Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Vandalism
August 6, 2003

American teenagers love to cruise, to be independent, away from their parents and out in the great wide world. Cruisers wander around town, looking for their friends doing the same thing, and sometimes big groups get together at a favorite drive-in fast food joint, or dozens meet in a big parking lot and talk about their cars and music and whatever the trends of the day might be. Girls and boys meet each other, flirt, show-off, share first kisses and much more.

It is all part of growing up. While cruising a person learns about self-discipline and peer pressure, as they explore their personal boundaries and limitations. Boys race their cars to see who can be the fastest. Crazy boys play “chicken” or “roadkill” as they test their threshold of handling fear. Drinking has been part of cruising since the first automobiles, but by the 1960s drugs became part of the experience. Parents wait at home with the palpitating sweats, with sometimes-horrendous family disputes originating from the adolescent’s rebellious behavior.

The Sibley Nature Center is an occasional destination for teenage cruisers. Sometimes their visit leaves a negative consequence. On some Mondays we pick up a caseload of beer cans around the building, or down under the trees at the pond. We have had several acts of vandalism, and as a result have had to construct our benches, boardwalks, signs, kiosks and other outdoor signage as sturdily as possible. Back in late March, one group of punks managed to destroy the boardwalk Christopher Keegan’s Boy Scout troop built. We let the pond dry up for three months so we could get all of its parts out of the pond. But the visitors are not all bad – not by a long shot!

Kids out cruising also come along and walk the trails. Often such visitors are young sweethearts, other times it is a kid wanting to sit quietly and write or draw. We have also had wonderful long conversations with kids who drop by to see how our displays have changed, and who want to pet a snake or tarantula the way they did when they were here on an elementary school trip. Some decide, after visiting while out cruising, to come back and help out. Each year a number of kids volunteer for public service through the Texas Scholar program or the Abell-Hangar scholarship program. College students drop in, and some hang out, and this year Jennifer Marble decided to intern for 120 hours to receive college credit hours from the University of Michigan.

In late July some kids out cruising stopped by and did something incredibly stupid. When the three exited their vehicle, they furtively walked into the pasture, constantly looking this way and that. My “psychic alarm bells” went off – “those three are bad news,” I said to myself, so I kept an eye on them. When another visitor and his two young children walked toward them the three swung off of the trail, walking hurriedly, and looking back at the other visitors. They then swung further out into the pasture and appeared to duck down. This behavior made me have a sinking feeling. The phone rang and I visited with the caller about horny toads for a few minutes, continually glancing towards the trail to see if I could spot the kids.

“I bet you they are either drinking alcohol, smoking dope, or smoking crack,” I thought. One had been carrying a six pack of soda pop – and I remembered once finding a crude pipe made out of a soda can along the trail. We have never found any syringes left behind by heroin users. We have had remarkably little evidence of drug-related behavior at Sibley. Once, on a night patrol along the trail, the police caught some dope smokers.

I did not see the three teenagers for at least five minutes. My uncomfortable feeling grew, so when I hung up the phone, I walked to the door to lock it. I was in the building alone, and even though two of the teenagers were slight in build, anybody can carry a gun. I returned to my office, and when I looked outside, I saw the three at the water well that fills the “intermittent salt playa” that won Eagle Scout Luke Dunn the prestigious Hornaday Silver Award for “Distinguished Service in Natural Resource Conservation and Environmental Improvement” in 1997. Only one or two are awarded in any one year anywhere in the nation.

The three teenagers kicked the pipe, hard, then spun the gate-valve controls. Again the phone rang, but it was someone wanting the Sylvan Learning Center, not Sibley. The three teenagers headed for the parking lot and as they passed the ultra-xeriscape garden of holy sage and algerita (we never water it) the oldest and largest teenager pulled a BB rifle from along the right side of his body and casually pointed it at the building. I could see his finger pull the trigger. The midsize teenager in dark clothes walked close to building to inspect the damage, and then returned to the car with the others after nodding and pointing as if asked if the BB’s had hit the window of the library. In all likelihood, the same three are to blame for another window at Sibley that a week before had been shot with nine pellets.

I put down the phone, grabbed a pencil and wrote down the license plate number as they drove away. By the time they had left the parking lot, I was talking to the dispatcher at 911. In less than 10 minutes a police car pulled into our parking lot and asked if I wanted to come identify somebody found with the vehicle. I could hear irate voices yelling over the radio, and the officer shook his head. “We are not getting any cooperation.”

We only drove a few blocks and pulled up not far from the house where the vehicle was parked. The midsize teenager in dark clothes was standing near another police car and I quickly identified him. In the yard, the adult owner of the house continued berating the officers, hollering at the top of her lungs. She refused to let the police to talk to the other kids who were in the house, despite the fact that the BB rifle had already been found in the car.

I hope to see those three teenagers in court. I would like them to have to work and pay for the window, for sure, and do community service in day care centers and retirement homes as well. That is the polite form of punishment most acceptable to those interested in the rights of “accused” criminals.

As an irate victim of crime, however, I am a horrible primitive, for I also believe that an ideal punishment would be for the three to be placed in stocks at every school in town for several hours, with a sign in front of them reading, “VANDALS.” I would have them sit there, in their boxer shorts, covered with the skunk scent that trappers use to mask their own odor. Humiliation and ridicule is appropriate punishment. I believe it would prevent most other youngsters from doing similar idiotic destructive behavior.