Did You know - outdoor edition

[rjwoelk]

I have had baby lambs while chasing them to the barn yard up and play dead. They stay that way for a minute then jump up and take off.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I was never around sheep. We raised goats for a long time and there is nothing cuter than a bunch of kid goats jumping and playing. I guess the lambs playing dead is like a fawn laying motionless and maybe that is a retained instinct but I did not know that. Thanks for posting this tidbit.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know the worlds fastest snake is generally believed to be the Black Mamba in Africa? He is also one of the deadliest with enough venom to kill a grown elephant. They are often reported to be very ill tempered making multiple bites. Reports have been received of a black mamba crawling into a hut after mice or rats and a sleeping inhabitant would roll over on him and the snake would bite everyone in the hut wiping out whole families. Maybe this is where the stolen honey hex came from.

On 28 December 2010 while touring in Ethiopia and on our way to the Omo Valley, our local guide Clahoon, suddenly yelled that he spotted a snake crossing the wide clay road we were on. We stopped and he said "It was by that bush" so I ran to the bush and got a long stick and probed around but no snake. We looked around but did not see anything so I walked a little further into the stand of scrubby acacia and mopani trees beside the road. The trees were maybe 20' tall but there was very little leaf matter or understory so the ground was pretty clear. I spotted the snake crawling quickly along the stony ground rapidly flicking his tongue out tasting the air. I grabbed a bushy limb and was able to stop and turn him. He was slender, olive colored and about 5' long. Clahoon said it was some kind of mamba and asked if we wanted to kill it. I told him there were no villages around so we'd leave it alone. Our daughter Sharon snapped 2-3 quick pictures and ran back to the car followed by Clahoon. Our driver had never gotten out. Becky and I stayed a couple more minutes with her taking pictures and me, armed with a 1.5 liter bottle of water (I guess I still had it in my hand when I exited the car because I can't recall thinking it would be useful for snake wrangling) and my bushy limb, trying to keep the snake in the area for her to photograph. She got several pictures then we decided we'd better leave or the rest of the gang were going to leave without us.

When we got to a village or lodge with internet we looked up the snake and it was, indeed, a black mamba. Apparently this one must have been a teenager as it was only about 5' long and a mature snake is typically about 8.5' long and can be as long as 14'. Fortunately for us, this one showed no signs of aggression and I never got to, nor did I want to, see the famous black mouth although we did see the coffin shaped head.

A little over a week later on 6 January 2011 while staying at a lodge on Lake Tana, the headwaters of the Blue Nile in northern Ethiopia, a local kid came and got us to photograph a python in the papyrus along the lake. We finally spotted the snake in the reeds but only part of his body slowly crawling forward till I saw the stubby tail which was nearly 2" in diameter at the tip. I grabbed the tail planning to pull the snake out for Becky to get a picture but after a brief tug of war and with no help from the crowd who scattered quickly and far, the snake pulled free. I don't and will never know if he was 10' long on as long as the telephone poles like the locals insisted. I assume it was an African Rock python as I don' t know of any other kind in that area. The tail was nearly black instead of the normal reddish brown like you normally see but different color phases are common in our American snakes and I assume that is true other places in the world.

 One thing I remember was in the crowd along the sidewalk surrounding the lake who had been watching the snake there was a young man in a wheelchair. While it may not be politically correct to say so, I really did think it was funny watching him leading the pack of the crowd running away when I grabbed the snake's tail. Have you ever seen a wheelchair burning rubber? I swear it looked like that one did.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know when the African warthog runs it carries its tail high in the air like a flag or banner? Apparently this allows the young to see their mother in the tall grass of the Savannahs and such and stay together instead of getting scattered. It is a comical sight to watch but has practical purpose.

   Did you also know the meat of a warthog is a dark, red flesh rather than white like our American and European pigs.

[Texas Ranger]

Did you know:  Events that end with you saying "what?". 

Sitting in the deer stand and a cougar runs across the feed patch, fast enough to make you think twice. 

