Jump Scare

Well, a couple of days of hard work on the house clean up project.  It's what my Scottish friends would refer to as "a fair bit o' graft".  

After a while you become cautious.  You haul things out into the light before exploring too closely.  Hmmm, this seems OK.

Wait a minute.  What's that little pile of stuff????

Sawdust and mouse droppings.  So lets open that drawer very carefully............

We're in the clear this time, but there were some unexpected scares earlier, when indignant mice jumped out of things we were trying to move.  Exciting.  Especially as we'd had a couple of beers and watched an episode of "Alien Earth" the night before.  Really puts you on edge regards things jumping unexpectedly.

Things not to do in a Scary House/Sci Fi Movie

We've got a bit of a project going on these days.  It's going to take a fair chunk of my time, energy and sense of humor. 

My dad passed away some years back, and about six months ago my mom went into memory care.  My parent's house had gotten into a pretty bad state.  In the usual fashion of people struggling to hang in there, and with some extra challenges that need not be delved into for our story.  

Suffice to say there's a mess, and our family has to deal with it.

Now, the first rule of every movie featuring a Scary House is:  DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR!

Jars of pickles, long forgotten.  How long?  I think we helped move my folks into this home 25 years ago.  These jars of pickles made that trip.  How old were they at that time?  Well, there's probably some dates on the jar tops but this is as close as I got.  You'll notice that some of the jars are mostly empty.  To switch genres, in every sci fi movie where cryonic preservation chambers are used as a plot device...a few of them fail. 

Here too, some of those jars contain the desiccated, hideous mummies of pickles from the last century.  

Things were actually worse in other parts of the house.  A quarter inch of dust was everywhere.  As areas started to be cleared we of course wanted to vacuum a bit.  One of my brothers was sent to the basement where a vacuum cleaner had been sighted some time ago.  When he dragged it up the stairs I looked behind him.....and saw the corpses of several long dead mice that had fallen out when he moved it!

The vacuum sat in a room for a bit.  I even found the instruction manual.  It boasted that this was "The Machine of Tomorrow, Today". But before we got around to powering it up it became clear from the smell that there were more, probably many more, dead mice inside.

Out the door it got chucked.  Next session we bring in a shop vac and throw the rodent charnel house into the trash...

By the by, this is a "Rainbow" brand vacuum cleaner.  Although in recent years they've apparently been a staple of the sort of door to door salespersons that preferentially prey upon the elderly it is said to be a decent brand.

Out of curiosity I tried to figure out just what model it was, and just how old.

Unclear....might also be 25 years or so.

Ah, The Machine of Tomorrow.  It does look futuristic, and I'm thinking the mice mistook it for a cryonics pod.  Guess they should have watched a few more sci fi movies....

The Perfidious Squirrels

I use some words just because I like to say them.  Perfidious is one such word.  For reasons I can't fathom it is commonly used by the French to criticize the English.  "Perfidious Albion" being the usual framing.  Evidently it was used by a Spanish-French playwright in the 1700's and just caught on.

Anyway, I've started using this word - so descriptive of dastardly behavior - to describe the Perfidious Squirrels.  My dog hates 'em, and I think he's got the right of it.  

Oddly the etymology of the word is a bit "doggy", making this very appropriate.

Perfidy, meaning treachery, faithlessness, or falsehood, comes from the Latin phrase "per fidem decipere" which means "to deceive through trust".  

Of course dogs would never do this.  That's why they have probably been called Fido, meaning faithful, for a very long time.  But oddly, it was Abraham Lincoln who popularized it, having a dog by that name that he regretfully left behind when be became president.  Supposedly his wife was concerned he'd chew on things and soil the carpets!  

Presidential dogs have gotten away with worse behavior in recent times.

Taxidermy Bar

Because tastes in such matters vary widely you'll find different "themes" in saloons, taverns, pubs and like establishments.  Biker bars.  Sports bars.  Gay bars.  It's all very egalitarian.

One interesting subvariant here in Wisconsin is the Taxidermy Bar.  And reigning supreme among them is The Moccasin Bar in Hayward.

