stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

I had mice in the garage like crazy, a month ago. I don't think my traps caught a dozen but maybe
!. After ones of adult size, there were little ones - not as big as my thumb.

The spring hoop house has a center path that is 18" below ground level, so that house is about 5' high. There is a "vestibule" with 2 steps down to the door. I've bricked that little area in, without mortar. Seems that I've made something of a mouse habitat.

I've set hoop house traps in the spring but they need to be in the garage in the fall. The mice just travel through the carport and go indoors.

A trap set under the kitchen sink caught a mouse within 30 minutes of it being seen. Got out 2 new traps with my regular peanut butter dipped raisins and never caught another!

Better put new bait on them by now but wonder if they just aren't risking coming in the house yet.

It's been somewhat warm, outdoors. Nights in the teens just haven't happened. On a couple of days, I have seen what was probably a fungus gnat, outdoors. It's kinda noteworthy to see an insect this late in the year. It must have been a month ago that I picked a yellowjacket off the interior wall of the shed (with gloves on ) and tossed him outside on the ground. I didn't feel like stepping on him after that.

Steve

you got them before they could make more, but they always make more outside, which is why i just want to plug the gaps i can find. i'd leave them alone outside if they never got in the walls of the house any more.

they don't really do much damage to the things we grow. they may chew on a few beans or peas here or there but they don't eat onions, peppers or tomatoes that i've noticed.

i've not been growing grains since one experiment with wheat and rye (which was fun and i wish i could do more winter cover crops again, but Mom hated what happened with the chipmunks moving seeds around).

fungus gnats will look like pepper on the snow here when i walk in the woods in the fall or in the spring.

i'm learning more about mouse habits by watching mouse trap vids where people set up cameras to watch the traps.

i've yet to get any answer about how long a mouse will live in a wall without access to food and water.

so far i've got six mice. i'm guessing i have at least four more in this tribe to capture. i don't know yet if i've gotten the ones that have been in the wall and i haven't found the gap they are using...

 

[flowerbug]

i want to get rid of this huge pile of mouse/chipmunk habitat which is
right next to the house, but Mom won't do it...

we call it The Berm. it was put in place to block the view from the SW. a big pile of sand and then topped with black plastic, rocks and a few trees planted on it. now the trees are getting too big and i don't like them being too close to the house and the big pile of rocks is a haven to any critter that wants to nest under the rocks and in those spots that have been dug/chewed through the black plastic.

the usual tracks i find in the snow are from The Berm along the foundation and then around the entrance to the crawl space and then behind the AC unit. it's a highway. almost all of the mice i catch are in the traps i put behind the AC unit or near there. otherwise there's a 10-30ft layer of crushed rinsed limestone the mice have to run across to get to the house from any of the surrounding garden spaces.

we saw yet another semi-feral kitty (or another of the neighbor's kitties) the other day. hope they get some mice or rabbits when they come through. in the past few months this makes it the fourth kitty we've seen come along.

 

[digitS']

In the hoop house, what I thought might be true about mice was all but verified ..

. After I had caught several with a trap in what I bet was just the right location -- no more caught!

Instead, there was dirt on the trap. I got the dirt off. Then, there was dirt again! New trap. SNAP! They show contempt for smelly old traps by scratching dirt on them. I put used traps in bleach water for a few days, then rinse.

Steve

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

DD programs in Ruby on Rails at HP. She also is adept at Python.

Where I last worked in 2009, the programmers were forced to use Fox Pro. Old and outdated!

 

[flowerbug]

In the hoop house, what I thought might be true about mice was all but verified ..

. After I had caught several with a trap in what I bet was just the right location -- no more caught!

Instead, there was dirt on the trap. I got the dirt off. Then, there was dirt again! New trap. SNAP! They show contempt for smelly old traps by scratching dirt on them. I put used traps in bleach water for a few days, then rinse.

Steve

they can scent mark things to mark territory, but as of yet i have had no problems with dirty traps catching mice on the highway here. i won't describe what happened the other day, but as of yet no amount of gross deters them as far as i can tell.

i've caught mice for three months on an empty trap with just the smell of peanut butter on it (in the car where the rains could not get at it). they're very curious and have a very keen sense of smell.

 

[flowerbug]

DD programs in Ruby on Rails at HP. She also is adept at Python.

Where I last worked in 2009, the programmers were forced to use Fox Pro. Old and outdated!

i'm not adept at Python yet, but having worked with computers as long as i have it usually isn't too hard for me to figure things out. as what i'm doing now is all for fun there's no pressure or schedule.

i remember Fox Pro but i never had to use it for anything.

people can still make a living writing COBOL so hey, if they're happy and doing needed work it's all fine with me. i'm glad i don't have to do that, i can read/write COBOL but i wouldn't consider myself an expert at it. same with a bunch of languages...

