Counterbalancing a horsefly

[John Ellison]

Anybody else ever seen this? My apology's to the horsefly lovers out there.
Capture a horsefly in your hand without hurting it. One of those huge ones that cant fly very fast. Have a sliver of wood ready beforehand that is about the size of a third or half of a flat toothpick. Carefully stick the sliver a very short ways into the very end of the flys hind end, abdomen? Turn loose and it is like a space shuttle launch, they fly straight up in the air, completely out of sight. Takes some practice to get the right size sliver and to catch them without maiming them, thats what I am not that good at(usually maimed when I catch em)
Maybe this should be in another forum, but it really is required knowledge on any rigging crew.

 

[clearance]

Can't say I have, after being bitten by them flesh removers countless times I let them bite a little so they are hooked and then kill them instantly. I could never let one of them get away, that would bother me a lot.

 

[kevinj]

Anybody else ever seen this? My apology's to the horsefly lovers out there.
Capture a horsefly in your hand without hurting it. One of those huge ones that cant fly very fast. Have a sliver of wood ready beforehand that is about the size of a third or half of a flat toothpick. Carefully stick the sliver a very short ways into the very end of the flys hind end, abdomen? Turn loose and it is like a space shuttle launch, they fly straight up in the air, completely out of sight. Takes some practice to get the right size sliver and to catch them without maiming them, thats what I am not that good at(usually maimed when I catch em)
Maybe this should be in another forum, but it really is required knowledge on any rigging crew.

:hmm3grin2orange: I haven't before, but I will now. How does it work with pencils and small birds ??? :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[Gologit]

counter balance

:hmm3grin2orange: John, you have way too much free time. Or is this something somebody thought up while sitting around at lunch? Some bug-lover will probably throw up a picket line and tell everyone that you're mean and vicious. Until they get bit by one. Don't know about Arkansas horseflies but the ones out here carry knives and forks and salt and pepper for the hunks they tear out of your hide.
Sidenote....how would a pool cue work if you applied it to a spotted owl the same way you're doing to the horsefly? Just a thought.

 

[slowp]

Sounds the same as required knowledge on a timber marking crew or fire crew during the hurry up and wait. We did not think of doing that but had a variation. Capture a fly and tie a hair to it and let it fly leashed to the hair. Or, with mosquitos, tense up the muscle where they have drilled in so they can't escape and, if you can hold it, watch them blow up. Lots of fun to be had out there......boulder rolling, Bowling for Snags (a variation of boulder rolling) pine cone baseball, and paint fights. Worked for a crazy guy who had us drive the crew rig right up to a bull and the crazy guy grabbed the bull's tail and started running behind it holding the tail, till the bull turned. Both were unharmed. You'd get in big trouble these days for doing some of the crazy stuff we did!

 

[clearance]

Sounds the same as required knowledge on a timber marking crew or fire crew during the hurry up and wait. We did not think of doing that but had a variation. Capture a fly and tie a hair to it and let it fly leashed to the hair. Or, with mosquitos, tense up the muscle where they have drilled in so they can't escape and, if you can hold it, watch them blow up. Lots of fun to be had out there......boulder rolling, Bowling for Snags (a variation of boulder rolling) pine cone baseball, and paint fights. Worked for a crazy guy who had us drive the crew rig right up to a bull and the crazy guy grabbed the bull's tail and started running behind it holding the tail, till the bull turned. Both were unharmed. You'd get in big trouble these days for doing some of the crazy stuff we did!

Yeah, the mosquito thing, wait till they are on your arm then squeeze your arm hard with your other hand and clench and unclench you fist. This pumps up your arm and the bug is caught by the increased blood pressure. Other hijinks when I was out there, pretend to be screwing around with your saw, then rev it up and hit a nearby guy on the leg with a stick, he will think he's been cut. Of course putting chains on backwards, catching a mouse and putting in a tool box and then asking someone to get you a wrench. It goes on and on, got to have fun.

 

[Gologit]

How about all the tricks that get played on the new guys? These are usually done when things are a little slack and you can spare the time. Sending them down to the bottom of the strip for a tree species count works good if he doesn't know the difference between a fir and a cedar...you can keep sending him back until he gets it right. Having him pick up a can of choker straightener after work, and on his own time, usually keeps him occupied in the evening. Then theres measuring the height of all the stumps to make sure we're not losing too much scale...that's always good to keep him moving during idle time. Re-circulating the water in the fire trailer is a good one if he doesn't take too much time at it...he can be sharpening fire axes and pulaskies while he watches the water go round and round.
Eventually he'll begin to wonder why he's the only one moving while everybody else is sitting in the shade but until them it can be a lot of fun...and a good test of his character and sense of humor.

