OK, today another drain tile lid flip. We made a decision yesterday on this. We’re going to have the installers return and screw down all seven lids. Sure, it’ll mean I have to unscrew them to clear out the debris. Whatever.
The guy we called said this is happening because of an over-eager squirrel. That may be the case.
Let’s see if squirrels carry screwdrivers.
I have searched the internet for a solution to this problem. All I ever find are links to my blog posts about it.
Now there are 4 tile drain lids that have been flipped. A couple of others were flipped last night. Sena put them back on and put a rock on one of them. The two others with rocks on top of them were undisturbed.
Four of the seven lids have now been flipped this season. We still don’t know what causes this. I suspect it’s an extraterrestrial playing a prank on us.
Well, a couple of our drain tile lids were flipped last night. I don’t know how it happened. One of them was flipped and landed right side up and the other was upside down. The posts beside them were also out of place. The worm gear clamp obviously didn’t work on the one, so probably it doesn’t make sense to keep trying those.
Sena put the lids back on and put rocks on top of them. This is the second season for this mystery. It always happens at night and during the fall.
I still think some animal is responsible—and that includes human suspects. I doubt I’d catch anything on the critter cam, but I’m tempted.
Well, on Saturday morning we noticed that a different drain tile grate was flipped in our back yard. Same problem as the other one that I blogged about last year. I put the wormhole gear clamp back on the other one and so far, so good.
Now I’m considering getting another clamp for the other grate.
I can think of a few animals around here that might be guilty of flipping grates: deer, feral cats, dogs, raccoons, and the like. We did catch a big raccoon on video up in the Mulberry tree a couple months ago. On the other hand, it’s not happening to our new neighbor’s grate.
I can’t rule out some kid pulling a prank on us. But I wouldn’t know who it is. As I may have mentioned last year, there aren’t any young kids in the immediate neighborhood.
I’m considering setting up our critter cam again. You never know. I might catch an extraterrestrial on camera.
Some of you may remember last year’s drain grate flipping saga in which something removed one of our back yard tile drain grates nearly every day for a while last fall. It’s happening again! This time it occurred during a pretty fierce heat wave which is still ongoing. It was so hot, the videos and photos we got were really hazy.
That adventure began in late September of 2022 and went on past the middle of October. I wrote a few posts about the saga. We set up a critter cam to see if we could get it on video. We caught deer running across the yard and that’s it, except for a UFO. Check our YouTube “Caught in the Critter Cam Lights” on October 17, 2022.
Yesterday, we noticed the drain grate was off again, after a nearly a year of no problems with it. Now, a couple of months ago, a couple of other drain grates popped off, but it looked like the explanation was heavy rainfall. The pipes were full of debris and the lid was very close to the edge of the pipes.
This time, the same lid that popped off last year popped off again and it was a replay of what looks like an ongoing mystery.
I’m not ready to set up the critter cam just yet. I’m a little unsure of whether it’ll work OK in triple digit heat.
The critter cam didn’t capture any activity last night. So, I did the next thing—I removed the worm gear clamp from the grate. It has been undisturbed for over a week now. The last event was on October 8,2022, when the big rocks on top of the grate were shoved around.
It’s getting pretty cold. It’s in the mid-twenties this morning. Maybe that’s inhibiting whatever’s out there. I didn’t see any poop, but Sena saw a pile yesterday which looked pretty much the same as the first one. It was in about the same location. This is likely from a dog.
Let’s see what happens.
I reset the mode of our critter cam to shoot both pictures and videos yesterday. One viewer suggested I walk around our yard as a check to see how this works. I did get up and traipse around this chilly morning shortly after 6:00 AM, took pictures of bright objects in the night sky (funny how celestial bodies can induce a sense of lost time…), and listened to an owl hoot and a dog bark.
The drain tile grate was still undisturbed. It was dark but I didn’t step in any poop; I checked my shoes. The specimen I shoveled up the other day was probably just dog poop.
Also, we caught some deer trotting through the yard as well. The video and pictures look pretty good. You can see the garden grasses blowing in what was probably a 14 mph wind out of the northwest.
That’s more like it. I set it for video mode only and we’ll see what happens tonight. You may want to turn up the volume on your audio speakers to hear the sounds in the video below.
OK, so we really didn’t capture a cryptid last night—but the point today is that we certainly could have. What proves this is the accidental shot of my groin (relax, clothed!) this morning just before I touched the critter cam which was still working within the time setting.
This proves that the camera works as it should. But again, I didn’t get any pictures overnight. This isn’t surprising, really. When you think about it, you have to get really lucky to catch a cryptid on the first couple of nights you mount a critter camera in your back yard.
This reminds me of the show The Proof is Out There, hosted by Tony Harris, who has the right mix of a sense of humor, skepticism, and an open mind. The program delves into the paranormal by various experts examining videos people send in. Lots of stuff gets debunked, although some end up being either unexplained or clearly identified as something which exists in the natural world. Michael Primeau is the forensic video analyst (“This video is clearly faked.”).
