Caught in the Act

Sunday, May 24th, 2020 – 100th Avenue Route

Today was 47F and sunny, not even a hint of rain. Starting the week off right, we found money.

Eleven cents. Yes, it looks like two cents, but the coin on the left is a badly-tarnished dime. Eleven cents.

Also, we removed three roadkill birds from the street including this one.

It appears this drone had an encounter with a vehicle. Wonder if it left a splotch on the windshield?

We found a Disney Pooh Piglet pin.

At least we think it is a Piglet pin. Fifteen bucks on eBay. Although, this one was run over a few times and the face was unrecognizable so we couldn’t make a positive ID.

An iPhone screen protector.

It’s an unused iPhone 11 screen protector kit. Before it can protect your phone, it needs to protect itself. Totally shattered.

We came across two batches of pilfered mail.

One small batch was from a mailbox just up 100th about 200 feet. We put it back in the mailbox. The second batch was on 145th and was from a block away on a side street. It was from a couple of mail boxes in a cul-de-sac. We left the pile on top of one of the boxes. Hey, we’re not paid to sort mail.

The “Smoker’s Choice.”

Right. For littering maybe.

We found a bracelet.

Once in a while we find jewelry, mostly cheap trinkets.

Not our style, but this one retails for $40. Our portfolio just went up.

For a while we’ve been finding empty Corona beer bottles on Norway Hill with the caps pressed back on. They have switched to Angry Orchard Crisp Apple hard cider.

We’ll see if they switch back to Corona or move on to White Claw. They seem to be waning.

A pressureless tennis ball?

We weren’t aware of these.

“Pressurized tennis balls have compressed air in rubber balls with a fuzzy fabric cover. Pressureless tennis balls are solid inside. For example, Tretorn Micro-X pressureless tennis balls are filled with 700 million micro cells filled with air. “

“700 million micro cells filled with air.” It’s called foam.

Whoa!

The McLitterers made a second appearance on Norway Hill in as many weeks. The bag contained the standard two clean pancake platters, unopened condiments: two syrups; four butters; two tea bags; and two tea cups, found separately. We’ve found more than fifty of these, but they have been scarce lately.

At a bus stop bench, someone left an empty bologna wrapper.

Oscar Mayer. “Made with Chicken & Pork. Beef Added.” Beef Added? What does that mean?

Monday, May 25th, 2020 – Safeway Route

Yesterday was warm and sunny. Today was cool and wet. We removed a small roadkill rabbit from the road and saw a dead duck near the end of 112th Avenue.

We found more money.

A quarter. We haven’t found a quarter in a while.

Today is Memorial Day and traffic was even lighter than our new pandemic-light.

Yet more unopened food.

A Mountain Dew Amp energy drink. Did they not have the energy to dispose of it properly?

We found a kid’s swim ring in a ditch.

Ok, we understand that the swimming pools are closed and there is limited access to the beach, but really? The ditch?

Two more Angry Orchard cider bottles with lids.

These guys are definitely looking to take over Norway Hill.

At the top of the hill, someone improvised water balloons.

A plastic bag and a rubber glove. It’s a shame to waste a clean rubber glove like that. We have a lot of used ones they can have if they catch us before garbage day.

We saw something new down a steep embankment.

And went down to investigate.

Someone dumped a car door down the hill. Maybe he thought it was contaminated with the coronavirus. Or perhaps he thought summer is here and they wouldn’t need it. Silly goose.

It was too heavy for us to pull up to the road and if we report it to Bothell, they’ll consider it out of their right-of-way. We need to think about this one.

Someone bought a bicycle. It’s good to see people using this extra time at home to get into shape.

Wait. An electric bicycle. We take the “getting into shape” back. We’ll see if you get the 15 mile range with a couch potato on it.

Tuesday, May 26th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route

Well, this was a strange day. It was misty during our entire walk, but that was not the strange thing.

No gloves
No poop bags
No money (not so strange)
No Coors cans at the park-and-ride
No Angry Orchard bottles on Norway Hill.

It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. We could have stayed home. Well, we did remove a roadkill squirrel. Does that count?

