On a side note, same thing happened to me in the 90s. But instead of pine needles, it was a weed wacker and acres of waste high thistle weeds.
However, I topped this grounding:
I later called into a BBS in San Jose to play "the pit" and chat on PCLink so much that our long distance bill was $926 for a single month.
I was grounded for a month due to that.
My dad yelled at me a bit. Telling me that "computers will never do anything for you"
After I ran intel's game lab for a bit and designed the Lucas Presidio data center.... my dad said to me "remember that time I said that 'Computers will never do anything for you' -- Well, I apologize" - it was one of the closest times I felt to him.