The Hole in the Hedge
Ryan Higgins

   Have you ever been to number four, Rickety Lane in the town of Kittery? Probably not, because it doesn't exist (neither the street nor the number four house on it). But while we're on the subject of Kittery... I grew up there. To be more specific, I grew up in my parents' house - a quaint little house with a quaint little front yard and a quaint little cedar hedge with a quaint little hole in it. This story is about that hedge and how the hole got there.

   From this point on, you will see sections in italics (much like this one) referring the reader to a concept known to some as 'Human Ecology'. To others it is called...well most people don't really call it anything, because they've never heard of it. So we can safely say that the average person would refer to it as 'Whoozie Whatsit?' As I was saying, these little snippets of the italic persuasion are not meant to be definitions of this 'Human Ecology' thing. Nor are they meant to define the 'Whoozie Whatsit?' Instead, these paragraphs are merely interjections explaining various aspects of what I have learned about the subject. They are placed, very strategically mind you, within the narrative to highlight key Whoozie Whatsit-ical - I mean -  Human Ecological points intended to enhance the impact of this story.

   At any rate, my parents' house sits there mostly as a result of my father building it there. The row of hedges running along our drive sits there mostly as a result of my mother and father planting it there. And the seemingly useless walkway that cuts through the row of hedges straight into the lamppost is mostly a result of my brother and me. I say "mostly a result of " because everything results from a series of multiple factors in the sort of way you can blame a rock for being there when you stub your toe on it. Stubbing your toe on a rock is mostly a result of your clumsiness, but partly a result of the rock being there. Consequently, our house sits where it is mostly as a result of my dad building it there and partly as a result of dad wanting to have a place to raise a family; the row of hedges sits where it is mostly as a result of my parents planting it there and partly as a result of there being a house to plant a row of hedges in front of. Keeping this logic in mind, one can conclude that anything my brother and I might have done to the hedge is mostly our fault but partly the fault of the hedge being there, which was partly the result of there being a house, which is the fault of my father - both mostly and partly. So really we can't be held completely responsible for anything...

   Realizing that there are many factors involved in life's inner workings and trying to understand the relationships between these factors are underlying concepts of Human Ecology. Things happen because lots of other things happen. When this happens, lots of things happen...and so on and so forth.

   My brother, Josh, and I were assigned the annual task of trimming the cedar hedge that ran along the driveway - a task that consumed the better part of an afternoon. Every year since we were tall enough to reach the top of the five foot hedge, we were in charge of making sure that it didn't become too unruly. My brother, two years my senior, was studying to be a mechanical engineer at the time, while I was a soon to be human ecologist. We decided that if we put our heads together - it would probably hurt, but we did it anyways. And so we devised a plan - a plan that would break the monotony bequeathed by the mindless repetitive task of snipping away at the great hedge with pruning shears.

   What if we mowed the hedge? This, I might add, was my idea. As it turned out, the hedge was just wide enough to require only two passes of our rusty old gas lawnmower, but we needed some way of elevating the vintage piece of Craftsman machinery to a height of five feet.

   Human ecology is a way of looking at problems differently and creating unique solutions for those problems. You take an ordinary problem and fumble with it in a completely original way until you create a whole new set of problems that distract you from the original problem. A good human ecologist knows there are no solutions, only more problems.

   The Craftsman mower is one of many old machines taking up residence with our family. We have old mowers, tractors, snow-blowers, trucks, cars, motorcycles, chainsaws, drills, compressors...you name it, we've got one that somebody once tossed out. We have all these because of my father's belief that no mechanical device is ever really broken; it just might need some work. He's right, most of the time. All of the machines and equipment we have are in perfect working order. They all run like new and some even better. My dad will come home from work or from visiting one of his cronies with a weed whacker that hasn't worked for years and say "Well I couldn't just let him throw the thing away." Within a few hours he'll have the thing up and running.

   Resourcefulness is a key characteristic of a good human ecologist. Human ecologists strive to save energy, consume less, recycle more, and that sort of thing. My father is very resourceful, but not from being ecologically inclined, necessarily. He saves, rebuilds, and recycles things because of monetary constraints. Financial shortcomings can make for good human ecologists. It's very hard to waste what you can't afford.

