So last week my folks were on a cruise in Alaska which left me with the duties of keeping up with there place. Actually they had just asked me to take care of the dogs and feed the ducks. No problem as they only live 10 miles from me and are somewhat on the way to and from work. Well last Wed. I decided to take a day off to mow there place and mine as the yards had finally dried out enough to mow for the first time in about a week and half.
So Wed. morning at around 930 or so I get to my parents house which is very secluded as it sets about 1/2 a mile back of the road with no neighbors that can see anything but the front yard. Pond and majority of the property is in the rear. My dad has a conventional garden tractor that he uses to mow close to the pond and a Ferris 61" zero turn that mows everything else. Well I open up the garage and the battery doesn't have enough juice to get the garden tractor going so I throw a charger on it and decide I will do the trim pass on the pond later.
I jump on the Ferris and fire it up and do a trim pass around the shed, garage, and garden which leaves me lined up to go down the long side of the pond which has a moderately steep bank in a few places. So I stay 3-4 feet from the edge of the somewhat eroded bank and make my pass blowing everything away from the pond. At the other end I decide to turn around and go back blowing towards the pond one mower width further up the bank. So I get back most of the way to the other end and this is where the steepest bank is with the most erosion and there is also a gazebo setting at the top of the bank with landscaping around it. Now to go past it I only have a foot or so of grass to mow by the gazebo as the rest was cut by the first pass. As I go by I bump the landscaping stones just enough with the deck to make the drive tires start to slip down the hill ont he wet grass that I had exposed by cutting off the dry tops on the previous path. Within a split second I had slid down the hill and went off a 2 foot or so vertical drop off into the pond. The mower rolled completely upside down with me pinned underneath of it on my side from just below my ribs down. Of course your first response is to get your head up above the water, which I could not. I could get close enough that the water was clear instead of having the brown tint of the pond but not enough to get my head above water. Luckily after what seemed like eternity, in all actuality probably 15-20 seconds, I was able to get rolled on to my back. I was then able to use both arms to push on the side of the mower and get the side of the mower down to my waste which allowed me to setup and get my head above water to get a couple breaths before I went back under to work on getting my legs out from under it which I did relatively easy.
Morals of the story gentlemen
1 You can never be to cautious around our ponds. A very slight error running a piece of equipment I don't operate on a routine basis about cost me my life.
2 ROPS are there for a reason and the one on that mower saved my life. Had it not been there I would have been pinned much worse and highly doubt I could have forced my way out from under the 1400lb mower.
Last edited by BLUE72CAMARO; 07/27/15 02:44 PM.