A bit dowdy on the outside but don't be deterred.  Inside....well, it was something I simply had to show our visitor from England.

It looks to have had a tidy up and remodel since the last time I was there.  So on the surface it's now just your average Wisconsin bar.

But all around the walls....

Stuffed critters acting out various dramas.  Here's a dishonest poker game.

Tipsy ground squirrels belting out "Sweet Adeline".  I'm guessing some patrons confuse it with "Sweet Caroline" and expect the little rodents to add on "Bup, bup, Bah!"

A Kangaroo Court, sadly lacking kangaroos.

Although the implication is that he was framed, the Badger does look pretty guilty....

A boxing match.

There are also many large stuffed fish including what was once the World Record Muskie.  This status was always considered controversial so perhaps it is best that another and larger fish took the crown.

Ah well.  A chance to show our guest - yes, that's her up above - something she won't see in New York or LA.  Shockingly the Moccasin, cultural treasure that it is, is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Maybe somebody should do something about that?  

A Day of Victories

It's not the things you can't remember, its the things you remember just a bit wrong....

As we headed out the door to fly overseas in late April I realized I had my house and car keys with me.  I recall where I was at that moment and that I commented to my wife that I had better leave them at home.  We both remembered that I put them down somewhere between the garage where I was setting our bags and the kitchen.  On our return they were nowhere to be found.

Since older people losing their car keys is short hand for losing their wits this has bothered us both to the point of a substantial bounty being placed on the keys.  Today my better half picked up a pair of jeans I had hung up, evidently when I switched to traveling clothes, and of course there in the pocket...

My next task of the day was to figure out why there was a dead mouse smell in my car.  Traveling might have something to do with this as well.  When you leave your vehicles in the garage for three weeks the little rodent deadbeats figure out they are a nice place to live.  We'd cleaned out a nest of chewed up paper from my wife's car.  Fortunately the occupant decided to climb into a trash can and expire.  So this was a smell I knew all too well.  As it turns out there is an alternate explanation.  Not a mouse.  Three mice.  

Pretty nasty but now cleaned and bleached.  Given their abilities to get in and out of places I have no idea why these guys decided to just stay in their nest of shredded insulation under the spare tire.  Could they not have just left?  Perhaps that stuff about not leaving animals in cars on 90 degree days has something to it.  Or maybe it was some sort of weird Rodent Death Cult.  Band Name of the day right there....

My assignment in payment for car key finding was dealing with the local Department of Motor Vehicles.  Where might be the tabs and registration paperwork we paid for online?  Not in our possession good bureaucrats.  I showed up prepared for a long tedious wait as the System decided whether it would hear my request and act.  I was prepared...brought some reading material.

In I went clutching, among other things the previous mouse chewed registration.  I was back out in under ten minutes and not only with the tabs but a nice tomato cage that was just sitting on the curb next to their sign.  True, the actual registration seems to be in some DMV-Postal Service limbo, having been mailed to us when we were out of town and sent to the wrong Mail Hold destination, but I could only take so much winning in one day.

The Striped Rats Return

Ah Summer.  The world is renewed.  Everywhere you look there are green growing things.  And yet for some reason the chipmunks have decided it makes sense to infiltrate our domicile and dig at our house plants.  Honestly....nothing edible out there?

After various threats and imprecations I was ordered to deploy the live trap.

Soon thereafter we had one.

My Better Half announced this and said I could take it away any time.  I suggested she heap some verbal abuse on it in the interim.  She allowed as how she'd already called it a "Little Bastard".  But given how few rodents pregnancies actually occur with the benefit of clergy that's just stating a plain ol' fact.

The picture is blurry because this trap is designed for squirrels.  The mesh is just big enough that Chippies can slither through.  So I added plastic side panels.

I used my best Mafioso voice to tell him he'd be "Takin' a little trip across the river....".  Which is literally true, I let them go on the other side.  The metal trap was opened, I banged on it vigorously and off Little Bastard went.  

T'aint Natural I say.....

 November 10th, 7Am....

Approaching 60 degrees.  Mid day it brushed up against 70.  This is very unusual in Wisconsin this time of year.  As I remind my UK friends, we are next door to Canada.

