[tobyaxis]

i here ya , i remember trying to do a tranny job on a jeep by myself , a few days later i had it towed to the car lot for a push drag and pull deal they had and traded it in , i hate auto mechanics

That is the easiest way to go LOL

[dertsap]

That is the easiest way to go LOL

it was't the easiest way to go considering the money i sunk into that pit but for sanity sake it was the only way to go

[Geof]

Well, I've been doing a bit of archery for the last couple of years......
......Gosh, talk about being stiff and sore! I'm not used to crawling around on the floor anymore

The archery brings back memories. My brother and I used to make bows when we were kids living on a farm in New Zealand. These things could push an arrow a couple of hundred yards or more and we would stand one each side of a gulley below our house and shoot at each other. The idea was to have the arrow land in the ground between the target's feet. You really had to keep your eye on an incoming flight to jump out of the way if it seemed a bit high. Looking back I think we were crazy.

And I am with you regarding crawling around on floors do auto repairs which is why my driveway is full of new cars these days; apart from the fact I don't have a clue what to do on modern vehicles, VWs, Austin Minis and Land Rovers were simple.

Today my project is four fence posts set in concrete; we will see if I can still type after doing four holes three feet deep with a hand powered auger and then mixing 12 bags of concrete. At least I have an electric mixer.

[martinw]

Dear Geof,
I looked up the medicinal properties of seal blubber. Part of the deal is that if you eat it, from birth, it gives you a cardiovascular system of a 20 year old, even at an advanced age . The downside however is that you will probably be poisoned by chemical concentrations of PCBs in the seas.

Your choice. It might come in handy as a hand cream after all those fence posts though...

Best wishes,

Martin

[martinw]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blubber

Best wishes,

Martin

[Geof]

I think I will forgo the seal blubber from birth; I think I will forgo seal blubber.

The holes got done but the posts are not yet set in concrete, as always I was over ambitious.

[martinw]

Dear Geof,

Clearly, you did not tuck into enough of that stuff at breakfast.










Well done with the holes.

Very best wishes,

Martin

[Brewmeister]

i here ya , i remember trying to do a
'tranny' job on a jeep by myself....

Didn't Chrysler already take care of changing the Jeep from male to female?

I hunt, fish, golf, spend too much time on the computer, fix stuff around the house. I'm refacing our kitchen cabinets. I have a trailer frame that I need to paint & put a new box on. And a deer head I need to remove the flesh & skin from so I can bleach the skull. Every once in a while, I brew up a batch of beer.

TTFN

[dertsap]

Didn't Chrysler already take care of changing the Jeep from male to female?


TTFN

edit I was informed by a mod that my statement was inappropriate so it's deleted ? though i dont understand why calling a crappy vehicle an abortion is wrong , its a term used by many in reference to pieced together trash or a make do fix

[AMCjeepCJ]

My very favorite thing to do is catching snakes, bugs, spiders, baby mammals, you name it, if it moves, I'll catch it. ATM I am teaching my son what animals are safe and what animals are not quite as safe.

Right now I have a 6 year old rottie named Deuce who weighed upwards of 152 pounds not long ago. I have a few hundred Blaptica Dubia cockroaches, another hundred or so Madagascar Hissing cockroaches, 50,000-70,000 Dermestid beetles, a small colony of meal worms, two cats and a 21 month old son.

Two weeks ago Everett and I went snake hunting and look what he caught by himself!! (Ok, I helped, lol~) He caught a medium sized Eastern Hognose and hauled it around for over an hour before I talked him into letting it go. It has its mouth open and tongue out in the pic...

I have had OVER 200 different species of animals in my life. I once went snake hunting in South Dakota for rattlesnakes but only found eastern yellow belly racers so like any good herpetologist I stuck them in my mummy bag with me at night to keep them from freezing. Well, they were loose in the bag so I tightened up the face hole to keep them inside. When I awoke in the morning, one had crawled out over my face and froze to death under my backpack but the other one had laid eggs in my foot compartment!

In the past three years I have caught a baby red fox, a couple of immature flying squirrels, a bunch of baby raccoons and bought some giant centipedes, scorpions, chameleons, tons of turtles, a few ball pythons, some toads and a couple-few other things if I'd think about it longer.

I think the dumbest thing I've ever done was going to a rattlesnake roundup (different rattlesnake trip) back in Bible school and taking 13 friends with me. I was the only one who liked snakes or for that matter knew anything about them. I basically brought everyone just for extra eyes. After roughly 8 hours I had found 3 Western Diamondbacks and the rest of the group had found 1. I grabbed them all and tossed them in my backpack but the dumb part happened when I returned to my apartment. I let a 50+ inch coontail loose in my living room and it kinda surprised me how damn fast they move once they warm up!

