COLUMN: Green with Yellow Spots

By Tobin Barnes
My lawn kinda looks like a leopard pelt. That is, if leopards were green with yellow spots. If they were, then my yard would be the spitting image of one of those pelts.

And I’m the guilty one.

This time it wasn’t our dog, although she can lay down some pretty good yellow spots, too. No, this time I’m the one who did it. Dumb as it was.

But it was all well intentioned, like the paving on the road to hell.

You see, we’ve been trying to go organic. Yeah, we believe in going green. Not green with yellow spots, but green in general.

My wife and I are trying to save the planet--two people at a time. Be responsible. Uh huh, we’ve been listening to Al Gore, who’s been listening to the scientists who are studying these things. The scientists scared Al Gore and Al Gore scared us.

Nevertheless, some people like to make fun of Al. No doubt, he has gained some weight. But laugh at your peril. A couple decades from now we could be frying steaks on the sidewalk. (Wait a second. Might not even be any cows by then. More reason to listen to Al.)

So go ahead, laugh. Poor Al won the 2000 election but lost it to Bush. Still laughing about that one, too? Think Bush will ever get a Nobel Prize?

I’ll take Al Gore’s word for it, rotund or not, Internet inventor or not.

Some people like to scoff at the greenhouse scientists, too: “Hey, how about last winter. Froze my patooty off! Har.” But like Ann Landers used to say, “Wake up and smell the coffee.” The polar bears are drowning up in the arctic, for crying out loud.

Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” scared the bejeebers out of me. Best slide show I’ve ever seen. Most slide shows put you to sleep. This one wouldn’t let me sleep.

Consequently, we’re trying to make our carbon footprint smaller. That doesn’t mean we want to go back to caveman days and communicate monosyllabically (although men would once more feel comfortable verbally expressing themselves: “Duh, beer!).

But there’s things you can do, short of becoming Ed Begley. Easiest is driving less. We’re doing wonders there. How about you? Pain at the pump is making conservationists of us all.

Who wouldn’t like to catch an oil executive and run him through a gauntlet of suffering consumers. Let the people spank him with gas nozzles as he scampers by. Might make the whirling dials on the pump easier to stomach.

Let’s see, what else.

How about all the lights people leave on? We’re turning them off and replacing the bulbs. And shopping with reusable bags, rather than paper or plastic.

We’re also eating more organic food. It’s a little expensive, but we’re ingesting fewer chemicals, and we like to think of the happy chickens and cows living more natural, organic lives, laying down their eggs and meat graciously, knowing they’re living in harmony with nature and within mankind’s generous plan for them.

We even thought we’d stop using chemicals on our lawn. Start using organic weed killers instead. Yes, the weeds would be happier dying this way, too.

Problem was, finding an organic weed killer. The local stores don’t carry such a thing.

So we got on the Internet (thanks again, Al) and thought we’d found what we were looking for. Ordered a jug.

I skimmed the label and applied the stuff full force, no diluting, as per directions. A squirt here at this weed, a squirt there at that weed.

Al Gore would have advised a friend of nature to read the directions more fully. After all, earth is in the balance. Then perhaps I would have realized we’d bought an organic weed AND grass killer.

Turned out the stuff wasn’t so hot on the weeds, but it was hell on the grass.

Now my lawn looks like a leopard pelt, if leopards were green with yellow spots.