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Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Lang - 02-19-2012 01:34 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/gramercy-tavern-snakeheads-potomac-river_n_1281838.html
Quote:
Gramercy Tavern Imports Snakeheads, Potomac River's Local Invader, For N.Y. Diners
Posted: 2/16/12 | Updated: 2/16/12
6630149713_2486c117dd
[snip for broken links]
NY Restaurants, Fish, Fishing, Ny News, Barton Seaver, Chesapeake Bay, DC News, DC Restaurants, Gramercy Tavern, John Rorapaugh, Maryland Department Of Natural Resources, Michael Anthony, Potomac River, Scott Drewno, The Source, Alewife, Snakehead, DC News
WASHINGTON -- A hideous, mucus-coated Asian fish feared for its species-killing potential in rivers along the East Coast finally has found powerful advocates: upscale diners in Manhattan restaurants.
Meet the snakehead. Native to Southeast Asia, the so-called frankenfish is a spiny-toothed predator that feasts on weaker fish, can survive out of water for up to five hours and lives in areas that would strike lesser gills deathly still. It's also fast invading the waterways of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River, gobbling up native species and threatening the livelihood of local fishers and tourist groups. The solution? Eat it first.
Or that's the plan according to John Rorapaugh, sustainable director for ProFish, a more than 20-year-old fishing operation that serves restaurants from New York City to Virginia Beach.
For the last year and a half, Rorapaugh has made it his mission to condemn snakeheads to dinner plates across the D.C. area. So far, they've been served up by chefs including Scott Drewno of The Source, sustainable seafood advocate Barton Seaver and Chad Wells of Alewife in Baltimore. But his latest client may be his most high-profile to date: Chef Michael Anthony of New York City's legendary Gramercy Tavern.
"It boils down to something really simple," Anthony told HuffPost. "Once we tasted it, we liked it. It has a dense texture, a wonderful clean flavor. There is nothing strange about it. It's a delicious fish."
By all accounts, this marks the first time snakehead has been on the menu at a showcase Manhattan restaurant. Gramercy Tavern, a powerhouse since its founding in 1994, is co-owned by restaurateur wunderkind Danny Meyer and launched the career of former co-owner and chef, Tom Colicchio.
Needless to say, it's always been up on trends. Like most well-regarded restaurants these days, Gramercy Tavern is a staunch supporter of the local and organic movements. But moreover, it's interested in a good story, and the snakehead certainly has one.
The first documented sighting of a snakehead in the U.S. was in 2002, in a pond behind a strip mall in Crofton, Md. Local authorities with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources panicked -- the fish is a menace to local species and can spread if there's an influx of fresh water -- and soon poisoned the entire pond. Six adult snakeheads went belly up, along with more than 1,000 juveniles.
It's unclear how they got there, but it's possible the adults were originally kept as pets or bought as food at a market. Snakeheads are known for their parenting skills; they're monogamous (rare for fish) and guard their young in a bed-like spawning area. Females mate up to five times a year, laying thousands of eggs at a time. Without predators, they thrive. Rorapaugh has seen adults grow to be 41 inches in length and up to 16 pounds.
In a 2005 article in Smithsonian Magazine, Helen Fields made light of the problem. "If the snakehead is different enough from the predators that natives have evolved with," she wrote, "it might drive some natives to extinction. It's hard to predict what will happen, though."
Seven years later, Rorapaugh says the problem is worse than ever. Since they began turning up in the Potomac a few years ago, snakeheads have infiltrated all the river's tributaries in both Maryland and Virginia.
The snakehead is a difficult fish to catch. It lives in low-oxygenated areas, in marshes and among lily pads, and thanks to little sacs above its gills that function like lungs, it can breathe on the surface. It's also slippery to the touch because of a heavy mucus covering. Some fishermen resort to unconventional means to catch them.
"The bow fishermen," Rorapaugh explained, "they go out at night and they have these lights on their boats, and they go into the grass beds and they shoot them with bow and arrow."
On one such night, he was shocked by the number of snakeheads swimming around the boat. "I saw so many juveniles, eight- to 10-inch snakeheads everywhere. Hundreds of them. It was alarming to me how many that I saw. I know that right now it's an issue, but I know five years from now it's going to be a huge issue with the amount of juveniles I saw."
But the snakehead's predilection for devouring its indigenous neighbors may be its downfall.
