RIVER WATCHER

FAKE ROCKS AND FALSE GRASS

Rex Burress

In my Oroville neighborhood, there is a yard display along my morning walking route, and I have always paused there to admire the strawberry madrone tree and rock arrangement. For years there had been wood chips, rocks, and some clever concrete mushrooms, but the owners put in a new design during the 2015 drought crisis, and one morning the mushrooms were missing.

The spot seemed empty without the fairyland fake fungi atmosphere, but attractive new rocks, driftwood, and green grass filled the space. In fact, the grass is the greenest in town...but it is fake, or commercially called artificial turf. It requires no water, which is commendable during drought, but I wonder when rains return if weeds will try to get through. There's nothing fake about weeds or water.

The owner was in the yard one morning, and I stopped to chat. I lamented about the loss of the 'toadstools.' “Oh that was the idea of the landscaper,” Mr. Emmett said. “They wanted decorations on top of the turf, rather than to dig a hole for the mushrooms.”

“Well these are nice large rocks,” I said, “tapping one with my walking stick.” It sounded like a drum! “The rocks are fake, too,” I said in surprise. You can fool some of the people some of the time, and all of the people all of the time with authentic replicas. I wonder what Keith Sheehan of Oroville, who provides real stones and boulders “for all your landscaping needs,” thinks about that?

Some natural rocks can be deceitful when altered by dyes and chemicals. I have a lovely slab of green agate, but it was changed by a heat process, and turquoise can be treated, or improvised by blue plastic, to produce fake gems. Blue topaz can be confused with the more valuable aquamarine, too.

Have your diamond discovery, or gold-piece checked by a jeweler for authenticity. My tumbled “diamond” from the Cherokee rubble was in reality a worn quartz crystal. “Fool's Gold” has fooled many miners when they think the golden glitter they have found is gold, only to find it to be pyrite or mica. The famous 54-pound gold nugget of Paradise that is shown at the Pioneer Museum in Oroville, is actually a worthless replica. “Deceit in the name of theft prevention.”

Cutting a stone with a diamond saw can reveal surprises, showing a dud or a dandy, and some, such as a geode, may be empty. Anticipation is what keeps the rockhound watching for gem stones, and it's what keeps the lapidist exploring the interior of a rock.

Many of the exhibits in a natural history museum could be called fake, or a better term might be the representation of nature. Those trees in a realistic redwood display are actually slabs of bark attached to a metal frame. The fresh-looking foliage in the Oakland Museum's natural history section, are freeze-dried plants laboriously repainted. I have seen the behind-the-scene workshop, and the crew works hard to make convincing fake structures, not only creating the illusion of living leaves, but rubber-cast rocks and other detailed substitutes.

Reptiles are freeze-dried as are other small animals, while taxidermy is a process of cleverly removing skins and stretching them over a wired-together mannequin. All large birds are thus represented. I tried my hand at doing a snow goose at the Oakland Nature Center, and arrived at a decent-appearing dead specimen, but the skinning, repositioning the feathers, wiring, applying the fake glass eyes, and fussing with appearance took all day. To have a live-looking bird arise from a table of tools is as satisfying as the completion of an oil painting.

Several species of animals practice mimicry, the art of appearing like another creature in order to gain benefits, much like the way of camouflage. The viceroy butterfly mimics the toxic monarch's bright color in a type of mimicry called the Mullerian mimicry, where two species look alike and both are poisonous. But most types are of a Batesian mimicry where a harmless mimic poses as harmful. There are many amazing examples of animals and plants surviving through clever interactions with neighboring species.

A fly would be a stinging bee if it could be a bee. But a fly is a fly and the best it can do is to look like a bee! Look well, therefor, to the ways of the bee-fly!

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.”

--Groucho Marx

“One thing you can't fake is chemistry.”

--Blake Shelton