SYRACUSE -- Some children on Park Avenue in Syracuse are mourning the loss of their front-yard snowman, Frosty, while parents and neighbors are saying the small acts of mischief are becoming routine.
Aaron and Gabriel Moore spent a few hours crafting the perfect snowman, picking out aluminum cans for eyes and a nose, and adding a scarf and cardboard party hat. "They were very proud, very happy and we had to come outside and look at it," the twin six-year-old boys' mother, Amy Moore, said. "They had it explain it to me, they needed a scarf."
But Monday morning, the twins were leaving for school with their mother, when they saw what had happened. Frosty had tumbled - but it didn't appear to be naturally. Footprints lead to and from the snowman, indicating that Frosty had not fallen on his own.
Amy Moore thinks neighborhood kids may have pushed Frosty down, but instead of piecing him together, Moore and her boys decided to take a different route. They painted a sign "Who killed Frosty?" with a sad face in the "O." Next to the sign lays Frosty's toppled remains, marked with a cross reading "RIP 2010 Frosty S. Mann." "Oh come on," Gabriel said. "We worked so hard on that snowman!"
But neighbors say this isn't the first small act of mischief in the area. Allen Wildhaber lives a few doors down from the Moore's and says his pumpkins have been smashed and his snow shovel stolen. Despite a neighborhood watch program and talking with police about the mischief, both Moore and Wildhaber believe it's neighborhood children behind the menace.
"They should keep their children inside and not let them run around at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, vandalizing property," Wildhaber said. "We're not going to stand for it."