Later in the day I had a small household task up on our roof.  For those who don't own an older house these fall into two main categories:  Current Rodent Entry Points and Future Ones.  But it was so darn nice I sat up there doing my work in shirt sleeves.  And barefoot.

Earlier I'd gone off on my usual three mile morning walk.  I heard a cricket.  There were bugs flying in the air.  A worm was painstakingly trying to cross a wet side walk.  I always pick them up and toss them where I think they are headed.  Who knows when we'll need that extra Karma Point.  I just hope I did not toss it to the wrong side of the sidewalk undoing hours of labor.  If I come up a few Karmic points short and end up reincarnated as a worm that's probably what will happen to me repeatedly.

But I've seen the forecast.  Time to run the gas out of the lawnmower, roll out the snow blower and make sure it will start up when needed.  Goodbye false spring.  

Mouse Control Pro Tip

I spent a couple of days recently helping out an elderly family member.  House cleaning, mouse control.  Regards the latter I wanted it to be clear that the Black Flag of No Quarter had been raised.

Incidentally, Black Flag has a venerable history in pest control.  Insecticides have been sold under that name since 1833, a point in history when a few OG Pirates may have still been sailing in odd corners of the Seven Seas.....

Notes from the Shadowy Underworld

 Unconfirmed sighting of the notorious Badger Trowelsworthy.....

Friend of Bats

As a side benefit of my brewery cave hobby I have learned a few things about bats.  They are odd creatures and I don't think my respect for them will mature into affection.  For sure the other member of the household views them with suspicion.  

Spring weather brings clean up jobs and on a recent morning it was the attic that got some much needed attention.  And from under a box being moved came some nasty hissing and squeaking.

Well I guess I still have a few useful functions around here.  Welding gloves and a container were obtained and the bat was dealt with.  My Bat People have indicated that the best thing to do is to take them outside and put them on a tree.  This time of year the light, which they don't appreciate, is still the place for them as they need warmth.   Here's our pal draped over a branch looking as if he has had a serious night of partying.

I imagine he'll wake up and wonder what the hell was going on when he was half asleep.  And why everything smells like Cheezits!  Hey, it was the first appropriate bat transport container that I could see in the recycling bin.

 

 
 

Sunday Stroll

I've been quite good about daily walks of two miles or so.  Weather is irrelevant but yesterday was actually quite nice.  Overnight there had been just the right combination of temperature, humidity and calmness to produce some remarkable frost everywhere.

When I saw this on the sidewalk a curious thought struck me.  It looks pretty much like when I trim my now white beard.

You don't suppose that 2020,  in the traditional representation, is still sneaking around somewhere?  It would be just typical for him to shave the beard and come back to bring us more mischief! 

Walking on I ended up down by the river.  Chippewa Falls was founded on fur trade and lumbering, so this is rather appropriate:

It appears we have a beaver living in the city park or its environs.  In fact I saw a brown, sleek critter swimming down there a couple of weeks ago and now its ID is certain.  These guys can be significant pests, damming up trout streams, gnawing down nice trees.  I'd not be surprised if he ends up being dealt with by Animal Control.

On the other hand, he seems a particularly ambitious - dare we say Eager - beaver.  He keeps nibbling on the downhill side of this snack a while longer and the problem may resolve on its own.

Snappy Times at the Hungry Mouse Cafe

I have a general live and let live attitude towards nature.  Almost all the fish I catch get released.  Bats that find their way into my home are gently escorted out.  When chipmunks become a garden nuisance I safely live trap them, take them across the river and release them.  I think they race me home.

But I do draw the line on carpenter ants and mice when either is inside my house or our up north cabin.  Ants will eventually eat your building.  Mice, well there's Hanta Virus, the fact that they harbor deer ticks that carry Lyme disease.  And all those little droppings.  Everywhere.

So it's a running battle.  One in which my grandson is a loyal foot soldier.  Mice outside:  good.  Mice inside: trap 'em.

Recently he spied the likely entry point from garage to domicile and we happily worked together to seal it off.  Since then there have been no mice caught in the house.  But they seem to still be present in the attached garage in abundance.  

