How do you like your lizard cooked? With my Nyle L53 set-up, you have two options. One is at the end of the drying cycle. I typically operate the kiln at about 125° as I am finishing drying a load. This gives you a lizard that is medium rare, cooked sous vide where the temp stays at 125° until the lizard reaches that point, then it stays right there. The other option is a lizard at is well done because it is at the end of the sterilization cycle where the temp is held at 150° for 24 hours. However, this option produces a lizard that is over cooked, and it may be a little tough.
Well, yesterday morning I went to check the kiln. It was at 115° dry bulb temp, and I was going to be gone all day, so to prevent the kiln from getting too hot, I cracked the intake vent a bit to keep the temp from going too high and tripping the high temp cut-off on the compressor. The is when I say some little legs and feet. There was a little lizard trapped in the kiln and he was pressed right up against the closed vent trying to survive. I opened the vent all the way so that he could get some cooler air coming in. There was no way to open the kiln and get him out, and I was worried about the little fellow.
I was not able to get back to the kiln last night, so when I went to check the kiln this morning, the dry bulb temp was 126°, and the little lizard was right at the screen of the vent, eyes, closed, looking dead. But, he was not and scuttled back inside the hot kiln when he saw me. I went home, worked in the shop, and then went back over to the sawmill about 11:00 to get some lumber secured from Hurricane Irma. Checked, and there he was again trying to get enough cooler incoming air to stay alive. So, I decided to take action. I removed the vent out of the side wall of the kiln so that he, the lizard, could come out and be saved. Backed away and watched about 10 minutes, and the little fellow did not come out. With the vent out, there was a lot more cooler air coming into the kiln, and he was hanging out on the inside wall of the kiln adjacent to the vent opening. I could see two legs and part of a tail. As I was observing this, a grandaddy longlegs crawled out of the opening. I took a piece of wire and put a hook on the end, snaked it around the little fellow's body, and snatched him out. It took him a few minutes to get his wits back, and I left him to recover. I came back later and he was gone, then came back later and saw him again so that I know that he recovered and is OK. Here is what the intake vent looks like operational and fully opened.
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Here is the vent removed, trying to save the little fellow from the sous vide kiln. If you look very carefully on the right side of the vent opening just inside on the kiln wall, you can see just a little bit of the little fellow.
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Here he is out of the kiln and recovering. I know he is a he because he had a vivid blue throat and belly. Little guy was in the wrong place (hanging out in the stickered lumber before it went into the kiln) at the wrong time, but he got lucky because a compassionate old man wanted to save him from a horrible death by slow cooking. Good luck, little guy. May you sire a whole whack of little new lizards.
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What wine do you serve with lizard?
You are a gentleman and a scholar. Good Karma will come to you.
Quote from: Texas Ranger on September 10, 2017, 10:16:38 PMWhat wine do you serve with lizard?
Which brings up the next question, is lizard meat dark or light?
Clark
Probably tastes like chicken, oh and remember that "no good deed goes unpunished"
My log dog spends most of the day "hunting" those blue bellied rascals. Once in a great while she'll catch and eat one uncooked. She used to hunt chipmunks but they stay out of the yard now. Never did see her with a chipmunk.
Good save WDH. We're not going to run out of lizards any time soon, but slow-cookin' is no way to go.
Around here, the blue bellied ones are called skinks. Maybe that's a local thing.
Lizards and lumber always seem make good partners. I guess the lizards are eating things we don't want in the lumber stack, so keep up the good work fellas.
Yesterday I found a black widow where I wasn't expecting one. It was up high in a stack of stickered lumber in a real dry area. I find plenty, but not normally where it's real dry. It startled me because it was sitting on piece of lumber I had just moved from one stack to another a couple minutes earlier. I should have taken a picture because it was a perfect specimen and it was just sitting in the middle of piece of ERC in the sun, where apparently I had placed it. Instincts took over before I thought of that.
I take it that the black widow didn't have the fine fortune as did the lizard. Banjo
Not a skink. It is an eastern fence lizard.
http://srelherp.uga.edu/lizards/sceund.htm
Good info. Thanks.
I see lizards like that around here, but I don't think I've ever seen the underside.
Quote from: WDH on September 13, 2017, 07:47:50 AM
Not a skink. It is an eastern fence lizard.
http://srelherp.uga.edu/lizards/sceund.htm
Thank you! I never knew their correct name before. I see them around here all the time. Had to rescue one about a week or so ago; it had crawled into a bucket and then got rained on. Don't know how long he treaded water but he didn't waste time skeedaddling when his feet hit the ground.
smiley_thumbsup
Good job WDH
It's been so hot here they're desperate for relief.
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