Have you noticed all the cranky people out and around today? I’m not ashamed to say that I’m one of them. It will take me a week or so to get over the transitional trauma. I am NOT a morning person!!! I would say that I woke up cursing our governor, Mitch Daniels, for pushing through the time change in Indiana, but it wouldn’t be true. I wasn’t awake enough for that…
Doing away with Daylight Savings Time (DST) was one of the more progressive things Indiana had done in the past. There’s no daylight being “saved”. It’s not like it’s something we can harvest and sell to northern Alaska to get them through the 30 Days of Night. I’m not saying that it’s the cause of our droughts like Mr. Hill here, but I’m not sure what good has come of it. Everyone is not a farmer these days. Whether I have the lights on in the morning or at night is irrelevant. I’m still not getting enough sleep…
But now we have it back… Governor Mitch was so adament that we needed to be in lockstep with the rest of the country that he lost control of the House in the following election over this issue. Nothing like having the Time Change right before the election to remind everyone and put them in the voting mood. And then what happens? The Feds decide that we need to change DST and extend it, without consulting with the rest of the world. So now, Indiana may be in step with the rest of the United States, but the United States is out of step with the rest of the World for about a month each year. Brilliant!
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali
As the day goes by, the drag will get worse. I wonder if Salvador Dali was suffering from the effects of Daylight Savings Time when he painted The Persistence of Memory? It seems appropriate to me as it shows the melting of clocks on the landscape… That will be me, dragging more and more as the day goes by. But hey! Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll be back to my normal hatred of mornings without the DST enhancements…
Can Culver survive Wolf’s Dilemma? For those of you that don’t know, there are various versions of Wolf’s Dilemma, but basically it goes as follows:
This is the Dilemma. A random sample of people are chosen to “play”.
You are each placed in a separate booth and cannot communicate with each other at all.
In each booth is a button and nothing else.
You are required to stay in the booth for 5 minutes during which time you can either press the button or not press it.
You do not find out if anyone else pressed the button until the 5 minutes are over.
The Payoff
If nobody presses the button during those 5 minutes, then each person gets $100,000.
If anyone at all presses the button, then:
Each person who pressed the button gets $20,000.
Each person who did not press the button gets nothing at all.
Except this is Culver. Everyone knows everyone else. Does that make it better or worse?
There seems to be a constant battle between the various factions in Culver. The Mary Means Study that was completed several years ago referred to these groups as tribes and labeled the main tribes as the Academies, Town, Lake and Ag. Unfortunately the chiefs and their allegances seem to change depending on what the issue is. Pardon me for not printing my list here, but I think we can all name an issue or squabble. If I name even one here I’ll be on one side or another of a group or individual with which I have to work! At times this goes all the way down to issues between individual board or committee members that are unable to work together.
My point is that we all should quit pushing the button! If we work together for the common good, we would all be better off. Occasionally we do come together for the common good. The original formation of the Second Century Committee is an example of this for civic groups. The Culver Union Township Public Library as well as the EMS and Fire that are under a Town and Township partnership are good examples in the public sector. We should do it more often.
No, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are not dodging slow-motion bullets on the streets of Culver ala The Matrix. It’s nothing that exciting. The matrix I’m referring to is the one that appears in Chapter 3, Section 3.0 – Authorized Uses in the Culver Zoning Ordiance. It was the topic of discussion at the last Zoning Ordinance Review Committee Meeting on January 21, 2009.
The Zoning Ordinance matrix specifies the district in which a defined property use is allowed. Just to pick the first one from the list, “Apartment Units” are allowed in the R-2, C-1 & C-2 districts as well as by Special Use in the S-1 and L-1 districts if specifically approved by the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA). The matrix was set up as the first line of defense against district creep and spot zoning, which are considered bad things in Zoning Ordinances such as ours and the ones ours was patterned after. Under our ordinance, where often R-2 is adjacent to R-1, you can have an apartment building (R-2 use) adjacent to a single family home (R-1 or R-2 use), but if that apartment building would want to expand across that line, they would need to go through public hearings at the Plan Commission and then at the Town Council in order to rezone the property to R-2. This can be a tedious process and with the required advertising and required number of meetings generally takes 4-6 months.