We had a puppy visitor recently so had to do something other than strew traps about randomly.  We decided to modify a cardboard box as The Hungry Mouse Café.

As you can see it has two doors and considerable decoration.  The little brown ovals are drawn on mouse droppings.  We figure they'd just follow the trail right on in.

This was originally a box of "Cheesecake" frozen treats, which seems a nice bit of advertising.  Note the five star rating and the peanut butter pie.  Note also that there are three loaded mouse traps inside.

So how did it work out?  Well, I came back a few days later and found a full house.  Looks as if a very wild time was had after hours at the Hungry Mouse Café!  Ugh...what a party.

Update.  Since I wrote the above, we found a little niche that the mice must have been using to gain entry.   With that blocked the number of mice caught in the garage went to zero.  Oddly, two weeks on there was a single mouse caught in the house.  I figure he was a lone survivor who had been wandering in what must have seemed to him an empty post rodent Apocalypse.  Mice are not particularly deep thinkers but he must have wondered:  "Hey, in all the stories I've heard its us and the cockroaches who rule after the humans are all gone.  Now, they are still here and I'm the last of my kind.....what gives?"

Boo! Also, Squeak!

My various underground meanderings and collaboration with the DNR have given me an appreciation of bats.  And so, as a Friend to Bats, my domestic duties are a little different when one of the fuzzy little fliegermice is detected in the house.  

This is a Big Brown Bat and was hissing at my better half when she went up into the attic.  It is pretty cold up there and he was sluggish, so she was able to pop a trashcan over him and call me.  After consultation with the Bat Experts I was advised to take him outside and put him on or near a tree.  He might do OK.  It would for him certainly be better odds than the Old Ways which involved a tennis racquet.

Here he is at the bottom of the trash can just prior to release.  He's groggy and torpid.  Probably, and I think we can all relate, wondering what the heck is going on in 2020.  Happy Halloween.

Life at the Lake - Bad Natured

It's beautiful at the lake in mid summer.  Everything is green and growing.  Critters everywhere.  But some of the latter have it in for us.  I guess I can see their perspective, it was their home before we came along.  So we generally have a live and let live attitude....but there are exceptions.

1. Mice.  Industrious little chaps, a few are always finding their way in.  They are oddly inclined to collect great hoards of acorns collected from far and wide, then accumulated on a specific bookshelf.  Solution:  we trap 'em.  As part of our ongoing educational program for the grands I set up one demised rodent outside with the automatic "trail cam" pointing right at him.  I figured we'd see some small predator ambling along for a midnight snack.  But the mouse vanished without a trace or a photo.  I wonder if the little blighter was just faking.

2. Bats.  My first task on arrival to the cabin is always to sweep off the front steps.  A gang of bats has been using it as a social club for years.  They swoop around eating bugs, which we appreciate, then alight to squeak the latest news of the night and to defecate all over the place.  I've been tolerant so far, but recently they have started actually living in the rafters of the overhang.  

Good news really, bat numbers have been crashing in recent years due to White Nose Syndrome.  Maybe this suggests a comeback.  But really now, does it have to be so messy?

Solution:  Put up a couple of bat houses.

My grandson named "Batville", I came up with Gotham City.  We have a third unit I'll dub Batavia when we see how the first two work out.  Here's the little niche that is home to the messy squeakers, I'll seal the area after a respectful interval.  (Addendum:  my contacts in the bat world tell me this is a roosting colony of little brown bats.  Great news as they have been hit so hard by disease in recent years.  Probably some baby batties up there so they get to stay until fall.)

3. Carpenter ants.  Oh, we've had dealings with this bunch before.  We'd sit on our enclosed porch watching the lake and be amused by the industry of black ants that popped their heads out of various nooks and crannies  Here our live and let live attitude came back to bite us, the ants had been stealthily gnawing away at the wood in several sites.  A considerable amount of damage was done and had to be repaired/rebuilt.  At that point we hired a service that comes and sprinkles granules of Death to Ants about at regular intervals.   Their local rep is a cheerful man named Ray.

