Myth: Cut your 6-pack rings. Birds and fish get caught in them.
Hypothesis:
Come on people! Do you really think a significant problem facing our enviroment and the survival of a species hinges on us snipping the rings from a 6 pack container? There is no way any animals die from getting caught in a 6-pack ring. That just makes no sense!
Equipment:
1 set of rings from a 6-pack of soda
1 worm (to use as bait for fish)
bread (to use as bait for birds)
string, a rock and a stick (for fishing rod)
potato chips (to snack on while we waited)
Procedure (Part 1):
Our goal is to prove that fish and birds will not get caught in 6-pack rings. To do this, we are going to use bait to try our hardest to catch a bird or a fish in the aforementioned rings.
As with most All Too Flat hijinx, this escapade began at the grocery store. We took a trip to P&C (the ghetto one downtown... ooooh!) to pick up some 6 packs of soda.
We had to make sure and get a brand that has the rings on them, which wasn't so hard. We settled for the refreshing cheap taste of Adirondac orange and lemon-lime sodas.
We headed down to the Ithaca Farmer's Market, which has both birds in the trees and fish in the water. We set out our supplies and began construction:
The first thing we had to do was drink all of the soda from both 6 packs. In retrospect, I guess we could have very easily skipped this step. But when you are involved in such high precision detective work, it is often easy to get distracted. Also in retrospect, it would have been better if we saved a little soda to wash down the potato chips. Ah well. Live and learn.
After downing 12 sodas, we were left with just the 6-pack ring, shown below:
Next we needed to bait our rings. Don't tell Arin, but we kidnapped worms from her worm bin:
You'd be surprised at how squirmy these little buggers are, but after a while we managed to get them tied securely into the rings:
Some string, a stick, and a rock and you've got a pretty nifty fishing rod, Huck Finn style!
Now down to the docks to test our hypothesis. The Ithaca Farmer's Market had a very nice pier which we used.
Results (Part 1):
Total travesty. 3 hours of fishing, & didn't catch a damn thing.
So far, our hypothesis holds true!
Procedure (Part 2):
After failing to catch a single fish, we decided to move on to birds. We figured it would be much easier to catch a bird- they are much less slippery than fish.
We baited the rings with stale bread, which is well known for being the best thing to feed birds.
We then found a low hanging bird's nest in a tree. There were babies inside, so we were sure the mother bird would be thrilled to have free food nearby. We hung the trap in the tree and waited.
1 hour later, and still nothing happened. The was horrible. We couldn't catch a bird for the life of us. Then Ton had a brilliant idea to make a trail of crumbs leading up to the trap:
At first we were really excited because birds came right to the trail and started following it down to the trap. But alas, they never got caught!
Results (Part 2):
Total travesty. 2 hours of bird hunting, & didn't catch a damn thing.
Our hypothesis is true!
Conclusion:
The myth is false! Birds and fish do not get caught in 6-pack rings! You can stop the laborious process of cutting them up from now on. Think of how much time you'll save! Yeah All Too Flat Myth Busters!
Cost Analysis:
| Item |
Cost |
| Soda |
$3.00 |
| Worm |
Free |
| Rock |
Free |
| Stale Bread |
Free |
| Stick |
Free |
| Bag of Chips |
Free |
| Amount of money I probably could have earned if I actually had a job and didn't spend the past 6 hours playing with trash |
$120.00 |
| Never cutting rings apart again |
Priceless |
UPDATE 7-31-02: Read people's responses to our experiments!
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