Reptile Fight Club - Are Morphs Good or Bad for a Rare Species?

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck are joined by Eric & Owen to tackle the question, Are morphs good or bad for a rare species? Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to another episode. Whatever that was. Oh man. This is off to a good start, you know. We have the most important guest. I can't even get the We have the most important guest. I can't even get the name of the show out here. Welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club!

I'm Justin Julander, and here also is Chuck Poland. Hot damn, good job dude. Thanks, I knew you'd support me in that one. I always support you dude. Thanks. I knew you'd support me in that one. And we are joined. I always support you, dude. We are joined today by the one and only pod father and the one and only Mac and Wookie. Welcome Eric and Owen.

What's up? So, yeah, I think, I think this all came about because, uh, I was, I was watching carpets and coffee and,

and, uh, Owen brought up the topic of having, uh, if are good for a rare species that's less commonly kept. And they're like, yeah, let's fight about it. And I'm like, oh, they're going to come on the show. I said the magic words of I bet we could do a reptile fight club about that. And, of course course like within moments justin was like yes like you're damn right you're damn right you can and that was just you know you

just toss that out there every once in a while when we're out herping i'll say that could be a reptile fight club episode middle of the desert justin's like it could be right now let's do it let's record let's. I got the thing. Yeah, we've done a couple from the field. I know Eric was on one, right? Or two. Justin is not shy about from the field recording. Yeah, I think we did one with Justin, with Schmitty and Phil. Was Phil?

Phil and Schmitty and then you and Rob, right? Me and Rob. Yeah, that was good times. We didn't do another one, did we? We didn't do an earlier one. You did a group one, didn't you? When you guys were out herping, though? I think that was the one.

Didn't you do one with the... You did one with the THA. Oh, the THA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did one with Keith in Arizona, but that was, I think, prior to us. Yeah. Was that Arizona?

Yeah, that was prior to us getting there. So that was like... Keith was the. Yeah, that's true. That was prior to us getting there. So that was like. Keith was the first one to arrive. So I picked him up and I said, now you have to do a reptile fight club. Now you're stuck. Captain audience. And so we went to a park and I was like. He gets in the car and the door is locked.

The door is locked immediately. Oh, crap. Oh, no. I've started recording talk where I drive us off a cliff. Oh, my gosh. We must fight. Well, thanks for coming on, guys. This will be fun.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Well. I figure if NPR is still a show by the end of this, we've done okay. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, welcome to the show. You know, it's sad to hear you're retiring and, you know, making the reptile fight club, the number one show on the network.

We appreciate it, but it is kind of a sad day, right? NPR will stop when one of us is dead. Probably be me at this point. You can't get dead yet. You're getting married. Yeah. I was going to say, we have the double jeopardy prize for this fight club. So the winner actually gets to live. So nice.

Somebody may die. See, the stakes have been raised. Listen, you know, prime guests give get prime, you know, prime prizes. False sweeps. You got to get the numbers. I feel like this is David and Goliath. The Hobbit and the uh viking yeah i guess if the story is correct then you you want to be on eric's side this time around i guess it's david and goliath i i was watching an old saturday night live uh skit the other day and it was like the karate teen and i had like uh john cena was like the cobra kai guy and uh one of the saturday night live guys was

daniel and like he kicks him through john cena kicks him through like five walls and he like loses his pants and stuff it's pretty great yeah i remember that. It was good. All right. Well, I guess it could go that way, too. Owen could just kick you through a few walls. I mean, ah, that's why I'm here. I want to see that. Yep. All right.

Well, what's going on in the world of reptiles? I just got some posters. So I printed a bunch of posters out oh yeah there you go right on eric's wall mine's mine's in a tube over here oh in a tube there's a prime space right behind your head there i haven't put it up yet well that spot is reserved for eric and his full pope regalia when i get that printed like Like that, you can't, it's going to be up here where I can stare at it while I work and cry. There you go. So I found out that I printed them off at my university.

I found out it was not allowed to resell those. And so I'm like, because the guy's like, why are you printing so many of these? And I'm like, oh, you know, just to wallpaper my house. I just really like this poster. You're asking a lot of questions there, dude. He's like, you know, you can't resell these. I'm like, I did not know that. But I guess that's good to know.

Damn it. So I had to find another supplier. And I just got, like, I ordered, like, 50 of them. And they came. And they're not as good a quality as the original one. So I don't know. We'll see. I haven't really unpacked them much.

I just kind of looked at them and felt them like, ah. Maybe you could wait until like a different, you know, like I assume they're like students that have jobs that are like manning the thing. That's right. Just wait until a different one. Wait a few months. Maybe you could run through like a print by the time you get back around to the same person. Yeah, one of the guys that's waiting on posters because I ran out of the other ones, he's like, hey, there's guys in my country that are getting these posters and you're not sending me any? What's going on here?

