All posts by Annaka

I am a software engineer, YA fantasy writer, and gardener.

Hummingbird Feeder Heating Hood

It has been an unusually cold and snowy winter here in Port Angeles.

Our house is at about 1000 feet, and we have had snow on the ground for more than five weeks. This, after an unusually warm fall.

We’re suffering from climatic whip-lash, and so are the critters.

We took the hummer feeder down in early September to encourage the birds to migrate, but the garden kept right on blooming until the first hard frost — December 5th. That night, the snow came.

The next morning, I put the hummingbird feeder back out, just in case some of the hummers hadn’t migrated in time. Sure enough, a male Anna’s hummingbird promptly claimed it.

The solution I use in the winter — one part sugar to three parts water — has a fairly low freezing point, so as long as the temperature stays above ~26 degrees F, the feeder is fine.

But the temperature has been dipping below that, and unless I take measures, the feeder freezes.

The simple solution is to pull the feeder in at night, and put it out in the daytime. That works fine if the colder temperatures are only at night, but it’s also a bit of a tyranny.

This tiny bird is dependent on me. If we had to go out of town, or I forgot to put it out one morning, or had to go out during the day and the feeder froze, the hummer might well die.

So, what to do?

Make a hummingbird feeder heater!

Below is my design for a heater. It has worked well to about 20 degrees F. This variant still leaves the little feeder straws vulnerable. Much below 20 degrees, and those will still freeze, rendering the beautifully fluid reservoir irrelevant.

Still, it fills in that critical 20-25 degree gap, which covers the vast majority of problematic temperatures here in the Pacific Northwest.

And let’s be honest: hummingbirds in sub-freezing temperatures are probably only an issue in a very narrow geographic area. I doubt it comes up much outside of the Pacific Northwest.

Hummingbird feeder heater

Materials:

  • Small heating pad (~6×8-12 inches)** Note that the model I link to here is a good size, but the cord is not technically outdoor grade. That means you should be sure to take it down before rainy weather. There may be outdoor-grade options, but I don’t know them.
  • Yoghurt container (or other semi-cylindrical container that fits reasonably well over your hummingbird feeder’s reservoir)
  • Bubble wrap
  • Packing tape
  • Plastic grocery bags
  • Extension cord (and external power source)
  • Binder clips
  • Ladder (depending on hummer feeder placement)

If you have everything you need on hand, this will take about half an hour.

Making the heater unit

1. Using a good pair of scissors, cut down one side of the yoghurt container to the bottom, through to the middle of the bottom, and make a hole as close to the center as you can (a diamond or rectangle is likely to be easiest). This will allow the feeder’s hanger to go through. Note that the bottom of the yoghurt container will become the top of the heating unit.

Make a notch closer to the edge of the bottom. This will provide room for the power cord, without disrupting the feeder.

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2. Take the heating pad and thread its power cord up the slit and through the notch. Curve the heating pad and slide it into the yoghurt container. It may not go all the way around. That’s ok. Position it so that the middle area is clear (both of the heating pad and power cord) — keep in mind that this will need to slide down over the feeder.

Stabilize the slit in the yoghurt container with packing tape.

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3. Take bubblewrap or a padded envelope (which is what I used), and wrap it around the yoghurt container. This will provide insulation, and help insure that most of the heat stays inside the yoghurt container. Because the yoghurt container does not have perfectly vertical sides, you will need to offset the bubblewrap some so that it goes high on one side, and overlaps on the other (to try to cover the whole container).

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Clip the excess off around the bottom.

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4. Take another bit of bubblewrap and make a circle. Cut a slit and a hole to correspond with the gaps in the yoghurt container’s lid. Put it on the bottom of the yoghurt container.

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5. Cut slits in the part of the bubblewrap that is sticking up above the bottom, and fold them down onto the bottom. Tape into place (this tidies it up and adds a little more insulation). Apply packing tape to the junction between the bottom and the sides.

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6. Cut a hole in the bottom of a plastic grocery bag. Thread the bottom of the yoghurt container through so that the bottom of the container lines up with the hole, allowing the heating pad cord to go through and giving access to the hole in the middle.

Tape around the yoghurt container in the bag, to snug the bag on and generally stabilize things.

