It's Not For Me...

I am the first to confess that I don't do a good job looking after my lawn. I don't water it nearly enough, partly because water costs money and also because watering it makes it grow, and therefore increases the frequency with which I need to cut it. So I am generally prepared to accept that in the traditional long, hot St Louis summer my lawn will look somewhat the worse for wear. This year should have been different, however. It seems to have rained an enormous amount, both in terms of frequency and duration, such that watering the lawn would have been a ridiculous undertaking. I'm not suggesting that I was contemplating starting work on a big wooden boat and collecting pairs of animals, but before I went on vacation it seemed to rain most days and it's certainly rained like buggery since I've been back.

Obviously it didn't rain during the week I was away, when it would actually have been useful to have the lawn watered, but even that doesn't quite explain the brown, dried out, generally fucked appearance that greeted me when I finally got around to cutting it today. Fuck's sake, it's rained more this year than during any summer I can remember - how can it be dried out? Watering it clearly wouldn't have helped; it's been watered to death and yet it looks up at me in a wispy brown way and taunts me for my inability to grow a simple thing like grass.

What's worse is that in one of the few decent green spots a mole has moved in. You might think these are lovely, cute animals, with their myopic expression and big pink hands, but let me tell you, they're evil rodenty bastards that will fuck your lawn beyond recognition. I was out there earlier with a big fork, stabbing its earth runs feverishly in the hope of impaling its body.

People here all have their own favorite remedy for a mole infestation, and every single one of them is just guaranteed to work, while everyone else's approach is scorned as hopeless and pathetic. There are traps (which are impossible to set and could not possibly work even if they were) and there are smoking devices (like a firework to shove down the hole, but without the satisfaction of a big shower of sparks, or, indeed, killing the mole). I used "mole smokes" once because someone had given them to me, swearing that these were the only things worth using, and of course they did nothing but produce smoke and make me feel like a cunt as I stood there watching little wisps drift up from the lawn.

But now I have a brand new "guaranteed to work" mole killer: Ex-Lax chocolate. Yes, I was told by a lady selling ice cream (so she must know, obviously) that you put this into the hole and the moles will eat it and die. Shit themselves to death in their little tunnels, presumably. This is a great idea, but there's just one problem - someone has to go out and buy Ex-Lax. I'm not proud - I can happily buy condoms, and even tampons if necessary, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go into my local drugstore and pick up a bar of "I Can't Take A Dump" chocolate. The thing about tampons, after all, is that the person behind the counter knows they aren't for me. Buying tampons says "I'm a man in a relationship with a real, live woman, who's caring enough to pick up her jam rags while I buy my Red Bull and Twix". Buying Ex Lax is different. It says "In spite of screwing up my eyes and straining, and probably as a result of an atrocious diet devoid of fruit and vegetables, I am incapable of producing a decent turd and I'm now in fear that I'll burst a blood vessel or pop out an eyeball if I don't get some help". I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to be that guy, even if it's only in the mind of the cashier.

I know what she'd be thinking. "Wow, that's really sad. He doesn't look that old but he's obviously in need of some Metamucil. He's only one step away from a hip replacement, an AARP card and an early death. Poor bastard." Fuck that - I can't have people thinking I can't take a dump without medication, especially since it's not true. Mrs Bison feeds me tons of fruit and veg. But what can you do? I could say "That's for someone else" but that's one of those classic lies that no-one believes. What about telling the truth? "The Ex Lax? Oh I've got a problem with a mole".

Bad move. Now she's thinking Richard Gere. She's imagining that I've inserted some subterranean beast into my anus in a bizarre search for unusual sexual pleasure and that it's got stuck. In fact it must still be up there now, while I'm standing in front of her. Jesus! What kind of a man does that? Was I walking funny when I approached the counter? Should I call someone? Surely that's a crime - cruelty to animals or something. And does he really think that Ex Lax is going to help him get it out?

So you can see my dilemma. Maybe, just maybe, I've been handed the true secret to dispatching the moles that torment my already withered and unhealthy lawn. But thanks to Richard Fucking Gere, or whatever diseased bastards it was whose animal-in-the-arsehole antics inspired that rumor, I can't go out and buy it. So I'm going to give it a few more minutes and then go out and see if I can stab the little bastard in the head with my fork. It's a bit more manly than buying constipation remedies, and it's certainly giving me some exercise.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison