Monday, September 12th, 2022 – Safeway
Today was uncomfortably warm at 66°F (19°C), but not opressive. To add to that, we found no money and removed three roadkill: a rat; a squirrel; and a juicy rabbit, Janet’s description, not Chuck’s. Chuck is now worrying about what tonight’s dinner will bring.
For a few days, we have noticed a feather in a ditch along 112th Ave. NE and finally picked it up this morning.
We are not experts on feathers, but knew it was probably not an owl. We sent it to Google Lens and it immediately identified it as a Red-Tailed Hawk that is native to this area. Google Lens is pretty amazing until it isn’t.
We picked up this random note on the sidewalk.
That is a precocious kid to want to take a tour at fifteen months. We’re figuring Orlando.
A Chick-fil-A kid’s place mat with the question “What does the animal say?”
Yes, the cat says “meow”, the duck says “quack”, and the cow says,
They’ll never win the spelling bee, but do we care? Moost certainly not.
At Safeway, someone decided to ice the parking lot.
Good job, and the initials fit.
An Ulta Beauty bag that is anything but.
“The possibilities are beautiful.” Well not in this case. It was filled with fast-food debris, napkins and wipes. But there was also a used toothbrush, so they have that going for them.
Then there was this.
It appeared to be a wrapped-up pair of pantyhose with something else inside. When we unwrapped it, there was another pair of pantyhose. Wow, a four-legged woman. It happens. Who knew?
Tuesday, September 13th, 2022 – Park-and-Ride
Today was slightly cooler, but still a bit too warm. We picked up no money but removed a small squirrel from the road. But we did remove a tool of sorts.
It was a baggie with a bottle of air tool oil. The Allen wrench is to loosen and retighten the plug. They are probably pretty torqued off for losing it.
We find a lot of gas/radiator/windshield washer caps. So many so we do not normally mention them.
However, this gas cap is freshly run over, and all the parts appeared to be there. So, with a little glue and patience, might be recoverable. Just saying.
Now, this was weird.
Chuck passed a little-used driveway with a rabbit that had a smaller rabbit beneath it. The mother was probably nursing the baby rabbit. A few seconds later, Chuck went back to take a better picture with his phone, but the smaller rabbit had disappeared. The mother rabbit remained in place. Kind of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, but in reverse.
We find a lot of earbuds, both wired and wireless, and mostly run over. Today we found an undamaged pair.
After some research, we found they were a relatively expensive set selling for about $160. We posted the find on social media in hopes that we find the owner. No, we wouldn’t use them, these fall out of our ears when we are walking and get run over. Then we have to pick them up.
It the park-and-ride, we found another frisbee.
This is a disc golf frisbee, so something for Goodwill. But wait, after some investigation, this is a rare find. Most stores are out of stock, and we found one on eBay for $135. What, that much for a frisbee? To find out why, we watched this review video. It was approved by the USDGA in 2003 and was dropped from production shortly after. There are several posts that indicate that although the USDGA approved this disc, they will not approve another similar design. Okay, we’ll let it go for $135. Let us know. And, by the way, we learned way more about disc golf than we needed. Or wanted.
Wednesday, September 14th, 2022 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
The weather this morning was about the same as yesterday, a little warm but, looking forward to the coming months, could be much worse. We removed a roadkill rat and small baby rabbit from the road. And no, we do not feel bad about either one. Plus, we did find money.
Yes, we know what you are thinking, it’s only a penny. And no, we did not pay a penny for your thoughts, we put it in our money jar.
A very considerate litterer.
Someone obviously cleaned out their car and left the litter by the sidewalk on 112th Ave NE. But most of the litter was stuffed into two plastic bags, so very easy for us to pick up. To you that did this: please contact us. We would like to thank you. Not! It’s still not taking responsibility for your life.
Last week at the bus stop on Juanita-Woodinville Way, more books.
Last week, books were left outside on the trash can and we took them for Goodwill because they were exposed to the elements. These are on the bench under the covered bus stop, so we left them.
At the top of the Tolt Pipeline, another torch lighter.
It is now in our collection of drug paraphernalia. No, we do not think someone was smoking cigars at the top of the pipeline. It was probably a meth pipe at the pipeline. But to be clear, it is a water pipeline, not a meth pipeline. Sorry, we are probably confusing the issue.
Thursday, September 15th, 2022 – 160th to 124th Street
Another day like yesterday. We feel like we are making the slow slide into the long, grey winter. We removed a small bird and a flat opossum from the road and another birdie from the freeway onramp.
Yes, a bad joke, but we can only use the material we find. And yes, it is also called a shuttlecock. But what sense does we “removed a shuttlecock from the road” make? Ergo, a birdie.
But we also found money.
