Ryobi

This was supposed to make life much easier, having a riding mower at each house. Then it would no longer be necessary to transport mine back and forth, each time having to get the gas-hogging pickup truck out of the driveway with the little tractor loaded in back. I would simply show up, turn the key, and off I go. So I parked my larger mower there, let it rest under some trees, since their shed space was taken up with plastic chairs and tables and the like. The elderly French couple liked to entertain out back when the weather was nice, so these little sheds stored a good many things related to that. There was no room for my mower, which I really had no problem with: It was used to being outside.

When I showed up for the first cutting of the season, I went to start the little tractor. Immediately I found a dead bird—a large specimen—recently killed and residing right there on the footrest. It was the victim of a cat, no doubt. I poked it aside with a stick, then went to start the machine. It fired up, then sputtered to a stop, out of gas. I poured some into the tank, discovered that the top had been eaten off by squirrels. There was a good-size hole in the top of the tank, but it would still hold gas. I decided not to fill it up all the way. The rest of the cutting was uneventful, but I explained to the wife that I would be bringing over my smaller machine, that it would fit into one of the sheds. I would be taking mine back home, where the squirrels weren’t so hungry. They had their corn-feeder out back, after all.
“Oh! Les ecureuils!” She exclaimed, “Ils mangent tout!”
“Oui, ils ont fait un trou dans le reservoir a essence,” I said.
I explained that the squirrels had eaten a hole in the gas tank, that it was up top, where the gas couldn’t leak out. She replied that the little animals ate practically everything around there, that they would wait for me with my bread truck, come running when they saw me with the long loaves, would retreat when they saw that I’d left. I thought back to the episode where they’d made off with an entire baguette---on a day when I’d had to leave the bread at the front door.

Earlier in the week my trusty saw had given up at last. A good-quality tool, I had abused it horribly, had completed many projects with it, and it had done fine over the course of about ten years. Now it could no longer muster enough energy to actually turn the blade; it simply stopped in mid-cut, unwilling to go on. It was without regret that I went to the store to buy a new one. At the Colosso-Box, they had them on sale, precisely the saw I was looking for—a Ryobi model with an additional five extra blades included for free. The whole package cost around thirty-five bucks, and came in an attractive cardboard box. I may keep the box around for a while just to look at, then set it out with the recycling. It’s a pretty nice box.

Back home I started fastening the new pine deck boards to the deck supports, making a platform that you can actually walk on. I put the new saw to use, found its operation smooth and accurate, and vowed to treat it better than the old one—at least for a little while. It remains to buy an additional eight boards or so for the deck floor, which will complete that part of the project. Then on to the railing and perhaps a trellis or pergola to act as a kind of covering to block the extreme sun that the house receives. At the Colosso-Box, a long-bearded man asked about the boards I was buying, wanted to know if I would be needing lots of them. Yes, I would need more, I said. I told him the price of these boards, which was just under eleven dollars apiece for sixteen-foot lengths. He then told me that the same boards could be had over in Glen Burnie for eight bucks each. I thanked him, said that I would surely look into these cheaper boards. Even with the price of gas, it may be less expensive to drive over for some of the remaining lumber I’ll need to buy. Besides, I don’t like being so dependent on the Colosso-Box.