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Tuck the open top of the bag through to line the yoghurt container’s central space. Make sure that there is a clear path through the yoghurt container, through the hole, and out the other side — that’s where the hummer feeder and its cord will go.

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The grocery bag will help protect your work from any stray sugar water, and will help restrict the escape of warm air (we want to keep it in the cavity, and this is part 1 of that effort).

7. Make sure that your hummer feeder fits nicely inside the cavity, and that its cord can get through the top hole. If so, you’re ready for installation!

Note that the finer points of installation will depend on whether your feeder is on a pulley system (as mine is), or whether you just hang it each time. In the former case, you want the heater installed where the feeder will hang, and then you’ll hoist the feeder into it (and adjust). In the latter case, you’ll put the heater over the feeder, and then install the whole shebang. More on that in 10.

The cord arrangement below should work well for either case.

8. Set up your cords. Note that you want the cord of the heater coming down from above, close to where the feeder itself hangs. This will keep the heater from tilting the feeder.

I tacked a couple nails into the eave to one side of the feeder. I hung a binder clip on each. I clipped an outdoor-grade extension cord with one, and hung it. I then clipped the cord of the heating pad with the other, and hung it.

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That keeps the cords at a good angle, and keeps the junction out of the weather.

9. Prep the feeder.

You will note that the heater does not provide close contact with the feeder, and there is likely to be a significant air gap between the bottom of the heater and the lower part of the feeder. It is important to fill that.

At minimum, tie a plastic grocery bag around the feeder, down close to the flowers. This will fill the gap between the heating hood and the feeder, and allow warm air to build up inside.

However, I found that with that arrangement the feeding straws still tended to freeze at 23-24 degrees F, even though the reservoir was lovely and fluid. To fix this, take another plastic bag, slide it under the middle of the hummer feeder, pull the ends up on either side and tie it on (e.g. With the second plastic bag mentioned above). This will create some protection and heat transmission for the lower part of the feeder. With this arrangement, I was able to predictably have fully accessible hummer water at 20 degrees F. It could probably go a little lower, but you might need to strategically add more insulation — e.g. a second grocery bag going under the bottom, up between the other pair of flowers (if you’re using the common four-flower feeder design).

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10. Put up the feeder.

10a. If you have a pulley system, hang the heater where you want the feeder to be. Thread the cord from the pulley through the hole in the top of the heater, and pull it down until it’s at a comfortable height to mount the feeder. You will then hook up the feeder and hoist it until it’s in the heater. You will need to be able to reach the feeder at its final position, so that you can make sure everything is snug, and check for freezing.

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10b. If you just hang your feeder, slide the heating hood onto the feeder and thread the feeder’s cord through the top.

Mount the feeder and plug the heater’s cord in, ideally clipping the heater’s cord into the appropriate support (see 8).

11. Make sure that you don’t have any big gaps between the heating hood and its plastic bag scarf. If there are any, adjust the plastic to cover them. You want to keep the warm space as warm as possible.

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11. Check the feeder.

This is very important, especially if this is your first time mounting the feeder, or if the weather has suddenly gotten colder.

If the little access points freeze, the hummer still can’t get to the food. If this happens, get everything thawed out (remember, that tiny bird is counting on you!), and then get it set up again, possibly adding a bit more insulation around the lower part of the feeder.

If it is very cold, you may still need to bring the feeder in at night, and then just use the heating hood to keep it fluid during the day.

Once you have observed the hood’s behavior at various temperatures over a few days, you can feel more secure, but keep an eye on it.

One last note:

This is a contingency plan, for if the weather gets brutally cold and there are still hummingbirds around. I recommend taking your hummingbird feeder in for most of the autumn, because ideally there won’t be any hummingbirds around in that ultra-cold weather.

But when the ultra-cold weather does come, if there are still a few holdouts, they may well die without your intervention.

Let me know if you try this, and how it goes!

I would be especially interested in any cold-weather improvements, or adjustments for different kinds of hummingbird feeders.

Processing

It has been a week since Trump won the projected electoral vote.

It has been a tough week, although as a white woman living in a quiet corner of a liberal state, it has been tough at some remove.

A week ago, I watched with creeping dread as the early returns looked worse and worse for Hillary. I went to bed before the worst was known — hoping that somehow the world would have reset to the “right” path by morning.

When I woke up, the first thing I did was check the results.

