The Electrocuted Owl

OK, technically this both is and is not the right picture to go with the story that follows.  As I've documented previously the first actual dedicated movie theater in Chippewa Falls was purpose built as The Victor.  Later it was purchased by the Rex Brewing Company of Duluth and renamed, logically, The Rex.

It had a mix of movies, live vaudeville, community theater, boxing matches.  But for sheer oddity, how about this from 1923:

Alas, I scanned the newspapers for an image of the Electrocuted Owl and came up blank.

Anger Goose Does Not Approve

I've had four footed "grandkids" before.  Often young couples have a dog before they have kids.  I've gotten on well with these slightly spoiled canines.

But the youngest and his lady now have.....geese.  On one level they - the geese of course - can be rather cute.  They follow my son around making happy little honking noises.

Me on the other hand, they don't like at all.......

Darn things peck at my pants legs and shoes when they can get away with it.  This goose is actually named Rodan, after the Japanese rubber monster movie star of the same name.  I think the resemblance is eerie.

Cache as Cache Can

With a bit of free time on my hands I've been paying attention to the string of geocaches that I have out in the world.  I mostly enjoy making and placing custom caches.  Finding them, eh, not so much.

Over time they tend to need maintenance.  Water gets into everything.  Put something inside a hollow tree and the tree blows over.  On occasion people who find the caches have their own eccentric ideas of how they should be rehidden.  

One cache I had near a ball field was called Brown Bat.  It was hidden inside a little plastic souvenir baseball bat.  I think it was something you could buy full of beer at the local minor league ball park.  Alas, it vanished, so I decided to replace it with something a bit more Lugosi themed...

That was a "one off", but I also have geocache series going.  Local History is rather unofficial.  Strange Fish is a long running series where I put a geocache - usually a custom container made to look like the species - where I caught some weird bottom feeding critter.  That's getting harder to do btw.  I'm up to 15 in this series.  HERE is an example.

Recently I started a new series that I'm calling Crossroads.  All at intersections of county roads.  For some reason these are designated with letters, and when they ran through the alphabet they started using double letters.   The juxtaposition of signs at such places provides, shall we say, opportunities.....

For instance......The House at Pooh Corner  What creative things could you do with semi random arrangements of two or three letters?

June Wild Life

Seen on a morning walk.  Pretty lame camo, bro.

Seen hiding in the side yard bushes.  I guess this is the time of year when fledglings get ornery and hop out of the nest a few days before they are actually able to, you know, fly.  Momma bird seen in the days that followed.  Checking several days later, no adolescent punk bird.  No sad pile of feathers.  So probably OK.

Seen on a "butterfly weed" next to the compost bin.  Tubby little guy, with a slightly smaller sidekick 'piller.

Digger's Day Out, Continued.

So how do you follow up on a visit to an honest to goodness Plague Village?

For us the next stop was bizarre antiquities.  There is an antiques centre in Morpeth that has some seriously weird stuff on display.  

I suppose your mileage may vary, but I never get enough of Bad Taxidermy.

This place had lots of it.

Bad Taxidermy is a favorite of mine on travels because I can realistically never buy any of it and ship it home.  I mean, how would you even explain a fully dressed mule deer?  And where did they get one in England???

An interesting side light to that question.  Small taxidermy is much more expensive than big stuff.

I really want a wild boar's head for the wall of my cabin.  I can't explain it, I just do.  They are much cheaper than little weasels and stoats decked out in silly little weasel hats.   Probably because of the "how do I pack it?" question.  And, lets be honest, the "what will my wife say" question.

More odd stuff:

And this really surprised me.  My English friends are appalled by the private ownership of firearms.  There are even laws against knives in the UK.  So when you go to the antiques center what do you find?  Cases full of bayonets and "Deactivated" submachine guns!

Across the street was a park area for which I had high hopes.  Why, there was a "Floral Clock"!

Alas, not planted yet.

And a statue commemorating EmilyWilding Davison, a Suffragette from Morpeth whose advocacy proved fatal.  She jumped out in front of a race horse - it happened to belong to the King - apparently hoping to throw a banner around its neck.  She got clobbered and subsequently died.  From what I can tell she was a bit of a nutter, also involved in a series of bombings.  I guess in a worthy cause you can still do some damned foolish things....

