I asked Jeeves,
“Why so slow
today?”
“Well, sir,”
he replied,
“It’s not
the traffic, as you see.
The fuel injection
line is sick
and try as I
might,
I can’t whip
this car
to gather
speed.”
If I had
wanted a machine
that rode at
walking pace
I’d have
bought a rickshaw
or an absurd
micro,
not a
Mercedes-Benz.
“So,” I said to Jeeves,
“An infection in the injection?
This car’s
but two weeks on the road.”
“There are
reports,” Jeeves replied, “that a tiny snail,
Xerolenta obvia by name, sought asylum,
from Germany,
stowed its
hermaphroditic
family in a shipment
of
Mercedes-Benz, then found its way –
or lost its
way more likely –
into our fuel
injection system.”
I pondered on
a nautical
analogy.
Deep divers
caught with
nitrogen in
their blood,
surfacing
too fast,
un-dissolve
it:
then bubbles
of gas
obstruct and
slow them down.
Perhaps the
snail, I thought,
might resemble
a bubble
in the fuel
line –
an
automotive embolus –
a case of
Mercedes bends?
No comments:
Post a Comment