WARNING: Hot Snakes

Among reptile enthusiasts "hot" refers to a venomous snake.   I want to focus on hot snakes here in Florida and try to give you a better understanding.  What I say may apply to other species as well.   In general snakes try to stay hidden and out of harm's way as much as possible.  They have a lot of predators and it's in their best interest to keep a low profile.  Many of them have some really good camouflage for this purpose.

There are three species of rattlesnake here in the sunshine state, all of which are pretty toxic.  They are all ambush predators so they spend a lot of time sitting and waiting near rodent trails mostly on the ground.  The last thing they want is to be discovered by a human.  However, they come with a warning system.  In the timber and diamondback rattlers the rattles are quite audible and that rattle will certainly stand out in the woods if you find yourself approaching the snake.  I think it is very kind of them to use that warning system.

Moccasins or cottonmouths have a more unusual warning system and I got to personally experience this one.  These snakes have very good camouflage and are almost undetectable in the leaf litter of a  swamp.  I found myself walking through a cypress forest near a spring run when out of the corner of my eye I see a white flash.  This two and a half foot cottonmouth had quickly opened and shut its mouth when I unknowingly approached it.  Flashing that snow or cotton white mouth at me was way more effective than I thought it ever could be.  Because this snake used it's warning I was spared by it.  The snake and I had a mutual interest and that was, neither of us wanted to touch the other.  Since copperheads are the same genus I'll quickly address their warning system.  They will shake their tail in the leaves to announce their presence.

Coral snakes are an elapid, related to cobras and mambas.  They are known to have the most toxic venom of any US snake.  These are so uncommon, non-aggressive, and easily avoided that in the state of Florida production of antivenin has been discontinued.  Coral snakes also spend most of their lives underground, only coming to the surface when they're moving from one location to another.  Of course coral snakes have very brightly colored bands that make them pretty obvious wherever they may be.

The point I want to make with this is that if you keep your wits about you and exercise good awareness then you really don't have to worry about venomous snakes.  They do play an important role in our ecosystems and as our cities encroach on wilderness areas we come into contact with them more and more.

If you ever have problems with snakes there are people you can call that will humanely relocate them.  I am one of those people, so if you want my number just send me a message to my email or facebook page.  Also there are people that do this for a living.

Once you get to know them, these snake really are alright.  Me with a pygmy rattlesnake.

The Rare Times

I spend a lot of times in the woods and every so often I experience something that is just incredible.  I can never predict or even imagine what these surprises will be.  More often than not these things happen before 9 AM.  One morning I was walking down a scrub ridge.  In scrub habitats you generally don't see a lot but when you do see something it's usually pretty awesome and wild predators are generally pretty secretive.  They often hunt in the morning and evening or even at night.  For the most part they just don't show themselves.  So imagine my surprise when I'm on this scrub ridge and I hear something crash in the bushes followed by a high pitch squeak.  I immediately scooted behind a tree. 

I could envision an eight foot eastern diamondback rattlesnake that had just latched onto a rabbit and was pumping it full of venom.  I froze waiting and listening to what would happen next.  I heard something slowly making its way toward the path.  I flipped my camera on and got it rolling.  The bushes were moving and I could tell the creature was about to emerge into the openness of the path.

The most amazing sight was had.  An adult bobcat came out with a squirrel dangling from its mouth.  It trotted down the path then stopped and looked back at me.  I remained calm and kept recording.  It continued down the path and did one more look-back before it disappeared into the woods.

This was the most incredible moment I've had in the woods this Summer!

 

The Ultimate Goal

Goals are what drive us.  For me I have roughly a million goals that will all lead to one ultimate goal.  I'm not going to tell you the ultimate goal for my life, mostly because I am not exactly certain what it is.  I can tell you what the main goal for my interest and effort in primitive stuff is though.

