Greenwich, Connecticut. Time was, it was a place to settle down. Raise a family. Have a happy life. But what darkness lurked behind those picket fences, those verdant hedgerows? Lots, it turns out, and we've been seeing plenty of it in the last year: Traders forced into cross-dressing slavery. Older men who collect teddy bears and run Ponzi schemes. Families who look perfect on the outside, but conceal dark and hideous secrets. Now, the pressure of the financial crisis is taking its toll, and Greenwich is sinking further into a dystopian nightmare. The homes of billionaires sit vacant and unsold. Rodents are running rampant in the once-tony boutiques. And a sinister new enemy has arrived in town ...

... a creeping vine known as the mile-a-minute weed.

“Remember ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’” said Tom Baptist, executive director of Audubon Connecticut ... “This has a similar science fiction feeling, but it’s the attack of an alien plant. It usually kills what it covers.”

They're trying all kinds of things to get rid of them, of course. Poison. Weevils. But that won't make a lick of difference. We think we know how this story is going to end, and it is grim. With the residents of Greenwich powerless to pay their landscapers, soon enough these weeds will erode the hedgerows. Briefly, the crumbling mansions and people within them will be exposed, then buried entirely, like ancient civilization.

That's how it would happen in the old Twilight Zone, anyway.

Hedges of Greenwich Succumb as Weed Invades Hedge Fund Capital [Bloomberg]