I'm like, I'm sorry. I ran out. They were faster. I don't know what to tell you yeah oh my gosh they're i guess they're popular in japan i've sent about 50 over to japan so nice a few more people want more so for the book and the signature can i request a simpsons quote somewhere in the book oh thank you i need to do that in every book. To just have a stiff Simpson quote marathon.

It gets a unique Simpsons quote in every copy sold. That's a tough one. I've got to think of a good one for you. I figure I'd give you some of that work. What a time to be alive. That's a good one. That's a good one. I'm just glad Eric's getting in on the Simpsons quotes these days.

He does the heart. He went kicking and screaming, but we eventually got him where he needed to be. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Owen sat down with a gun and said, okay, turn on. Honestly, it was the fact that you were involved in it. Because when it was just me and Rob, he was like these two idiots. And then when you jumped in, it was like I'm outnumbered horribly now. All the cool kids are doing Simpsons quotes. It does help when everybody but you is doing it.

The peer pressure was definitely there. All right. Well, that's good. However it came about, it's just good to have you on the team. Yeah, thanks for getting on the team. Jesus. Took you long enough. Oh, man.

Yeah, me and Chuck have a trip coming up here, as do you. Well, I can't say you guys, but you've got a trip of a different sort coming up, right? Yes. The trip of a lifetime. Yeah. As I'm spending money that would have taken me to Australia four times. But yeah, it's fine. Oh, did you give that check?

Not yet. It hurts. Oh, man. Only because my bank was closed. I feel like, though, if Justin would have gotten married later in life, he would have worked his wedding into an Australian trip. Like, well, yeah, honey, but we could go get married in Australia. And then it would be a fight between the honeymoon and herping. Oh, I got to tell this story.

Wedding, the honeymoon and herpes oh i gotta tell you the story on my wedding the honeymoon everything yeah so strike out third strike three you're you're done no more suggesting australia if you say australia one more time one more time yeah this isn't happening no i we went on our honeymoon to um mexico uh what's the place uh somewhere in mexico where they filmed predator and we were walking we went to the site the site the the movie uh set of predator up in the jungle right it was like a rainforesty type place um and uh we we we rented a jeep so we're all cool you know driving up the mountain in a jeep and we get to this place and i'm like let's go check out the jungle and so heidi's like uh okay and so we i started trudging along and i look back and heidi's clear back there we've taken like 10 steps and she's like she takes a step and then she looks

down and looks over here looks all around and then she takes another step i'm like oh this is not gonna go very far it's gonna take a while quick you're moving and she was just like scared of just about anything and so i said would you feel more comfortable staying at the set of predator while i go off into the jungle for just a little while just a minute you know and she's like okay yeah she's like kind of sigh of relief and then so i go off running into the jungle and this is the first time i've been in a rainforest you know so i'm all excited and i'm running around in the jungle looking for stuff thinking i'm gonna see all these snakes and lizards everywhere and i saw jack squat and i come back and he's like oh there was a boa constrictor and it crawled under this you know

this board over here and then i looked over here and there was a snake and it crawled up the tree. And I'm like, what the crap? Yeah. So, yeah, she got to see all the wildlife. I saw like a cool bird. I should have stuck with my wife. That's a lesson for you, Owen. Stick with your wife. Okay.

I thought you were going to say you like just got out of sight and turned around and was like, get to the chop you'd be screaming that the entire time i mean i don't understand i i finally showed if it bleeds we can find it yeah i finally showed that movie to heidi hadn't seen it and i'm like what is up here i mean her family used to watch like every show like every show from the 80s. So I was really shocked. And so we watched it. It's a good one. Was she like, I've been there. I saw a boa constrictor right there. Quit rubbing it in. But the kids were a little nonplussed.

But I think we watched Prey as well. And that was a really, really good show. I really liked that one. Is that the new one? Yeah. Have you seen it? I have not. It's on my list. It's worth it. It's really cool. Yeah. I like that one.

Cool. But yeah. Cool. What's going on with you guys? Where are you guys going? Oh, we're going to Arizona. We're going back to hang with Dustin. Oh, cool. Yeah.

Nice. I had some miles that were about to expire so i'm like i might as well go down while during the during the monsoon and you know dustin keeps posting all these great pictures hell yeah like i gotta get back out there and then uh chuck found out he's like why didn't you invite me you jerk i'm like uh i thought I did. He like randomly brings it up while we're in the middle of a show. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Wait a minute. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah.

It's Steve's going. I'm like, Steve, Steve Sharp? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, what the hell, man? Steve's like north of me. I'm like, unbelievable. He's like, oh, I'm pretty sure I invited you. I'm like, no.

Justin, there's a crew behind your back. What the hell? Exactly. That's cool. I can't take a hint. So we're getting the band back together. I just couldn't handle the rejection if he said no. Surprise!

