Beer-drinking Raccoon

Monday, August 12^th, 2024 – Safeway

We started out the week with a brisk walk in cooler weather. We removed two fat rats from the street and found some small change.

Two nickels and a penny in the gutter along 100^th Ave NE. A better start to the week than last week. Oh, wait, we didn’t walk last Monday, so this is a great start to the week.

Oranic Peaches.

They are imported from Oran, Algeria. Well, we’re pretty sure.

We found a skull in the weeds.

According to this site, it is the skull of a Barred Owl. Barred Owls are common around here. The photo above is one we took near our home a few years back. We’ve removed two dead owls during our walks, but we don’t remember where, so this skull may have been one of them.

Someone left a bag just for us.

And that’s exactly what we’ll use it for.

Tuesday, August 13^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

This morning, we removed four roadkill from the roads: a small bird, another rat, and two rabbits. But we found more money.

We found a penny in the middle of Juanita-Woodinville Way followed by a dime on the opposite side of the street on our return path. Then, a quarter on NE 145^th Street across from the 7Eleven. We hope to keep it up through the week, so we are counting on all of you to pitch in, so to speak.

We picked up a couple of tools.

We found a screwdriver on the northbound freeway on-ramp and a greasy grease gun on the southbound on-ramp. It must have slid off the truck.

Also on the on-ramp, we found a large shoehorn.

It was broken, so we wedged it into a nearby trash can.

We went out into the freeway intersection to pick up a small box. As we were heading back to the curb, a golf ball fell out and we needed to herd it toward the curb. We crossed the street and found more loose golf balls. We gathered them together for a photo.

After we took the photo, we found another in the weeds for a total of ten. On Amazon, a package of twelve is twenty-five dollars, so this is twenty-one dollars’ worth in excellent condition. We will look for the missing two, but don’t hold your breath. There are several drains in the area so the person who dropped the balls may have achieved two holes-in-one.

Today we set a record for the most balls found in a day, thanks to the golf ball spill. In addition to the spilled balls, we found another unrelated ball and a lost baseball for a total of twelve. We’ll be celebrating with Champagne at seven o’clock this evening and we’ll have a ball.

Wednesday, August 14^th, 2024 – Safeway & 100th Ave NE

Today we removed another rat from the road and picked up some more change.

A penny on Juanita-Woodinville Way and a quarter at Janet’s favorite drive-thru. The quarter is a good find because the drive-thru has been a bit sparse lately. We thought we found more coins.

But they were one-dollar car wash tokens. That’s fine, we’ll use them, we just can’t count them as money.

As we were leaving our neighborhood, Janet saw a raccoon and called Chuck across the street to see it.

It evidently did not like the attention because it climbed a tree then watched us. As we were having our staring contest, we glanced over and saw a pile of beer cans in the gully under some bushes. After some discussion, Chuck descended to the mess and filled up both his recycle and garbage bags with cans.

There was a total of twenty-four cans and once we got them out on the street, we defanged them (pulled the pop tabs off) and crushed them to better fit in our bags. When we looked back to the raccoon it was gone, and it was a good thing, too. Damned beer-drinking raccoons.

When we got done with the beer cans, we continued our trek, but soon got slowed down again. Someone had smashed a jar on Juanita-Woodinville Way, and we picked up the larger pieces of glass.

Among the glass shards, we picked up two small rocks with writing. One had “Oncologist” on it and the other, “Pediatritian [sic]”. We are sure the jar and the stones are connected. When aspiring doctors finish their pre-med education, they gather and pull these stones out of the jar to determine their future specialty. Obviously two candidates dropped out. That is our story, and we are sticking with it.

We found more lost glasses today.

This pair consisted of broken frames and nothing else. The second pair was in a protected case and was complete.

Okay, they are not in great shape, but all the pieces are there.

We found another rubber duck to add to our collection.

A friend who owns a Jeep said the reason we are finding a lot of these is due to Jeep Ducking. According to Wikipedia, “The practice began in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada, to ‘brighten someone’s day’.”

Well, this would certainly brighten our day if someone snuck up behind us and put a duck on our shoulder. Almost as much as finding a dollar bill.

We came across two dolls outside KinderCare.

The skimpily dressed doll on the left is the same one we tossed back over the fence last week with a fig leaf. Since then, we’ve tossed her back three times. This time, we bagged her. The second doll looks shocked at what the first one was wearing.

Thursday, August 15^th, 2024 – 160th to 124th Street

Today, we removed another crow from the street. There seems to be an uptick in the rate of crow roadkill. This is the sixty-fourth roadkill crow since we started keeping track seven years ago. That works out to about nine per year. We have removed eight in the last two months. Are the crows getting dumber? Are they becoming less agile? We know we are.

