The Last Laugh - Battle of the Briquettes

The minute the temperature climbs above 60 degrees, the smell of charcoal-broiled food wafts through my neighborhood. I’m pretty sure that my husband and I are the only two people on our street who don’t own a grill, or even a hibachi. I have to admit that it’s all my fault, mainly because I don’t trust myself around anything that can self-combust and force me to use the “stop, drop and roll!” technique I learned back in school.

Every time I think about our friend, Henry, who squirted lighter fluid onto red-hot coals and ended up having to wear a toupee for the next three months, I whip out the electric frying pan.

It’s not as if I haven’t tried my hand at barbecuing. One of our neighbors once gave us his old grill, complete with a big sack of charcoal, when he purchased his new Deluxe Turbo-Flame gas-on-gas grill with a heavy-duty rotisserie big enough to roast an entire cow.

A few nights after we received the grill, I decided to surprise my husband by cooking up a batch of juicy cheeseburgers. He’d always said that burgers cooked outdoors on a charcoal grill were the best on Earth, so I knew he would be thrilled when I handed him a plate of burgers with telltale grill marks on them.

Getting the charcoal to light, however, was another story. I tried everything short of a flame-thrower to get the briquettes started, but they refused to catch. Two hundred matches later, when one briquette finally did light, I blew on it until my cheeks hurt and I felt lightheaded … and still the flame died.

I grew so frustrated, I took all of the charcoal out of the grill, lined the bottom with crumpled newspaper and stacked the charcoal back on top of it. Then I set the newspaper on fire. I also threw some dead maple leaves on top of the whole thing. I figured that maple tasted good on pancakes, so it might add a little zip to the burgers.

I’d never cooked on a grill before so the burgers turned out just a tad on the well-done side. Actually, they resembled hollowed-out lumps of coal topped with overcooked, brown rubbery cheese. Not wanting to hurt my feelings, my husband choked them down.

“Well, how were they?” I asked after he’d finished.

“They had a really … unique flavor,” he said, then added under his breath, “A flavor that I’m sure will linger with me for the next few days.”

After that night, I refused to use the grill again. In fact, I left it standing outside untouched for so long, the next time I lifted the lid on it, I found a big wasps’ nest inside. That did it. The grill mysteriously disappeared the next day.

To be honest, there actually is a plus side to not owning a grill. When we go to other people’s barbecues and stuff ourselves with their food, they don’t expect us to reciprocate with a barbecue at our place. But even if we did own a grill, I’m pretty sure no one would show up to eat our burgers anyway; not unless they wanted to risk developing an intestinal blockage.

Still, a few of the barbecues we’ve been to over the years haven’t exactly been gourmet fare. My husband once was handed a hot dog that had been burned so badly, it resembled a long cigar ash in a bun. And at another barbecue, I cut into a chicken breast that was so raw in the middle, I swear I heard it cluck.

Alas, no food ever was quite as bad or made my husband suffer as much as my maple-leaf burgers. Perhaps it’s because when I grabbed the handful of leaves to toss on top of the charcoal, I might — just might have — accidentally grabbed some poison-ivy leaves, too. NH

Mowing The Lawn: What A Drag

I bought myself a new toy a few weeks ago…an electric lawnmower.

Up until my purchase, I’d been using an old-fashioned push-mower, which was about one step above cutting the grass with a sickle. Anything thicker than a blade of grass (such as a dandelion) required me to mow over it 30 or 40 times before the mower either finally cut it, or it became so flattened out, it didn’t have the strength to pop up again. Sometimes I got so fed up, I just bent over and yanked out all of the stubborn stuff by hand.

So last month, I finally decided to move out of the Stone Age and climb the next step on the ladder of lawnmower evolution. That step was an electric lawnmower. I figured that going from and old push-mower directly to a modern gas-powered mower would be such a drastic change for me, I’d probably end up accidentally de-whiskering the neighbor’s cat with it. So an electric mower seemed as if it would be easier to control.

The clerk at the store showed me a nice lightweight model. His sales pitch piqued my interest when he said I wouldn’t have to worry about gas, oil or spark plugs, the way I’d have to with a gas-powered mower. But when he demonstrated that all I’d have to do was plug in the mower and press a little bar on the handle to make it work, I was sold. Too often, I had seen my neighbors, red-faced and heavily perspiring, double over from hernia-induced pain after they’d yanked the pull-cords on their mowers three or four hundred times without succeeding in getting them started.

I bought the mower and a 100-foot extension cord, and then headed home to mow my lawn.

I loved the mower. It sliced through even the toughest weeds as easily as a hot knife through butter. It also sliced through part of the extension cord.

From the moment I tried my new mower, I developed an instant hatred for the extension cord. For one thing, 100 feet of thick, outdoor-type cord, felt as if it weighed about the same as a ship’s anchor. To keep the cord away from the mower, I tried slinging it over my shoulder, but it was so heavy, it made my knees buckle. So I had no choice other than to let it drag behind me.