I invited myself. The older we get, the more frail we get i get it just too sensitive so steve's gonna pick up chuck and then they're gonna drive over i'm gonna fly down dustin's gonna pick me up from the airport and then we're gonna head out sweet still trying to decide what to do it's it's like that trade-off between driving and you know and hitting good spots and stuff. So I really want to see a hognose alive. And Steve has a good spot for those, so we may go out back towards Bob's place. It wouldn't be bad to go out. Another one of us is going to be there,

which means you're going to be tripping over hognose and kick a Gila monster by accident is what's going to happen. Between Justin and Dustin, which i am affectionately now calling justin okay justin and dustin justin we're just the ustins yeah that's a good one we should we should mob up out there if there is if there's reptiles steve steve's found twin spots i know all sorts of good stuff so i know but it was hard for me to work in the joke about justin dustin and misty you know what i'm you see how that doesn't we're just gonna be carrying chuck the whole time would you find something but there will be no smitty tears out of me that's true you won't complain i'll be sending you pictures of coastal carpets and blackheads.

I'm going to be mad at everybody. So, okay. I'll hold you to that, Eric. Hell yeah. I sure hope you guys find a lot of stuff. That's awesome. Yeah. My friend Cindy, she's going out to Alice Springs.

And I was like, oh, man, I really need to get back over there. But I don't know if i should announce it on the show but i am planning a 50th birthday in australia so you guys are welcome to come along um everybody on the screen right now it's in march of 2025 my 50th okay i was gonna say you got time right now thank you for giving me time i might i might be 52 we're going to look for these in the gammon oh done now you got sorry yeah yeah i i haven't really done anything down in south australia um kind of that interior you know so i i think that would be really cool and maybe even head up to Alice Springs I don't know if that's too far to go

but somewhere down there check out some cool nobtails hopefully see some Inlands or Gammon Ranges carpets that would be the ultimate that would be cool how awesome would that be I was looking on iNaturalist

and March seemed to be a good time and I'm like hey there's a good excuse. I'm turning 50. I got to be there in Australia. Has to happen. Yeah. Yeah. As the podfather, I must attend all hosts' birthday parties regardless of where they're at.

It's in the contract you guys signed. Yeah, very small. It is. I think that goes the other way, too. Birthday contractual obligations. Every birthday, just let me know where we're meeting. We'll do a different spot in Australia. Justin just shows up to every birthday you have from now on.

Where are we going? The only downside is you have to wear a stupid birthday hat the whole time. Whatever, man. If I'm finding a gammon, I'm wearing a stupid birthday hat the whole time. Whatever, man. If I'm finding a gammon, I'll wear the hat the whole deal. That'd be great for all the pictures. Eric found something. When we find it.

Did you blow your horn? Eric said, I'll do it in my podfather regalia if you want. No problem. Oh, God, heat stroke back there. Yeah. Excellent. regalia if you want no problem happy to eric oh god heat stroke back there yeah okay excellent that sounds good well anything exciting going on with you guys in the reptile world okay far too many babies just just so many you still got eggs don't you

i do still have eggs going i have bread lie that are getting ready to hatch probably in a couple weeks here and then i have a secret project that i was working on that we have to see if that works out because that is still looking like it might there's a hint i think i caught the hint yeah yeah so uh we'll see if that works out if that works out then i'm screwed so um but i am plugging through a ton of different species, several that I've never produced before. So I'm trying to get like the blonde hognose to eat. I found out baby goldface white lips are just assassins directly out of the egg. Nice.

So which is cool. But then like my olives just hatched. My rhinos just hatched. It's pandemonium. That's awesome. Yeah, you are killing it in the most busiest way. It's the worst year to do it. Oh, my gosh.

The worst year to do it. Okay, babies, I've got to leave on my honeymoon. If you can do it this year, you can do anything. Any year, exactly. God, bud. Just make it through you're young and virile you know you're not like that's old i feel like it off son walk it off i was telling eric the other day i'm like i feel like i'm one of the old guys but i have to remember how much of a young annoying thing i was when i first got in here i'm still that apparently like when does that stop never oh it's always good to be young at

heart even if you're not young in body but um i yeah i just had my last eggs hatch out so i came down and saw a couple little uh nephorus wheeler eye the banded knobtails running around nice so well in their container in the incubator. Yeah, that was exciting. They're nice looking too. One was really dark and one was kind of lighter. Two? Two of them, yeah. Both the eggs hatched. The first two clutches, only one of the two eggs hatched. So I don't know what happened there.

