CARLSBAD - Some folks might view it as a traditional teen-age right of passage, but Calavera Hills area resident Jeanne Brandone has had it with giggling young people sneaking into her yard in the middle of the night to toss toilet paper onto her trees.

Hit by toilet-paper tossers twice in two weeks, Brandone has her suspicions that the incidents have something to do with her 16-year-old daughter - a slender, dark-haired girl who's active in Carlsbad High School's band.

"I would guess it has to do with boy/girl relations, but I don't know what yet," she said.

She's trying to track down who might have been involved, saying she wants to get them to pay for cleanup of the higher spots in the trees that she can't reach on her own.

Her reaction is unusual. Most people don't even report "TP" incidents because they're considered minor trespassing events, police say. Usually, they happen in the middle of the night and catching the perpetrators isn't easy.

However, Brandone is probably on to something when she says there might be a romantic connection, Police Capt. Mike Shipley said.

"There's no guarantee that's the reason, but usually somebody likes somebody in the house," he said.

Typically, a teen with a crush will encourage a few friends to conduct a late-night, toilet paper tossing excursion, Shipley said. It's far more common that one high school kid is trying to impress another rather than someone acting in a malicious in nature, he said.

He should know. When his 20-year-old stepdaughter was a teen, his house was coated multiple times - he even caught one of the neighborhood kids as he was about toss the first roll one night, he said.

Carlsbad Police report that they receive about one to two toilet paper-related vandalism complaints a week, but Shipley figures many folks don't even bother to call. In fact, many parents take a laid-back attitude toward the whole thing, he said.

"I've heard of parents taking their kids out (to toilet paper) because they don't want their kids to get in trouble (by going out themselves)," he said.

That parental attitude bothers Brandone.

"(The teens are) putting the toilet paper where you can't get it off," she said, staring at strands that dangled from palm tree fronds some 30 feet from the ground. "My point is it has escalated … and the parents who think this is funny … are clueless."

The first incident two weeks ago took just 45 minutes to clean up, but the one Saturday probably resulted in the destruction of about 100 rolls of toilet paper, she said. People tossed the rolls onto the second story of her roof, they coated her car, they tore of individual pieces off the rolls and stuck dozens of them inside the bird-of-paradise plants.

"They woke us up by yelling and that's how we knew it happened," she said.

As a crowd of about 10 boys went dashing off in the darkness, she and her daughter started cleaning up the mess. Her daughter, Maria, said she just wants it to stop. She didn't enjoy getting up at 2 a.m. and spending hours cleaning up soggy wet paper, she said.

"I think it's more than being flattering now, it's downright cruel," she said.

They could have waited for daylight for the cleanup, but her mom said she didn't want the toilet-paper crew to get the "visual satisfaction" of driving by in daylight and seeing their handiwork.

After hours of cleanup, including sweeping the street in front of three neighboring homes, they had filled 13 trash bags. But a few long tendrils of toilet paper still dangled from the roof and the palm trees on Monday afternoon.

Brandone estimated that 25 to 30 rolls remained up on her roof, and she wants to hire someone to get the stuff off the palm trees. She's now on the hunt for the perpetrators, she said. She's got leads on a few possibilities, but she's not releasing what she knows to the media. Her family lawyer has advised her that it's better to keep her mouth shut, she said.

If people are caught conducting a toilet-paper caper, they can face misdemeanor vandalism or trespassing charges depending on what they've done, Deputy City Attorney Paul Edmonson said. Conviction carries up to a $500 fine and/or six months in jail, he said.

- Contact staff writer Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072 or bhenry@nctimes.com.