I had a few seconds of profound relief when I saw the vote percentages.

Then I saw the electoral college tallies.

The mixture of disbelief and creeping dread throughout was similar to when Dubya beat Gore, except a few orders of magnitude worse. It was having a nightmare come to life in slow motion — and of course this is just the beginning.

In the last week there has been a swell of hate crimes. Trump has put together a ghastly transition team.

I have heard such terror from so many of my at-risk friends (minorities, people with health problems, people outside of the white “mainstream”). And at the same time, there is a chorus of “this won’t be so bad, we can get through this, we’ll just roll with the punches.”

It is terrifying to think that these conciliating attitudes may exacerbate the harm that Trump could cause.

A snippet from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” has been going on. I just hope that it isn’t as prescient as it feels at this moment in time.

There is still the cruel hope that faithless electors can prevent Trump from taking the Whitehouse. I signed the petition, but I know that it is an incredibly long shot. One or two might defect. Maybe ten could defect. But unless Trump does something absolutely insane in the next month (something Republicans see as insane, that is), I don’t see how 38 would possibly defect.

I feel very helpless, but I also know that I can’t just sit here and feel helpless.

I am privileged. I am not at risk in the way that many of my friends are. I need to step up for those at risk.

I have set  up recurring donations. I have subscribed to the New York Times and The Seattle Times, in hopes of showing my support for journalistic integrity.

I will try to go troll hunting for my friends.

If I see something in real life, I will do my best to quash my conflict-avoidant conditioning and intervene. As lily white as Port Angeles is, that seems a bit unlikely, but I will put myself in the mindset to be ready.

I desperately hope that all of this will pass without doing too much damage, but I cannot assume that. I desperately hope that history will not be looking with profound image at this period to see how America let a fascist dictator take power.

Much as I would love to assume that everything will be ok, I cannot assume that. I will do what I can to help make sure that doesn’t happen, even if it is a number of small things.

The small things add up.

Cringer

The other exciting development is the addition of a kitten to the family.

We first met Cringer at the end of July.

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At that time he was being fostered by a tech at the Port Townsend animal shelter. He was due to be neutered at the start of August — just in time for Rob’s birthday.

Because of some complications, he actually came home with us three weeks later than expected. It was hard waiting, but in retrospect a 12 week old kitten was much easier than a 9 week old kitten.

Even so, he spent his first day with us in the corner of the closet, facing the wall. That was pretty sad, but he settled in quickly. By the next day he was purring and playing.

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Within a few days we let him out of his room and he started terrorizing Dulcie. She had never been around kittens, and so she ran away every time he came into the room. It didn’t help that he recognized her as a cat, and wanted to dash over and make friends.

After a few days she realized he wasn’t actually dangerous, but he persisted in leaping on her at every opportunity for the first few weeks.

He is starting to mellow slightly — he only pounces on her half the time now — and they occasionally look downright cuddly together.

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He’s shaping up to be a great lap cat when he’s not acting like a kitten.

Cougars, Part 4 – 3 goats – Done!

The fence is done, and has been for a while.

From getting the corners done to getting the fence completed took about a month. We had to cross-lash the H braces, string the wire, and install a gate.

Once we figured out the process, it took about 15 minutes for each electric wire, and a bit less for each ground wire. I’d rather not compute how much time that required, considering that there were four sides, seven wires per side.

It looks good, and although it isn’t cougar proof, it is a lot better than what we had.

It’s rather comical to look at the old and new next to each other.

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Having gotten the fence squared away, we were able to get a new girl. Her name is Teela, and she is another Nigerian Dwarf — probably with a bit of Pygmy in there.

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Nob spent a couple weeks bossing her around — he’s bigger — but she has some spunk, and she has horns. Now she ranks him, and 8-Bit ignores her (except when there’s food involved), so she has it pretty good.

She’s a sweet goat, and fits in very well.

Hopefully that will be the end of our cougar woes.

It is a risk still — the fence is cougar resistant, not cougar proof — but the only realistic alternative would be to rehome our goats. That wouldn’t have been hard with Nob, but 8-Bit would have been a job and a half.

Now we just have to wait and hope. It was a year and a half before we lost Bell, so it will be a while before we can be confident in our lovely new fence.

Cougars, Part 3 – 2 goats – Fencing!