We know that crows often have lookouts to warn of dangers. We also know there is a lot of migration on our Mexican border. So, it may be some of the lookouts are from Mexico and when a car comes, they yell “coche, coche” instead of “caw, caw” when a car is approaching.

We did find a bit of money.

A nickel and two pennies were found near a clothes donation bin where folks illegally dump any old junk. One man’s junk is a TrashWalker’s treasure, especially if change is involved.

Once again, a trucker approtioned his license plate to Washington State.

The state would appreciate money more, but it is recyclable.

We picked up some tools today.

A wrench and a haircut, two bits.

Okay, no haircut.

Friday, August 16^th, 2024 – 100th Ave NE

Today we removed a roadkill snake from the street and found some money.

A penny and two dimes. The penny was found by Chuck along Juanita-Woodinville Way and the first dime was found in the Safeway driveway on 100^th Ave NE. The second dime was found farther down 100^th when Janet crossed the road to head up Simonds.

We also picked up three tools.

The first is called an anti-theft socket to remove anti-theft lug nuts. So, shouldn’t it be called a theft socket? Then we picked up another cheap Allen wrench and another drill bit. We don’t know a song for one bit.

Yesterday when we started our walk an Xfinity truck was at the intersection of 112th Ave NE. Today there was a truck belonging to an Xfinity contractor, but there was nobody outside, so we went on our way.

Later, as we reached the intersection of 100^th Ave NE and Simonds Road, we saw the same truck. It had the TV cable snaked down through a window in the back of the truck, and we heard some TV audio. We assume that he is splicing or otherwise working on the fiber cable. But he was very antisocial, or he is just watching soap operas.

Up Simonds Road, we picked up a large beverage with only a small amount consumed.

We emptied the rest out and recycled the bottle. If we had kept it, Janet would have found a way to integrate it into one of Chuck’s future breakfasts.

We came to a spoon in the road.

When you come to a fork in the road, you know you have a decision to make. But when you come to a spoon in the road, it’s pointless.

On Fridays Chuck detours a short way up Simonds Road and picks up trash on both sides of the road. During our weekly errands, we periodically see excessive trash farther up, and both of us go about twice as far up the Simonds Road hill. We both walk up one side, cross over and work our way down the other. At one point, Janet takes a lot of our collected trash, crosses back over Simonds, and dumps the trash in a couple of recycling and trash bins.

Today, as Chuck was continuing to collect trash down Simonds, he passed Janet having a long conversation with a man on the other side of the road.

Eventually Janet passed Chuck and disappeared around the corner back into the construction zone. As Chuck finally turned the corner, he saw Janet having a conversation with a couple of construction traffic controllers.

Janet and Chuck need to have a conversation about work breaks.

Saturday, August 17^th, 2024 – Riverside Drive

Today the skies were clear, so the morning started out a little cooler but warmed up quickly after sunrise. We removed a snake and two more rats from the streets. That made six roadkill rats this week and spotted two more live ones. The total roadkill this week is 11 which eclipses the previous record of 7 set on July 22^nd,  2023. We couldn’t have done it without the rats.

We also found some money today.

A dime across from the apartments on Woodinville Drive and a penny by the dumpsters in the Bothell parking lot. If someone is tossing change into the dumpsters, we may need to do some dumpster diving.

We also found another tool.

A small 7/32^nd inch socket.

We picked up another hat.

Katie Ann, Pride of the Sea. With a little Googling we found that it is a Factory Fishing Trawler out of Seattle.

The cap looks new, but it has been worn. The guy took one trip to Alaska and abandoned ship.

Another pair of eyeglasses.

Unfortunately, they’re missing an ear piece, so we won’t be able to repair them.

We found an unopened can of beer.

Finding an unopened can of beer at 6 am is like the universe saying, “Hey, it’s 5 pm somewhere…”

This may be more of the bridal shower items we’ve found over the last two weeks.

An old bouquet in the park-and-ride. They could have been a part of the bridal activities. We also found these nearby.

A pair of women’s panties. Guess these could have been involved also.

That wraps up another TrashWalking week. Our take,

• 76 Cents.  We are consistently getting about this much each week now.
• 15 Balls, breaking two records: 12 in a day and 15 for the week, helped by the golf balls.
• 11 Roadkill, breaking two records: 4 in a day and 11 for the week. The rats gave it their all.
• 7 Tools including an insecure socket.
• 3 Articles of clothing including panties and a fishing cap, probably not related.
• 3 Pairs of glasses, one fixable, mostly.
• 2 Car wash tokens.
• 2 Physician career stones.
• 2 Beverage containers, one full and one mostly.
• 2 Bridal items.
• 1 Unwise owl skull.
• 1 Beer-drinking raccoon.
• 1 Jeep-ducking duck.
• 1 Imported peaches sign, the peaches, not the sign.
• 1 Immodest doll.
• 1 Two-bit song.

Have a great week and remember, rats can be your friend when it comes to roadkill.