South Florida - The Cherry on a Pile of Dung

There's not a lot of people that are willing to deprive themselves of sleep and look for reptiles and other animals all night long.  My friends Alex and Rhett are freaks (hence why they're my friends).  Even after hours of finding nothing they will not stop looking for snakes, lizards and whatever else they're after.  Rhett's friend Taylor came along as well and she was a bit new to all of this but was an absolute trooper, mostly for putting up with our idiotic shenanigans that plagued the entire trip.  I'll be honest, I'm not quite as intense as they are.  Also, I'm happy with finding anything that sparks my interest and I tend to go at a much slower pace.  When you're in South Florida for only a weekend though, you've got make hay while the sun shines... or find chameleons before the sun comes up.  I was going to film everything but a few hours in I realized if we wanted to be productive then there was no way I could film because to film you must go at a much much slower pace.  So I left the cameras in the truck and got out my cell phone.

The first night was slow and we were finding things that I could find back home.  We really wanted to focus on species that we don't have in central Florida.  The second night is when stuff started getting exciting for me.  Alex and Rhett have seen mangrove water snakes galore before but it's not a species that I've ever seen much.  I think this little one may have had some N. fasciata influence.

After doing some night cruising we got bored of that and decided to do some shining in a new spot.  It wasn't terribly productive but I found my first find of the trip which was big rough green snake.  I say my first find because Alex and Rhett found most of the snakes.  I've found these in my yard before but they're just beautiful snakes and I don't see ones this size too often.  A couple minutes later I hear Rhett yell something incoherent so I go check it out and he's got a red rat snake.  It's the furthest south I've seen one. I took the opportunity to get a quick photo of these two vibrant snakes together.

After quite a bit of more shining in this area we decided to go look for chameleons.  We got to the spot around 12:30 AM.  I've never found an oustalet's chameleon and the night before we didn't do so hot looking for veiled chameleons since our previously productive spots had been partially cleared and it appeared that a lot of collecting had occurred.  I was a little disappointed with that since chameleons are some of my favorite things to find and the veileds are especially attractive.  We started shining and we started seeing a lot of knight anoles and cuban treefrogs.  At one point Alex found a small lizard about 30 feet up in a tree.  We all thought it might possibly be a baby chameleon (wishful thinking) so I got to climbing.  When we got it down it turned out to be a juvenile knight anole, which I hadn't seen one like this before.  he was one feisty little lizard!

We were a little bummed it wasn't a chameleon but I thought it was pretty cool anyway.  We continued our search for a few hours and didn't turn a single chameleon up.  Rhett and Taylor were starting to turn into zombies so they went back to the truck to get some rest.  Alex and I kept shining for another hour or so.  Up to this point we still had no luck.  We had been searching the same kind of spots so I figured we had nothing to lose by mixing it up and searching a different kind of area.  Alex agreed and we started shining without any expectations.  At this point we were just zombies wandering around with a head lamp strapped to our foreheads.  We had many false alarms as so many of the leaves in the trees looked just like sleeping chameleons.  I saw one of theses leaves and stopped and looked at it for a few seconds.  I was absolutely sure it was a big female oustalet's chameleon but after so many false alarms I figured I'd get a second opinion.  I stood there, barely awake and called to Alex to come look at this.  He stumbles over and looks at it. "That's a chameleon!" he exclaimed.  I just stood there with a smug face for a moment enjoying the victory of finding a chameleon, especially before Alex.  I reached up grabbed her and we continued looking.

A few minutes later I hear Alex yell for me that he's got one.  Carrying my beautiful prize I wander through the trees where I see his light.  He's found a juvenile about chest high.  She's a real cute one.  

By now it's about 3:30 AM and we're only running on a chameleon high.  Alertness has returned to us and we're both psyched to find more chameleons.  I duck under a tree and look up and among the branches I see the third chameleon of the night.  It's a big male, which was what I really wanted to find!  This is the second largest species of chameleon in the world.  This dude was the most chill chameleon I've ever come across and he was perfectly content to perch atop my head... and steal my glasses :)

                                            

By now we only had about an hour and a half before the sun started to come up so we went to gloat about our finds to Rhett and Taylor and make sure they felt dumb for sleeping.  Seeing the chameleons they wanted to find some too so they came with us to the same area and looked for a while but none of us could turn up another chameleon.  Alex found a red rat snake to finish up the trip.  Here we are with our plunder.

I know someone is going to ask so here's your answer: All native species were returned where they were found after photos and Rhett kept the little oustelet's and the adults were released where they were found.

