Mount Pleasant DC Forum

[jack]

Nicking narcissus

Mount Pleasant’s Jack McKay was bicycling through Rock Creek Park recently when he was stopped in his tracks — er, wheels. He was stunned to spot a dog-walking couple picking daffodils from a slope at Peirce Mill.

“I confronted them,” Jack wrote, “and they were unrepentant. ‘So, you’re going to squeal on us?’ said the man, showing that he knew full well that picking the daffodils from national parkland was illegal.”

Jack said they took their floral booty, got in their car and drove off — “on Broad Branch, towards the high-income neighborhoods of Northwest D.C. These were people who knew better and could well afford to go to Johnson’s Flower Center and buy whatever flowers they wanted.”

Well, who can be sure of that? But anything short of needing the daffodils to make a special serum to save a dying child sounds pretty lousy to me.

“What does one do about such people?” Jack asked. “Am I wrong in finding this behavior outrageous? The daffodils of spring are to be shared, not stolen and taken home.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/lunch_or_parking_the_commuters_dilemma/2011/04/08/AFS8z1GD_story.html?nav=emailpage