"Tumbleweeds Devour New Mexico Town"

Hahahaha! If it's not tarantulas, it's tumbleweeds. This just in from Clovis, New Mexico: Tumbleweeds Devour New Mexico Town. The military has been deployed.


This is a good excuse to revive one of my favorite posts: The Trouble With Tumbleweeds (December 2012):

The Trouble with Tumbleweeds

Russian thistle, in its pre-tumbleweed life. Credit: Jim Pisarowicz

You may recall I killed a tumbleweed on my way to Alamogordo.

Russian thistle, aka tumbleweed. Credit: Fred Bauder.

They're kind of engaging, tumbleweeds, like bouncy lab pups always on the wrong side of trouble, or prickly tribbles, and it's difficult not to anthropomorphize them into young'ns, teen-agers, and adults, depending on size.  I like how the Quantum Biologist describes them:

"Tumbleweeds: ... out here in the day-to-day life of the American West, they’re practically an animal of their own. You swerve to avoid hitting them on the highway. They nuzzle the barbed-wire fences, sniffing out an opening. They show up mysteriously like stray cats in your yard overnight. Though native Westerners give them scant notice, transplants like me still have a starstruck fondness for them, as if they were some B-list actor from a John Ford movie that we’d discovered, lost and drunk, making a cameo in the alley behind our house...."

The Columbus Museum of Art commissioned this cinematic study of tumbleweeds. It is a masterpiece:

Tumbleweeds are not always endearing. Here is the account of a member of the Chihuahua Desert Wildlife Rescue organization:

"You have not really experienced life until you have been attacked by one of these monsters as you drive along our local roadways. This can be especially frightening at night when, under cover of darkness, they sneak up on you and devour your car. I remember a cold, windy night a good many years back. A good friend and I were driving along a narrow, rocky road in the mountains near Bingham, New Mexico, in my friend's VW bug. Suddenly we were am-BUSHED by a huge tumbleweed flying off the mountainside. I do believe we both wet our pants."

I thought tumbleweeds were indigenous Southwestern plants, but they're not - they're Asian exports, thought to have insinuated their seed into grain brought by immigrants to South Dakota in the 1870s. New Mexico considers them noxious weeds. Most tumbleweeds in New Mexico are the Russian thistle.

As early as 1895, the Russian thistle had proven so prolific that one alarmed academic had this to say: 

"Kill it first, if possible, whatever it may be, and find out its name afterward... There is but one treatment to recommend for (it), utter extermination from New Mexico, and let me emphasize this statement: Now, if ever, is the time to exterminate it!" 

When driving down a New Mexican road, it is fascinating to see tumbleweeds caught up against fences, trapped there by prevailing winds and wire. Eventually, a pile-up against the fence gets tall enough so that the tumbleweeds at the top can get over to the other side.

En route to Santa Fe last week, I was enthralled by the tumbleweeds on the fence along Highway 285 south of Cline's Corners. Look on the left side of the road.

Here is a good photo of tumbleweeds piled up along a fence.

Tumbleweeds against fence, New Mexico. Credit: Sarah at Adobe Nido.

In reading the text to describe Sarah's photo above, you can see how hard it is to write about tumbleweeds without imbuing them with thoughts and feelings!

So, is Russian thistle good for anything?

According to Utah State University: 

"Russian-thistle hay saved the beef cattle industry during the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, when no other feed was available for starving animals."

and: 

"Cattle and sheep eat Russian-thistle, and it is a minor component in mule deer and elk diets until it flowers and becomes spiny. It is an important prairie dog food, and pronghorn eat it readily. Russian-thistle seeds are eaten by birds, including scaled and Gambel's quail, as well as small mammals."

Well, other than nocturnal ambushes of innocent people, why are tumbleweeds a problem?  

Again, Utah State University offers the best description:

"Livestock ranges, deteriorated from drought or overgrazing, are frequently invaded and dominated by Russian-thistle. After seeds mature in late fall, the plant stem separates from the root and the plant is then blown by wind. Seeds fall to the ground as the plant tumbles. The tendency of dead plants to collect along fence lines and buildings creates a fire hazard. During a fire, ignited plants can blow across fire lines and make fighting fire more difficult."

How to best manage Russian thistle? 

I like Utah State University's emphasis that Russian thistle thrives in disturbed land (see my post re: salt cedars), thus recommends solutions related to this core cause: 

"Prescribed burning will not control Russian-thistle since it thrives on disturbed sites, and seeds are easily spread from unburned areas by tumbling weeds. Some herbicides are effective against Russian thistle, and current herbicide information can be found in the Weed Management Handbook on the University of Wyoming Extension website. Revegetation of infested areas, along with the removal of disturbing factors like overgrazing and fire, is the best way to repair lands infested with this weed." [Emphasis mine.]

