Did You know - outdoor edition

[KEC]

WV your posts are hard to beat. Reminds me of a few years back I was driving past a pasture and it was raining. In the pasture was a very big draft horse standing there with a goat taking shelter under the horse. No camera, of course.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know that a giraffe has a very difficult time drinking water? First they have to spread their front legs very wide just to be able to bend his neck down to reach the water and then when he does his lips do not seal and water pours out from between his lips when he lifts his head to swallow.

  Here is my journal entry of 27 June 2010 when we were touring southern Africa on a private tour and stopped over to visit Etosha Game Park in Namibia. We were watching a water hole on the park:

Several large giraffe come and drink. They have to spread their front legs very wide to be able to reach the water. When they finish drinking and lift their head a quart or so of water always runs out of their mouth as they can't swallow it all and I gather their lips don't seal it in. One cow is evidently coming into season as the bull follows her closely and tastes her urine to see if she is in heat.

[Tacotodd]

I knew that they had to lower their head to extremes, but I didn't know about the lack of closing of the lips or the inability to swallow until closer to the upright position. I'm learning new things from this thread quite often. 

And to think, several people already say that I'm the smartest person that they know. What THEY don't know is, this all just means that I need to find smarter people to hang around 🤷

[WV Sawmiller]

Taco,

   Thanks. The odd and really awkward thing was how really wide he had to spread his front legs to reach his head down to the water. I don't know how much he actually swallowed while he had his head down and I guess it is a bit of a chore to pull enough of a vacuum to suck it up that far but when he raised his head the water did spill out. The guide knew it would happen and told us to watch so we saw it and my wife got a picture of it.

    BTW - did you know they have a really big head? I think the head of a big bull giraffe is nearly 3' long? Also our guide said a young cow giraffe is very good eating and provides a lot of meat. I guess they mostly make biltong or jerky out of it. 

   No offense since I don't even know you but if people are saying you are the smartest person they know, I agree you need to start hanging out with a better group of people. :D

[Tacotodd]

Yes, yes I think I will!

[WV Sawmiller]

   Does that mean you have changed your mind about coming to visit? :D :D :D

[K-Guy]

Like these guys??

Randy Travis - Better Class Of Losers (Official Music Video) - YouTube

[WV Sawmiller]

    Did you know that White Rhinos are grazers and typically live on the plains and savannahs of Africa while the Black Rhinos are browsers and live in the brushy areas of Africa resulting in them being much harder to find?

    Did you know the White rhino is not white but got his name from the old Dutch settlers pronunciation of the word "wide" for his wide mouth?

    Did you know rhinos are severely threatened for the value of their horn (Actually a Keratin substance like hair rather than true horn) which is sold to Asians to make aphrodisiacs and to wealthy Arabs who want to make traditional rhino horn handled daggers?

    Did you know poachers will typically give a local tribesman an AK-47 and 30-40 rounds of Ammo to go kill rhinos for them and the value for such a horn may represent enough for them to buy a farm and build a home on it? To put that in perspective what would it cost you to buy 100 acres or so of good farmland and build a contemporary home on it?

    In December 2011, my wife, daughter and I visited Kruger Game Park in South Africa for about a week and stayed in a different camp/lodge every night to see the different areas. At every campground they typically had a map of the park set up as a game sighting board with little colored magnets to indicate where tourists had seen various big or unusual animals. They quickly learned to remove the symbols for rhinos because the poachers were using that info to help them go slaughter them. Rhinos and leopards are the two hardest members of the big five (Elephant, Rhino, Cape Buffalo, Lion & Leopard) to actually find and watch.

[Tacotodd]

  Does that mean you have changed your mind about coming to visit? :D :D :D

No. Unequivocally NO!
I still want to meet up with everyone that is there. I believe that it will be great fun. 

BUT, back to the current fun and learning 🥳

[WV Sawmiller]

    Did you know a baby marsupial in Australia is called a Joey? I understand this is from an Aboriginal word meaning something like young one or small one or such. 

   I guess in North America a baby Marsupial is called a possum (since that is the only marsupial we have :).

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know the Ger, sometimes called a yurt over here, in Mongolia is designed to be disassembled, transported and reassembled on a new site as needed, basically when the forage has been depleted or weather changes?

(This may get a little wordy so be warned!)  