Sitting on a friends patio with an adult beverage in hand, watching the Martin house when a hawk flys in, lands on the side of the house, reaches in one of the nest holes, and extracts dinner.

Sitting in the deer stand and a racoon joins you, the question arises as to who will vacate the stand.

Walking a pipeline road in deer season, friends wife walking beside me, she turns and grabs my arm with a look on her face.  Points down to the skunk walking between us.

Sitting around the fire, mid day deer season, when the rattle snake crawls out from under the cabin and the camp lights up with gun fire.

One I have told before:  driving to another county with my wife when a cougar jumps the road in front of us, wife's question was, "what was that?" I replied "the cougar you say I never see".

Moments that stick in your mind.

[azmtnman]

A little over a week later on 6 January 2011 while staying at a lodge on Lake Tana, the headwaters of the Blue Nile in northern Ethiopia, a local kid came and got us to photograph a python in the papyrus along the lake. We finally spotted the snake in the reeds but only part of his body slowly crawling forward till I saw the stubby tail which was nearly 2" in diameter at the tip. I grabbed the tail planning to pull the snake out for Becky to get a picture but after a brief tug of war and with no help from the crowd who scattered quickly and far, the snake pulled free. I don't and will never know if he was 10' long on as long as the telephone poles like the locals insisted. I assume it was an African Rock python as I don' t know of any other kind in that area. The tail was nearly black instead of the normal reddish brown like you normally see but different color phases are common in our American snakes and I assume that is true other places in the world.

I've been watching "Serpent Invasion" on Discovery Channel lately. But I believe their weight (and possibly length) is inflated for TV. If you watch those guys, they're not picking those things up and putting them in a sack like they weigh 100+ lbs.  :D :D :D 

[WV Sawmiller]

   Good catch. I know those snakes can be very heavy. I have been wondering as I watched the History Channel specials and three of them walk out of the Everglades carrying, based on what the individual weights were listed during the show, must have been over half a ton of snakes. Those Cajuns are pretty stout if they can each carry 400 lbs of snakes in a pillowcase over their shoulder.

We were going to relocate a big female green Anaconda in Ecuador in December 2008 because it was too close to a village and was a threat to the animals, pets and children of the village. We stopped and took pictures of the snake on our trip downriver. It looked to be at least 20' long and over 6" in diameter. The year before the residents of the village had killed a large anaconda in the same area and our guide wanted to protect the snake as much as the people. Our guide said he would grab it from behind and put a sock over its head to help calm it but that he was going to need our help carrying it to the boat and unloading it at the new site because he was sure it weighed over 200 lbs. I was game to help catch and carry the snake and my wife was excited to take pictures of the whole operation but when we returned to the site on our trip back upriver a week later the snake was gone.

 I have a python skin I bought during my travels that is about 14' long and it is 18" wide.

[ellmoe]

Howard , you underestimate the strength of those cajuns. I've watched with my own eyes ( tv ) as the announcer narrates , them one handed flipping " a 500lb dinosaur " ( gator )  into a 14' jon boat.  :D

[WV Sawmiller]

Ellmoe,

 You underestimate the strength of a relocated Hillbilly I bet. I'd bet if that 500 lb gator were in my boat I would have readily thrown him a good 50' getting him out! :D

 Did you know the primary food of the Harpy eagle in South America is arboreal/tree-dwelling mammals such as monkeys and sloths? They cruise the sky over the jungle and when they spot their target they swoop down and pluck him from the tree-tops to take back to the nest of a convenient perch to eat.

 In December 2008 we vacationed at the CuyaBeno wildlife reserve/national park (Famous for several of the Naked and Afraid contests now) at the corner of Ecuador and Peru and were on a private boat tour down the a tributary of the Amazon River when we stopped to camp in an Indian village. A young local Indian man offered to show us a young harpy eagle on the nest to we trekked 2 hours into the bush to the nest and watched and photographed the rare bird the rest of the afternoon. When we started to leave we checked the ground underneath the nest tree and found and brought back a monkey skull about the size of an egg and a sloth toe (off a three-toed sloth) about the size and shape of a large turkey spur.

