Lawn Decorations

Mark's Remarks: Lawn Decorations

By Mark Leeper

[Editor's Note: This material originally appeared in the Club Notice of the Mt Holz Science Fiction Society, Volume 7, Number 52 The MT Void Copyright © 1989 Mark R Leeper. It is reprinted with permission.

And I thought things were bad when everybody was sticking stuffed cats onto their windows with suction cups. And when everybody was putting "Baby on Board" caution signs in their car windows. It seems that the public is ever alert for some other stupid new idea. The new "craze"--a good word for it, just close enough to "crazy"--is lawn decoration.

Now for years I have let my lawn decorate itself. It has been more than willing to erect pretty yellow dandelions, pretty white dandelions that look like Fourth of July fireworks frozen in time, beautiful purple crabgrass. I tell you, my lawn is so beautiful that neighbors have taken to walking by it just to look and shaking their heads as if to say they could never hope to achieve a lawn like that themselves. I have even heard rumors that the neighborhood is so envious that they are thinking of pooling their money and buying my house.

So I think I can count myself something of an expert on lawn decoration but I am somewhat bewildered at the new lawn decorations. All over my neighborhood I am seeing wooden sheep grazing.

We are, I think, living in the age of the artificial animal. As we kill off the real thing, technology is rushing to our aid to create artificial surrogates. The wooden lawn sheep is only the latest in a long and proud line that includes everything from clockwork nightingales to the artificial owls outside of Lincroft. (Yes, I am proud to say that AT&T has been a leader in the artificial animal field. of course, we all know about Holmdel's--and apparently Lincroft's--styrofoam swans. And who can forget Middletown's stuffed Christmas pony?)

But even the styrofoam swans are there for a purpose, however demented and pitiful that purpose is. They are fulfilling a function you might like real swans to do if you could get them there. They are scaregeese. (That is the equivalent for geese of a scarecrow,) The geese, of course, find them a big joke and have been seen using them as pool toys, but at least they are there for a purpose.)

But what purpose would a sheep have on the lawn that the surrogates could possibly perform? Have you ever seen a lawn that has had a real sheep on it? You know sheep eat grass right down to the roots. That's why we had sheep wars in the American West. After sheep have grazed on the lawn you 'night as well start over.

If you are going to put artificial sheep on your lawn, you might as well put plastic gypsy moths In your trees, plastic fleas on your dog, that sort of thing. Have you ever smelled a lawn that has had one grazing on it? uf-da to the max! I cannot possibly imagine why anyone would want their lawn to look as if it had had one of these disgusting things besieging it. Yet there they are, wooden sheep all over the neighborhood.