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<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nSo\u2026 What if scientists were able to collect the castrating fungus and put it in a canister like pepper spray\u2014maybe call it \u201cWeenie Whacker\u201d? Based on how the fungus effects male cicadas, men sprayed with Weenie Whacker would go into a \u201cfreakin\u2019\u201d frenzy, not knowing their equipment has fallen off. Talk about bushwhackerus interruptus! Can you spell \u201cpoetic justice\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now to a different topic\u2026 If you\u2019ve lived in the South for any time at all you know about kudzu. Kudzu was brought to the USA from Japan in the 1930s to help control soil erosion. Just like in the movie The Blob<\/em>, kudzu spreads, taking everything in its wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not everything about kudzu is bad, though. Sometimes kudzu sculptures formed by the vine swallowing trees and telephone poles are almost high art\u2014performance art, I suppose, as it is always in motion. It\u2019s like watching clouds and seeing the plethora of images they form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kudzu is also edible. I\u2019ve never tasted it, though. Cicadas are also edible, but you\u2019re not going to catch me eating one of them whether it\u2019s fried, cooked in a taco, added to banana bread, or even dipped in chocolate! I would, however, taste kudzu as long as the DDT was washed off it. BTW, I think one of the reasons Delta folks can drink so much is that they rode their bikes in the DDT fog of mosquito trucks. Maybe they also ate kudzu that had been sprayed with DDT, which would explain a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brainstorm! What if scientists added some DDT to the deflowering fungus spray I mentioned earlier? Maybe call it \u201cPestercide\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kudzu was distributed through the newly-formed Soil Conservation Service, headed locally by what were called \u201cCounty Agents.\u201d My father was a County Agent for a while. I don\u2019t know if he had anything to do with the kudzu invasion or not, but odds are he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also had an uncle who was a County Agent about an hour\u2019s drive from Oxford\u2014not gonna say exactly where. A couple of weeks ago a person who knows my late uncle\u2019s daughter (my cousin) quite well told me that, according to my cousin, her father was THE ONE who introduced kudzu to Mississippi. After that, kudzu and Mississippi fell in love, a union that soon turned into a love-hate relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In semi-tangenital conclusion, I was thinking about names for bands. The Sterile Cicadas has a nice ring to it I do believe. And since my family is partly responsible for kudzu in Mississippi, do you think there\u2019s any way I could be made an honorary Kudzu King? Stranger things have happened\u2014or have they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026and that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n