Our grandson was fascinated by Ray "The Ant Guy".  It was agreed that Ray would treat the outside and that any ants found inside the house would be given The Stomp by the youngster.  It seemed to be working out until we went up for the Fourth and found this:

Yes the ants are back.  A particularly industrious batch of invaders is digging away, dropping granules of sawdust out of that little hole up above every few seconds.    Well we called Ray the Ant Guy.  Hopefully he comes with fire in his eyes and a vengeance in his heart for this gang of wreckers who defied his treatment just a couple of weeks earlier.  And to make sure he found the spot right away...

Spray 'em Ray.  I had considered the more classic "Nuke 'em from Orbit" but I would not want Ray to take me literally.

I wish ill to very few life forms but am eagerly awaiting The Big Stomp for these guys.  

Time Capsule - Button Box Part Two

Today a bit of Canadian history from the button box.   

This is a uniform button from the Canadian Militia.  You can think of this organization as being a combination of National Guard and Army reserve.  The lineage of the militia goes all the way back to the days of French rule in Canada.  A summary of militia history can be found HERE. 

 

I'd call this an effective design.  It's not easy to make a chubby rodent look capable of combat but I think they pulled it off.  Various militia buttons feature either a beaver or the crown as the central device.  I've seen one source that plausibly says the crown was favored in English speaking Canada, the beaver in the French speaking parts.  As to the date.....I thought 1900 give or take a decade.  When war broke out in 1914 it was realized that the militia was not much of a fighting force and it seems to have become largely obsolete at that time.  

The back of the button makes things more interesting.

P. Tait and Co.  Limerick (Ireland).  Peter Tait started a factory for making uniforms in 1852.  Two years later the Crimean War proved good for business.  Soon after that the American Civil War broke out and Tait not only sold uniforms to the Confederacy but  even delivered them on his own small fleet of ships.

Tait prospered, being elected Mayor of Limerick and later being knighted.  He handed the business over to his son in the mid 1870's.  At this point it was renamed "The Auxiliary Forces Clothing and Equipment Company".  

I suppose the buttons used could have retained the earlier company name, but it does appear my ball park dating of the item could have been off by a couple of decades.

Christmas Bills

It's that time of year again.  My taxidermy pal Bill the Squirrel has an abundance of wardrobe options.  This year he's stylin' a knitted wine bottle cover made to resemble a classic Ugly Sweater.  I suspect the Asian textile mill workers who crank this stuff out pause occasionally to wonder what they'd actually be used for.

I don't think they imagined this:

May your days be Merry and Weird.

Me versus the neighborhood punks

We've had a lot of "Nature" going on in the back yard this summer.  Maybe we've let the garden go a little wild, maybe the neighbors are keeping their cats indoors more.  Mostly its been a plus, the Raccoon Depredations on our pond notwithstanding.

But in the last couple of weeks there have been some actions by our fuzzy pals that cannot be ignored.  Every tomato gets stolen, partly eaten and discarded.  Bean vines get nipped off at the base, evidently just to see what they taste like.  Eventually my wife ordered me into action.

The culprits appeared to be chipmunks and bunnies.  With a mandate to remove but not kill them a live trap was needed.  I had one on hand but the mesh was too wide for chipmunks.  Having a Secret Robotics Workshop comes in handy....I just added a casing of clear polycarbonate.  Tough, bullet resistant, more than enough for these characters.

Ready for deployment.  Right under the bean arbor and next to the tomatoes. 

A captured perp trying to look innocent.  Notice that I am using for bait the very tomatoes they fancy so much.

More cute, equally guilty.  A baby bunny.

When I tell my better half that I am taking them "For a little ride over the river" I mean it literally.  I'm not mean.  I want them to have decent little rodent lives somewhere else.  Or maybe not, foxes gotta eat too.  Good luck ya little striped rat.

---------
Current tally is seven chipmunks, one bunny and a bat.  Although the latter was captured in the house with a net - and safely released - it counts in the seasonal campaign against Critterdom.