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Seven

Wally World.

 Spent a good part of the day chasing a wall.  

The barracks room we were in was constructed circa 213 AD.  On top of a different barracks from 50 years earlier.  Presumably nobody on the later construction crew had any idea what was underneath, so things were plotted out nice and neat....and then started sinking into earlier ditches, pits and assorted features.  Here's an example of what can happen:

Yes, this is a wall.  Or rather the top of one.

It dates to the Antonine stone fort, so lets say 140's or 150's.  It looks like junk at this level but I'm told is actually pretty nice down another foot or so.

What we had to work with was without question an annoying bump in the floor to the guys who lived in this barracks room in later years.  And I mean lots of later years.  After the 213 build was completed the space was occupied through the end of the Roman era in the early 400's, and to some extent on into the Dark Ages.  So, a couple hundred years of slumping floors, patching and replacing floor levels.  And through it all the big ridge right down the center of the room was just....there...

You can actually see evidence of this buried wall all up and down the length of the barracks block....

As viewed from the next barracks room over, you can see where the later wall has had its back "broken" where subsidence has happened on either side of the presumably solid wall beneath.

That's a bit more "feature" talk than many will find of interest.  So here's a sight from my morning walk up to the site.  It's about forty minutes of up and down hills.  At one point I go past a riding stable.  I'm becoming friends with the horses who continue to expect me to produce an apple or carrot out of my pocket some day.  I like the zebra style horse coat....

The Romans actually knew about zebras.  They called them Hippotigris, which means horse-tiger. Once in a while a live specimen would be brought back from the coast of East Africa.  They were rare novelties that were occasionally seen pulling chariots in the circus or being dispatched in the Colosseum.  

Rescuing the damn Donkeys

In the Great Clean Up there are moments of whimsey and of despair.  Sometimes they coincide.  Digging through strata of long irrelevant junk paper I came across this:

By this point my routine of shuffle, glance, identify, sort had become quite efficient.  But what the heck was this???

Well you have to know that sadly for the last decade or so that my mom lived at home she was bombarded by scammers.  The phone rang every hour (and it still does occasionally), the mailbox was full of appeals.  When one loosely uses the term "a ton" its usually hyperbole.  But I'm sure she got five pounds of mail every day, virtually all of it useless and a large percentage of it scamsters.  That's a ton every 18 months or so.  What she was getting on the internet before she lost the ability to use it, I don't want to know.

Finds of this nature are becoming less common in "the stacks".  Its one area we've been able to take stuff out wholesale.  But they keep coming.  Whoever occupies this house next will get them for another decade at least.

My brother and I have a bit of dark humor regards this stuff.  She got appeals from every end and each fringe of the political spectrum.  "At least they've found something to agree on".  There were certain themes.  Animal rescue.  Famine relief.  Political prisoners in faraway lands.  After a bit they started mixing and matching.  We expected to see appeals to "Free the starving Ethiopian donkeys".

This is in that vein.

It's a deck of playing cards from a place that is a Donkey Rescue ranch.  Why cards?  Well, lots of these outfits will send you some small trinket.  Mailing labels.  Stickers.  Sometimes a nickel or a dime glued to their appeal.  Playing cards were a new one to me.  Maybe they figure their core mark demographic sits around playing solitaire.

Anyway, sans future comment, here's a few pics.  I was mildly curious about the Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue folks.  They seem to own a very large tract of land out west.  Where they get the donkeys in need of rescue was not clear.  If you also get curious and look 'em up, don't send them any money.  

Responding to the Bat Signal

In the course of exploring Forgotten Brewery Caves and other underground places I occasionally encounter bats.  This has led to collaboration with the Department of Natural Resources and their "bat people".  With the emergence of White Nose Syndrome and its disastrous impact on hibernating bats I sometimes show them new places where bats exist.  In return they've taken me on the occasional bat counting survey.  So I know my Wisconsin bats pretty well.

I can't say I'm a big fan.  They are still creepy, and if they bite you there is the matter of painful rabies shots.  Also, they have issues with boundaries.  More on that presently.  But I'm appreciative of all the bugs they eat, and on some level I am rooting for the under loved underdog species.