But yeah, the last clutch got two. So total of four babies. Not bad. Not at all. They're really cool. I'm really excited. I'm going to have to hold some back i think and see if you know get uh get a at least a pair or something and try to pair them up with some of the unrelated stuff and then you know i'd like to i don't know there's something about raising stuff up in your in your own spot you know that just they do so much better and i think it's

even more drastic with the lizards some, I don't know, for some reason. Like the adults that I got just haven't really performed much, you know. I just had one female that laid all those eggs. So she had three clutches. So I don't know. But we'll see how it goes. Yeah, you almost wonder if there's like environmental imprinting that happens

when they're really young. Yeah, you almost wonder if there's like environmental imprinting that happens when they're really young. Yeah, right. I was reading a cool paper by Schein's group. And they incubated eggs on like sterilized dirt or dirt with like bacteria and stuff like that. And they found the babies that hatched in the dirt that had the bacteria and stuff, they were significantly larger than the babies that hatched on sterile soil, even though the water content and everything was the same. Yeah, it was really an interesting thing. I think, I don't know, I'm still just geeked out over Shine's book, but he has all of his publications on his website. You can go and just look at all the papers he's published.

Most of them. I don't know that they're all on there but he has like a link so you can just open the paper and read it you know right there so check out rick shine's uh his uh website but yeah they just did a big book book event in australia and everybody got their books signed and stuff like that i i think uh nice um they were talking about it on the aussie hurt podcast so yeah yeah cool stuff that would have been cool to see our nemesis yeah that book was cool until i got this other book that showed up in the mail and then i threw that one yeah i mean i i saw it i don't know if you should do that. The Shine book's over there. Sorry, Dr. Shine.

It's like on a table behind his chair. Dr. Junander has taken your spot. That is quite a compliment. That is. That's very too kind of you. That's really nice of you. But I don't think I agree. Of course you don't. Yeah, I'm almost done with Shine's book.

And it's just a... It's fantastic. I really enjoy it. Got my brain wheels turning, that's for sure. Yeah. Anything else going on? You guys just itching to fight? I mean, constantly.

Yeah. Have you listened to NPR? Of course. I don't think we ever fight Do we ever fight? I'm under contract to say no You'll give each other a hard time here and there Oh yeah

I don't think I've ever seen you guys fight Especially if Owen has to argue The Side of the morphs In the rare species are a good thing that would be awesome so bad because i have a channel like turn off my brain yeah yeah look his eyes twitching already all right now i guess the question is do you want to have any help from us or are we just here to referee sure i mean which part he doesn't yet you can't give him

maybe maybe we'll just kind of maybe ask some helpful follow-up questions and that works you guys fight and then jump in as you feel i don't want to get in between the you know you two though i mean yeah don't stick your hand between two fighting dogs. Yeah, that's probably not a good thing. Yeah. All right. So who wants to call the coin flip? Okay, so I guess we need to introduce the topic.

I guess you guys don't need to introduce yourselves because if anybody doesn't know who you are, then they won't be listening to this podcast. How'd you get here? Yeah. Well. listening to this podcast how'd you get here so we're going to talk about if it's a good thing or not so good thing to have a morph show up of a rare or less commonly kept species so i horrible oh i think somebody has it no i think that's kind of how this maybe came about there was some discussion in the chat about uh uh was it a halmahera or no it was a yeah it was the albino found and and allegedly chuck's like kill kill it. And certain other people were like, no, it's cool. Come on, let it have a chance, you know. It's bringing you to a bar neck. Yeah, exactly.

Or anything with a cloaca. See, I love it because it's very easy to just set off Chuck. It's fun to do. Chuck loves that phrase. It's just such a great phrase. It grinds my clo do. Chuck loves that phrase. It's just such a great phrase. It grinds my slow wake up. All right. We smell our own.

I know where Chuck's at. He knows where I'm at. It's fine. Who's calling it? I give it to the pod. Okay. He's going to call it. That makes a lot of sense.

If I do, people will call me. I guess the question is, do I help the pod? No, he doesn't need it. I think, yeah. First off, I demand witnesses. I say heads. It is heads. The podfather wins.

So now comes the fun part. Which side do you want to debate? Which side do you want to debate, knowing what's going to happen? Well, Owen, friend of mine. Just do it. Rip the Band-Aid off. I'm going to take the side of the morphs are bad for a rare species because I gave all my morphs to you. So clearly you're the morph guy now, and I'm the non-morph guy.

This seems like some sort of years-long laid trap that you're dropping in right now. I feel like he didn't even just say it was meant to be. I don't think he just pulled the band-aid off. I think he just hot-waxed your whole beard and ripped it off, dude. He's rubbing salt in those wounds. This is what makes it fun. Now you have to argue the others.

Eric definitely plays the long con, and it's just not good. Hey, the coin decided. The coin made the call. All right, Eric. I'm going to defer to Owen. You're chuckifying him. You're chucking him. I'm chuckifying it.