 

[flowerbug]

the mouse traps have finally (i hope) gotten the culprit. the past three days no new mice have been caught and i've not heard any more chewing in the wall. i sure hope so. i still have not found the way they are getting in the wall to begin with. i have my suspect places, but don't have a boroscope to be able to see for sure what is up. it's complicated...

the last mouse i caught was on the small side so it could have been going through some wire mesh i have put on (which prevents me from easily feeling around inside further and why i would need a scope to see better in there). the wire mesh is cemented in place at the end of a pile of cemented sandstones used to make steps for the patio door to my room. the steps are also over a vent from the basement so when they built the steps and cemented them in place they made a tunnel for the air to go in and out. they did not make sure the area around the vent was sealed up properly and so after a few rounds of mice getting in through there i did put the wire mesh on and cemented it in place. now it may be that i should get some finer wire mesh and put it on there. i may even have some if i can find it (i hate it when we reorganise the garage )...

in other news the game/program is getting very close to version 1. i need to do some distribution/setup/dependency things and then put it out there further, but it's gone along well the past few weeks as i've had time/energy to poke at it.

family news... ugh... pass.

 

[digitS']

Flowerbug, I was tempted to post some quotes by linguists essentially explaining (for the umpteenth time, I'm sure) the difference between a linguist and a polyglot. Of course, you were not talking about those languages. Good for you being able to use programming ones with purpose.

It sounds like you might almost enjoy living in a house 120 years old like mine with your curiosity about what is going on inside the walls. Or, is that just frustration ?

Although it's still small, this house was built in 3 parts. I'm fairly sure that there was a kitchen fire that prompted a rebuilding of that area at what might have been at a very early date. It allowed for a new basement. Before that, access to a cellar was through the floor in what was then the dining room. That room is now a bedroom and the cellar is a room in the basement where I store roots and such from the garden.

Next came an extension to the utility room taking out the earlier backdoor. That extension also includes a second bedroom. We had only one child at home when we moved here and the previous owners were a childless couple. They are responsible for this addition after, I guess, living in a one-bedroom house for about 30 years.

I was on one archeological dig in my academic career and don't count myself as a digger. Maybe that's why it took me over 10 years to discover the old access to the cellar .

Waste water etc. runs in a pipe to the front of the house and probably has for many years. Honestly, I don't think I can bring myself to locating the "backhouse" and excavating there . It's absolutely a sure bet that it is somewhere out there but I didn't come across evidence while digging for the greenhouse foundation.

Ya know, those locations can hold treasure troves from antiquity .

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

Flowerbug, I was tempted to post some quotes by linguists essentially explaining (for the umpteenth time, I'm sure) the difference between a linguist and a polyglot. Of course, you were not talking about those languages. Good for you being able to use programming ones with purpose.

It sounds like you might almost enjoy living in a house 120 years old like mine with your curiosity about what is going on inside the walls. Or, is that just frustration ?

Although it's still small, this house was built in 3 parts. I'm fairly sure that there was a kitchen fire that prompted a rebuilding of that area at what might have been at a very early date. It allowed for a new basement. Before that, access to a cellar was through the floor in what was then the dining room. That room is now a bedroom and the cellar is a room in the basement where I store roots and such from the garden.

Next came an extension to the utility room taking out the earlier backdoor. That extension also includes a second bedroom. We had only one child at home when we moved here and the previous owners were a childless couple. They are responsible for this addition after, I guess, living in a one-bedroom house for about 30 years.

I was on one archeological dig in my academic career and don't count myself as a digger. Maybe that's why it took me over 10 years to discover the old access to the cellar .

Waste water etc. runs in a pipe to the front of the house and probably has for many years. Honestly, I don't think I can bring myself to locating the "backhouse" and excavating there . It's absolutely a sure bet that it is somewhere out there but I didn't come across evidence while digging for the greenhouse foundation.

Ya know, those locations can hold treasure troves from antiquity .

Steve

this house was built in '96 so about 22+yrs old. frustration for sure... and a desire to know what is going on/where they are getting in.

i did have an archaeology class in college, but it had no field work aspect at all. that said me and a friend enjoyed digging for old bottles (he would also go diving for them and i would man the boat up top for him). funny that as i'm eyeing that bottle collection for getting rid of it since i have done nothing with it other than keep moving it around. so it is also a dust collection too.

as for computer languages, i've always been very good at practical aspects of programming but some parts of the theory were difficult for me (dyslexia and mathematical symbol interpretations just don't go very well together) to pick up. formulas i can only learn very slowly.

i did try to learn German one time but gave up after a few weeks. i had so much rote memorization going on at that time that adding yet another class of it was too much. "ich bin crank" summed it up nicely.

