Down With Rogues

Though he finds the subject completely boring and pointless, Tuxedo the Cat is here to remind me to explain the meaning of "roguing" to you-----its meaning as connected to a cornfield, anyhow.

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The countless crews of teenagers picking their way through rows of corn in Iowa right now are not only removing tassels, but also eliminating "rogue" cornstalks from the seed corn fields.

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Under the word rogue in the dictionary is a biological definition of the word: "an individual, usually a plant, that varies from the standard." Similarly, the verb definition of rogue is "to eliminate defective plants from".

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Ha! And, here you thought a rogue was "a tricky, dishonest, worthless, rascally person", or "a mischievous person", or "an animal with a savage nature that live apart from the herd"! A rogue can be any of those, of course, too.

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Back in my own detasseling days, we spent a day or two roguing before we started removing the corn tassels. For roguing, we carried a long-handled tool with a curved knife-blade on the end which was used to cut rogue cornstalks off at their base. (Watch your toes, please!)

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A rogue cornstalk is one that stands out by being taller and having more leaves. It must be eradicated so it won't replicate its weird, freakish self by fertilizing innocent, unsuspecting female cornsilk strands.

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The photo above shows sort of what a rogue cornstalk might look like........its the taller stalk in the silouette there on the right.

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So, in whatever you're doing today.........try not to be a ROGUE! Don't vary from the usual, and don't stand out from the crowd. Just blend in, even if that requires you to contort yourself into an uncomfortable position. Its better than being chopped down!!!

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