Word: poisons
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Last week, like pennant losers looking forward to next year, homeowners across the U.S. besieged garden stores for poison to kill off this year's waning crab grass, spades and shovels to dig it out of their lawns, sturdy seed to protect them against its ravages again in the spring. In Chicago, Vaughan's Seed Co. estimated that its 1959 lawn chemical sales are running 50% ahead of last year. In Marysville. Ohio, O. M. Scott & Sons, biggest U.S. lawn supply house, looked forward to a $30 million year, up $6,600,000 over record 1958. Said...
...than a garbage can in his foyer, the prolific (up to 50,000 seeds a plant) weed has become a neighborhood problem, like juvenile delinquency; if not snuffed out in one spot. it quickly spreads to another. Yet it is almost impossible to stop: digging only exposes more seeds, poison is often ineffective or kills other grasses, mowing only conditions crab grass to produce its seeds closer to the ground...
Garden experts suggest applying regular doses of poison and keeping eternal vigilance, or gently pulling crab grass out by the roots. They are putting their hopes in new, specialized chemicals that have been developed to combat the weed. Many a homeowner has found the most comfortable way to beat crab grass is to join it. Says Washington Building Manager Mrs. Adeline Watson: "I'm sick of fighting. I decided to grow just crab grass. We've had wonderful luck with it.'' Trouble is that crab grass turns brown at the first frost. But Chicago...
...flasheries, says they have no meaning; the real secret is contained in a doubly locked metal box, which he opens in the presence of no man. He is probably telling the truth, for the best guess entomologists have made about his methods is that he knows just how much poison a starling can take without dying, sprinkles it around while diverting onlookers' attention with his noisy toys. Starlings would not want to go back for more. Perhaps the aluminum tube around his neck is just a long salt shaker full of poisonous bird seed...
Standke denies that he uses poison in his starling system, but admits he uses it on pigeons. Whether his secret is more closely related to biochemistry or to mumbo-jumbo, the bird man is in interesting company: the sixth labor of Hercules was to rid the Arcadian city of Stymphalus of its rasping birds. "When Hercules was at a loss how to drive the birds away," writes Apollodorus, "Athena gave him brazen castanets ... By clashing these, he scared the birds. They could not abide the sound...