 I think the Harpy eagle is about the size of our golden eagle and is white with a distinctive fuzzy ring of feathers around his neck. The beak and toes were black on our immature bird (He could fly but never left the nest tree) but may change colors as he gets older as is the case with out American Bald Eagle.

[KEC]

WV  Sawmiller, all I can saw is that, with all your exploits and adventures I'd welcome you to sit on my front porch for a visit to hear more !

[WV Sawmiller]

@KEC ,

   I'd love to come talk. Talking is one of my favorite hobbies which was one of the reasons I got a sawmill. :D I think we may have to wait till summer as if I read your profile right you are up in New York and I'd be afraid your winters are worse than ours. I guess if I come I'll have to bring my own grits won't I? :D :D Better yet, you come here and we can feed you catfish and grits and show you pictures to match the tall tales and scars. We'll keep the light on for you. ;D

[Roxie]

You underestimate the strength of a relocated Hillbilly 

:D :D :D

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know the world's smallest monkey is the Pygmy Marmoset in South America. They are about the size of an eastern flying squirrel - about 4.5"- 6" long and weighing about 3.5 ounces. It is known as a Gummivore meaning it lives on the sap of specific trees. It gnaws the bark off small spots in several locations on its target tree and spends its day running back and forth lapping up the syrupy sap that oozes out and re-opening the spots by gnawing off the healed spots on the bark to keep the sap flowing. I gather the tree must be similar to our sugar maple. I read they live in small troops of 2-9 individuals.

   In December 2008 one one of our last days  in the jungle of the Cuya Beno reserve in Ecuador we started out for our morning outing. As soon as we pulled out from the dock at our lodge our guide, Neiser Toro, directed Clever, our Indian boat driver, to pull across the small river which was not much wider than the length of our 50' fiberglass canoe with a 40 hp Yamaha outboard, to the opposite bank. We walked a very short distance into the bush and Toro pointed to a particular tree and we walked around it for about an hour looking from various vantage points between the foliage to see parts of the tree and photograph the little marmosets. Finally we spotted what Toro had told us to be looking for. A tiny monkey darted to a spot on a large limb and looked like a tiny dog lapping up water in his dish then he laid his head on the side and gnawed rapidly for a minute or two then darted to another spot on the same tree and repeated the gestures. The tiny monkeys seemed to be in constant motion and were very hard to see clearly because of the thick leaves, their small size, distance from us, and their speed. Without Toro knowing what to look for and pointing them out to us we would never have seen them.

[KEC]

Not so much exotic, but around here, gray squirrels will sometimes gnaw Sugar Maples to get the sap. They seem to select one particular tree when there are others nearby. I suspect that female squirrels are nutritionally stressed in spring. They get pregnant in mid-winter and carry babies through the late winter period when food is scarce and have to make milk  to nurse. This is before new seeds and nuts are available. They really can chew heck out of a tree. One thing that puzzles me is that Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers don't seem to bother Sugar Maple.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know that the African Oyrx or Gemsbok (Hems Bok) will crawl under an obstacle if possible rather than jumping over it. We watched an oryx walk up to a tight barbed wire fence keeping cattle away from a road through a pasture along the western/Skeleton Coast in Namibia then stick his head under the bottom wire and basically he just crawled under letting barb wire slide down his 4' long scimitar shaped horns until it slapped him on the rump just as he cleared the fence. A whitetail deer will exhibit similar behavior by walking along a typical 47" high pasture fence hundreds of yards or more to crawl under a knee high low spot in the fence rather than simply jumping over it which he could very easily do. They will do the same and crawl under a fallen tree in their trail rather than jumping if possible. Also when a deer, elk, antelope or such do jump a fence, instead of getting a running start, which would seem to be easier, they will walk up to a fence, stop, squat down, commence a standing broad jump over the fence while lifting his front legs against his chest and tucking his back legs in as they clear the top of the fence. It is a very graceful maneuver when typically exhibited.

