SUCKERED AGAIN!

To say I'm PO'd would be a gross understatement right now.

Last fall, I sucked an aflac duck our dogs had been playing with into my Toro leaf vacuum/blower and burned it up. I'd used it several seasons and the only problem was with the elastic on the leaf bag giving out. An old ranch kid like me knows how to deal with that with the equivalent of baling wire. Problem solved!

I needed a new leaf vacuum and soon found a brand new Weedeater E-Max at a sale, still in the box, for $25. I bought.

Today, I decided to vacuum up the leaves in our back yard so it wouldn't be so messy and went merrrily after them. In about half an hour, ground up leaves started hitting my leg. What the _____?

Inspection revealed that the small twigs that are inevitably a part of such a job had knocked a hole in the housing surrounding the impeler. Off to the shop to contrive a fix.

I discovered that the housing was very brittle and very thin -- less than an eighth of an inch. Also, it's a plastic impeler instead of the metal one in my old vacuum. It already has chips in it.

I'm like the guy with the Tee Shirt that says, "I can fix anything! Where's the duct tape?" It soon became apparent to me that duct tape would be the best repair. After several layers of that, the hole was sealed and I was back on the job -- for about a minute -- at which time leaves started pouring out the other side.

Another hole!

After four stops for repairs which left my tool basically a duct tape wonder. I finished up and all the leaves had been ground up and deposited in my compost bin where they're soaked down and soon will be great composted mulch that's set aside for my patch of egyptian walking onions.

What companies stick people with really frosts me. I'm sure Weed Eater makes a deluxe model, but this certainly isn't it. This is made to trick people who want a leaf vacuum but can't afford a good one to buy this cheaper model and then be stuck with a broken down piece of junk and their money already gone into the ravenous pockets of some millionaire or billionaire.

They'd never stand behind such a piece of junk and just say something was sucked in that never should have been. If I have to sort my leaves to find anything a little bit hard, what's the point in having the tool anyway. My original Toro took care of any small stick without even a grunt, but that stuffed duck was a little too much for it.

Will I ever get to the point where I don't get suckered like this? Doubtful. There isn't time to think every little thing through to the nth degree. I know I'll spend my money for a piece of junk again sometime somewhere. Just gotta live with it -- but, I can at least bitch about it!