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The Flamingo Lady, revisited By Phoebe Sweet STAFF WRITER It started as an innocent attempt to stave off winter's gloom. "I just said, 'I'm so sick of winter,"' said Jill Hunter, who has come to be known as the Flamingo Lady in Newton and beyond. It was while looking for a new Sigmund Freud action figure for her husband, Bill, that Hunter found the flamingos on the Internet. She bought 16 pairs of the pink, plastic birds and stuck them on her lawn in the snow one night while her West Newton neighborhood slept. Alongside the flamingos were plastic flowers, meant to bring a sense of spring to the lawn of her Prince Street house and cheer gloomy neighbors tired of being snowbound. But since that fateful winter morning when West Newton first saw the flock on Hunter's lawn, a flamingo frenzy has begun. Hunter, an artist, is even planning to make a book called Flamingo Frenzy detailing the growth and migration of the flock, the reporters who hounded her for months and the eventual arrest of a Newton man for stealing flamingos from West Newton lawns. After Hunter put the small flock in the yard of her bright pink house, children began to steal the flamingos and plant them in neighboring yards. Eventually the birds migrated as far as Watertown. Hunter bought more flamingos and then more, augmenting her own flock and taking orders for friends and neighbors. She ultimately spent $5,000 on the birds. “I met more people in those two months than I met in nine years here." Jill Hunter, aka, The Flamingo Lady A New York University graduate student is making a movie about the birds. After a ceremony at the Newton Housing Authority, a flamingo on a Newton lawn has even come to symbolize support for affordable housing. "It got to the point where I would not answer my door," said Hunter. "I don't care how obvious it was that we were all home." She was featured in newspapers and on television, and says she almost made People magazine. And although Hunter says she's glad to have met so many interesting neighbors, she says the tour buses, kindergarten classes and tourists who flocked to her lawn to snap pictures got to be too much after a few months. She's even contemplating painting her pink, gem-studded Pathfinder back to a more conventional color to avoid being spotted. “I want to be anonymous again,” said Hunter. Hunter said that after “wallowing in anonymity for 10 years as an artists” the glare of the spotlight was a little much for her. "And I didn't feel that this was my masterpiece," said Hunter, who is also working on a book of photographs of burka-clad figures around the United States and Europe and a photo essay about strong women and their favorite pink objects.
Although she may be tired of flamingos-- Hunter says she was never a flamingo nut to begin with -- she does hope that some of the hundreds of people who took photos of her and her house will send copies to her 159 Prince St. home. And while the flamingos may be getting on Hunter's nerves a bit, they are certainly bothering Newton police. "People may take these flamingos as a prank, but what they are really doing is committing a larceny," said Sgt. Kenneth Dangelo. "It's taxing police resources." Police have recently put directed patrols on West Newton Hill to watch out for flamingo burglars. Hunter says the police have been to her house more than once. Recently, while Hunter was away with her daughter in Europe, police woke her husband at 3:30 a.m. to question him about missing flamingos. "By the time he gets downstairs he's in a panic," said Hunter "and the police say 'Can you tell us if any of your flamingos have been stolen?"' But while the flamingo thefts may have become be a joke to many, 22-year-old TyIer Abele of Page Road in Newton was arrested July 27 after allegedly stealing the birds off West Newton lawns. Police found him hiding in a bush and arrested him after they spotted him pilfering the pink lawn ornaments. But Hunter has said that she doesn't mind people taking the flamingos from her lawn as long as they put a flock on their own lawns. She likes that she had been able to share, the birds with neighbors. Hunter does say she has made lasting friends over the months the flamingos have graced her lawn. "I love the way it added community spirit," she said, pausing to answer the pink telephone in her bedroom. Hunter even spent the Fourth of July with elderly neighbors she met because of the flamingo frenzy. "I met more people in those two months than I met in nine years here," she said. Hunter has lived in her West Newton home with her husband and two children since she moved from West Roxbury nine years ago. Her West Roxbury home was also pink. And would she do it again? Yes, but "I would have waited until I was thinner. There is nothing worse than seeing yourself on TV really fat," she said. AndrewLightman contributed to this report. Phoebe Sweet can be reached atpsweet@cnc.com. Reprinted from Newton TAB, August 12, 2003 | ||
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