Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for October 20, 2018

is it the too much shampoo, conditioner, or even hairspray that make deer dislike the smell of human hair?

In addition to elevator muzak, we now have radio muzak?

Maybe I should start hanging such hair bags in my driveway. I’ve come home to as many as eight deer loitering there, unfazed by my car entering from the street, merely annoyed by my blasting horn! I live on the edge of Kennesaw Mountain National Park where hunting is of course not permitted. The deer are abundant and fearless of wandering into residential areas. Vegetable gardens have to be aggressively protected against them. I’ve learned to drive slowly on the last mile of the busy street leading into my neighbor hood… to the annoyance of drivers behind me who wonder why I don’t speed up. In ten years I’ve seen a dozen dead deer in or beside that street. A couple of times, at night, I’ve barely avoided hitting them.

Last week, driving at night, as I made a right turn after a stop sign… I finally hit one! Because I was going slow and had just paused at the stop sign,there was zero damage to my car. The young doe (who had darted in front of me) flew tumbling, landed, and did another somersault, and then went motionless on the lawn where she landed. I was sure she was dead.

I got out of my car, got to within half a dozen stepsof the poor creature. Then I saw her rally, stand up, look directly at me. Then she turned and lept bolted into the darkness.

I’m pretty sure I’ll continue to annoy impatient drivers on the main drag approaching home.

I was a broadcast engineer & consultant for more than twenty years. I worked with dozens of radio stations, and I’ve never heard of “comfort noise.” In fact, sending the transmitter no audio for about 15 to 30 seconds will shut down the transmitter (silence sensor failsafe) in many facilities.

I enjoy classical music, but the drawback is that it can go from loud to barely imperceptible in a matter of seconds that I often think that the stream has cut out.

Anyone old enough to remember 9/11 personally will know about the USS New York.

You’d think the steel from 9/11 would be unsound to be reused in a ship…

The NY’s keel has some twin towers steel but the rest of the ship, including the hull is standard.

If you don’t want deer eating and trampling your gardens, just add tiered levels. They don’t have to be very high, and it looks nice.

Those deer dread locks.

The problem with the hairbag is that deer in suburban areas are accustomed to the smell of humans. Perhaps it would work in a more rural area. You can always let them learn the smell of a .30-06.

Naw, the smell of human hair reminds deer of bullets!

In college in the early ’70s I used to listen to a soft-rock station that was an automated one-man operation. It cycled randomly through a series of half-hour mixtapes with station ID & commercials in between. It was great except when something went wrong with the tape changer, in which case it would default to station ID, OVER & OVER & OVER until the guy got there to fix it! Comfort noise would have been much easier to take…

The trick is to keep something, anything, going, even a fill-in with the Hammond organ because dead time encourages listeners to switch to another station.

I was a radio engineer for several stations, and none of them added any noise to the signal. We had enough generated by the equipment, which we had to keep to a minimum.

My Dad was a gardener, in a suburban area. He tried various things to keep the deer from his garden, including using human hair. The only thing that worked was a fence they couldn’t jump over.

Hmm. I’ve worked in radio for decades and have never heard of a station that broadcasts “comfort noise.” Not saying it COULDN’T be happening, but it’s news to me….

Only a small portion of the hull of USS New York is made from World Trade Center steel salvaged after the 9/11 attacks. That steel is in the bow section of the ship.