THE MURDEROUS PALMS

Since Friday, June 27, these palm trees have attacked me twice:

Sure, they look innocent enough...planted there next to the pool, providing shade and a semblance of a "tropical" feel to our desert backyard. But don't be fooled. They're very nasty. They want to kill me, and they want to do it without mercy.

Allow me to explain.

On a regular basis, I water these palms (and another one near the pool filter) by placing a hose at their bases and moving it after a couple of hours or so. We don't have an irrigation system for our trees, and this method of moving-the-hose has worked fine for at least two years now. I also weed and rake the gravel yard to keep it looking neat and spiffy. G mows the grass and does the harder work of trimming the trees back, and together we keep the backyard in good condition.

The trees are mostly harmless. A jacaranda, a purple plum, two Chilean mesquites, a Chinese tallow and a lovely eucalyptus. They can be trimmed and their amputated limbs hauled away with little chance of injury. But there are three dangerous trees in the yard...the Mexican fan palms. And their scary, long, super-sharp BARBS.

The larger the palms grow, the more fierce the barbs. They seem like razor-sharp claws anymore, and it's pretty much impossible to go near these palms without getting poked. Here's a close-up of what these terror-spikes look like:

The first time the palms attacked me, I was bending underneath the huge fronds to re-arrange the hose so the damn things could receive nourishment and grow even bigger and more ruthless. A barb or two raked across my scalp, poking in and drawing a shitload of blood. Head wounds bleed so much worse than any other type of wound. I ran in the house and called to G, so he could assess the damage and apply some alcohol to the cuts and help me mop the blood out of my hair. It was lovely, and the two puncture wounds did heal up very well with little trouble except when I accidentally scraped them with my fingernail later that evening when running my hands through my hair.

Cut to exactly one week later. This time, it was the morning of the 4th of July and we were getting the yard and house ready for visitors. G was in the house slicing and preparing the veggies and fruits, and I was in the yard, slathered in a thick layer of sunblock, popping the weeds up and out of the gravel with the hula-hoe (I don't know the proper name for it, but it's a metal loop at the end of a stick). I was moving along very well, listening to She & Him on my headphones, methodically killin' weeds and raking everything up into neat piles to be picked up at the very end.

I was wary to go near the palms now. I did every other section of the yard first and left that region for last. Finally, it was time to hit some of the weeds with the hoe and rake them away. I carefully removed weeds near the outside edge of the palm-tree-region, not caring about ducking underneath to do extensive weeding. I wasn't going to risk yet another head wound. Everything was going fine, until I reached the rake out and underneath the palm to quickly rake the weeds and gravel right near the pool edge.

Instantly, I was caught. A barb cut through my shirt and settled somewhere in the skin of my neck. I was stuck to the tree. I couldn't move because I could feel the barb under my skin, and had no way of telling which way the barb had gone in and how to pull myself off the tree without tearing anything further. Last thing I needed was a ripped-open neck.

I yelled for help ("Greg! Help!" on repeat) since I didn't have my cell phone on me, and it took a couple of minutes before G finally ran out back to free me. He couldn't really hear me out there, since the A/C was running and the TV was on as he was working in the kitchen. The dogs apparently heard me, though, and went to the back door and let him know something was wrong out in the backyard. Anyway, he got out there and managed to unattach me from the barb. I got upset, not just because I'd been stabbed in the neck by a tree and it hurt, but because what kind of SPAZZ am I to sustain two palm injuries like that? Why am I so accident-prone, anyway? What's the deal with me? Normal people don't get hooked in the neck by trees.

The good news was, the barb went in kind of sideways under the skin, so the wound wasn't deep this time. It just looked like a reddish-purple hickey with a red hole in the middle. It's still very ugly. The bad news is, the barbs on a Mexican palm tree apparently have some sort of toxin on them. I'm fine, but I did get bad headaches both days I was injured; headaches that felt nothing like a migraine but instead like a too-tight helmet around my entire skull, making me super sleepy. Greg says that when he gets poked with those barbs when he's trimming the fronds back, the joints in his hands get stiff and sore for a few hours. I tried to find information online about this mysterious toxin, but I came up empty. It's a very strange thing to have a tree that you have shown nothing but kindness suddenly turn and try to kill you. The purple plum would NEVER do a thing like this.

So, that's my story of how the palms and I became mortal enemies. I sincerely fear and loathe those palm trees now. I don't trust them for a second anymore, and I'm thinking of trading a responsibility with G so he can take over watering duties on those particular trees for awhile. Once they grow a little taller and the fronds are all trimmed off to a point where it will be easy to walk around them, maybe I'll feel a little more confident venturing into their territory again. Until then, though, I'm not ashamed to admit my intense fear. They're just evil and they clearly HATE ME. They want me dead, I know it. They are having fun toying with me and my spilled blood. Bastard palm trees.

I know it's really bad and I have no business going near them because yesterday, when I took the two photos above, I narrowly avoided being poked in the face...possibly the eye...by a wayward frond riddled with barbs. I was trying to get a close-up of the barbs and as I was checking the photo, the wind carried a long spiky frond right up to my cheek. I jumped back so fast I almost fell in the pool. And that, my friends, is the LAST TIME I risk my life around those fuckers. Hope you have enjoyed this story and the pictures that I nearly died to obtain.

Stay safe out there.