Some notes on the operation of the rotary lawn mower.
SOME NOTES ON THE OPERATION OF THE ROTARY LAWN MOWER
Power-Driven Rotary Lawn Mowers are a great boon to shiftless suburbanites whose lawns are full of dandelions, buckthorn, and other weeds, too tall for the real type or conventional grass cutter.
The rotary mower, however, is not an unmixed blessing. Unseen rocks and sticks, to say nothing of unburied bones, raise hell with the blade, so will nails, bits of wire, and other metal debris. But these problems pale into insignificance when compared with the unhappy result of running a rotary lawn mower over newly deposited dog shit. Until you have had your shoes shined with pulverized dog shit, you cannot appreciate the extent of this problem. Cat shit, to be sure, smells worse, but cats do not shit as much as dogs, unless you have very small dogs or very large cats.
There are a number of approaches to the problem of animal excreta versus the rotary lawn mower, but unfortunately, no real solution. First, of course, you can try and keep dogs and cats away from your lawn. The only effective method of doing this is to buy a dog bigger and ornerier than any other dog in the nieghborhood and train him (a) to chase other dogs off your grass and (b) to shit on the neighbor's lawn. There are obvious drawbacks to this method of combating the problem.
First, of course, there is always the chance that one of your neighbors will hire a cow and train it to deposit cow flop on your lawn. It is estimated that a rotary lawn mower operating at 3450 RPM can hurl a normal deposit of cow shit as high as your second story windows and over an area of 500 square feet. Building a fence is a possible solution, but expensive. It is, in addition, no good unless you can train your wife and children to keep the gates shut, and then some dogs will jump fences even when full of shit.
There are various commercial preparations sold mostly to evil minded old women, which are supposed to discourage dogs from (a) screwing lady dogs on your front stoop, or (b) pissing on your shrubs. These chemicals are worthless, since it is second nature to dogs to screw and piss, just as it is for humans.
This leaves three other possible solutions:
1. Let the goddamned weeds grow.
2. Move into an apartment and use the rotary mower for a window fan.
3. Wear brown shoes when mowing and associate only with people who do not mind the smell of dog shit or are too polite to mention it to you.
