A gardener searches for the destroyer of his magnificent sunflower crop, and is surprised to find he accused the innocent.
By Adrian Barbaric/Special to The Malibu Times
Three months ago my thumbs turned green. I bought gray-striped sunflower seeds and planted them in beds of brown dirt.
I waited, and then magic! The seedlings sprouted. Each plant had two lush leaves that soaked up the spring sunshine. The sunflowers grew, but one morning I found whole sprouts gone. Their leaves had been chewed to pieces and a silver luminous slime covered the severed stems.
As night arrived I grabbed a flashlight and a pail and set out to find the sunflower eaters. To my horror I found a whole army of brown-shelled gastropods. A snail legion! They roamed the lawn like small armored tanks advancing on all fronts. I admired their moist bodies and their optical tentacles that felt the air with black eyes. And even their trails of slime resembled silver comets spiraling through the green universe of the lawn. But these snails had hunger propelling them. If I wanted sunflowers then I couldn’t have snails. So I collected the shells with their wet inhabitants and dumped them in the garden bin. Now my sunflowers could grow.
Days passed and the seedlings became plants. But during the night I found creatures eagerly munching leaves. Slugs the color of runny eggs used their mouths like machetes to chop the sunflower stems. These slugs proved horrible to handle since I discovered white mites swimming over their wet bodies like surfers. Yuck. And I found earwigs munching leaves. The earwigs had great pinchers like two-pronged forks jutting into the air. Who knew sunflowers had so many hungry admirers?
Still the sunflowers grew. With every new day the plants vaulted into the sky. Their stems thickened and hardened. Fuzz covered their leaves. The plants felt like soft sandpaper. Twice I found gaping holes on the leaves. Upon careful inspection I discovered ravenous caterpillars bloated like green balloons. I removed them and the sunflowers survived.
The sunflowers grew taller and taller. Every day you could measure their progress. And just looking at them proved to be a meditation. How could something so large come from such a small seed? Soon they towered over my head. Green bulbs formed on their tops. At last the day was coming when they would bloom. And the first one to open was the grandest of them all-the champion, more than 8 feet tall. Golden petals unfurled and surrounded the flower like a lion’s mane. Orange flecks of pollen speckled its leaves. Bees covered themselves in the stuff.
But then, with all this beauty, something truly horrible happened. When I returned home one day, I discovered the champion’s proud sunflower head bowed. On closer inspection I discovered its neck had been chewed in half. And then in the front yard a whole row of sunflowers had been destroyed. Their green crowns not yet gold had been chopped off. The sunflowers had been beheaded! What could have done this? A rat? No. There had been too many casualties. An opossum? A raccoon? No. How could they climb the sunflowers without bending them down?
And then it struck me as I gazed up at a lamppost and saw two crows. The birds had a suspicious look in their keen eyes. The crows with smooth ebony feathers stared down at me. Surely the crows had slaughtered the sunflowers. After all, didn’t farmers use scarecrows? And if crows had to be scared then they must eat crops. The logic of deduction made perfect sense.
With the beauty of so many sunflowers destroyed and the time and care it took to help them grow I tried my best not to despise the crows. But the next morning I awoke to a horrible screeching-an inhuman rasping like a plague of harpies descending from the heavens. I ran to the window.
To my surprise I beheld not crows, but a horde of parrots. With disbelief I watched the exotic non-native birds with their greener than lime feathers as they sat perched on the suffering sunflowers. I ran outside and chased away the parrots that used their sharp beaks like guillotines to slice through the plant stalks. It was a sunflower slaughter. The only thought racing through my mind was a strange mantra: Crows are still my friends.
And now after the attack of the parrots I’ve learned two important lessons. First, never assume anything. The crows were innocent. And second, tie sunflowers with shiny silver ribbons and hope they will keep away the parrots.