It is now late July, and our remaining 2 goats are intact.

Unfortunately our remaining goats are the 2 boys – one big (a La Mancha) and one little (a Nigerian Dwarf).

From a compatibility standpoint, they’re the worst pair of survivors to have . . . But they seem to have adjusted reasonably well.

The only problem is that the big boy can’t play very well with the little boy, so then he’s overly frisky with us.

Once the fencing is done, we’ll see about getting a girl to keep the boys in line.

The fencing . . . ugh.

Good fencing isn’t easy.

What the game warden recommended was high tensile electric fence.

The power of the fence doesn’t need to be any higher than what we had already, but the goal is for it to be tight and strong — so the cougar can’t just zip through.

High tensile electric fence is made with 12.5 gauge wire (annoyingly heavy-duty) cranked to 250 lbs of force.

The real problem is to support that kind of fence, you need really strong corner posts.

We have spent the last month and a half going through the steps to get H braces in place.

This setup involves bracing the corner post with a partner post a few feet away, with a pole holding them apart towards the top, and a cross wire pulling them together into a stable box.

It is, frankly, a huge pain.

The biggest issue was getting the holes done. Our soil is rocky, and even with an auger it took several hours to do the preliminary holes — and even longer to tidy them up and wrangle a few extra inches to get the full three foot depth.

Then we had to put 8 foot posts in the holes, level them, and fill in with concrete.

Thirteen of them.

It was slow going, but we finally got the top braces in a couple days ago.

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The next step will be the wire cross-lashing that will stabilize the box.

Of course, at that point we still won’t have a fence. We’ll have corners.

Cougars, Part 2 – 3 Goats – May

I am sorry to say that we did nothing.

After all, we had lived in our house for a year and a half without any problems. And the cougar didn’t get a square meal out of Bell, so maybe it would just roam on its way.

A couple weeks later, I went out to give the goats a treat, and Minnie was gone.

Poof.

One big goat – 130+ pounds – missing.

Not without a trace, though. All of the electric fence wires at one end of the pasture were broken, and there was a broad drag trail.

I followed the trail a little ways, but balked when it went into the woods. After all, Minnie was bigger than I was, and the cougar had taken her out just fine!

When Rob got home from work, he managed to find Minnie’s remains . . . Which was amazing, because the cougar had carefully buried her. It was sad, but also really impressive. I don’t think that a human could have done much better hiding a goat with duff and moss.

Can you spot the goat?

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We didn’t notice it at the time, but a couple days later we realized that 8-Bit — the big boy — had a bite on his rear leg. The cougar must have gone for him first, failed, and then gone for Minnie.

The less said about giving antibiotics to goats, the better.

The game warden came out the next day. The first step was to put up a game cam and try to see what was what.

I had assumed it must be a big cat. It dragged Minnie a hundred yards, including through the brush.

The game warden told us about a cat that took out a 400 lb. calf. The cat was able to drag the calf to the fence, but then couldn’t get it over or under.

So . . . cats are freakishly strong.

The game cam came up empty the next morning, but the morning after we had some fine pictures of the cougar.

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Unfortunately, halibut season had just started, so it was a couple more days before a warden made it out. It was too late for a cage trap, he said — the carcass was starting to rot. He told us that we should keep checking the camera, and let him know when the cougar resurfaced.

In the meantime, see to our fences.

We had taken advantage of the “safe” time after the cougar took Minnie to set up a gate in the shed, so we could lock our two remaining boys in at night. That was fine in the short term, but in the long-term the only answer was a really good fence.

Really good fences are a big pain.

Cougars, Part 1 – 4 goats – April

I tend to go to bed early, so Rob had to wake me out of a sound sleep.

“Bell is hurt. Can you come help?”

Bell is the smallest of our 4 goats. She is super sweet, and all the other goats bully her.

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I pulled on some clothes and went out with him, feeling that this was probably a dream. What could have hurt Bell?

Rob had moved her to the shed, and she was lying on her side on the ground, her four little legs sticking straight out.

Stiff.

Screaming.

She had blood on her neck, but we couldn’t find the wound in her thick hair. It wasn’t gushing, but there was a liberal amount of blood on the ground, and all over Rob’s sweatshirt.

I went to check the other three goats – her brother and two big goats. Of course, the other goats took that as an invitation to come back in the shed. Not good with a wounded goat.

