Just One Thing with Max Wheeler

Max Wheeler’s short story “Abatement” explores the hazardous bond between a man and his weeds. Here he shares just one thing about the piece: 

“In Spring of 2023, I enjoyed a surreal commute to work. Most mornings, as I sped along highway 680 between Walnut Creek and Danville, I would catch a glimpse of a real, live camel silhouetted on the grassy hillside. Sometimes, his zebra companion. Usually also an emu or two. After exiting the freeway I would come across my favorite sign, with human-high lettering in bold black ink: Hazardous Vegetation Abatement Deadline May 31st. (Because so much of the flora currently occupying California are invasive species introduced during the waves of settler colonization, they are not adapted to our summer-dry climate and pose serious fire risks.) And then for two beautiful weeks, I would arrive at my school and greet the herd of goats who had been hired to eat our fraught, flammable plants. It was a strange and fruitful time, from which emerged this little story. I think Darryl's fate is a kind of wish fulfillment for me.”