Last night, the show’s experts looked at a video which showed what clearly looked like either a cryptid, an extraterrestrial, or a fraud. It turned out to be a kind of moth called Creatonotos gangis. One of the experts called it a kind of Tiger Moth. The male of the species develops several tentacles which make it look like it’s a cross between a mini-octopus and a little alien. Those tentacles are scent glands used to attract a mate.
So, could a winged dragon explain why there are no discernible tracks in our yard? On the other hand, we found a suspicious pile of poop in our yard nearby the target area of interest in the vicinity of the drain tile grate—which is still intact.
I got an F grade in Cryptid Crapology, but I think we could narrow this down. According to at least one internet authority, the poop is much too large for a squirrel, chipmunk, mouse or rat. It’s certainly not consistent with bird poop. It’s probably not from a raccoon because you usually find berries and seeds in it.
It could be from an opossum. They’re nocturnal. That reminds me of the scratching noises in our attic. It doesn’t explain why the tradesmen who fixed our exhaust vent found a walkie-talkie up there. Opossums use telepathy to communicate, as you all know. But I can’t figure out why an opossum would mess with our drain tile grate.
I don’t think it’s bear poop. The scat is usually much larger and would contain berries and seeds because it’s an omnivore. Deer poop is rounder.
Sena saw a skunk in our yard in the past, but the poop doesn’t look typical for skunk. If you poke it, it would likely have remnants of undigested feathers, fur, and seeds. I did not poke it and that could be one reason why I flunked Cryptid Crapology.
I don’t know why dragon poop is not listed.
The drain tile grate has been secure for about a week now. But I may keep trying to catch the cryptid on camera, just in case. I could get a video on The Proof is Out There.
Things did not go according to plan last night with the critter cam. It took zero pictures. What gives? I’m sure I had the timer settings right. It’s a 24-hr. military time clock and it was set for 1930 to 0730 starting yesterday evening. The grate was undisturbed and maybe that’s the explanation.
Could there be a problem with taking night time pictures? I checked a web site about that, “Trail Camera Not Taking Night Photos? 7 Things to check.” As far as I can tell from the list, there is nothing seriously amiss.
The area of interest is well within our camera’s 65-foot detection range. I suppose the problem might be the alkaline batteries, but it took pictures in dim light of me just fine. The memory card is brand new, formatted and I deleted any test pictures I took so there was plenty of storage. The camera is rated to 13 degrees below zero and it didn’t get close to that last night. It’s not shooting black pictures—it’s taking no pictures.
I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t think it had anything to do with night time. It took pictures of me in dim light and daylight just fine. The camera was pointed in the right direction according to the daylight test shot I took this morning.
No pictures might just mean no action. That doesn’t mean unusual things can’t happen. I ran across a headline today on the web, “Mountain Lion sighting in South Central Iowa.” The animal was filmed in Madison County, which is not far southwest of Des Moines.
Anyhow, I got an idea about a different approach today. I think I figured out how to mount the camera on the stand with base included in the box. Feel free to point out any mistakes I made putting it together. The manual didn’t include instructions on how to assemble it. I also could not find any YouTube or other internet guidance. It’s like nobody else thought it was important enough to tell newbies how to do basic things with trail camera field mounting.
I know the stand is supposed to be secured to something with screws, but I couldn’t find a suitable place to install the tiny wood screws with funny looking plastic sleeves.
Instead, I placed the camera with the stand along with a couple of heavy rocks on the base on a patio block. I took some test pictures, which looked OK. You can tell which pictures are which by the time stamp. The post mounting shot was at 9:46 AM; the stand on the block picture was at 11:23 AM. I think the latter would be as secure as the post mount.
There were either no trigger events or there was a malfunction. I doubt it was the latter, but I’m not the handyman or modern age Daniel Boone kind of guy.
For now, my new plan is to use the critter cam stand and rocks setup and try again, maybe tonight. I can just hear people groaning, “Rocks, are you joking? Extraterrestrials will just blast them with their ray guns!”
I would like to try video, but for now I want to just make sure it’ll take photos as programmed.
We’re trying to catch a glimpse of whatever or whoever has been removing one of our tile drain grates in our back yard for the last few weeks. It happens only at night. We bought a critter cam and it’ll go live tonight!
Today I ran the critter cam through a few tests to see if it would work in the dark. I set it up on a footstool, turned it on and clowned around in a dimly lit hallway. It wasn’t completely dark, and it seemed like I had to dance a fair amount to trigger the Passive Infrared Sensors (PIRs)—but it worked! Check the slideshow below.
I have no experience with these things and I don’t know whether the PIR Sensitivity might be set too high because we’re in autumn and the leaves are falling. It makes me wonder if the camera will trigger too much, making the image yield low. But there’s only 3 settings: high, medium, and low. Because I want to make sure I catch whatever is messing with our drain grate, I plan to leave the setting on High.
Sena and I mounted the camera on the nearest post supporting the sun room. She clowned around while standing next to the drain tile grate and it triggered and got her picture. We hope the rigging holds. I’ve set it to come on at sunset tonight and turn off at sunup tomorrow. It’s set to take photos, not videos for now.
It’s chilly out there; only 49 degrees. I don’t know how that’ll influence Bigfoot activity out there tonight.
I removed the rocks but left the worm gear clamp attached. Keep your fingers crossed!
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