A Little Crank

I knelt down by the two interlocking bottle caps under the deck steps. The wooden stirrer was still resting flat across the green cap, but pushing the flat wood kept slipping against my fingers. I looked around the dry dirt and found a short, hollow plastic coffee straw tossed near the foundation. Using the edge of a flat stone, I snapped off a clean piece about an inch tall. I pressed it straight onto the outer tip of the stirrer stick like an upright handle. Bracing my knees in the dirt, I gripped the little vertical straw between two fingers and revolved it in a smooth circle. The green cap turned instantly, its ridges grabbed the red teeth, and both wheels clicked in a neat, unbroken loop without my fingers scraping the ground.