That main goal is to be capable of living off of the land in a sustainable manner with only the things I can get in nature.  I wouldn't necessarily have to use them right off but in the long term I would have a better idea of how to do things.  This means I have a ton of things to learn.  I feel like the amount of things I need to learn is so great that I would have needed to start learning when I was a child just to have an understanding of how it works at my current age.

Anyway, back to working on my BS degree in electrical engineering.

Perspective - The Way we Choose to See

It's been raining all day.  Coincidentally I've been at school all day as well.  I go to the largest university in the US so our campus is a pretty decent size.  Rain plus walking around on campus is unfortunate for those of us that don't have the foresight to leave an umbrella or raincoat in our vehicles.  I had to traverse across campus in the rain to get from the parking garage to the library, where I would do some homework and write this blog post.

I say all that because even though it sounds pretty miserable.  It really wasn't that bad.  I made a game of finding the driest route, sprinting barefoot from building to building.  Personally I love water.  I love to drink it, to swim in it, to look at it, etc.

I could have seen this rain as a real bummer to my Monday or look on the bright side of things.  Florida needs rain bad.  The city of Orlando pumps up unimaginable amounts of water for it's many water parks, golf courses, and residential lawns.  If we don't get these all-day downpours we would run our aquifers dry.  Luckily the library wasn't very cold and I've dried out now.  Crossing campus in the rain was a fun challenge and I hope some of the other students out there could see it the same way.

Crazy Ideas

I get them far too often.  I'll be reading something and "BAM!" something crazy pops into my head.  Most of these ideas just make me chuckle to myself and some even hang around for a little while but seldom does the idea actually hit me so hard that I end up implementing it.  Even more seldom does that crazy idea work.  I generally don't share these ideas because I get a disappointed look and a head shake from most people. 

Over the summer I came up with an incredible idea while researching primitive bowstrings.  Of course, I had to find some other materials that I had access to in case I ran out of one kind.  I found a list of bowstring materials that had historically been used.  The author also rated them but did not provide any information on how and why so I disregarded the ratings.  The material that stood out was hair.  It didn't specify from what creature I should make a bowstring from so I just went for what was available.

At this point it had been about a year since my last hair cut and my hair was probably about eight inches or so.  That was the ticket!  I could just use my own hair.  I thought it was genius.  I shared the idea and nobody understood how it was even possible.  I was so confident in this idea that I had to video the entire process from taking it off my head to shooting arrows from the bow string.  So, I did it!  Here is the video.

It turned out much better than I expected and I've worked out some of the drawbacks that I mention in the video.  This has also given me a renewed view of other people's crazy ideas.  When someone comes to me with a crazy idea, I'll think about it for a second, and then if I can't find a reason not to then I try to encourage them to go for it!

Culture

Today I was sitting in the library doing homework, then after my homework was finished I started checking some Primitive Tim stuff.  I sat down to write this blog and I would write a paragraph then decide I didn't like that topic and delete it all and start on something else.  To say the least, I was lacking inspiration.

Inspiration came and sat down right next to me.  He came with a foreign accent, so naturally I asked him where he was from.  I like to welcome foreign folks to my country.  His reply caught me off guard.  "Turkey" was his reply.  Without skipping a beat I replied, "ah sen Turksun?"  Talk about caught off guard!  The poor young man was very surprised.  He could see that I was a normal American dude but I just spoke his native tongue in a convincing accent.  Gurhan is his name

So the topic is culture and I believe it is very important to be culturally aware.  Now, I had lived in Gurhan's culture and as it turns out we may have even ridden the same bus together, having lived in the same city.  Immediately I could relate to Gurhan in culture, language, and humor.  After chatting laughing with him for a few minutes I felt comfortable enough on a personal basis that I could show how we're culturally very different.  We quickly became facebook friends and he was exposed to all the snakes, spiders and other creepy crawlies that I catch on a regular basis.  By the look I saw on his face he was pretty well creeped out.  This is a man in his twenties reacting to a picture of me holding a snake similar to how my grandmother might react.  Turks have a special fear of snakes more so than most folks on America.  However, he had met me personally and saw that I wasn't a nut case like my facebook might portray and listened to me explain how they weren't venomous and totally harmless.

