Those Blond Barrel Cactus
August 22, 2008
Post Tags: blond-barrel-cactus , catus-theft , LA-Times , micro-chips
All over Tucson and Oro Valley I see the blond barrel cactus in yards. Some as a single more often as a cluster or group of cactus, like a nice family meeting.
Last week I had an image I posted here of a night blooming cactus get picked up and posted on “The Cactus Blog” (I gave them permission to use the images after the fact).
While I was looking around the blog I came across a post about blond barrel cactus disappearing from neighborhoods. It quoted an article in the LA Times about cactus thieves taking them with a value between $100 and $800 each.
They are implanting microchips in the cactus (similar to the effort for the Saguaro cactus here) in order to track and hopefully prevent the problem from growing to epidemic levels.
Can you imagine buying a blond cactus on the cactus black market, only to have it stolen in a couple of weeks so it could be resold?
Now I’m wondering, with this kind of value being ascribed to each of these cactus if we might see some California cactus thieves making hunting trips to Tucson and Oro Valley to grab some Blond Barrel Cactus without micro chips embedded in them.
I suppose only time will tell. You just might want to document your landscaping with photographs should you have any of these highly desirable little beauties.
I don’t know if blonds have more fun but it sounds like they are more likely to be stolen at least if they are covered with thorns and have a nice round shape : )
I have a friend who has a micro chip in her dog, . . . I didn’t ask.