All right. Owen, the floor is yours. Shit. All right. I will mute my mic. Go ahead, sir. Crap. All right. mute my mic go ahead sir crap all right um

all my thoughts are now i have to be like no betrayal you got to turn off obviously when it comes to popularity in species all in themselves we can see like time and time again the popularity has come through with followed by morphs. And I would say probably one of the best examples of that is that carpet pythons were definitely a fringe species in the hobby until morphs like jaguar, zebra and other things that could be combined and worked with came about. So that kind of renaissance that was Morelia of the last 10, 15 years is due to morphs. So I would say the biggest thing and the biggest key of morphs in rare species is that it does bring some people who maybe thought about dipping their toe into a new species. It kind of gives them almost like a reason to yeah and i would say

that's why morphs are good and it doesn't hurt me at all how are they gonna know how cool they are if they don't keep that exactly no matter how they come into it it's not like they can just look at the snake and admire it for what it is it needs to have some fleshy colors. Otherwise, what are we doing here? All right. It's not a little half-hearted there. It hurts so bad. I feel like watching Eric right now and the look on his face is Arnold Schwarzenegger setting up all the traps in Predator for the Mac and Wookie to walk in. Go ahead.

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm out. First of all, how dare you, sir? The renaissance of Carp Python has to do with morphs? And not like, I don't know, a podcast called Morality Python Radio, a book called The Complete Carp Python. The Complete Carp python that had a morph

section in it because we needed to make sure that everybody knew yeah it was like 10 pages i'm sorry i'm interrupting please continue why do i think that morphs are bad for a rare species um i think probably my thought would be that with a rare species typically they're difficult to breed or they're wild caught and you have to get them established and it takes somebody that really cares about um you know that species um like chuck with alma haras um and i just think if the morphs get involved it sort of dirties the pool you know um especially when that animal's trying to become established i don't i guess the older i get the more i um have moved away from morphs and look at the you know the natural variability you take something like a carpet python. And like, I was thinking about this the other day and I wonder if like,

you know, like carpet pythons hatch out and it's always the odd one in that clutch and it just looks cool and it could be nothing. It could be something who cares, but it's just like, wow, look at this one. It's really a smoker. Um, um and i i don't know if i really see that in like ball pythons that are morph heavy it seems like they're just worried about making the morph refining the morph you know but um just replicating that uh you know that color or pattern yeah it doesn't even seem to matter like how how nice the morph is. As long as it has the gene, that's what they're excited about. Yeah. And I, and I know that because I've been guilty of that. I mean, when I was breeding zebra carpets, they were dirt ugly

beginning when they first came in, you know, they were just dirt. I was surprised at how fast they turned around into, you know, these yellow and black things you see today they're amazing but um you know i i just i don't know to me it was just at that point i've been in that mindset where it's just like oh i'm gonna just try to make one of these and i think it really just comes back to money right um it's it's sort of the uh i was i was, I was talking to Scott Iper about this, where we were talking about the Jags and we were talking about the whole, like, um, do, uh, YouTube people do the thing, you know, like their videos for themselves or are they trying to promote a species?

Um, and obviously they love reptiles or they did love reptiles at some point. They must have some sort of love for reptiles. But I wonder if at some point the money becomes more a part of it. And the thing I related to was the Jag carpet. And for me, I had to get rid of the Jag carpet, even though I thought if I didn't have them, I wouldn't be somebody in the carpet python community. I wouldn't have stuff to sell on a on a table that people would like. So it led me to fight, even though in my head I knew that for me it wasn't right. So and then that's the other thing about if morphs are bad, like, I don those genes are kind of broken right they're not supposed to be like that and you're like have this rare species that you're introducing broken genes

into doesn't make sense to me floor's yours i object to half of what he said because it's devastating to my case okay so i i don't approve um the i would say that the other good thing about morphs is that like i said it does gain in the popularity so people might be working with the rare species and hopefully with the idea of breeding the rare species more in captivity like let's say olive pythons that only have one morph, albino. But because some people might be chasing an albino olive python, they're breeding more and more and more. Now, obviously, importation is illegal from Australia. Can't do it. But in other species where there's maybe one morph or something like that, where there is importation, having a captive bred population does help with not having too many things be imported question

mark so um there's that whole thing is that it does also help with that and it also does kind of lock the species in as something that can be in u.s herpetoculture and might be a little bit harder to say not be because a lot of times with a rare species if there's only maybe one or two guys breeding them if something happens to their collection or if they just stop then it's gone like dunai and things like that where we have to bring them back into the country because nobody gave a damn so that's where having some kind of morph project and like again increase in popularity could help keep animals in u.s herpetoculture yeah look at what happened when uh burt langaworth died i mean you couldn't find an aussie water dragon to save your life for a bit and then people were like wait we gotta we gotta

breed these they're they're valuable you know so he just kind of taking care of that and then when when he went away they went away too so yeah even with no morphs, that's a problem. Yeah. Or there were no morphs in Aussie water dragons in the U.S. So that's, yeah, that could be part of it. That's a decent point. All right. I'm coming back strong at you, man.

