Comment by lostlogin
7 hours ago
Larkin wrote that his mower had 'stalled, twice' and that he found 'A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, / Killed.’
It’s a seriously pathetic mower that would be jammed by a hedgehog.
7 hours ago
Larkin wrote that his mower had 'stalled, twice' and that he found 'A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, / Killed.’
It’s a seriously pathetic mower that would be jammed by a hedgehog.
We tend to underestimate the progress we managed to make in the last 100 years or so. There was a small TV segment showing the earliest vacuum cleaners. Both vacuum and cleaning looks like wishful thinking compared to what we have today.
Heck, the rechargeable vacuum I have at home has more power than what I used to the one I plugged to the wall ~20 years ago. Reducing the cost of CFD via higher performance computers did wonders in efficient system design, and that's just one aspect of life.
We have 1.5L Turbo / Hybrid engines which can propel the vehicle quicker than a run of the mill V6 of yore, too, and I find this amazing.
I always wanted to have a bigger engine because of the agility in emergency conditions. Now the bog standard car has more agility than I even dreamed of.
I suspect that a 1970s mower for UK garden use was typically not very beefy. Wikipedia thinks Larkin had some kind of Victa.
We grew up with an '80s Victa, but it was one of the super 600 slashers with a newer 5hp engine. He probably didn't have a slasher, but the rest of their lineup used similar engines and weren't especially underpowered.
If his model was anything like ours, a hedgehog could probably crawl between the blade disc (not the blades but the thing they're attached to) and the chassis and get itself wedged in there.
Probably a reel mower. A wet fart will clog a reel mower. They were real popular back in the day.