So I Told The Inmates, "I'm So Blogging This!"

I glanced out my window this morning and noticed a few prison inmates. Wielding machetes. Thankfully, I've seen this before so I had no need to panic. The State actually bought well over half the original owner's land to erect an overpass....which was a good thing really, because otherwise you had to drive clear to the next town to cross the train tracks if a train was in your way. So we inherited this overpass in our backyard. It's really not a big deal.....we live in a very rural area, so it's not like we have lots of traffic up there. It's actually a cute little backdrop to our land, and makes us feel a little more tucked in and isolated.

The inmates clear the hill leading up to the overpass about once or twice a year. In the Spring they come through and chop down any seedlings, and later they come through to pick up litter. I'm all for that. I spent a year and a half teaching in prisons, so I don't have the automatic fear of inmates that so many people do. But I will tell you, looking out my window and seeing eight men wielding machetes, with no sign of a guard ANYwhere......that was a little unnerving.

Then they spotted me watching them through my window. So naturally they all stopped their tree whacking and looked at me; a few even waved. I did what any woman would have done; I called my hubby. Now seriously, I'm about to burst forth with child, I have a toddler with me, no car, and I'm fairly secluded. And I had eight men with machetes smiling and waving at me. Not a comfortable situation.

Eventually they moseyed on down the highway and I relaxed....but then they were back. This time they had a guard with them, but he was missing a shotgun, which I always thought was kind of, you know, required for work details? I watched these inmates hacking away at the lovely wooded area behind my house, and I started to get mad. They were all up on my property by now, cutting down trees and vines and stripping branches off trees! I called my hubby again, and after phoning three different prisons he found the right one. A little bit later I noticed the inmates were gone again. Hopefully someone called that guard and told him to get his crew off my land! (I sound so stereotypically Southern when I say that, don't I?).

Oh, and the prison these guys came from? Houses inmates with "behavioral problems" and is "close security". And I had eight of them in my yard with machetes.

It's always something around here, folks.