"It's very clean tasting," Rorapaugh mused. "It's a predatory fish, so it only eats other living things. The diet is very clean, so you are what you eat, right?"
Gramercy Tavern received its first shipment last Thursday after Anthony and Rorapaugh connected through a cross-country network of chefs. The order was a modest one -- only three fish, or 12 to 14 portions -- and they were served as an experiment.
"Snakehead -- I've never heard of it," Anthony said, chuckling. "The sous chefs have never heard of it. The guests have never heard of it. Everyone says, 'Huh?'"
On a busy Friday night, Anthony offered a special he called a "hot winter salad." The snakehead -- whose taste he likened to Japanese sushi fish the yellowtail -- was roasted over a wood-fire grill and served with charred and raw sunchokes and pickled cippolini onions atop a bed of baby mustard greens and baby bok choy. The whole plate was drizzled with a blood orange vinaigrette.
The reaction, Anthony said, was entirely positive. "I've noticed, in my experience of working in New York, people generally, at least in this restaurant, are very open to eating products they've never heard of before. They like that sense of discovery."
People are also receptive to a good cause. Although a fish hailing from the Chesapeake Bay watershed stretches the definition of "local" for a New York City eatery, the snakehead's story is one that Anthony feels Gramercy Tavern and his diners will connect with.
Still, both Anthony and Rorapaugh are reluctant to call for open season on snakeheads.
"Here's the thing," Anthony warned. "Anytime a restaurant like this starts to sell a story and endorse a new product, there's a certain phenomenon that happens. If all of a sudden, people decide that snakehead is the next big craze, well, it'll do a few things. It would definitely drive the price up on that fish, and at a certain point, there is a good chance that we could deplete that population quickly and someone would decide that they want to start raising, cultivating or encouraging the growth of snakehead in order to sell it. As soon as there's a demand, they're going to want more."
It's a problem that Rorapaugh readily acknowledges. But there are penalties in place for trying to transport live snakeheads -- they must be killed immediately after they're caught -- and the problem has reached such proportions that he feels restaurants must forge forward. They certainly aren't being overfished yet; if local companies other than ProFish are selling snakeheads commercially, Rorapaugh doesn't know about it.
"I saw such alarming rates of reproduction," he stressed. "You can't put your head in the sand and hope it goes away. You really have to do something proactive."
This article has been updated to include background about the Gramercy Tavern.
Posted: 2/16/12 | Updated: 2/16/12
6630149713_2486c117dd
[snip for broken links]
NY Restaurants, Fish, Fishing, Ny News, Barton Seaver, Chesapeake Bay, DC News, DC Restaurants, Gramercy Tavern, John Rorapaugh, Maryland Department Of Natural Resources, Michael Anthony, Potomac River, Scott Drewno, The Source, Alewife, Snakehead, DC News
WASHINGTON -- A hideous, mucus-coated Asian fish feared for its species-killing potential in rivers along the East Coast finally has found powerful advocates: upscale diners in Manhattan restaurants.
Meet the snakehead. Native to Southeast Asia, the so-called frankenfish is a spiny-toothed predator that feasts on weaker fish, can survive out of water for up to five hours and lives in areas that would strike lesser gills deathly still. It's also fast invading the waterways of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River, gobbling up native species and threatening the livelihood of local fishers and tourist groups. The solution? Eat it first.
Or that's the plan according to John Rorapaugh, sustainable director for ProFish, a more than 20-year-old fishing operation that serves restaurants from New York City to Virginia Beach.
For the last year and a half, Rorapaugh has made it his mission to condemn snakeheads to dinner plates across the D.C. area. So far, they've been served up by chefs including Scott Drewno of The Source, sustainable seafood advocate Barton Seaver and Chad Wells of Alewife in Baltimore. But his latest client may be his most high-profile to date: Chef Michael Anthony of New York City's legendary Gramercy Tavern.
"It boils down to something really simple," Anthony told HuffPost. "Once we tasted it, we liked it. It has a dense texture, a wonderful clean flavor. There is nothing strange about it. It's a delicious fish."
By all accounts, this marks the first time snakehead has been on the menu at a showcase Manhattan restaurant. Gramercy Tavern, a powerhouse since its founding in 1994, is co-owned by restaurateur wunderkind Danny Meyer and launched the career of former co-owner and chef, Tom Colicchio.
