Strolling Amok

Ahhhh, Da Bee-udy a Nature

Now I know where they got the concept for the “mother” critter in the movie “Alien”.

Originally posted 10/31/2012

Well, my Innsbruck travel trailer appears to be a hit with the local denizens – witness the large tan spider residing on the refrigerator temperature control. I got up this morning and walked through an unusually stiff single spider web strand on the way forward, not thinking much of it. Didn’t see the spider yet, though. Just now, this afternoon, I even unpacked the mass of groceries I’d stored away in the back seat of the truck, including a few items I put in the fridge and freezer sections. Since the fridge has trouble cooling off new items, I thought I’d better kick down the temp control button to minimize its tendency to get warmer. Whoa!! Nice camouflage effect. Notice that it picked a tan surface to settle on.

This thing was large enough (1-1/2 inches) that I really, really didn’t want to knock it off and take my shoe to it. Would you? I’d be twenty minutes cleaning up the mess. Plus, the large “industrial” spiders that I’m familiar with, the ones that sometimes live above ceiling tiles in offices, are very aggressive and can jump a considerable distance. Hmmm. Never saw one of these, but it appeared to react quicker than its size would indicate. So, I drew upon my minimal resources of courage and held a large glass pasta storage jar under it while I knocked it off with the 18-inch grill fork my daughter had given me. I just knew I’d be using that here! Clink! It fell into the jar and I walked it 50 yards away near a bush, hoping it won’t find its way home again. I wonder how it got in. I guess the underside of the trailer isn’t as well-sealed as I thought.

I rode my bike to town today to get a few items at the hardware store, mainly fasteners, vinyl tubing and cork pads to modify the part of the bike rack that actually contacts the bike. The existing system wore through its padding and protective covers to expose the bike frame to steel, which chewed through paint and tried to get through gearshift control wires. The damage is done, but at least it’s an aluminum frame bike, so it won’t rust there. I suspect that its designers didn’t actually try it out for a very long distance before they put it into production, or more likely, management was in a rush and nixed any further work. Judging by the instructions, they’d had some problems with bikes slipping out of it completely. It’s now difficult and slow to use. Good enough for who it’s for, I guess. This is the kind of thing I had to clean up in my last product design job, but the clients would come in having already shot through their entire budget. Not very profitable for us, compared to the firms that initially screwed it up.

Still working at jamming five pounds into a three-pound sack. “Hmm, now where could this go? Oooh, boy.”