My Little War
It’s sticker burr season. I think mine are sentient. I know the common ways they get into the house. Pants. Socks. Shoes. Pets. But we have no indoor pets, and I’ve found so many recently in the house that mine have to be traveling on their own. It’s either that or I’m being inordinately careless when it comes to my shoes and socks. I’m going with smart burrs.
The bad thing about sticker burrs in the house is the method of discovery. Bare feet. Especially bare feet in bath and bed. There’s nothing quite like answering a call of nature in the middle of the night to have a sharp peg driven into the bottom of your bare foot. The insidious nature of the beast is that the perpetrator is camouflaged in whatever carpet or rug you’re walking on. So, finding it requires hands and knees and the delicate sweep of the fingers.
Of course, I could do what some civilized people do. Take off my shoes when entering my home. I have a nice room for that purpose. Over the years I‘ve tried to do that. But it only takes one slip up for the burrs to get past my defenses. In the end, I suppose I’ll do what I normally do which is go on the offensive and start digging. It’s a battle we’ve fought before, so I guess I’m fighting it again. Or maybe, like some of our so called wars, it just never ended.