Rotten #@$%# Park Urchins

When I went out yesterday evening to water, I found the season's first evidence of park urchin inflicted damage. About three fourths of my carrots, bless their little stubby roots, had been pulled up and scattered around. They lay there like fallen soldiers in the path, their frothy tops only just beginning to wilt. About half an hour earlier, I'd ridden by the garden on my way home from work and seen two of the local ten year olds (boys, of course) using the hose next to my patch. When they looked up and saw me ride by, they scattered like roaches. Hmmm, what are the odds that they were rinsing off the only couple of carrots they found that were actually big enough to eat?

This is THE bummer thing about gardening in a community garden, particularly one that is next to a big slummy apartment building (with no yard) filled with children that are apparently unsupervised about 95% of the time. Most of these kids come from large families that live in one bedroom apartments (I've seen the living conditions in there, and it's not pretty). The majority of the adults are absent (presumably working) most of the time. In short, there are few if any consequences in these kids' lives for bad behaviour, and I seriously doubt that any parent or guardian has bothered to explain to them that taking things from the garden is stealing -- or that stealing is wrong.

I'm debating what, if anything, I should do about this particular incident. Talking to the kids themselves will get me nowhere -- if anything, they'll just take it as a challenge to be more sneaky and do more damage. A couple of the fringe members of the gang live in houses nearby and do have responsive parents, so I guess I'll start by talking with them. But I'd be very surprised if those kids are the ones who are partcipating in the vandalism. And the parents of the ones who are, if I can even locate them or catch them at home, don't speak the same language I do and would probably find it laughable for some gringa woman to bitch about their kids pulling up a few carrots.

Sigh. There's a big sign on the notice board at the garden that says any vandalism should be reported to the police department. But again, I can't quite bring myself to call the cops (who are busy right now with an overwhelmingly active drug trade and a bunch of recent violent gang related events) to report the damage to the garden. "Uh yeah, officers, I know you're busy trying to figure out why people are randomly shooting at houses in the neighborhood, but a couple of ten year olds pulled up some of my carrots and I want you to stop them from doing it again." Yeah, right. We'll get right on that, ma'am.