An abandoned bicycle at the park-and-ride.

It has a tire issue and is a little beat up. But it has disc brakes. Neither of our mountain bikes have disc breaks. But our bikes are about thirty years old and haven’t been ridden by us for at least fifteen years. Perhaps we should dump them here also.

Once again, as we were on Juanita-Woodinville Drive, we saw a woodpecker on the sidewalk in front of us.

It had been cleaning the moss out of the cracks. We need a lot more woodpeckers.

Wednesday, May 27th, 2020 – Safeway Route

Today was more normal. We found several gloves, a poop bag and Angry Orchard bottles on the hill.

Actually we found Angry Orchard bottles and Corona bottles, all with their caps pressed back on. The Corona bottles were partially hidden, so we may have missed them on previous walks. Or, we may be dealing with a split-personality drinker.

Our walk today started out with broken glass. Outside the apartments on 112th Ave NE, we saw evidence on the curb of someone who broke into a car.

Then, about fifty feet farther down a car with a freshly-taped window. The news has been warning that car theft and car prowls are up due to people leaving their cars on the street for long periods of time.

Someone dropped several steel mending plates in the street.

They had teeth on them that could cause damage to a bicycle, but have little effect on a car tire. Well, they could get stuck in the tire and it would go tap dancing down the street.

An orange dog ball.

It was in so-so condition. So-so it’s in our ball collection.

We don’t know where this scrap of paper came from.

And we don’t know if it had any impact. We do know the lighted car owner is a litterer.

More broken glass.

This was a Google Pixel phone found in a busy intersection and had been run over, probably several times. As is our practice, when we got it home, we plugged it into the computer to charge.

The screen was dead, but after a few minutes, it showed up as a disk drive with nothing on it. We continued to let it charge and it periodically buzzed and chirped, but we had no way of knowing what it was doing. We pulled the SIM card and found it was a T-Mobile phone. Later, we dropped it off at a T-Mobile store. Hopefully they notified the owner that their phone was found. Not safe and sound, but found.

Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route

We are no longer in the Park-and-Ride Twilight zone. The park-and-ride was again back to pandemic normal.

There were Coors cans from at least two parties.

Two six-pack holders and eleven empties. One for the road.

Also they left us some Ritz crackers.

Thanks, but an unopened beer would have been more appreciated.

We saw something at the far end of the park-and-ride.

It was more women’s clothes.

There were a lot of nice, fairly-clean clothes on the ground. There was also a large plastic bag. We stuffed the clothes into the bag and came back later with the car to pick it up. In all there were a lot of tops, one pair of pants and one pair of shoes. Not a very balanced wardrobe. No problem. Goodwill has a lot of shoes.

Off the park-and-ride, we did find some money.

A nice shiny dime. We had to race the ladybug for it.

A Kings Remodeling hat.

It could use some remodeling itself. It ended up in our the garbage. Sorry Kings.

They must have been out of bottles.

We only found a single Angry Orchard can on the hill. And there was no attempt to reseal it.

An Obsessive-Compulsive litterer.

Labelling their trash. This person needs help. They might want to align the writing with the paper, it would look neater. Just saying.

Friday, May 29th, 2020 – Safeway Route

Another beautiful day to trash walk. There seemed to be more traffic out which hopefully signals a reopening of our economy. However, we also saw at least three vehicles pulling boat trailers. We had our normal mix of trash, but found no money. We did remove two roadkill squirrels from the road.

In a one-block stretch, we found five lottery cards.

All losers. Of course, he wouldn’t litter the million-dollar winner, would he?

Someone took a large bite of Brie cheese and didn’t like it.

Brie is for pairing with something or spreading on crackers. Next time, stick to Cheddar.

We picked up a couple of cups.

A reusable cup from Timberlake Church. Well, it could have been reused if they hadn’t tossed out the window. Also Rafael’s “Cars” water bottle. It’s also designed to be reused, Rafael. But I guess that argument doesn’t carry water anymore.

We picked up a book from the middle of Juanita-Woodinville Way.