You said about wild caught stuff like that, rare stuff. Yeah. Right. Think about the granite carpet the only wild caught carpet python that we can get legally in the states and what do we do to that brand it so bad it didn't have eyeballs yes go on i don't i don't get your point. I'm just worried about the idea of the morph itself comes before putting the species in captivity the correct way.

We'll breed the hell out of anything. Look at rough-skilled pythons. It doesn't matter. and look at the alleged uh hybridization of very albino variegata right like remember all the harrisoni or well allegedly all of the the you know the one male or whatever they got bred to all those harrisoni anything with the cloaca well because they couldn't wait i can't wait for the head i mean is that only a problem with you is that only a problem with things with subspecies though Anything with the cloaca? Because they couldn't wait for the het. Is that only a problem with things with subspecies though?

Would that be the same thing as say the Halmahera? Unless they're making hybrids. I mean I think unfortunately what it clearly demonstrates is people when they see the chance to make money, will make bad decisions. And that is, unfortunately, the primary driver in the whole issue. So I won't say much more because I think Eric's got plenty of points more to make about this. That is a pretty big deal. I certainly have a lot to say about this, but it's not mine. It's not my fight. All right. Go ahead, Eric.

I was going to say, since Owen, you took a side for me, I'll make a point for you. Maybe you kind of said this already, but I guess the idea of a morph would mean that maybe more people would be interested in it, which means that there would be more people working with it in captivity, which would possibly mean that more people would establish those rare animals in captivity. Did you say that? Yes. And I would say to that point, my traci are pretty big now. They're good. They're every bit of eight feet. And could you imagine an eight- and an eight foot albino Tracy?

Just, it would be, it would be a stunning looking animal. I would admit that, you know, it would, but you know, I, I just think the rest of that is kind of the problematic part. I don't, I don't know. I don't get into the albinos like a lot of people do. I just think they kind of wash everything out. Yeah. Unless it's like a carpet.

Albino carpets are kind of bright. Yeah, I was going to say, variegata doesn't do that. That picture that the scrub didn't do a thing for me. I'd much rather have the normal wild type pattern than, yeah. How do we feel about albino olives because i feel like that's everybody's thing where it's like either you love an albino olive or you're like because it's like it it has no pattern which is kind of what i think a lot of people who are into albino darwin's love is that there's colors there's patterns there's

flashy everywhere where it's just like it's one solid color you're like okay well it's already one solid color so it's either i feel like that's exactly right it's one solid color and so what you're left with is is this snake super cool yes this snake's super cool so know, whether you like the white one or the brown one, you're still left with a snake that's super cool. Right. So, you know, like, I don't know. I feel like that's a, you know, a no-lose example there. Right. But you don't see, I mean, there's not a lot.

You don't see them. Why don't you see them? Yeah. You know, they're here. Well. Why aren't they produced? Why not? What's going on with that?

Because olives are hard. Come on. Somebody spill the beans. What's happening? Yeah. I mean, plenty of normal. that olives are hard come on somebody spill the beans what's happening yeah i mean plenty of knowledge no i mean from the from the get-go they've been very difficult i think that's a that's a you know kind of a point for eric is that you know that these these morphs when they're when everything's focused around the morph like like you were saying, then it kind of just, you know, that's the focus.

And then the normal outbreeding and different things you try to do in a normal project when you have just regular wild-type animals ceases to occur, and then you're just focused on that one morph, and so you're breeding everything to the morph. You're not breeding normals anymore. You're breeding all your females to that albino male because you paid 20 grand for it or whatever so and if you look at like ball pythons there was so much importation of like and people went through and sifted through all the weird shit that was coming in that was you know genetic mutations

but still out in wild population that was genetically diverse right so you had this genetically diverse thing rather than like you know a freaking pair of snakes that came in that were related to each other from the same clutch and then bred and bred and bred and bred and bred yeah but you still you still breed to the offspring you know you're still breeding them back to the parent to produce more of those more right but i guess what i'ming and you're focusing in any deleterious genes that may have come with that you know mutations i get what you're saying but but you're also talking about like ball pythons which have morph morph morph morph morph all these different morphs so that's you know all the all the ball python mutations aren't interrelated where carpets are

you know you're talking about like wider versus much narrower yeah right like does that make sense yeah but now ball pythons are turning a trash species into gold we're talking about turning whoa whoa we're turning it into trash are we there are some you would agree with that one royal pythons listen i'm on this side right now. I cannot tell you what I would think about. That's a good point. Ask me tomorrow.

Fair enough. There's eight-year-olds everywhere trying to punch you through the mic right now. Jesus. I mean, nobody wanted to work with ball pythons back in the day. And they were very difficult to work with, too. They were hard to breed and everything. They were hard to breed and everything. So I guess that works to Owen's advantage to show that something that's difficult to breed and nobody wanted to work with, and all of a sudden there's morphs. And now any eight-year-old can breed them like Chuck said.

