The following piece appears in this weekend's Fauquier Weekend paper. Top of page 3. Check it out!“Mom!” I was sitting at my desk when I heard my ten year-old, Cuyler, and his best friend, Jeff, come racing into the kitchen. “Hey, mom!” he shouted again as I caught the familiar sounds of the refrigerator door opening, slamming shut, and the pop! hiss! of two cans of Coke being readied for rapid consumption. “Did you know we have Kudzu on the farm?”
“What do you mean, on the farm?” I shouted back. “It’s in the den.”
In a flash, both boys were standing in my doorway. They were dirty, sweaty, and sucking down their sodas almost as fast as Jon Gosselin replaced Kate. They were also looking at me like I’d completely lost what was left of my mind.
“We have Kudzu in the den?” Cuy asked, incredulously.
“Yeah. Dad has a book of them. Kudzu puzzles. He has crossword puzzles, too. You guys want them?” I stood up and started down the hall. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
“Mom, that’s Sudoku.” He made a circular motion with his index finger near his temple, and mouthed the word “blonde” to his buddy. “Kudzu is a vine.”
I whirled around. “I saw that, dude.” Both boys looked at the floor. Holy cow; they even had dirt on their eyelids.
“They call it ‘The Vine that Ate the South,’” Jeff ventured.
“When you say vine, do you mean Tarzan-swinging-from-the-trees type vine, or the Vinca-we’ve-got-in-the-window-boxes type vine?”
“That depends,” my son replied. “Who’s Tarzan?”
Wisely, I didn’t try to explain Tarzan and they didn’t try to show me how to do Sudoku, an unfortunate pastime that involves math and to my way of non number loving thinking looks about as much fun as having one’s large intestine removed laparoscopically and being forced to wear it like a feather boa.
Instead we hit the Internet and searched on “Kudzu.”
The images of the broad-leafed plant, sometimes resplendent with blue or purple blooms, were both mesmerizing and horrifying, not to mention startlingly reminiscent of the sets in
Edward Scissorhands. Picture after picture showed it blanketing abandoned barns, fallen trees and untended pastures all over the South, and site after site described its startling and unstoppable summer growth rate of a foot a day.
A foot a day! And I thought nothing could spring up faster than my seventeen year-old. If it eats as much as he does, we’re all doomed.
I logged off and looked at my younger son and his pal, both of whom were busy adding a lovely orange coating of Cheez Puffs to their filthy fingers. “Where exactly did you two see this stuff?”
In the woods, on the old wagon.
No, it’s an old chicken coop!
Nuh uh. Wagon!
“Guys, guys.” I put my hands up in the universal signal for Stop, or I’ll cut off the snack foods. “Wagon, coop, who cares? Take me there.”
And so they did.
Sure enough, there was an ancient wheeled whatever barely visible beneath some kind of freaky foliage. Was it ivy? Was it Kudzu? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t want the kids to get any closer. What if the ghastly thing suddenly did its foot-a-day growth dance and devoured both boys right before my eyes?
No, no, better to stand back and plot its destruction, or at least postponement. You can’t kill Kudzu, but you can maim it.
I figured we’d start by getting our goats to graze on it. Then, we’d bring in the cows. When they’d chowed it down to nothing but nubs, we’d finish by letting the hens have at it. That would bring it to the brink of the grave.
And if it didn’t, we’d resort to Sudoku. One look at that stuff and the darn thing will wish it were dead.
