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Monday, August 7, 2000

By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Plastic strings were gathered by a Royal Circle
resident during routine walks.

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So, after chewing the bag's contents and finding it tough going, we eventually read the note attached to the Zip-Loc.

"What in the world," wondered a Royal Circle resident, "are these stiff, colored pieces of plastic tied in a knot? My mother and I have found many of them on walks in the Diamond Head-Kahala area. Do they have something to do with a marathon? The military?"

Plastic? Clue one.

Knots? Clue two.

Clue three: The strings are mostly square in cross-section, and even those that are round have a sharp edgy seam along their length.

Clue four: The strings are shredded, not cut, and have bits of debris embedded in them.

Highly Scientific Deduction: It's not li hing mui.

Second Highly Scientific Deduction: Royal Circle residents don't do a lot of their own yardwork.

If they did, they'd recognize these torn-off bits of weedwhacker string. Some of the bits are big enough to come from industrial-sized whackers, smaller bits are from the average home whacker.

The weedwhacker works by spinning rapidly, flinging a bit of string out in an arc using centrifugal force. The spinning string cuts through foliage, hence the sharp edges. As the string shreds, new lengths are wicked out of the whacker machine and cut off. The knot is tied by the whackee to prevent the string from being sucked back into the whacker housing.

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