I think the only thing – that's true but look at i and again i don't have my finger on the pulse of the ball python hobby but i feel that like i feel like we take the the reptiles we work with let's let's just say pythons for the moment i feel like we take them for granted. You know, for me, I think that I was always driven to look at morphs simply because I had, you know, I kept them in a rack on plain paper. So I needed something to pizzazz it. But it wasn't until I started herping that you start to see the animal in its environment. I mean, think about those rattlesnakes and think about their, you know, just the environment that they're in and like they are matched perfectly for that environment. You know, thinking about bread lie in Alice Springs and that, you know, just all those things come into play. And I just think that as somebody that has been through the side of it, of trying to be the flashy morph person, first of all, I don't know. My opinion is, is that it's an endless, it's just a pyramid scheme that ends with you being the loser, you know?

At least that's how I felt. It was just like no matter how much money I spent to be at the top of the list, I was still always behind everybody else because I was trying to be patient with the, you know, raising them up and feeding them correctly and not power feeding. Whereas everybody else in that, you know, in that market was sort of rushing to be the person that produced X, you know. Eric, do you feel like when you stop kind of participating in the morph, the morph game, however you want to say it, that your goals changed instead of chasing that next or whatever? Now you're like looking at it because yeah i think i think for me what has always been is i've always been a natural history person just like to me there i mean just the idea of a snake having no legs no arms and being able to survive and eat things with its face and kill things with its face it sheds once i don't know there's just so many cool things about these uh snakes that we work or just reptiles in general that i think that we take for granted and i think that the morph thing at least for me

blinded me to those things because the only thing i was concerned about was making xx combo hasn't the shine book just really awakened that in like that's what it's done for me thinking about how cool reptiles are and how amazing australia is and like you know just crazy stuff that he discovered and just we you know we didn't know this stuff before he came along and said somebody needs to look into this in in australia because australia is different you know they they have that just severe weather and i don't know i just have gained so much more appreciation for snakes in the wild surviving you know i who cares about a paint job when you've got a snake in the wild

surviving it's pretty cool yeah yeah well and i i kind of oh go ahead go ahead no no go ahead i was just gonna say and i think i mentioned this on one of the earlier fight clubs, but like when you hatch out carpets, like, you know, non-morph carpets, it's like you get nice animals and then, you know, you get that like nice spectrum from like the really awesome stuff that's right out of the egg that you're like, oh, that's going to be a nice animal, right? And all the way down to like, oh, yeah, that's just a brown, ugly carpet right now. And then six months to a year down the line, you get it again.

And if you hold on to all of them, the ones that you were like, oh, that's crap, turn into like you're like blowing your mind, right? And how many times have you sold a snake that you were like oh my gosh i can't believe i sold that that thing turned out to be one of the nicest ones of the clutch like just that whole like you know that whole like just process of it is is so cool with carpets and i don't know that you get that necessarily with morphs as much like certainly you know like one of my variegata uh albinos is much nicer than the other one but that's like pretty obvious like right out of the you know like it doesn't to me it doesn't change where you know with with with a more wild type uh color change you kind of see it see it more i don't know. Maybe that's not an accurate thing to say, but that's kind of

been what I've noticed. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. I think the other thing with morphs that just popped in my head when you're saying this is just the, you know, then there's the other part of it is the political part of it, right? And to me, I think this is what turned me off to morphs more than anything. It's like if you buy a morph from said person, then you're now on said person's team, and then there's the other person that has it. You know what I mean? And it just becomes this bullshit.

And to me, it just loses the whole idea of what we're doing this for you know yeah it becomes a pyramid scheme then rather than a yeah working with cool animals thing all right owen yeah yeah what you got it's so hard right now it's like i'm like yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. Yeah. Shit. No. It's like I would say that it does give you a something to chase, something to have fun with, a project to build. You can start with the smallest little thing of your own and decide that you're going to breed this animal for this thing, this color, this thing, that thing. And you can do that. And then as you get generations in, you see the fruits of your labor through the morphs. I started in 2009 with two original caramel carpets that I got because some guy bought them and decided he didn't want them. And I picked them up and that earned me a phone call from Nick Mutton, having never heard who I was. And he's

like, how did you get these? So there was that whole thing. But through that of just breeding those animals to each other, to animals that I had, to animals that i picked up i'm starting to produce now my own super caramels and super caramel jaguars and various caramel tigers things like that that i've been working at to get down to a point where um i have my first super caramel exanic that i hatched out this year. And she's done. She's everything I ever asked for when it came to that kind of a project. But then there's also the small projects that are important to me. Nobody cares about them.

And I don't give a damn. I fell in love with tiger Jags when I was in college. So I am on a mission to find the, to create the most perfect tiger Jag, in my opinion, and that is what fuels this project. I already gave it to you. Yes. Yes, you did. She's over there.

