Carroll Gardens Basil War Comes to Bitter End

The basil thieves of Carroll Gardens are hurting tonight. Their quarry has been removed.

Two weeks about it emerged that a window box brimming with fresh basil, sitting outside a green-brick building on President Street near Henry, in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood, was being regularly robbed of its herbal bounty. The owners fought back with a shaming sign: "PLEASE Stop taking our BASIL!" cried the sign on President. IT IS VERY Cheap AND YOU CAN buy you own. P.S. The children are quite disturbed by your actions. And so are the adults." [Capitalization and punctuation, theirs.]

It was still there as of mid-week last week. But tonight it is gone. And so is the basil.

Plunked down in the dirt of an empty window box (and oddly set off by what seems to be a white picture frame) is a considerably less ostentatious sign made of brown cardboard and black magic marker, which reads, "No more basil for you to take. The End."

A little bit of Soup Nazi syntax there if I'm not mistaken.

Now, how am I gonna make my pesto?

Kidding. Kidding.