Tools of Intimidation

Last year, a visiting young man (friend of my daughter) stepped into our garage while my husband was testing his new circular saw. Eager to show off his new toy (since his own daughters are more interested in eyelash curlers and knitting needles than cordless drills or belt sanders), my husband asked the young man to hold a piece of wood while he operated the blade. My daughter's friend quickly backed away, saying "Oh, no - tools intimidate me!" Strike one for that potential suitor!

Power tools can be dangerous, no question.  Nearly every piece of equipment in our garage is covered with dire warnings and graphic illustrations of severed body parts. Somehow my husband still sports ten fingers, yet the tool which recently sent him to the emergency room was not his sandblaster or grinder, but a tiny bungee cord which sprung off a car trunk with the force of a thousand pythons, the metal hook on its end slamming him in the eye. Excellent medical care saved his vision, but since then I give bungee cords a wide berth...

Goats come with their own unique hazards as well. I have reconstituted and administered a caustic medication which, undiluted, actually ate through a metal mixing bowl. Razor-sharp trimmers could slice off a finger just as easily as a chunk of hoof tissue, and anyone who's ever tried to wrangle an eighty-pound goat for an injection knows the needle can go anywhere. However, my own most serious caprine-related injuries have come from an incongruous source -  household brooms, which I use for eight to ten hours each day to sweep away goat droppings. First I developed a painful bone spur on my left hand from the repetitive motion, and more recently I sported my own ocular bruise after being attacked by a dozen or so brooms in a nearby hardware store.

Like a familiar dance partner, I loved my old broom - but with the handle rusted and duct-taped together and the bristles worn down to nubs, it was time to say farewell. Reluctantly I entered a local business (where I knew the owners and most of the staff) to choose a replacement. What happened next was something like a Stephen King version of a house of cards, but with haunted brooms. I had just pulled one down from the overhead wall display when suddenly all of the brooms descended on me in an avalanche of wood and bristles - "Pick me! Pick me!" Though luckily I was the sole customer in the store, this freed all six of the staff to come to my aid as I extricated myself from the pile of giant pick-up-sticks; one kind clerk (a classmate of my daughters - not the one intimidated by tools, thank goodness!) brought me an ice pack for my bruised eye.

The worst part was that I couldn't even purchase a broom, as they were all of the "natural-material" variety where the bristles look like straw and are therefore edible to goats. Maybe I'll just keep using my old plastic broom after all.