THE CASE OF THE OVERZEALOUS LAWN WARRIORS

It was a bright and hot summer day. Bright enough to cause everyone to walk around looking like Secret Service rejects in their Maui Jim’s, and hot enough to fry the proverbial egg on the sidewalk, assuming you like dirt, and bug parts in your breakfast.

I was in my office with the door locked, slumped in my expensive custom made executive ergonomic chair, my Sportsman Guide Assuie crushable hat pulled down over my eyes, keeping out distractions, while I tried to sneak in forty winks. I’d been up all night absorbed in a Harry Potter novel, my hiney was drag’in, and I didn’t want my secretary, or Administrative Assistant as he insisted on being called, Bob, to find out I’d been sucked in by a kid’s novel.

That boy wizard sucked me in alright. I was as hooked as a trout on a fly rod, but that was another story.

I should have felt guilty about sleeping at work, but it was my office and I was the boss; Indigo Bunting, Environmental Detective. The only big shot I had to answer to was me, and I was too tired to yell at myself.

An annoying sound, as persistent as a fly at a picnic, buzzed around the room and landed in my head, making it increasingly difficult to concentrate on my siesta. My eyes shot open, and my fuzzy brain analyzed the distraction, then my nose confirmed it. The drone of a lawn care company dousing my neighbor’s lawn with poison was interrupting my meditation session.

My fellow citizens were neck deep into the “Trophy Lawn” competition. They lived for their green, neat, weed free patches of organic wasteland. My clover and wild violet inhabited yard gave them nightmares.

As an Environmental Detective, my question was, to what purpose?

I never let a chemical company anywhere near my yard, despite their happy trucks with pictures of animals on the sides. According to the EPA, 95% of the pesticides used on residential lawns are possible or probable carcinogens. Bob had orders to read the salespeople the precautions off an herbicide or pesticide label if they called. That’s enough to make my blood run cold, and I’m not easily frightened; I’m a professional.

It was impossible to snooze with that nonsense going on next door, so I straightened up, pulled up my hat, and yelled to Bob that I was taking the afternoon off. I was going to try to find a quiet place to resume my nap.

As I grabbed my bicycle lock key and headed for the door, I thought I might stop by the bookstore and buy a copy of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” to send my neighbor. She’d give them plenty of chow for thought. Not fast food with empty calories, but healthy meaty fare for their consideration; something to make the ol’ brain pan chew a bit.

I stepped outside; the summer sauna, cranked up as high as it could go, enveloped me in steamy air and made me wish I had gills.

Birds were everywhere, belting out the Halleluiah Chorus in ten part harmony. As I got on my bike, a quote from Ms. Carson’s book predicting the empty and silent place the world would be with lawn poisons run amok came to mind, and made me shudder like a Weight Watcher in a Krispy Kreme.