   So we took the Craftsman and secured it to two two-by-sixes that were long enough to bridge across the width of the hedge and rest snugly on our shoulders. There we were, each of us standing on either side of the hedge, with a wobbly lawnmower suspended between us. We were ahead of our time. All we had to do was walk down the hedge and walk back and we'd be done with an otherwise time consuming endeavor. The last bit of ingenuity was figuring a way around the annoying safety features, or obstacles, that were built into the machine. The mower had the unnecessary requirement that you constantly engage the engine by holding down a lever on the handlebar. Otherwise, the machine would automatically stop running. This was easily remedied with duct tape.

  After a few cranks, we had the old mower groaning away. We hoisted our contraption onto our shoulders as it shook violently and threatened to vibrate the knots loose that held it to the planks. But first, we put on our goggles and earplugs. Safety first. Each of us on opposite sides of the hedge, facing each other, we commenced to edge our way down the decorative shrubbery.

   A student of human ecology can tell you that nothing is predictable. With all the factors that contribute to the way life goes on, it's impossible to be sure that doing such and such will create so and so for an outcome. Predictions are merely guesses and should be looked at with a suspicious eye. The only reliable predictions are those that are made after the fact.

   The first pass over the hedge went off without a hitch and it looked like we were going to get out of hours of unnecessary work. It was on the second pass that we ran into some technical difficulties. When you have a lawnmower level with your face chopping away at a shrub, you can expect to get a few chunks of debris thrown your way. We had taken this into consideration and decided to wear long-sleeve shirts. However there was a spot at the hedge where the flying debris really started to sting. It was when I considered the unlikelihood of mere bits of chopped hedge being able to crawl up my sleeve and sting my armpit, that I surveyed the situation more closely.

   As it turns out, we had knocked a little too loudly on the front door of a very busy bees' nest. I call them bees, but I think they may have been hornets. To tell the truth I wasn't considerably interested in classifying the angry little buggers. It was quite a predicament we had found ourselves in. My brother was under siege as well. The cedar hedge was a very long hedge and we were trapped right in the middle. I don't know if you have ever attempted to run with a snarling lawnmower on your shoulders, but I would advise against it - especially while you're acting as a human pincushion for thousands of very upset bees, or hornets, or whatever they were. In a moment of quick thinking I decided the best course of action was to run away from the bees' nest.

   We had to let go of the lawnmower. Josh noticed this at the same time. I think it took a bee in his skivvies for him to have this epiphany. From a safe distance my brother and I stared helplessly as the old Craftsman, left to its own devices, ate its way down through the hedge. We didn't dare go near it, on account of the bees. The mower, because of the mechanical alterations we had made to it, would not stop cutting until it either ran out of gas or stalled out from the blade getting jammed. We hoped that it would only cut a few feet into the hedge and then stall out, but alas, no. Because the Craftsman was a product of our father's resourcefulness (meaning it was once thrown out by somebody and fixed up by Dad) it had a few more horsepower at its disposal and the hedge barely fazed it. The mower did sound like it was laboring by the time it ate down to the stump, though. On a side note, the bees nest was taken care of.

   Human Ecology is a multidisciplinary way of using everything at your disposal. Even a seemingly disastrous experiment can provide the tools needed to solve a problem. No experiment is a failure, unless it fails to produce results. We had definitely produced results and we were ready to use the knowledge obtained to tackle a new problem. We took a moment to congratulate ourselves.

   When Dad came home from work he was surprised to find that there was a new walkway in his front yard. A series of stepping stones had been planted, leading from the lamppost out to the road, through his cedar hedge. There was now a little entry way in the hedge, just wide enough for a lawnmower to fit through, allowing any passers-by to walk straight onto our front lawn and examine our lamppost.

   Dad didn't say anything about the new walkway when he came into the house, but he did ask Josh and me to take a walk with him. I must admit, we were rather suspicious. He was taking it all surprisingly well. We shuffled along behind dear old Dad as he walked up the street until he stopped at our grandparents old house - the house he grew up in. We all stood there silently. I noticed something that I had always noticed was there, but never given an awful lot of thought to. There was a walkway straight through his parents' old boxwood hedge that led to no particular location in the front lawn. It was just large enough to fit a lawnmower. Of course, this particular walkway was much older than his new one. I'd venture to guess that it was put in around the time Dad was my age. So it turns out my dad is a human ecologist too.