Beware of the creeping enemy
These days I’m afraid to walk
outside my own commune.
It’s spring again, finally,
and that means the return of the Creep
ing Red Fescue. /
It sits out there in front of the
house, breathing. Growing. Eating.
Creeping.
Sure, it looks like a type of shade
grass, just as the government would
have us believe. But what tipped me
off early onto the real nature of this
green death was the way my landlord,
Bill, fawned over that patch between
the porch and the sidewalk.
“Creeping Red Fescue,” Bill in
toned, pointing a bony old finger at
the ground. Bill was having trouble
getting grass to grow in that particular
patch there under the tree and Fescue
seemed to fit the bill.
He clearly had been taken in by the
bold promises the big Fescue corpora
tions pound into our minds day after
day: Grows in the shade,” they say.
“Be popular with the ladies.”
But even then, a shake snaked
through my being.
“Danger here,” I thought to my
self. “Danger.”
Last summer the Fescue wasn’t
very thick. It was a thin green cover
ing, slowly gaining strength. Bill was
always worried about us stepping on
itor throwing trash on it, such as two
month-old com bread. He put up a
makeshift fence around the patch,
constructed of yam and stakes.
I used to think these measures were
to protect the Fescue from the com
mune. But I soon came to believe, to
my horror, that the yam in fact pro
tected the commune from the Fescue.
“Horrors,” I thought. “O! Grim
Iook’d night”
Often I would stare at the Fescue,
creeping along in the mischievous
way shade grass has, and feel this odd
sensation that it was staring back at
me—that it wanted so badly to creep
right up on the porch and through the
Earl told me Fescue
doesn’t exactly
“creep.” Instead, the
grass uses
something called
“rhizomes” that
“spread” and come
up from under the
soil.
frontdoor, up into the living room and
over Moochmate Gabe.
I dismissed these thoughts as mere
balderdash. It’s just a shade grass, I
said, falling for the government line.
No simple ground growth could hurt
a vertebrate!
But then Gherkin, the squirrel
whose dead carcass gleamed for so
long on our lawn, disappeared. His
friendly-but-sad, and, of course, dead
eyes no longer gazed at me as I headed
off to classes.
The Fescue snickered, creepily
creeping ‘cross the yard. I froze, then
backed slowly up the porch stairs.
To face my fear, I decided to study
my foe. It’sacommon tactic forpeople
who regularly face foes like I do.
Fearfully, I called Earl May Gar
den Center and asked why, exactly,
the Fescue was called “creeping.”
Earl told me Fescue doesn’t ex
actly “creep.” Instead, the grass uses
something called "rhizomes” that
“spread” and come upTrom under the
soil.
I cut through the scientific jargon
and demanded Earl tell me if the
Fescue could possible creep over a
small animal, such as a dog or squir
rel.
“Oh, heavens, no,” he tried to reas
sure me. “It doesn’t grow that fast.”
But any calm that might have settled
over me was shattered when Earl said
one little, innocent pound of Fescue
seed could “spread” to cover 500
square feeL A whole mess o’ squirrels
could fit in 500 square feet.
A man at Williams Garden Center
explained further the concept of the
mysterious “rhizomes” of death.
“That’s what makes it spread —
little chutes go under the ground. It
spreads all the time with rhizomes,”
he said.
That’s right—“all the time.” As I
mulled that thought over, Garden Man
began to get personal.
“You’re letting that ‘creeping’ dis
tort you a little bit,” he told me.
I told him to give it to me straight.
He had tried to convince me that the
Fescue was not actually dangerous,
but then I asked him if the stuff could
have creeped right over Gherkin.
“Oh, God no,” he replied, obvi
ously taken aback.
I have interviewed quite a few
people in my Daily Nebraskan days,
and I could tell that Mr. High-and
Mighty Garden Wizard had not been
expecting that question. Had I
stumbled onto something?
Could, in fact, this Red Creeping
Death creep right over people who
might come over to visit me? Could it
absorb them .using rhizomes as a kind
of brain-sucking mechanism?
“No,” he said, quickly hanging up.
Meanwhile, the Fescue quietly
creeps. But if you dare put your ear
near the ground, you can hear a tiny,
evil laugh.