I leave you with the Tumbleweed Invasion. (You may wish to hit the mute button for maximum enjoyment.)

  

On the Road to Alamogordo, Day 2: I Killed a Tumbleweed

Oklahoma

I left Chandler, OK, at about 9:00 a.m. I wasn't in much of a hurry. I try to remember lessons learned from Caucasus Georgia (be flexible, don't worry so much about time), though often unsuccessfully.

Note my new use of "Caucasus Georgia" instead of "Republic of Georgia," both designed to distinguish it from the state of. I didn't come up with Caucasus Georgia - a guy who wrote and edited a new guidebook on Georgia did, and I like it. I'll reserve any linky love to the book until I find out how the author(s) addressed Rustavi, or if they did at all. There are some folks who purport to know what's what in Georgia, but who have either never been to Rustavi (3rd largest city in the country) in the last five years (if ever) or who dismiss it out of hand as a has-been industrial backwater. 

Oklahoma has a pleasing terrain and once you get past Oklahoma City, you've also got the red earth to capture your eye. I'd planned to stop for lunch at Lucille's in Weatherford, a place my mother and I enjoyed on my last pass through these parts, but I missed the exit. I could have backtracked, but that isn't in my genetic make-up, so I pushed on. 

Speaking of OKC,  I saw the damnedest thing. As I drove onto a highway ramp, I saw two police cars on the right. As I turned my head to look at why they were there, I saw more LE and I saw a black, SUV-type vehicle straddling a deep, wide concrete ditch over by a fence, which was adjacent to a mall or some other sort of large building complex. And when I say straddling, I mean that the vehicle's front end was on one side of this trench and the rear end was on the other. How the hell did that happen? I imagine the cops wondered the same thing when they first arrived. 

Turned off at another Route 66 town, Clinton. All of these small towns are worthy of exploration for their Route 66 artifacts and vibe, but there's only so much time. Had a ho-hum lunch at Gayla's Cafe at the Market. Weak coffee, a real sin in my book. A good yeast roll, though.

For God's sake, people: You can always make a strong cup of coffee weaker; you can't do a damn thing to make weak coffee stronger. If you can see through the coffee in the glass pot, it's too weak.

While on the subject of coffee, I pulled up later at a c-store for a pit stop. I like to buy something when I use the facilities, so I was searching for something not too expensive and settled for a cup of coffee. The store guy stood right by me as I asked if the coffee was very strong (having been recently disappointed by Gayla's). He said, "Pour a little in the cup and try it." (Give him 10 points for good customer service.) I did, and it was lukewarm, and very weak. I said in a neutral voice, "It's lukewarm." He said, "Add a little hot water to it," pointing to another dispenser. (Fire him.)

Texas

The I-40 West Texas Welcome Center is among the most beautiful in the country, I think. Dramatic views from the picnic shelters, elegantly designed. An informative and graceful center. Didn't have to stop there this trip, however.

In Amarillo, I veered off from I-40 to Highway 60, via which I'd pass through Hereford and then Clovis and Portales.


Somewhere on Highway 60, I saw a tumbleweed begin to cross the road and through the vagaries of wind and timing, I ran right over it. A little piece clung to my front hood latch for awhile. No immediate damage to my car's underpinnings seemed to occur, so I carried on.

The land between Hereford, TX, and Clovis, NM, is dotted with huge plants of some sort. Processing plants or factories of some kind. Definitely among these are packing plants. Beef. In one spot, I smelled something yeasty, like bread. It smelled kind of good. Later along the highway, I smelled something not-good a couple of times; I think these were beef packing plants.

A couple of times, I saw hundreds of cows in short-term feedlots, awaiting their fate.  I say feedlots because at one place, I also saw hay bales. At another, I didn't notice any hay. Maybe one place was for an upcoming auction.

I also saw a number of long trains. Several of the trains carried trailers from companies such as FedEx. Kind of funny: Transportation carrying transportation.

The view through a bug-stained window, accompanied by a sad tune from Johnny Cash:   

A roadrunner ran across the road.


Road death

On I-70 in Missouri, I see electronic MODOT signs that say "535 deaths on Missouri roads this year." (Now it's 598.) Then it says 63% of those who died were unbuckled.

So when I saw a similar Texas DOT sign on Interstate 44, you can imagine my shock at the number of fatalities: 2058.

As shocking as that is, Missouri's per capita traffic death rate is (as of the 2009 figures) two people per 100,000 more dead than Texas. 
 
Roswell, New Mexico

I stopped for the night at the Super 8 in Roswell, NM.

I had no cell phone service anywhere in town. Odd, don't you think? What are they trying to hide?

Roswell, New Mexico.