Continuously opining, intermittently publishing.
25
June

Gas-Powered Lawnmowers

Posted by oshane | Leave a comment at the end of this post.

Gas-powered lawnmowers are better than electric lawnmowers.

We came back from vacation last week. While we were gone, our lawn became a jungle. We have long winters here in Laramie with short springs; I’m not sure, but I think the plants start to get restless and as soon as the last snow melts, they jump out of the ground and grow as fast as they can.

Anyway, some of the grass in my front yard was quite high – maybe 18 inches. Some of the grass in my back yard was two and a half feet tall. I know, that’s a little socially awkward in a residential neighborhood. I wasn’t cavalier about it; I just had quite a bit to do when I came back from vacation.

So today I mowed my lawn. Our lawnmower was broken, and the neighbor who lets me use his was not at home. So I bought one.

I bought a gas-powered lawnmower. I do think electric lawnmowers are cool: they are quieter and have zero-emissions. Batteries on electric lawnmowers are becoming more powerful such that one can mow an entire reasonably sized lawn with one.

But, it was evident an electric lawnmower wasn’t going to cut it today.

The lawn required two tanks of gasoline and may have been so thick that it damaged the front-wheel drive (I have to check). The job took about three hours, and near the end, as dusk was approaching, I realized I might be doomed.

Near the beginning of Laramie’s summer, legions of mosquitos hatch. There are so many sometimes that they form clouds. Laramie controls them with god-knows-what-kind-of-evil chemicals, but they do the job, mostly. Still, when you’ve killed ninety percent of fifty bajillion mosquitos, fifty octillion remain (yes, I’m defining 1 bajillion as 10 octillion).

They wanted me. Usually, I am not the most attractive human to mosquitos, but I was the only human around, and I was razing their homes and businesses. They started to fly closer to me, but then flew away.

Then I realized I had certainly made the right purchase. Heavy hydrocarbons are mosquito kryptonite. It seems that all the emissions of a dirty four-stroke engine drove the little Culiseta longiareolatae away from me. The engine might as well have been emitting DDT.

One Response to “Gas-Powered Lawnmowers”

  1. roland says:

    Had you mowed with an electric lawnmower, these Wyoming buffalo size mosquitos would have carried the lawnmower away. Whenever, I have confronted the same issue (mowing a spring lawn in Destrahan, LA for example) I worn a bat mask and that seemed to do the trick.

Leave a Reply