 

[John Ellison]

I can't believe how sick and demented you guys are.

Or setting the new guys stagged pants on fire during the ride home on the crummy. Or at the end of the day giving them a "woodsmans test", where they chop at the coiling block for accuracy while blindfolded. Of course someone else holds their gloves for them and then puts them on the block.

 

[Gologit]

How about when the new water truck driver shows up...only he's at the wrong job,wrong side, and the wrong company and we let him water roads all day for us anyway because our water truck was down? He was doing such a good job we just didn't have the heart to tell him he was watering the wrong side of the mountain.. His boss finally found him about quitting time...and fired him. We hired him to set chokers (figured it was the least we could do) and today he's running a shovel and will probably make side-rod before long.
Then there was a log truck driver that nobody liked. He whined and ?????ed and screwed everything up and still knew more than anybody who tried to tell him anything. Somebody who will remain forever nameless told him to back down a certain spur road about half a mile and wait at the first landing for the loader...just sit there and wait, be patient, they'll get to you. And then everybody went home. It finally dawned on him about two hours after sunset that nobody was coming. He left his truck in town and we never saw him again.

 

[slowp]

I'm currently getting even with a young yarder engineer. I have him convinced he is getting fat. I'll bring him a can of Slim Fast next week and a Weight Watchers magazine, if I can find one. Stay tuned. Hmmmm, what if he develops an eating disorder?

 

[turnkey4099]

Not logging but in the spirit of the thread.

I worked in a welding shop for awhile. One guy thought it was hilarious to heat up chunks of iron and leave laying on a work station bench. He quit doing it when someone took a rosebud torch to his iron stool while he was playing at his trick. He didn't think that was funny atall.

Harry K

 

[sawyerDave]

One of my favorites

was back when I was working for a sod farm, contracted to lay curlex netting in road ditches during road construction, had a pull start indian state highway engineer who's English was limited to "you are doing it wrong." He had a special porta john with his own lock, would lock it after using-didn't want the riff-raff using it. Would take that lock with him when he was using it-I guess someone got him once before. Sod staple did the trick one 90 degree+ day. You know that no one heard his screams for over 3 hours-We was too busy stapling and laughing!:hmm3grin2orange: :hmm3grin2orange: :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[slowp]

Crummy Humor

Here's a good one. On Thursday afternoon, the yarder engineer was still laughing hard. The crew was heading home last Wed. and stopped to get something to eat. The chaser was sound asleep, head back over front seat, mouth wide open. The hooktender came out of the mini mart with mass quantities of hot sauce, and proceeded to fill chaser's mouth up to the brim. (Chaser is a very sound sleeper). I guess it took 10 minutes to take effect, then a lot of spitting and spewing ensued.

 

[Stihlboy088]

do'h

A few years ago when i was cutting pulp by hand (thank god i try not to do that anymore) we had a kid workin for us putting it on the wagons by hand, well one day he either was recovering from a rough night of bad beer or had just ate at the local mexican slop and grit joint and he had to do a pop n' sqaut. The boss sent him about 50 yards away on the edge of a clearing and told him to find a nice handful of really soft leaves to wipe with. What the boss didn't realize at first was he sent him over towards a nice patch of poison sumac. Later that afternoon when he was pullin wagons out he went past it and realized what he had done lookin at the area he sent the kid to. i never saw the kid again but heard from his older brother later that year that he spent two solid weeks on steriods tryin to get rid of it, and apparently tells all his buddies never to go and work for that guy. gee i'm glad i keep T.P in the truck:hmm3grin2orange:

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Back when I was little I worked construction and a favorite trick was to barracade someone who was "Un liked" in the porta crapper with a pickup.



Then either turn the hose from the jackhammer comperssor down the vent stack, or with a blunt end bit, simply hammer away on the bottom foot of the wall and get that mess to jiggling and splashing. Or sometimes if we did like the guy We would just walk away.



In anycase, thay would be one stinky bugger for the rest of the day.......





.

 

[ShoerFast]

Back when I was little I worked construction and a favorite trick was to barracade someone who was "Un liked" in the porta crapper with a pickup.



Then either turn the hose from the jackhammer comperssor down the vent stack, or with a blunt end bit, simply hammer away on the bottom foot of the wall and get that mess to jiggling and splashing. Or sometimes if we did like the guy We would just walk away.



In anycase, thay would be one stinky bugger for the rest of the day.......





.

Wonder if that would work with the 'crapenter extraordinair' Gobbleondis?

Or stick to the counter-ballance horsefly trick?