Needless to say, it's always been up on trends. Like most well-regarded restaurants these days, Gramercy Tavern is a staunch supporter of the local and organic movements. But moreover, it's interested in a good story, and the snakehead certainly has one.
The first documented sighting of a snakehead in the U.S. was in 2002, in a pond behind a strip mall in Crofton, Md. Local authorities with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources panicked -- the fish is a menace to local species and can spread if there's an influx of fresh water -- and soon poisoned the entire pond. Six adult snakeheads went belly up, along with more than 1,000 juveniles.
It's unclear how they got there, but it's possible the adults were originally kept as pets or bought as food at a market. Snakeheads are known for their parenting skills; they're monogamous (rare for fish) and guard their young in a bed-like spawning area. Females mate up to five times a year, laying thousands of eggs at a time. Without predators, they thrive. Rorapaugh has seen adults grow to be 41 inches in length and up to 16 pounds.
In a 2005 article in Smithsonian Magazine, Helen Fields made light of the problem. "If the snakehead is different enough from the predators that natives have evolved with," she wrote, "it might drive some natives to extinction. It's hard to predict what will happen, though."
Seven years later, Rorapaugh says the problem is worse than ever. Since they began turning up in the Potomac a few years ago, snakeheads have infiltrated all the river's tributaries in both Maryland and Virginia.
The snakehead is a difficult fish to catch. It lives in low-oxygenated areas, in marshes and among lily pads, and thanks to little sacs above its gills that function like lungs, it can breathe on the surface. It's also slippery to the touch because of a heavy mucus covering. Some fishermen resort to unconventional means to catch them.
"The bow fishermen," Rorapaugh explained, "they go out at night and they have these lights on their boats, and they go into the grass beds and they shoot them with bow and arrow."
On one such night, he was shocked by the number of snakeheads swimming around the boat. "I saw so many juveniles, eight- to 10-inch snakeheads everywhere. Hundreds of them. It was alarming to me how many that I saw. I know that right now it's an issue, but I know five years from now it's going to be a huge issue with the amount of juveniles I saw."
But the snakehead's predilection for devouring its indigenous neighbors may be its downfall.
"It's very clean tasting," Rorapaugh mused. "It's a predatory fish, so it only eats other living things. The diet is very clean, so you are what you eat, right?"
Gramercy Tavern received its first shipment last Thursday after Anthony and Rorapaugh connected through a cross-country network of chefs. The order was a modest one -- only three fish, or 12 to 14 portions -- and they were served as an experiment.
"Snakehead -- I've never heard of it," Anthony said, chuckling. "The sous chefs have never heard of it. The guests have never heard of it. Everyone says, 'Huh?'"
On a busy Friday night, Anthony offered a special he called a "hot winter salad." The snakehead -- whose taste he likened to Japanese sushi fish the yellowtail -- was roasted over a wood-fire grill and served with charred and raw sunchokes and pickled cippolini onions atop a bed of baby mustard greens and baby bok choy. The whole plate was drizzled with a blood orange vinaigrette.
The reaction, Anthony said, was entirely positive. "I've noticed, in my experience of working in New York, people generally, at least in this restaurant, are very open to eating products they've never heard of before. They like that sense of discovery."
People are also receptive to a good cause. Although a fish hailing from the Chesapeake Bay watershed stretches the definition of "local" for a New York City eatery, the snakehead's story is one that Anthony feels Gramercy Tavern and his diners will connect with.
Still, both Anthony and Rorapaugh are reluctant to call for open season on snakeheads.
"Here's the thing," Anthony warned. "Anytime a restaurant like this starts to sell a story and endorse a new product, there's a certain phenomenon that happens. If all of a sudden, people decide that snakehead is the next big craze, well, it'll do a few things. It would definitely drive the price up on that fish, and at a certain point, there is a good chance that we could deplete that population quickly and someone would decide that they want to start raising, cultivating or encouraging the growth of snakehead in order to sell it. As soon as there's a demand, they're going to want more."
It's a problem that Rorapaugh readily acknowledges. But there are penalties in place for trying to transport live snakeheads -- they must be killed immediately after they're caught -- and the problem has reached such proportions that he feels restaurants must forge forward. They certainly aren't being overfished yet; if local companies other than ProFish are selling snakeheads commercially, Rorapaugh doesn't know about it.
