Of Seed Pods and Interplanetary Horticulture

I’m just watering the plants.

One of my favorite patients ever was this guy from El Paso. He was brought in under a warrant because he was caught urinating in someone’s yard. The officers felt that he was a psych patient just from talking with him for a few minutes and brought him in limping in shackles. He was this little guy about 5’2” around 100lbs.

Careful that your not in someone’s little buddy section.

Where I worked there was a section where we put our rowdy patients or the ones that were too intrusive for the other patients. I usually took these patients as it was closer to my desk. I called them my “little buddies”. This guy became one of my favorite little buddies.

 I guess you’ll not leave you ball in the yard anymore.

When I sat down with him he was very cordial. But I quickly found out that he was quite delusional. First he tells me that he from another planet. That he was left here to propagate our planet with their seed pods. That’s what he was doing when he was arrested. What he was doing was finding balls that someone had left in their yard, like basketballs, footballs, tennis balls, etc… and he would bury them where he found them. Then he would go by periodically and “water” them, urinate on them.

Now, I’m an observant person, but it took me about 30 minutes to realize that he has a marble in each of his ears. I ask him what they are doing there and he replies that they are “grogs”, a way the he is able to communicate with his people. He was hearing them talk as we were chatting.

Of gardens and interplanetary horticulture. 

So we get him set up in a room by himself. Over the next few days, he kept to himself. When I went to check on him I noticed that he had coffee cups stacked all over his room. He had little coffee straws hooked up in a maze of what appeared to be an irrigation system. Inside the cups were various seeds, a peach pit, a few green bean seeds and a slice of tomato. Normally, I would have had him remove all of this, but he wasn’t hurting anyone and he was by himself so I let it go on. After a few days I found out that the peach pit had actually appeared to sprout.

Tie a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree.

Several days later his brother came by for a visit. He told a horrifying story of how he got his limp. His brother told that many years ago he was living with his Mother in El Paso. The guy said that his brother used to go to the local convenience store everyday. On month he decided to go visit his brother in New Mexico and was gone for several months. When he came back he found out that the couple that ran the convenience store had been brutally murdered. The police arrested the patient when they found that he was back. Someone had identified him as the murderer. He was convicted and went to prison.

His brother found out and tried to help out. He found that the murders had happen while he was in New Mexico, so he couldn’t have murdered anyone. While his case was being retried, he was involved in an altercation and was severely beaten by the prison guards. This resulted in his ankle being broken but he was never treated and it healed incorrectly. This gave him his prominent limp. When the psych records came back from his stay in New Mexico, he was finally released from prison, with only a limp to remind him of the experience. I felt very sorry for my little buddy.

A little something to remember me by. 

Well, to wrap this up, he was eventually sent to the State facility for further treatment. I never found out what happened to him. Before he left he told me that he had lost one of his “grogs”. We searched everywhere for it but didn’t find it. Months later, when we were re-tiling the floor, I found his grog under his bed and I have kept it since then as a memento of my “little buddy” from another planet.