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"the secret pink menace"
by renee
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cities are great. in the cities there is crime and drug deals and sirens twenty-four hours out of the day. i have unpleasant, unwashed homeless people living on your front steps and find broken needles when i walk my dog, scooter. between my neighbors fighting and the constant traffic, there is always the sweet sound of the city to lull you to sleep. but in a moment of weakness i accepted a job in the suburbs in florida. i packed up my apartment and left the world of security gates and mace behind. |
what i found was more terrifying than anything i had seen in my eighteen years living in chicago. it was a terrible menace that no one seemed to even notice, and they were everywhere. they had completely invaded the neighborhood, holding dominion over every house. it was the order of the lawn flamingos, and they had me in their sites.
i was first a victim of a pink attack on monday, july seventeenth. i awoke at my normal time, ate breakfast with my kids in my new spacious kitchen, and went into my two car garage with an electronic garage door opener. i backed my light blue minivan carefully out of the driveway, trying to avoid jimmy's tricycle. that's when i spotted it. right by the mailbox, pretending to mind its own business, was a plastic lawn flamingo.
i was horrified! i tore the flamingo from the soft ground with both hands and tossed it into the street, hoping that it would hobble back to from whence it came. i smoked a cigarette to calm my shaken nerves and headed to work, only a few minutes late. |
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by the time i arrived home, i had almost forgotten the morning's terrifying incident but as soon as i turned the corner, i knew that something was wrong. there were at least thirteen flamingos standing innocently in my yard, staring at me in defiance. i pulled my minivan in and closed the garage door, watching carefully to make sure none of them snuck inside. i had to do something quick before the invasion got any worse. |
i took a shovel from the garage and crept into the house, being careful to avoid the windows. i let myself out the back door and slowly circled the house, but it was too late. the flamingos had discovered my sinister plan and had taken flight. the only sign that the flock had been there, guarding my lawn, was hundreds of tiny holes marking the grass where their metal legs had made their stand. | 
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by now i knew that they would not give up as easily as i had thought. couldn't close my eyes and hope they stayed away. if the rest of the neighborhood wanted to cater to this strange pink invasion, more power to them, but i was not going to subject my family to this threat. at dinner i told my boys i didn't want them playing at the houses that had flamingos in the yard because i didn't want them to be vulnerable to the brainwashed families inside. then i calmly did the dishes, dressed in a warm sweater, and prepared to spend the night on the front lawn with my dog, scooter, defending my home.
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i must have dozed off because when i awoke night had fallen and three flamingos were clearly visible in the gloom. they were perfectly still, and facing the street. i snuck up behind the leader of the group, a tall pink menace with one leg raised, and knocked his legs out from under him with my shovel. i swung wildly at another, decapitating its pretty plastic head while scooter viciously maimed the third. my shovel stuck again and now there were three headless pink torsos on my lawn, one badly chewed. their deadly metal spikes were now useless. |
the bodies i secured in the large raccoon-proof garbage bin by the back door. i knew their friends would not be able to rescue them now. i had half expected the heads to have disappeared while i cleared away the bodies, but they lay where i had left them, their lifeless plastic eyes staring up at an angry moon. pleased with my victory, i stuck the shovel deep into the ground in the center of the yard and impaled the three heads on the handle to serve as a warning for the others. the neighborhood committee has been at me for months to remove the decomposing heads from my pike but it's my yard and i have the right to decorate and defend it as i please.
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