Nothing to do but move her.

We have a little back area in the shed for hay. I opened the inner gate, and Rob picked Bell up. More screaming.

He lay her in the small space by the hay, and stayed to comfort her while I went to phone the vet.

Note: Always have the vet in your contact list, easily found.

I didn’t have that foresight, so even though it was close on 11 I called a friend who also has goats to get the livestock vet’s number.

Thank goodness for emergency livestock vets! He said he’d be there in 45 minutes.

Back out to the shed, where Rob sat next to Bell. She was quieter, but still looked awful: eyes open wide and rolled back, blood on her neck, stiff as a board.

It was a long 45 minutes.

In the meantime, Rob filled me in.

He had gone out to say goodnight to the goats, and he had heard them moving around in an odd way. He turned his headlamp on, and saw an animal disappearing through the orchard – and there was Bell, in extremis.

I went out and, sure enough, the electrical fence was busted in two places. Entry and exit. There was a liberal smear of blood near the exit point.

 

At last the vet pulled up in his van/vet’s office.

He looked Bell over, gave her a shot for the pain, and told us that we could most likely expect her to bounce back the next day – eating, etc. – or not. And if not, there would be some hard decisions to be made. In the meantime we should keep her warm.

We tucked her between a hay bail and the wall, with a ratty old sleeping bag that we had been meaning to trash wrapped around her. Rob settled in for a long night, while I went in to get a little sleep before spelling him at 4:30 the next morning.

He had to work the next day, but I didn’t have anything pressing for work – so I would take her for the day Friday.

 

It was a long night for Rob. He got a few winks dozing on the hay bales next to Bell, but the one time he went inside for more than a couple minutes she dragged herself out of the nook and was lying on her side in the middle area – crying – when he got back.

Ugh.

So I collected my kit – reading light, book to edit, snacks – and settled in for goat duty while Rob headed off for work on half an hour of sleep.

After some experimentation, I established that Bell and I were both happy if I sat next to her, against the hay bales. It gave her a sense of herd, and it gave me the sense that I was doing something useful. And a backrest.

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When I had my breakfast – hot cereal – I offered her the last bit, and she ate it with every evidence of enjoyment. That was encouraging, so I went in and made some rolled oats with lots of hot water, so that she would get some fluid as well.

She took that as well.

All very encouraging. Eating had been one of the vet’s criteria for bouncing back.

I caught up on social media and did some editing. Every hour I popped inside for a few minutes to make sure nothing was blowing up at work.

All seemed to be going well . . . but by noon she still hadn’t stood up.

Worse, she had tried, and every time she did she would scream and subside shaking, and pant for the next ten minutes or so.

And it was Friday.

So around noon I gave the vet a call. He said he would come by to take X-Rays around 3. That way we would have a better sense of things going into the weekend.

Fortunately Rob was on the early shift, and was there for the vet’s visit. The vet had a nifty portable rig. He would position a plate under Bell, and then pass a hand-held machine over it to take the X-Ray.

No digital processing, though – we’d have to wait for the results.

In the meantime, he wasn’t sure whether she would be ok or not. It was the dreaded “not bouncing back, but not in dire straits” gray area that he had warned us about. She might just be very sore. Or it might be a more serious issue.

His advice was to keep her quiet, but he didn’t think we needed to keep sitting out with her, as long as she was pinned in. She wasn’t about to keel over.

He gave us some more shots to give her over the weekend, and left us feeling generally optimistic.

 

Two hours later, the vet called back.

The X-Rays were done. Her neck was broken. He would be out in 45 minutes to do the necessary.

Bad news, clearly. I was a little surprised it was so cut and dry. After all, Bell was eating, and apparently there’s some gray area with a broken neck. Sometimes they can heal, although it’s a pain for all concerned.

We went out to spend the last stretch of time with Bell. We fed her treats, and sat with her.

And I cried.

When the vet arrived he showed us the X-Rays, and his certainty made sense. One of the large bone spurs from her vertebrae was snapped off, and out of place by a couple inches. The vertebrae was at an odd angle.

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This wasn’t just a broken neck. It was a badly broken neck.

Bell should have been dead eighteen hours ago.

But she had somehow made it, and her spinal cord hadn’t been severed – so she could eat – but it was pinched enough that she couldn’t stand.

