Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden
“Welcome to Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden. Today, we’re tackling a common garden pest, the strangle vine.” Hal Rogers grinned at Jane Kryskill’s camera and motioned for her to pan right with the slightest tilt of his pith helmet.
“No way in hell,” Jane murmured. She did not need eight years’ experience of filming in Pittsburgh to know that a half-eaten deer did not make good ratings. It might be sensational news on Earth. It was, however, a fairly typical outcome when an Earth animal met any number of Elfhome carnivorous plants. Eighty percent of their Pittsburgh viewers would not be impressed, and the other twenty would call the studio the next day, pissed off that their dinner had been ruined by the sight.
Hal’s grin tightened slightly as he continued. “The strangle vine is a dangerous plant to deal with as it’s a master of disguise. It can produce up to five different types of foliage, depending on the type of anchor it attaches itself to. It makes safely identifying this plant very tricky. Thus, it’s best to investigate any possible outbreak with weapon in hand. Some people like a machete. Others, an axe. Personally, I like a flamethrower.”
He whipped up the wand and gave his signature evil laugh. The cackle inspired the rumors that he had accidently killed someone on his previous show and thus his backslide to obscurity. She’d seen the videos. The only thing he’d killed was the ratings; he’d been bored silly doing curbside appeal remodels and it showed.
“This is a Red Dragon Flamethrower. You can get it at Wollertons on the South Side.” Other places in town sold the same flamethrower, but they weren’t sponsors of the show. “It comes with this wand with a squeeze trigger and this propane tank backpack.”
Hal turned around to show off the ten-pound tank strapped to his back. “Simply turn this valve to on.” He turned back, his grin widening with glee. “And apply a spark!”
Others might see Pittsburgh as a demotion, but Jane knew that Hal truly loved any excuse to wreak massive destruction. Where else could he routinely play with sticks of dynamite? Of course there was the small matter that his judgment was poor, hence the reason Jane had her job. She had been hired on originally to be nothing more than a glorified gofer. Hal had ignored, shot, or run over (figuratively and literally) everyone else assigned to the show until it was just Jane and her elfhound, Chesty.
Hal nearly took off his eyebrows applying the spark and blackened the rim of his pith helmet so it smoldered as he continued. “The six types of anchor plants that the strangle vine uses are the Elfhome Maple and Beech, the Wind Oak, the Silver Ash, Ironwood saplings, and root-bound Black Willows. For this reason, we advise viewers to clear these native trees from their yards if possible. Strangle vines will use Earth trees for anchors but can’t mimic their leaves, which makes them easier to spot.”
The yard was filled with native plants, thus Jane didn’t notice the vine creeping closer to Hal until Chesty growled a warning.
“Check.” Jane silenced the big dog by acknowledging the threat. She pointed at the vine attempting to snag Hal’s ankle. “Careful.”
“See you!” Hal cried and let loose an arc of flame at the tendril. It recoiled at stunning speed. He laughed again, sounding slightly demented.
Jane’s camera chimed quietly as Hal chased the retreating vine across the yard. Locking the focus and the microphone on Hal, she tapped the phone icon. “Hm?”
“You do remember what happens after every Shutdown?” Dmitri Vassiliev, station manager of WQED, asked dryly.
“We all waste our time in a staff meeting as Hal derails brainstorming for new story ideas with suggestions on blowing things up.”
There was a moment of silence as Dmitri came as close as he would to acknowledging that she was right.
She continued on with what probably happened at the WQED studios that morning while she and Hal played hooky to film a new episode. “I figure Network just about shit themselves with last month’s stories that you dumped on them yesterday and spent all last night flooding our servers with conflicting demands because they couldn’t do anything as logical as actually reading your summary first. I also figure that they had ignorant questions like ‘why didn’t we get any video of the royal wedding’ or ‘where were the still shots of the new princess in her wedding gown’ and ‘why did we send them a hundred photos of hoverbike racers covered in mud instead.’ ”
The answer was that there had been no “wedding” per se, as elves apparently didn’t go in for that kind of thing, and the only photos of the bride were of her racing. They couldn’t find a single picture where Tinker wasn’t covered in mud, so they just sent them all.
“Someone did figure that out. Eventually.” Which meant there probably had been several dozen patiently ignored e-mails before the light bulb went on at Network.
Jane laughed bitterly. “This is a large strangle vine in the backyard of an EIA desk jockey who has two little kids. He called his supervisor asking what to do about the half-buried deer under his tree, and his boss called Hal.”
Dmitri huffed out as he realized all the vectors of the situation. The United Nations for some reason thought that clerical employees wouldn’t encounter Elfhome’s hazardous wildlife, so they provided no training on how to recognize lethal situations. The supervisor probably knew there were professional exterminators to handle things like strangle vines, but decided to ask Hal for help. For all his love of explosives, Hal was a political creature, honed by years of clawing through the ranks of network television to achieve in-front-of-the-camera status. That he insisted they tackle the strangle vine at dawn meant that the EIA manager was worth currying favors for—plus Hal would get to use his flamethrower. Lastly was that the lowly EIA employee wouldn’t know to keep his children out of the yard until it was safe.
“How soon do you wrap up there?” Dmitri obviously was trying to sound casual while his blood pressure spiked through the roof. The meeting was long over, and Dmitri rarely reamed them out for anything short of setting someone on fire—which they hadn’t done yet today—so why was he calling now?
“What else did Network drop on us?”
There was a too-long silence that meant she was going to hate what Dmitri said next. “Network wants us to provide a ‘native guide’ for a crew filming on Elfhome…”
“You want me to play babysitter?”
“No, they asked for a guide, they’re getting you as a producer, and you’re going to keep them out of trouble even if you need to hogtie them, which I know you’re fully capable of.”
“I don’t do babysitting!”
“It’s not babysitting, and you’re very good at it, otherwise Hal wouldn’t be alive now.”
Chesty went to point on a strangle vine staging a surprise rear attack. Jane sighed. When was Hal ever going to learn that these things were more like octopuses than snakes? “That is debatable,” she said as Hal went down with a yelp.
“Ouch. Is he going to be okay?”
“Probably.” Jane backed up to where she had the tripod set up and a small arsenal of garden weapons and a fire extinguisher.
Hal rolled, cackling wildly, trying to bring the flamethrower to bear on the vine that had him by the ankle. Unfortunately, the plant was much larger than the homeowner had led them to believe. It jerked Hal up into the air even as he squeezed the trigger. He went flying into the tree, leaving a contrail of flame behind him.
“Shit.” Jane grabbed the chainsaw.
“Oh, the viewers are going to love this one,” Dmitri said and hung up, hopefully to call the fire department.
After Hal was packed off in the ambulance, Jane stopped in the Strip District to pick up supplies for the month. After a morning of fighting a giant man-eating plant with a chainsaw, she didn’t want to talk to anyone, and certainly not Dmitri about some stupid babysitting job to some stuck-up New York City network idiots. It was going to be twenty-eight days of useless fighting back and forth until the next Shutdown proclaimed one of them a winner.