Consumerism

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I wanted to buy some predatory nematodes.  Crane fly larvae are lumping up my lawn and the gross and fragile and weird flying adults are in my house, on my floor, and irritating me to no end.  So, I went to the local nursery to get some eater-bugs to control them.  

There were several sizes of the little eater-creatures; 100,000 or 500,000 or 1 million.  In a little container thing that I mix with water and sprinkle on my lawn.  Each with a price that reflects the quantity.

The thing is, how do I know how many I am getting?  You can't see them without a microscope, and I don't carry one around.  I posed the question to the clerk; 'How do I know that there are a million or 2,315 in this container?'.  He said, 'Well, you have to trust us.'  "Xcuse me??"  I would never trust someone like that if the commodity was, say, caviar, or broccoli!  'Do you have a microscope so I can check this myself?'  I ask.  'No.'  'How about a statement from the farmer saying that s/he legally confirms that there are X amount of predatory nematodes in this sample?'  'No'.

This is a consumer fraud in the making.  I am telling you, you can pay for a million and get twenty thousand or two!  No way to know!  And, how do you come back on a fraudulent distributor?  In a civil suit, do you say, 'Well, it seemed to me that the lawn was lumpier than if one million nematodes were munching away, rather than less than I had paid for.  I'd say it was more like 250,000.'  Or, 'Yeah, there were, like, fifty more adult crane flies that I had to kill rather than the twenty I'd have had if a million nematodes were in my lawn.'  

This is an overlooked area of consumerism.  We gardeners need to contact our congressmen in order to be able to buy predatory nematodes with confidence!

Burning limbs off

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I got a really cool pole trimmer today, a Poulan hot-shit long pole thing.  It has a little bar and chain on the end of a long pole to trim trees.  Like a chain saw pole vault thing.  I have wanted one forever.  With George in Alaska, I figured I needed one now.

My nephew and I got it ready to attack the limbs leaning out over our driveway.  It looked fast and effective just laying there, all neon green and sleek.

Well, he revved it up and applied it to the limb.  I whined and spun it's chain like you'd expect. But it was passing through the limb at about the same speed as if he was using a nail file.  Hmmm.

He adjusted it a little and tried again.  Same thing, but this time there was smoke.  Lots of it. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the limb has scorch marks where the chain was grinding away at it.  My God, this thing was burning the limb off!  And, slowly at that!

So, I motioned for my nephew to stop and we got out the operator's manual.  An illustration of the bar and chain showed us the problem:  the chain (and therefore, the bar) was put on backwards, meaning no cutting edges were faced in a manner to cut the wood.  So, friction-caused heat was just burning away at the limb.

Well, even though we corrected the problem, the damn thing continued to be persnickety, stopping frequently and not cutting well.  I began to lose confidence.  I just knew that this thing had been assembled by a new or poorly trained (or both) employee on a bad day.  Or by a disgruntled and angry psychopath who was quitting the very day he assembled my trimmer. I just knew that the backward chain was only the tip of the iceberg with this unit.

I took it back and exchanged it for one that was correctly assembled.  I had the store employees open the box for an inspection and we compared the illustrations against the product.

Can you imagine if a less observant person had bought this, say, one of the lower 95?  There would have been a forest fire or a conflagration of some sort.  So, folks, check you chain saws and tree trimmers lest you get burned alive or seriously killed.