Collecting cans and bottles for charity....

Lucky Lager:The booze of choice for yahoos on Vancouver Island 

We've been doing a lot of housesitting, or rather, that is what we do while we are not travelling. Almost all the house sits involve animals and if they are dogs, require walking.  We walk the dogs everyday, if not twice or thrice daily.  Since that involves walking on roadways, we see a lot of road litter. Where we are in Lake Cowichan, there's a Tim Horton outlet and as a result, a lot of Tim Horton cups everywhere.  Even worse, there are a lot of alcohol containers thrown out of vehicles, sometimes pretty full and sometimes not.  Sometime last year in Maple Bay, I would find a lot of large Heineken bottles, many of which survived a fall on the rock landscape.  I get to observe what these yahoos drink and their booze of choice on Vancouver Island, it would seem, is Lucky Lager as that's about half of all alcohol containers that I find.

I do admit to collecting these cans and bottles.  Since we drink our fair share of wine, I have to bring bottles to return anyway and if I am going, I might as well make it worth my while.

You may ask, what can one buy for 10 cents (deposit on a beer can or bottle, or wine bottle in these parts)?  Well, a lot of quality items - even vintage Canadiana - if you shop at thrift shops which we do for almost all our non-food and beverage purchases.  So I can say I (indirectly) collect cans and bottles for charity.

Vntage Glo-Hill tray and Baribo cheese knife - 10 cents each, including tax

Spot the tick

Collecting bottles can also be handy in other ways.  Walking dogs in these parts often results in them getting ticks.  I've picked 2 unfed ticks off the big dog and also two attached ones which we kept in case the dog gets ill.   I found a mickey of Bols vodka the other day that still had quite a bit of alcohol remaining - not that I would ever drink it - which came in handy after finding two ticks on ol' Frank. What better to preserve them than in fine vodka?