EPILOGUE: I actually ended up calling the Public Works department and they confessed. The shrub was on the boulevard, which is a narrow strip of land on every yard that follows the street and which the city actually owns. Citizens are asked to maintain it by mowing and such. The city likes to plant trees and bushes along the boulevard, and they’re perfectly within their rights to march around town and cut or move things as they see fit. Which is what happened; that bush in particular is an aggressive grower and the Corn & Apple festival was about to be in town, so the city workers were just going along the streets and cleaning up messy shrubbery before visitors showed up.

It did make for an awkward phone call. “Hi, I live on <street> and…I think my shrub was stolen?” [ July 29th, 2014 ]