On my way through Saga­ponack on an errand Monday afternoon, I noticed that the plastic coyote that had been placed in the middle of a field south of the highway was gone. Thus ended what had been one of the area’s all-too-few solid public pranks.

The plastic (or whatever it was) coyote sure had fooled me. Driving that way earlier this winter, I spotted its gray figure a couple of hundred yards out in the rye cover crop and pulled over quickly. 

It was too tall to be a fox, I thought. It had to be the Sagaponack coyote that had caused a stir about a year ago! 

That it did not move a muscle hardly mattered to me; when I got back to the office, I excitedly described what I had seen. Problem was that it was in the same place in the same posture the next day, and the next, and the Monday after that.

The roster of great South Fork pranks is too few, in my opinion. Why our public spaces are so lacking in humor, I don’t know. Nor do I know why some people, myself among them, enjoy the occasional gag. I suspect that the attraction is that they are often a visual trick, a pun, or a joke in real time, to break up the relative monotony of day-to-day life.

My favorite prank here has to have been the now-gone Route 114 submarine, which appeared, floating, in a road drainage sump the Town of East Hampton had dug, improperly and probably illegally, on preserved farmland. That it was allowed to remain there for about two years, I thought, spoke well for the sense of humor of local officials.

Then there is the Napeague giraffe, or perhaps giraffes (I think this one might be an updated version), hidden in black pines in the state park. The effort to walk a life-sized fiberglass giraffe that far off the road and into a narrow gully boggles the mind.

There have been a few others, but perhaps the biggest center-stage prank for me occurred around 1975 when the movie version of “Jaws” was released. One morning my young teenage buddies and I were hugely impressed to see a large, black shark fin bobbing in Town Pond. 

Thing is, not content to enjoy it for the simple and amusing sight it was, we resolved to catch it. It was raining that day, if I remember, and though we had a rope long enough that we could walk in two teams to snag the thing, one on either side of the pond with the rope between us, we got plenty wet. 

Streaking, another kind of prank, was a thing that summer, and, once we had captured the fin, we discussed giving that a try. None of us will either confirm or deny guesses about what happened after that.

At a gathering at Ashawagh Hall that followed a service in Green River Cemetery for Ralph Carpentier, who I always remember said the tranquillity of the terrain here informed our psyches, Elena Prohaska exclaimed that she hadn’t seen me in years.

“Then you don’t go to the dump,” I said.

But she did go to the dump, she said. How our paths haven’t crossed, then, I am at a loss to say, for that’s where I, a democratic socializer (a more viable label in these times, you may agree, than a democratic socialist), see people, given the facts that I don’t belong to a church, a fire department, or a service organization — albeit I think they all do wonderful things. 

When I set forth from my landlady’s some 33 years ago, she said, “Now I’ll never see you again.”

That hasn’t exactly been true, though East Hampton’s a strange — but beautiful — place. If only she went to the dump. 

I have actually seen her from time to time over the years, as it’s turned out — once, I’m happy to say, at a party where I was able to testify to her salvific generosity to me during a trying period in our lives, and most recently at East End Physical Therapy, where, under Rob Balnis’s care, we are trying to preserve what’s left. 

But even more than self-preservation we are reminded by Ralph Carpentier’s tranquil paintings of the sky and the land and the water of the need to preserve this beautiful place — a sentiment rendered all the more urgent even as our spirits have been diminished, eroded, if you will, by the recent deaths of those like him who felt called to preserve it.   

On a recent getaway to Newport, R.I., my husband and I enjoyed a cozy hotel room with a fire, perfect for the cold and windy winter’s night. But, alas, there was also a television above the mantel, and on it went to check the following day’s weather. My husband flipped through the channels, stopping at first to catch the score, but as he scrolled through, he stopped for a moment on what looked like a public access channel with a judge hearing a case. He kept pushing the button, but I was curious. Go back, I prodded. And like any good husband, he did. 

From the bench, the older judge questioned a middle-aged woman about whether she had actually run that stop sign at the corner of such and such a street. Through a translator, she claimed to have been in a hurry. Not a good enough excuse, the judge said. He ruled that she owed an $85 fine. Next case. 

