I started to write this post stating that this was a rather intense season for roadkill. The remnant and fresh carcasses of squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, birds, foxes, skunks, porcupines, raccoons were seemingly littering the road more than I can recall starting near the end of August and even up until now in early October. We hear about Hurricane seasons, but I just wasn’t sure if roadkill season was an appropriate phrase. But I’ll leave it at that and assume there should be a roadkill season if there isn’t one already.
Skunks. I prefer that any skunk that ends up roadkill, be at least 5 or more miles from my house. Preferably 50. I hear there are disposal sacks that can contain the odor of a squashed skunk. That’s good, but who tested that?
Foxes, birds, porcupines, raccoons, deer. Unless sick or almost dead anyway, I’d prefer not to see these animals dead in the road. Just the other day, a small juvenile fox darted across the road in front of my car. It had a pretty coat, looked in good shape, stopped briefly on the other side of the road, then disappeared into a culvert. It made it safely across, and I’m ok with that. Now the guy who has the chicken coop on that side might have different ideas about how things should turn out.
And that brings me to chipmunks and squirrels.
You see, I posted this past Spring about my small but very important Strawberry garden (see post). I like fresh strawberries. I like fresh strawberries with cream. I like fresh strawberry shortcake. Strawberry season is usually mid-June to early July, so it’s not that long, but I look forward to it nonetheless. I just do. Kind of like getting whoopie pies for my birthday in April.
And for a while I liked chipmunks. I had commented to my wife, Lisa, on occasion, that we’ve been at our property since 1991 and had never had a resident chipmunk. That was until the end of 2017 when I spotted the first one to stay. So when Mr chipmunk again showed up in early 2018 after the snow melt, I was thinking “cool”.
I didn’t know chipmunks and squirrels ate strawberries.
That is, until I bragged about the strawberry garden and how I was so looking forward to it. And when it came about that time to harvest a bowl or two, I opened the front door, took a step out, and froze. Yonder on other side of garden, I spotted Mr Chipmunk looking right at me with a strawberry in its possession. He tried to be very still. But no way, I can spot a nice strawberry a mile away, and Mr Chipmunk had one solidly in his mouth. I was rightly furious. Soon though, the stupid Mr chipmunk dropped the strawberry and ran off. What a waste, he didn’t even take it. I walked over to the strawberry and saw it was about one third eaten. I looked around and noticed most of the strawberries ready to be picked had already been gnawed on. My wife said both Mr chipmunk and squirrels were at it.
So the strawberry harvest was nil this year, and my “chipmunk’s are cool” thoughts are more like “stay the heck out of my strawberry garden, I own a rifle”. But I live too close to the road, so I’d probably have to resort to flinging some sharp stones. I used to be good with a slingshot.
We used to have a few bunnies when the kids were young. One bunny, Ginger got out of the cage and ran across the street. It never made it back and was a roadkill statistic that year. I buried her out in the woods. I checked on it the next day and another animal had already dug it up and dragged it off. I’m ok with that.
With such a heavy roadkill this year and an unlikely letup in traffic in front of my house, I think I’ll just sit back and let the road do it’s work, this year or next. Mr chipmunk and Mr and Mrs squirrels will probably want to try the road running at some point. It seems these Mr chipmunk and Mr and Mrs squirrels are the majority of those in the roadkill census anyway. And I’m ok with that.
I will have to mine my strawberry field however.
Seen here is a stock photo from Olivetti. My dad’s version didn’t have the drawer storage cabinet seen on the left that I recall. An electric typewriter console occupied the central operator position. On the right was a calculator type console which also served as the programming unit. On this same programming unit was a calculator size paper printer and also a magnetic strip reader/writer. Not seen in this stock photo, but below the desk level and to the right of the operator was a tape cabinet unit. One would place a tape cartridge into the unit positioning it onto the keyed motor spindle and then operate a hand lever to engage the tape into the electronics of the tape unit. Each tape contained it’s own read/write head. The tape itself was a single length endless loop configuration as pictured here. The tape cartridge dimensions were about 7″ by 6″ by 2″. 
The usable tape is visible in through the smoke gray plastic with the exception of a length that ran from this oval area to the read/write head seen at the top through the “dimpled” portion. The tape ran through a few capstans and a tensioner around the perimeter. The tape itself had 4 tracks. I have since forgotten the density of the tape, but I don’t believe each track was more than 4k roughly, for a total of approximately 16k. For a bit of fun, one could take the cartridge by itself, hand-rotate the keyed receptor on the back, and watch the tape “slowly” move through its path. As a 12 year old, I thought it was magic that the tape didn’t end up in knots. So what could you do with this whole thing? Well, it could be used as a typewriter. You could also use it for it’s calculator though I never saw it used that way myself. Then with the magnetic cards (about 2.5″ by 8 or so inches, double sided) and/or with the tape unit, one could read/write/run programs. The programs could output onto the typewriter. There was no screen. And before I forget, it weighed a “ton”. In 1979 he still had this boat anchor running parts of his office. And that year, being a computer science major and believing I could do anything with a computer, I wrote a structural heat-loss program for him on this unit. It was worse than coding in APL. Well, not really. Just to wrap up the nostalgia a bit, in summary, if one used enough of the calculator paper, one could wind it back up tightly and then pull it from its center, making a real neat paper sword for that child still in oneself – fun and no worries.