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Securing
my homeland
By Judy Simmons The
last Thursday in March I raked pine straw: a soothing task
compared to walking the treadmill at the cardiac rehab lab or
the Y, where televisions gabble, machines screech and people
shout conversations over both. A fellow Y patron told me I upset
some people by insisting on turning the giant TV’s volume down
from maximum (I kid you not) to medium. Another man said with
what appeared to be disgust, “Look, she’s got on
headphones.”
Precisely
the point, I said, the TV still overpowered and noise is a
stressor and I also pay to be here. Told I was out-voted I said
I didn’t know it was a democracy. Lame. Should have said,
“Why am I not surprised?” and raised my eyebrows at the five
men present; two women had left. Timid Judy, facing the wrath of
“the majority” for trying to save everyone from deadly noise
pollution — it’s a Walter Mosley novel, Always
Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. Help me, Lord Jesus!
To
scrape up pine droppings I used a good leaf rake I had ponied up
17 bucks for at Downing’s. I shop at local businesses some so
we won’t be totally dependent on chains like Office Max and
Cowboys. After I stuffed a 30-gallon trash bag with cones and
straw, I commenced hostilities with terror-spreading fire ants.
No limit to their appetite for domination. They get you with
conventional and chemical weapons if you step wrong: the nasty
bite and then the poison — at least it’s poison to my system
as I swell up in painful pimples. Fast little buggers, too, very
mobile, strike anywhere.
I
grabbed the pole that fell off last year’s el-cheapo rake and
advanced to the front with a bag of Spectracide and a quart-size
plastic container. A friend told me he pokes the mounds to get
the ants’ attention. I did that though it seems gratuitous to
induce a frenzy of fear before deluging them with death
granules. I guess it’s a shock-and-awe tactic to break their
will to resist. The directions say pour a gallon of water gently
after establishing a two-foot perimeter of poison granules. I
did that. ‘Course we all know they’ve only retreated to eat
their casualties and regroup. They’ll be baaack!
Mice
made a surprise attack on my house this winter. I was caught
off-guard because beloved Pudgy the Cat has been dead for more
than a year; he had waged my war on mice terrorism since we met
in 1989, a military tradition he inherited from other cats who
served and protected before him. Finding myself without a
standing mouser force for the first time since 1968, I went back
to Downing’s and got Havoc poison bait pellets of a pastel
aqua hue. In the next two weeks I disposed of two or three tiny
mouse corpses, feeling tender and regretful that we didn’t
reason together, and have been mice-terrorized no more.
In
a day or two I’ll take out the Round-Up and spray death on the
grasses that are cracking my concrete driveway. I’m shocked
that I’m willing to do so much killing to protect my homeland
security interests. I guess it’s different when invaders
actually enter your own yard and house. Lucky for me I don’t
think the whole world is my personal property.
Judy
Dothard Simmons is an award-winning writer, editor and
broadcaster with national media whose recent work appears in
American Legacy Woman, Black Issues Book Review and Africana.com.
She lives in Anniston.
Special to
The
Star--04-04-2003 |
