a scenario they'd once seen on a TV crime show?
"Should we call the police?" Emily wondered.
"How about we call my mom first," Tommy suggested.
Once they learned that it was I, and not the Mafia, behind the escapade they were tickled as pink as the flamingos, and from this first successful hit-and-run was born the Pink Flamingo Mafia. All two of us.
I took Emily's advice as I planned our big hit to the lawns of all nine Posse members for that night, Sunday night. I decided that after all the birds were assembled,
"Aw, for cryin' out loud, Tom," I pouted, "this isn't a Boy Scout function! It's a danged clandestine operation!"
The Scoutmaster rolled his eyes, duly switched to a dark grey hoodie, and loaded up the flamingos.
"What if they do?" said I. "It's not like if I'm arrested I'll lose my piano-teaching business. I've already lost my piano teaching business to COVID. And it's not like if you're arrested you'll be fired from you're job. You're retired. So even if we are arrested, what difference will it make?"
But luck was on our side, and nobody caught us or called the police.
It took us about an hour of quick work to hit all our precalculated targets. I had one pair of flamingos left over and so I thought I'd do a hit on our front yard, too. But then I thought of one of our neighbors whom I reckoned it would be fun to hit as well. Besides, we did actually already have a cute little flamingo perched in our back yard.
Epilogue:
As of today, Today, March 11, to my knowledge five of the twelve targets of the Pink Flamingo Mafia have solved the mystery of the birds in their yard.
One from among those who still don't know who flamingoed them put up this post on Facebook on the day after the hit:
A couple of recipients decided that they were going to pass the flamingos on to another friend or family member's front yard with an additional attachment stating that whoever recieves the friendly flamingos should then in turn pass them on to someone else's front yard, and so on. I think it's a spendid idea. Maybe the Pink Flamingo Mafia will, in fact, become a thing.