This summer I ran an experiment to test with the environment up here in New York City does the average person. I figured it would be grim, what with all the cars and smoke, but didn’t know it would be as lethal as it turned out.
To run my test, I was gonna use lab rats, but I don’t like rats, so I used the strongest, meanest living thing on earth: KUDZU.
If you’re a Southerner, you know kudzu. We’ve got 2,000,000 acres of it in Dixie, according to the department of agriculture.
Kudzu: it’s that green creep that hangs out in the spare lot across the street and scare small children; it’s that leafy man that harbors bugs, snakes, and refugee lab rats; it’s the only thing other than roaches that will survive a nuclear winter; and when the south finally does fall under ruination, when the last barbecues folders out, when the last pick up truck sputters to stop, when the last column falls off the last mansion – – kudzu will be there – – creeping at a rate of 18 inches per day, covering the vestiges of our glorious region.
I hate kudzu.
Kudzu was brought to America by the Japanese in 1876, and to borrow a line from Earl Tucker, I haven’t had a Christian thought about Japan sense. Pueraria lobata was introduced to the South during the great depression by the federal government.
That’s right, the gubment actually paid Farmer as much as eight dollars per acre to plant the woolly green bees to stop erosion on our overwork cotton fields. When politicians promise to fix all my problems, I just think about kudzu.
Kudzu root can wiggle down over 5 feet into the red clay of Dixie. Those roots can be as big as a small tree. Those vines can smother, kill, mutilate, cover, move, and obliterate nearly any living thing.
Southern myths tell of slow-moving cows that have been covered by kudzu. In fact, the gubment suggested the cows be fed kudzu. Problem is, kudzu is a member of the bean family and the four stomachs in our bovine friends caused something of an EPA problem. If you know they’ll be in poem, you know what I’m talking about. These kudzu cows had trouble releasing the, er…gasses, and Lance had to be invented to “pop “the cattle. Sounds dangerous to me.
My neighbor once tried to kill the kudzu in his backyard first he tried to pull it up. For a week, he sweated and cussed at kudzu. Then he took an ax to the sneaky vine. Then he bulldozed the area. When the plant kept growing, he took the battle to biblical proportions: he poured salt on the lot and set fire to it.
The kudzu lived. But the kids who I planted this summer in New York City died. And I figure if Manhattan killed kudzu, a guy like me doesn’t stand a chance. Farewell, Thomasville.
–Morgan Murphy