HAVEN April 2022

Page 28

WORDS Tara Crutchfield

Unlikely Vandal Caught Mid‘F’ art The time was 2:04 am on October 9, 2021. A security system picked up movement outside an arts organization in Winter Haven. An alarm rang out as management and police were alerted and raced to the scene to discover the cause of the disturbance. What would they find? Broken glass? Had they been robbed? Far worse… or should I say ‘fart’ worse. A thick green ‘F’ had been spray-painted in the middle of the sign. The Lake Art Association was now the Lake Fart Association.

the PCSO. “We knew that if so much as a sharp squeak of this leaked, the attention could inspire others to commit similar acts.” Cheese-cutting copycats were something they couldn’t afford to risk. It would turn out they didn’t have to wait long for breaking wind to become breaking news. The vandal would strike again just a week before Christmas. The sign for a city about 15 miles south of Lake Wales now read, “Welcome to Frostpoot… The Friendly City.”

“We felt like the butt of some bad joke,” said a spokesperson for the vandalized organization.

The air was thick with unanswered questions and the upset stomach of Lady Justice – she was a rumblin’.

Convinced it was a one-off occurrence, just some kids with too much time and spray paint on their hands, the Polk County Sheriff’s Department was no less determined to sniff out the air biscuit bad actor responsible for this heinous crime.

The new year got off to a crappy start as well. The signs, website landing pages, and social media accounts of dozens of local businesses and organizations were targeted with flatulent aggression. Not even long-standing and respected

“We wanted to keep things quiet,” said a representative for

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Dramatic re-enactment

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