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View from the North 40: That weed is some bad sh-tuff

While the whole country is debating the mary jane, ganja, dank, 420 issue of legalizing marijuana, I’m obsessing over weed of the noxious list kind.

I know. I wrote about noxious weeds sometime in the last year or two. I swear I had every intention to consider it a spent topic, to ignore my single-minded obsession with the idea that weeds are my mortal enemy, y’know, just let the obsessive compulsiveness go. But no.

Blame my day job. Call my boss. I had to interview the county weed control district Coordinator Terry Turner for an article, a nice guy, but a little too effusive about his job, and he got my weed anxiety all riled up again.

Yours should be, too.

If you don’t know, you should know that every state has a list of invasive, non-native, noxious, bad hombre weeds. They are plants that take over an ecosystem. They push out or kill the native plants that wildlife thrives off of, they cause problems with ag production and/or are a detriment to recreational activities.

Sometimes they hurt the soil by making it susceptible to erosion. Sometimes they increase fire danger. Sometimes they’re poisonous. They are rarely palatable. And most of them have pokies and stickies that jab into the skin, cling to clothes and hair. They are unpleasant to an extreme and detrimental to our economy and well-being at best.

One of the state’s newest noxious weeds is upon us in north-central Montana.

Brace yourselves, and cover the children’s eyes, this weed thing is about to get very real:

The big new weed infestation? It was introduced to the state right here in north-central Montana, our backyard.

It’s like being Patient Zero in a plant-based STD plague.

Turner gave me a lot of amazing, information about a bunch of weeds that you can read about in the Farm & Ranch insert in the paper next week. The article, of course, contains lots of these things called facts, but here’s the quick tutorial on the one we have hosted first in the state:

“Our” noxious weed is called phragmites, pronounced “frag-My-teez.” It’s a grass-like reed that grows up to 15 feet tall and spreads prolifically, creating dense stands that block waterways to human and wildlife usage. Eradication of the weed is accomplished with burning and spraying.

After a week of obsessing about this weed, this is what I have in my head:

The invading phragmites grows so tall two men and a small child stacked foot-to-shoulders can’t see over the tops. The plants grow so fast and thick you can hear the runners slithering out across the ground, popping like a cork every 12 inches as new sprouts burst out, fully formed with a beard and a full set of teeth.

They seek to destroy all water access to keep all the water for themselves, drinking it up like beer kegs at a frat party, and to block all sun and joy from the other plants of the world. Bambi, Thumper, Tweety Bird and all their little friends will die from dehydration, or drown when the runners catch up to them in open water and pull them under. Nemo and his little blue friend might succumb, as well.

Call a professional weed assassin to control the invasion.

Set ablaze, phragmites burns with all the dark-smoke and flaming fury of a pile of tires doused with jet fuel.

Herbicide spraying requires a specialized aquatic applicator license and a wet suit.

If the phragmites spreads to your favorite fishing hole, it’ll take resurrecting Jacque Cousteau and more weed killer than you can buy with a personal loan to spray the weeds. It might cost our souls, too, in a deal with the devil.

——

I have to stop talking to Terry. He gives me nightmares at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.com/.

 

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