Believe me, dragging a 100-foot cord behind you has its hazards. For one thing, the cord slides through every disgusting thing that’s in the yard or in the vicinity of the yard; from mud to doggy souvenirs and poison ivy. And when you turn around to mow in the opposite direction, the cord suddenly crosses in front of your ankles and makes you do some pretty fancy footwork...to avoid tripping and landing in the mud, doggy souvenirs and poison ivy.

Because of the cord, it took me longer to mow the lawn with the electric mower than it ever did with the push mower. I spent so much time untangling the cord from around trees, stumps, rocks, branches, the porch and my legs, I forgot why I was out in the yard. And whenever I tried to fling the cord out of my way, it inevitably landed in a bush or over a low-hanging branch. I think I even accidentally strangled a squirrel with it.

Another problem was that the only outdoor electrical outlet at our house is on the opposite side of the house from the lawn, so I had to pull the cord around two corners to get it out to the back yard. And every time I pulled on it too hard, it unplugged. I walked back to that outlet so many times to plug in the cord again, I wore a path through the grass (at least that’s one place I won’t have to worry about mowing any more).

And maybe I have crazy bees in my area, but they actually seemed to be attracted to the humming noise the lawnmower made, because they kept buzzing around me as I mowed. Either that, or I knocked their nest out of a tree when I flung the cord into the branches.

I must confess, however, that my lawn looks better than it’s ever looked, and I owe it all to my new mower.

And if anyone wants to buy it, I’m selling it dirt cheap (along with a free 100-foot cord with about 200 nicks on it)…so I can save up for a battery powered one.

A Walk On The Wild Side

For the past 33 years, I have spent at least six hours a week walking on the cross-country and hiking trails throughout Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown. As a result, I’m fairly well acquainted with most of the park’s 10,000 acres.

Believe me, I’ve seen some pretty strange sights in the park during my walks, and have encountered a lot of interesting creatures…of both the four-legged and two-legged varieties.

Lately, however, it seems as if the wildlife in the park purposely is trying to rip my arms out of their sockets. You see, I usually walk with my dog, who weighs nearly 90 pounds, and she takes great pleasure in bolting after everything from squirrels to butterflies (and an occasional bicyclist)…while I am hanging onto her leash. As a result, my poor arms have been yanked so often, I now can touch my kneecaps without bending over.

At dusk one day last week, for example, a deer suddenly darted through a clearing about 50 yards ahead of us. My dog, wagging excitedly, thought it was another big dog and immediately charged after it. When she reached the end of her leash, the jolt was so hard, I felt my teeth rattle.

There also are quite a few pheasants lurking in the bushes in the park. Pheasants have a sinister habit of quietly hiding until you walk past them. Then, when you least expect it, they fly up out of the bushes and take off. Their wings make a sound that is comparable to that of a low-flying helicopter. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve nearly suffered from pheasant-induced cardiac arrest.

And, of course, my dog thinks she can leap high enough into the air to catch one of them…while I’m still hanging onto her leash.

Once, we also encountered two wild turkeys in a cornfield adjacent to the park. I honestly never knew that turkeys could fly, but I suppose when you startle them by screaming at the top of your lungs (heck, I’d never come face to face with a wild bird that big before, so they really startled me), the poor birds will do just about anything to get away from you.

I like to think of myself as somewhat of a wildlife expert by now, but to be honest, two things in the park recently have puzzled me. First of all, I came across a large pile of what looked like tan-colored, two-inch long, jelly beans. I knew that the pile was the calling card of some animal, but which one?

I immediately ruled out deer, horses and rabbits, and I was pretty sure a bear hadn’t done it…even though I had absolutely no clue what a bear’s calling card might look like. The more I thought about it, however, the more curious I became, so the next day, I brought my digital camera and took a photo of the “evidence.” Then I showed the photo to several hunters and even e-mailed it to a few of my friends.

The general consensus was that a moose was the culprit. “You be careful around the area where you found that pile!” one hunter warned me. “It’s the time of year when the females have their young, and believe me, you don’t want to mess with a protective mother moose!”

“If I ever come face to face with a moose,” I told him, “the moose won’t be the only one leaving its calling card in the woods!”

The other thing that has been puzzling me lately is beginning to make me think I’m hallucinating. On two separate occasions during the past week, when my dog and I were about a mile into the woods on one of the isolated trails in the park, we heard something rustling in the bushes.

When I turned to see what was lurking in there, I caught of glimpse of an animal that looked like a big black and white spotted guinea pig, about the size of a housecat, moving swiftly. The reason I thought it looked like a guinea pig is because it didn’t have a tail.

The next day, near the same spot, the black and white animal once again appeared, but this time it was with a rust-colored companion. I stepped closer to try to get a better look at them, but they bolted off into the deeper woods.

Did someone abandon a bunch of cats (without tails?) or pet rabbits (without long ears?) out there? Or are they perhaps some strange new hybrid species?

I may never know. But I do know that every time my dog spots them, she yanks so hard on her leash, my arms feel as if they’ve been stretched another inch or two. If this keeps up, pretty soon I’ll be tripping over my knuckles when I walk.