Mowing lawns could be hazardous to your health.

Take a somewhat out-of-shape person, give them insufficient liquids, 85 degree (Farenheit) or higher temperatures in the late day sun, about an acre of lawn and a mower and you have a recipe for disaster.

Make that person pig-headedly stubborn about getting the job done in one continuous grueling bout of sheer testosterone and you have heatstroke.

I’m not writing to extoll the virtues or dangers of heatstroke. I want to leave that to the experts.

I want to extoll the virtues of natural lawn mowers.

No more gas guzzling noise polluting mulch making hay spewing 1.5 horsepower rack-n-pinion steering (*cough*) bag-toting machine fury!

No. Just a little fur, some neighborly tolerance, and patience.

I have several lawn mowers. Woodchucks. Rabbits. Deer. If it weren’t for the sheer overwhelming SIZE of the lawn, woefully seeded with absolutely useless grass, I probably wouldn’t need a lawn mower at all. Give me ground ivy, chickweed, mint, wood sorrel, plantain, dandelion and cleavers any day over 100% useless indigestible grass. While we must have grass, since it’s not my lawn, then at least we have our natural lawn mowers. I even have photos — I’ve just been too bloody lazy to put my photos into the blog. I have to actually get off my butt and do it

These lawn mowers have many myriad benefits:

• they’re eating what most people hate anyway. The woodchuck and rabbits specialize in the little plants between the blades of grass, like dandelions — the ones the mechanical mower misses anyway. The deer eats young grass — enough deer and there’s no grass to mow in the first place!
• instant composting. As these critters graze, they leave behind yesterdays morsels in a ready-to-use form. Bonus: herbivores don’t have i-coli bacteria. The compost is ready for your soil, worms, and all other manners of nitrogen-hungry life
• They’re cheap: (what!! No nested lists GRRRR)
• You don’t have to pay at the pump
• you don’t need to buy or maintain machinery
• you don’t add extra wear to your car fetching mowers, oil, gas, parts or taking it in for repairs
• you no longer need to buy fertilizer
• You don’t pollute the environment
• When these lawn mowers break down, they biodegrade quickly — no need to get them hauled away in the trash and have them take up room in a landfill
• they replace themselves
• they provide hours of amusement and possibly food and exercise to your pets

Anyway, here’s a billion blessings to our lawn mowers — they’re welcome here any time — as long as they stay the HECK out of my garden.