Wapsi Square Forum

lake_wrangler wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 8:49 pm I came home tonight, to find out that both mouse traps have been licked clean of peanut butter, yet the traps themselves are still untriggered!

Sounds as if you have an infestation of Mus ornithoptris (the North American hovering mouse).



One thing you could try, is tying a couple of turns of twine around the trigger/bait platform, before baiting. If the mice chew on (or tug on) the twine to try to get to the bait caught under it, they'll be more likely to trigger the trap. Solid bait tied to the trigger has a similar benefit.

A friend of mine taught me the best way (he says) to make a standard Victor (or similar) rat trap more effective. First thing is to screw it down to a piece of 2x4 - this keeps the trap from flipping when it triggers. Second, put the trap in a narrow box (or wrap metal netting around it) so that there's only one direction that the rat can approach from... the baited end, where the bar will come crashing down.

Both of these tricks make it much harder for a rat to access the trap from a direction where it won't be hit if the trap triggers.

Meanwhile, down in McGehee, AR, someone hasn't updated a gas station's sign, even though the business is long gone.

Nah - J R Ewing is running a sale! You just need to get there early.

Just a little friendly bit of advice: if you intend for anything to be delivered to your house (or don't want a neighbor's stuff delivered to your house), make sure your house number is easily visible on both your mailbox and your house.

Also, if you order something online or through a mail order catalogue (I think those still exist), and they ask you for your phone number... put your REAL phone number!

I haven't had a single day this week where I didn't have at least one fake or invalid phone number, which meant I couldn't ask that person for directions or ask them to authorize a signature release so I wouldn't need to get a signature from anyone when I got there. And I'm not sure, but there's a good chance I accidentally delivered my last shipment to the wrong house. I tried calling the customer, but it didn't connect, probably because of a bad signal, and there were no visible numbers anywhere.

Though I may also be okay, as I think the number that waa on my list and on the order were both wrong. It was the home of a farm LLC's agent, and I looked it up on Google... and the house number was different.

I truly hate businesses that have no street number displayed...

Back in 1966 i spent a summer delivering telegrams on a bicycle.

As i recall, house/business numbers were more likely to be displayed in those days, but there were still enough times when i had to figure out which of two or three houses i was looking for...

AnotherFairportfan wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:39 am I truly hate businesses that have no street number displayed...

Just having a house name displayed and not a number is less cool when you need an emergency service.

Also annoying is your address not being on 50% of satnavs, even though it's been here 120 years. (Our delivery curry got lost last night.)

It’s worse when you’re a school bus driver, too. Especially Special Ed drivers.

Asking for directions doesn't always help, unfortunately.

thehappyman wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 3:58 am Also annoying is your address not being on 50% of satnavs, even though it's been here 120 years. (Our delivery curry got lost last night.)

You might want to check it on OpenStreetMap.org - this is a community-sourced map database that is used by a number of satnav programs (I use Osmand+ myself and it's absolutely worth every penny... it does routing and navigation without needing to have live cellphone service).

If your house number isn't shown, you can create an OpenStreetMap account and edit the database yourself. Add numbers to your neighbors' houses while you're at it. The changes will go into the live database almost immediately, and offline-navigation programs like Osmand will get database updates within a month or two.

I think that Google Maps has a way to submit corrections, but it's been a long time since I used it.

My biggest gripe with most satnav programs is that they seem to try to route people to where a building is closest to a street, which isn't necessarily the right place. Our property is in a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood of twisty little streets, and it backs up against a medium-size connector road. Satnav programs (including Google Maps) always seem to end up directing people to the back, but there's a sound wall here with no entrance and a strict "no parking" rule, so people are left rather bewildered. I haven't found any way to override this... the navigation programs don't pay enough attention to obstructions and don't look for "building entrance" annotations.

