One Million Seven Hundred And Fifty Thousand Leaves
Then three years ago it all changed! Some shortsighted people on the local town board decided to cut out the leaf pick-up program for this year even though there was money already in the budget for the eating of my leaves to continue. When I heard this news I could feel my bones aching in a massive revolt. What am I going to do with one million, seven hundred fifty thousand leaves? I could stuff mattresses with them, but then what would I do with the mattresses and who would ever want to buy a leaf mattress?
One million, seven hundred and fifty thousand leaves! My God, where will I put them? Seriously, where? I looked around me…and around me. I could take them to the dump—but how? In my Prius? It would probably take about fifty trips. Oh, that sounds like an enormous amount of work.
But first I had to gather them all up and I don’t think a sheet will do. I went to town to buy a leaf blower. How do you use a blower? Two masters’ degrees and about a hundred and fifty other post graduate college hours, but not an hour spent on learning about the technique of using a blower. How hard can it be? Very! It was slow and tedious, and actually even a little boring. (What did I do with that sheet anyway?)
I tried the blower with my left hand, then with my right. Sometimes I tossed it between the right and left hands. I watched the leaves perform as I aimed my blower at them. They danced along, twirling around and around like young ladies in a ballet class. I worked hour after hour hoping my neighbors weren’t too annoyed by the loud humming sound as they went about their lives. If I can keep up my concentration, I can master the stroke that gathers the most leaves to their final end. Whenever I pretended I was throwing a bowling ball, I managed to herd the leaves like a cowboy gathering his cattle up for a long drive.
One million, seven hundred and fifty thousand leaves this year! Wish I could devour them like that lovely machine used to. Wasn’t much I could do with this haul but pile it into a moat I can create around the property line, and pray that next year they will come to their senses and rescind the no leaf pick-up nonsense. Then I could rush out to the leaf-eating machine at the edge of the street and watch it while it devoured 3,500,000 leaves for breakfast.
