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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Just another pretty flower? Only to fools



 (The Spokesman-Review)
Doug Clarkdoug Clark The Spokesman-Review

Homeland security has been on everyone’s mind during the last few fear-filled years.

But who would have guessed the next threat to our safety would be take root right here in snoozy Spokane?

Fortunately, I can now spread the panic thanks to a brave City Hall worker who e-mailed me the Scoop of the Century a few days ago:

“We have a very serious invasion on our hands in the greater Spokane area,” he wrote. “I’ve got two words for you: Dalmation Toadflax.”

Dalmation Toadflax?

I felt the wispy tendrils of terror grow under my skin.

“Must be a Taliban splinter group,” I thought.

It took all my journalistic skills to convince the city worker, who asked to be identified as “The Phantom,” to meet me for an interview. Bob Woodward and Elmer Bernstein had the same trouble conducting their Watergate investigations.

More e-mails arrived from deep within the impacted bowels of City Hall. City workers must have a lot of free time on their hands.

Finally, The Phantom agreed to meet me for research at O’Doherty’s pub.

“How will I identify you?” I asked.

“I’ll be carrying a Local Planet under my arm,” he wrote. “If I’m not there, look for an unlikely death in the obituaries.”

Sure enough. Shortly after quitting time on the prescribed day, The Phantom walked into the bar carrying the dread fishwrap.

He plopped onto the stool next me. He ordered a Guinness. He began to tell his tale.

Apparently he’d been snooping through the mail and intercepted this bombshell letter to the city from the Spokane County Noxious Weed Control Board.

“Noxious weeds like Dalmation Toadflax have been spotted along the Bloomsday course,” said The Phantom, cutting to the chase.

He looked at me.

“I knew when I found information this important that there was only one place to go. The public needs to know and you’re the only one who’ll waste your time to tell them.”

Noxious weeds, eh? I’ve seen “Little Shop of Horrors.” Some of those noxious weeds are carnivorous. And can sing.

“There’ll be a Pulitzer in this when I tell the world,” I told him.

Then came the tough part:

Open a phone book. Call the Noxious Weed Board. Convince the Noxious Weed People to take me to the lair of the evil Dalmation Toadflax…

“Do you think the Toadflax has anything to do with why Bloomsday numbers keep going down?” I asked. Dave Mundt, who coordinates the Noxious Weed Board, told me he didn’t think so.

I smell a cover-up.

And so on Friday morning, I met Mundt and another Toadflax authority at the base of Bloomsday’s infamous Doomsday Hill.

“There it is,” said Niel Bafus, pointing at a bushy green plant.

Shock. And awe.

“That,” I asked, raising my voice in skepticism, “is Dalmation Toadflax?”

Bafus said indeed it was.

“But that’s just a sweet innocent snapdragon.”

I used to bite the end off the yellow flowers when I was a kid. Then I’d suck out the sweet nectar.

Mundt smiled. Some people call it wild snapdragon, he said.

My gawd. I had no idea I was sucking Toadflax.

Apparently one person’s ornamental garden flower is a county weed warrior’s noxious enemy. The weed board wages a never-ending war trying to control those non-native plants that have been introduced into the area by people like me who, for example, think snapdragons are pretty.

Mundt and Bafus named some of the other culprits that fall into the noxious category. Knapweed. Skeleton Weed. Canada Thistle. Leafy Spurge. Rush Skeletonweed. Rush Limbaughweed. BC Bud.

No, wait a minute. That last one is a different kind of weed.

Hoping to fertilize the hard scrabble of my mind, Mundt gave me the pamphlet titled, “Selected Noxious Weeds of Washington State.”

Although the plot is a little thin, this literary work includes some lyrical passages such as: “Legal requirements, definitions for control, and the state noxious weed list are found in Chapter 16-750 WAC State Noxious Weed List and Schedule of Monetary Penalties.”

There’s bedtime reading.

I thanked Mundt and Bafus and drove back to the newspaper. Bankrupt of ideas, I called the city to see what they planned to do to halt this Toadflax invasion.

Who was I kidding? You don’t try to get anyone at the city on a Friday afternoon. That’s like trying to place a Kentucky Derby bet after the horses take off.

I left a Voice Mail message and called it a day.

There goes the Pulitzer.