Sorry to hear about your lost curry! It's sad to think of a lost curry, abandoned and forlorn, shivering from the cold as it cowers under the landscaping shrubs trying to evade hungry predators, slowly going feral as it loses all hope of rescue, yet still holding onto its dreams of a nice warm bed of basmati rice and a comforting blanket of garlic naan.

My biggest gripe with most satnav programs is that they seem to try to route people to where a building is closest to a street, which isn't necessarily the right place.

An Uber driver told me once that garbage-truck routes are a major portion of the database, so - particularly for stores and the like - the GPS wants to show you the route to the dumpster.

I'm of the opinion that some companies also use satellite photography to find more roads. The problem is that fences don't show up well in those photographs, so they fail to distinguish between an actual dirt road and a tractor-path through a farmer's field... or between an actual road around a building and a secured parking area behind the building.

Then there was this one place I was told to turn left... the problem being that the road I was supposed to turn onto was three feet above the road I was on.

Since discovering it, I've never been more in favor of What 3 Words than anything. However, since it's still a niche service compared to Google and Apple (and even Bing), I tend to use a couple of different methods to find addresses.

The one that tends to be the most accurate is looking at a county's GIS mapping - mostly for tax purposes, but it can be extremely helpful to find addresses, especially at apartment complexes and in trailer parks and gated communities.

Maricopa County has several apps, including historical aerials (which was a surprise for me). Most of the time, it's part of a parcel lookup program which allows you to search for addresses.

My former home county of Waukesha back in Wisconsin has its own map as well.

Back in the 70s when I was posted to Luke AFB west of Phoenix, an odd thing happened that really threw the Emergency Services systems for a loop. It seems the cities of Phoenix, Mesa, and Tempe are neighbors, and they all used a road naming system dating from their founding in 1800s. They had a Main street N-S, with the ones on either side being called (number) Street, Road, or Avenue. So, somebody on 23d Ave had a mailbox friend on 23d Street or whatever.

One day a child called the operator asking for help - their mother wouldn't wake up. "Where do you live?" "57th." "Ah -- 57th what?" "I don't know."

The street address was known, but not which street type. This was before caller ID and such, so SIX ambulances were dispatched in three cities to cover all the possibilities. Happy ending, but big problem identified.

Dave wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 9:00 pmOne thing you could try, is tying a couple of turns of twine around the trigger/bait platform, before baiting. If the mice chew on (or tug on) the twine to try to get to the bait caught under it, they'll be more likely to trigger the trap. Solid bait tied to the trigger has a similar benefit.

A friend of mine taught me the best way (he says) to make a standard Victor (or similar) rat trap more effective. First thing is to screw it down to a piece of 2x4 - this keeps the trap from flipping when it triggers. Second, put the trap in a narrow box (or wrap metal netting around it) so that there's only one direction that the rat can approach from... the baited end, where the bar will come crashing down.

Both of these tricks make it much harder for a rat to access the trap from a direction where it won't be hit if the trap triggers.

Another option is to put the bait on a pressure plate connected to twenty pounds of RDX. After that, you won't have to worry about rats in that particular kitchen again. Or those particular dirty dishes on those specific counters again. Or anything else regarding that specific kitchen again.

AnotherFairportfan wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:39 am I truly hate businesses that have no street number displayed...

Back in 1966 i spent a summer delivering telegrams on a bicycle.

As i recall, house/business numbers were more likely to be displayed in those days, but there were still enough times when i had to figure out which of two or three houses i was looking for...

Somebody who I knew used to work as a mailman during the Christmas season in the 1960's for a bit of extra money. He always hated being assigned to one particular neighbourhood, but not because the houses lacked proper address markers. The houses were fine. The problem was the envelopes.

Every street in that neighbourhood had the exact same name, but with a different description. So it was something like Jones St., Jones Ave., Jones Blvd., Jones Rd., and so on. And apparently a great number of people sending mail to the neighbourhood would just address it to "321 Jones" or whatever.

