country matters
by uzwi
I bought a set of cheap cast iron dumbells. They arrived in the kind of plastic case you associate with home drilling equipment, which smelled strongly of whatever compound the manufacturer had used to keep the iron from rusting. It was an intrusive smell–not quite mineral, not quite organic–so, since I intended to store the weights in the case, I put it out on the balcony & left it to the cleansing rain of Suburb Barnes. It’s been out there ever since. Internally it has the shape of a set of dumbells with the weights affixed in increasing rather than decreasing size, & it opens flat. Within hours these graded rectangles were full of water. A few days later the squirrel turned up &, after an angry look around to make sure nobody wanted to make anything of it, took a drink. She’s been visiting the new pond daily ever since. If I keep still I can watch her suck it up, an act she performs with as much aggressive, whole-body physicality as she does everything else. Chemical residues don’t seem to have turned her into any more of a monster than she already was. I’ve had a lot of use out of the weights and now the squirrel has too. I was wondering: if I introduced a few small fish, would I perhaps attract a heron.
the m john harrison blog 
Not until you’ve done a Health and Safety risk assessment and taken the two-day Live Fish Custodian course.
“… with the weights affixed in increasing rather than decreasing size …”
That’s just a tease, right?
Ah, the penny has finally dropped. You really don’t want to know what I was imagining. (And I’d prefer to forget it.) If you could see my waistline, it’d be sufficient testimony to my unfamiliarity with exercise equipment.
Keep pumping and dream of that rock.
Power to weight ratio come on!
I know that squirrel. (It stole my mom’s glasses off her head. But my mom has ninja reactions and stole them right back in the same beat.)
Does it have a mohawk?