the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

OOPS 40
problems that were plaguing the South in the early part of the 20th cen-
tury, and, in fact, kudzu was as effective as promised in that regard.
But none of those well-intentioned cheerleaders foresaw the unin-
tended consequences of their enthusiasm.
Despite emerging evidence that kudzu is useful in everything from
cooking to basket weaving to curing alcoholism, the creeping vine these
days is generally considered what Deliverance author James Dickey described
as “a vegetable form of cancer.” It’s pernicious, destructive, and
pretty much unstoppable in the warm-weather states. Barely a century
after its introduction in the United States, kudzu now covers more than 7
million acres, or an area roughly the size of Massachusetts. According to
one recent report, the vine has established itself in at least twenty-eight of
the fifty states and beyond, with each new colony greeted with alarm in
locales from Peoria, Illinois, to Long Island to the island of Bermuda.
“Throughout the South,” wrote Janet Lembke, author of the 1999
book Despicable Species: On Cowbirds, Kudzu, Hornworms, and Other
Scourges, “kudzu creeps with stealthy swiftness over brushpiles and fences.
It climbs trees and telephone poles and casts its soft but heavy net over
thickets and hedgerows. It enshrouds abandoned houses, tumbledown tobacco
barns, rusted appliances, and junked cars. It sneaks into gardens and
plowed fields. Displacing innocent native vegetation, it twines, curls, shoots
upward and outward with relentless green insistence.”
Power companies spend millions each year to keep kudzu from
disrupting power lines, and great snarls of the plant are said to have derailed
trains. Employing everything from angora goats to powerful herbicides,
those trying to stop kudzu’s advance report few long-term successes.
They might as well swat an attacking swarm of bees one bee at a time.
There were plenty of warnings. Long before the modern environmental
movement schooled even average Americans about the dangers of
introducing nonnative species into a new ecosystem, those who understood
kudzu’s dangerous potential, including many farmers, were advising
against it. The public debate was passionate; the red fl ags were waved,