At a party one night in our Smoking Garden, a friend was telling about a fundraiser her church youth group had done back in Massachusetts.
“That’s a great idea,” I said. After all, she was a United Church of Christ pastor with all kinds of connections. “UCC,” for short.
Next thing I knew, a big sign and box appeared in our Quaker meetinghouse, warning Friends to buy flamingo insurance. This is New Hampshire, remember, not Florida.
One night after our party, our renowned sculptor Jane and her husband had come home to find her flock of pink flamingos missing from their yard and garden, but a sign stood in their place: “They needed to be quarantined.”
Uh-huh. I was as baffled as anyone that Sunday as we entered the meetinghouse and faced that big sign and its box of warning.
Here’s how it worked: you could donate any amount for insurance, but if someone else trumped that figure by offering more, you could still get flocked. And if you were flocked, there would be an envelope for another donation for their removal. In other words, you could get hit coming and going.
Then the plastic birds – and wooden cutouts – began appearing in Friends’ lawns. Folks living in apartments weren’t immune, either: the birds showed up strung around balconies or in the backseats of cars left unlocked or wrapped around cars that had been locked.
For the most part, it was great fun – even for the police officers called out to investigate rustling sounds in the night. We had no idea who was in on it, and nobody from our Smoking Garden party guest list was looking guilty.
When we were hit, one of our neighbors laughed and explained why she knew we hadn’t selected the birds as permanent decor: “You’re too organic.”
(Ouch!)
The Sunday morning the operation came out in the open, a guest to Meeting told me, “We did the same thing, down in Connecticut.”
“UCC?” I countered.
“Yes, how’d you know.”
“Just a lucky guess.”
So it had been the Meeting’s kids who were keeping the secret, along with a couple of very, very discrete adults. The money we raised went to the Heifer Project. Our children had to decide what kind of animals they’d send to the Third World – something big, like a cow, or something smaller, like a lot of chickens? And then they took a field trip to the project’s New England farm to check out all the options.
It’s a much better story than the one about my ex-wife’s two birds – the ones a friend of hers stole from my yard after the separation.
Flocked
our Lady of Pink Flamingos keeps taunting
“Have you been flocked?”
where’s it going, our summer of plastic flamingos?
poem copyright 2014 by Jnana Hodson
Jnana's Red Barn 
I have seen this done before. Very funny to see a yard full of pink flamingos.
Indeed.
That’s a really good idea and lots if fun too.
Sounds like another youth group’s about to adopt it. Let us know how it goes!
Have lived in Miami most of my life. All those corny visiting NJ ers and NY ers fell in love with and returned with a set of plastic flamingos. Oh, how we would laugh at them. There is usually a flock at the pond at the center oval or horse and dog tracks here.
We made fun of them, too, and I guess that’s what makes the “flocking” concept viable. (Oh, the horror of having them on our yards?) Our artist friend (and my ex) obtained the birds entirely as jokes, and it worked.
This is a great story and a great idea. I don’t have any flamingos, but maybe I should get some. 😀
I’m sure there are variations on a theme to be developed.