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Stalking Dandelions PDF
April 26, 2008 ~2pm

It’s still sunny now (1:50pm). It rained all week and for once it’s sunny on the weekend. So with my trusty “weed-hound,”¹ I go outside and start stalking dandelions.

If you accept the idea of lawns as aseptic expanses of fuzz, then the worst offender aesthetically is the Dandelion.² If you accept lawns are pretty to look at, if they generate a soothing, numb feeling in you, and if seamless geometry has a great deal to do with pleasing the eyes, then Dandelions break up the flow, like phlegm in flawlessly-cleaned urinal, caught in the plastic mesh guard –like an apéritif for the pink urinal cake.

The weed-hound is hungry.

So I’m outside in the sun, weed-hound in hand. At first, they are are hard to spot, camo’d in the grass.³ They squat and crouch along the ground unmoving: they know I am hunting them.

For the first few minutes, I walk quietly around the yard, trying to “see without seeing,” i.e., if I try to look at any one spot, I’m never going to see them. They don’t register directly, only peripherally, just out of the reach of vision. So I stay quiet and loosen up my focus and wait. Being loud or blundering will only make them skedaddle and disappear. But all it takes is spotting the first one. Once you do, you start seeing them everywhere. Where you thought there were only four or five, you realize that there are ten, twenty; more than you can count quickly. Frustratingly, the more you remove, the more that remain.

The pat explanation is that as you pull one up, their leaves no longer provide cover, and so another three to four dandelions are uncovered, blinking in the sunlight. The more sinister, conspiratorial explanation is that Astoria —already riddled with tiny streams, unseen paths; streets that stop, then start 50 feet away— has tiny tunnels which allow the elves, rampart around here, to immediately shove another dandelion up through the dirt, whenever you pull one out of the earth.

The sun is blazing (for the Northwest). Soon, I spot a big one. Its hairy leaves spread out, hugging the ground. It hasn’t seen me yet, so I start lining up my shot. Like any big game hunt, the first shot is usually the last shot. If you wing or clip it, you aren’t going to have much to show for it afterwards. I take my time, wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and slow my breathing down; the trick is to squeeze the trigger between heartbeats. Don’t forget to take into account: Wind, Temperature, Humidity, the Coriolis effect, etc. Aim for the center. Aim for what can not be seen: The Root that lies beneath. Miss that and you’re no better off than if you were planting them yourself.

I squeeze the trigger and follow it with a foot stomp to drive the weed-hound deep into the heart of the dandelion. It’s a silent kill; there’s no struggle. It pulls out of the ground clean and true, root and all. It’s a big one, easily two feet across from tip to tip. One bagged, many more to go. I could spend hours zoned out and zened in, pursuing the shimmery sheen of the perfect lawn. Man’s fight to subjugate nature, right here, right outside my door.

1. http://www.hound-dog.com/weed_hound.htm [↩]
2. The ones out here are actually called “False Dandelions” (Hypochaeris radicata) which is annoying on yet another level: Not only are they a pain in the butt aesthetically, but they don’t even have the decency to be the real thing. [↩]
3. For something that seems to blend in so well, they make the yards and houses on them look abandoned. I don’t know why this is the case. Perhaps, dandelions are signifiers for abandonment, but when I look at my house I know it’s not abandoned but the yard still looks like crap. I have not fully worked this out and don’t intend to in this pensées. [↩]