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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