In Which I Manage To Get Arrested For Shrubbery

Yeah...2015 has been a banner year. I think an adult night of watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail with a big old glass of vodka is in order. You know, cause of the shrubbery thing.

So here's the thing. I'm a rules following kind of person. Straight and narrow, never in trouble, good student, the whole nine yards. The worst thing I have ever done is get a speeding ticket. (Unless you ask the husband - he may say the worst thing I ever did was back into the cop car and put a big hole in his bumper...but that's a different story).

You can only imagine my surprise then on Tuesday when I opened the mail to see a big old WARRANT FOR MY ARREST.

I went into panic mode: what am I getting arrested for? Will this go on my record? Will I have to report this to my licensing board? Will they then revoke my license? Will I be out of a job? Would I survive in jail? Are the cops coming to my work? My house? What is going on here?

Orange really isn't my color. I guess I could rock some stripes though.

Dusty had one too which was both a relief and even more frazzling. If we both got arrested, what would happen to Wyatt??

WHY AM I ON THE MOST WANTED LIST??!?!?!?

The warrant was issued in OH, a state we haven't lived in for many years. A quick call (or 5) to the courthouse and the answer was revealed:

We had an unruly hedgerow at our rental house.

Wait? What?!?

There is a warrant issued for my imminent arrest for.....unkempt shrubbery?

Then the panic was replaced with a deep seated, fuzzy, red anger.

In a world of racism, terrorism, mass shootings, bombings, drugs, woman and child trafficking and black market weapons, my overgrown bush is such a priority that I would be arrested for it? Seriously? That's an arrestable offense???

To make matters worse, we have a property management group who gets part of each month's rent to manage the property. We hired them to collect the rent, handle tenant issues, fix things that go wrong and make sure the property meets all codes at all times. You know, to avoid things such as fines. I guess I should have been more clear that they also needed to avoid getting me arrested.

To be fair, we had received a citation back in the summer for the bushes not being trimmed, dog poop being in the yard, the house needing painting and some other things. We paid to do all the things that were on the list and our responsibility, but made it perfectly clear that yard maintenance, including the hedgerow separating the yard from the sidewalk, was the tenants responsibility. The management group said they would get it all fixed and then even went so far as to email us and tell us it was handled and completed.

Apparently not.

Tuesday was a blur. Dusty called and called and called and called the prosecutor to try to figure things out. Would we need to go to OH to clear our names? So many questions. He left 5 messages and then began calling again on Wednesday. The poor prosecutor apparently only works Thur-Fri, but having been blasted with a million calls from us, he kindly called us from home on Wednesday morning.

As of today the warrant has been lifted.

I am no longer a fugitive.

We have to fix the hedgerow (contacted someone and they will be trimming them ASAP), have the city inspector out to verify and then everything will go away.

Well, not everything. Once everything is officially erased I will be contacting the management group. It won't be pretty.