Car and Van Projects and a Rat Report

Wednesday November 16, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Working on projects

I got another layer of epoxy on the car’s broken mirror bracket last night so it was now ready to put it back together and back on the car.parts1

 

It’s back in one piece after I did some trimming to get some of the epoxy out of the way were it wasn’t supposed to be.mirror

 

And it went back on the car without breaking so I think it will work.fixed3

 

A nice blue sky today as I sat in my chair in the yard thinking about what to do next.dky4

 

New bike basket

While I was sitting there a package was delivered. It was my new basket for the dirt bike. I thought I’d try this style out as it’s made for bikes. It’s small enough not to get in the way, I hope.basket5

 

Van work

The next project was a bigger one. I had some work to do on the van. But first I remembered to spray some silicone into the ignition key hole to help loosen it up a little as it’s been a bit on the sticky side as far as putting the key in and out.silicone7

 

Extending the spare tire mount bracket

That was the next thing I needed to do.

I measured things and drew lines on the parts I needed to cut off to add one and a quarter inch pieces.lines8

 

Fortunately I had a power hack saw which made cutting the metal pieces off a breeze, well, almost. I’ve cut the metal pieces off which are sitting on the rear of the saw with the wheel nuts on them.saw9

 

I setting the parts up here with the extension pieces to get them welded on as the first step.welding10

 

Once I had those parts welded up, I put them aside to cool and will finish welding the parts on the van tomorrow. The parts have to be welded on exactly right so the spare tire will fit over them.

Rat report

I had a rat dig a hole just in back of the bait blocks and spread the dirt out around the area. It then brought some crab shell pieces into the area. It’s been sampling the bait at the right, but none have messed with the blocks.pen11

 

It’s hole is in the back but I don’t think it is living in there, only hanging out at night. It might have brought in the crab pieces to save them from the chickens as the chickens can’t get into here. The pieces it brought in have little pieces of crab meat in them.hole12

 

I crushed up two more cubes and put them in the right container without the flour and I left them in a bit larger pieces. A couple of rats have sampled the new green stuff on the right, so far. They seem to have something against the blocks as they are leaving them alone. I’m thinking of putting some blocks in with these dishes and giving that a try.bait13

 

Nice day.

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Chickens Will Eat Anything, But Rats Won’t

Tuesday November 15, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Chickens

I eat the crab meat and give the shells to the chickens and they consume all the crab shells I feed them. They gobble those shells up like they are a delicacy. They have the system to eat them, but I don’t. I think it has something to do with making eggs as the crab shells are made of similar stuff. If I throw a whole egg on the ground they eat the shell first.

Anyway, it’s a good way to get rid of those smelly shells.shells1

 

Rats

Now the rats seem to be a bit fussier. They are eating the crushed cube bait mixed in with a bit of flour and have been doing so for several weeks now. I think, maybe a couple of them have died from eating the green stuff, but there’s still a bunch of them feeding here every night.bait3

 

Cubes

The cube bait has been under this cut off bucket for the same period of time and the rats haven’t touched it. A couple of mice ate a tiny bit of it, but that’s all.

Today, I put the bait out in the open in the bucket to see if they might take the bait. I’m thinking they might be leery of the bait in closed up stuff, as it’s more like a trap, although the rats and the mice where going in and out of the bucket before I put the bait cubes in it.blocks2

 

We’ll see if there is any change in their habits with this change? I’m watching them with a cam hooked to my computer that records any motion.

Broken car mirror repair

I got out some epoxy and glued the broken car bracket together and am now letting it set up. I’ll put another coat of epoxy on it to beef it up hoping it will then be strong enough to not to break again.bracket6

 

There’s plenty of room to build up the epoxy to make it stronger.epoxy6

 

Van nuts

I ordered up some new wheel lug nuts to replace the ones I lost when my spare tire fell off on the trip. They fit so now I need to do some modifications on the mount to make it better, but not today.nuts4

 

Quad battery check out

I checked the quad runner battery again today to see if it held it’s charge overnight and it did.quad5

 

I got my Pulaski that I put the new handle on and rode on up to this spot and stopped to check out an old spring.quad8

 

I’m thinking of tapping that spring but first I need to figure out exactly where it’s coming out of the ground. I’ll have to watch it to see if I can figure that out over the winter.spring9

 

I continued on up the road and parked here to do some work and get some exercise.quad10

 

Our main spring water pipe goes down this trail and it needs some dirt over the pipe in certain spots I haven’t had time to cover up yet.pipes11

 

Pipe burial

I cover the pipe up by making the trail a bit larger so I have enough dirt to cover it up which makes the trail much nicer to walk on and I get some exercise in the process too. I’m mostly covering it up to keep any future wild fires from burning it up, like what happened to most of my neighbors that had plastic pipe laying on top of the ground during the last wild fire a couple of years ago.trail12

 

Bridge work

I worked a couple of hours on that and headed on home stopping at this bridge to put a bit of rock on the lead up to these metal ramps.bridge13

 

Metal runners

We originally used wooden runners, but they caused the wood to rot where the wood was laying on the other wood, so we decided to try these metal runners the military uses for stuff. So far they are working out real well with no rot which is good as those big boards are real expensive.

Nice day.

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