06/09/2002 - 11:42 p.m.

Flamingo Day

Every house on Maple Street looked just like the ones on either side. The houses all immaculately white, the yards smooth and bare of anything other than grass. It was what is generally deemed a beautiful suburb.

On Sunday morning, the suburbanites noted that someone new had come to the area. The welcoming committee was sent with all of the appropriate welcoming accouterments: the white luminaries for Christmas, the green trash bags for Tuesday, and most importantly, the list of rules. They approached the house, rang the doorbell, and the woman answered.

�Hello,� she said with a smile.

The committee briefly explained their mission and presented their gift. She smiled again, and thanked the committee kindly. Pleasantries were exchanged, and the welcoming committee dispersed, glad that they had acquired such an upright new neighbor.

That Tuesday at seven o clock, the woman would put out her allotted two bags of garbage at the bottom of the driveway. Every evening upon arriving home, she put her car back in the garage. She mowed the lawn that Wednesday in the same checkerboard fashion as the other houses on the street. She was in every way the model neighbor.

Things would have worked out very nicely this way, had it not been for that fateful Saturday. On that morning, the suburbanites awoke, dressed, and went out to get the paper while the coffee was perking, the same as every Saturday morning. But this morning, as they glanced across at the woman�s house, they saw that something was very, very wrong.

At first they thought that it had to have been a trick; a prank pulled by the local high school students. Certainly that was it. The woman absolutely could not have done it. They were content to believe this until they saw her lounging in the front lawn, reading her newspaper.

The welcome committee called an emergency meeting and arrived at the woman�s house quite out of breath.

�Hello,� she said with a smile.

The committee looked at each other uneasily and pushed forward their spokesperson.

�What is the meaning of this?� he cried.

�The meaning of what?� she asked sweetly.

�These� these, pink monsters!�

For sure enough, the lawn had been taken over by a flock of flamingos! Hundreds upon hundreds of lurid pink lawn flamingos were settled in her yard as though they had flown there. All sizes and varieties of the birds clustered under trees, in the garden, along the sidewalk, and even in the birdbath.

The woman put down her paper and glanced about her, her hand resting gently on the pink plastic neck of the bird beside her.

�Oh, these,� she said lightly.

�Yes, those,� snorted the spokesman. �What are they doing here?�

�They�re my friends,� she replied.

�Your friends?�

�Yes, they arrived in the night.�

�I should say they did,� replied the spokesman.

�Do you like them?� asked the woman.

�But, ma�am, in the rules�

�There is nothing written in regards to lawn flamingos,� interrupted the woman, looking the spokesman in the eye. �Today is Saturday, today is a flamingo day. Good day to you.�

She stood up and walked into the house. The welcoming committee looked at each other helplessly. This was most certainly the last thing they had expected.

All day long the flamingos stood in the woman�s yard, and all day long people gathered to see the birds standing on the woman�s lawn. It wasn�t a difficult house to find.

And, across the street the welcoming committee poured over the rules, looking for some clause, some line that showed that the neighborhood hated that pink brood and all that it stood for. The flamingos seemed tickled pink at the proceedings.

Unfortunately for the welcoming committee, they were unable to find a thing. She would simply have to be allowed to have her flamingo day.

The following morning, all traces of pink in the woman�s yard had completely vanished. The crowds that turned up that morning went away crestfallen, until next Saturday