In this county, there are roads with the same name in different townships that are not the same road. I think the dispatchers have a better handle on it now, but it used to cause all kinds of confusion for emergency responders.

Catawampus wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 10:03 am Another option is to put the bait on a pressure plate connected to twenty pounds of RDX. After that, you won't have to worry about rats in that particular kitchen again. Or those particular dirty dishes on those specific counters again. Or anything else regarding that specific kitchen again.

Meh. RDX-Rat is so last year that even the big-box stores carry it. It's for the unadventurous suburbanite.

The really intrepid DIY rat-remover uses antimatter. The bait is suspended over an opening in the magnetic bottle, the rat's tail or leg breaks the field when it tries to get to the bait, and fzzz-FOOM! No more rat... and in fact no more rats for several miles.

Dave wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 12:25 pm

Catawampus wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 10:03 am Another option is to put the bait on a pressure plate connected to twenty pounds of RDX. After that, you won't have to worry about rats in that particular kitchen again. Or those particular dirty dishes on those specific counters again. Or anything else regarding that specific kitchen again.

Meh. RDX-Rat is so last year that even the big-box stores carry it. It's for the unadventurous suburbanite.

The really intrepid DIY rat-remover uses antimatter. The bait is suspended over an opening in the magnetic bottle, the rat's tail or leg breaks the field when it tries to get to the bait, and fzzz-FOOM! No more rat... and in fact no more rats for several miles.

The only problem with that is that while not specifically noted as not covered, I still get the feeling that this sort of incident would not be covered by my home insurance...

lake_wrangler wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 7:06 pm

Dave wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 12:25 pm

Catawampus wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 10:03 am Another option is to put the bait on a pressure plate connected to twenty pounds of RDX. After that, you won't have to worry about rats in that particular kitchen again. Or those particular dirty dishes on those specific counters again. Or anything else regarding that specific kitchen again.

Meh. RDX-Rat is so last year that even the big-box stores carry it. It's for the unadventurous suburbanite.

The really intrepid DIY rat-remover uses antimatter. The bait is suspended over an opening in the magnetic bottle, the rat's tail or leg breaks the field when it tries to get to the bait, and fzzz-FOOM! No more rat... and in fact no more rats for several miles.

The only problem with that is that while not specifically noted as not covered, I still get the feeling that this sort of incident would not be covered by my home insurance...

I don't really expect that that would matter to you, actually.

AnotherFairportfan wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 8:53 pm

lake_wrangler wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 7:06 pm

Dave wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 12:25 pm
Meh. RDX-Rat is so last year that even the big-box stores carry it. It's for the unadventurous suburbanite.

The really intrepid DIY rat-remover uses antimatter. The bait is suspended over an opening in the magnetic bottle, the rat's tail or leg breaks the field when it tries to get to the bait, and fzzz-FOOM! No more rat... and in fact no more rats for several miles.

The only problem with that is that while not specifically noted as not covered, I still get the feeling that this sort of incident would not be covered by my home insurance...

I don't really expect that that would matter to you, actually.

Well, I guess that would all depend on whether I was at work or at my (by then former) home, when the trap was triggered...

I read a lot about Edison when I was a kid. He liked to set traps to electrocute rats and mice.

Even though my grandfather was an electrician, I was strongly discouraged from trying that at home.

I used to live near a street that (in part due to freeway construction) had two north ends, a south end, and an east end.

Something odd that I noticed on this job:

Just north of Pine Bluff, within the Pine Bluff metropolitan area, is a town called White Hall. This town is home to the Pine Bluff Arsenal, where for a while a lot of chemical weapons were stockpiled, and later destroyed.

That isn't the weird part, by the way.

South of Pine Bluff is a town called Monticello, which has some really nice looking buildings. South of Monticello, where state highway 425 intersects with highway 172, there's another place called White Hall, but I can't find it on any map, and no mention of it anywhere, aside from the sign next to the road.