News-Record.com

And so it has come to this.

Apparently not content with walls, bridges and the sides of railroad boxcars, somebody with more time than good sense has now spray-painted a living, breathing animal.

The vandal last week painted his "tag" in dark-blue, 12-inch letters on a horse in Southampton, England. The horse was sprayed while it grazed on a field.

There are people on this both sides of the Atlantic for whom all the world -- and now the creatures therein -- are a canvas.

Even Greensboro is developing a graffiti problem. Volunteers and police worked to scrub away the scrawlings three weekends ago. Some fear the art is a sign of growing gang activity. Gangs are an issue, here and elsewhere in North Carolina, but police say the art (and I use the term loosely) also is the handiwork of bored teenagers.

Whoever is responsible, these public tattoos are popping up in places you might not expect, such as a culvert in the upscale Lake Jeanette community, an abandoned Winn-Dixie on Lawndale Drive and phone pedestals near Greensboro Day School.

In an ongoing war of wills, somebody scribbles the message on a pedestal and somebody scours it off. Then somebody redraws it.

Greensboro approved an anti-graffiti ordinance in May 1999. The law fines vandals between $250 and $500 for defacing property. It also fines property owners $100 if they fail to clean the scrawlings within two weeks.

City Councilman Don Vaughan proposed the ordinance after somebody defaced his downtown law office.

Graffiti is so ubiquitous on Norfolk Southern box and tank cars, many of which roll frequently through Greensboro, that model railroaders can buy graffiti decals to make their miniatures more true-to-life.

I refuse to be that realistic.