Phelps Is a junior news-editorial m^jor,
the Dally Nebraskan managing editor and a
columnist
Out of touch with Earth Day
11 might have been just another
Thursday, another boring Mon
day, if it weren’t for him.
He came out of nowhere, like
Michael Landon or the Lone Ranger,
and made my day something special,
something out of the ordinary.
I was on my way to class, bleary
eyed and sleepy, the taste of skim
milk and Crispix still hanging on my
breath, when I saw him.
Him.
He was walking — no, waddling
—across 17lh Street carrying a huge,
white vinyl armchair. It wasn’t just a
chair, not a dining table chair or a
fold-up, portable one. It was a giant,
yellowed leatherette monstrosity.
I nudged the person I was walking
with — “Look at that. Look at that
guy.” >.
“So? He’s carrying a chair.”
' I was amazed. She didn’t even
care. Obviously, my time at the UNL
College of Journalism has boen time
well spent. My powers of observation
and my sense ot the bizarre arc finely
honed.
How could she — a pre-nursing
student—even attempt to appreciate
the absurdity of someone carrying an
armchair to class? No, it takes a pro
fessional eye and a focused mind to
catch these things.
I remember looking out my bed
room window the first lime I pul on
my eyeglasses in the seventh grade.
For the first time, I could see the
individual leaves on the trees and
each brick in the house next door. I
couldn’t believe all that amazing de
tail had always boen there but I’d been
unable to see it.
That must be what life is like for
people like my friend — people who
can look but cannot sec. Poor thing, I
hardly noticed when we parted ways
at the union.
As I walked by the union, my
journalist’s spider sense kicked in
I was on my way to
class, bleary-eyed
and sleepy, the taste
of skim milk and
Crispix still hanging
on my breath, when I
saw him.
again. Something was afoot, I was
sure.
The fountain was surrounded by
smiling people. There were tables and
bands playing and a loudspeaker.
Hmmmm ... what could it be ... ?
Of course, I thought, the fountain
is on again. My roommate has been
complaining that they should turn it
on. I can’t wait to tell her. She might
not notice by herself.
1 thought it was pretty neat that
people were excited enough to set up
booths and a loudspeaker for the foun
tain. Someone was even giving away
popcorn. A closer look revealed T
shirts, too. T-shirts! — what a bunch
of fountain-lovers these folks are, I
thought.
Or maybe it’s not the fountain.
Maybe it’s something more. And then
it came to me.
Earth Day.
Well, it didn’t actually come to
me; I read it on someone’s T-shirt.
What am I doing with my life? I’ll
make a lousy journalist. How could I
forget Earth Day?
When I was a junior in high school.
Earth Day was a huge deal. As secre
tary of the Science Club, I spent hours
making posters, helping with recy
cling drives and attending ecology
conferences.
I pored over articles about con
taminated groundwater and waste in
cinerators. I was concerned, and
rightly so. Everyone seemed to be.
I would like to think the planet is
much better off now and that’s why
I’ve abandoned the ‘save the earth’
scene. But the truth is, I got busy. And
maybe a little bored.
- Mostly busy. I stopped paying at
tention to what was happening in the
news. My life had become restricted
to my room, my classrooms and the
union. Sometimes I venture off cam
pus to visit Super Saver, but that isn’t
the best place to go to brief yourself on
current events. If you’re in a really
long line, you might have time to see
what’s up with Drew Barrymore, but
I don’t even know if they sell real
newspapers.
Yesterday I realized that I have
lost touch. I was tempted to trudge
over to the Administration Building
to change my major to something that
required no perception or knowledge
of the world around me.
But it’s hard to keep that sort of
attitude in the presence of live music
and free popcorn. So, instead of pun
ishing myself, I decided to try harder.
Not all journalists arc bom with a
keen eye. It took Lois Lane years to
realize Clark Kent was Superman,
and even then I think he had to tell her.
I’m not that bad. I did notice that
guy with the chair. I’ll work on it.
Maybe I ’ll even start reading the news
paper. That’s probably a good first
step.
Next year, I might even see Earth
Day coming.
Rowell is a junitr news-editorial, adver
tising and English major and a Daily Nebras
kan columnist
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