3 Days, 2 Mowers, and a Bug in the Ear

My neighbor, Beth, works where I do. She works on her lawn a lot. "I don't understand it," she said. "I can never get my grass to grow like yours."

"Well, I don't cut it."

"I had noticed," she said, with a bit of a sniff.

I smiled. "Well, you have to understand that I'm laboring under a terrible handicap."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I could do a great job if I gave a s***."

She had to admit the logic of this.

Besides, the grass wasn't doing much. We got some warm weather, but then it got cold again. For a week, it froze every night. We even got snow, one Saturday earlier this month.

But the rains came, and kept coming. And it got warmer and warmer. I skipped mowing because it was raining, then it was raining another day, and then the grass was waist-high over the septic tank. It was definitely time to Mow the Lawn.

Day One, after the rain. I drag the mower out of the storage shed, prime it, pull the cord. It starts on the first pull. And then dies.

I do all the usual things-- rebend the throttle linkage I bent two years ago to get the fool thing to run at all. Knock all the dust out of the air filter-- there was a shocking amount of it in there. Check the oil. Make sure the engine is firmly bolted to the mower deck. The bolts do work loose. I know, it happened to me. At that point the engine, with attached blades, tried to go somewhere the rest of the mower didn't. The blades WHANNNNGGGGED against the underside of the deck and stopped the motor, and if I remember correctly that was the end of that mower. So I do tend to check that.

And then it was getting dark.

Day Two, I got the mower running. Very slowly (for the grass was deep) I started mowing. I got the little patch around Tephie's Jeep done, and some across the front of the front yard, and then the mower died.

I couldn't start it in the deep grass, so I hauled it back to the driveway. I restarted it. Mowed about twenty feet. It stopped again.

After about six times like this, a fair amount of cursing, another round of throttle linkage and air filter thumping, and so on, I came to the conclusion that the mower was going to start on about the seventh pull, run twenty feet, and stop. No matter what.

This particular mower is about ten years old, I'd guess. It replaced the very expensive Lawn Boy I had for three years before one of its very expensive cast aluminum parts fractured and the engine disintegrated. Horrible mower, that Lawn Boy-- two cycle, so it stank to high heaven, and since its exhaust was in the space above the whirling blades, under the mower deck, and since dried grass tends to accumulate inside that space, it would also quite regularly set itself on fire.

Anyway, this had been about the second cheapest mower I could find- I went with the 4.0 hp instead of the 3.5 hp unit, but that was about the only upgrade from rock bottom. And it was old. And I had never taken much care of it, except to change the oil when the fancy struck me. Maybe it was time to get a new mower. I had just gotten an expense check from my employer, so I could buy a mower without having to charge anything.

This morning, Memorial Day, I went to the Sears store. We don't have a REAL Sears store, but we have a local merchant who carries Sears appliances and stuff. He had no fewer than ten different models of push mower on hand. I could get just what I wanted; a self-propelled mower with a plain old Briggs and Stratton 4-cycle engine, and no bagging attachment. I let the grass clippings pile up on the lawn. It kills much of the grass. That way I don't have to mow it so often.

It was beastly hot today, for here; 94 degrees f, and about a thousand percent humidity, under a sky that was gray even though there were no clouds to speak of. Even the new, more powerful mower wasn't quite up to the waist-high grass over the septic tank. But by working slowly and taking water breaks, I managed to get most of the sticks out of the lawn, stake up the grapevines, and actually... mow... the... lawn.

Until the crisis struck.

Imagine it from Tephie's point of view. She is in her room doing whatever it is that she does in there, no doubt under close supervision from the Feline Contingent. All of a sudden the mower stops and she hears a howl. The screen at the sliding door, in back of the house, rattles. It is latched, of course. "Teffie!" Hafoc howls in pain and terror. "I need your help! TEFFIE!"

"What's wrong?"

"I have a bug in my ear."

"Ewwwww. What kind?"

"I don't know! I don't know what kind. I didn't see it. It's in my EAR, not my frickin EYE! Help me!" It was up against my eardrum, and every time it moved it sounded like thunder. I was getting a little frantic at this time.

Tephie opened the door. "How can I help?"

I wobbled into the kitchen and turned on the sprayer. "Water. Water, blow it out of there."

So she did-- flushing the bug out. Or maybe the longer flush I did in the bathtub got it. I don't know. But it's not in there now.

That, folks, was the Battle of the Tall Grass. I don't know why I bothered, though. It'll just grow back, and I'll have to do the whole thing over in a week or two.