The Attack of the Cones

Prior to the Open House for our home this past Sunday, I took the boys down the street for some good old-fashioned trash picking. As everyone knows, an empty box of Trojan-Enz lying on the sidewalk in front of one's home knocks a good 10 grand off the price, and this just could not be allowed. I brought yellow rubber gloves with me for the most offensive items. Each person got a plastic bag. It was like an Easter egg hunt, except amusingly different!

Here was some of our take:
Candy wrappers, assorted sizes
Cigarette boxes and butts
Assorted plastic bits
Three pieces roofing shingle
One Snapple bottle
One Taco Bell wrapper
Trojan-Enz box, empty
One pair ladies' pantyhose (black)
One large, matted clump of ladies' hair (black)
(I wonder if the latter two were related? They lay on the street in close proximity to each other.)
One large orange traffic cone

I didn't know what to do with the cone, as it was too large to stuff in the garbage can, so I promptly hucked it over the back fence of our property into the parking lot of the Post Marine supply store. (Well, what else was I to do?) I considered the matter finished, but apparently the traffic cones of Westchester did not.

They began to follow me.

On our way to Route 95 later, I glanced into the Post Marine lot to see a whole mess of orange cones: as many as 6 or 7 sat in the lot (the one I had thrown lay on its side right next to our fence, but seemingly at home among its brethren). Had they all gathered here to investigate? Some of the cones stared at us menacingly. They had seen what I had done to their kin and they didn't like it.

On the way up to Mahopac later, we spotted whole herds of the things sitting on their haunches by the roadside, staring at us malevolently. They were clearly breeding, and they had vengeance on their minds.

Once we got up in the country we continued to see them. Lone wolves (some battered and covered with reflective tape) sat here and there on seemingly bucolic country lanes. Their presence was disconcerting. We continued to see them lurking in unexpected spots.

I expect them to come for us shortly. They do not take lightly to ill-treatment of one of their own. We'll pull aside the bedroom curtain tomorrow morning and they'll be there, waiting in a row on the street before our home. Perhaps some of them will be clad in the discarded finery of street garbage: one bewigged with a matted clump of hair, another swathed in grubby pantyhose. God, no! They will be there. And they will begin to shuffle slowly, inexorably in our direction.