Operation: Over-seas: 2012

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Dealing with one of the most poisonous snakes in south america part II

I've told you a lot about finding the snake, but I haven't told you a lot about making the band. Now, pictures can capture doing a lot better than words, can't they?

1. Skinning

To skin a snake you will need:

1 bottle of alcohol
scissors
abandoned construction site
sharp Swiss Army knife
plastic garbage bags
latex gloves

You don't have to cut off the head, but we did since it was pretty much trashed from the car tire. We started by slicing up the belly from the bung hole all the way to the throat. Be careful when you are doing this because the skin can tear as easily as wet paper. Ours was road kill so we had to be extra careful with the holes.

Pour out half of the bottle of alcohol and then put in the snake skin. It's like shrink wrap so be careful.

2 weeks later:

When you get home from the Amazon, take the skin out of the alcohol and lie it on a long, flat, board.

When you're finished with that, using the cut you made along the belly, take 1 pin on each side, and working
in about a centimeter intervals. flatten out the skin and gradually make you're way up the body.
Just pull it enough to keep the edges out. We pulled it too tight the first time so as it dried, it shrunk
and pulled itself out of the pins.

done!

2 weeks later:

Take the pins out--it should be dry now-- and start a bath of warm water and non-iodized salt (sal sin yodo) and soap if it's really yucky with meat and stuff. You're trying to keep it from rotting so clean it well--but be very careful because when we tried to clean ours, it was really fragile. then you soak it for about 2 hours.

Next you clean it in 1ounce Borax (borax) and a gallon of water. After that, you scrape it (or "scud" it)-with a butter knife to really clear all debris and grease off the skin. We had reduce the recipe because our directions were from the New Mexico Extension Service for tanning Deer and Bear hides. We also had to be much carefuller because a snake skin is more like wet toilet paper than a bear rug. After scudding, you rinse it in water and air dry it. Now, if need to, you can repair it. We had to do lots of repairs because ours was roadkill. Use dental floss because it's waxy and less chance of tearing the skin.

3 Tanning-Breaking Proteins.

While the skin is soaking, you can clean up and prepare the next step.

Here we have two solutions that you pour together. The first is 1 pound of Alum to 1 gal. of water and the second is 4 oz. Sodium Carbonate, 8 oz. Salt (non iodized), and 1/2 gal. of water. Obviously, we are not tanning a bear hide so we adjusted the amounts.

Next, slowly combine the two mixtures and stir vigorously. This will froth so don't be worried, just make sure you use a bigger container than you expect you will need. Put the skin into the mixture for about 2 days. This is to break down the proteins so that when the skin dries, it doesn't get hard and brittle and crack.

mix it

put the skin in the mixture 2 days or until flexible. What this is doing is breaking down the proteins that make it rigid.

4. Two days later.

Remove from the mixture, rinse well in clean water and let it dry. I dried it by tacking it on to the same board with pins. It's probably not necessary but the edges will curl a bit which will make it hard to work with afterwards.

5. Softening and Descaling

This is optional, but we decided to do it to slant the scales so later you can brush them off with (your Dad's) tooth brush.

the next mixture consists of half glycerin, half alcohol. (optional)
Notice we had to brush on the glycerin so that it would be softer so we could fit it into the jar with out bending it. Chances are, it wouldn't have broken, but I didn't want to take the risk.

I left it in the jar of 1/2 glycerin , 1/2 alcohol for about a week.

after doing this you might want to pin it up on the board again to dry it and brush it of with a toothbrush or fine-bristled brush.

Well you are stretching the skin, you may want to get the backing ready.

When you are putting on the contact
cement you need to be very careful
because you're mistake is final!!!

You may need 4 hands to do this and a pencil. even more hands are better.using the pencil, start at one end of the skin and . While another person holds the other end up, gently press down, careful not to get any air bubbles. Then, roll the pencil firmly along the skin from one end to the next.

The last step is to sow it on and decorate it. We had to go to a leather-makers store to get it done.

Now, using a utility knife, flip the band over and cut the spare edges of the skin off. Then sow the edges and decorate!

finished!

Monday, February 13, 2012

dealing with one of the most poisonous snakes in South America

Hello, or should I say good-bye!

this is the right leg of an 11 year
old Ecuadorian boy 2 weeks after equis bite.
(Please Note: effects will vary depending on amount)

see if you can see the pits underneath it's eyes

We spent the first 2 nights of our adventure in Tena, where we did have internet connection, but we did not have internet deeper in the Amazon for 5 days.