It was really exciting to me how I could relate to someone so quickly just because we are both part of a culture that nobody else around us is from.  That instant relation was jut incredible.  If any of y'all haven't had that much cultural experience you more than likely know somebody that is or you can meet someone that isn't from around here.  You have no idea what it means to foreigners when you take an interest in their culture, language, or country.  We all represent our different countries to other countries.  We want these foreigners to go home and tell their friends and family how nice the Americans were... because we are nice!

Why the Tie-dye?

If you haven't noticed, I wear tie-dye t-shirts in all my videos or I'm not wearing a shirt at all.  To be honest I'm not really a big fan of shirts.  Shirts are something you wear to protect yourself from the elements.  The reasons I do wear shirts are to insulate my body in cool weather, to protect my skin from the sun and bugs, and lastly I'm ashamed to admit that I wear them because it's normal.

I have a confession about some personal habits as well.  I'm not a very tidy person.  If I'm picking blackberries or elderberries and I grab a really ripe one too hard and get the juice all over my fingers then I can just wipe it on my shirt.  A plain shirt with a logo or something doesn't look good with a stain on it.  I also get scraped up a lot or get bit by small animals that may draw some blood and if I get really hungry then I'll have a big meal and I eat like Tarzan.  Undoubtedly, I spill some ketchup or greasy meat on my shirt.  Getting stains on a tie-dye just makes the shirt even cooler!  I don't have to worry about getting stains on my shirts any longer!

My Relationship with Bows and Arrows

Primitive Archery is something I got into toward the end of last year.  I gained this interest when I went through a bout of doubt in modern society as we know it.  I got to thinking, "What happens when world governments collapse?  What happens when all the mayhem settles down?  When all the guns and bullets are used up?  How are we going to hunt or protect our families when that happens."  We will have to rely on what nature provides.  I know I know, I sound like a crazy guy that probably has a dozen or so conspiracy theories that are based of off unheard of prophets, cult teachings etc.  I assure you this is not the case.  I do not think, in my lifetime, that the US or any world super power is going to collapse and leave us an ungoverned mess of primates.  However, my opinion has little to do with what will actually happen.  I cannot say what will happen in the next 50 years much less the next 100.  

With this uncertainty I set out to build a bow with the tools I had and no electricity at all.  I succeeded pretty quick but the quality was quite low.  So low, in fact, that the bow quickly broke and I was left with a few arrow shafts and no bow.  I did have a nice homemade string though!    I cut more wood and let it season while I worked on my next one.  This one was much better with a few flaws here and there.  I kept using my worst pieces of wood to practice on 

I then had a bowyer's epiphany!  I was attempting the wrong design.  The design I was after wasn't wrong in itself but it was wrong for me.  My white-man brain wasn't thinking like it should have been.  Rather than make a bow with a big handle and two working limbs I could make a bow that was essentially one working limb and bending the whole length at full draw.  This was genius!  So genius, in fact, that Native Americans had been doing this for thousands of years before they had ever met a white man.  Hunting and fighting with primitive bows, the natives of North America had come up with the most simple and efficient design.  

I've come a long way but I am still not to where I want to be.  My last bow wasn't shooting arrows quite as fast as I would like so I'll pull another stave out of the barn rafters and start hacking away with my hatchet and wood rasp.

First bow

2nd Bow

3rd Bow

And a few bows later I have the latest bow that I've made.

In the Works

Contrary to popular belief, I can work hard and I have some things in the works.  It all has to do with a man named Brian Barczyk.  He is the owner of BHB Reptiles up in Michigan.  This is basically one of the world's biggest snake breeding facilities in the world.  He has tens of thousands of snakes.  So what does this snake breeder have to do with Primitive Tim?

