LOST

I've developed a bit of a nervous tic whenever we walk through a wooded area. It seems I'm compelled to feverishly scan the forest floor for evidence of unwanted invasion, rushing in to save the natives before they are deprived of their very lives. A bit dramatic? Okay. But I'm afraid it's the natural fallout of a lil' project that I committed our family to and now I just can't help myself.

It's like this. Last week, we spent the first part of our Saturday in a prehistoric woods, clearing an invasive plant called garlic mustard. We were told that this plant is not consumed by animals and crowds out the desirable plants that are consumed. In other words, it wreaks havoc on the ecosystem when it is left to produce more and more plants.

Now I'd like to tell you we completed this community service out the goodness of our own hearts. Sadly, uh,...no. No, we did not. We completed this little weed pulling mission to earn free tickets to Disney for our single income family of six. Not a bad deal, really. 4 hours of weed plucking for a day with Mickey Mouse.

It had rained the night before, so the forest floor was wet. And we were afraid of picking up unwanted guests like ticks and spiders, so we sprayed our clothing with Deep Woods Off. I have to tell you though, when our coordinator told us to spread out in a side-to-side line, I stood there on the cleared path with a panicked look. I don't know how I envisioned picking invasive weeds from a forest, but I guess it didn't include stepping a single foot off the main path.

"But,...there's stuff in there."

Stuff? Dh wanted to know what "stuff" I was referring to. Oh, you know, the usual. Snakes, spiders, ticks, slugs, poison ivy.

Dear me, I had completely forgotten about the poison ivy. "Kids. KIDS!!! Watch what yer grabbin'. Leaves of three, let it be. Don't touch the foliage and then touch your face unless you want it to look like you have a skin disease. No, I do NOT know how you'll scratch if you itch, but just don't touch your face."

By now, most of the team was staring at me and clearly sizing up my state of panic.
"What, you're not afraid of getting poison ivy or picking up who knows what in the brush?"

Just then a rabbit hopped and rustled the ground cover nearby.
"AAAAAAHHHHH!!!! Oh, sorry. Just a rabbit."

Humiliated, I lowered my head, busied myself by snapping open my garbage bag, and pretended to look for garlic mustard. As we all walked along, our family and two others got somewhat separated from the rest of the team. I insisted we make our way back to what I considered safety in numbers, where a patch of garlic mustard had finally been identified. As we picked, I tried not to think about the ickiness all around me. My kids fell over logs and I cringed. Someone stepped on a branch and I got a sudden case of the twitches. I felt like the trees were closing in on me (remember how they did that to MacBeth???) Wondering why the heck I had gotten us into this situation, I reasoned that the forest could swallow a naive family up, never to be seen again.

Oh, shoot!
The other families, the ones who got separated with us.
Where were they?
Goodness, it's true.
The forest can swallow a family. Even two. And it did.
This beast of a forest did just that.
They were nowhere to be found. PANIC MODE!
"Oh team leadin' coordinator guy, I think you should know that two of your volunteer families are nowhere to be found. They were over there, waaaaaay over there. And now (gulp!), they're just not." Some guide he was, not even watching to be sure the group stayed together. Hmmmf!

I searched his eyes as if to say, "They were your responsibility. Just what do you have to say for yourself?" His response? "I'll check the parking lot when we get back, to see if everyone made it out okay."

I knew it. Disney partnered with some shady, "enter at your own risk and fly by the seat of your own pants" weed pluckin' society and only after we signed something like, oh say, a right to life waiver, were the words "IF everyone made it out okay" spoken. Hey, no guarentees. Pick weeds and hope you don't get poison ivy. Hope you don't get bitten by an angry snake. Hope you don't get lost because, hey, we're a weed pluckin' team, not a search party."
Swell!

Never did see the two other families again. Hope they fare better in the park at Disney than they did in the ground cover of the local historic woods? One can only hope.

On a lighter note, Reece (age 8) told me the other day, "Mom, your legs remind me of Arizona."
Me, puzzled, "Arizona? Why would you say that?"
"Because they remind me of those cactus plants."
Okay, clearly it's time for a new razor.

Toni