“Wirehaired Pointing Griffon And Wirehaired Pointing Griffons.” So what’s the difference between the two? Guess we could read the book, but we’d probably fall asleep before we found the answer. If anybody has a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, or Griffons for that matter, let us know and we’ll gladly get this book to you.

More Angry Orchard trash.

A troop carrier and two soldiers. This is interesting. Angry Orchard “Crisp Apple” hard cider seems to have quietly taken over Norway Hill without a challenger. The entire pandemic may be a diversion for this assault on the hill. Sneaky.

“You say tomato, I say tomateo??”

“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K75g7eRhH9M

Saturday, May 30th, 2020 – Riverside Drive

Today our walk started out cool and clear with the sunrise lighting up a pink sky, but things changed. As the walk progressed, it became overcast and darker. As we reached the freeway, our weather app buzzed and notified us of a severe thunder storm alert. We started hearing thunder all around us, but the rain held back until we reached home.

These are three screenshots from our weather app radar map with the black marker showing our position. The one on the left is from early in our walk, clear skies. The center pattern is when we reached home and the one on the right is about an hour later when we were having our morning coffee. You win some and you lose some. This morning, we won. Thank you.

Ok, let’s get this week’s statistics out of the way.

There were thirty-one gloves and three dog poop bags. The glove count is reasonable but the bag count is very low. It has been dropping, but we assumed it was due to inclement weather. But this week’s weather was mostly very nice. There has been a lot of chatter on the neighborhood app, Nextdoor, about folks being rightly-disgusted and annoyed finding owners dumping their bags in the bushes. Perhaps it’s having some impact on the offenders. No, not a chance.

We did find some valuable things today.

A beat-up penny on the northbound freeway off-ramp. Hey, on our salary, this is a treasure.

But we also found another wedding ring, on the southbound off-ramp.

It is a titanium band and much worse for the wear. This is the third wedding band we’ve found on our walks. Each time we’ve tried to find the owner and failed. The others were gold and appeared to be in the $400 to $500 range new, and in new condition. This looks to be in the $150 range in new condition, which this one isn’t. We’ll watch the social media sites, but for now it’s going into our Found Jewelry Jar.

Okay, this is only related to trash because we walked past it, but Chuck found it interesting.

These signs warning of road work look pretty mundane from afar. But today, we stopped by one to transfer some trash between bags. Don’t ask. Up close, the signs are circuit boards with LEDs, capacitors and IC chips. Interesting. Well, not to Janet.

“You are Beautiful.”

Give us a break. Have you even seen us in our walking gear??

Another hubcap.

We have been walking past this hubcap for several weeks on our Saturday walks. It was wedged in the ground behind the chain-link fence by the freeway. Today, we tried lifting the bottom of the fence and successfully slid it out. It appears to be a 1960’s or 1970’s era Lincoln hubcap, but we couldn’t find a match with Google.

We found some clothes on our walk. This big find was across from the apartments on Woodinville Drive.

It was high-quality women’s clothes including a suit, a gown and several tops and pants. One of the garments had an original retail tag on it.

The park-and-ride also contributed.

A pair of socks stuck in a tree. Don’t ask us. Why should we know?

Also, a women’s jacket.

It may have been related to the bag we found yesterday, but who knows?

We did find a nice tool.

A utility knife. It was in fine condition. All collections have condition ratings. In picking up trash, “fine” means it hasn’t been run over. We need to publish our trash rating system.

This is getting old. By the apartments on Woodinville Drive, if you don’t want it anymore, just set it on the curb.

I’m special, I shouldn’t have to deal with broken appliances; let someone more responsible take care of it. A conscience is such a burden.

We found an empty DVD case.

It was one of the most graphic cases we’ve found. Four hours? It must have a really good plot.

Someone accidently tossed out their cigarette lighter instead of the butt.

Then we found these.

Well, what good are they if you don’t have a lighter to light them?

After we picked up trash on one side of Woodinville Drive across from the apartments and were on our way back, we saw this.

Two guys heading to work. Watch the guy in red casually toss something into the bushes. Hey, we just cleaned up that side. Littering is illegal – caught in the act!