The Crows. The Crows.

Monday, August 1^st, 2022 – Safeway

The week started with another warm morning, but with promises of cooling off. We even had some rain on our walk. Granted it was only twice for about one-minute each and we had to try hard to feel it, but still, it was precipitation.

This week is starting the exact opposite of last week. We removed a rat and small bird from the street and found no money. Also, today, for the third time, we picked up a cigarette but that was still burning. And we don’t carry fire extinguishers, though we think our vests may be fireproof.

This is the biannual time of year when the crows in the Bothell Rookery often fly overhead during our walk. The Rookery is only about two miles from us and is the home of thousands of crows.

We have learned a bit about crows since we moved here. One is that crows are very social birds and tend to meet up on their way to work for morning coffee or after work for drinks and gossip.

This morning these crows were making a racket socializing in a tree. If you look closely, you can see little coffee mugs in their hands. Made you look. Crows don’t have hands. They use their feet.

At the KinderCare, Janet found another toy outside the fence.

She successfully tossed it back over the fence without hitting herself in the face.

Chuck is proud of her.

This is a rarity.

A pair of sunglasses on the street totally unscathed. Sixteen bucks worth. We’d rather have the money, though.

Near Safeway, they removed a large shrub that people tossed trash into. They placed some mulch in the spot.

But they did not bother to pick up the trash first. This is a partially-buried, plastic water bottle. Yes, we collected it along with several other items.

We did find some tools.

A 3/8^th -to-1/4^th socket extension and a runover knife. The blade has AIR FORCE on it. We have a call into the U.S. Air Force to report their knife is missing. We’re sure they are looking for it.

Finally, we found a couple of tote bags.

A dog’s treat tote bag filled with dog treats. Then a people’s dog tote bag with no dogs in it.

Tuesday, August 2^nd, 2022 – Park-and-Ride

Today was much cooler than yesterday, a welcome relief. Today continues the low-cash trend. Yesterday, zilch and today a single penny.

But, for the second week in a row, there was this.

Another fake movie prop one-hundred-dollar bill 1.5 miles from where we found the one last week. It appears someone is playing with us. If they keep doing this, they may accidentally toss a real bill.

This morning as we left the house, we saw a bunch of crows in the same tree as yesterday.

As we were starting to take another photo, they suddenly took off to work in Seattle, about ten miles away as the crow flies.

We did find a couple of tools today.

A Torx screwdriver bit on the freeway onramp and another pair of scissors on 100^th Ave NE. We seem to be finding a lot of scissors recently, mostly broken, but a few, like this pair are serviceable. When we find them, we are careful not to run.

Another lug nut.

This one still has the snapped off stud in it.

Week 11 at the Moth Hotel.

Nothing. Wouldn’t you expect a roach or something?

Someone dropped their can of paint.

Or perhaps they were trying to become the next Jackson Pollock?

The toy that Janet flung back into the KinderCare yesterday turned out to be a McDonalds toy.

Today, we found another that did not fare as well. Can we count it as roadkill? It is a raccoon, after all.

Wednesday, August 3^rd, 2022 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE

The cool weather continued making for another great walk. The roadkill finds went a bit downhill with a rat and a small bird. However, the money situation improved.

Slightly. A nickel. It is worth more than a plugged nickel. Okay, if you take into account inflation, it probably isn’t.

Whoa!

A sheet of garage sale stickers. We can use these if we ever auction off our trash museum. Do they make these in smaller denominations?

We knew this moment would come, but we dreaded it.

The mowers arrived on Norway Hill hacking down the weeds and exposing the trash that has been eluding us including another syringe.

We kept count of the Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans we found, nineteen, and, although we did not keep count, a similar number of other random cans.

We left the hill clean, but we know under the hewn weeds rest many more zombie cans and other trash. Also, the part that probably has the bulk of the Mike’s cans remains unmowed. More to come.

At the Tolt Pipeline, we found a plastic bag.