Rejection is never a good thing, but unfortunately it’s inevitable. We’re putting a lot more proposals out there to get fewer jobs. It’s making things difficult. More effort is going into proposals that don’t move ahead, taking our time away from monitoring work that we do have.
I received the following email from my sister the other day:
Hello all,
I have something in my wall between my bathroom and kitchen wall…. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get it out? I’m not sure what it is… Kameron and I think it might be a bat, but it’s possible that it’s a mouse.
If you have any suggestions… Please let me know… I hate how it sounds in there… You can hear the scratching and then something dragging… Not great!
Let me know…
Thanks!
+++++++++++++
Tongue firmly in cheek, I responded as follows:
Critter Options:
Take Kameron to Chuck E. Cheese with a roll of quarters. Have him practice on Whack-a-Mole for a while. Then when you get home., give him a hammer and let him start busting holes in the drywall. When the critter pops out one of the hammer holes, Whack Him!
Borrow a shot gun. Do your best Elmer Fudd imitation, “Shhhhhh… Be Verrwy Quiet… I’m hunting wabbits…” Close your eyes, listen and shoot where you hear the sound!
Rent Mousehunt. Those guys had a million ideas! I particularly liked trying to impale the mouse through the wall using nail guns and 16d nails… http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119715/
Turn up the TV until whatever it is dies. The smell will go away in about a week…
Number four is the method I generally use, but if you decide to do one of the others, I can’t wait to hear about it! If there was a way of getting it out of the wall without putting a hole in the wall, it would have found it already on its own. It wants out as badly as you want it out. Yes, it could be causing damage in the wall, but probably less than if you go after it. If you still hear it there after a week, then it probably has a path to get to that point and is trying to get through to the next stud or into the cabinets or something. At that point you may have no choice but to put the hole in the wall and get it stopped.
Kevin
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bat Exclusion using Hardware Cloth and Duct Tape
There are some things you can do. It’s best when you can find out what you’re dealing with, but that’s not always possible. For small mammals such as mice or bats, that you expect are still traveling in and out, you can put hardware cloth over the opening. Cut the metal fabric slightly larger than the opening. Three sides should be cut to leave protruding sharp points. Fasten one edge above the opening and bend the protruding points back towards the wall around the hole, creating a hinged flap that they can escape past, but cannot comfortably re-enter.
Once you are sure that there are no animals inside, seal the hole. Again, once the building envelope has been breached, this is often an area which will be breached over and over as the scent is there and it will be recognized as a weak point.
Bats, rats and mice can enter any hole that they can get their heads through. If the hole is small, steel wool can be used to fill the hole. This is difficult and uncomfortable for them to chew through. Larger holes may need to be patched with sheet metal. Once the point of entry has been permanently sealed, then cosmetic repairs can be made, such as replacing siding, stucco or whatever the appropriate finished material is.
Back to my sister’s issue, odds are this is a bat or mouse in the wall. It has probably entered through a small hole and become trapped, unable to find it’s way back out. It may have followed holes drilled for wiring (or plumbing considering the location) and without her tearing up the walls to find it, it will probably die there. It is not unusual to find mummified remains when doing demolition for remodeling projects.
Even when your solution is #4 above, it is always good to look for an entrance point. If you can find it, it needs to be blocked to prevent additional “critters” from entering. Be they bats, rats, mice, squirrels or God forbid, larger creatures such as possums, raccoons, cats, etc., once an entrance point has been created, breaching the integrity of the building envelope, it will be a constant point of entrance, even after the initial invader has been eliminated or died. If you can determine what intruder you’re dealing with, you can set the appropriate trap outside the hole in the path they are traveling.
You can find more information on bat exclusion here:
And if you’re one that believes misery loves company, check out this amusing blog and read about someone else’s experiences driving critters out of their home: http://www.komar.org/faq/hunting_bats/Fair warning though, some of his pictures are a bit graphic….
Have you noticed all the cranky people out and around today? I’m not ashamed to say that I’m one of them. It will take me a week or so to get over the transitional trauma. I am NOT a morning person!!! I would say that I woke up cursing our governor, Mitch Daniels, for pushing through the time change in Indiana, but it wouldn’t be true. I wasn’t awake enough for that…
