Cattail Fun, or Not

I learned something new yesterday and it has to do with cattails. Cattails are great outside fun, but they do NOT belong in the house or on the back porch where they may sneak inside when no one is looking.

Josh and I wandered around outside yesterday, eventually ending up down by the drainage ditch. I was looking for photo opportunities, and he was looking for fun. Cattails fill both categories quite nicely. I broke off one cattail stem about halfway down and handed it to Josh. "It's chicken on a stick!" he said. It looked more like those hotdogs we used to cook over the campfire years ago, but I didn't bother to disagree. I like chicken better than hotdogs anyway.
 

"Ripe" cattails slide right off the stems, and some of yesterday's specimens were over the top ripe. We, or should I say "I", opted  not to show my young grandson what a great cloud of flying fuzz could be generated. No use in making a mess all over his clothes and risk getting the stuff in his eyes and mouth, besides, we had a napping child in the house and it was time to go back inside. I left my own intact cattail on the picnic table outside and didn't stop to pay attention to what was happening to Joshua's.

I decided to wash my kitchen window screens and panes while the kids played. It wasn't until I was putting my windows back together that I noticed a disturbing collection of cattail fuzz meandering about the hardwood floor. (No, I didn't take pictures...) It was congregating in my kitchen as well. I was not a happy Grammy.
 
I found that cattails are terribly messy when disassembled and literally impossible to sweep up. "It was just a mistake," Josh told me as the fuzz swirled about my living room floor. Somehow I was less than impressed. After trying unsuccessfully with a dustpan and broom, I went upstairs to hunt down the vacuum cleaner. You know, I even had to suck the silly stuff off the concrete floor of my back porch. Sweeping it resulted only in a rising swirl of miniscule fluffy seeds.

Next time I'll settle for a war out in the yard instead.