Earlier this month, America’s commander-in-chief unveiled a long-awaited plan to fight a rising surge in crime across the country.
One part of the criminal landscape, however, that President Biden neglected to touch on was an apparently exponential increase in the theft of plants and flowers from people’s landscaped gardens.
At the sharp end of this new scourge is one of Houston’s toniest downtown neighborhoods, Houston Heights, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.
The report talks first about one “brazen plant thief” who had been caught on camera pilfering pots and greenery from residents’ front yards.
The green-fingered thief remains on the run, the paper said. And the miscreant is continuing to rob residents of their carefully cultivated greenery, according to a recent post on The Heights’ NextDoor.com board.
In a post titled “Plant-based crime syndicate operating in the Heights!”, Woodland Heights resident Roger “Onrochow” Veteto posted a photo of a lily he claims was taken from his yard by someone wielding a shovel and a lot of nerve.
“Somebody came through my gate into my yard earlier this week, brought a shovel with them and dug up a Lilly [sic] beside my entry stairs,” Veteto wrote. “I’ve been plant-jacked!”
“I’ve heard of potted plants getting nabbed but to dig one up?!?” he lamented.
In a hand-wringing editorial, the Chronicle goes on to speculate about who may be funding these wave of plant criminals, and for what purpose.
“To catch a plantjacker you must think like a plantjacker”, the paper concludes.