Chipmunks

I first noticed the rodent activity last week (image above) at the place where the driveway meets the garage, so I replaced the gravel in the burrow and made a mental note to do something about it, but by yesterday (below) the process was obviously in an accelerated phase.

The quickest response would be to push all the dirt and gravel back down and then seal the top with an expanding foam, but I was reluctant to possibly convert the burrow into a live burial, so instead I got out our smallest Havahart trap, baited it with a piece of chicken teriyaki, and waited.  Within a couple hours the malefactor was in the trap, and I drove him/her to a new homesite near fields and prairie about a mile away.

Then I reset the trap, not sure if this was one guy or possibly two.  I captured a second one before evening and drove it over to where the first was released.  Then I realized that I don't know that the ones I trapped are a mated pair and the occupants of the hole or just wandering neighborhood residents, so I decided to look up some info on their ecology and when they have their litters.  Found this nice infographic -

That was new information for me.  I did not realize that common chipmunks would create multiple entrances to their hidey-holes.  Now I'm thinking that the risk of sealing a chipmunk family into a live burial horrorshow is unlikely, and that I can just go ahead with the cleanup and closure.

But one advantage of having a blog full of well-read and diversely-experienced readers is that sometimes I can call for help.  So I'd appreciate advice from others with backgrounds in rodentology, mammalogy, pest control, or house maintenance.

Before leaving, I'll insert several tidbits from the Wikipedia entry:

The common name originally may have been spelled "chitmunk", from the native Odawa (Ottawa) word jidmoonh, meaning "red squirrel" (cf. Ojibwe ajidamoo). The earliest form cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is "chipmonk", from 1842. Other early forms include "chipmuck" and "chipminck", and in the 1830s they were also referred to as "chip squirrels", probably in reference to the sound they make. In the mid-19th century, John James Audubon and his sons included a lithograph of the chipmunk in their Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, calling it the "chipping squirrel [or] hackee". Chipmunks have also been referred to as ground squirrels, (although the name "ground squirrel" may refer to other squirrels, such as those of the genus Spermophilus).

Eastern chipmunks, the largest of the chipmunks, mate in early spring and again in early summer, producing litters of four or five young twice each year... Chipmunks construct extensive burrows which can be more than 3.5 m (11 ft) in length with several well-concealed entrances. The burrows are complex and include plugged entryways, nseparate compartments for nesting, multiple food chambers, side pockets and escape routes. The sleeping quarters are kept clear of shells, and feces are stored in refuse tunnels.

11 stars on this eagle

"President Donald Trump has posted what appears to be a doctored image of a large, golden eagle attached to the White House's Truman Balcony on social media—the latest in a series of altered or AI-generated images the president has shared in recent months...

According to CNN, the image has details in its metadata that indicate it was created with Google AI.

The outlet also noted that the image did not appear to be real because of differences between the railings in the picture and the real-life Truman Balcony.

The shield in the image also has 11 stars, whereas the traditional version has 13 to reflect the 13 states at the time the United States was founded."

The original digital artist may have used 11 stars to represent the 11 states in the Confederacy.

"The Life of Chuck"

Using the Siskel/Ebert grading system, this movie gets two "thumbs up" from me.  I've embedded the official trailer above, but it is so spare that it doesn't offer much of the sense of the movie, which is perhaps better conveyed by this excerpt, in which Chiwetel Ejiofor's character explains Carl Sagan's "cosmic calendar" to his ex-wife:

But for a full appreciation of the movie, I would recommend this 14-minute longwatch analysis and commentary:

Some will consider that commentary to be full of "spoilers" but in this case I think the reveals are appropriate in order to understand what is happening in the opening sequence when the "world" is coming to an end.

What impressed me was author Stephen King's choice of a glioblastoma multiforme as the cause of Chuck's death.  Had he died in a vehicular accident or from other sudden trauma, the "universe" in his head would have just winked out.  The glioblastoma, by contrast, slowly snakes its way through Chuck's head, and as it destroys or replaces his memories of California for example, the California of the universe slides into the ocean.  The characters in his head can "see" their impending death and have time to react in their personal lives.

When the key monologue in the movie is delivered by Chuck's 6th grade teacher, I was surprised and delighted to see that the actress in that role - Kate Siegel - was the same actress who delivered the most important monologue in the miniseries Midnight Madness ("what happens when you die"), which was also directed by Mike Flanagan.

When the movie was released in 2025 it received mixed reviews from critics, but notably won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival - a distinction that normally leads to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture - but that did not happen in this case, and I think the movie has been sadly overlooked.

Found the above on Facebook but lost the source.  Below is a thematically related screencap from the movie Interstellar in which Michael Caine's character is asked whether he is afraid of death.  He replies no, then adds this...

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A link for lovers of movies: The Criterion Closet

For much of my adult life I have been a fan of the Criterion Collection.  About fifteen years ago I did subscribe to the Criterion Channel in order to stream their movie collection on demand, but I found the interface clunky, especially for fast-forwarding, seeking etc.  I dropped that subscription after realizing that our local public library has over a thousand Criterion Channel movies available on DVD and Blu-ray.

There is a  physical (and a mobile) Criterion Closet containing all the movies.  This week I realized there is an app to access that closet.  At the link you can view and interact with that closet either in a mockup of the physical setting ("closet view") or in a list view (screencap embedded above).  From that app you can access all the movies via your subscription or purchase them.  But more importantly for the average reader here, you can access trailers for virtually all of those 1,327 movies.

Then I borrow the DVDs from the library.

Goat tower

If I had goats, I'd want to have a goat tower.  You can read about the (unexciting) history of such towers at Wikipedia.

