Other peoples’ kids
CONIFER — For many a long year Glinda had been at odds with her neighbor to the west, Elphaba, over the dilapidated fence separating their respective lands. Every time Glinda has tried to fix it, Elphaba has hexed the process by threatening to have her thrown in a dungeon unless Glinda can produce a permit from the county. At last Glinda had finally had enough. She’d been once again working her gentle enchantments on the blighted fence when Elphaba appeared in a puff of outrage and started filming Glinda’s doings and cursing her in the most wicked and hurtful ways. Instead of floating away in a giant soap-bubble, however, Glinda called the cops herself, and asked deputies to banish Elphaba from the realm. Asked by deputies why she objected to Glinda’s fence-mending activities, Elphaba immediately launched into a wandering rant about the many failings of Glinda’s children. When deputies suggested she convey to Glinda what manner of fence-repair she would find acceptable, Elphaba proclaimed Glinda’s malevolent munchkins to be pestilent creatures little better than flying monkeys. When deputies recommended county mediation to solve their differences, Elphaba professed disappointment that the officers seemed unable to grasp just how truly rotten Glinda’s kids are. Having by then had enough of Elphaba themselves, officers threw a figurative bucket of water on her by instructing that she have no further contact with Glinda lest she face the county’s great and powerful wrath. Elphaba shrank from further dispute.
Hew and cry
EVERGREEN — Last week, Ben Cartwright and Jarrod Barkley were scrapping over access to Jarrod’s property across Ben’s land. This week, the feud-some twosome were at it about entirely new and even more exciting issues. For one thing, Jarrod told deputies on July 11, somebody who was almost certainly Ben pulled up a row of small flags Jarrod had planted to mark the line of his planned fence. Then — and without any justification whatsoever, mind you — somebody who was almost certainly Ben called the county to complain that Jarrod’s compost heap was too close to the property line. But the thing that really put a kink in Jarrod’s lariat was that he rode out to the fractious frontier that morning to scout good locations for surveillance cameras and discovered two small pine trees cut down completely and a larger pine teetering precariously atop a nearly-severed trunk. All three trees were several yards on Jarrod’s side of the divide, and the most obvious suspect was almost certainly Ben. However, since even well-founded suspicions do not a viable case make, deputies advised Jarrod to get a restraining order against Ben and let JCSO know if his surveillance cameras catch Cartwright doing something Cart-wrong.
Pole position
EVERGREEN — Although quite busy giving the electrical repairmen a lot of static, Willy Watt found time to call JCSO. According to Watt’s complaint of July 8, the electrical repairmen were “leaving things on my property,” troublesome and potentially dangerous things like “nails and electrical poles.” Worse, the electrical repairmen were running electrical wires “diagonally,” which he believed to be “illegal.” Watt was still giving the repairmen 5,000 volts of what-for when deputies arrived and asked the workers how they’d wound up on Watt’s hot seat. The repairmen explained that they were merely improving the neighborhood grid by replacing old, potentially flammable poles with a new fire-resistant variety, an overdue upgrade that’s going on all over the Front Range. As to “diagonal” disagreements, the repairmen generously allowed that Watt may simply have “a misconception of where the poles on his property should be.” The workmen weren’t looking for more trouble, but they did think the deputies should know that the word “shotgun” had come up in the long course of Watt’s rant. Watt assured deputies that he’d never threatened the repairmen with a shotgun, but warned that “I have a right to protect myself” and “if I need to go get my shotgun I will.” Officers refreshed Watt on state and county gun laws, and advised him to cut the electrical repairmen some slack. Watt appeared “remorseful” and promised to dial it back.