In many ways and for many reasons, the high level of suspicion inherent in the average suburbanite can only be an asset for that persons's local community. Those who know me know very well that, if I saw something suspect, I would make it my business to find out what was going on. I would also be the first on the phone/FB/Twitter to update anyone who might care to listen.
Don't be at all surprised, if you are messing around out the front of my house, to see me standing in the window on the phone: but be warned - I'll typically be in my underwear and there is currently no remedy to remove THAT image from your occipital lobes!
The fact that everybody makes everybody else's business their business makes great business sense. For instance, I had a trailer and bobcat stolen from the verge down the side of my house a few months back. Twenty minutes spent chatting to neighbours that are sensitive sleepers, night-shift workers and early rising laborers narrowed the exact time of the theft to within one single hour during the night. I got the trailer and bobcat back the next day.
But citizen surveillance makes one of my favorite past times very awkward indeed. You see, no matter how many tiger snakes I see I always want to see more. For five seconds or five minutes - I don't care. I absolutely adore them. So if ever I am out and about, hopping from one meeting to the next, I might pop into a local park or sanctuary that has a bit of water in it to have a poke around. In doing this I have had some delightful little encounters that I never had the time to enjoy during the three year spent studying this very same species for my PhD. Back then if I saw one, I jumped on it and poked it with stuff.
My problem is that you can't see squat walking alongside a wetland on a cycle path 15 foot from the water;s edge. So you have to get in amongst it; get down into the reeds and the mud. However, when I find myself with these magic moments of free time, I am most often dressed in full business attire and this makes me look a little bit odd and out-of-sorts to passersby.
Yesterday, in an affluent coastal suburb, I emerged from the rushes and came face to face with a relatively robust looking teenage lad and his even more robust looking hound. So perturbed was he at the sight of a suited male emerging from a wetland fringe that he actually changed trajectory and quickly walked off in the other direction. We passed each other again about 10 minutes later as I ploughed through a grove of Melaleuca and, although his dog gave me a kind muzzle in the crotch, this young man simply refused to acknowledge my presence.
By the time a mid-40's mum pushing a pram doubled back to get a decent make on me and a younger mum at the play ground gave me a 15 second unblinking death stare I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and I left. I can imagine the tweets - 5ft 8' brown haired, Caucasian male seen skulking around in swamp #carineneighbourhoodwatch #stalker #pervert #swampcreature).
So next time you see someone loitering around the waters edge at your local, rank, litter strewn, hydrocarbon infused swamp do please report them. Whether they are sinister pond slime with perverted intent or innocent pillars of the business and scientific community, they should be reported because they should not be there. It is your swamp in your community and it is up to you to keep your community safe.
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