Dear Otus,
My husband and I retired to your beautiful state last November, so this is our first spring in the Natural State. We never had anything like this back in North Dakota.
Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.
No sooner did the leaves come out than everything was covered with a layer of chartreuse goo. The car was stuck in the driveway and my husband's Crocs are cemented to the front walk.
We had a steady shower the other day and the street ran green with slime. What in the world is going on?
-- Clare Atin,
Hot Springs Village
Dear Clare,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and to reassure you that all this is perfectly natural, only a bit more so because we had an unusually warm winter.
This has been a record spring for Arkansas pollen and the experts predict it will get worse before it gets better.
What you have witnessed the past month is the annual onslaught of wind-pollinated trees, mostly pine (green pollen) and oak (yellow and green).
The combination of the two forms a patina on all exposed surfaces and stands of water. Drifts can be up to 18 inches deep.
This is a family newspaper, so I can't go into graphic detail, but what is taking place all around you is a disgusting display of botanical sex.
That's right. All that icky crud coating your car, clogging your nose and tormenting your sinuses is nothing more than unbridled, indiscreet, indiscriminate, wanton plant lust wafting lasciviously through the air -- in flagrante delicto.
Arkansans are awash up to their loins in the annual spring orgy of the chlorophylls. It's a base ritual that often enlists insects, birds and higher life forms as well as the wind to accomplish its reproductive purposes.
State Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Bigelow) tried to get it banned, but the measure failed in committee.
His main concern were the plants of the Solanaceae family (tomatoes, peppers and eggplants) that indulge in self-pollination. That involves stigmas and ovules and other vile plant parts.
Monoecious plants, such as oaks, birches, corn and pumpkin, at least have separate male staminate and female pistilate flowers on the same plant.
KATV meteorologist Todd Yakoubian warned us last month that this would be a particularly harsh spring for the cyclical phenomenon known as "El Estornudo." It's like El Nino, only nastier. El Estornudo is to blame for the current "sliming" of the state, including the sticky goo that covers Hot Springs Village.
Most of this year's slime is coming from oak catkins. These are the stringy worm-like yellow "flowers" popping off marcescent leaves. A typical catkin is a couple of inches long. This spring there have been reports of mutant catkins up to six inches.
One caution about oak catkins. Do not sweep them into piles. Dried catkins still contain about 30 percent of the pollen grains they did on the tree.
If a steady rain should come during this period, impressive green and yellow pollen rivers form, leaving behind yellowish high-water marks.
After that rain you had last week, the Ouachita River actually ran green from just below Pencil Bluff to the mouth of the Caddo River north of Arkadelphia.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to open the floodgates at Blakely Mountain Dam to flush out lakes Ouachita, Hamilton and Catherine. There was a ring left around part of Rockport south of Interstate 30.
As far as Hot Springs Village is concerned, Mill Creek backed up and closed Lake Desoto for three days.
One final warning. The tree pollen is just the first round. Grass pollen is next and many feel it's worse.
Native Arkansans are used to the onslaught of ragweed, plantain, nettle, creeping thistle, yarrow, mugwort, cinquefoil, curly dock, spiny pigweed, fat hen, sheep piffle, frakken and fahrvergnugen, but you never get used to the sicklepod, eclipta and hemp sesbania.
Arkansas chief otolaryngologist Dr. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is monitoring the situation and is prepared to issue a Stage 4 Severe Pollen Alert.
"With a Stage 4," Nahasapeemapetilon says, "you'll be hip-deep in green slime before you know it if you're outside. Cars parked in the open quickly became Chia Pets."
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you there has never been a Stage 5 in recorded history, although geologic evidence points to a "pollen event" in pre-Cambrian days that may have contributed to the extinction of many species of trilobites and brachiopods.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of
Z humorous fabrication X
appears every Saturday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
HomeStyle on 04/22/2017