Bright Idea From A Dim Bulb

Even if it's not my money I'm loathe to spend $20. If you care for reptiles or invertebrates you're probably familiar with Zoo Med lamps and probably familiar with the problem of bulbs buzzing or lamp fixtures intermittently working. It's the easiest thing to fix so don't toss it, tweak it.

The All Sewing Sewing Awl

Most of my fire hose projects so far have been cutting crafts using the inherent properties of the material to create new things. The constructive projects have been clunky, using nuts and bolts like many of us do to wrestle together stiff pieces of hose like your uncle trying to hold down your rowdy cousins at the table during Thanksgiving. It would really be great to have a way of fabricating with a little more refinement and detail.

Try a Trio of Triangle Hammocks

You can't fit a square peg into a round hole. You can't hang a square hammock in a corner. Solve one of these problems with a triangle!

Maybe you'll notice I'm not using hose. Or maybe not! It's not hose. Construction paper is not fecal-friendly. I'm sick at home so this is what I've got, but paper is a great way to prototype your hose fabrication ideas.

Building With Red Rubber Hose

Red rubber hose. Makes you feel powerful and professional at work, gives you hose envy at home when you have to use your run-of-the-mill garden dribbler. Great as it is it doesn't last forever, especially if you have to slide it across any paved surfaces. But even as the red gave way to black and then to ever-fraying white threads until finally you got a blowout of high pressure water all over your pants right before your keeper talk you still didn't throw out that sad 50 feet of rubber, did you? All those months (years?) of working together making the world clean and new and the quality time looping it over and under into the perfect fireman's coil. And hell it was like $80; when are you going to get approved to spend that again? Honor it. Give it a second life as something for your animals to poop on.

Reusable Carcass Box

Our goal with enrichment is to bring animals out of their routine and hopefully do so in a way that highlights their natural abilities. Today let's make a box that helps the animals to exercise their ability and desire to tear up stuff in a productive and challenging way.

Better PVC Bamboo

I'm not going to retread any ideas for PVC enrichments here, just show you how to make them look a little more interesting. There are a ton of ideas out there but they may not always be well received by your curators and directors who are looking for a more naturalistic look to your exhibits.

PVC is a versatile and relatively cheap material that we know well and love to use for it's ease to cut, drill, and clean. But it's ugly. So let's fix that.

Making Use Of Every Scrap

I noticed a pile of short pieces of jacketed hose just lying around and decided to give them a job. Instead of long runners they'll be stacked side-to-side like rungs on a ladder. These in turn will tab into a narrower rubber hose. Having everything tabbed into something else makes for simpler construction than the edge-less hammock with almost the same benefits of eliminating open ends.