“Caught in Providence,” as I learned, is something of a local phenomenon, the brainchild of Frank Caprio, the chief udge of the city’s municipal court. Cameras have full access to court proceedings, mainly for traffic, parking, and low-level criminal offenses. The unscripted reality show airs on the local ABC affiliate, though it began sometime around 2000 as just a local cable show. A search on YouTube is worth it.

During the show I caught, a member of the military, originally from the Dominican Republic, faced the judge on a disorderly conduct charge he received after an altercation with the police outside a nightclub. He respectfully argued his case, and the judge read aloud the officer’s version of events. Ultimately, the judge decided the truth was probably somewhere in between, though he told the member of the armed services he likely had his “alcohol muscles” out that night and perhaps didn’t quite remember things the way he had explained them. Still, he gave him a break: Stay out of trouble for three months and the case would be dismissed. Fair, I thought. 

The camera cut to those sitting in the courtroom, waiting their turn in front of the judge. One young man, whose hair was a bit unkempt and who was wearing a sweatshirt, smirked and whispered in his girlfriend’s ear. I imagined he was saying he didn’t expect the same kind of treatment. This is why you never judge a book by its cover. Later in the program, I found it was the girlfriend who was in trouble, not him. 

The show has gained a cult following, as I read online. The end of it features voicemails the judge receives about the show, a mix of both positive and negative feedback. One man said the judge, who is of Italian descent, could never be expected to understand the plight of minorities. Another caller told the judge to keep up the good work holding the defendants before him accountable. I had a fleeting thought to call him myself about the late-night entertainment.

All of it — the back and forth, the outlandish excuses, the ways people decide to dress for court — got me thinking about my days as a police reporter. There were many moments, particularly in county court, where I was left thinking, Did that really just happen? I remember covering proceedings back when justice court was held in the meeting room of the old Town Hall. There was this one man in Justice Catherine Cahill’s courtroom one day, shackled thanks to a minor offense, really, who was desperately trying to get out of jail and just needed $200 to pay a fine. He was sitting a stone’s throw away from his girlfriends who, unfortunately for him, showed up on the same day to get him out. Back to the Riverside jail he went. 

Let’s face it, “Caught in Providence” could easily be filmed in almost any courtroom, though Judge Caprio’s good-natured humor and the low-level offenses he’s hearing help keep it as mainly lighthearted entertainment for the viewers at home. If the police blotter on the pages of The Shelter Island Reporter are any indication, justice court on the Rock may be the perfect setting, if there’s some producer out there interested. East Hampton Town Justice Steve Tekulsky’s wit from the bench also makes him a candidate, from what I’ve seen and heard. 

All jokes aside, the Rhode Island show is a reminder of the sad state many find themselves in, the justice system often just bringing it to light. I often wonder how long it took for that young man on Justice Cahill’s docket to get out. We’ve all seen the jailhouse reality show, no laughing matter there. Just check out “Lockup on Long Island: Extended Stay,” filmed at the Suffolk County jail. 

If you’re thinking I need a break from reality television, you’re right.

Taylor K. Vecsey is The Star’s digital media editor.

From where I sit, the world is getting narrower. It’s a given that the longer you live the longer your list becomes of colleagues, friends, and relatives who are gone. My sister-in-law is at the top of that list this week, having died on Monday.

Memorials and mementos are not salves, but they are nice and often meaningful. I want to remember what was said and written by or about someone who has died and to be able to look at their photographs. I’m proud of the way The Star has handled and written obituaries over the years, have edited hundreds, and written many. I’ve learned that the closer you were the harder the task.

Will the words and pictures we’ve always saved be lost to the digital revolution? Or will they remain somewhere in the ether forever? Will the next generation reject what we still hold onto physically as they wander in cyberspace?

My brother died more than five years ago, and his children — my niece and nephew — have posted many pictures of him and members of their extended family (including a young me) on Facebook; they have also unearthed what my nephew described as reel-to-reel audiotapes, which in the ’60s and ’70s the family used to mail back and forth between the East and West Coasts. My tech-savvy nephew must have had them digitized, because last week he sent a number of us a batch of these exchanges: conversations, poems, songs, stories. 