Discipline

Discipline makes me feel good.  Strict discipline increases productivity by an insane amount.  Today I realized that.  I made a list of things I needed to do today.  I did them and had time left over before I had to go to work.  I could have slept in and piddled around until work today but I didn't and it feels great.  I've done that sort of thing so many times before.  Another thing that helped was that I organized my goals, made them concise and clear, made a plan to efficiently complete them and went and did them.  One of my biggest struggles to productivity is just getting around to doing something because I don't plan it out and see where it will fit into the day.  Productivity must be prepared for so that means I need to go to bed in the next 20 minutes.  Good sleep helps but today the most important part was taking 30 minutes this morning and having quiet time getting my thoughts, focus, and mental state right.  I've got a goal in this life and I'm competing with a lot of other people for success so I must accomplish my goals.  My life purpose has to do with rejecting fear and pursuing my purpose.  I don't know if that is the key to success but we shall see, and I'm feeling pretty confident.  Read this in 5 or 10 years and see where I am then.  Keep in mind there are spiritual practices along with the morning routine that I believe are very important.  You can ask me more about that if you want.  I'm going to sleep right now :)

I Must be Trippin'

Bear with me as I seek to explain why life seems to go by exponentially faster.  When we first grasp the concept of time and we measure it without any set time we base lengths of time compared to our own life span so far.  When I was 6 and I had to wait another year for Christmas to come again that was an added sixth of my life I had to wait.  Now that I'm 24 that's only another 24th of my life, which 1/24 is considerably less than 1/6.  As we get older we base a year's length relative to our lifetime so as we get older a year starts to approach zero so it gets smaller and smaller.  I hope that makes sense.  It's something my dad told me once and I think there is some merit to it.

That all is relative to me "trippin'" because pretty soon I'm gonna be old and I have to do awesome things now.  I've been working hard and saving my money like a miser for something for several years now.  I save for things that I haven't thought up yet so when I think of them I have the funding to do them at that moment.

Anyway, I've decided to go on the most ridiculous trip of my life (hopefully not).  I will of course be starting in Florida and I will roughly head north, then west, then at some point come back to Florida.  That has to do with how far I've gotten and how much money I have left.  Thus far I'm planning on leaving in Late April.  That will get me lined up good for the Tennessee Classic and a Turkey hunt that I was invited on.  I'm making a map of friends in North America and this is what I have so far.  I guess I'm a little thin out west but I'm sure I'll make plenty of new friends out there!

So the plan is to do this in the 86 Toyota van that I got for $800.  That's the main reason that I say this trip is ridiculous.  It's only got about 82k miles on it so I have high hopes. 

The purpose of this trip is to see friends, see nature from all over this beautiful country.  It's amazing to be able to travel such long distances in relative safety and I'm blessed to be in a place and time where that is possible.  Along the way I want to hit huge expanses of wilderness and just head out into them for a couple days and see what's out there.  I'm interested in finding animals, natural materials, and anything beautiful in nature.  I want to capture what is so amazing about nature on my camera and put out videos during my trip.  So here's what's bouncing around my head at the moment:  Film and edit as I go and release videos, these wilderness trips will be for AnimalBytesTV, I'll also film other shenanigans which will go on my personal channel, like the Turkey hunt, and go on adventures with old friends and new.

Videoing and documenting everything that happens is really important to me so I have already started with documenting the process of transforming my van into a camper van.  The first two videos are below.  Be sure to subscribe to my channel and join me on my adventure!

When I Fail

I hate failing.  I hate failing at anything I attempt no matter what it is.  I think I am like this because I am athletically inclined and can pick up most activities pretty quick so I am not used to putting the hard work necessary to acquire proficiency.

My latest failure hit me pretty hard.  I felt ashamed that I had failed, most because I was so confident I would succeed.  I went about 8 miles up a river and was filming a nature/survival show.  I had all day to collect materials and craft a hand drill set for making fire by friction.  It was evening and I had a few hours before it got dark and I had to make a fire and there was no backup plan for fire.  The purpose of fire was to keep me warm and help ward off mosquitoes.  So, I got to drilling and I started getting smoke.  I knew better than to quit there so I began yelling loudly "DON'T STOP!" to psych myself up.  I repeated it over and over and kept drilling.  By this time smoke was pouring out from the base of the drill but I just kept drilling and drilling until my arms were so fatigued that they were no longer coordinated enough to spin the drill.  My drill fell out of the socket I had burned and the smoke slowly started to fade.  If the smoke stays for a little while it means there's a coal, if not then no coal.  The smoke all faded out and I was left with no coal.  I tried several times, each time failing.  I had some cordage I had made so I tried the bow drill method.  I had finally got it going pretty well until my string broke.  I started feeling hopeless.  At this point I was so exhausted and felt defeated.  I had choice to make.  Do I stay out the rest of the night as planned or do I head back and paddle a few hours through the dark.  If I stayed it meant certain discomfort from the cold and mosquitoes and if I left I had just had to paddle in the dark.  I paddle in the dark all the time for work so I figured it wouldn't be that bad.  I went with the latter option and only ran into one log on the way back.  I'll be honest though, it was one of the creepiest things I've ever gone through.  Moving shadows, weird noises, and the whole kit and caboodle.  I was pretty exhausted after that.