I had a stroke roughly two weeks later but had that not happened, I was going on an alligator wrestling trip with another group of bible school buddies down in Louisiana.

My little guy is getting to the age where he occasionally throws a tantrum but his tantrums consist of "Buggy, buggy, BUUUGGGGYYYY!!!" It is him wanting to see his pet cockroaches, so we have to go get his "Buggies" put the cage on the floor and let him take every single stinkin' roach out and give them a kiss, one-at-a-time......ugh~ If I were to write the process in G-code, it would be:

G0 X0Y0 (Finding the bugs)
G1 X100 F.02 (Yeah, it takes that long~)

This week all Edwardo and I have caught were a couple of spiders, a bunch of ducklings, a two year old snapping turtle and a beautiful, HUGE Blandings turtle, which are endangered and illegal to catch here in Michigan. We pulled it out of the road and took it to my parents swamp to let it go in their pond away from traffic.

(PS the Great Dane in the pic was my puppy at 8 months old! He was 132 pounds, could touch a 7 foot tall ceiling with his nose on his back feet and again, he was 8 months old in that picture! The rottie in the pic weighed 152 pounds at that time, look at the size of Goliath's feet compared to the Rottweiler~ GD's usually grow until 12 months old and then gain weight the second year. We were careful to NOT overfeed him but he just kept growing out of control. He was the biggest puppy the breeder had ever had by a good 30%, dunno how big he ended up getting because he literally ate my couch, wound up his intestines and I had to cut a deal with the vet to save his life because I couldn't afford the $$$$$ for the surgery at that time. Last I heard he was living on a horse farm out in the country and extremely happy.)

(PPS I have a secret desire to be a hairstylist for babies and animals, I wish I had picture of some of the 'haircuts' I've given raccoons and dogs. I once shaved flames into my rotts head and face that were unbelievable looking because he is a mix and has a bright white undercoat. If I EVER find pics of it, I'll post them for sure, it took a loooooong time to do it...)

[Geof]

Having fun in the backyard; nothing like as scary as catching rattlesnakes.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQqewd-t-bI"]YouTube - OffRoad[/ame]

[Brewmeister]

...And a deer head I need to remove the flesh & skin from so I can bleach the skull. Every once in a while, I brew up a batch of beer.

Right now I have ...., 50,000-70,000 Dermestid beetles,

Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?

Where, roughly in Michigan are you? I'm in Macomb County.

Be Well

[Geof]

....... And a deer head I need to remove the flesh & skin from so I can bleach the skull. Every once in a while, I brew up a batch of beer.

TTFN

The juxtaposition of the two subjects interest me; do you brew your beer in bleached deer skulls?

Be careful you don't get the beetles intoxicated.

[AMCjeepCJ]

Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?

Where, roughly in Michigan are you? I'm in Macomb County.

Be Well

I actually WAS thinkin' what you're thinking... I'm in Climax, 3 miles from exit 85 on I-94 exactly...

My bugs ate roughly 7 pounds of freezer burned venison in two weeks and are breeding like wildfire~ In all honesty I probably have more than double the bugs I said because my adults right at the moment should be laying between 5,000 to 9,000 eggs per day but I don't count my beetles before they hatch

My bugs right now should easily be able to strip a white tail skull down overnight and pick it clean in no more than 2 days judging by my old colony.

Do you do taxidermy? I trade my services for cat/dog food, freezer burned meat, kittens (for chipmunk control) or weird skulls for trade. I also love to trade for good meat too, I've found craigslist to be an awesome place to barter bug services for all kinds of weird crap right on down to free Jet Ski rentals~ I was doing a whole pile of skulls (13 I think) awhile back for a taxidermist and killed off the colony because my vent quit working and since he hadn't flushed the brains out, they went rancid and gas chambered the whole group. (wedge) I must be too cheap on my price though because he paid me 25% MORE than we agreed on and he gave me a good 50 pounds of meat to jumpstart my new colony and that was AFTER I took 4 extra months to finish them?! So much for a quick 2 week turn around, lol, he gave me his recurve bow making business too. I'm kind of excited about getting that whole endevour up and running this fall.

So what do you do with the deer skulls? European mounts for you and your buddies??