They arrived through Dropbox, an Internet file-sharing service, and even a somewhat computer-phobic person like me was able to figure out how to access one of the files. Imagine what a surprise it was to hear my niece, as a child in the early 1960s, saying she had just lost a tooth! She’s a grown woman now — and a grandmother. 

My brother and his wife were in the habit of storing lots of things, so it wasn’t surprising that the tapes were there to be found when their house was emptied after its sale. We are lucky to have them.

Which brings me back home to the myriad cartons and cabinets my husband and I have stowed away in the Rattray family house, but, thank goodness, not in the oldest part of the barn, which the East Hampton Historical Society is going to move to the Mulford Farm and restore. The historians call it the Hedges barn because a Hedges had it built in the mid-18th century, and it was later moved by my late mother-in-law’s father to its present site.

I’ve watched as friends have aged and begun to divest themselves of possessions (from souvenirs gathered on travels to furnishings and treasured mementos, not to mention real estate). Listening to my niece on that audiotape this week makes me realize that maybe, just maybe, the technology of the 21st century is making it possible to retain those words and mementos in a way that better values the past than putting them away in a box in some dark corner.

Almost every time I go out these days, someone I run into wants to talk about our pet pig, Leo, who has been the subject of a disturbing number of columns in these pages. Leo, the height of indifference except at mealtime, could care less, but he has become a bit of a subject of interest, from appearances.

To refresh: The pig came to us, as most bad things do these days, via the Internet. My wife, Lisa, and eldest child had (quote-unquote) researched the subject for months, settling on a breeder in Texas who specialized in (again, quote-unquote) tea-cup pigs that would not grow tusks or exceed 10 pounds. I said it was bunk.

Four years later and hitting the 100-pound mark on the bathroom scale easily, and with sharp curving tusks poking from his mouth, Leo is a living, grunting reminder that Daddy is always right. Or at least that’s what I wish the takeaway was.

Leo doesn’t do much. This is one reason why I think it is amusing that my columns about him get the most attention. His days begin at 5 a.m., with shuffling around the kitchen, hoping to be fed. This wakes the dogs, the largest of which comes down from his bed on the second-floor landing, which in turn vexes the pig, who whines and wails to great effect. By effect I mean that I get up, and before doing anything else give him a bowl of feed on the porch.

Lisa says I baby him and that when I am out of town Leo sleeps in. Truth is, I think, she throws a sneaker at him when he tries to rally her at 5 and tells him to get back to bed. Yeah, I don’t mess with Lisa at that hour either.

After that, Leo might go outside for his morning constitutional or, if he is feeling lazy, go back to his bed and sleep till noon. For the amount of water he drinks, I think he must be part camel. 

Then, around 5 p.m., it’s feeding time again. Then bed. When the weather’s warm, Leo varies the plan by doing his daytime sleeping in a sunny spot in the yard. Other than that, his is the model of contented life, all but oblivious to the varied dramas that surround him. 

It is perhaps this lack of activity that makes him fascinating. Maybe readers — and I — are just a little bit jealous.

After congratulating me on my 76th birthday and hearing that I still played tennis in mad dog fashion, Matt Charron, who does our photos, said, “I hear you’ve got some titanium in you. . . .”

“Yes, two knees,” I said. “But that’s nothing. Joe O’Connell, who still plays, told me he has two knees, a hip, a shoulder . . . and a pacemaker. ‘God,’ I told him, ‘you sure know how to rub it in!’ ” 

“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser,” Cam Newton has famously said. “I am a bad loser,” I confessed to my daughter Emily, “so thank God I always win. . . . At least Mike Press and I always do.”

“Keep it up, Dad,” she said. 

“And tell the kids I’m hitting the ball as hard as Cam Newton throws it.”

“Kids, Grandpa Jack says he’s hitting the ball as hard as Peyton Manning throws it,” she called out to Jack and Max.

Jane Bimson made her wonderful carrot cake muffins slathered in that irresistible cream cheese icing for Min Hefner and my Feb. 11 birthdays, and, of course, by early afternoon last Thursday I’d wolfed down three.