He has a successful youtube channel called SnakeBytesTV and has over 140,000 subscribers right now.  For such a niche market that is a ton of subscribers!  He did this by making the snake breeding hobby interesting to everyone.  This is an example of one of his videos.    This is a man that is absolutely passionate about reptiles and animals in general.  He has a vision of creating another youtube channel that he wants to become the Animal Planet of the internet, except it will actually be awesome.  We want to focus on showing people how incredible wildlife is rather than worry about ratings.   Obviously he is way too busy to provide content for this new channel because he's really busy cleaning poop out of his thousands of snakes' cages.  Anyway, he needs external sources to film, edit, and host episodes for this new channel.  The way this will work is I will remain Primitive Tim and provide content for his channel as me.  I feel like this is a pretty good opportunity and a huge stage for me to get my name out.

So far I have filmed and edited a few episodes and I have gotten nothing but good feedback from Brian.  We talked on the phone going over all the business stuff and how our relationship will be and all that good stuff.  Every so often I'll give him updates on what's going on and he has always been really encouraging.  I invested in a new camera and that has only boosted my zeal to film and produce great content.  I put out videos every week of some of my favorite latest footage that I've taken.  These videos are called Fun Footage Friday.  This is to let people know that I am working on stuff and Primitive Tim is an active channel.

Here's a shot from Yesterday's filming trip!

The Best Day in a Decade!

This is sort of a response to another blog written about an event that I was involved in.  Actually, it's mostly about me.  I find that very flattering, considering it was written by a man that I have a ton of respect for.  If you want to read that blog then click on the word "blog."

Anyway, this is my take on the best day in a decade.  I woke up absurdly early and met my friend William and his dad (Mr. Thompson) at their house to go offshore fishing.  Now, I enjoy fishing and harvesting food from nature.  I think it's healthy for man do these kinds of things. Mr. Thompson is a pro when it comes to offshore fishing so we had that cooler full of kingfish and cobia by like 10:30 that morning.  I had brought my GoPro hoping to film some of this fish underwater and I did do some of that but that beautiful day had something more in store for me:

Leatherback sea turtles!  Yes, I had seen one once before in the spring and it was majestic.  I thought for sure that was my once in a life time encounter with a leatherback and I would never see another one again.  that was not the case for this day.  We saw at least five and I got footage of at least two of them.  William helped with the Gopro and I had the most incredible experience with a leatherback that was beyond anything I would have ever even imagined!  We sighted a giant leatherback resting on the surface.  Mr. Thompson idled toward it and before it got spooked I dove off the bow with William right behind me.  I swam toward it and down and once I got under it I allowed myself to slowly float up.  The giant preferred to avoid us so it dove and we passed each other in slow motion.  Had either of us reached out our "arms" we could have slapped hands but of course they have a powerful flipper and it's illegal to touch them.  I had a difficult time wrapping my head around what had just happened and the shear awesomeness that this turtle embodied.  These are the facts:  Leatherbacks are the largest turtle in existence today, they are critically endangered, and they're known to travel thousands of miles across open ocean.  This turtle could have been twice my age easily and had certainly traveled more than I have.

From thinking I would never see another leatherback again to seeing five in a day and swimming with a few of them was a huge delight for me.  I was able to experience a magnificent creature in person in its environment in a very natural way was the icing on the cake.  I guess the cherry on top was seeing a ton of other insane creatures in the ocean and being able to take some fish home.  It would be wrong if I didn't give Mr. Thompson and William a huge thanks for taking me out and really making this my best day in a decade.

 

What Makes me Sad?

             This does!  This makes me really sad(picture below).  Don't get me wrong, I'm not against hunting at all and I think FWC is doing fine at managing alligator populations in the state.  What makes me sad is our culture.  We think killing a huge alligator is something great and the hunters should be praised for killing such a massive beast that has been chasing our children around every time they dip their toes in Florida waterways.  This happened recently in the Econ River.  A river near to me and one that I am very very familiar with.  In fact, so familiar with that I may have even seen this same alligator.