Recently I've gotten acquainted with some Big Brown Bats.  In the last month or so there have been five that have turned up in our house, usually doing frantic circles around our bedroom.  Here's a pleasant face to abruptly wake up to:

Yes, no fun to have that whispering squeak nothings in your ear, even if they are largely out of the range of human hearing.

In an old house this happens, so there's a routine.  I'm alerted to the presence of a bat.  I get out of bed, collect my gear, don additional garments, catch the bat with a fish landing net, then release it to the Great Outdoors.  How exactly they are getting access to our Great Indoors remains a mystery.

The other night I did a nifty mid air interception and brought the captive out to the front porch.  But his wing was pretty tangled up in the netting.  I tried this and that, eventually putting on gloves and snipping some parts of the net free.  Bat hopped, flopped and chittered away.  I hope all is well, there still seemed to be some net stuck to one wing.  I'm only going to do so much for my squeaky pals, not gonna risk rabies shots.  But it was time for an upgrade.

The landing net was now basically useless for fishing purposes.  Guess I'd snipped a few more strands of net than I'd figured.

So I decided to modify it as a dedicated bat catcher.

On the right is an old pillow case.  It almost but not quite fits over the aluminum parts of the net.

I affixed the pillow case to the inner aspect of the net, with the extra ballooning out the now enlarged holes in the net.

This way I can dispense with the trash can I generally bring on bat missions.  With this it should just be net 'em, then flip it over and trap the bat in the long "tail" of the net.

Various things could be used to make the attachment.  I had brown duct tape on hand.  And I figured Big Brown Bats might like it.

And of course, I asked my long suffering but occasionally appreciate wife to take a picture of me kitted out for the next Bat Capture.  Probably this level of preparedness means they'll quit sneaking in.  That would actually be ok.

Frog Mummy

 

I was up north the other day, doing a bit of prep on the new deer hunting property.  There are two nice box stands, each about 15 feet up in the air.

Unfortunately they seem to have been built by and for a guy who we figure was 7 feet tall and preferred to stand for hours on end waiting for a deer to maybe saunter past.

As this can sometimes take a while, it's preferable to have an option to sit down.  But normal chairs, while they might give you a shot at passing flights of ducks, do not get you anywhere close to being able to sight out those ridiculously high up windows.

So I built this out of various stuff.  Free swiveling bar stool, steel milk crate, etc.  Works pretty well but we'll have to add or subtract a bit more underneath plywood to accommodate hunters of various heights.  

As I was taking this picture from the door way I looked to one side and saw something rather alarming.....

Yikes, it's a mummified tree frog!  Although it has a rather zombie like appearance I guess its just part of Nature.

Hank and the Coyotes

Hank is a dog with large ears and a small brain.  So while he loves being up at the cabin he gets a bit confused.  Happily confused for the most part.  So many things to sniff at, so many things to roll in!

Sounds confuse him.  When hummingbirds come to the feeder he can hear their noisy approach but not immediately spot them.  Non specific barking ensues.

The other day my wife was playing crow noises on her ipad, in an attempt to chase away a pesky family of same.  Hank cocked his head in a bemused fashion.....more bird noises without evidence of birds.

So I decided to play him some coyote sounds.  Here's his reaction....

Hank got his name from a series of books featuring Hank the Cow Dog.  Apt, as that Hank also was a dim bulb, ever goofing up in his tireless efforts to guard the ranch from non existent threats.

In one of the books Hank went Outlaw and ran off to join a pack of coyotes.  One of the coyote gals was pretty taken with that Hank.  For this Hank, I don't see that working out for him.

Karma of the Caterpillar

What a remarkable summer.  It started early, and just kept on going. We are still enjoying warm days even as the October shadows lengthen.  The deer are grow plump, and alas, clever.  And wooly bear caterpillars are everywhere, crawling hither and yon on their enigmatic missions.

I write something about the woolies every fall, as they are said to be a harbinger; an oracle.  Their color pattern allegedly predicts the severity of the upcoming winter.  

A few days ago while out at The Homestead I saw my son's lunatic dog jumping about and snapping at something on the ground.  She's a bit like a malicious cat in this respect, she'll capture baby bunnies and such and toy with them.  I do not approve.

