The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons by Glen Chilton Read Free Book Online

and I heard that once Pacific oysters have grown to fullsize, and after they have reached reproductive age, they are very stress-tolerant. They can deal with low salinity, and it takes exposure at low tide at –10°C to kill them. Lisa admired the shell of a particularly crenulated oyster that Norbert said was the result of the chemical tributyltin (TBT), an anti-fouling agent painted on ships’ hulls to discourage barnacles and other nasty hitchhikers. TBT didn’t kill Pacific oysters; it just made their shells more ornate.
    Much of the Netherlands is either created or transformed landscape. Islands like Texel are just about the last bit of unaltered area of their type—naturally created and constantly moving sandbanks. We heard that the North Sea is overfished, but as it’s a marine environment, people cannot directly see the damage and so have trouble imagining the scale of the destruction. In contrast, the coastal portions of the Wadden Sea are exposed at low tide; you can see the area, and so people become involved in its preservation. There is interest in having the Wadden Sea established as a World Heritage Site. The region is generally thought to play an important ecological and economic role and is recognized as an important nursery for North Sea fishes.
    T HE FELLOW WHO CHECKED US in to our hotel in Den Burg was the very model of a company man. As he waved his shaven head at us hypnotically, he explained that the hotel restaurant was a fine place to dine. “It can be put on your bill!” We said that we would probably find something to eat in town. He went on to extol the virtues of the hotel’s bar, explaining that the tab could be put on the bill. “Well, that sounds nice,” we said, even though it didn’t. We asked about our options for renting bicycles. “I can make a reservation for you and put it on your bill.” Lisa asked for alternatives. He responded: “Rent a bicycle or rent a car.” We allowed him to make the bicycle reservation and put it on our bill.
    “I am sure that you will want this guidebook. It has everything you will want to know about Texel. It has maps.”
    “I have good maps.”
    “It has a tide table for Texel.”
    “I downloaded a tide table for Texel.”
    “It has everything,” he claimed. Lisa asked if he had an English version.
    “No, just Dutch and German.”
    “But we don’t read Dutch or German.”
    “I can put it on your bill.” After that much sales effort, I let him put it on our bill. If Lisa hadn’t been with me, I suspect he would have offered to find me a prostitute and put her on my bill.
    In the town’s main square, we found a nice little restaurant that served pancakes and the products of the Texel
bierbrouwerij.
On offer was Texels Amber and Texels Goud, but I settled on a Texels Witbier. It was close enough to vile as to be quite refreshing. Lisa pointed out that the restaurant’s music system played nothing but mid-’70s one-hit wonders. We watched the parade of cyclists, from pre-schoolers through advanced seniors, with not a helmet in sight. As a young boy, I probably would have donned a wig and called myself “Brenda” before I would have put my leg over a girls’ bike, the type with no cross-bar. On Texel, there was no obvious “thing” about a man riding a girls’ bike.
    T HE DAWN PROVIDED BEAUTIFUL SUNNY SKIES and no wind. Slathered in SPF 20 sunblock, Lisa and I set off for the bicycle rental shop. This was pretty brave of me. The last time Lisa had got on a bicycle, about fifteen years earlier, she had swerved out of control and run me down. Growing up in rural Alberta, surrounded by gravel roads, Lisa had never come to terms with pedal power. But, she explained, she would have felt foolish trying to get around Texel any other way. It was going to be transportation the way the locals did it or nothing at all. She had been worried about having no control and swerving into the path of oncoming Dutch seniors. But once she got over