“I’ve got to stop or something bad will happen,” I said, “like a stroke. . . . Three strokes and yer out.” 

One always worries at this time of life, or phase of life — my mother used to say periodically that I was “going through a phase,” in an effort, I thought, to render banal what I viewed as brilliantly uncategorizable behavior — that something bad will happen, but, as Dave Van Ronk sang in “Cocaine Blues,” they don’t tell ya when.

I gather from having read a pale ontologist who writes wonderfully, Richard Fortey, that life is owing to fortuitous chance by and large, being as we are descended from photosynthetic blue-green mats, and that, moreover, it’s wishful thinking to believe that evolution’s goal is perfectibility. 

Still, though we all have our flaws (floss, too, if you’re of a certain age), there remains the urge to, if not strive for excellence, as our scholar-athletes are said to do, at least to steadily improve — to acquire knowledge and wisdom, and to attain every now and then the joy that comes when you’ve kicked your opponents’ butts in doubles, at the ages of 80 and 76.

The war on leaves throughout the Town of East Hampton, New York, has been won. Victory has also been declared in the Village of East Hampton, a village within the township’s boundaries. East Hampton is a small community by United States standards, located along the Northeast coastline. Somewhere in its lengthy history dating to the 17th century tree leaves got a very bad name. 

Tree leaves, you know them: oak, cherry, apple, maple — they became the unwanted guests on lawns, in gardens, fairway, byway, or throughway, destined for a fate worse than banishment. Loud gasoline-powered air blowers with hideous three-foot plastic tubes and backpacks mounted on people’s backs accelerate their demise: The leaves are blown into enormous piles and taken to their fate.

Warlike items, these gas and electric blowers! Stalinesque men wearing protective earmuffs and protective glasses move through Village of East Hampton and town properties alike, blowing leaves into piles. Hell of a racket these leaf blowers make. The U.S. Army is inquiring with East Hampton Town officials if the noise and disarray these blowers create could be used as a counterintelligence deception. Send 20 men armed with leaf blowers to cause a distraction in a military zone or to disperse hostile persons. American police are considering the leaf blowers for riot control. Trump is considering the measure.

After the tree leaves are blown into piles, they are put into trucks and carted off to their resting place. Sometimes a large box truck with a giant tube arrives to suck up the enormous piles of leaves. The truck, with a 10-inch-in-diameter, 20-yard tube attached, makes a ground-shuddering noise when sucking up the leaves. Often the big box truck with tube scatters a fine dust of leaf particles in all directions for 40 yards, coating cars and house windows alike. After being sucked up, the leaves are taken to the East Hampton Town dump, then ground up by huge machines into piles of mush. Poor leaves — what a destiny!

Dads, moms, sisters, brothers, uncles, nieces, nephews used to rake the leaves at their homes, making five-foot piles. Children would take 10-yard running starts and leap maniacally into the piles and disappear. It was rather the spectacle! A 5-year-old vanishes in leaf pile, emerges as leaf child shortly thereafter. It is sad — no more leaf children. 

In modern 2016 East Hampton — tick paranoia, the Howard Hughes germ complex, call it what you may — you see few children jumping in leaf piles. Years ago and through the 1960s and 1970s, laissez-faire homeowners, after raking the leaves into piles and jumping into them, burned them in old steel garbage cans. The pleasant smell of burning leaves pervaded most neighborhoods in East Hampton as late fall turned to Thanksgiving. 

No one really knows what happened. Burning leaves was banned. Industry took over. There is money in beating and pulverizing those poor desperate leaves.

Leaf destruction is big business in East Hampton. Fanatical homeowners hire professional landscapers and pay them lots of money to blow every leaf off their lawns. The sight of a man with a leaf blower blowing 20 small leaves into a tiny pile taking 15 minutes accompanied by atrocious noise is common. 

So it goes: No more moms and dads raking leaves into giant piles. No more nutty kids running across lawns, leaping, arms outstretched, feet airborne, vanishing into leaf piles. No more burning leaves and the pleasant burning-leaf smell wafting through East Hampton neighborhoods.

