A good news/bad news scenario

Opinion

Discussion

November 18, 2009

Dwain Walden The Moultrie Observer Wed Nov 18, 2009, 10:56 PM EST

It could very well be one of those good news/bad news scenarios. University of Georgia scientists have discovered a bug that eats kudzu. Right off the top it sounds like a godsend.

Now let's look at the downside, something more tenacious than kudzu might be a cure that's worse than the disease.

For years, researchers have tried to find a way to control kudzu with very little success. On the novelty side, there have even been contests sponsored for marketable byproducts of this vine. Again there has been very little success.

Kudzu wine just doesn't carry the bouquet, ambiance or whatever it is that makes people want to share it with their fish and steaks - not even with their Vienna sausage. Wreaths tend to be seasonal and basket weaving can support only so many college football programs.

This insect has never before been found in the Western Hemisphere. It is native to India and China. Here's an immediate downside. It also eats legume crops such as soybeans.

It's described as a pea-sized bug, brownish in color with a wide posterior - the latter being a condition that fits many creatures that eat a lot of stuff. Scientists say that it “waddles” when it walks, again a byproduct of heavy appetities and too much football.

And so now we have a non-native bug feeding on a non-native plant, both of them having come here from the Orient. A conspiracy?

Now I realize that kudzu was brought here initially to help stop erosion. And indeed it will do that. Unfortunately it will also stop other stuff. In fact, just across the Georgia state line in Alabama, there is a long row of freight cars on a non-used rail line that are completely covered in kudzu.

My question always has been, did they quit using that rail line because of a shift in commerce, or did they park those railcars there one night and a week later they couldn't find a locomotive powerful enough to break them away from the clutches of kudzu?

I don’t want to sound like an alarmist here, but as one cartoonist has depicted, we should really be concerned about a bug that eats faster than kudzu grows.

At the moment, this little bug has been reported mostly in North Georgia. I suppose the big concern could become that once it eats up the kudzu, will it come south looking for peanuts? And what if it wants a little salad to go with the main course and sets its sights on our extensive vegetable production?

One report stated that to control the pest in China, it is manually removed. That sounds like a very labor intensive task, as formidable as going out into the jungle each morning to milk water buffaloes, but not as dangerous.

So along the lines of good news/bad news scenarios, there's the story of a man who had to have some surgery near the lower abdomen.

During the procedure, the surgeon slipped and removed more than the problem. And so in telling the patient about this miscue, he used the good news/bad news analogy.

“The bad news is, I cut something off that should have stayed. The good news is, we sent it to pathology and you don't have cancer.”

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)

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