And by a “new low”, I don’t mean it’s just not happening.
No. I mean, could it actually get any more despicable?
I can hardly bring myself to share this. Yes, sadly, SA is known for its crime, but it’s not nearly as bad as you might expect if you read (and believed all that you read) in the newspapers and the internet. I checked this morning, and despite the frankly terrifying murder rate here, I was actually still alive.
On the other end of the crime scale is the Isle of Man. At worst, crime there is sparse, and minor.
Or rather: it was. Because today – heartbroken – I read this story:
You can keep your violence and your drugs and guns. When an heron garden ornament is taken from a heron garden ornament owner’s garden, something has gone seriously wrong with the system.
And it’s not just any heron garden ornament. It’s a sentimental heron garden ornament. One which wasn’t some recent addition to the heron garden ornament owner’s garden, one which had been there for many years and one with which the heron garden ornament owner had developed a special bond. Not quite enough of a physical bond to prevent it from being nicked; more of an emotional bond, but still, a bond, nevertheless.
The biggest sadness here is that the police in the Isle of Man simply aren’t set up to deal with this kind of thing. And that means that the heron garden ornament owner will probably never see his or her heron garden ornament again.
And that’s despite the clever effort of the IOM Newspapers at the bottom of the story there, with their endeavour to tempt the perpetrator or perpetrators of this heinous crime to inadvertently give themselves away by sending in the best pictures, video or story of the crime. I know that if I was bold enough to take a heron garden ornament from a heron garden ornament owner’s garden, I’d certainly have snapped a couple of pics and grabbed a bit of footage to document my outrageous actions and share with my criminal peers down at the pub on a Friday evening when I was trying to fence my ill gotten ornamental birdlife for a bit of extra ice cream money.
The urge to show off to a (slightly) larger audience by sharing that evidence with “iomtoday.co.im” would probably prove too much to bear and I strongly suspect that the hardened criminal(s) involved in this disgusting theft may very well struggle with the same sort of impulse.
It’s the only hope. For the sake of preserving the very low crime rate on the Isle of Man and in the defence of other wildlife-themed garden ornaments on the island, we can only hope it bears fruit.
I’ll keep you posted.
