Doug Hilton's Blog

Planet Earth mini-series on Discovery Channel

This past Sunday, I recorded the first three parts of the Planet Earth mini-series from The Discovery Channel. I got to watch two of the three episodes while at home with my sick daughter on Monday and wow! The imagery and cinematography is absolutely incredible. This series took over 5 years to produce/film, and that dedication shows. They have many recorded many never before seen things including some live hunts and other animals that are just not filmed in the wild. The other incredible photography comes when combining time-lapse technology with panning technology. Imaging watching the seasons pass in a meadow while panning around that meadow! It's just incredible.

The rest of the episodes are set to air every Sunday night on The Discovery Channel through April 22. For a complete schedule, look here. There is also a DVD available of the entire series that I may have to purchase. This one is worth it!

I am so smrt (I mean smart)

Something to keep you entertained for about 5 minutes over lunch. Let me know how you fair in the comments.

Mice

A couple of months ago, I noticed that we had mice living in our garage. They had taken dirt out of our bags of soil along with shredded news paper and built a nest in our post hole digger. They also found my stash of bird seed and were using that for food. They were cute, but I knew they had to go. They are not healthy and were tearing my garage apart. I did not want to kill them, but had to get rid of them. Consequently, I bought an ultra-sonic noise maker that was supposed to drive the mice away. I plugged it in in the garage, opened the door, and let it go for a few days. It did what it was advertised to do, except the mice didn't leave, they moved further in. The found a way into the walls, and up into the attic. Not good. Now they were keeping me up at night as I could hear them in the walls and in the ceilings.

Plan B. I still just wanted to get rid of them without killing them, so I ordered some smart mouse traps from greenfeet.com and set those. After about two weeks of setting these and transporting the mice away, I have now caught six, and there are still a couple left. I only had one die on me, and that was either caused by shock or lack of food/water while he was trapped until I could check the traps. I feel bad about the one, but safely releasing 5 makes me feel good.

Soon I will have my garage back, with a lot of cleaning to do come spring.