The Lathe of Heaven goes CNC

I guess the weirdness started when I recently picked up and re-read a classic Ursula K. LeGuin novel, A Wizard of Earthsea.  Good stuff, a fair bit of which was - ahem - later borrowed by the author of the Harry Potter series.   Another favorite LeGuin book of mine is The Lathe of Heaven.  In it the premise is that a man is able to alter reality by the content of his dreams.  This is a thoughtful concept and handled well, but dreams seem such an inefficient way to alter reality.  Rather like the difference between making something on a simple lathe versus a 21st century CNC machine.

It appears I have stumbled upon a more efficient method.  The bedtime stories I make up for grandchildren have started coming true.

It was a week or so back. The grands were staying over on a night that had storms and high winds.  We peered out the window and watched the branches of trees flailing back and forth alarmingly.  In fact a big maple tree in the neighbor's yard had one huge branch shear right off and land on their car.  It made quite an impression.  On the grands that is, the car surprisingly just had a broken mirror and a series of dents on the top.

Bed time story that night was about a mamma squirrel putting her baby squirrel to bed.  Of course there were squirrel snacks involved and squirrel bedtime stories about acorns.  Finally the baby squirrel insisted on being rocked in his nest but just then the wind blew up and gave him a wild, crazy ride.  I did at the last minute say that the part of the tree that the squirrel nest was in did not fall down.  

The next morning in our own yard there was a disorderly pile of sticks and leaves.  A fallen squirrel nest.  Tipping it over I found.....a newborn baby squirrel.

Grey squirrels generally have litters of 2 - 4 and this was the only kit to be seen.  According to the Internet mother squirrels will come and retrieve fallen young, and the best thing to do is just put them in a bit of nesting near the base of the nearest tree.  This we did and a few hours later the baby squirrel was gone.

Props to mamma squirrel by the way.  They tend to be scatterbrained parents, having random batches of children several times a year and by assorted fathers.  They put them up in ramshackle nests that always look ready to fall apart.  From what I've heard them say I bet they scold all the time.  But they sure are devoted.

Of course bedtime stories the following night had a much happier tone to them.  I'm considering a sub plot where grandpa wins the lottery.

The Yorkshire Hills - Jubilee Cave

Victoria Cave is certainly the most famous of the Yorkshire caves above Settle, but it is not the only one up there.  My OS map showed a half dozen along the five miles I walked that day, and from reading other sources I have learned of others that have been explored and excavated for evidence of early times.

Here's a substantial cave just past Victoria.  I can't find reference to any archaeology finds but it has the look of a place that has been cleared, presumably for that purpose.  One reference I found named it "Wet Cave".  Quite apt, it had in it a small stream running through tenacious cave mud.  My hiking boots still have a thin coating of this two weeks after my return to the States.

Other than a couple of rock climbers at Victoria Cave, and the hale oldster I mentioned the other day, I had the high country to myself.  Unless you count this inhabitant of a cave entrance.

In the same area as Victoria Cave is Jubilee Cave.  I understand that it was excavated at the same time as the more famous cave, evidently by the Pig Yard Club I mentioned on Wednesday.  There were said to be Romano-British and neolithic finds but if there is a detailed report it has eluded me.

The cave has three entrances that link together in a series of small rooms and rubble strewn passages.  A sign indicates that the roof is not stable and I did not venture all the way back.

I never like to see modern artifacts - aka trash - in sites like this.  But I was intrigued by this.  It was a nice reminder of the discovery of Victoria Cave by a wandering hound.  Did some walker bring a tennis ball up the hill and toss it into this cave in conscious homage?

It was a pleasant thought with which to finish my morning.  As I sat outside Jubilee Cave eating my lunch I looked across a few yards at a pile of rock that also seemed to have three entrances.  It was almost like a miniature version of Jubilee.

And if you look very, very closely.....

I was sitting quietly enough that three little bunnies emerged, each from a different little cave entrance.  Surely this would be more than enough to send an enthusiastic dog down a dark hole in pursuit!  Maybe this is why the tennis ball was ignored.

There are lots of caves in Yorkshire and a very dedicated community of caver-historians who explore them.  I suspect there is a lot left to be discovered.