THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 2, 1996 TAG: 9607310206
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 62 lines
Anybody who regularly travels London Bridge Road has seen Betty Hysinger's raccoons. The stone monuments frame the driveway to her Log Cabin Farm where she and her husband, Jimmy, have retired to an easy life of low stress.
Betty Hysinger took particular care of her animal adornments and dressed them up for each holiday - red, white and blue scarves for the Fourth of July and red caps for Christmas.
All that ended when someone recently stole the 75-pound stone creatures. Only one has since been recovered. That might have ended the tale were it not for a surprising show of community interest in the matter.
When word spread of the critters' fate, a local resident dropped off a stuffed animal likeness while another little girl approached Betty Hysinger with $1 as a small offering of support. Hysinger kindly turned the girl away, suggesting she put the money in her piggy bank.
As a means of saying thanks, Betty Hysinger put up a sign saying just that and in seeing the hand-made sign local folks made the connection the statues had been stolen and then came to her in even greater numbers.
``People used to pull up to the driveway and say thank you for dressing them up,'' Hysinger said.
``When we bought them, we put them out there and glued them to a fence post, figuring that someone might try and steal them, which, of course, they did.''
She was not sure how the thief got past the glue. When they realized the crime had taken place, Jimmy Hysinger set out to look for the artifacts and found one of them a little bit down the road from their home in the 2200 block. But the second one remains missing.
``Now my husband has a chain on it,'' she said.
The Hysingers bought the cement critters because they see so many raccoons in the back yard of their log-cabin home.
``I see them every night,'' she said. ``They're so cute, I thought, why not put a little statue out front? A woman on Potters Road has two wooden cows out front. She puts hats on hers, according to whatever holiday comes.''
The Hysingers live on a seven-acre plot in a community that is noteworthy for its semi-rural look and feel. Neighbors look out for one another and notice when things are amiss, like the missing statues.
Mary Louise Smith, whose family farm, Foxridge Farm, is across the street from the Hysingers, said, ``Everyone along the road knows them and knows what she does with the raccoons on special occasions.
``When she put up the sign that said they were stolen, it was the subject of great conversation,'' Smith said. ``People just couldn't get over it. They were something that we looked forward to seeing.''
Mary Wenger, who lives down the road from the Hysingers, said her friends often rode by to look at the raccoons, taking particular notice at how they were dressed.
``A lot of times they were dressed in rain coats,'' she said. ``We were upset to learn that someone had taken them.
``The thing that struck me was the fact that people were concerned when the raccoon was missing. It somehow added a lot to people's lives. That for me made it newsworthy.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
Jimmy Hysinger, who recovered one of the two stolen raccoon statues
in the woods near his home, has chained it to its pedestal. by CNB