Stuff you find while mowing tall vegetation

[9501tts]

Here is the worst. July 1998 Aurora CO mowing along Chambers Rd. Found the body of a deceased young lady. Called police. Soon there was crime lab, homicide dept, TV news vans. FD sawed off the bridge railing & wrapped in plastic. Was bloody hand print - his print, her blood. He got life in Canyon City Prison. The guy working with me was so shook up he quit and moved back to Iowa.

 

[scootr]

That reminds me ~
40 yrs ago I hired a friend with a backhoe to excavate for a curb and gutter job in the county street. Not too far in he pulled up a 600 pair phoneline. He shut it down and I looked at that just mortified at what the cost was gonna be.
He said relax. I said what are we gonna do? He said go to lunch. I said who should we call? He said you don't need to call 300 people are calling already.
When we got back from a nice long lunch the repair crew was just wrapping up. No cost because it was not as deep as it should have been

 

[Fallon]

Have you ever thought about selling?

Only the well head was mine. All the others were customers. My side gig is tractor stuff to pay for toys (including tractors & implments).

 

[BEAGLES]

FEL with bucket or bale spear attached, about 8” off ground angled upward acts as an early warning system for most objects in fields.

Been rolling that way successfully for 25 years.

Almost speared me a buck.
Not my idea of “deer hunting”

View attachment 812092

That sure blends on.

 

[Fallon]

Only the well head was mine. All the others were customers. My side gig is tractor stuff to pay for toys (including tractors & implments).

And found a small bit fencing wire today. Only took me 10 min or so to cut out with bolt cutters.

 

[Jstpssng]

Haha, I feel like a lightweight after reading these stories. I’ve hit rebar, a bundle of barbed wire, and dead horses a couple times

You can’t make a comment like this without explaining. The first time I read it I thought you had backed up and run over it again. Then I noticed that you said horses, not horse.

 

[Flad]

Our place is next to an old aluvial gold field where in the 1850's there were over 20,000 miners living on every square inch of my place, there must have been a sly grog shop on a patch of ground where thousands of broken bottles were dumped , not just ordinarry type bottles, these are dark blue black or green along with broken ceramic plates mugs and pottery,the glass in the thinnest sections is 1/4" thick to 1/2" on the bottoms , when I first tried to slashed that area it cost me a new steer tyre over $300, half a bottle length wise cut through the side wall.
I later picked up by hand two 44 gallon drums of broken glass and ceramics, then sprayed the area with weed killer and got another half drum, now every time it rains more glass keeps comming to the surface a lot smaller pieces but still the thick jagged bottoms and necks make an apperance, that area is kept bare with weed killer about 1/4 acre in size.

Next door had a problem with trespassers metal detecting at night digging holes and cutting fences to drive in across the hay and dumping rubbish car parts refrigerators and TV"s in their hay paddock, nothing like a old car parts to ruin a hay bailer, My dogs put a stop to that

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

When I was in my teens, my least favorite object was skunks while cutting hay with a swather. They would get lodged in the conditioner (crimper) and clog it up. I would have to pull the clummed up hay out by hand. Then pull the skunk carcass out. Baby skunks would pass through, but the fog they created would get me if the wind was not in my favor.
Sometimes I would have to sleep outside and enjoy the stars. Putting my Boy Scout Astronomy merit badge being to use, so I thought it was a good trade off at the time.

 

[prairiegirl]

Reading other posts about brush mowing with FEL vs. without FEL, got me to thinking of all the stuff that can ruin your day and brush mower. Like several others I do side jobs and usually mow the same places, but still find surprises. Some of the things the FEL has saved my mower from are: transmissions, bowling ball, grocery shopping carts, dead horses/cows/goats/sheep, all sizes of tires/wheels, T posts (lots of T posts) rebar sticking up, gas line meters, trailers, drill pipe, pallets, suit cases, 55 gallon drums, sewer line manholes (usually 12" to 20" tall). Other than the regular and typical tree stump, rock piles and concrete, what has your mower of FEL found?

Not me, but a neighbour told me about a field with "No worry, nothing in it" but he hit an irrigation manhole at full speed. No fun. Swung his haybine and stalled his tractor.

 

[Hay Dude]

So I have told this story before, so if you have read this years ago before, indulge me while I tell some of our newer TBN’ers. It was “something I found while mowing tall vegetation”.

About 10 years ago, I got up early on a sunny beautiful summer morning to grab a tractor and a discbine and drop some hay. I was in a remote part of my little township on a back road slowing down to turn into the field at about 7AM and set up to mow hay.

Out of my side glass door a disheveled younger woman in her 20’s ran at the side of my tractor, clothes torn, hair a mess, waving her arms at me to stop.

I stopped and opened my door. She started climbing the steps into the cab and I held out my arm and commanded her to stop. She asked me where she was and if I could “get her back to Philly” (Philadelphia is about 25 miles northeast of me). I told her I could not get her back to Philly and told her what rural town she was in.

She went on to tell me 2 men picked her up, allegedly abused/raped her and dumped her into the field I was getting ready to cut just before daybreak.

So I called our local PD and they showed up quickly and whisked her away. I bumped into them about a week later. The story was she is a prostitute and a couple guys picked her up, brought her out to my town and dumped her out when they were done with her.

Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

[milkman636]

……..The story was she is a prostitute and a couple guys picked her up, brought her out to my town and dumped her out when they were done with her.

Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

That story reminds me of an early morning encounter I had a couple years ago. It was around 5:45AM on a normal weekday morning and I as was walking out of a convenience store, about 1/2 mile from the job, carrying my big cup of coffee. As I get in my truck this lady in a similar state as you described runs up and starts hopping into passenger seat. She just about made it in before I could put my coffee down and stop her. She wanted to know wheee was heading and if I’d like some company. I let her know very directly that the last thing I wanted at that moment was a hooker that was 9 hours and 45 minutes into a 10 hour shift and to gtfo. Apparently there are some hard working girls in that profession that aren’t afraid to work a little overtime.

 

[calamitous]

You can’t make a comment like this without explaining. The first time I read it I thought you had backed up and run over it again. Then I noticed that you said horses, not horse.

LOL it sounds a lot more dramatic than it was. We bought our property from some folks who hadn’t taken much care of it. Along (many) other things, we discovered that they’d been dumping their dead horses in an old dried up cattle pond (I’ve verified at least 3 different horses). Over time, scavengers have dragged the bones all over the place, and I find them with my mower.

The worst are the vertebrae: the mower fires those things out like a bullet. I came close to nailing one of my boys with one from forty feet away, so I’m much more careful where the mower is pointed now. I don’t want to end up in the ER trying to explain why my kid has a concussion from a horse’s spine.

 

[Jarheads]

Jimmy Hoffa

Over the years I’ve found car batteries, tires, an automatic transmission, a manual transmission, car doors from an oldsmobile, brake drums, antique cow stanchions, a pile of asbestos siding shingles, barbed wire, cinder blocks, a pile of old red clay drain tiles, fence wire, a 14’ green colored wooden boat, jimmy hoffa, a model T frame with the crossbuck springs and axles sunk in the dirt, a coal pile and a few other things.