Snapshots of life in the Golden State. : Life Turns Hellish After a Bale of Hay Turns Nasty

Construction worker John Rensing is a head-to-toe walking sore, with welt-like blisters all over his body. For this, he blames the hay from hell.

Rensing, who lives with a girlfriend in rural Perris, says that when he snipped open a bale of hay for their horses, pigs and goats, it exploded with barbed weed seeds, like miniature foxtails that cling to socks and slacks after a walk through a weed patch.

“There was a huge puff of dust, and it seemed like my whole body was blasted with these little things,” Rensing, 45, complained. That was last spring, and ever since, he says, “tiny little particles” keep popping out of his skin, remnants of these little weed monsters.

The hay store doesn’t know what the problem is, and denies responsibility. Riverside County agricultural and veterinary officials aren’t sure what it is, and say they’ve had no other complaints. Samples were sent to the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture, and all they could figure was that the stuff under their microscope was wild barley that grows just about anywhere.

But one of Rensing’s veterinarians said she saw the little barbed seeds bedeviling the mouth of Rensing’s Great Dane and was confounded by them too. “I’d never seen things like that before,” Dr. Maryanne Williams said.

Rensing’s physician, Dr. Armando Franco, said the irritations were on “his hands, arms, forearms, chest . . . thighs, legs and knees, too numerous to count.”

He offered cleansing agents and painkillers but didn’t say what the little things were.

Rensing, meanwhile, hasn’t been able to get back to work because the swelling of his hands makes it impossible to grip a hammer.

He says he can only hope that, slowly but surely, they’re working their way out of his body.

“I thought the hay was some crazy government experiment gone wild,” he said, “and I was the victim.”

Increase in Sexual Harassment

Reporting of sexual harassment on the job is on the rise in California and elsewhere. Below are the numbers of sexual harassment cases filed over the last five years, in California and the nation, and the percentage of all employment discrimination cases that they represent. Other types of discrimination cases include those based on race, gender, age and appearance .

Fiscal No. of Cases % of All Job No. of Cases % of All Job Year in California Bias Cases Nationally Bias Cases 1991-92 2,239 18.2 10,532 8.4 1990-91 1,744 16.5 6,883 6.0 1989-90 1,457 17.8 6,127 5.6 1988-89 1,391 18.4 5,623 5.2 1987-88 1,390 16.7 5,499 4.8

Source: State Department of Fair Employment and Housing, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission

Compiled by researcher Tracy Thomas

No harm, no foul: Authorities say they won’t file bank robbery charges against a desperate 79-year-old Victorville man who, not having received his Social Security checks since October when he moved from Los Angeles, tried to rob a Bank of America in San Bernardino.

The man, in blue blazer, blue vest and brown slacks, approached a teller and displayed a water pistol. The teller turned him down. The man walked out and was found by police next door at a Jack in the Box.

All you can eat: Fuji Natural Foods in Ontario claims that it is the nation’s largest grower of sprouts. It grows 30 tons of sprouts a day on its 32-acre plot. That’s 30 tons a day.

In Holtville, according to the Imperial Valley Press, “Overwhelmed and overfed judges left the Civic Center . . . after nearly 3 1/2 hours of tasting, evaluating and computing the cooking contest entries.” This, for the 32nd annual Carrot Festival.

And in Walnut Creek, migratory robins and cedar waxwings are feasting on the winter’s crop of berries. Gorging, in fact.

Susan Heckly of the Lindsay Museum of natural history says the birds eat all they can from pyracantha and other roadside shrubs and miscalculate their added weight. Seems they’re unable to quickly reach safe cruising altitudes and are colliding with passing vehicles.

Caltrans workers are keeping the roads clean.

Bucks stop here: When a Blythe police officer grew suspicious of a Los Angeles man parked along the side of the road, he called for backup--including a canine cop with a good nose.

The dog didn’t turn up any drugs, but sniffed out a black case in the man’s trunk, containing $150,000 in cash.

Hmmm.

Not mine, the man said. Found it at a rest stop in Arizona. Heck, you can have it. Yeah, I’ll sign the disclaimer.

Blythe Police Chief Larry Vandiver said that while they are investigating the source of the money, it has been deposited in a bank account, where it can draw interest of a different kind.

Pipe dreams: When work crews at Franklin Elementary School in San Diego uncovered a suspicious piece of 14-inch pipe, capped at both ends, they called the Fire Department, which efficiently blew a hole through it to make sure it wasn’t a pipe bomb.

And now the San Diego Police Department crime lab has offered to piece the contents back together: news articles and other memorabilia, carefully planted by the Class of ’54 as a time capsule.

EXIT LINE

“A man who does would be more in touch with his feminine side and . . . I take that to be creative. We could even swap clothes.”

--Waitress Katherine Leroy’s answer in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Question Man column, as to whether she would date a man who cross-dresses.