In the future you will be arrested for that! We can only hope. But for now if a person “owns” property or an animal, s/he can do anything to those living things without consulting society, the neighbors or even their own conscience.
Dave stood outside the back of his house watching a machine gobble the hedge along the edge of his property. Wearing a hat on his bald head and an eye patch under his glasses, holding a cup of coffee,
"I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. It’s just so much work to keep it trimmed and I don’t want mom to have to do it." He was restless telling me this line of BS because he knew my opinion, which is to say, I like green growing plants around me.
“This will be so much easier, you know. That hedge gets out of hand. So messy!”
His mom is a vibrant 85 years old and he is bald from the cancer treatments. Sinus cancer, I heard. All those years of sitting beside the burning barrel full of plastic garbage have taken their toll, but don’t tell that to Dave because he won’t want to hear such nonsense!
"Will you be putting up more redwood fence?" I inquire politely. The three panels of fence he installed three years ago are already starting to lean. They are covered with spider webs and weeds grow along the edges now, where a lush green wall once provided sustenance for critters, a sound barrier for the neighborhood and a visual barrier from the ever popular stark siding so prevalent on coastal northwest buildings.
He explains further, "You know how ugly these things get when they don’t get trimmed regularly. We just can’t keep it up." His answers are flimsy and he knows it. These people just like watching big machines gobble large vegetation while sipping coffee.
“I will be putting up a three strand fence. You know, simple.” I nodded and didn’t ask what that was because I figured it was three strands of wire on posts eight feet apart. What else could it be? So far, this owner has cut down a thirty year old Empress Tree and poured a ton of gravel on the corner at the bend of the back road where the tree used to live, and now the lush hedge is gone, leaving a steep hill unprotected.
Soon it will ruin the drainage of our gravel road as the dirt erodes down the hill. He has the esthetic of a Billy goat and the common sense of a blind tour guide. But hey! He’s an owner. The Owner of the property. The One Male God of This Corner!
As the heat of global warming increases here in the once cool places, people will stand by sipping imported beverages while commenting on the weird weather this year, without a thought of the past 20 years’ worth of debilitating drought due to obsessive deforestation.
"Where did the rain go? Why is winter so dry these past years?" Now I can watch their every move as they sit in plastic chairs while the garbage burns. And wow, that’s quite a blocky foundation you’ve got there! Thanks for showing it to me! Snark. The One God of Ugly things has invaded my eyeballs again. Fuck that hedge.