A Crummy Commercial

It's the end of the tourist season on the island -so I was surprised to find out that a local store owner was interested in buying books.  I got in touch by email and was able to deliver and get immediate payment for a very nice wholesale order of books, nice ! AND coincidentally I got an email question from a customer on whether I accepted credit cards for book purchases and was able to refer the buyer to the local island store, Fair Isle: https://www.fairisleshop.com/ So if anyone is interested in books with electronic payment (no kits) please contact Fair Isle. And if ordering with check or cash by USPS is still OK, please see the Jackson Harbor Press books page: http://wb9kzy.com/books.htm Thank You   and  Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

source:  https://youtu.be/uD-uyGWdXyE first a doe: but then a spike steps in and does the scarfing up of the pile: finally this doe appears to be saying: "Hey Man, where are my apples ?": WHERE ARE THEY ?: Also there was this, yikes: I still find these pictures fascinating, another day, another pile of apples (but I'll move them next time). Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

The experiment with alternate bait didn't work out, at least as far as the cam was concerned.  I had set out the fat trimmings from a meat canning session but got no takers.  Later a dead mouse was added, which was taken but the fat remained: So the cam was moved over to another apple pile and voila, both the fat and the apples are gone Monday AM.  Here is the resulting "movie": source:  https://youtu.be/tr8gofIDzFA The actors appear in evening light instead of the ghostly gray of night, here is a female red fox ? (no, it's probably a gray fox): And our now trained apple eater doe, Spotty ?: The gravel by the roadside tree shows evidence of deer hoofs but I think they prefer to be away from the side of the road so I'm doing them a favor with the bait piles ?  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

I checked on the cam Saturday morning and found this: Yikes !  I had tried another bait pile during the night, here's another "movie": source:  https://youtu.be/P3wFOfK64mo A little larger cast of characters, in addition to the doe (previously misidentified as a fawn) from the previous bait pile: A fawn: A fox ?: Masked Marauders: I *think* the Masked Marauders were the tripod tippers !  :)  Cam and tripod seem OK though.  I'm trying something different Saturday night. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

Several items: First, the Brewers manager, Pat Murphy, is NOT afraid to make a decision.  For the second time recently he changed pitchers in the middle of an at-bat !  Thursday afternoon Murph replaced Robert Gasser during the Mariners game: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8qxh4gqJ34 On August 3rd Murph replaced Brandon Sproat versus the Pirates: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYNhK7-CvFM Murph is definitely serious about the end of the season !   But the Brewers did finally win: BTW, the only other time I remember seeing this was in a Cubs game during the 1980s - I'm sure it happens a lot more but gotta figure that it could be seen as a public insult to the pitcher (reminds me of the schoolyard refrain: "but we didn't get our last ups" - IOW the pitcher didn't get a chance to redeem the at bat). Second:  During the afternoon while checking the laundry on the line I saw this: 2026 is a cicada year here on the island.  The ques...

I was kind of ambivalent about using bait with the cam.  But then I thought about windfalls.  Usually the deer police most of them but not always.  And I have to figure that a pile of apples probably has at least a few worms.  If I get the deer to eat the apples won't that kill the worms ?  See, you can justify anything :) So I tried baits for a couple of nights.  They found them the first night but left 3.  So I redeployed on Monday night - all were taken.  I think by a single deer, appears to be a fawn ?  Here's my attempt at stitching together the stills: source:  https://youtu.be/gd6jSkp1aWM This reminded me of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show (season 1, episode 32) where Opie is banished from the courthouse after school because Aunt Bea thinks it's a bad influence.  So he goes wandering around, kicking a can down the road.  He encounters a kid eating apples on a pickup truck tailgate and trades him apples for the can....

A few recent pictures, first these from the cam: I've been keeping the cam relatively close to the house.  It dawned on me that the deer know about fruit trees, the volunteer crabapple tree sometimes will have a lot of fruit.  I don't see how they can stand the crabapples though.  I may try setting up the cam near some of the apple trees. The only thing about the crabapple tree is that it's hard to see them with the grass so high - that can be remedied, Chuck ! The Town recently repainted the lines on the road.   In addition they painted the four rectangles around the surveying benchmarks: I am suspicioning that these are meant for the aerial Door County photo property maps, previously mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/06/surveying.html Finally I rode by the nearest DSL installation by the side of the road: And by the DSL stuff was this can which I *think* has the loading coils for the POTS (plain old telephone service).  That silver round thingy ...

Both kinds of bucks tend to be skittish.  Here is one from last night: VVhats this ?  Another mystery communique from the IRS ?: yes, I blanked out stuff for no good reason, just for fun I believe it's my 2025 tax refund, the other kind of bucks.  Hopefully I'll find out on Monday. Yes, this is all my fault because I at least partially refused to conform.  I didn't have an ID.me account so I couldn't file my taxes online.  So I mailed them in, at the last minute.  It took a while for them to get into the system.  I had an error which the IRS corrected in my favor which was nice.  But I also entered my bank account number incorrectly - TWICE ! :(  So apparently no direct deposit this year. Update August 3, 2026: It was a checkie for Chuckie from Uncle Sam - just like 1974 ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

When I see this: The trail cam gets shut off and brought inside, so no trail cam pictures from last night. While listening to the Brewers Mets game the phone woke itself up and had an ominous tornado warning message.  Unfortunately I didn't save a screen shot but it got me all rattled.  Here's the gist of it: Not sure where it was actually, probably over the lake. there's a red box on the southern part of the island, is that where it was ? One thing I did notice again, Starlink is like our old dog, Buddy.  When there was a bad storm Bud would go downstairs and lay in his crate.  When Starlink encounters heavy rain it doesn't work.  I got a red LED on the router (it didn't photograph red for some reason or I'd include a picture). So anyway, I wasn't always online during the storm.  There was a little hail and then heavy rain along with the usual winds.  But I didn't hear "the train" so no tornado around me. Eventually after the Brewer game the p...

I don't know if this is the same doe and fawn over multiple days/nights but possibly ?  Here's the mom: Here's the baby: Here's a mom and baby in the same shot from another day (fawn is at the left): Here's a fawn taken with the cell phone in the back yard: Here's a somewhat hard to see picture of a doe and fawn at night: Here I've circled them: Yes, I know I should cut the grass ! Maybe it's time to consider a better trail cam ?  This one works fine but the quality isn't that great.  Also the red LED glow at night and the audible click aren't good.  Also it makes me look like a big, fat, ugly, old man with poor posture !  :) A Wifi cam would be nice but they apparently work with a cell phone in close proximity.  My wifi reaches hundreds of feet to the trees.  But there do appear to be more expensive trail cams that have extended wifi range.  The cell phone equipped connectivity of other cameras doesn't interest me, not looking for yet anothe...