[KEC]

I've seen adult woodchucks squeeze under a concrete slab where you would not think they could fit. I once watched a muskrat waddle over to a storm drain and go down through the iron grate  cover. I measured  the slot that it went down through and it was barely 1 1/2" wide. I once got a bat out of someones' house that got between two windows. I got it out through a slot that was barely wide enough to get a not-so-large diameter ball point pen through.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I knew a mouse could squeeze through a spot about 3/8" if not smaller. I was never around muskrats enough to know what they could get into and never had the occasion to see what a woodchuck could get in. Good on you for getting the bat out of the window! I've seen sleeping bats in our local train depot and they did not look like they were 2" long. They looked more like a leaf than an animal.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know natural rubber comes from the sap of a rubber tree? When the tree is about 6" in diameter a "catface" is cut along one side of the tree at an angle through the bark which is thin and smooth and similar to the bark on our American Beech tree. As I remember a cut about  24"- 30" long was made and at the bottom a small pail (about a pint size) with a wire bail was hung on a peg. White milky sap "bleeds" from the tree and follows the path of the cut and drips into the pail as a dirty white substance. It has a very foul odor and looks very similar to old paint that has been left exposed to the air to harden. Periodically the pails are collected and the hardened rubber sap is dumped on strategically placed work tables built of bamboo or raffia palm fronds on access roads or trails through the rubber plantation. Workers then drive a tractor or ATV pulling a cart through the plantation and collect the chunks of rubber to take to a factory for processing. 

   While the collection may be similar to tapping maple trees for syrup it is more akin to "chipping turpentine" on pine trees in the southern USA. Every few days a plantation worker refreshes the wound on the tree using a special tool that looks similar to a beekeepers hive tool with one sharpened edge. The worker cuts a strip about 1/4" wide of fresh bark off the tree at the top of the exposed surface/cut on the tree. This continues until the tree is about 12" in diameter when production decreases and the tree is cut down and, at least in the area of West Africa I was visiting, cut up into firewood. There is evidently no obnoxious smell when the wood burns. Rubber plantations are obvious from a distance because the trees have a distinctive lean indicating the prevailing wind direction. The trees I saw were leaning about 30 degrees or so.

   The rubber tree was apparently native to South America but it was eventually smuggled out and planted in Africa and possibly the tropical areas of Asia.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you ever buy river gravel for use in making concrete or to put in a fish aquarium or on a walkway? Did you ever see how it is collected and processed? Where I grew up in N. Fla sand and gravel was and remains a big local operation. I grew up fishing, frog gigging and swimming in large borrow pits where the gravel had been pumped out.  I gather the operation starts with the owner excavating a pit with a loader or bulldozer until they reach the water table, which is pretty high. Once they get a small pond created they put a gravel barge in the pond. The gravel barge is just a square barge, usually floating on 55 gallon drums or such for flotation. In the center is a flexible pipe (seems to me like they were 6-8 inches in diameter) hooked to a very large pump. The pump is fired up and starts pumping up dirt, sand and gravel which spits out the discharge side on to a series of progressively finer screens. The large river  rocks get screened out at the first 3-4 inch square screen, 1-3 inch gravel is next, then pea gravel (generally under 1/2" or so) and finally the sand is on the bottom. As the powerful dredge pump runs the lake gets deeper and the sides cave in and the lake gets bigger. The barge is towed around the lake as the lake gets bigger. River gravel is generally pretty well rounded from rolling around in running water which knocks the rough edges off. I have worked on construction sites where we had a big rock crusher and crushed large slabs of stone into smaller pieces to use as the aggregate used in concrete. It probably binds better than river gravel due to the rougher edges.

 In Cameroon and Guinea in Africa sand and gravel mining was a manual operation. Large dugout or plank built boats were towed, paddled or poled to spots in the river or mangrove swamps and at low tide a diver got in the water and would reach or dive down to the bottom and scoop up the sand and gravel with a bucket then surface and empty the contents into the boat.


 Gravel boats on the kissi-Kissi River near Forecariah Guinea, West Africa


 Yes, there is a Kissi-Kissi River and it looks like the bridge is about 173 m long.

