Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

The Domestic Files: The Carpet Sweeper


My 40 pounds of cat are convinced that I want to kill them with my carpet sweeper.  As soon as they see me wheel the sweeper out from the utility room, they basically explode into escape mode.  While I have no intent to harm my cats, I have no compunction about thrashing a dust bunny or two.
I have had a few carpet sweeper “episodes’ over the years.  The tarantula incident comes to mind first.  When I was younger, I kept an assortment of exotic pets: birds, snakes, lizards, and one tarantula.  Sadly, the tarantula escaped from her aquarium—a fact discovered only when my mother pulled the sweeper from the corner where she kept it.  The giant spider quickly legged across the floor to hide under a bed.  Few words can accurately describe how my mother felt about finding the tarantula free. 

End of pet tarantula.

Over the years, I have had a host of my own carpet sweeper misadventures.  I have sucked-up several dozen coins.  The sound a coin makes when caught-up in a sweeper ranges on a scale that begins at slightly musical and escalates to downright catastrophic.  I have drawn-in shoes by the shoelaces.  I have started ugly wrestling matches between my sweeper and pretty little throw rugs.  You might think that a beefy, cord-powered machine would win in a wrestling match with a throw rug, but rugs are resilient beyond measure.  Once the rug and the machine lock-together, the machine will immediately start wheezing.  If left to battle long enough, the sweeper will begin to let-out puffs of blue smoke.

Apparently it is good practice to somewhat clear the larger clutter from the carpet before sweeping.  After finishing my sweeping, I often find what appears to be an entire cat inside my sweeper.  Honestly, I sometimes don’t know if I should start feeding what I find inside the sweeper or triple-bag it before disposal.  I have noticed that the newer (all plastic) carpet sweepers have become much more powerful in their sweeping abilities, but a throw rug can still kick their ass.

--Mitchell Hegman  

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