Blackberry bushes are the Godzilla of invasive species.
Blackberry bushes are the Godzilla of invasive species. Fabio Pagani/www.shutterstock.com/www.shutterstock.com

According to SPD blogger officer Lauren Lovanhill, on Monday night, the police arrested a 55-year-old man for allegedly setting fire to four vehicles, one of which was a squad car. It is reported that officers, who had arrived in the area to deal with a "family disturbance," actually saw the suspect pouring fluid on a truck and lighting it. The huge fire that resulted spread to other cars.

For me, however, the interesting thing is not the purported act of arson, but the role a blackberry bush played in the incident. What is said to have happened is this: After the truck caught on fire, the suspect fled the scene. The cops chased and lost him. A little later, the suspect was spotted by a BNSF Railway employee in Interbay, which is the industrial valley between Queen Anne Hill and Magnolia.

The rail-yard worker told the officers that a man fitting the description of the suspect ran across the train tracks, which is never an easy thing to do (especially here, where there are between 15 and 20 tracks). The suspect then plunged into blackberry bushes by a golf course (which has to be the Interbay Golf Center). The officers secured the area and began calling into the blackberry bushes.

Now imagine if you came across this scene (in a golf cart, of course) with no idea of what was going on. Surely, for a moment you have might thought that the world had gone mad. Why were these police officers talking to those bushes? Why were they trying to arrest the plants?

This makes no sense even if blackberry bushes are one of the "biggest bullies" in nature and have horribly "powerful roots" and all of those nasty thorns. They also have ugly leaves. Ecologically speaking, blackberry bushes are almost always up to no good. Indeed, the man who brought them to this part of the world, botanist Luther Burbank, must be the satan in the Bible of indigenous species. The only reason blackberry bushes are tolerated is because in late summer and early fall their fruit provide urban types with the pastoral pleasures of foraging.

Eventually the suspect left the bushes and surrendered. The bushes were then left to grow and grow and grow.