Enraged, Vindicated, Laughing Out Loud

Eco-freaks planted meadowfoam, an endangered plant, on a construction site in Santa Rosa CA in an effort to stop development. My reactions are in the headline above; let me start in reverse order.

Here's the headline and lead from Lancaster Online:

Activists Suspected in Flower Plantings

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) - Authorities are on the lookout for pistil-packing activists who apparently planted endangered wildflowers in order to block a housing development.

You don't usually find funny puns in the leads of news stories, and I just about fell out of my chair when I read this "pistil-packing."

Vindicated because I've known radicals do this -- they did it to a project I worked on once by planting a stevens kangaroo rat on the site -- and the allegations are so certain to be discounted that developers rarely raise them. So it's good to see that a criminal investigation is in the works.

Outraged because (1) it happened and (2) the newspaper thought it was funny. The "I've got mine and you can't have yours" set and the heathens who personify and diefy the earth are abusing the most powerful law they have on their side, threatening the very species they seek to protect, because they don't think 145 families should have homes. There's nothing funny about that.

But pistil-packing was great, nonetheless.

h/t Fark.com