This wasn’t an injury that a goat could come back from.

So we said our goodbyes, and the vet did the necessary – first something to knock her out, and then a shot to the heart to stop it cold.

No more suffering for Bell.

 

We buried Bell in a nice spot by the woods. Our smallest, sweetest goat was no more.

We could take some comfort in the fact that we made her last eighteen hours as comfortable as possible.

 

But we couldn’t just mourn.

We had a cougar.

Bell’s broken neck confirmed Rob’s initial guess. Cougars latch onto their prey’s neck, both in the initial attack and to drag their prey away.

So, we had a cougar.

What to do?

 

Bell as a baby

lap bell

 

Ups and Downs of Country Life

We live a couple miles outside of Port Angeles, and to most people our neighborhood would look like country.

In the last couple months our life has really been feeling like life on the farm.

In a lot of ways that’s good: gardening, fun critters, neat projects.

In some it’s bad: predators, inclement weather, failures of various sorts.

 

In the next few posts I’m going to record some of the ups and downs of our life in the (almost but not quite) country.

Emergency Preparedness

My family moved to Washington State when I was 12.

Earthquake country.

Since then, I have lived in WA and CA. I even felt a couple minor quakes while living in the Bay Area.

I should have put together an emergency kit years — decades — ago, but I just never got around to it.

A few weeks ago, author Elizabeth Bear tweeted a link to a New Yorker article on the Big One.

It finally scared me into action.

If the Cascadia fault does bust all the way up to Washington, Port Angeles is going to be in deep trouble. If we make it through the initial quake, there will be a tsunami, and then if we survive that, the whole area will be such a mess that it might be a good long time before we get help.

So, properly motivated, I finally went through and put together an emergency kit. With Amazon’s help, I was able to get it done in an hour or so by starting with emergency radios and first aid kits, then looking at the “customers also bought” items.

I think this is a nice, solid basic emergency kit, suitable for anyone who is living in an area at risk of a large-scale disaster.

The whole thing cost a bit more than $100 . . . not cheap, but if I ever need it, it will be well worth it. Of course, I hope that I never actually need it!

If you’re looking forward to put together a kit of your own, feel free to use this as a jumping off point!

My focus below is on a non-food emergency kit – but my friend Blair McGregor recently did a nice post on food preparedness.

Did I miss anything critical?

Emergency Kit Contents:

The most basic requirements have an asterisk; many of the others are nice to have, but not critical.

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Communications

  • *Emergency Radio with USB charger
  •        Cell phone charging cable
  • Sharpie/pencil
  • Paper (for making notes)
  • Telephone list (emergency numbers in case you gain phone access, but your cell phone got broken)

Health

Light

  • *Head lamp (or flashlight)
  •        Extra batteries

Shelter

Tools

General

*Food

Not pictured. Ideally you would have enough for at least 3 days.

Human power pellets or a bunch of canned food . . . Whatever you can actually keep on hand and swap out as necessary.

If you have pets, include some food for them — or select canned food that either of you could eat.

If you want to be properly prepared with more than a few cans of food, here’s  a nice post on food preparedness.

*Water

This is partially covered under health (water treatment), but in an ideal world you would have actual containers with at least 3 days of water.

Clothes

In an ideal world, you would have some layers, clothes, socks, etc. Take some things that you were planning to take to the thrift store, and stick it in your emergency kit instead. Ideally you would have such things in your car, anyway, so one cheater method is to stash a copy of your car key in your emergency kit, and just keep the clothes in the car. Of course, you better be sure that your car will be home if you are!

Aftermath

In an ideal world, you would have a packet of paperwork with copies of your identification, insurance, telephone numbers, etc.

Placement

You have your handy dandy kit. Now where are you going to keep it? I’m stashing mine in a shed, so that if the house falls down I can still get to it. Wherever you put it, imagine the structure in a heap of kindling. Could you still get to the kit in a pinch? If so, you’re good.

 

I broke my emergency kit into a compact kit of items that can just live in a plastic bin.

I’m keeping the food and water separate, since those are bulky, and need to be swapped out periodically.

Even if I get sloppy with the food and water, at least the gear will still be there!

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And if the big one does come . . . well, I’m going to owe Bear a lot of drinks for spurring me to get my act together.

