A story about a mower, a snake, and an old shoe for 4/12/09 Daily Flash. |
Mower Wins by TKO "Well, you can't tell us you had a dull weekend this time, Mike. What's with the black eye?" asked Skip, setting down his coffee. "I, uhh, had a little run-in with a snake," I mumbled, wishing I had run into a door, or gotten into a fight or something. Almost anything would have been better than the tale I was stuck telling. Oh, sure, I didn't really have to explain what had happened, but I'd have no peace until I did. "It was nice on Saturday, so I decided to mow the yard. I'll probably get a new lawn mower this year, because it took a lot longer to start it this time. Anyway, when I started down the west side--you know, where all the weeds are on that vacant lot?--I saw something come out of the weeds right in front of the mower. I didn't hear it hit the blades, so I stopped pushing and took off the grass catcher. The snake had avoided the blades and had curled up right there." "But how'd you get the shiner?" "I figured I should scare it out of my way--it was probably unhappy about almost getting shredded, because it wasn't moving back into the weeds--so I took off my left shoe and threw it at the snake." "Your shoe?" Skip exclaimed. "It's an old shoe," I replied, somewhat defensively. "Anyway, you know part of the rear deck's missing on the mower, right? Well, I missed the snake, the shoe hit the spinning blade, ricocheted off the tire and..." Skip's laughter filled the break area, and I figured I'd said enough. Only one question remained: How many people would he tell before lunch? [286 words] |