Andy, I had a magnifying glass (like everyone else here) but they tend to just make stuff smoke and stink, and it takes way too long to set something on fire. Matches are much simpler, so threw the magnifying glass away. Ha ha.
We caught a chipmunk it a downspout once too, and my thought was to just let it bake in the sun a few days, but the wife had to take it out to the country and let it go. Put it in a 5 gallon pail, put a lid on it, and drive out of town to let it go. What do you do?
We had an old cat die years ago. Don't pick up a dead cat like you'd pick up a live cat. All the "stuff" runs out if you do that. Pick it up "ass up". Anyway, it was February, and I wasn't going to pay a vet $100 to take a dead cat. I decided to just bury it. But the ground was frozen. The ground was fairly soft up next to the house foundation though, and with a hammer drill, I was able to break it up enough to shovel out a hole. Of course I did this at 4 am so the neighbors wouldn't see me. People tend to look out their windows when they see a light on at 4 am...
Anyway, I was playing cards with the neighborhood guys a few days later and told them what I did. One of them said "I would have put the dead cat in a plastic bag, put it in the freezer, then set it out with the trash on trash day". There was a long silence while we all pondered what the wives would say to that, then we all agreed that was a GREAT idea! Ha ha ha.
