Mowed the parents' lawn today with our family's electric mower. It's fairly quiet and doesn't make you stink of gasoline exhaust, but the batteries make it pretty heavy and it was only barely able to finish off our lawn (and these batteries are only a few months old).
When I get a lawn of my own, I'm thinking I'll have to try and find one of those old-style push mowers (my first inclination would be to call it a “cylinder mower”, but apparently that's the British name—Americans supposedly call them “reel mowers”). I saw someone using one at the church near the 5th St. pedestrian bridge that crosses 35W. He didn't seem to be having any trouble with it, so I believe that stories of them being hard to push are probably overrated—I certainly doubt the battery-powered monster I just used is any easier to push..
I wouldn't be surprised if the gas-powered lawnmower, like many other waste-inducing American icons, was a Cold War weapon of a sort. Not only did we have to have nice, big, green lawns (even in the middle of the desert)—we had to beat the shit out of each and every blade of grass every week..
Anyway, while I was mowing, I was unfortunate enough to come across a dead rabbit. Fortunately, it hadn't been dead long enough to attract bugs and stuff. It was stiff, though, so it had probably been dead around a day.. I checked online to see if anything special is supposed to be done with dead animals these days (as they can be indicators of disease and whatnot), but I didn't find anything.
Posted by mike at May 20, 2003 04:10 PM | Abode , Hardware | TrackBack