                   Let me tell you how I felt when I saw this alligator in person (bottom picture).  It was purely amazing!  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  The sheer size was magnificent.  My first thought was to get a picture then to get closer.  My friend and I slid down the bank opposite of it to get a closer look.  When we did that the alligator responded in a way that you would never see any crocodilian behave on TV.  It slowly slid half way into the water.  It did this for one reason only.  The alligator simply felt exposed and vulnerable.  We stood there on the bank for several minutes, all three of us motionless.  This alligator was easily older than me and had likely lived in the area most of its life.  He was the dominant male and he was the top predator.  I felt like a foreigner in his kingdom. All the animals respected and feared this animal, even I did but unfortunately, not everyone sees it like I do. 

                If you look up this story you'll probably find that there was also an alligator attack in the same area a few months prior.  So great, we killed a man eater right?  NO!  Watch this video it's a pretty good account.  First of all it bit him in the head and did not kill him.  That was a bit comical to me.  Also, the alligator was estimated to be 10ish feet long.  People never under estimate when it comes to alligators (that's science. lol).  It's pretty safe to say that the culprit was not the alligators pictured below.  The bottom one doesn't look nearly as big as it did in person but it was certainly in the same class as the dead one.  So the bottom line is this kid, and many others, have been swimming in this river, likely for years with these alligators and this is the only recently recorded "attack?"  If it was an attack the kid would be dead.  This was surely a response to being frightened or disturbed when the kid floated and bumped into it (mentioned in the video).

               I think what we can learn from this about alligators is that they're not out to get people and even when we're swimming in their rivers and they're many times our own size.  I'm glad the kid was okay and able to hike out with a bleeding head but if we're going to swim in Florida waters it's very important that we keep our wits about us and know our own limits.

I apologize for the long post but please ask me any questions you might have.

Feeling Accomplished

So today I'm not asking a question.  I'm throwing out some stuff that's on my mind.  Like the title says, I'm feeling accomplished.  Whenever you're working on something it's those little accomplishments that keep you motivated to continue.  

Ok, so I'm feeling accomplished about where I stand on search engines!  I searched "Primitive Tim" on google, yahoo, and bing.  For each search I was the top few results.  Now, I got my best results from google where almost the entire first page was me but it may have some bias since I was logged in as Primitive Tim.  I'm not really sure how all that works.

To be honest, I didn't do anything special to show up on search engines.  I just chose a name that was original.

Now I can feel confident that when I tell someone to just search Primitive Tim, they will find me!

How Did I Get into This?

To be honest, it all started with Tarzan.  Yes, I read Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's a brilliant read and you should go read it.  But how does the incredibly handsome ape-man relate to me loving nature and primitive stuff?  Tarzan made a grass rope.  That's where it all started.  As I read I tried to imagine how he did this and I didn't understand how you can make a rope.  I was completely ignorant of the process so I googled it!  It turns out there are a bunch of people on the internet making cordage from all kinds of things!  I tried it and was baffled that I could just walk into the wilderness and come out with a length of cord.  That got me to wondering about other primitive skills and I kept asking myself, "What else can I make for free?"  Now I'm working my way up to making bows and arrows of a quality that can kill big game.







Agave cordage used for bowstrings.  It is waxed with beeswax then reverse twisted over itself.

What in the World is Primitive Tim?

                 Primitive Tim is me.  My legal name is Timothy Eldon Raley.  Good name, right?  In reality though, Primitive Tim is something much greater than me.  It's really about bringing people to a better understanding of nature.  That means educating about wildlife, showing what kind of crafts can be made straight from nature with basic tools, and we'll throw in some survival stuff for good measure because they all relate to one another.

Until next time, find a new way to appreciate nature! :D