Our run-in with the law

Very early this morning we got a call on our home phone. We ignored it as we always do because there just seems to be no way of explaining to telemarketers that we live in Australia so we’re probably not interested in what they have to say. But a little girl with a fever and a little boy who needed feeding kept us up anyway. And, because if my husband is awake more than 60 seconds any moment of the day he checks his blackberry, we were able to find out who called.


It was the U.S. Department of Agriculture—three of them—standing at our front door in Highland, Utah demanding entry into our house. You ask, “what could Dave and Carey possibly have that the Federal government would be so interested in?” We wondered the same thing. As it turns out, they wanted my lemon and lime trees as much as I seemed to last May when Dave ordered them for me for my birthday. No. More. They definitely wanted them more.

They told Sue—who they called and who had to go down and run interference (Thanks Sue!)—that their orders were to “seize and destroy” our trees. As if it were a new crop of anti-patriotism I was cultivating. And apparently that’s just what they did: chopped them into pieces and carried them out in black bags.

I guess the guy in Georgia we bought them from (despite all the online testimonials) had smuggled them in from Florida, before which they had been smuggled in from China, carrying with them a pretty invincible bug posing a big threat to other citrus trees in the state.

The crazy part is, the government has big enough muscles to track down all of this naughty seller’s buyers (19 just in Utah this year!) and take back their trees, but not to stop the guy from doing it again. We’re told this is the second year he’s done it.

At three in the morning the whole thing seemed so funny to us that we couldn’t stop laughing, but now, in the light of day, I’m really kinda mourning the trees. I’m told the lime tree was bursting with white blossoms! That’s just enough motivation to try again next year.