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Flock 'flew' in for her birthday

What do you give a woman who's turning 80? How about a yard full of plastic pink flamingos?

By JACKIE RIPLEY
Published February 18, 2005

LUTZ - Leona Clasen expected any number of surprises for her 80th birthday, from dinner out with her husband, Clauden, to a quiet night in with her children.

What she didn't expect was a yard full of plastic pink flamingos.

"I thought, there must be 80 of them," Clasen said.

The flamingos, a gift from her children, were the handiwork of Bonnie Leslie, owner of a business called Get The Flock Outta My Yard!

"We've created a new verb: To flock somebody," said Leslie, who gets ready for work when most of us are getting ready for bed. But then she also drives around in a van that says "Flock them all, let God sort it out."

"We get started at about midnight and have everything placed in the yard and ready to go by 5 a.m.," said Leslie, who bought the St. Petersburg-based business a few months ago. "The person comes out in the morning to get their newspaper, and there they are."

Clasen's daughter, Beth Grimes, said she wanted her mother's birthday this year to be more memorable than most. That's why she invited friends and family to her Lutz home, hired a five-piece band and arranged to have a flock of flamingos in the yard when her parents arrived for the surprise birthday celebration.

"We like to do different things, out of the ordinary," Grimes said. "We were going to go to a restaurant and have dinner with the family, but we decided to go behind her back and put 50 pink flamingos in the yard."

It's that kind of thinking that has kept the company in business for 15 years and keeps Leslie enjoying her job.

"I love being on the road at night. There's no traffic and you get to see where you live, what goes on," she said. "We sneak in the yard and sneak back out."

Leslie, who drove the company's van for two years, has planted everything in peoples' yards, from plastic cows, bats and birds to golf balls, dinosaurs and stork-hauling babies.

Her achievements are usually met with pleasure.

"Oh my, they were lovely," Clasen said. "I had never seen anything quite like this."

And when all that sneaking arouses a neighbor's suspicion?

"I've been stopped by the police in Tampa," Leslie acknowledged. "But that's just led to other jobs."

[Last modified February 17, 2005, 10:50:08]