Jumping Cactus

 

People have warned me about this cactus (Jumping Cactus or Cholla) but the warning went unheeded.

I found myself where I always seem to end up, near the entrance of the western Saguaro national forest as the Sun was nearly setting. I had a few minutes before the Sun would be in position for a neat shot, so I ventured off into the desert. I got some good shots of the Sun through the cactus, like the shot on the top of this post, before I realized that I better get back in position if I wanted to get that specific shot. I hurried down the hill back to the car and too my surprise I noticed a small ball of cactus had attached itself to my pant cuff. Not being from Arizona and having small burrs attach them selfs to my clothing before I thought the best course of action would be to simply reach down and remove the cactus ball with my hand. As I did this I realized that it was not coming off easy so I pulled harder. That's when the fun started. I got it off my pants, but now it was stuck to my left hand. More specifically my ring finger. I tried to pull it off with my right hand only to get it stuck as well. Luckily it was in my left ring finger pretty good, so I was able to get my right hand free after some pulling only to get more fingers stuck on my left hand. I would try to touch it as gently as possible as not to get any more barbs into my fingers, but it goes in so easily and won't come out. I got my other fingers free, but it would not come out of my ring finger. I grabbed the side of a barb and pulled hard enough that it felt like the guts of my finger were coming out with it. And the harder I pulled the more fingers would get stuck. I finally freed all but that one finger and decided to step on the ball and pull my finger out that way knowing that it would be on my shoe after that. So I stepped on it and pulled very hard; feeling like my finger was being turned inside out, it was finally dislodged from it's captor. I was expecting a lot of blood, but only the pain and a tiny pin prick remained. Now that it was off my finger I tried flicking it off the bottom of my shoe. It was coming off, so I kicked a little harder and off it flew. To my absolute delight it ended up right back where it had started, on the cuff of my pants. That was last week. The experience was so traumatic that I don't remember now how I got it off. I think I did a whole lot of pant shaking and kicking. Needless to say, I missed my shot because by the time I got it off, the Sun had set.

I looked this cactus up later and found that it has some microscopic barbs that keep it right where you don't want it to be. I think the military should look into this. This would be a very affective weapon. If you carpet bombed your enemy with this stuff, they would surrender in a matter of seconds. :-)

Here is the Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylindropuntia_fulgida