and old houses with strange levels or basements i've seen in many places already and almost bought one when i was in TN but i talked myself out of it. good thing too. it was an old cabin that was upgraded, but was still not finished, it had some nice aspects like having 22acres and an uphill area with a natural spring for a water supply, but it also had a lot of things that would have taken $$ to fix so i had to make a low offer. they didn't accept it and i wouldn't come up further. like i said, good thing... it saved me a lot of headaches i'm sure. the year after i made the offer they had a very heavy snow followed by heavy rains and the road and bridges were washed out in that area and some fatalities from people driving into rivers not noticing that the bridges had been washed out.

one other fun part of that place was the plumbing went into a cesspit and that may be what you are hinting at too... would have been fun to get that fixed.

i've never had to excavate an old outhouse pit for any reason. i think it would be fun to do old basements/cellars and me and the one friend mentioned above did some hunting to try to find some but we never actually did find any we could dig.

now a days they have those ground radar thingies that can help find historical sites. if you had gold in them thar hills you'd find people nosing about...

 

[flowerbug]

i hope i'm out of the woods for a few days...

we had some very high winds (being in an open field area it does kinda come with the territory). high enough winds that it took down our t.v. antenna one night and that also was the pole my internet connection was on so ... (that antenna had been up there over 10yrs without problems before - it's been through a tornado)

along with this high winds came about 2 inches of frozen snow/ice on everything.

i went out a few days ago and made sure the snow was scraped off the cement drive so it could warm up in the sun and dry off. there was a paper sitting on the ice at the end of the drive where the gravel section is at and even though i told myself to be very careful and was doing so i still managed to fall. i was almost all the way down to begin with so i didn't have to fall far, but it was still a pretty good jolt.

which meant the roof was full of ice and snow from the storm, i couldn't get up there to fix anything. the tarp we have up there to cover the cap (intermittent leak) was flapping in the wind and making a lot of noise.

well yesterday the roof was clear enough on two facets that i could see i could get up there but my body was too sore. so Mom called the roofing people since they'd have to come and redo the tarp. i was forbidden to go up there, but i wanted to while the weather was decent enough to get it done.

this morning she's making cookies and says she has to go to the dentist because her tooth hurts. off she goes.

i get out the ladder, my pockets stuffed full of tools and go up on the roof to see what was up. the antenna is laying there twisted up, a stainless steel strap is broken. i needed a pair of pliers to undo it. in my pockets of tools did i bring a pair of pliers? nope. so down the ladder i go. it's a twisty route i have to take because of the ice and where i set up the ladder, but i get the pliers, get back up there, get the rig disconnected and lower it.

once i free the internet box from the pole i connect it to a strap that is holding the tarp in place for now.

the t.v. antenna i took and put on the ground and came inside to check that the internet connection worked and to see what the t.v. might be picking up... then i start laughing. the only channel it isn't getting is one. so i go back outside, plug the cable back into the antenna and lay it on the ground with a few rocks in place to hold it until we figure out what to do with it next.

turns out we didn't need it up on the roof/chimney to begin with. and Mom was just saying how much she hated the thing and i hated it from the beginning...

came back inside. channel now works. antenna laying on the gravel.

called the roofing people and told them to not bother stopping by today as they'd planned later. we're set for now. i'll have to re-route the wire once the ice is gone and it is safe enough for me to get out there and do that.

the entire area around the house of the crushed limestone is ice and it's pretty treacherous to walk out there. i was careful and didn't wipe out.

this calls for some hot chocolate to celebrate.

earlier in the day a deer decided to lay down in the NE garden by the lilac tree (perhaps it liked the pickles/pickle smell?) and i was using the pellet gun to try to get it to run away, but it would not move. i got out the slingshot but ran out of rocks (in the house - i wasn't going outside to try to pry some more from the ice) and it still would not move - not until i went outside and walked at it telling it to get the heck out of here did it finally get up and leave. when it jumped over the back fence it went down that large ditch edge and crashed through the ice in the ditch so i'm hoping it was a very unpleasant experience and won't return. alas, i think it is one of the ones that was born and has run through here a lot... fence. gotta get that fence up...

and in other news, found some origami techniques for making small envelopes. it is quick enough and ok, i have scrap paper to use and to hold it together it takes a bit of glue, but i have a tiny stapler i need to use up the staples... so i'm doing that instead. there are other methods of folding to make small envelopes that don't need glue but a lot more folds and so i'm just going to keep doing these and use up the staples... people will think i'm nuts, but at least it is getting done.

ok, so that is sorta the news... snow in the forecast later this week. that is also why i wanted to get the stuff up top taken care of, before we had more ice/snow on the roof to complicated matters...