In my neighbor’s yard, a leaf blower coughed and racheted into action, joined by a second, and a third. Their two-stroke gas engines hit a whining pitch that shook my windows. A fourth choked into action and a fifth. The racket shook my windows and rattled my brain. My thoughts broke up and fell into heaps. What level of decibels is allowed here?
A man in a sweatshirt and black pants and sneakers and Celtics cap (no mask, no ear protection) aimed his blower at a bush. Garden soil swarmed into the air, darkening the wall of my neighbor’s house. His fellow workers advanced in formation, like men beating the bush for quarry. Dust and dirt and leaves and seeds billowed high into the air, carrying nematodes and spiders, ants and larvae, and all the food that birds need to eat to stay alive through the coming cold season.
The leaves and their nutrients and their life-giving fungi swung and dipped and swirled in the air until a truck with a vacuum hose large enough to suck up a cat backed toward the posse of blowing men and sucked the life out of my neighbor’s yard.
And you wonder why birds are disappearing?
Tracy Winn
Monument Street
