Shatter Scatter

Monday, October 28^th, 2024 – Safeway

After a blustery night complete with wind, rain and a thunderstorm, this morning was mild with no rain. That works for us. We removed a large raccoon from the street and found some money.

A whole penny at the drive-thru. Don’t laugh, it’s the first walk of the week and matches last week’s total in six walks.

At the Tolt Pipeline trail, we always check for trash and the odd tossed dog poop bag. Not being political, we saw an election sign.

And yes, that is a dog poop bag on top. Someone expressing their political views? Who knows? We took the poop bag and left the sign.

At the intersection at the end of 112^th Ave NE, we came upon the remnents of a scatter-shatter, also known as a fender bender except fenders no longer bend, they shatter.

From the emblem, at least one of the cars in the altercation was a Subaru. We picked up what we could of the smaller pieces that would fit in our recycle bags and took them to the 7Eleven’s recycle dumpster. We will report the larger pieces to the City of Bothell for removal.

The high-tech trap from last week was gone.

Evidently, they thought we were not worth trapping.

We found a Roots shopping bag.

Inside it was another smaller roots shopping bag. We checked the smaller one, but there was not another smaller bag like the famous Matryoshka Bags. Wait, what? There actually are Matryoshka Bags. It was a joke. Go figure.

We picked up an expensive piece of jewelry.

Yeah, the cheap stuff has red or yellow string.

Tuesday, October 29^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

Today’s walk was just like yesterday—pleasant, uneventful, but completely money-free. We did, however, remove a roadkill rat. You know, the usual. Oh, and we gathered more car parts from the same mystery Subaru explosion site as yesterday. Nothing unusual about that.

Well, except there was a bonus—a giant plastic car part at the freeway off-ramp, which we hauled to Jackson’s dumpster. But seriously, aside from normal trash duty, that was it.

Okay, we did get a honk from a friend on the freeway, who was on his way to work to pay for our Social Security. But other than that? Totally boring. Really.

Wednesday, October 30^th, 2024 – Safeway & 100th

Today was a bit more interesting. We found no money and no roadkill, but we did find a couple of tools.

First, and least was another half of a tie-down ratchet.

Yes, but the important half, the one with the ratchet. But it had been run over and smashed, so perhaps not so important.

But then we found this in the street.

A Jeep combination knife, seatbelt cutter and window breaker, which is strange because the knife part should also cut the seatbelt. Also, it is strange to include a glass breaker for a jeep that normally does not have glass windows except for the windshield. Okay, this last bit of information may be a bit dated. The last time Chuck drove a jeep was in the army in a country far, far away and it only had a windshield. And it didn’t have seat belts for that matter. They didn’t give him a Jeep knife either. Scary times.

We did find an unopened beverage.

A Red Bull. We periodically accumulate unopened beverages we find and can normally find a good home. However, nobody seems to want Red Bulls. We left it on a picnic bench. If it is still there on our next trip, we will recycle it.

We picked up two cough syrup boxes.

We have seen multiple bottles of mouthwash containing alcohol and cough syrup and assumed that it is underage teens looking to get high. But these are alcohol free. We could teach these kids a thing or two. Been there, done that. Not us, of course, but we knew people.

Then there were these.

Two garden gnome condoms, ribbed, too. Who knew? And do not Google it, you don’t want to know.

Thursday, October 31^st, 2024 – 160th to 124th Street

It was a little cooler today with a slight bout of rain, but tolerable. We removed a roadkill opossum as we were leaving our neighborhood on 112^th Ave NE and a flat rat on the freeway on-ramp. We remain at one penny this week. Not good.

This is our week to go down 116^th Ave NE where two weeks ago a guy accused us of being car prowlers. Then last week, we saw his car but didn’t know if he was in it or not. This week, he was a no-show. Hopefully he got bored and gave up on turning us in. While we were traversing the ditch, we removed a buried shoe.

We think it probably has been buried for a while. Just a guess.

