Days after a windstorm blew through bushels of tumbleweeds, a family’s home in Colorado remains so “submerged” beneath the brush they can barely see out the window.
“It’s a horrible situation,” said Marlies Gross in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, three days after the tangle of weeds wound up on her property. “Like a horror movie.”
Though the metres-high tangles of tumbleweeds that are encircling her yard, driveway and, at one point, front doorway, may appear to be appropriate furnishings for spooky season, the reality of living with the prickly plants is not only just an eyesore but a physical – and financial – burden.
“It’s very eerie and very creepy,” said Ms Gross standing outside her home in Colorado Springs with a maze of tumbleweeds enclosing in around her front door and back windows.
At one point, she and her husband were unable to access her car, the road or even squeak through the front door without getting scraped by the sharp and dry edges of the plants.
“There’s a mountain, and I mean a mountain on the right side of the driveway,” explained Ms Gross while pointing to the pile of tumbleweeds that stood well above her head. “I kind of panicked,” she admits when she realised that, should there be an emergency, neither she nor her husband would be able to access the car to get themselves to a hospital.
While they still have a full yard of work cut out for themselves, Ms Gross says that some neighbours were able to help them at least clear a path to their car and roadway earlier this week, which helped put some of her anxieties at ease.
However, that feeling was short lived as the couple began receiving quotes for how much it would cost to clear the entirety of the mess from their property, which she said would likely top out at about $6,500.
“I hope I can see out the window again,” she said. “When I look out it’s nothing but tumbleweeds climbing up the window. It’s a disaster.”
Ms Gross wasn’t the only person in the area to be hit by a thicket of tumbleweeds this past weekend.
A rancher living in El Paso County, about 23 miles east of Ms Gross’s home in Colorado Springs, also awoke to the unwelcoming sight of eerie plants stacked as high as some of the trees on his property on Sunday morning.
“It was breezy all morning, and then it just started really blowing hard, and here they came across the pastures,” said Delbert Vahling in an interview with KOAA.
Outside of the inconvenience of his front door also being blocked by the arid plants, the mass of bristles became a potential hazard for the animals on the Painted Skull Ranch.
“My first thought was fire danger... And the whole front porch was covered and I was worried about a spark from anything starting a fire. Still a big concern,” said Mr Vahling.
Mr Vahling had to dig out one of his cow’s that had become buried beneath a pileup, while elsewhere on a farm in Ellicott, a hen’s babies were trapped beneath a stack of tumbleweeds after they came blowing through the ranch.
While many people across the region are now finding themselves plagued by the plant after it blew through from the windstorm – multiple hauling companies told News5 on Monday they received several calls to clear out tumbleweeds, but no jobs had been completed yet due to backlogs – the onus for clearing the invasive species from private properties falls on the owner.
“The county does not remove tumbleweeds from private property. Property owners can dispose of tumbleweeds in local landfills,” a spokesperson for El Paso County told News5. Tumbleweed, also known as Russian Thistle, is not included on the state’s noxious weed list, and is therefore the local government has no ability “to enforce control of the plant”.
“Unfortunately, the plant is widespread and beyond control as it is found in every state in the U.S., except Alaska and Florida,” the spokesperson added.
Tumbleweeds have indeed been a “widespread” problem in Colorado, with issues with the plant dating back decades and prompting, at one point, for two counties to declare a state of emergency because of their unwanted - and hazardous - presence.
“They are nothing but a hazard,” Gary Gibson, a county commissioner in rural Crowley County, Colorado, told USA Today back in 2014. “They aren’t just a nuisance. They cause damage.”
The year before the emergency orders were issued, 45 miles of road in the region were closed down because they were so overwhelmed by tumbleweeds, Time reported.