Onward, to the war on snow. Not more than 10 years ago, before a few hundred Range Rovers and an equal number of Mercedes-Benz S.U.V.s, and more recently Porsche S.U.V.s, invaded town, snow fell in large amounts during January and any rational person stayed home. 

Fifteen years ago, adventurous types took the oldest truck or car in the driveway out for a spin as a storm descended. The proverbial spin down Further Lane, Hither, Middle, Indian Wells! Doughnut spins in an empty beach parking lot seemed normal. Not a snowplow or policeman in sight. After all, it was late January with 10 inches of snow predicted. 

The Village of East Hampton and Town of East Hampton used to let it snow for a few hours and then plow as best as they could. Who in their right mind would be driving? Maybe a longtime resident in an old Ford truck with a broken heater and holes in the floorboard, or a couple comfy and coated inside a Chevy truck. Who else would be driving around in a blizzard?

New politics: mash, plow, and scrape every bit of snowfall to make way for brand-new Jeeps, Range Rovers, and expensive S.U.V.s of every description. The United States government’s assistance to the auto industry has been effective. Just look at all these fabulous vehicles roaring through the small Village of East Hampton. Of course half of these vehicles’ owners own no property here. Yet, East Hampton taxes pay to keep the roads spiffy for these out-of-town motorheads during whiteout blizzards. Impassable snow-covered roads are now salted, sanded; hourly updates are given via social media, via local governments, as to the progress in keeping the roads traversable. 

The question is, who are the roads open for? Schoolchildren dream of snow days; parents do too. Seriously, who drives in New England during blizzards?

East Hampton, New York, February 2016: Men decked out in scarves and expensive coats drive deluxe Range Rover S.U.V.s to shop at Citarella, buying lots of food, some of which goes to waste. Beautifully adorned women ride in the shotgun seats of the S.U.V.s to watch the flurry of the Northeast weather maelstrom descend as hubby shops. Of course some business owners don’t mind. The dedicated employees who show up during blizzards are getting paid $15 an hour. Great Scott, what a deal!

Clear the roads. Keep everyone at work throughout snowstorms, hurricanes, and major weather events. It is good for the 1 percent. They can amuse themselves shopping during major storms. 

Mash and smash those poor leaves, demolish that snow! More snowplows, more leaf blowers — please! 

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

The graceful rituals of a Greek Orthodox wedding took us UpIsland last weekend, when one my husband’s sons and the woman of his dreams were married on Saturday at the exquisite St. Demetrios Church in Jamaica, Queens.

Amid chanting by a cantor, the traditional, and quite moving, rites included some that were entirely new to us and, apparently, unique to the denomination. The priest plac­ed simple white crowns, connected by a ribbon, on the heads of the bride and bridegroom, symbolizing their unity. The couple drank from a common cup, which is meant to express the belief that their joys will henceforth be doubled and their sorrows halved, and they took their first steps as a married couple circling a table holding the books and artifacts of belief.

The ceremony was solemn and tranquil, but the party that followed in a popular wedding catering hall was anything but. The guests, on both the bride and groom’s sides, worked their way through a jaw-droppingly vast appetizer buffet (honestly, a spread of food more extensive than any this side of Las Vegas, I’d bet) before making their way to a fairy-tale dining room — decorated in white, with soft lighting and towering bouquets of white hydrangea, peonies, and roses — for a four-course dinner. Families from both sides of the aisle danced under colored lights that beamed down as if by magic from the ceiling (impressing the heck out of the youngest members of the party). 

There were top-40 tunes, a bit of 1970s funk, and also Greek circle dances that brought just about everyone onto the floor. The highlight, however, for me and I am sure the couple, were the toasts made by immediate family members. It isn’t often that wedding toasts are sincere enough to bring the entire room to tears.

The wedding had another plus for the my husband’s family: Many of the Corys were able to gather at a Hilton hotel, where breakfast and other spare moments became rare together times. Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and in-laws — or outlaws as a few of us call ourselves — caught up with what the others were up to, sharing news of the recent past and plans for the future. 

Our weekend wound down with lunch at a large neon-signed diner, the Majestic, which was full of people celebrating Valentine’s Day and birthdays. By then our group had dwindled to only six, but we were still in enough of a party mood to join the waiters in singing “Happy Birthday” to strangers — twice.