It contained Oklahoma Smokes. They are hemp cigarettes that claim to be nicotine and tobacco free. That’s a good thing. Then again, there is that marijuana THC thing, but only in very small amounts. Evidently not in amounts enough to keep this user interested.

Thursday, August 4^th, 2022 – 160th to 124th Street

Today, we removed a small roadkill bird but did not find any money. Well, we did, but we couldn’t get it.

We think it is a quarter buried in the road tar, but we are not sure. We had the tools to remove it, but the traffic was too busy. We may try on our Saturday walk when it is quieter. So, penniless today.

We came to a fork in the road.

Whoops make that a spoon. Generally, spoons are straight-forward, but this one was telling us to make a left turn. But that would send us back the way we came. It looks like this spoon speaks with a forked tongue.

On an errand earlier this week, we saw some trash on the I405 South offramp, but farther down than we normally go.

It was a large piece of plastic that we rolled up into a cantaloupe-sized ball. Or maybe a casaba? It definitely was not watermelon sized, otherwise we would have left it.

Last Thursday, crossing the freeway overpass, we found a 7.62×39 cartridge shell that is used in AK-47 rifles. Today, we found more.

Eleven more. We may have missed these last week, but we highly doubt it. It makes us a bit uneasy.

The Bothell mowers mowed the other side of the road over Norway Hill.

We picked up a total of thirty-eight Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans, many shredded by the mower.

Friday, August 5^th, 2022 – 100th Ave NE

This morning was close to our perfect walking temperature, a little on the chilly side to start but very comfortable over the hill. We didn’t find any roadkill and found a penny.

Pretty sad. We are starting to think that when the temperatures are really hot like last week, people want to get rid of the hot change. This week is cooler…

Okay, this is disgusting. We often find water bottles that contain urine.

Today it was a plastic bag. With a water bottle, you can open the lid, dump it out and replace the lid. With this we needed to untie the knot, dump it then be stuck with a wet plastic bag. We do wear rubber gloves, but still.

We did find a tool.

A very nice bungee cord. Actually, this is called a tarp strap. We have been using the wrong name for a while, but we stand corrected. We added it to our collection of thirty or forty stretchy things with hooks.

At Safeway, we found a necklace that is either very late or very early to be wearing.

A Christmas pick-up line. “Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleighride together with YOU.” We’re thinking it’s late, but we are keeping it. We could get lucky.

We picked up a squeaky heart toy.

Why would you even make the damn thing?

The mower on Norway Hill claimed a tiger.

At least we think it’s a tiger. We picked it up and did not call it roadkill. This site claims there are only 4500 tigers left in the world, so this one is a major loss. Of course, this site also calls tigers “one of the most iconic species on Earth.” Sorry, we’re going with the MGM lion.

Sorry, Tony.

At Safeway, we spotted a guy working on the gas price sign.

We are thinking he is adding an extra digit to the fuel price.

It’s time to check out Chuck’s vest pocket accumulated over the week.

In the kid’s section on the left, the letter U as in unicorn, a marble, bell peppers for a kid’s pizza puzzle and a tiny ice cream bar. In the adult section below, a dime bag with some substance in it, an unopened cigar, and another Bic pen made into a dope pipe. It looks like it got too close to the product. In the miscellaneous department, a white rose, a directionless arrow, and a discarded key card.

Finally, a Post-it note with the words “Platonic Solids” on it. Are these two objects that only like each other? No, according to Wikipedia, a Platonic Solid is “a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space.” That certainly cleared it up for us.

Saturday, August 6^th, 2022 – Riverside Drive

Today we found some money.

Actually, we found it on Thursday pressed into the tar in the street, but there was too much traffic to retrieve it. Today, using a screwdriver we were able to get it. We are pretty sure it’s a quarter being the right size but has been repeatedly run over on the exposed side and covered with tar on the other. We are calling it a quarter.

Other than the money, the rest of the walk today was mundane. Well except for the shark sighting.