So I went over and found that the object of her taunting was a curled up wooly bear caterpillar.  Well, I rescued the little guy, took him off to a safe location and said: "Hey, how 'bout a mild winter?"

I knew this was a big ask from a little guy, but it is rather their forte, so what the heck.

An hour later I went for a stroll down their dirt road.  Just enjoying the day and getting some fresh air after an afternoon breathing through a respirator while installing insulation.  And right there on the road I found something extremely implausible.  This:

It's a box of ammunition.  Now you might think this is not totally implausible as there is a rifle range down the road a bit and yes, things do bounce out of pickup trucks.  But I've never found ammo laying around - other than my archaeology experience at Ypres - and to have this appear just when I'm getting discouraged about hunting prospects.....and to have it be in the somewhat atypical caliber that I actually hunt with????

Thanks Wooly.  I know one small bug does not have the power to change the climate for a continent.  But hey, a box of ammo that retails for around $37?  You've out done yourself.

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Addendum.  Lest any one doubt the Power of the W-Bear it should be noted that the spot where I got a deer (albeit with the crossbow) was about 75 yards into the woods directly even with where I found this gift of the caterpillars!

Hank versus that Snooty French Squirrel

Hey, all squirrels are punks.  On that humans and dogs concur.  My dog Hank is particularly antagonistic to them.

On a recent walk we came across an unusual one.  Very snazzy dresser, sleek black and white trim.  And snooty.  Barely gave us the time of day.  I've encountered this attitude and fashion sense mostly in Paris, so I figure its a French squirrel.

In the interests of international amity I did not let Hank off the leash, so he had to content himself with giving ol' Monsieur LePeu an earful of canine cursing.

Eve's Revenge

Seen at a surplus store.  Evidently a real product, but alas, nobody named Eve actually associated with the company.

And no, there is no connection to last Friday's post on Rattlesnake Junction.

Hank Versus the Rodents of Unusual Size

Hank loves walks so much he's willing to compromise on some basic dog instincts.  I do not care to have my shoulder pulled out of its socket just because he sees a squirrel a block away.  So I issue the command:  "Leave 'em."  Sometimes for extra emphasis I remind him: "They're punks!"

It works fairly well unless one of them is extra insolent and/or appears suddenly and at close range.

You can't just have him chasing any old fur bearing critter.  Some of them would likely take a piece out of him.

The other day we were walking when this critter was prowling around in the tall grass.  It's a wood chuck, aka ground hog.  He did not give Hank any respect at all....

But this was at least a teenage punk 'chuck, not a full sized one.  On another section of our route Hank was very curious about this.  Hmmm, smells like a really big Squirrel!

Really big is right.  Beavers can be bigger than Hank, and have teeth sufficient to gnaw down trees.  

As the silly mutt shows evidence of Dog Bravery towards bears, Amish horse and buggies, UPS guys, etc, its best he does not get close to Rodents with Attitude.

Dead Worm Number Five

When I'm off on archaeology digs I have a pretty good "eye" that lets me trowel away at a brisk clip and still detect changes in soil color, texture or the presence of small artifacts.  The problem is, I can never turn it off.  So on my daily walks with Hank the Dog I'm always seeing things.

Here a worm did not make it off the sidewalk when the sun got hot.  Farewell, Worm Number Five.

When I see worms struggling across sidewalks and streets I always - in the interest of Karma - pick them up and toss them to safety.  Of course I can't save them all.

Home with the Turkeys

Back home.

It's a long journey.  We woke up at 6am back in Northern England.  A fellow excavator gave us a ride to the Newcastle airport for a flight leaving at 9:30. 

Newcastle has a weird airport....you have to get there early as with any international flight.  But after clearing security you wait in a large, heavily commercial hall until 20 or 30 minutes before your departure time.  I guess they want you to buy all kinds of duty free swag.  The smell of high priced perfume is pervasive.  But its sort of fun.  There are always Stag Parties and Bachelorette Parties heading off to various destinations.  Elaborate and often embarrassing costumes are often involved.

One hour flight to Amsterdam.  With a tight connection on the other side it was nice that they read out the gate connections for you before landing.

We walked straight from the Newcastle flight to the Minneapolis one which was already boarding.  International transport is really quite remarkable.