 The basic components of a Ger include:
Panels - these look much like the wood lattice you buy at a building supply and are the walls
A door unit - a wooden door on a frame transported as a unit.
Center Support poles - Normally 2 tall (12-14 ft) T shaped poles with a cross arm about 3' long
A "Wagon Wheel" - Not correct name but what it looks like. It holds one end of the "rafter poles"
Rafter poles - slender poles like TeePee poles that run from the Wagon Wheel to the Panels.
Felt - usually about 3/4" thick and insulates the sides and roof. Cut to fit the shape of the ger.
Canvas - Used to cover the sides and roof and helps shed the rain and snow
Stove and stove pipe - a small, round sheet metal stove about half the size of a 55 gallon drum and stove pipe to vent out the roof
Rawhide strings used throughout to tie everything together

 To start construction the door unit is placed facing South and temporarily propped up. (It is bad juju to face the tent in the wrong direction and I nearly started a strike/riot one time setting up several for lunch tents at the mine site because I had the door facing North). I suspect the South facing direction is based on prevailing wind directions and likely good reasoning.

 Next stand up the panels and tie them to the door frame and each other with rawhide strings. Ger sizes are referred to by the number of panels used and a 5 panel ger was about the smallest I ever saw, an 8 panel ger was larger and anything larger was rare and for ceremonial use and such. Panels are made from lattice strips cut traditionally with a draw knife but likely sawed/milled now. Traditionally where the strips cross a hole is made with a awl and they are joined with rawhide using a special knot so the tighter you pull the stronger the knot gets. The panels are adjusted to make a circle. A panel is typically about 4.5' high and 9' long when opened. When not in used you push from both ends and the panel folds up like an accordion into a neat round bundle for transport about 12" in diameter and 5' long.

 Next the 2 T-shaped poles are stood up and the "wagon wheel" is laid flat and tied to both of them with more rawhide strings. The wagon wheel has holes for the spokes which in this case are the rafter poles. The number of holes/rafter poles is standard and magical based on long standing superstition. I want to think it is 79 or 81 or such but I honestly don't remember. The center support poles were often carved with a horse head design on them.

 Now we are ready for the rafters. The rafter length is based on the final size of the ger planned. One end of the pole is placed in the spoke hole of the "wagon wheel" and the other is placed in the top valley of the X on the panel and lashed in place. More rafters are placed at right angles and tied and the panels are moved around slightly to make the ger into a perfect circle. After 3-4 rafters are placed the hole framework is temporarily self-supporting. As more rafters are added the structure becomes increasingly stronger and more stable. When all the framework is in place and lashed together the structure is very strong!

  When the framework is complete the felt is lashed to the sides then over the roof. Traditionally the felt was made from wool and hair saved from the sheep, horse, yaks and camels. I don't know how they wove it together. One pie shaped panel in the roof felt now has a hole for the stovepipe and fire retardant material around the stovepipe opening. Finally the cut to shape canvas is fitted over the top and sides. During the colder months sand and dirt are piled on the bottom of the sides to seal out the cold weather. In the short summer months the sides are raised and tied up during the day to allow ventilation then lowered at night. The sheet metal stove is put into place at the center of the ger and the stove pipe is fitted to run out the roof. Traditionally dry horse, camel and yak dung were mostly burned but wood and coal is burned if available. Most of the trees I saw in Mongolia looked similar to a white pine and except up north near the Siberian border where they were larger, they were rarely much over 12" in diameter. In some of the valleys small birch trees grew. These were the only hardwoods I saw but in Ulaan Bataar (Capitial city of Mongolia) I saw sweetgum leaves and read where it was used in making some medicines so there must have been some there somewhere. A rabbit was used as a symbol for a doctor or pharmacist on some drawings.

 I don't remember any staking of the ger to hold it down but I may have overlooked that step as there are very strong winds in the area. The ger would have been erected in sheltered valleys near water if possible and the weight of the felt and sand on the bottom edges must have been sufficient to keep it in place.

 In our mining camp we had prefabbed wooden floor sections that fit together to make a circle. Traditionally rugs would have been placed on the ground or the bare soil would be left exposed.  In our new camp under construction when I left we were building concrete floor pads with in-floor hot water heating we would pipe through them. We were building them in pods of 4 with a bathroom connecting all four which was a huge improvement over getting out and walking to a bathroom 100+ yards away in sub-zero weather. Constipation and urine filled water bottles thrown over the walls were a constant health problem. Also dehydration was a big issue as people were very reluctant to drink enough water especially at night. All the urinals in the bathrooms had color coded urine descriptions reminding the workers to drink more water.

 Traditionally when broken down a ger could be lashed on to the back of camels or yaks or pulled behind them or horses on a 2 wheeled cart. Now they are often hauled in a truck.

