Country Roads

Got my ‘goat’
“I’ll bring it to the ag department tomorrow.” When tomorrow came, I drove it to the agriculture office off Airport Boulevard. It was captured in a plastic bag with a twist tie securely in place. There were two of them and I could see their gnarly little selves in the bag awaiting identification from our agricultural experts.
I went directly to the ag department to the right, ignoring the Master Gardener office to my left. This was serious business. This was war. “I have a weed that I have never seen in 35 years of farming and it has burrs that puncture bike tires. It is really, really scary.”
“You need to bring it to the Master Gardener office across the hall.”
“But they won’t know this weed.”
“I have to follow protocol and you need to bring it to the Master Gardeners first.”
With an inner sigh of annoyance, sure that this will be a useless trip across the hall, I carry my little bag into the Master Gardener office. “I have a terrible weed in this bag that has punctured my son’s dirt bike tires by simply pushing the bike over a gravel path at our farm. These awful thorny burrs are all over the gravel.”
A young man was kind enough to allow me to finish my sentence and then calmly announced, “That is Goat Head Weed and it punctures tires. Let’s look it up.”
We did. We were both alarmed at what we read. It has two common names – Goat Head Weed, because its hideous burrs have thorns that look like the horns of a goat and Puncture Vine Weed. Its botanical name is Tribulus terrestris. However you call it, it’s a monster and you don’t want it anywhere near your hands or feet or rubber tires.
Where it came from, my daughter-in-law Mindy suggests ,is from the hillside across Alexander Valley Road during the December deluge. I think she is right. Now, how it got on that hillside is anyone’s guess, since it’s a desert plant, often found in Arizona. But, a friend from Florida told me it grew there in the sand, attacking bare feet.
If it weren’t such a dastardly weed, it would enter the realm of comical fantasy reading about its removal.
“Wear flip flops and walk all over the dry burrs. They will puncture the rubber soles and you can remove them carefully and put them in the garbage. Then, return to the burr area and trod around some more. Repeat until your flip flops are no longer stuck with Goat Weed burrs.”
“Burn the plants with a propane torch.”
“Pre-emergent sprays applied in late winter/early spring; post emergent spray to growing plants.” All are chemicals that need to be a covered by a tarp so that your pet’s feet don’t get the wet chemicals in their foot pads. This method requires reading instructions and cautionary directions carefully lest other plants get killed.
About pets and children: if you find this burr on your property, carefully check your pet’s feet. Don’t allow children to walk barefoot in areas where the Goat Weed has taken up residence. Three issues about this weed are scary. The first is that once a burr has entered your foot or hand, it lodges in your skin in multiple directions since the thorns are poking in different trajectories and can cause infection if not carefully removed.
Secondly, each plant contains 200 to 5,000 burrs (seeds for the future) so you do not want any plant to survive.
Thirdly, eating this plant if you are a sheep can cause death due to nitrate poisoning. This occurs after the animal has had their mouth, lips and gums punctured multiple times before swallowing the lethal burr devils.
I wish there was something, anything, humorous about this weed but I cannot for the life of me find a witticism or pun anywhere.
The firm belief in me that the glass is always half full; that there is an “up” to every “down” is not finding a place to root in my story today – unless it is that all my life I have been pleading with my grandchildren to “wear shoes when walking around outside.” They all, every one, ignored me. That really got my goat.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.