Friday, June 29, 2007

Note to Self : Weed whacking in shorts can be painful.

My back yard is hidden behind my garage and undeveloped so it has pretty much become a parking area and weed garden. And a pretty good weed garden at that - especially this year when it was wet earlier in the spring, and now it's dry as hell. Nice dry weeds. And being a couple of blocks from Sugarhouse Park and less than a week away from the 4th of July, it's a fire just waiting to happen. So I pull out the weed whacker and start to harvest the crop. Things are going well until I hit a rock, the tip of the "string" breaks off and heads straight for my calf. Now I know how those poor weeds feel, course they don't bleed. So I head into the house, put on my paratrooper pants, supress my sympathy for the weeds and whack the rest of them. I tried to do the humane thing and kill them all off at the beginning of spring, before they even had a chance to grow - but there's a reason for the phrase "growin' like a weed".

5 comments:

A Paperback Writer said...

Yes, but did you find any rats?
check out my weedeater story:
http://apaperbackwriter.blogspot.com/search?q=rats

Max Sartin said...

Sitting out on the side of the house watching a rat die? You got a trailer park next door or is it a case of Bubba & Bellie-Sue inherit a house on the east bench? Either way, that's real class and I'd be sure to let what they say about you effect your self-esteem.
.
Anyway, I didn't see any rats in the back yard, but that could be because Gata spends most of her summers outside feasting on any that dare cross onto her territory. But it did remind me of a rat incident back in my Churchill Jr. High days. If you've ever been up there, you know that one of the hills is covered with evergreen shrubs, the kind that really attract rodents. All the teachers knew they were infested, and we spent a lot of time discouraging students from playing in them. One afternoon after school, when the upper parking lot was almost empty, a couple of teachers and I were standing out in the parking lot chatting when one of the resident rodents runs out of the bushes about 10 feet down from us, gets halfway across the parking lot, clutches his little rodent chest and dies from a little rodent heart-attack. Ok, ok, he really didn't clutch his chest, I'm not sure what he died of and to be honest, I didn't even check if it was a he or a she. But it did dart out of the bushes, skitter half way across the parking lot and drop dead in it's tracks. We just sat there staring at it wondering "What the hell just happened". Then we went inside, told a custodian and went home.

A Paperback Writer said...

I'm laughing over your description of my neighbors. However, it was the gardner with the weedeater vs. the rat part that made me think of you.
Nice Churchill story. I'm surprised no neighbors there dropped dead over the shock that a rat might live in their nosebleed neighborhood.

Max Sartin said...

Well, the rat's up there wear little berets and say things like "mais oui, naturellement j'aime un petit peu encore de fromage". The French makes them classier.

Anonymous said...

Well, guess I must add my rat story... A while back our neighbors had a shiptop full of those fitzers, the kind of bushes that attract all the rats. There had been a few comments about the rat population so they decided to get rid of the bushes. Well, there I am with my '64 Wagoneer smiling and say "I can pull 'em". I still miss that old Jeep, anyhow... So I rap the chain around the first bush, give a few tugs,and yank it. We go to look at the remenants of that bush, and low and behold there is a rat with a crushed little head laying right about where the trunk used to be. Seems he mustuv been sitting there when I gave the first yank and the bush crushed his wittle head. The neighbors were quite thankful they were getting rid of the fitzers after that...

General Chaos