Cheat grass a foe to man and dog alike

I was sitting on my front porch the other afternoon engaged in a tedious and time consuming seasonal activity – removing cheat grass pods from my socks. As always, the task seemed impossible at first, and were they not expensive wool hunting socks, I would have probably given up and put them in the garbage.

When I took the dogs for a romp that morning, I unsuccessfully tried to avoid the large patches of cheat grass on my property. As always, however, I got caught up in the antics of my Brittany pup, and where I was walking became not nearly as important as getting to where she was holding a solid point – on a bull snake as it turned out.

Besides what it does to my socks, I dislike cheat grass because of what it does to my dogs. Gus, the springer spaniel, got it between his toes every summer. The dry pods have one-way microscopic barbs that allowed them to work their way into his skin, usually requiring an expensive trip to the vet. Sometimes the pods would be a half-inch into the flesh and the wound was red and full of pus.

Gus also got cheat grass pods in his ears, so the hair both inside and out of his ears had to be clipped often. If a seed got into the ear canal, it was another bountiful Christmas for the children of my vet. Lucy, my Brittany, has much silkier hair than Gus and the cheat grass pods can’t seem to hang onto the hair between her toes long enough to penetrate. She has already had one removed from an eye, though, by a vet who had to put her out.

The tendency of cheat grass to go in easy and come out hard, much like a porcupine quill, is also what makes it such a chore to remove from my socks. When it enters the material, it wants to go forward, but my inclination is to grab the longest protruding piece and pull it backward. This creates all sorts of fraying and can reduce a good pair of socks to a wad of yarn shaped only somewhat like the socks for which I paid $9.95 just a week ago.

Cheat grass is also feared by folks like me who live on acreage in the country because it is excellent tinder for a wildfire. Once a flame gets in an expanse of cheat grass, it moves quickly and produces a lot of heat. When I was a child visiting my grandmother in Moses Lake, I saw a fire roar through several acres of cheat grass behind her house so fast I could barely outrun it. It was a very good lesson for a young boy about the dangers of playing with matches.