The military is a small world. You knew that. But did you know that the world becomes significantly smaller (which is to say, as small as an elevator feels when your infant son has just messed his pants) when your husband’s commanding officer (CO) lives in the house behind yours?

Dustin’s CO is a wonderful man and leader with a great sense of humor (remember that because it becomes important later), but that doesn’t mean Dustin isn’t slightly unnerved knowing that the CO can look across his yard and see Dustin putting the wrong fertilizer on our grass. And we have children, too, which throws all kinds of variables into the situation. Dustin can tell me to quit leaving on the flood lights -- the ones that shine right into the CO’s house -- all night (actually, I think his exact words were, “If you leave those lights on again, I’ll rip the entire light fixture out of the wall”), but when it comes to our three boys, well, Dustin can talk all he wants (“Stop hitting baseballs into the CO’s yard!” and “If you’re going to moon each other, could you do it in the front yard, please?”), and it doesn’t mean they will listen. Which brings us to two weeks ago.

Dustin was leaving for work early one morning, when the dew was still on the grass and clinging to ... the six pink flamingoes in our front yard?

“Sarah,” he yelled back into the house. “Do you know anything about the pink flamingoes with bows around their necks in our yard?”

Apparently, we had been “flamingoed.” A large poster-board sign next to the birds told us that a high-school group raising money for their graduation party was responsible. In order to get the flamingoes out of our yard and into someone else’s, we had to pay $10.00. If we didn’t want the flamingoes to ever flock our yard again, we could pay an extra $5.00. And who sent us these six pink treasures? The CO and his wife, of course. And they have a teenage daughter, so Dustin worried (without reason; the CO had been an unwitting “victim,” just like us) that it may be her school or friends raising the money. (Why do military men get so freaked out about anything involving their CO?)

“Whatever you do, don’t let anything happen to those flamingoes today,” Dustin said as he left for work.

The children were of course delighted to see the tacky pink birds in our yard. I can only guess now, in hindsight, that they spent a good majority of the school day imagining what they would do to the flamingoes when they got home.

The bird’s instructions said that their owner (not related to the CO in any way) would be back at 8:00 p.m. to pick up the flock, our check, and directions to the next sucker -- I mean donator -- of our choosing. At 4:00, however, just one hour after my older boys, Ford (7) and Owen (5), got home from school, there was a knock on the door. A flustered woman stood on the front porch, one lone pink bird clutched to her chest.

“I’ve come to pick up the birds,” she said flatly.

“Oh, let me write a check then,” I said. “I’m sorry that I’m not ready yet. I thought you guys weren’t coming until later.”

“Well usually, yes. But then we got a call alerting us that your children were beating the flamingoes in the front yard.” She made a motion like swinging a baseball bat with her free arm.

I was confused because I knew that Owen was asleep on the couch, and I thought Ford was upstairs. But just then, Ford and our neighbor’s son peeked around the side of the house, guilt all over their faces.

“Oh, those children,” I said, pointing to Ford and his friend. “I have no idea who those children are." The lady wasn’t buying it.

I spent the next hour helping her and the boys unearth buried flamingo parts in our front yard. Then I wrote a big check to help cover the cost of the damaged birds.
When Dustin got home that night, together we grilled Ford about his behavior. Ford sobbed into his hands. “But flamingoes are only supposed to stand on one leg,” he said. “And those birds were standing on two, so we pulled off the extra ones and buried them.”

He had a point. Flamingoes do only stand on one leg.

Still, I knew by the look on Dustin’s face, if I valued his sanity at all (and often I do), I would definitely turn off the flood lights before going to bed.