Pest and Pestilence Time in East Texas

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Rosie the Wonder Dog and I were walking one of Longview’s trails the other day, taking in the smells of an East Texas spring — honeysuckle blooms, mimosa-tree blossoms, that earthy dampness after a late-night thunderstorm. As happens, Rosie needed to answer the call of nature, and gave me The Signal. That means she quits being an obedient pooch on a leash heeling nicely to my left knee and starts jerking sideways. As in, “I have got to go potty, Big Human Guy. Let’s get off the trail.”

I wonder if anyone has calculated how many hours pet owners spend in the course of a year patiently waiting for their dogs to do their business. Imagine if one could just productively harness that time somehow and end world hunger or something.

I guess not.

Rosie is modest about her habits, wanting to get as far away from everyone as possible. That is fine by me, of course. Some activities are best done in private, and this is one of them, even for a dog. But I quickly jerked back on Rosie’s leash, which rudely interrupted her reverie. She was about to do her business in a lush patch of poison ivy. She looked at me reproachfully, wondering why I was interfering with her Call of Nature. These matters are difficult to explain to a dog. And it is true that canines are rarely susceptible to this noxious plant. But she could spread it to me via her fur. This is a dog that gets hoisted around often. So Rosie would have to wait until we found a more hospitable area.

Poison ivy and I have a long, unhappy history. As a child who loved rambling through the woods of New Hampshire during the too-brief summers, playing Army and other games with my buddies, I contracted a case every year, as regularly as the July 4^th celebration down at the park. Rashes developed in the most vexatious places, causing my mother no end of frustration. “How did you get poison ivy there,” she would ask, the annoyance in her voice apparent. My parents should have bought stock in whoever owned Calamine lotion — that pink goop used in the 1960s for all poison ivy outbreaks. She could have smeared Pepto-Bismol on me for all the good it did.

The outbreaks have gotten more rare and far less severe as a grownup. But about 15 years ago I went searching for a golf ball sliced into the Piney Woods. I emerged with both the ball and what quickly became a major-league rash that turned both of my arms into swollen hamhocks. It took two cortisone shots to get any relief. I have largely given up golf since then. At least I have given up tromping through the woods looking for a 99-cent golf ball on those rare occasions that I hit the links.

I once played golf with a fellow who had been bitten several months earlier by a copperhead while hunting for his ball in the woods. It was a serious bite that required brief hospitalization and lots of drugs and treatment. We got to the same hole where he had veered off the fairway and encountered a poisonous serpent. Sure enough, he hit his drive back in the same general area. Without hesitating he drove the cart over there and headed off into the woods. I suggested he was tempting fate. “I don’t care if I find the ball,” he said. “I’m just trying to find that ‘expletive-deleted’ snake so I can beat it to death with this 5-iron.”

I stayed in the cart. There was probably poison ivy in those woods as well as that copperhead.

Generally, I am a live-and-let-live fellow. I once shooed a tree rat out of the house, brought in by a cat, and urged the rodent to run for its life. I will pick up a daddy long legs spider and transport it outside. Roaches must die, of course, and a red wasp nest will get the full treatment from those cool aerosol cans that can soak a nest from 20 feet away. But I generally avoid killing things because I don’t enjoy it.

I don’t even want to kill snakes, much as I dislike them. One time a large king snake curled up by the door leading into the house from the garage. I flipped him away with a broom handle, and the fellow hissed and returned to block the door again. Again with the broom handle with the same result, except the hissing was louder. So like the Red Queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” it was off with the head via machete. Some snakes just don’t know when to exit gracefully.

It is pest and pestilence season in East Texas, with any number of flora and fauna that can bite, sting, raise rashes and otherwise make one miserable. Be careful out there.

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