The Art of Manliness suggests ways to carry duct tape at all times. We're all for this.
I usually wrap it around something flat like a credit card or just an old piece of reasonably stiff plastic. I almost always have some tape wrapped around my lighter and flashlight as well. I use black electrical tape for a lot of applications and carry it the same way. Duct tape works better for something like a wound -- and I've actually used it for that. It's also better for creating a setup where you don't want it adhering to part of a surface -- since it's bigger and easier to manipulate, slapping another piece of duct tape face down on the sticky side where you don't want sticky.
Paracord was one of those things I had never bothered with. I always have lots of fishing line, some nylon cord -- like mason's line around, polypropylene rope, jute for the garden, and, of course, baler twine. I was ordering some other items recently and decided to add a hundred feet of paracord for good measure. I like it. I haven't tried snaring chipmunks with the inner fibers yet, but the concept seems kind of neat. It is easy to work with and does make decent replacement bootlaces, if nothing else.
Two of the grandkids -- the more redneck of the four -- are big on duct-tape crafting, or whatever you want to call it. My wife's coupon retainer is one of their creations. I took part of an old pocket-size planner, cut it up some and used camouflage duct tape to make myself a pocketed index card, business card, note, and receipt carrier. I carry that in my back pocket, keeping my front-pocket wallet smaller and slimmer.
A Swiss Army Knife and Vise-Grips,
WD-40 and duct tape
Will fix a lot of troubles
And avoid a lot of scrapes.
Accompanying a brain
These are handy tools
Which lets out the President
And the Congress full of fools.
I could be pursuaded to start carrying duct tape. Good link. The chipmunk snare reminds me of a friend in college. Loved lizards. He used to catch them by forming a little noose with dental floss that he dangled off the end of a small stick. It required patience.
ReplyDeleteI roomed with aggies and wildlife majors in college. They were always needing to stuff something for some class, so I'd occasionally pop a chipmunk with snakeshot and take it to them. We have an abundance of them here, and there were tons on Dad's farm. We even had flying squirrels. Amazingly enough, it is possible to turn a chipmunk into beer. I could have probably turned a flying squirrel in a keg, but I couldn't bring myself to kill one of them. The chipmunks were bad enough.
ReplyDeleteTurning a chipmunk into beer, heh. Back when I was a wildlife major I spent a couple of quarters as a co-op student wearing climbing spurs and checking flying squirrel nest boxes. We were looking for the Northern flying squirrel in the southern Appalachians. Got to visit the highest peaks where the spruce-fir forests were from the Smokies to northern Virginia. We did catch one or two but we caught mostly the southern variety. They are really too cute to kill.
ReplyDeleteThe co-op students now are checking bear dens around here. Flying squirrels seems like a better deal.
ReplyDelete