Will Kaufman's "Coping with Common Garden Pests" offers a fresh and weird perspective on the gardener's age-old battle.
Normally benign to gardens, Red Cross volunteers become pests when they decide to tramp through your roses in their heavy boots, and not because they want to appreciate whatever faint perfume those bruised blossoms have left to offer. After all, if their heavy filtration masks are working properly they shouldn't be able to smell anything beyond their own stale breath. No, they're going piss in the grave you dug and then steal some of your increasingly ragged and limp kale on their way out.
Red Cross volunteers always come in pairs, which is not enough to be considered a group and require a name, although I think a group of Red Cross volunteers is probably just called the Red Cross. One of the pair distracts the gardener at his front door, delivering rations and clean water, and encouraging him to start wearing a mask because the air isn't safe to breathe.
"It's still pregnant with bad tech," is the volunteer's phrasing.
Meanwhile, the other volunteer sneaks around back to ravage the garden. You might not even be aware that your garden is a Red Cross volunteer's favorite rest-stop for days on end.
Coping with Common Garden Pests [Will Kaufman/Unlikely Story]
(Image: West Side Slug Life by Andrew Ferneyhough)