[Geof]

When I started this thread I didn't quite envisage the above subject matter; couldn't you choose an area of interest that is a bit less icky.

I suppose the next thing that is going to surface is someone who has dung beetles for pets.

[AMCjeepCJ]

Oh, I misread your post, you have 1 deer skull to do, I thought you meant you do it as a hobby. If you brain it, thaw it, dry it in front of a fan for a day or two, refreeze it (to kill of any other bug eggs that might have been laid on it) and ship it boxed in a plastic bag all sealed up to my shop with return postage, I'll refreeze it one more time for a couple of days to double check no rogue bugs get into my colony, thaw it out, rehydrate it for a night and let the bugs go to town on it. If I don't rehydrate it, the older skulls tend to take a week or so to pick clean because it's hard for the little guys to chew through old, tough, leathery meat.

Oh, just make sure you skin it and pop the eyes out, tongue if possible. I'm sure you already know but the beetles don't eat hair and don't really like skin too much. Eyes leave a crust around the eye sockets if it's not a fresh skull and needs to be pried off with needle nose when the skulls aren't fresh. Removing the tongue just saves time~

On a fresh skull you can just skin it, leave the brains, eyes, tongue and everything in and it'll be gone within the day if not overnight. Leaving those things in the freezer makes everything ridiculously tough as I'm sure you've noticed already.

As for Geof's comment on dung beetles, I haven't been able to locate grubs for sale in the states or rest assured, I'd have some!! What would be cooler that literally turning @#%! into money?? I would buy them just so I could say I'd done it, lol~

BTW, have any of you seen where in the big cities they use these beetles for pedicures?!

[Geof]

.....BTW, have any of you seen where in the big cities they use these beetles for pedicures?!

Is it beetles or larvae? I have read articles about debriding wounds using maggots; only certain species are suitable because you don't want ones that eat live tissue.

And I had better be careful I am subject to spontaneous syncope.

[AMCjeepCJ]

Larvae not adults, sorry for the confusion... Yeah the babies only eat dead stuff, preferably soft tissue but they are not to keen on blood, guts or thick hide. The adults do not seem to eat much of anything compared to the babies. Despite what all of the literature available on Dermestids say, they actually will eat EVERYTHING but the hair and bones if you have a big enough colony, warm them up to just below 85 degrees (anything below 85 and they cannot fly) and don't feed them for a week or two prior to dumping whatever it is you want stripped into their container.

I use a combination of dog food (for laying eggs, hiding, pupating and eating but they prefer meat), special UNTREATED wood chips and frass (beetle crap) for bedding with my humidity and temperature computer controlled with a radiant heat source and decent ventilation. They don't need water although some breeders do put it in. This combination is works stupidly efficient and I will easily have over 1,000,000+ critters by hunting season at the current rate this year or roughly enough to do 10 deer skulls a day.

There is really no practical use for this many bugs but they work good for feeder insects with spiders and other inverts, so I'm experimenting with using the larvae as food for other breeding projects I'm looking to start.

BTW, don't let these buggers get loose in your house or shop! I forgot they burrow through foam to pupate and lost fifteen or twenty thousand in my dads shop once, lol, they burrowed into the dry wall in our new kitchen and turned it into dust, lmao, not cool!! My dad built a moat around the sand blaster cabinet we were using to breed them in but they would fall out foamed seals, drown in the water and the catfish we had swimming in there would eat them up.

After awhile the novelty wore off, we ate the fish and I put that colony into my barn where a raccoon came, pushed down on the dumper at the bottom of the media blaster tank and feasted on the dog food and buggies pouring out. (Think raccoon-slot-machine-jackpot! A hundred pounds of dog food, spastic little six legged candy and all he had to do was pull the lever down~ Winner every time!)

Just so no one worries, these beetles are a native species to my state but not exactly in the concentrations my yard has experienced, there is very little roadkill on the side of my street though~

[AMCjeepCJ]

I just caught a baby skunk last weekend, unfortunately he died five days later by what I am assuming were possible internal injuries from the dog that was playing with it when we found it. It was a cute little bugger though~ (Sorry, no pics but if you could smell my keyboard right now......lol)

[Brewmeister]

AMC, yes. One skull. It's my first try at a european mount. Usually I just saw the rack off & nail it to the wall. I thought a nice bleached skull would look nice in the stairwell.

I have all the skin, the lower jaw, and most of the neck meat off. Any tips on flushing the brain?

I should be travelling down to Indiana in the near future. I'll blast you a message & get directions to the shop. I can't wait to see the critters.

Be Well