JUST HOW IS A CATTAIL A CATTAIL?

A corn dog, yeah, it looks like a corn dog. But a cattail? Why is it not cat's tail?

It's all pretty mysterious to me. But I really like them. One of the first that I saw was in the woods behind the Little League field where a friend of mine and I went to throw his boomerang. We didn't get it to boomerang much then. Years later in Australia, I didn't do a whole lot better. But I was awesome with a spear. I didn't just chuck it; I had to use a kind of bow and fire it at animal targets.

But in my youth, we didn't have any of those kinds of things. My friend Blaine was the only one I knew to have a real boomerang. So we tossed it for an hour or so until we got tired of chasing the sickle down. That's when I discovered the cattails.

Cattails or bulrushes (I also don't see how they are bulrushes) fascinated me in those days just like lily pads. It must have been a dry Spring when we boomeranged (boomerrunged?) because I was able to extract a couple to take home. Actually, I think I had a handful, but all of them didn't survive the afternoon. A few did and my Mom placed them in two small flower pots that connected to a mantle clock, big and green and loud. They survived for years if I'm not mistaken, but when you're a kid, time drags its feet so slowly. Who coulod know. But it seems to me that every time I looked at that clock, those cattails were still there.

So whether it was the newness, the adventure, the corn dog similarity, I don't know what attracted me to the cattails in the first place. But whenever I see them, I still like them.