Dry! So dry!
Someone in this great nation please send us poor Floridians a bottle of Perrier. We’re parched. We’re thirsty. We’re drought-stricken. We’re all going to be on fire soon. And well, this is just ridiculous because five miles that way is the great Atlantic Ocean, and a few miles that way is the Gulf of Mexico, so how in the heck can you be surrounded by water but dying of thirst?
How can that be? We shouldn’t be the ones begging for rain. We’re tropical. We have rivers, lakes and even water parks.
But here we are, desperate and dry.
When we want it to rain, we get nothing. When we don’t want it to rain, a hurricane pulls into town like an unwanted house guest who sleeps on the sofa, eats all our food and then throws such a big, fat party that the power gets knocked out and the yard looks like the Rolling Stones played there.
How about moderation?
Just a little rain would suffice — those cool, sweet teardrops that fall from above, turning all our wonderful dust into mush. That’s about all we have left — dust — although a year or so back we started planting all native Florida plants in our yard that could care less about water and don’t even wear sunscreen.
But it’s still not easy. You know you need rain when your roof starts to wilt. When you spend more on water than gas. When the birds start knocking on the door holding Dixie cups and asking if you can spare a few drips.
You know you need rain when your shuffling across the yard builds up enough static electricity that every plant bursts into flames and even the dirt catches fire. When dirt burns, you’ve got water problems.
Now this lack of precipitation means we have fleas en masse. They’ve gotten so bad in my yard that they’ve formed a caucus and are beginning to elect delegates to a national assembly. When the fleas get so bad you go to yourr backyard and they have your dog tied up, that’s not good.
My brother’s flea immigration problem has reached such epic proportions that he’s contemplating pouring gasoline on the whole yard and seeing how they deal with fire.
“They already stole a car,” he said, “and they’re about to take the house, so what do I have to lose?”
He may be right.
But I think the solution to all of our problems lies with something I’ve read about the Chinese recently. In China, they’ve learned to make rain by regularly “seeding” clouds.
No, this is not something some gullible Chinese bureaucrat bought off of a late-night infomercial — “new all-in-one age-defying facial cream with chicken rotisserie is guaranteed to make rain!”
The Chinese, no kidding, launch rockets that release silver iodide into passing clouds, causing it to rain. Now, it’s also possible they’re mistaking rain for silver iodide falling back to Earth, but the Associated Press reported Beijing used these rockets to wash away the dust that coated it after major dust storms.
So are you telling me we’re locked in drought while the Chinese are manipulating mother nature to pressure-wash their streets? Why aren’t we getting in on this?
The BBC reported that in one drought-stricken province, angry officials from one city were accusing another city of using these techniques to shanghai rain clouds headed for them.
Shoot, they’re so proficient, they can even steal rain. They’re out with rockets screaming, “Quick, shoot it before it gets to them.”
I ask again, why are we not getting in on this? Why aren’t we the leader in this technology? We should have cloud-seeding rockets at hardware stores. Granted, as dry as we are, we’d probably burn the whole state down. But then again, my brother might do it first with his flea-killing experiments. So let’s bring on the rain rockets.