Now what?  I went to shoot a video about the wilderness and survival and stuff and I failed.  I copped out on the second night.  That's so lame.  I've built a friction fire before so why couldn't I do it this time?  It's the most frustrating thing in the world.  I'm supposed to be good at this sort of stuff but it just didn't work out this time!  It made me want to throw in the towel and say screw it.  I even thought for nano-moment about getting a normal job.  However, my purpose in life is to do something great.  I want to change this world in a big positive way.  I think that means I have to fail sometimes but I cannot, under any circumstance, lose my vision and my drive.  When I fail I must keep trying until I master!

Trading

I love trading!  When I got into this primitive archery stuff I vowed never to spend money on natural materials and so far I haven't.  It's a pretty good hobby when you don't have to spend money.  I've really been getting into flint knapping and I'm starting to get confident with it.  My material was getting smaller and smaller and I was slowly but surely reducing it down to a pile of gravel.  I needed some rock and I found myself messaging a man with a good reputation out in Oregon and he wanted an arrow made by me.  He likes to collect arrows from different people that he respects and I was flattered that he wanted one of mine.  So I made an arrow and sent it to him and he must have really liked it because in return I got a huge box of obsidian with a knapped blade included.  I've made 3 points from it so far and I'm really pleased with the material and over time I'm sure I'll get some points that I really like as well.

New "Toy"

My brother texts me and says he found a really good deal.  So I open the link he sent me and it's an 85 Toyota van.  I've been flirting with the idea of getting an old van, stripping out the inside, and making it into a camper van.  When I saw this deal I had one of those moments when I was like, "Crap, I have to act now or this opportunity is gone forever."  So I went out and bought the van that night.  I'm pretty excited  and it's a trip to drive.  I'm sure that excitement will wear off but for now it's just kind of fun to drive.  So far I've stripped everything out of the back  and I'm about ready to start outfitting the inside.  To be honest I'm not too concerned about the color but I have some friends that want to paint it for me so we'll see if I let them.  I kind of like the primer gray.  As of now the plan is to get it outfitted for camping and take it across North America!  I've got some ideas that I'm pretty excited about but I'll update y'all as they're implemented.  This should be interesting :)

Georgia Hogs

My mom's side of the family is from Georgia and my dad's side is from Florida.  I kind of like it that way because it's almost like having a secondary home.  Just before the new years I headed up to Georgia with the goal to hunt and kill a feral pig. There's some family land that's got pigs on it so I wanted to harvest and process one with my primitive bow and arrow and a stone knife, all of which I have made with my own two hands and all the stone worked with antler tools.  

When I got here I was eager to hunt the morning and every single day.   The first morning I got up early and got in the woods before the sun came up.  I stalked through an area that had good wind and I saw nothing.  I spooked one deer when I wasn't paying attention and the wind began to get shifty on me.  I decided to go scout another area and as I headed down the hill I saw a feeder.  There's another guy that hunts that land that traps the pigs.  As I got closer I noticed there were 4 pigs under the feeder.  I was instructed not to shoot pigs under the feeder as the others will get feeder shy and become difficult to trap.  So I watched for a little then decided to see how close I could sneak up on them.  Finally they spooked and ran off into the woods.  I'm not really interested in shooting pigs off of a feeder anyway.  I might as well use a rifle if I'm going to do that.  

I decided I'd come back that evening and hunt back in the woods where I saw them flee.  That way I could get them when they were on their way to their food source.  I waited and waited that evening until I heard some commotion behind me.  The pigs were beginning to move.  They came closer and closer. Behind me and on my right I was covered by two palmettos so I wasn't really visible from those directions. The pigs were so close but I couldn't move until one came around the side or in front of me.  I half expected to feel one sniffing my leg.  Finally one comes up on my right.  Just a few more steps and it would be out in front of the palm frond and I could take my shot.  It stops and sniffs... then turns away from me and walks away.  My heart had been beating almost out of my chest and I wouldn't be too surprised if the pig heard it.   

The following days I continued to hunt but either the wind was finicky or I just wasn't getting myself into the right scenario so I was unsuccessful.  However, it's not all about making the kill.  I still continue to learn and one day I even gathered up a bunch of river cane for arrow shafts.  I found a few rocks that may produce a sharp edge as well.  It was a good time in the woods.  When I get home I will hunt the small game season.  I need to make a kill soon, otherwise all this work in making my primitive bows and arrows is almost useless.

Thanks for reading and I will have some more videos soon.  Until next time, find a new way to appreciate nature!