On Raking Leaves

Here comes another trivial story with a deep hidden message...(You know, sometimes I hate my own smart-aleckiness):

Leaves fall from the trees this time of the year and if you live in the suburbs your neighbors will shun you unless you get rid of them. This is one of the banes of my life. I love trees and plants in general, so my yard is packed with stuff which means that the leaves get stuck in dead plants and have to be removed with a fine comb and tweezers. But I try to be a good (and quiet) neighbor so I rake and pick and rake and pick. Never enough, though.

As a consequence, my neighbors cross the street when they see me. I am shunned! My morals are bad; I don't hire those people that come in and spend half an hour sucking everything that is not nailed down into the mouths of the extraterrestial machines which SCREAM. I also don't kill the weeds during the summertime, and that's another big minus in my morals report.

The condemnation of the Snakepit Inc. and its bad morals is pretty general in this neighborhood, and the strident voice of Henrietta the Hound doesn't help. So we usually slink in and out holding our collars high over our faces.

Anyway, I have witnessed the following event three times this autumn: the leaf-blower crews that my neighbors hire finish their job by blowing all the leaves along the edges to my side of the hedge. This is why I have about three times as many leaves than anyone else.

The deep moral of the story is obvious, I hope. The only remaining question is whether I should poison my neighbors slowly with some weedkiller or suck them up into one of those extraterrestial maws.