Joe had spent nearly an hour digging at the cold hard ground with his hoe in a doomed attempt to remove the tree stump. He was drenched in sweat and tired and sore, but all he had managed to accomplish was clear the soil around the foot wide trunk.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and threw the hoe down onto the lawn.
"You gonna give me a hand or what?" he asked Ben, who laughed.
"Who, me? No way." He swatted away some dirt that had clung onto his shirt from Joe's last swing.
Joe grunted and picked up a pickaxe and swung it at the stump near it's base. He wedged it under a large root and using a rock as leverage, tried to wedge the trunk loose a bit more. But it was useless. Futile.
"Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat," he said as he threw the pickax into the large pile of garden tools, none of which have had any success.
"What cat?" asked Ben.
"Huh?" Joe started walking to the shed. Ben followed.
"What cat are you skinning? You making a hat? A scarf?"
"You realize you're an idiot right?"
"Seriously, that must be one of the most nonsensical sayings around. I mean, on any given day, what person would be faced with not only the task of skinning a cat, but also the conundrum of finding alternates methods for it."
"Mmhmm." He was used to Ben's ranting and was already rummaging through the shed for current problem. Meanwhile, Ben continued his tirade against idioms in the English language outside on the grass.
"I mean, why not 'There's more than one way to murder a hobo'? Or, milk a spider monkey? Or--"
He was interrupted by the loud revving sound that was emitting from the chainsaw Joe brought out of the shed.
"You keep thinking about that while I take care of this stump."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment