The Rose Thief

Someone came into our yard this week and took an enormous powderpuff-pink rose on a two-foot stem. The thief came through our gate with clippers, sometime between 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night when I was taking a picture of the rose, and 6:00 Wednesday morning when Brent came out to water it. How ballsy! How bold! How desperate! Whoever it was really needed that rose.

I can’t really blame them. Brent’s roses are spectacular right now. I figure it was a guy with a girlfriend. Or maybe it was a graduating senior celebrating the last of three zoom-filled years, or someone congratulating their roommate for getting through final exams. There are also a lot of hormonal twenty-somethings wandering around our college town. Any one of them might have been overcome by the beauty of that rose, using it, perhaps, to entice their paramour.

Clearly, this was no typical thief. I mean, it’s not like they could snag a rose then go out on the street and sell it for a few bucks. If it were that kind of thief, how do you explain the roses they left behind? Wouldn’t they have taken them all? And what about the premeditation aspect? The fact that the thief came into our yard with snippers? This was not a passerby acting on a whim. No. Whoever took that rose wanted that particular one, and they planned their crime. I’ll bet they acted alone. They were careful about it, too. Left no footprints, didn’t step in the scat that happened to be precisely where their foot would have wanted

to go to get to that rose most easily.

When Brent discovered the missing rose, and after experiencing a measure of disbelief (and some understanding, too, for the rose thief’s desire), we decided we might as well snip a few too. Until someone else had taken one for their own enjoyment, we hadn’t thought to bring a few inside for ourselves. So now, we have roses at the kitchen sink, a place where we spend a good deal of time; a place where we can enjoy them more often.