I spent the 8 hour flight watching movies.  I had not previously seen Barbie, which I mostly enjoyed as unserious satire.  

Short walk to the shuttle which took us to the larger town near us, then a short drive home.  

6am to 6pm, although of course we were flying west and crossed five or six time zones.

When we got home there were wild turkeys walking around on our front lawn.  Having never seen such critters in town before I did consider the possibility I was hallucinating.  But the photographic evidence suggests otherwise.

A few days of catching up are in order.  I'll have additional thoughts on travels and digging over the next couple of weeks.

Magna 2024 - Amphibians

No update yesterday.  It rained all day and the site could not be walked in much less excavated.  We had talks in the morning and a nice walk in the afternoon.  

Today, our last day of the session, started out better.  I was delighted when at start of work a wheelbarrow was turned over and a rather handsome toad had taken up residence under it.  I guess Thursday was even too wet for him.

And of course, no opportunity for a silly photo should ever be missed.....

Then it was most of a day of digging.  Everything was just a little harder.  The trowel comes away coated in mud.  Makes you remember that they are usually used by brick layers to slather on mortar.  Every bucket and wheel barrow clings to its load of extra heavy stuff.  And you have to step carefully on slick surfaces.  Still, a fair bit of work got done.  I was just too busy to take pictures of it.

I'll have some follow up thoughts on the dig in a few days.

Cheers!

Crrroooaaakkkk!

Non Zero Odds of a Stinkbug

I'm occasionally advised that turning a Dixie Cup upside down is Wrong, yet another example of the Error of my Ways.

To which I'd respond that the odds of a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug  (YUCK! ) crawling in there, while not high, cannot be regarded as zero.....

FIRST Robotics 2024 - Tournament Bound Again

And here we go again.  The FIRST robotics competition season runs for six weeks.  This year we had the longest possible gap between two events, doing a Week One and now a Week Six event.  And boy howdy, we needed every day of the interval to pull off a complete rebuild of the robot.

Elevator...gone.  Number of motors, down from 17 to 15.  Lots of pulleys, cables, brackets, wires....adios.  It is a cleaner robot and one that has survived several in testing impacts with solid objects.  We'd like more time of course, but here's what the critter could do with four days to deadline....

Actually not bad.  There's fine tuning to do.  We'd like the spin up to taking a shot to be a little shorter.  And the velocity is certainly enough to take shots from further out once the auto tracking systems are tweaked a bit.  In fact it has enough power that it broke the board on the top of our testing target.  Our drive team are confident they can handle it.

The glitches, and the promise of excellence, both are related to the robot's ability to "see" where it is on the field.  It does this with cameras, processors and software algorithms.  It can find, navigate towards and inhale game pieces.  It can go the the right spot on the field.  It can lock onto a target and adjust angles to make the shot.  Usually.

So, how many eyes does this require?

The robot needs binocular vision for three different kinds of targets, so like many spiders it has six "eyes".  Two of them - BETA and GAMMA - are right on the front of the intake, constantly searching for things that look like large, orange bagels....

Well, we'll see how it all works out.  Of course the main goal is the kids learning things.  By that standard it has been an outstanding season.  Building robots is sort of a secondary....

Beached Whale

So here's something I had not seen before.  And likely never will again.

Near one of the areas we fish at a 70 foot long Sperm Whale had run aground on the rocks just off shore.  Poor guy couldn't get free even with a rising tide.

Obviously this sort of thing draws a crowd.....

It's a weird sensation.  You want to do something to help.  Maybe have everyone wade out there, grab a fin and roll the poor beastie out into deeper water.  But of course, logically, an adult sperm whale of this size can weigh 45 tons, and there is nothing you can do to help them out of a situation like this.

We hung around a while.  Once the novelty wore off it felt rather sad.  On our way back up the beach a couple of sheriff's deputies in an ATV had gotten stuck in some loose sand.  Our party of hardy Midwesterners having plenty of experience with vehicles and snow drifts was happy to put a shoulder into things and help get them unstuck.  It made us feel a bit better after not being able to do anything at all for the whale.

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Update. Sadly, but predictably, the whale did not survive.  Evidently it was only 45 feet long.  I don't think that beach will be a popular destination in the next few warm, sunny days.