"I saw such alarming rates of reproduction," he stressed. "You can't put your head in the sand and hope it goes away. You really have to do something proactive."
This article has been updated to include background about the Gramercy Tavern.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Alison - 02-19-2012 02:35 AM
Maybe we can do something like that here in Australia with the Cane Toad. Only problem is, they're deadly poisonous.
Alison
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - skyblue1 - 02-19-2012 03:08 AM
a fair warning to any alien invaders:
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Vampslord - 02-19-2012 03:41 AM
Alison Wrote:
Maybe we can do something like that here in Australia with the Cane Toad. Only problem is, they're deadly poisonous.
Alison
Alison
You could lick them!
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Lang - 02-19-2012 04:50 AM
Alison Wrote:
Maybe we can do something like that here in Australia with the Cane Toad. Only problem is, they're deadly poisonous.
Alison
Alison
If I recall correctly, you're in Australia. I remember reading about wild horses destroying the delicate desert ecosystems in your country. Ship them over here, and soon enough we can have those wild fillies on a plate with fries and snakehead soup.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Alison - 02-19-2012 08:25 AM
I iz skeered ov ur tattooless warriors, Skyblue!
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - 142857 - 02-19-2012 09:34 AM
European carp are highly valued sportsfish in the UK and Europe. In Australia they are vermin which turn rivers into mud and choke out the native fish. It is considered poor form to catch one and return it to the water without killing it first. If they tasted better they probably wouldn't be such a problem.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Kapkao - 02-19-2012 10:03 AM
Alison Wrote:
Maybe we can do something like that here in Australia with the Cane Toad. Only problem is, they're deadly poisonous.
Alison
Alison
Some of the snakes in Austrailia can kill them, but there aren't enough of those snakes, obviously.
At least Cane Toads make free hallucinogens in their... anterior glands.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Kapkao - 02-19-2012 10:05 AM
Vampslord Wrote:
Alison Wrote:
Maybe we can do something like that here in Australia with the Cane Toad. Only problem is, they're deadly poisonous.
Alison
Alison
You could lick them!
LICKABLES!
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Lang - 02-19-2012 10:07 AM
142857 Wrote:
European carp are highly valued sportsfish in the UK and Europe. In Australia they are vermin which turn rivers into mud and choke out the native fish. It is considered poor form to catch one and return it to the water without killing it first. If they tasted better they probably wouldn't be such a problem.
So spice the *** out of 'em. OR turn them into fertilizer.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Kapkao - 02-19-2012 10:50 AM
Demand a Cane Toad infestation here in Deep South, USA.
edit; oops, already got my wish. Need to go Full Country to find them, though.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - 142857 - 02-19-2012 12:04 PM
ConLang Wrote:
142857 Wrote:
European carp are highly valued sportsfish in the UK and Europe. In Australia they are vermin which turn rivers into mud and choke out the native fish. It is considered poor form to catch one and return it to the water without killing it first. If they tasted better they probably wouldn't be such a problem.
So spice the *** out of 'em. OR turn them into fertilizer.
Costs more to catch them, apparently, than to send factory ships down to Antarctica and plunder the oceans.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - 142857 - 02-19-2012 12:11 PM
ConLang Wrote:
Alison Wrote:
Maybe we can do something like that here in Australia with the Cane Toad. Only problem is, they're deadly poisonous.
Alison
Alison
If I recall correctly, you're in Australia. I remember reading about wild horses destroying the delicate desert ecosystems in your country. Ship them over here, and soon enough we can have those wild fillies on a plate with fries and snakehead soup.
We call them brumbies. And there would be an outcry if people started eating them.
Horse meat is popular in Central Europe, but I think overrated. It does taste good (but smelly) when ground and mixed with pork and served as hamburgers or hotdogs.
There IS a market for Australian wild camels. Australia is the only country with wild camels, albeit feral. They fetch a high price in the Middle East as breeding stock.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Alison - 02-19-2012 09:38 PM
Kapkao Wrote:
Some of the snakes in Austrailia can kill them, but there aren't enough of those snakes, obviously.
At least Cane Toads make free hallucinogens in their... anterior glands.
At least Cane Toads make free hallucinogens in their... anterior glands.
