Spurts

Apr 6, 2008 by Naomi.

Pygmy rabbits on the endangered species list in the sagebrush grasslands of Washington state. At the Sandhill Crane Festival in Othello, a poster announced a kid’s activity where a juice can is wrapped in gray paper and ears added to resemble a bunny. A fun pencil holder. Bunnies, as all babies, are cute, but only as baby vertebrates. Other bunnies are not. My dust bunnies are not cute - only a reminder of what a haphazard housekeeper I am.

Under furniture, considering them as bunnies distracts me from the tiresome physical labor of pushing a cleaner around. Rolls of dirt caught up in fuzz or hair and left to drift under the bed with the swirl of air from foot traffic in an otherwise quiet room. They are a down to earth example of particulates in the air I have to breathe that is dooming our earth to global climate change.

Tiny bits of dirt can do that?

My automobile, a Hundai Accent, exhausts miniscule particulates when the motor is running. With my driving that represents hours for about one thousand and five hundred miles each month and I haven’t tried to estimate the millions of bits that represents. But I did figure out that if I eased slowly out of a hard stop instead of using a heavy foot on the gas pedal, there would be no spurt of gas wasted in the engine, whatever the mechanism is that needs fuel. Then once in traffic if I held my speed steady the engine needed less fuel, at least I surmise that as I watch the rpm reading level off.

Fellow drivers race around me hurrying to their destination - spurting out of the starting gate as if they are in some important horse race rewarded with an enormous wreath of roses. Yet minutes later at the next stop the horse is no further than I am - the place beside me. I’m convinced that wear and tear on brakes and parts of the engine are not worth the imagined time saved by spurting ahead in traffic. I know my resistance to the spurt quick start saves my money at the pump. If that helps in some small way to slow up climate change, so be it.

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