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Last week I was cutting the heads off the clover with my poor excuse for a gas lawn mower when it hit me.

No, it caught me. The Morning Glory vine from the neighbor's yard reached out and grabbed me. I responded as I do when anyone touches me by screaming and swatting at it. I have issues, so says my bruised doctor.

The vine from hell (VFH) scratched me! I tried to lift the lawn mower high enough to sever its spindly arm.

I don't know how many times the lawn mower spun around before it stalled, but it was enough to knock several boards off the fence and me to the ground. My poor excuse for a lawn mower was now five feet in the air and wound tight to the fence.

"Well, I can break my glasses and throw them away. I've seen everything now!" I shout at the neighbor in her bathroom window.

I got up to free the lawn mower off the fence. I borrowed the machine from my brother three years ago. He's probably given up thinking I'd ever return it, but come Friday I was going to prove him wrong. That's if I could unwind this piece of junk off the fence.

I blindly reached through the fence to pull at the VFH when it bit me again. Then it grabbed hold of my arm with kitten-like claws and said, "Wait right there!" I'm arm deep into the neighbor's yard, stuck. Now both the lawn mower and myself look like some weird fridge magnets stuck on the fence.

I cowboy up and just pull on my arm as needle points etch bloody linear roads down its length. I haven't been this scratched up since I tried to baptize the cat.

"Boy, that doesn't look good!" I yell at the top of my voice. "Probably looks worse than it really is, though!" But still she remained in front of the window.

I reach in my pocket for my pocket knife and start to cut at the kitten-claw vine that's hanging onto my brother's soon-to-be- returned piece of junk lawn mower. I discover my VFH is made up of two vines, Morning Glory wrapped around blackberry runners. The perfect weed! A weed you can't kill or pull.

I don't have to tell you how hard it is to kill a blackberry bush. These two vines make up one of these symbiotic relationships you see on the science channel - like the oxpecker bird and the rhino, remoras and sharks, and panda bears and kangaroos living in harmony together.

The Morning Glory with its large, white trumpeting flowers attract bees that pollinate both vine and bush. Wrapping itself around the thorny runners of the blackberry bush discourages anyone from trying to pull it out. Gol-lly a perfect marriage made in hell. It can't be stopped! The whole world is going to be taken over by the black Morning Glory berry bush.

"I can see it all now. It's horrible. Shut the curtains!" I think to myself.

I walk, no run, to the hardware store wondering why I didn't drive. They'll have some poison to do away with my little friend. I make it to the end of the driveway, winded and change my mind. I will drive!

Two minutes later I'm back in the house on the computer wondering where I was going to go in the car. I type in "hoe to kill black betty bush." Because of my poor typing skills and ex-president George Bush having a relative named Betty, I'm now on some list. So, then I change the wording from hoe to how and kill to poison. Again, I've alerted the police.

If this bush from hell were in my yard, I'd have a fighting chance of hacking away at it, but it hides between the neighbor's garage and my fence. It strikes out into my yard, the Morning Glory vine pulling the blackberry bush along at speeds equal to a pensioner heading to Denny's on his birthday.

I can't go in the neighbor's yard to attack this beast as the beast and dog both hate me. I quietly climb the tree for a peek and yell a rude insult at my victim.

Two days later

It's Friday and the lawn mower is still looking like a fridge magnet on a fence. I'll have to borrow my brother's other mower or my other brother's mower to cut the heads off the clover and the three dandelions poking through my dead lawn.

The neighbor bought new boards and fixed the fence. He's now watering and fertilizing that bush from hell. I think he's feeding it meat!

I cut at it, hack at it and try to set it on fire but with little success. It's a daily fight at this time of year.

Blackberries are now in season, and the wife has taken a real liking to them. But I've got so much 'Weedkill' on the bush that I'd never eat them.

"Honey, I'm going out to pick more berries! If I pick enough berries, will you make a pie for Pete and Judy? Kind of a peace offering to make up for my critique of Judy? What's that? Sure, I'll pick a pail for you, too. No problem."

I may have lost this battle, but this war's not over.

- Bob Niles

Bob Niles, who answers to Robert, Bobby, Dad, Grandpa, Unit No.2 (his Dad could never remember all the children's names), honey and super hero, is new to writing but not to storytelling. "I like to make people laugh and to think, with a secret desire make them dance and send me untraceable $100 bills in the mail," says the happily married, retired father and grandpa from Richmond in British Columbia, Canada. He blogs here.