I couldfn't find anything in the literature published that mentioned Australian snakes being able to eat them with impunity, although I think there is one species of South American snake that can do so. Here's what I found:
"Since its original introduction, the cane toad has had a particularly marked effect on Australian biodiversity. The population of a number of native predatory reptiles has declined, such as the varanid lizards Varanus mertensi, V. mitchelli and V. panoptes, the land snakes Pseudechis australis and Acanthophis antarcticus, and the crocodile species Crocodylus johnstoni."
What was surprising to me was that there was something which could kill crocodiles! Although they were only the species johnstoni, or little freshies. They don't usually grow much bigger than three metres. But I thought those guys were invulnerable, like Superman.
Alison
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Lestat - 02-21-2012 03:37 PM
Do NOT lick toads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is an urban legend. Sort of. The secretions from a toad's venom glands do contain psychedelics, 5-methoxy-n,n-dimethyltryptamine, or 5-MeO-DMT for short. And bufotenine, 5-OH-DMT, this is the n,n-dimethylated analog of serotonin, also present in many other psychedelic preparations used by natives of various places, both 5-MeO-DMT, DMT itelf and 5-hydroxy-DMT/n,n-dimethylserotonin are very common throughout the plant world, good sources for DMT are the rootbark of Illinois bundleflower (Desmanthus illinoiensis) and quite a few Acacia and Mimosa species. I recommend the rootbark of Mimosa hostilis, or Jurema, this is commercially available online in fact in both shredded form, powder which is probably the easiest to deal with, as there is no shredding, pounding, pulverizing and powdering with one's blender.
Toad-wise, the constituents of the venom of the cane toad of importance, are mainly (or possibly exclusively) 5-OH-DMT/bufotenin (from Bufo, the binomial for the toad genus containing these. The cane toad, B.marinus contains mostly, or entirely, in psychedelic terms, bufotenin, whereas the american species, B.alvarius, the sonoran desert toad contains both 5-OH-DMT and its methyl ether, 5-MeO-DMT)
But licking them is NOT what to do. The venom glands should be squeezed, gently, so as not to hurt the toad, or injure them. Animal cruelty is wrong of course, and think about it. The toad is providing you with a valuable product. So they should be valued for that, even if you care not one tiny sh1t for the animal. They deserve some recompense for their service. The venom will squiirt from the glands, so have something positioned to catch it. Its a viscous fluid, which will set into something akin to latex rubber.
Licking them is a very foolish thing to do. The venom is packed with cardiotoxic steroids which have an effect very similar to foxglove poison/the heart medicine derived from the same plant, digitalis/digoxin or the poison found in oleander, an extremely poisonous ornamental shrub, or any number of indigenous arrow or dart poisons. Namely, in Bufo marinus and B.alvarius the steroidal bufagins, bufogenins bufotoxins, and numerous other cardioactive steroids, as well as sulfate esters of many of them (structures and profile available on request, just ask and I shall consult one of my books on tryptamine chemistry, which covers toad poison and its composition also under 5-MeO-DMT/5-OH-DMT
Also, bear in mind, toads are amphibians, with moist skin, they need to keep it that way. Licking one could give it an infection and sicken or kill it, a human mouth is festering pit of bacterial horrors, and you wouldn't want the toad which just gave you a good few doses of a potent and valuable psychedelic to be rewarded with a miserable death from infection, would you? Personally I believe that they should be kept overnight in a suitable habitat afterwards, and given a meal. They aren't fussy. Bugs, as long as they aren't poisonous, and don't pack some variety of vicious stinger or other. Worms, bugs, etc. Just avoid salted, cured meat products, I doubt very much weather they would go well with the toad, too high a salt content, along with the nitrites used to cure salted meats like bacon. You took from them. Now its your turn to give back in return. Same goes for all of natures harvests. What you take, give something back.
This product should be smoked, and NEVER ingested! smoke by vaporising it in a meth pipe, lightbulb pipe etc. Or off foil if none is obtainable , not with a direct flame, so as to avoid burning the tryptamines within.
Avoid if you have heart problems, both 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin(e) have quite significant pressor effects.
I've had bufotenine, isolated from yopo seeds (used to have some baby trees too of this plant) although never a breakthrough dose of 5-MeO-DMT, and it does make one's heart pound quite significantly in a manner absent or greatly diminished in n,n-DMT itself. Also avoid if you have high blood pressure..