A quarter, this time on NW 160th Street and not run over at all. That helps our week’s average a lot, but it is still a pathetic six-and-a-half cents per day.
We found one sock on 112th Ave NE. Great, what do you do with one sock? We already have a bunch of sock puppets.
But then we found the matching sock about two blocks farther on. Great, we have something we can shuttlecock to Goodwill. Make that shuttle to Goodwill.
Then, on Juanita-Woodinville Way, we found one shoe, much bigger than the socks.
Then, farther along, we didn’t find a matching shoe. It was shuttled to the garbage can.
We did find some tools.
Another 5/16th socket and a hex bit. We are cock-sure these will come in useful someday. Yes, this is probably a cock-and-bull story. We shuttled them into our lost-tool collection.
We found the floorplan to the Northshore Middle School.
We looked, but we don’t see the money room where all our taxes go. If we had, we could plan a burglary. But we would probably just cock it up. Sorry, we will stop with this theme. If we continued, we’d be going off half-cocked.
Friday, September 16th, 2022 – 100th Ave NE
We had a run-in with some wildlife this morning and for once, it was not roadkill. While walking down 112th Ave NE, a large owl made a fly-by.
It flew ahead of us and lit in a tree.
It checked us out with evil-looking eyes and finally decided we were not food-worthy and took off. Farther along, we went into some bushes for a couple of beer cans and came across a spider. It was very large, and we let it be. We do wish it would not toss the beer cans on the ground, though.
An unsquashed squash by Safeway.
It’s Friday, time to check out Chuck’s vest pocket.
Another Pokémon card. We find a lot of these, and we don’t even know how to play the game. Who knows, we may have won at some time. We found Blair’s Visa card and we were actually able to track him down, but he had already cancelled it. A seventh-grade attaboy from a teacher. We assume L-E-A-D is like ‘Lead’ the team and not ‘Lead’ as in a heavy metal weight.
A silver Nissan emblem, a black knob of some kind, an orange W or M, depending on your point of view, a black guitar pick, a blue flower, an orange highlighter and a multicolored package of SweeTARTS.
A bunch of real estate business cards along the street, probably the result of an open house. Perioral Dermatitis. We looked this up and wish we hadn’t. A photo of the Pinball Wizard of Bothell.
A fortune cookie fortune. “YOU AND YOUR PARTNER WILL BE HAPPY IN LIFE TOGETHER.” So, our question is, when do we meet the partner?
Saturday, September 17th, 2022 – Riverside Drive
Cool, overcast with no rain today. Oh, deer, we had another run-in with live wildlife.
This time it was a deer that walked across the road in front of us. It stopped by the bushes and rudely mooned us as we walked by. However, we did remove a squirrel and a very messy rabbit. It took five trips to the bushes to get most of it.
However, we found significant, for us, money.
First, we found a dime on Woodinville drive. Then, on the way back down Juanita-Woodinville Way, there was a piece of trash across the street. However, the traffic was too heavy to get across the street, so we decided to continue to the light, cross and backtrack on the other side. Along the way, we found three, one-dollar bills on the grass. That brings our daily wage this week to fifty-six cents a day! Well, twenty-eight cents each.
Tobacco products.
This is different. There is some roadwork happening on Riverside Drive and the Copenhagen cans were found near where the flaggers stand. Normally we find a bunch of cigarette butts. We like the cans better. Then, later an almost full pack of cigarettes in the box. We like that better than butts spread along our route. That’s the spirit!
Butt, we speak too soon. We went down an embankment along Brickyard Road and spotted a path into the woods that we had not noticed before and walked in to see where it led.
It led into the woods and into a ravine. There was a lot of trash including over a hundred cigarette butts. Down the ravine and along it was a lot more trash, more than we could deal with today. We cleaned up the area at the top where whoever the perpetrator is sits and trashes the area. We’ll go back another time to delve into the ravine.
When we were exiting the path, we found another cell phone.
This is the 19th cell phone we have found on our walks and is a Motorola XT1031 released in 2013, so almost ten years old. We got it home and charged it, but it is basically dead. When it is plugged in or the button is pressed, a white LED at the top lights for a half second and goes out. Otherwise, nothing. We can only hope that whoever trashed the ravine lost it.
Thus ends another walking week. Our take.
- $3.36 working out to a wage of nine cents per hour for each of us.
- 9 Roadkill including a flat opossum.
- 5 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans on Norway Hill. The Mikes drinker must be on vacation.
- 2 Sets of pantyhose.
- 1 Feather from an off-balance hawk.
- 1 Expensive set of ear buds.
- 1 Expensive golf disc.
- 1 Birdie.
- 1 Evil-looking owl.
- 1 Cell phone on life support.
Have a great week and remember, garbage out, garbage in.
Trash Walking 