AITA for ripping up wildflowers and stirring up the Karen brigade?
I'll try to keep this short. A local dog park has three areas, two of which are for large/ active dogs. The front area is watered, grass, and maintained. The back area is gravel, and the weeds are allowed to grow at will. This part of the park is surrounded by empty fields on three sides, so the weeds are plentifully available.
Some of these weeds are wild sunflowers, which I enjoyed until my dog got stabbed by the dried up stems last year. One stab wound was 12 inches deep, running along the inside of her skin and over the muscle and bone. You could see her ribs in the gash. That was about $800 to fix. The second was more superficial, so I treated it myself. That second time was when I realized what caused the injury.
So this year, not wanting any dogs to be injured again, I started slowly ripping up the seedlings as they came in. No one has ever asked me about it.
This morning, there was a red marker laminated sign hole punched and zip tied to the fence saying "Please don't pick the sunflowers, other people enjoy them."
I laughed it off, and grabbed a couple more sprouts as I was picking up my and others' dogs' poop. A woman passing by said to me "did you see the sign?"
I said "yes, it's hilarious," and explained why I was removing them.
She said "well, MY dogs enjoy them."
I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but as she walked away, I realized it must have been her and this other old lady at the park that I've had situations with before. The other lady started taking pictures or video of me and my dogs.
There are no policies or laws posted against what I'm doing that I know of. I reached out to the park office this morning to ask if I should stop, so hopefully they will hear my message and I'll get some info from them.
In the meantime, am I a raging AH? It never occurred to me that people would get upset about removing a hazard like that until this "confrontation."