 A ger was considered a living family member. Our safety team nearly started a riot when they were going to set one up and burn it to identify how much response time they had if one caught fire. I had the same response when I was going to cut holes in the sides for openings for the serving and dining gers I set up. We finally just built multiple gers and built wooden weather fences connecting them to avoid the strong dusty winds in the area at lunch. The workers allowed me to face 2 dining gers east and west but not north.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know that most of Mongolia is home to a little rodent that looks about like our Prairie dog? We saw hundreds of them driving around the grasslands of central Mongolia on our vacation there in July 2006. They are about the size of a Fairydiddle (Pine squirrel) and upon further research I discovered they are actually a Gerbil. 

    These Gerbils store food in underground "larders" for the long winters. A common food supply is a grass bulb that looks very much like a chufa. The local migrant Mongolian herders look for these larders and when they find them they raid them taking all the seeds/bulbs they find. This is a traditional food source for them. I understand these larders may contain 10-12 gallons or more of stored seeds/bulbs.

    On 11 July (Naadam - Mongolia's National Day) 2006 we visited a local Mongolian family and as we arrived the women were preparing a special treat using a bunch of seeds/bulbs they had found in a Gerbil's larder. I don't know if they roasted them first or not but I remember seeing them grind them with a mortar and pestle. They took the top off their little sheet metal stove and put a round bottomed pan sort of like a big wok directly over the flames, added a big gob (maybe a pint) of yellow Yak butter, an equal amount of sugar then they added the ground gerbil food and cooked it till it was done. The finished product was very good and tasted very much like oatmeal no-bake cookies. 

   I sort of felt guilty for the gerbil who had a long hard winter ahead of him.

[KEC]

Red Squirrels (Pine Squirrels) put up large caches of food for later use, too. Doing wildlife control, at one house the R Sq had put a garbage bag full of Staghorn Sumac seed clusters up in the false ceiling of the garage. At another home they had filled several interior wall voids to the top with Black Walnuts. Another had the soffits of a car port stocked with Black Walnuts, and the R SQ were  still feeding on them in June. In the winter,especially, R Sq go into underground dens like under tree root wads where it is a lot warmer than up in tree nests or cavities. They will also tunnel under the snow to avoid predators and extreme cold air. Like many animals, when they have lots of food they can be hard to trap in a baited trap. They will prey on bird eggs and nestlings. I try to keep a lid on them around my home. I've learned a couple of ways to trap them without bait.

[WV Sawmiller]

    I rescued a chipmunk from our old cat and he escaped and stayed in the house undetected for months. One day he came out of the portable dishwasher and my son and wife spotted him as he ran to the dog food dish and stuffed his cheeks full of dry dogfood and my son grabbed him before he could get back inside the DW. He said he had gotten huge eating the dogfood and it slowed him down trying to squeeze into the DW back. My son took the back off the dishwasher and found about 25 lbs of dry dog food stored back there. All this time we had from 1-3 dogs and 1-3 cats in the house and nobody ever knew he was there.

[KEC]

That's called living large.

[Tacotodd]

hehehe

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know one of the basic principals of scuba diving is neutral buoyancy? This allows the diver to remain at a specific depth without having to struggle all the time to stay down or to keep from sinking too deep. The basic components used for this is a weight belt to make you sink and an air filled vest called a buoyancy compensator or BC to make you float. You add air to your BC by pushing a button on a hose which adds air from the tank till the 2 balance each other. Think of a fishing float and a lead weight on a string. When perfectly balanced the float will neither float to the surface or sink to the bottom.

    Compounding the issue is the fact the air in your BC is compressed by the water pressure the deeper you go making it less buoyant and making you want to sink faster - so you have to add more air as you go down. The air in your BC expands as you rise making it larger and making you float to the surface faster so you have to dump air using another little valve on a hose to the BC as you ascend to keep from rising too fast and before your body can adjust to the pressure changes. The major safety rule in Scuba is Breathe Constantly to keep from blowing up your lungs or getting the bends from rising before the air in your joints works its way out. Another safety rule is to stop at about 15' depth for 3 minutes and breathe normally to allow the gases in your body to adjust.

    Since you never truly achieve permanent neutral buoyancy when you reach the depth you want to stay you use your fins and swim up or down slightly while observing the coral and sea life in the area. Also since your lungs are an air bladder an experienced diver learns to inhale a little deeper if he wants to rise a little or exhale a little deeper if he wants to descend a bit.

   BTW - Did you know Scuba is an Acronym for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus?

