A new "Orchid Thief" has emerged from the bowels of eBay to be arrested for selling endangered species. Strangely enough, the plants were stolen from exactly the same park that John Laroche, the original "Orchid Thief" from the novel and movie "Adaptation", did his poaching.
While I'm happy that eBay is minus at least one orchid poacher, I'm even more delighted by the way these kind of stories draw out journalism's hidden drama queens:
Scent Of Orchids Started Hobbyist's Descent Into Poaching
Gary Bienemann fell into the tender trap of orchid obsession the same way many enthusiasts do.
The Clearwater resident took up orchids as a hobby, buying
them at home supply stores starting about four years ago. At some
point, Bienemann told state investigators, the flower's addictive
power pushed him over the line from hobbyist to poacher...
..."To desire orchids is to have a desire that can never be fully
requited,'' said author Susan Orlean in the New Yorker article upon
which her book "The Orchid Thief'' was based....
Delicious.
Or how about this headline:
Man finds flower's power arresting
The affair began innocently enough, with trips to Home Depot and Lowe's. Soon, Gary Bienemann was obsessed.
For an orchid, it seemed, he would do anything.
Even the normally prosaic Harold Koopowitch got into the spirit of things:
"it's almost like a new universe and when you fall into it, you get ensnared. They're big and they're gaudy and gorgeous."
(cue the CNN music):
Boom boom boom boom. Orchid hobbyists gone bad. It could happen to you.
Then someone practical had to pipe up and spoil the mood:
"This man's biggest problem probably was stupidity. He did it on eBay," said Paul Martin Brown, author of Wild Orchids of Florida. "I'm delighted someone has been caught. This goes on far too often."
