Please Explain the Shield Symbol

[Navotifarm]

There's a marvelous thread on here with Google Earth images of some fellow posters' homesteads. I do not see a thing wrong with it but that little shield symbol with the upright lines has appeared near the header. My observation has been, that's a precursor to thread lock or deletion because it showed up in Farm Boy Bill's gay-bashing nasty butts thread and in two of my threads that got deleted when I freaked at the deprivation and hunger attack. So they must be a kind of warning but I don't see any symbol intrepretaion as to warning of what and there is no such symbol on the dog murder thread so I can't figure out what it means and would appreciate translation. Thank you.

[starlady]

If you hover over it, it tells you how many posts have been deleted in that thread. I think it's meant to be a trash can.

edit: looks like Cabin Fever deleted his post. I think the reason the trash can is sometimes a precursor to thread deletion is that if the mods have to go in and delete off-topic or nasty posts, the trash can will show up... and then eventually they might delete the whole thread. Sometimes, though, people delete their own posts for unrelated reasons.

[WhiteWillow]

Hmm...interesting.