The second night we were going back to our hotel and found an equis! (A.K.A. Fer-de-lance!) Whose lower body had gotten crushed by a car. The next morning as we were preparing to leave, we found it had dragged itself all the way to the side-walk and to the main entrance of of our hotel where it had obviously just died. Just as our host was about to throw the body into the river that had obviously flooded the nearby houses several times, Yvonne rushes up to him, asks him if he has a bag, and BOOM before I know it I'm carrying around a dead snake body. So I'm lugging the body around now, to the bank, to the bus station, where we ask what time our bus is leaving. But before the bus station however, we stop by 2 tanners and asked them if they could skin it for us. The first one's excuse is superstitious, saying that it contains poison all the way through. The second one said it was already too rotten. So we end up going to a farmacia and picking up 2 pairs of latex gloves and some hand cleaning alcohol. Then we find a plot of unoccupied land under construction. There Derk whips out his Swiss-army knife and starts skinning it. I think you all remember the band with the Ecuadorian colors on it that goes around my panama hat? Well now I have a real snake skin one.

The equis is a type of pit viper, meaning they have distinct pits underneath their eyes. The Fer-de-lance is known to cause 75% of all snake-bite fatalities. Females average at about 6 ft, with males being slightly shorter. Average venom deposit is about 105-124mg, but they have been known to deposit 310-342mg. the lethal amount for a human is 50-62mg. Their scientific name is Bothrops atrox. Their name in french means "lance head" (basically "Iron of

equis are named for their distinctive X pattern on their backs.

the lance") If you are bitten, you may get nauseous, paralyzed or simply black out. They have been known to creep around banana and coffee plantations looking for rodents, where they can lie in wait for hours. The fer-de-lance is a ground snake, but they can also climb and swim. Their color pattern can be olive, brown, tan, grey, yellow, and less likely than not, rusty. They also have a distinct pale yellow chin color. Luckily for them, despite vast destruction of the rain forest, they are nowhere near extinction.

Our guide Octavio, his mother was all alone in a field, Octavio was at school, and his father was in Tena about an hour away. She was bitten on her finger by an Equis, when she pulled back, the fangs got stuck on her thumb so she chopped off its head with her hatchet. She managed to get back to the house where she fainted. Luckily, a neighbor came by to ask something, he was a big man and he carried her to his motorbike and took her one hour to the hospital in Tena. After that she was in a coma for 10 days. She was lucky to be alive!

Ciao,
Niko

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Cotopaxi and the Ring of Fire

I picked volcanoes because I thought it might be a fun topic since there are ''only a few in the country'' (about 29)actually, the entire country is riddled with them!!!! I have made a graph that hopefully will help you understand my weeks worth of work in a minute.

Cotopaxi (Ecuador)
Pyroclastic flows from this volcano have the nearby city of Latacunga two or three times in the last 200 years.

Volcanoes all over the world

Stratovolcanoes,a.k.a. composite volcanoes (compared to the less violent shield volcano) are able to go extinct for tens of thousands of years between eruptions. Not so much with Cotopaxi!(also a stratovolcano) It has exploded more than 50 times since 1738! Believe me,that is one big, scary volcano. It is also the second highest mountain in Ecuador.(The tallest is Chimborazo.)

According to my graph, Aconcagua is the highest mountain, but Denali(mount McKinley) is still almost twice as tall! For example, Oliver standing on a table next to Mr. Schrankler is higher than Mr. Schrankler, but Mr. Schrankler is still taller. Aconcagua may have a higher summit elevation, but Denali has a mucho less base elevation(see my graph for example.)

The ring of fire is a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) upside down horseshoe shape that spreads all the way from the ross ice shelf alllllllllll the way around the pacific ocean, along the Andes through Mexico, through San Francisco, to Alaska, down the Aleutians, to Kamchatka, Japan, New Zealand, and finally Antarctica again. That is one big ring of fire if you ask me! The Ring of Fire has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes.

I hope you think my work was worth it. I learned a lot about volcanoes and that is important for me because there are so many around us in Ecuador. I think they are cool works of nature.

Niko

Here is a link I liked. Check it out

http://www.volcano.si.edu/index.cfm