The Weed That Won the West

Derik Lattig says check out this information from writer George Johnson detailing Tumbleweeds How did an invader from the Russian steppes become a symbol of the American West? By George Johnson The trouble begins around sundown, when a couple of city slickers out for a drive in the desert become stranded along a lonely canyon road. It’s silent and windless. Yet one by one, like wolves in the night, tumbleweeds start gathering around them. “They’re following us,” the heroine cries. When her husband tries to intervene, one of the tumbleweeds leaps at his eyes. “It was just like an octopus!” he shouts, after tearing it from his face. “There was living strength in it! ... Where did all that energy come from? How can you animate a dead weed?” There were scarier moments in The Outer Limits, the old black-and-white science fiction series. But this episode, “Cry of Silence,” holds a special horror for me. My own encounter with these monsters began one autumn when my wif