Dangers of Mowing

My family thinks I'm a menace with a mower...shooting rocks, breaking fingers and windows, running over cattle panels and sprinkler heads.  I try to be very careful, I really do.  But, I almost had a very nasty accident this week.

Son, who no longer lives on the farm, left this contraption when he moved.  It's a frame built out of steel that he used for his crossfit workouts.  It's probably about 8 ft. tall tower and used to be tethered to the ground in another spot over by the barn, but was untethered and moved to another spot.  It has these long straps on it that are attached to acrobat rings.  Really, the straps should have been taken off and put away, but nobody took the time to do it, so they've dangled there for a year.

Over time, somehow the long straps began dangling on the ground.  They dangled in the tall grass where I couldn't see them, so, when I went to mow yesterday, I mowed over one of them.

Before I could reach back and slam the button that operates the blades to the off position, within seconds, the strap wound tight around the blades and pulled the tower towards me, crashing down right beside me.

Of course, the strap was mangled and wrapped several times around the blades.  I decided to not involve husband (who had just spent the last two days servicing the mower and putting brand new blades on) and after about 30 minutes of scrabbling around on the ground with my arm under the mower deck, I managed to get it untangled.

A near miss for me, and the mower wasn't damaged, so it was a good day.