How to secure a ladder

A few weeks ago we had our bedroom window replaced (a topic I'll cover in another post soon), and the guys who came to install the window used what seemed to me to be a very clever trick. They held a full size crow bar against the bottom rung of the ladder, and hammered the straight end into the ground like a tent peg so that the foot of their ladder wouldn't slide out from under them. 

Do you think that this is another great use for the woefully under-appreciated crow bar (see Ode to the Mini-Crow Bar), or a dangerous recipe for disaster?

Would it be better to hammer the crow bar in until the curved part hooked right over the bottom rung, or does the way that they have it work just as well?

Or should we just stick to doing things the old-fashioned way and make sure that we have a friend on hand to hold the ladder in place?

Finding a Mummified Squirrel

Today we dug holes for our new fence posts, and in the process (although not underground), I found a mummified squirrel. Well, it wasn't actually wrapped in cloth or anything, but it was a very well-preserved squirrel specimen.

It startled me when I first realized what it was, and then my scientific curiosity took over. It was actually very cool, although I did feel bad for the little guy, because he apparently did not get a proper burial. The most interesting part of it, I think, was that this was not just a squirrel skeleton (not that you see those every day...), but the skin and whiskers were preserved as well.

Here is a photo for those with a healthy scientific curiosity. You can't see it that well, but I wanted to include the trowel for scale.

Tomorrow (when I have my good camera with me) I will take another photo, and then we will give this poor little guy the proper burial that he deserves.

Have you ever found the remains of an animal, an interesting fossil, feather or something like this when you were digging in your yard? I'd love to hear your stories of interesting finds!


Update: Here are some better photos of the mummified squirrel:

The squirrel has now had a proper burial in our back garden.

How to open a bottle of wine with a drill

We just got home from a long day of painting with two of our good friends N and C at our new house. Of course, to thank them for helping us out we were sure to order pizza, and offer them home made chocolate chip cookies some of our wine (well, we don't really make it ourselves, we just bottle it).

We have brought a few things to the new house that we thought we might need when we're over there working, like our camping pots so that we can boil water for tea, a few mugs, and some wine glasses. Unfortunately, our thinking ahead did not extend to a corkscrew. This put a damper on our much anticipated wine break, until C came up with a great idea. Why not use the drill that James had out and was using to build our new fence to get the cork out? Brilliant!

Better yet, we decided that instead of using a drill bit, which might just shred the cork, we should use a screwdriver bit with a screw attached. We had some great contractor's screws that we were using for the fence, so James drilled one into the cork. But then we had a problem. How could we get the screw and cork out?

In another flash of brilliance, we decided that a small pair of vice grips around the screw between the head of the screw and the cork would provide the grip that James needed to pull the cork out of the bottle, while I held the bottle firmly. We cleverly tilted the neck of the bottle upwards while pulling, and we hardly spilled a drop. Success!

(You could probably also do this with a screwdriver, although I strongly recommend using a drill for extra drama.)