We picked up a pair of kid’s sweatpants that had been tossed over the fence near the middle school.

Some poor kid got pantsed. Yes, Chuck still has psychological scars from his childhood. It explains a lot.

We found two items of unopened food today.

A can of Tomato Basil soup and a candy bar. Janet mentioned something about lunch for the soup and we normally get one or fewer trick-or-treaters each year, so we are good with the candy.

This seems to be the theme on the Internet this year, but this is the first we’ve seen firsthand.

Too much candy.

Friday, November 1^st, 2024 – 100th Ave NE

It appears we are in for some rainy weather for the next few days starting today. We began our walk with a steady, moderate rain that eased toward the end. This is the time of the year we start feeling like Joe Btfsplk.

He is a character from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner cartoon strip. Joe Btfsplk, the worlds worst jinx.

We picked up some money along the way.

A very blurry nickel at the food truck and another penny at the drive-thru. So, we are standing at a meager seven cents for the week so far, but we still have tomorrow to go.

We came across part of a kid’s Halloween costume.

We’re not exactly sure what it is supposed to be. The plastic handle is meant to be a wood stick, and it has purple plastic streamers on the end. So, it could be a torch, a wand for a good princess to grant wishes or an evil wizard to cast spells. Given our lack of information, we handled it with great care. We didn’t want one of us to arrive home as a frog. “Ribbet.”

We found a small ball.

Normally, we don’t take pictures of random balls we find, but this one glowed in the dark, which made it hard to pass up. Now, if only money did that! It would be much easier for us to find and would give counterfeiters a challenge. We’ll be sure to drop this tip to the Treasury Department; it’s the security upgrade nobody knew they needed.

Whew, we also had not found a urine bottle this week.

We were getting worried.

We picked up a soggy, flattened cardboard box.

This was a box for a 2kg (4.4 lbs.) Space Gas nitrous oxide bottle that we found last week. We did not find the bottle, but we did hear some laughing in the distance.

We came across some stollen mail in the middle of Juanita-Woodinville Way.

It was mostly junk mail with a couple of bills. We checked out the address on Google maps and found the mailboxes.

None of the readable numbers match the address, so it is one of the two non-locking boxes on the end. Figures.

Here is our week’s worth of credit cards and pieces/parts.

The card in the upper left is an eGift card, for the Salt and Straw ice cream shop. It may have some money on it, but we need to go to the store to find out. Janet goes to the mall periodically and will check if it has any money left on it. Either way, Chuck is sure it will be empty when she returns.

Then, a Discount Tire credit card. Who knew? We checked it out and it does have some discounts and rewards attached to it, but how many tires do you buy per year? Okay, maybe these guys.

Saturday, November 2^nd, 2024 – Riverside Drive

We started out today in a very light mist. Then, about forty minutes into our walk, the sky opened up with a very heavy rain.

It only lasted about ten minutes, but that was enough to soak us. The rest of the walk had very little rain.

We saw no roadkill and didn’t find any money, but we found a tool.

A nice pair of wire strippers.

At the top of Brickyard Road, we picked up a snack that someone had opened but the crackers and can of tuna were still in it.

Score! Breakfast. At least we got something from our walk. When we got home and examined it, we found that it had been opened, the guy just put it back in the box. All that was left were some soggy crackers. Figures.

That wraps up our TrashWalking week. Our finds,

• 7 Cents. We don’t want to talk about it.
• 3 Roadkill including an opossum, a raccoon and a rat.
• 3 Tools, including a Jeep knife.
• 3 Unopened packages of food including Tomato Basil Soup.  Creamy.
• 2 Gnome condoms.
• 1 Ball.  Only one, but it glows.
• 1 Scatter-scatter of car parts.
• 1 Missing trap.
• 1 Boring Tuesday.
• 1 Buried shoe.
• 1 Magic torch or wand.
• 1 Urine bottle.
• 1 Batch of stolen mail.
• 1 Barfing pumpkin.

Have a great week and remember to burp your pumpkin.