[Tacotodd]

Howard, I learned ALL of that stuff in college when I took scuba for an "elective" that we were FORCED to take for a phys-ed course . It was either that or tennis. Scuba sounds MUCH more fun, and I think 🤔 I made the right choice! 🤗

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know that when you plan to cook live shellfish such as crabs, lobsters or crawfish you need to have the water boiling before you add the shellfish to the cookpot?

  While I was stationed at Parris Island in my USMC days we met several friends from church at a retreat our pastor owned on an inlet near Beaufort SC. The wives got out and caught a bunch of blue crabs in a trap and by using the old chicken neck on a string technique. They decided to cook the crabs so the pastor's wife got a big pot with a lid, filled it with water, added salt and seasoning and put the crabs in then put the pot on the stove and turned on the burner. A few minutes later we began to hear a scritching and scratching sound so Darlene went over and lifted the lid only to find the top was ringed with the crabs trying to get out. I will always remember her beating those crabs back with a big wooden spoon for several minutes till the water began to boil. We should have realized ahead of time this would happen.

[Old saw fixer]

     Don't forget the Old Bay seasoning Howard!

[WV Sawmiller]

   It was already in there but not enough incentive to make the crabs want to hang around when the temps started rising. 

   My brother was working near Morgan City LA and said they would have shrimp and crawfish boils and when they ran out of shrimp or crawfish they threw hot dogs in the seasoned water mix and the crowd would eat them before they finished off the shrimp or crawfish.

[Will.K]

On diving:
Did you know that the first mass produced individual diving apparatus was made in France in the early thirties? One of the things driving the development of autonomous diving equipment was the race to explore underwater caves or to breach sumped sections of caves. Standard Equipment used in open water diving had been used in such settings with some success, and lots more failure. The much improved Aqualung, developed in the forties by Jacques Cousteau and others, was soon put to work in caves. 

Cave diving developed at different rates all over the world, with many examples of ingenious or idiotic homemade equipment. Even now it remains one of the most dangerous sporting endeavors. 

But the most audacious such exploration, maybe, was that of Norbert Casteret  in the Grotte de Montespan. In 1922 he passed a flooded section of cave by free diving in total darkness. Finding air on the other side, he returned prepared, with matches and candle sealed up in a swimming cap. Passing the sump again, he lit his candle and explored, finding a second, longer sump. He dove this one too finding more air-filled cave. Going onward involved crawling in a heavily dripping passage that put his candle out repeatedly. Being separated as he was from the surface by two sections of water-filled cave, and with no gear of any substance, the fact that he kept exploring further is remarkable.

It is a strange feeling to dive under the water and come up in a place that has never before been seen. I have had this experience only once, largely because I am not too comfortable in the water.

[WV Sawmiller]

Wil.K,

   I am no fan of cave diving. I prefer to have open sky above me that I can at least attempt to reach if things go south. At the end of a night dive in Jeddah Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea in the early 90's right at the exit point I spotted and shot a nice snapper with my compressed air spear pistol with a 12" spear under a large section of riprap - a broken concrete slab. He ran to the end of the 12' line and got fouled. Instead of tying off the gun and trying to reach him from the other side I crawled in there after him. My gauges got hung in a crack in the coral and I was out of air so my dive partner was at the edge of the concrete and I gave him the share air signal. He pulled off his octopus and methodically uncoiled it while I was sitting there turning blue thinking "This is a significant inconvenience" (Funny what lack of O2 will do to your brain that way). He passed me his spare regulator and I started breathing and I shed my vest to try to untangle it and the quick release on my weight belt got hung on a piece of old fishing line and it released and fell to the bottom of the coral. This caused me to float to the top till I bumped the underside of the concrete slab. I got my tank and vest freed and pulled it out from under the concrete into the open sea but then without my weight belt and the partially inflated vest and empty air tank I started to rise uncontrollably and I lost the spare regulator off my buddies tank and was surface bound. It was about 40' to the surface so I breathed out all the way up to keep the air in my lungs from rupturing them as it more than doubled in that distance. This is standard "Uncontrolled Buoyant Ascent Training" in PADI scuba classes and the only time I ever had to use it. I can certify that it works. I came back the next day with a spare weight belt and went back down and retrieved the weight belt and spear. The fish had long been eaten by crabs and other fish. 

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know there are two living genus of egg-laying mammals alive today? They are the Duck billed platypus in Australia and several different species of Spiny Anteater in New Guinea.

   These animal lay eggs and hatch their young then nurse them like all other mammals do. 

[KEC]

I think the Duck-billed Platypus has some nasty claws that may be venomous, too.