For DMT extraction, rootbarks are convenient, much more so than leaves of for instance, chaliponga, or Chacruna (psychotria viridis) as one can skip defatting step in the extraction, as there is relatively little fat in Mimosa hostilis rootbark. Never worked with bundleflower rootbark, Extracting from rootbark can be as simple as digesting with base (NaOH/lye. You want white, deliquescent tiny beads, not the shite I've heard of in the US sometimes, that also contains sodium nitrate (or nitrite, I forget) along with aluminium grains, to make it foam up when misused and wasted on drains and sinks. White, clean beads, of an appearance similar in shape and size to coarse sea sand, which take on atmospheric moisture quickly, eventually liquefying(deliquescence).
Simply take the powdered rootbark up to PH 10-12 or so, then extract with boiling naphtha (xylene or toluene also work excellently, in the case of Mimosa hostilis rootbark they also pull out a reddish alkaloid of uncertain composition, this is insoluble in naphtha, and is also an active psychedelic, referred to online as 'jungle spice' once you have this, the two can be separated if this is desired by extraction with naphtha)
Then evaporate mostly down (be mindful, that the solvents are flammable, and also of the fact that some hotplates for use in kitchens, can spark when the switch is flipped) Do it outside if you don't have equipment intended for such purposes, DMT extraction can be done easily by someone with no chemistry equipment or training though....and I am....led to believe...that it is quite a fun project.
Evaporate the xylene/toluene or naphtha most of the way, then put it in a tightly sealed watertight (or should I say, naphtha-tight) container, and bung it in the freezer. Thats right. In the freezer. Extracting with boiling solvent will catch more DMT than room temp. or cold solvents, and evaporating down will concentrate it still further. Freezing will lower the solubility of the DMT in the naphtha even more, and shock-freeze it out of solution, whence it can, whilst still frozen, be decanted off (there is still a substantial unrecovered yield in the solvent at this point, do NOT throw it away! and do several pulls with boiling solvent on your rootbark. Multiple pulls with smaller volumes of solvent is a better way to do it than one big pull! You want to exhaustively extract the everloving bejesus out of that rootbark. Pull a minimum of twice, three times should be done, and a fourth is usually worthwhile. I wouldn't waste solvents doing a fifth pull)
Evaporate-freeze, evaporate-freeze, evaporate, freeze, until you can freeze no more out. Then simply evaporate the rest for a slightly lower-grade DMT. A very pure product will be clear to white, although canary-yellow is perfectly adequate for smoking. Recrystallization from other solvents can be used to purify your DMT or 5-MeO-DMT from plant rootbarks etc. until one has a perfectly clear freebase. Freebase, not salts, are what one wants for smoking. And remember; vaporise your product with indirect flame, not just burn. Although I've heard plenty of times of people sprinkling some into a joint for something less intense than the 'ooohh shiiiit! I just got shot out of a universe-sized cannon and right up the nose of God himself!' and melting it into the weed/tobacco mix by using the heat generated by a lightbulb. Or by smoking in a bong. Never done it though, although I've smoked it via a pipe before, its more wasteful and harder to break through though.
Test your solvent first, if you aren't buying from a chemical supplier, or ebays lab chemicals and lab grade solvents. Spot some onto a glass (not plastic, some solvents will melt some plastics, such as acetone for instance, dissolves polystyrene, pour a little onto polystyrene foam and watch it melt into goo before your eyes)
If the brand you bought leaves behind oily residue, save it for lighting fires etc. You want clean-evaporating solvents for this, it is to go into the human body after all. You know what they say in the computing world? garbage in, garbage out. I.e if you start with shite, you can expect to get shite back.