Sometimes this was a one person operation, sometimes one man would stay in the boat and the other was the river rat doing the digging. They would fill the boats till it looked like a light chop on the water would sink them. Most boats I saw looked like they would hold about 1-2 cubic meters of wet gravel.


 No much free board left on this load.
 At the landing the sand and gravel is unloaded using shovels and it is thrown against a piece of 1/2" hardware cloth built on a frame at about a 45* angle. The sand and tiny pea gravel falls through leaving the larger gravel on top.


 Boats full of gravel being unloaded at the landing.
 Often someone will set up a concrete block operation at the landing taking the freshly collected sand and gravel and mixing it with cement in volcano shaped mounds with water added in the volcano mouth. This concrete is then poured into metal forms along the bank, tapped down to remove air pockets, the excess on top is troweled off then the form is lifted off and moved over a few inches for the next block and the cinderblock is left to air dry on the bank in the sun. Local builders will drive to the river bank and buy these blocks for any new building projects they are working on. I never asked the price of such blocks but my price no doubt would have been more than a local buyer would have been charged.

 In Guinea as shown above the gravel was collected at low tide from the Kissi-Kissi River. In Douala in Cameroon the operations I saw were out in the mangrove swamps and I never actually got to visit the collection sites. It was common to go down to the unloading site and see a naked man working in and around the boats. I have seen loaded boats coming down the local rivers with a naked man poling his vessel to the landing. When or just before he landed he'd slip on a pair of ragged cut-off shorts as a concession to the civilized world.


 I would walk around the local villages and observe and talk with the local residents. The kids loved to have their picture made and some young man or lady was excited to get to "snap" this picture of me with his family or neighbors.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Here is another picture of a fully loaded boat full of gravel. Note the boatmen use their 8" contractor's shovels as paddles. It almost looks like the water level is already higher than the sides of the boat.


 This was taken right at sunset just outside our camp in Forecariah, Guinea in West Africa. 

[KEC]

Regarding fractured stone being better for making concrete, when I worked for a concrete company I learned that  concrete used on state jobs such as bridge decks had to have fractured stone as aggregate. State inspectors actually would sample stones and count the number of sharp points. 

[WV Sawmiller]

 Dad used to have a Chain link fence and monument business and he refused to bid on state or federal fence jobs. He said their specifications would list things like #1 gravel being used in the concrete around the post. He said evidently because it was labeled #1 they evidently thought it was better when actually pea gravel would have been must stronger and held the post in place better. #1 gravel were big river stones more appropriate for landscaping and would not bind well in concrete. 

   I remember the US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan bought a lot of the big river rock and laid in walkways for dust abatement. I don't know how many sprained or broken ankles we got from that as they were nearly impossible to walk on.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know the snapping turtle (Alligator and common snapper) has a little organ on his tongue that looks like a worm? The turtle lays in ambush on the bottom of the lake or stream with his mouth open and wiggles this lure which attracts fish who dart in and try to grab it and the turtle lunges forward and catches a meal.

    When we first moved here to WV we met a couple who used to help do recovery diving in the local lake and river to look for the bodies of people who drowned. (We used to and still sometimes have several people each year who slip on the slick stones in the river while wade fishing and drown, often after hitting their head on another rock and too much water weight and current for them to get up.) Recovery diving is often done in zero visibility water so the recovery divers dive to the bottom of the stream and crawl along the bottom feeling with their hands for the body which is usually hung on a rock shelf or snag or something. The lady was feeling around and stuck her hand into the open mouth of a large common snapper and he chomped down - hard! That was her last recovery dive and she refuses to ever attempt another.

[Hilltop366]

Thanks WV, sound like you have been on some interesting adventures, its nice to here the normal side of the story about places otherwise we only here the horror stories when there is a disaster or war. (our own countries included)

[KEC]

I've got one for you. When I was a kid I liked to play in the crick (AKA creek). A few times I saw a muskrat jump into the creek, roil it all up and go limp, and let the current carry it downstream. When it figured it was safely out of sight it would  "come back to life" and crawl up out of the creek.