The Hilton we stayed at is in Westbury, in Nassau County, which encompasses the North Shore (of F. Scott Fitzgerald fame) and Brookville, the town that the Bloomberg organization has ranked as number-one for wealth in the entire country. What we saw definitely wasn’t Gatsby country, though. We did get a good eyeful of congested highways and endless shopping malls, not usually the sort of places I would choose for a winter vacation. Nevertheless, we all had a smashing good time. 

My very-much-impressed youngest granddaughter, who must have danced for two hours solid, said it was the best party she’d ever been to in her life. “When I get married,” she said, “I want to have the reception in Queens.”

My thinking was that if I couldn’t manage to clean up my office in February, there was no way I was going to be able to do it at all. So, while Lisa and the kids were in the city to see a Broadway show recently, I began what amounted to paperwork excavation.

One gets used to the piles after a while. My office was certainly a case in point. Durell Godfrey, one of the Star photographers, included a version of my workspace in her recent coloring book for adults, “Color Me Cluttered.” This morning, when she saw the result, she said she might have to return to her drawing board.

Just where all the stuff comes from can be a puzzle. Looking in the kitchen cabinets at home the other day, I noticed that we had an overstock of baking dishes, and I wondered just how many anyone might need. Looking in another cabinet, I saw an object I’d never used and never will, a fluted thing for making a matched pair of baguettes — but why? As for cake pans, do I really need circular ones in nearly every size but none that match? What if I want to make a layer cake?

Among the objects hanging around The Star that need to go are a remarkable number of tables that date to a time when computers took up lots of desk space. In my office, a faux-oak monstrosity occupied one corner, on top of which I had slowly piled hundreds of old photographic negatives, prints, and archival material. Underneath it you might have found a couple of outdated phone books, a pair of official Jackson Pollock Crocs, and, among other things, a dullish blade for a circular saw. 

My co-workers were shocked by the change but there is plenty of work left to do. My strategy is to come in an hour earlier than usual to continue to go through things. Then I’ll tackle the house. Anyone want a baguette pan?

“You’re gonna love it. I’m going to get the best business minds in the country together and we’re going to say no to China and no to Mexico — and build a wall there, by the way, it’s easy — and no to Bernie Sanders, who wants to give this country away. I’ll be the greatest creator of jobs that the Creator ever created. You can count on it. We’re going to make America grandiose again.”

“I can’t believe the trade deals they’ve been making, and this budget! We’re $19 trillion in debt. Nobody even knows what that means. It’s got to end, folks, it’s got to end, and I’m going to end it. It’s over.” 

“We’re going to rebuild our military too. Anything they want. I who got a medical deferment because of a bone spur am going to spur this. We’ll make the Mexicans and Chinese pay. They’ve been playing us for suckers for far too long. ISIS will be toast. Assad? Forget him. Putin too, and what’s his face, that crazy guy in North Korea. No more tiptoeing around. Our way or the highway. I’m telling you, you’re going to love it. They’re not going to love it. The tinpot dictators of this world are not going to love it, they’re not going to love being dictated to by a real, honest-to-God dictator with a capital D. A capitalist dictator, not a democratic socialist, one who can back up what he says with the greatest military the world has ever known, and under my presidency it’s going to be an even greater military than the greatest military the world has ever known. I know it.”

“Drugs? They’re over. Done. Trust me. Done. Same with Obamacare. Illegal immigration. Done. Over. We’re going to take our country back from those who want to give it away, like the politicians in Washington, and from those who have been invading it. The Mexican War settled that. It’s our country, Mexico, not yours. There’s a boundary, folks, and that’s where the wall is going. And the Mexicans, once I get them back to their country, are going to build it. It’s an easy thing to do. Hasta la vista, baby.”

“First thing I’m going to do when elected is dissolve Congress. If it can’t make up its mind, I’ll make it up for it. And the Supreme Court too. Checks and balances are for sissies. All this tergiversating and navel-gazing. It’s disgusting. And I’ll make the Second Amendment the First Amendment, and, come to think of it, I’ll tear up the First Amendment. Who needs it?”

“I’m telling you, you’re going to love it.”