Poor Cueing – Wing Commander

Last time, I discussed some thoughts on cues and audience expectation.

Today, I want to look at an example where the cueing was poorly done, and resulted in disappointment for at least some audience members.

My target is Wing Commander.

When I saw this recently, it caught my eye as having a few instances of poor cueing — some of which made a difference, and some of which didn’t.

I am going to look at three examples of failed cueing in the movie. One is the innocuous sort of false cue that is almost inevitable in a complex work. The other two are more problematic.

Example 1: Minor cueing failure

When the MC and his best friend first arrive at their posting, they go and check out the fighters they’ll be flying. Almost immediately they see an attractive female — the first, as far as I can recall.

Rob made a crack about her clearly being the love interest, an opinion that I was inclined to agree with.

Of course, then we met the real love interest some twenty seconds later.

Cue Cause: Something unusual (a girl!), underscored by character attention.

Effect: Brief red herring about the love interest. A minor red herring that did not cause any disappointment when it turned out to be misleading.

Comments: This cueing misfire didn’t really hurt anything, although it didn’t really accomplish anything, either. If there is a good variety of characters all the way through, the storyline will be less vulnerable to such mis-cues, because the first girl (or POC or …) won’t stand out as different from the homogenous norm.

Example 2: Detail-based cueing failure

One of the major sources of tension through the middle of the movie is the MC’s Pilgrim association (he is half Pilgrim, which makes him the subject of suspicion by some of the crew members). Early on, he discusses his Pilgrim memento — an amulet roughly in the shape of a cross — with his best friend. His friend thinks he should get rid of it.

All well and good.

But then it is revealed that it has a little knife that can pop out of it.

It is a striking and suggestive detail.

We promptly decided that it would play a key role in the plot, probably in some sort of fight.

It . . . didn’t.

The amulet crops up again, but the little knife isn’t shown ever again. It doesn’t play a role, major or minor.

We were disappointed.

Cue Cause: something unusual (the amulet has a knife!), underscored by character attention, the fact that it had clear utility, and the fact that it was otherwise pointless.

Effect: this engendered the expectation that the knife would show up later and be used for something cool. The lack thereof caused disappointment.

Comment: this detail registered as a cue rather than an enriching detail because it was unusual, it was not surrounded by other details of similar weight, and it was a detail that had clear application. The reason all of this is problematic is that the viewer is cheerfully waiting for the knife to come into play, and when it doesn’t, is disappointed. It’s sort of like putting a gun on the mantle, but never having it fired or used to hit someone over the head.

Example 3: Interaction-based cueing failure

The MC’s best friend does some semi-competitive showing off with a girl.

The girl subsequently dies in an accident as a result of showing off.

The MC’s love interest blames the best friend.

All well and good.

But then there is a scene where the MC tells his love interest (who is also a officer) that she needs to make things right with the MC’s best friend, because she needs every fighter at her disposal.

This cued the expectation that the best friend would then play an important and likely redeeming role.

But . . . that was basically the last we saw of him.

Cue Cause: an emotionally fraught scene where the MC’s love interest forgives the best friend because they’re about to go into battle.

Effect: this engendered the expectation that the MC’s best friend would play some sort of important or cool role, or — failing that — die spectacularly. It is somewhat ironic, because he did play an important role — but it was before the “clearing the air” scene with the MC’s love interest.

The issue with this is similar to the issue with the unused dagger: there was the expectation that something interesting would happen at the end, and it didn’t happen. With a really good climax that might not have been a problem, but Wing Commander had a relatively weak climax — so the cues relating to interesting things that never happened were far more noticeable.

Comment: if you’re going to make a big deal of needing someone, their success or failure should be important. They should somehow be relevant, whether they come through or not.

To just ignore the whole thing doesn’t hack it.

In this case, I think they were just tying off the sub-plot “hey, we can’t just leave the MC’s love interest mad at the MC’s best friend,” but it looked like it should relate back to the main plot. And it didn’t.

General thoughts:

The two cueing failures that I consider problematic set up expectations for an exciting climax and resolution.

The ending turned out to be pretty lukewarm, so the cues stuck in my mind as missed opportunities.

I see two possible fixes:

1. Pay attention to the critical cues, and fulfill or subvert them.

2. Have such a splendid, satisfying climax that it blows away any recollection of what the audience expected.