Bonsai man wants his stolen trees returned

A BONSAI enthusiast is appealing to anyone who might have bought bonsai trees from a man on the street in Musgrave recently, to contact him urgently.

Mike Cason was the victim of a very opportunistic thief, who stole a third of his prized bonsai collection from outside his home.

“I have been a collector of bonsai trees since I was in standard five and I am very passionate about the hobby. I have spent many hours making my own bonsai trees. I usually keep the plants in a garden I created by my flat, however, as it is winter, I moved the trees into the sun on the driveway and positioned them so they were not too close to the pallisade fence. I never thought there was a risk of them being stolen,” he said.

He said on the Wednesday he noticed one was missing.

“This was a tragedy as the pot was given to me by my god-mother when I was 15, and the plant belonged to an old man related to my landlord and was 30 or 40 years old. It had died back to the trunk and I had worked hard to resurrect it. I was quite surprised that someone could have reached it through the fence. I wrote it off as a tragedy,” he said.

The next day, another four bonsai were gone, and a branch and a broken fishing rod which had been used to reach the plants, had been left in the fence.

Mike said the thief had obviously managed to sell the first plant and came back for more.

“I moved the plants up, further away from the fence, but on the Friday, another one was gone. The thief must have jumped over the fence to get it. On the Saturday morning another had gone missing. These were seven of my best trees,” said Mike.

He said on the Thursday in a ‘livid rage’ he had gone to a nearby business where a woman said she had seen a man walking on the road with a bonsai tree, and had thought it was unusual.

Mike walked the streets looking for him. He said he was amazed by the unbroken network of car guards, security guards and vagrants who spoke to him and told him they had seen the man and that he had been trying to sell the trees to motorists.

When he was packing up his trees to take to his parents in the Midlands on Saturday, a man living nearby told him he had seen the man outside his property with a crate of four bonsai trees, and that he had told him to put them back.

“The neighbour said the man had been staying in a garage down the road from my flat. I have opened a case at the police station and police have said they have grounds to charge this man,” said Mike.

Mike said he was very worried the stolen trees would die if they were bought by someone who didn’t know how to care for them.

“These trees are very important to me. I spend 40 minutes a day watering them, checking them and split grafting. It’s a passion. I desperately want my trees back. They were all still in training and had wires on them. I’m afraid the people who bought them wouldn’t know how best to look after them, and they will get sick or die. I’m counting on the sense of decency and humanity of these people to contact me so I can recover them,” he said.

Contact Mike on 071 124 4977.