A reflecting pool cocktail

There are a seemingly endless number of memes on the reflecting pool disaster.  Readers are welcome to provide links to their favorites in the Comments.  I thought this one posted by Sarah Dahlinger on Facebook was nicely done.

I've seen a lot of brilliantly made craft cocktails dedicated to the Reflecting Pool this past weekend, and I thought, something was missing. Something wasn't right. 

They didn't quite capture the level of class and sophistication that our Reflecting Pool currently has, so here's my version. 

To start, line your glass with a blue fruit roll up. Then you're going to need:

2 oz rum

4 oz juice that is kinda yellow (pineapple, mango, orange, lemonade, whatever you like)

1 oz blue curacao (you can adjust for color)

Garnish with lime zest

The yellow and blue liquids make a lovely shade of algae and the rum eventually melts the blue fruit roll up, which is, IMHO, the best part. 

Interesting library chair

Via Architecture Hub.

Two videos about techniques for filming movies

Via Kottke.

New technology for warfare: gyrocopters and paragliders

"They appear after midnight, slowly crossing Myanmar’s skies. The motorised paragliders are improvised aircraft, suspending small metal frames from brightly coloured sails. They drift over a patchwork of villages, farmland, forests and winding rivers.

Each “paramotor” has two or three soldiers strapped in – one piloting, the others holding the bombs. Their craft are powered through the sky by small, rattling engine propellers, heading towards the lowland villages. Finally, switching their engines off to glide low and near silently through the dark, the men throw their explosives.

The destruction is immediate and devastating. Attacks can last several minutes, with bombs weighing up to 16kg (35lb) each dropped in quick succession. Homes are torn apart, schools and religious buildings destroyed – and civilians killed or injured as they sleep. The villages descend into panic and confusion, with families fleeing into the darkness and emergency workers digging through debris for the wounded.

“People try to run to the bomb shelters. But there is usually not enough time,” says Lwan Thu, an activist in the Sagaing region, which has been heavily bombed by the paramotors. “There are scores of dead and injured after the strikes.”...

“We’re facing constant strikes by these new aircraft,” says Lwan Thu. “They are using them to attack everything – civilians, hospitals, religious ceremonies, residential homes.”...

Unlike military jets, these lightweight aircraft require little infrastructure, use small amounts of fuel, are cheap to buy and are hard to track, evading detection from early-warning systems. Soldiers can be trained to operate them in a matter of days, rather than the years needed to fly conventional aircraft.

Buying paragliders, which are widely available commercially, also allows the junta to evade international sanctions targeting the military’s access to arms...

One attack on a Buddhist festival at a primary school in October killed at least 24 people, including three children, and wounded 61. A witness told Fortify Rights, a human rights organisation: “[The paramotors] had no lights … I didn’t hear any engine sounds at all.

“We later found out that the paramotors turned off their engines when they approached the school compound and glided over with their parachutes.”

One woman told Agence France-Presse in the aftermath: “Children were completely torn apart.” The next day, she said, they were still “collecting body parts”.

Additional information at The Guardian.

A cure for anthropocentrism

If you have friends who believe that human beings are the center of everything and humans are the reason for the existence of the universe, suggest to them that they view this video timelapse of history, and note that the entire length and breadth of human existence is condensed into the final cel of the presentation...

Via Neatorama.

Italian word for the day: coglione

Here is the definition, from the Wikipedia entry on Italian profanity:

Lots of interesting material at that link.

Prefix of the day: "pene"

This rock was identified at the whatsthisrock subreddit as a "penecontemporaneous deformation structure."  It apparently is such a commonly-used term that it is shortened by users to "PCD."  There is excellent informed discussion at the link to explain that PCDs are formed when sedimentary material is deformed during deposition ("contemporaneously").  Lots of further details at Geological Digressions.

I thought the rock was cool, but what grabbed my attention was the fact that I am an English major almost 80 years of age and I'm seeing a prefix that is not in my wheelhouse.

Onward to the Wiktionary entry for "pene":

Almost the thing or quality expressed by the root, as peneplain (almost a plain), peninsula (almost an island), penultimate (almost the last), penumbra (almost in shadow).

Wow.  Three words I've used for essentially all my adult life without appreciating their common prefix.

You learn something every day.

The etymology of "soccer"

 This will be my only post relevant to this year's World Cup.

"... in its early days, football was a very "posh" sport.  "The people who founded the Football Association in England in 1863 were Oxford graduates who had attended elite public schools," he said.  The game played under Football Association rules became known as "association football", wrote John M Cunningham in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  The name also helped distinguish it from another popular sport: rugby...

Among wealthy university students in the 1880s and 1890s, there was a habit of shortening words and adding "-er" to the end, creating a kind of slang.  "So instead of saying 'breakfast,' they would say 'brekker'."  Applied to rugby, they would call it "rugger."..

It appears that these inventive students took "soc" from the middle of the word "association" and added "-er," producing "soccer".  "Obviously, no-one knows for certain, but what people are sure about is that it comes from Oxford. There are many documentary sources confirming that it was a word coined by students there."

More information at the source article at the BBC.

Postal history of the Telemark coast of Norway

The video is a full-length recording of an hour-long presentation at the Boston 2026 World Exposition of Philately.  The Telemark postal district is situated west of Oslo, and the coast extends from Skien on the north to Kragero on the southwest.  This presentation discusses postal history of this region up through the end of the 19th century.  The information will be of most interest to serious philatelists or to others interested in Scandinavian history.

One item will also be of interest to anyone who has a relative or friend whose last name is Odegaard.  When the Black Plague arrived in Norway in 1349, approximately 2/3 of the population died.  Some of those who survived moved to the abandoned farms.  "Odegaard" is Norwegian for "abandoned farm."  You learn something every day.