Aromatic solvents will pull the dark reddish alkaloid from M.hostilis....this is ONLY applicable to Mimosa hostilis rootbark, and not to other DMT sources (Virola spp. tree resin or bark..not rootbark, regular bark, is a good source for 5-MeO-DMT, along with in some cases n,n-DMT as found in M.hostilis rootbark, and should be able to be processed with this straight-to-base type technique as used for other root-barks and barks such as jurema root bark)
Avoid benzene however. The methylated benzenes like xylene and toluene are known to work. Benzene will (not the same as benzine, a synonym for naphtha. Benzene is highly carcinogenic, known for causing leukaemia, it intercalates DNA, and is in general, fairly noxious stuff. The methyl groups on xylene or toluene prevent that flat, planar benzene ring from intercalating with DNA and screwing up its replication, and are not leukaemogenic)
Also. Avoid chlorinated solvents! And for that matter, avoid halogenated solvents in general. This includes dichlormethane/methylene chloride and chloroform, as well as carbon tet (the latter is hard to get anyway, even for chemists, its notorious stuff for being hepatotoxic and carcinogenic)
At least methylene chloride (and presumably chloroform) can donate that methyl group, to form a quaternary ammonium salt, n,n,n-trimethyltryptammonium chloride, which bears a charge, and will not pass the blood-brain barrier, so there can be significant losses of yield here, its possible to dequaternize it, but this requires lab work, not kitchen chemistry)
For plants that produce the goods in leaves or seeds, an acid-base extraction is necessary. Ask and thou shalt receive.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Lang - 02-22-2012 01:06 AM
142857 Wrote:
ConLang Wrote:
Alison Wrote:
Maybe we can do something like that here in Australia with the Cane Toad. Only problem is, they're deadly poisonous.
Alison
Alison
If I recall correctly, you're in Australia. I remember reading about wild horses destroying the delicate desert ecosystems in your country. Ship them over here, and soon enough we can have those wild fillies on a plate with fries and snakehead soup.
We call them brumbies. And there would be an outcry if people started eating them.
Horse meat is popular in Central Europe, but I think overrated. It does taste good (but smelly) when ground and mixed with pork and served as hamburgers or hotdogs.
There IS a market for Australian wild camels. Australia is the only country with wild camels, albeit feral. They fetch a high price in the Middle East as breeding stock.
There was an outcry when the ban on eating/serving horse meat was lifted in America. Still, domesticated animals are a highly renewable resource, especially when they've gone feral and are destroying the eco-system due to lack of predation.
It's like banning venison because so many people have seen Bambi.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - skyblue1 - 02-22-2012 02:00 AM
Alison Wrote:
I iz skeered ov ur tattooless warriors, Skyblue!
LOL, thanks for pointing that. Now that you mention it.
They arent very threatening
Probably american descendants of Maoris
it is kinda funny though
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Alison - 02-22-2012 05:53 AM
New Zealand Football team the All Blacks perform the Ka Mata Haka. It's the only reason I'd watch the football, for that performance before the Australian team whenever the two countries play!
Alison
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - skyblue1 - 02-22-2012 05:57 AM
Alison Wrote:
New Zealand Football team the All Blacks perform the Ka Mata Haka. It's the only reason I'd watch the football, for that performance before the Australian team whenever the two countries play!
Alison
Some Occupy Oakland protesters tried that move in Oakland , California..................They got gassed by the police
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Alison - 02-22-2012 05:57 AM
Aussie team has an "Oh sh*t" moment at the Bledisloe cup...
Alison
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - d_olson27 - 02-22-2012 06:04 AM
I can imagine that would be intimidating. I remember a similar story of some famous Judo player, who, before each tournament, would go through an ancient Samurai ritual, where he would write a letter to everyone he was attached to, saying goodbye and apologizing for any wrong doings. If you want intimidating, imagine going into the ring with someone who's ready to die that day.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - skyblue1 - 02-22-2012 06:06 AM
Alison Wrote:
Aussie team has an "Oh sh*t" moment at the Bledisloe cup...
Alison
Does NZ usually win?
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - ῦ - 02-22-2012 06:38 PM
If I am not mistaken, and I may well be as I know *** about sports; Isn't that the Rugby team, not the football team?
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - 142857 - 02-22-2012 08:15 PM
Pikajedi3 Wrote:
If I am not mistaken, and I may well be as I know *** about sports; Isn't that the Rugby team, not the football team?
Australians tend to call Rugby "football". Depending on which state or territory we are from. Actual football is called soccer.
RE: Invasive Species Countered by Human Predation - Alison - 02-22-2012 09:29 PM
Pikajedi3 Wrote:
If I am not mistaken, and I may well be as I know *** about sports; Isn't that the Rugby team, not the football team?
It's a game where a mob of big beefy guys fight over a rubber bladder wrapped in leather in a muddy or dusty paddock. I only watch the start when Aussies play New Zealand, for the haka.
Personally I don't see the point, I'd just give them all a ball if they want one so much, so they wouldn't have to fight over it. But then, I always got picked last in school team games. I was the little weird kid, the one standig next to the fat one. 
Alison