The Hops Phenomenon

I was invited to Yakima Valley, Washington one weekend to attend a friend’s marriage. While there, I decided to take a tour of the many vineyards, groves, and other kinds of agricultural establishments—as I never see things like this in Utah, where I’m from. One day, while driving around Mount Adams, I stumbled upon a field of hops that were just turning green and ready for harvest. I passed the owner’s house. He was just to the side of the road, yelling into a cordless phone. He seemed enraged about something; his face was red, possibly from a heated argument.

“I think they call it ‘Mandagora,’ and I’ve been trying to get rid of them!” I heard him say.

I pulled over when first I heard the term. “Excuse me, sir!” I called after him, stepping out of my car when I saw him end his telephone conversation. “I happen to be an expert on Mandagora.”

“So you can tell me how to exterminate them?” he said, giving a chuckle and shaking his head.

“Do you have a problem here with your hops? How many Mandagora do you think you have?”

“Only one,” he said, raising a finger to illustrate. “I just got one, and he seems to keep getting into my shipments of hops!”

“That’s very unusual,” I said. “Normally you find Mandagora in larger numbers than just one.”

“Well, he’s been spotted again, this time at The Knuckle-Head Trout. It’s a microbrewery just across town. I’ll give you the address if you’d like to go have a look.”

“Of course. Thank you.”

He opened a screen door to step inside. “I can’t guarantee you anything. They say they’ve been trying to catch him since this morning, but he seems to keep changing shape and dodging their efforts to get rid of him.”

I drove by The Knuckle-Head Trout later than evening, around 5:30 pm. As I pulled into the parking lot, the place appeared to be empty. I stepped around the back and again found no one. Then suddenly a door opened with a bang! and an angry man wearing a dirty apron stood at the door, batting at something on the floor with a broom.

“Git!” he cried, swatting the broom downward. “Git! And stay out!”

I approached him. “Excuse me, sir. But is this the place where a Mandagorum has been spotted?” I spied a leafy little creature run out the door, the man chasing after it. The Mandagorum fled to the back field, and I took up the pursuit with the man.

“Where did he run off to?” the man said, bending to look through the weeds, sweeping the tops of them aside with the broom.

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“For a few weeks now.” He stood and stretched his back, rubbing his head in bewilderment. “That little thing sneaks onto the trucks that deliver hops to my brewery, and then we always find him floating in the beer! It’s making sales go way down, and we’re having a mandatory health inspection tomorrow; if I don’t catch that little critter—or at least keep him from getting into my brewery—I’ll be shut down for good.”

I noticed some suspicious tracks in the dirt, lines that would appear as erosion marks to the untrained eye, but obvious leaf-prints of Mandagora to someone as trained as myself. “I think I can help you out,” I said, and I followed the tracks.

They led me to a run-down apartment building. I knocked on the door, and two Mandagora answered the door. “Yes?” they asked in unison.

“Do you know anything about the Mandagorum that has been harassing the brewery?” I asked.

They let me inside and offered me a seat on the couch. “Yes, we do,” said one, shaking his head. “We keep trying to tell him to stay away from that place, but it appears nothing we say will get him to stop.”

“Do you know where he is?” I asked.

“He came home just a few minutes ago,” the other said. “He’s upstairs in his bedroom. He was staggering around pretty badly, though. It’s possible he’s passed out on his bed.”

“Then shouldn’t someone make sure he’s sleeping face-down incase he throws up and aspirates on his vomit?” I asked.

“Ew!” said the others, and they turned on the TV.

I arose from my seat and stepped toward the stairs. I heard floorboards creak above me, and I turned back to the other Mandagora.

“He’s up,” the first said, the other nodding his head.

The creaking moved to what I guess was the end of the stairs the next floor up.

“Oh no!” the two others spouted, giggling erupting from their mouths. “He’s coming downstairs! Three, two, one. . .”

Something at the top of the stairs slipped. “Woah!” I heard the voice of another Mandagorum. He tumbled down the stairs until he landed at the bottom, sprawled out on his stomach. His eyes were red, and it was plain that he was drunk. He took no notice of me or the other two, but instead tried to read the ingredients of an empty Smirnoff’s bottle on the floor.

Then an idea came to my mind.

The next morning was a Saturday, and I set a glass cylinder near the side of the brewery and filled it with pure vodka. I hid among the hops and watched the cylinder with my binoculars. Nearly thirty minutes later, the lone Mandagorum came sneaking in, his shape already changing to match the hops. When he spied the open cylinder, he ran and jumped into it, readily imbibing the alcohol. I leapt to the cylinder and capped it, and I placed it in a box to deliver the Mandagorum to the owner of the Knuckle-Head Trout the next Monday morning.

I brought him the box with the cylinder, proud that I had captured the Mandagorum. The owner could not stop thanking me, and he was ready with a list of alcohol the little creature had consumed, and the fee he owed the brewery. When the owner lifted the lid to the box, the Mandagorum was gone.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he yelled at me angrily.

“I swear he was there! I caught him just the other day!”

“Wait!” came a little voice as a female Mandagorum scampered up to us both. “I’m his girlfriend. I can pay the fine for him.”

The owner looked down at her. “Why would you do that for him? It’s quite a list, and it’s not gonna be cheap.”

“I know.” Her voice held no hint of annoyance, and she stared up at us, her expression sunny, yet vacant.

“Where is the missing critter?” I asked her.

“Oh,” she said, “he’s in the hospital. After he escaped from your cylinder, he drank so much this past weekend that the alcohol in his fluid system started oxidizing the color out of him! It’s really quite embarrassing, for him and me both. He looks like stewed cabbage. He’s going to need lots of chlorophyll transfusions over the next couple days.”

“Is this the first time it’s happened?”

“Oh no!” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve had to bail him out of things like this many times before!”

And yet you still stick with him? I thought to myself as she handed the owner the money to the fine.

“Well,” I said to the owner before I left to catch my flight. “Here is my number in case you have any other encounters with Mandagora.”

“I hope not to,” he said, taking my business card. “Though I think that what you do for a living is stupid, I’m glad you happened to be out here this weekend.”

“You’re not the first to tell me that,” I said, and I drove away to the airport.