The return of the West Seattle woodland Grouchos

Via matthetube's Flickr. Thanks, Matt.

Last year in a post titled "Where Are the West Seattle Grouchos?" I lamented the mysterious absence of an urban guerrilla art giggle-bombing that, from 2007-2009, had manifested annually in a stretch of woods alongside a major thoroughfare near my neighborhood. They were the West Seattle Grouchos, and they never failed to lift my spirits as I drove past. Yet last year these drive-by non sequiturs didn't reappear, so I missed the whimsy that seemed aimed at me, a dedicated Grouchophile, on my daily drive into downtown Seattle.

Did the herd of crouching Grouchos migrate to greener Freedonias? Had the unknown artiste(s) moved on to bigger things — perhaps San Francisco and giant Harpos on the Golden Gate Bridge? If so, I wished that I could thank him, her, or them, and perhaps buy a round of a local ale followed by a showing of, say, Duck Soup on the big screen at my house. But alas, they'd vanished like Zeppo at MGM and to all appearances the era of the West Seattle Grouchos was over. (The spot is geo-marked at Wikimapia and wiki.worldflicks.)

So I'm pleased to report that they're back again. And they've multiplied. They're in the same location as before, although given the long, wet spring and nominal summer we've had this year, the underbrush is even more jungle-like than before and the Grouchos aren't quite as easy to spot. So, armed with a camera, yesterday I pulled off to the shoulder of the road and snapped this new herd in the wild before they vanish again for who knows how long.