What the Pet Hair Eraser Learned

The Bissell Pet Hair Eraser arrived in a box that promised everything. Everything. BW opened it with the kind of hope usually reserved for lottery tickets. She'd been finding dog hair in places that didn't make biological sense—the inside of the refrigerator, somehow, and wedged into the battery compartment of the remote.

The Pet Hair Eraser was supposed to be different. Cordless. Lightweight. A little handheld savior for a house where a golden retriever lives like he owns the place. (He does, probably.)

For three days it was perfect. BW used it on the couch. On the car seats. On the hallway where the dog likes to lie down and shed like he's being paid per strand. The Pet Hair Eraser sucked and whirred and did the one job it was built for with the kind of focus most people lose after their first marriage.

Then the child found it.

I was doing an Uber run—airport run, always airport runs—when BW texted a photo. The Pet Hair Eraser was in the child's hands. The dust cup was open. She was using it as a megaphone. Or possibly a telescope. The angles were unclear from the photo, but what was clear was that she'd gotten dog hair into the Pet Hair Eraser rather than out of it, which seemed to violate the entire contract.

When I got home, the Pet Hair Eraser was on the kitchen counter, unplugged and very still. Like it was thinking about what had happened. BW explained—with the exhaustion of someone who has already moved past this—that the child had filled it with "treasure" before losing interest. Treasure turned out to be dog hair, lint, a yogurt-covered raisin, and what I'm 85 percent sure was a piece of a crayon.

I tried to clean it. Opened the dust cup. Shook it out. But something was wrong with the motor now. It made a sound like a cat being told it's time for a bath. Not quite broken, but broken in spirit.

The dog walked past while I was standing there holding it. He shed two more hairs just from being in the room. They landed on my shoe.

The Pet Hair Eraser is still on the counter. BW uses it when the child isn't looking, which is most of the time, actually. It works fine now. Most days. But I think it knows. The way it sits there between uses, not quite at rest. Like it learned something it didn't want to learn about this house and the people in it and the one small person who gets to decide what anything is for.

It vacuums the dog hair. It does the thing it was made to do. But I catch it sometimes, just sitting there, and I think it's reconsidering its whole existence. (Can't blame it.)

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