America: 50☆Stars (Vol. 2)

Episode 32: Troublesome Tumbleweed

In the 1890s, a botanist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture was sent to the Dakotas to investigate a highly invasive plant that had been tumbling across the region for the past twenty years. What they found was a troublesome situation, to say the least.

"Waaah! Get them off me!" South Dakota cried while waving her arms around frantically.

"Sis! Calm down! I'm trying to help you!" North Dakota kept telling her to stay still, so he could help her get rid of the nuisances that plagued her.

Every part of her body was covered in balls of thorns. One was stuck to her left arm. Two were stuck to her head. Three were stuck to her right leg. And a massive clump of four was stuck to her back. North Dakota used a pitchfork to carefully pry the thorny bushes off her. But while pulling one off her, the brown brambles tumbled off his pitchfork and fell on top of his head.

He made a paranoid scream. "Ack! It's on me, too!"

"This sucks tumble balls!" she whined.

"Excuse me." The botanist approached the screaming siblings cautiously. "Has there always been this many tumbleweeds?"

"Only in recent years," South Dakota sniffled. "Do you know how to get rid of the Russian thistle? My house is covered in them!" She pointed to a farmhouse that had been engulfed by a huge pile of brown bushes.

"Not yet. B-But not to worry! The Department of Agriculture will find a way to get rid of these tumbling weeds. Ack!" He looked down at a small thistle stuck to his ankle.

Unable to get the tumbleweed out of his hair, North Dakota threw down his pitchfork in frustration. "I give up!" He stomped off.

"Hey! Where are you going? I still have thistles stuck to me!" South Dakota complained.

"Get rid of them yourself. I'm going home, possibly to get a haircut," he grumbled.

"Wait!"

"No way! You can't convince me to come back! I'm going—" A tsunami of tumbleweed hit the teenager like a train. "AAAaaaAAAaaaHHH!"

"Brother!" She and the botanist helplessly watched him get swept up by the tumblepocalypse.

☆☆☆☆☆

Up in the land of moose and maples, Saskatchewan—a provisional district of the Northwest Territories at this time—was tending to her farm, working hard toward provincehood. "Ah, I can't wait to harvest all this wheat I've grown." She admired her tidy farm with a smile on this beautiful sunny day.

As a gust of wind swept across the golden fields, Saskatchewan noticed a brown ball of brambles tumble across the amber waves of grain. 'What's that?' she wondered. She had never seen anything like it before in her life. She decided to leave it alone and let the wind take care of it. She figured it was harmless.

But then, she spotted another ball roll onto her farm. It was followed by another ball. And following that ball were two more that looked just like it. They kept coming and leaving with the wind. However, there were a couple that remained stuck to the wheat. In a matter of minutes, her golden fields were littered with over a dozen of these bristly bushes. There was no end to them!

"Where do they keep coming from?!" Saskatchewan screamed.

~ Hetalia! ~

"LOOK OUT!" North Dakota yelled as he and the tumbleweed tumbled onto Saskatchewan's wheatfield.

"North Dakota!" She ran over to help her American neighbor. "What the heck is going on? What are these things?"

"They're tumbleweed," he explained as he kicked a tumbleweed away from his legs. "There are hundreds of thousands of them, most of which come from my sister's house."