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There is a reason that one of it's nick names is devil's thorn as it's fruit - more like a booby trap - bears two or more painfully sharp spines. Even with leather soled western boots, they find a way to stick to the boots so you bring them inside your house where they fall off in strategic pathways and you find them when you walking bare foot. Even the most Christian among us will utter a few select cuss words when stepping on one of these caltrop shaped "fruits". Have you ever watched someone have a big bore needle and syringe driven through their back into a lung to remove fluid? The cussing that ensues is nothing like what emits from deep within the vocal bowels of someone who has deeply and fully onto a Goathead with their bare feet.
While I don't use Glyphosate chemical weed spray like Roundup anymore, as I have seen too many cancer warning television commercials, I do use about every other method to get rid of these evil spawns of Satan. I've spread salt; tried propane burners; employed battery powered and electric weed eaters; used the big rake on my John Deere tractor - and No, I don't look sexy on my tractor, just pissed off. I have tried dragging a weighted and spiked grate with a truck; used all manner of manual tools such as garden hoes, shovels, etc......the best manual tool I have found is a type of garden hoe but with a stirrup resembling working end that has a sharpened edge that cuts the roots off below the ground, but your arms go numb after awhile.
Pulling those weeds by hand is far and away the best method of ridding these good will robbing weeds for a decent length of time, but who among us has a strong enough back for several days of that kind of soul crushing work over acres of goat heads? But you have to do something as they can spread fast and even grow 10 feet in diameter. Anxiety and the countdown clock begins when you see small yellow flowers blooming as the rapid growth and release of the caltrop shaped spikes is imminent. Some people call these things burrs, but that does not do justice to the pure evilness of them.
I don't know how these things got started growing on this earth, but I'm leaving room in my thoughts that they may have been brought here by aliens....or just maybe demons brought them up from the underworld. I pulled up several of them this morning that grew up seemingly over night next to one of my stock tanks. I intended to come back in 30 minutes or so with a bucket to collect them for the dumpster. As I approached the area of pulled Goatheads, I could have swore I saw one of the pulled weeds, with an unusually long tap root, moving. There was absolutely no wind, so I did a double take and looked again, and I believe that the tap root was moving trying to dig it's way back into the ground where it could grow anew, and again sprout those pain causing spikes to terrorize dogs and people. Right now I'm on hold with the local US Air Force base asking how a citizen in moderately good standing can order a napalm strike. If anyone has a better idea, please contact me.