Okay? Now I'm going to take her and do other stuff. Like that's – Okay. The next level. But there's that whole thing is that you can build these things and it gives you something to shoot for. And there's something in the back of your head of just producing an animal that at one point was years away. And you finally get it.

Then it's got those colors that you wanted. It's got that pattern that you wanted. And you've now you're now four generations in and you've hatched its grandfather and you saw something in that animal that you kind of decided it needed to stay and tweak and it is definitely a huge payoff i i definitely agree that like if you get the red gene or the tiger gene or the hypo gene genes whatever whatever you know what i'm saying involved it can you know really turn an animal up to 10 very very very quickly so it definitely cuts down some of the some of the work that needs to be done to refine it um that i think that's a pretty unarguable point yeah definitely instant

gratification goes along with morphs yeah look at you and then you get you get the morphs and then you get the youtube and then you get the money and then you get the power and then you get the women like that's how it works right yeah i thought that damn it i thought that you go to, what is it called? Animal Con? They wouldn't let me in. It was weird. That's okay. I think anybody who didn't go in didn't get the free door prize. I said, do you know my voice?

Close your eyes. Listen, it's me. Let me in. Didn't work. They turned you away. I can only go by your voice because you're frozen, Alan. That's why I don't say many things when I'm flinging Tite Needle into you. You've only got an audio element.

If you click on your camera back and forth, I've been doing it the whole time because I keep freezing too. I don't like looking at your bitter face like... It happens. That's bad. There you go. There we go alright okay well I feel like

Owen I will give you props I will give you props you approached the morph thing way better than I did because you picked a project and you worked with it and you're still working with it and you've refined it to where i would dare say that you have probably some of the best caramels in the states um in my opinion

that's just because you've seen the shit i hide from everybody else yeah yes i've seen i've let you come in and go through tubs yeah and i think that's the thing that i think that reptiles you know me and rob stone were talking about this that requires patience i think that's the thing that I think that reptiles, you know, me and Rob Stone, we're talking about this, that requires patience. I think that establishing an animal, getting them to eat, you know, getting them to breed and getting the babies going and all those things requires a tremendous amount of patience. I mean, you're looking at bringing in if we're talking about, let's say, like a wild caught Halma Harris scrub. I don't know chuck how long did it take you to establish them years right years i mean i mean i got them i got them in 2011 so right yeah you know uh so i i just think that like the morph thing it's it speeds it

up and i think that um you know i will like i, I think if you're doing a project where you're doing a specific project and you're not trying to see to me, the more thing became too enticing. Like it was too tempting to just like, oh, I can be a carpet python breeder and that's what I'm going to do. And I don't have to go to work anymore. And this is going to be great. It's selling a lifestyle. You know? And I don't know. And then I think the only other part that I would push back is what happens when the morph isn't cool.

I mean we've seen this over and over and over and over again, right? Where, you know, you get in this albino halmahera scrub all right okay it's beautiful whatever we can go back and forth on whether it's nice or not you get it established it's nice and then it becomes it's been done you know so now that rare species becomes and it just disappears into the ether of the reptile hobby where, you know, some 60 year old dude that has, you know, had them since, you know, 2006 is, you know, working with them. And he's the only person and nobody knows because they're not on Facebook and they're not on social media and all that stuff. So I just worry about what happens then. Does the species not it loses its cool?

I mean, think about I think about when we used to listen to reptile radio right and they would talk about like a bumblebee ball python was like the pinnacle of what you could do with ball pythons have you seen anybody that ever talks about a bumblebee ball python they haven't even refined a bumblebee ball python you know i don't see them anymore i don't know maybe they're there maybe and i just don't see them but not without i don't know. Maybe they're there and I just don't see them. But I don't think anybody cares anymore. They're folded into the morph pancake by now. But it's also the spider is kind of similar to the jaguar, so it's lost favor with people. They don't want to have a ball python that spins around.

Fair enough. But, yeah, I mean, name any morph and, yeah, that's the case. Unless it's like one of the key ingredient morphs that seem to be in everything, you know, Yellow Belly or Fire or whatever. They're in every combo. And you do have a few people that, you know, like I think Justin Kubilka, I think he does it right. But he's not following a trend. He's setting the trend, right? How many people can set a trend?

They're the ones making the money. The ones that are setting the trend. Correct. Yeah, you have to they're the ones making a different the ones that are setting the correct you you have to be the justin kabilka or the paul harris in order to be the relevant you know that that could easily not work too i mean you could try to set a trend and you could wind up with something that everybody goes who cares about that you know you or you could be lucky and you know predict it correctly like just Justin Kobilka did and everybody's drooling over your animals. Multiple times. And then you've got to keep doing that. So the pressure is on you to stay in the forefront and keep refining what you have.

So you're always chasing that next thing. Yeah. I think, yeah, that's 100%. It feels like you're always chasing that next thing and it never becomes about learning about what makes this animal tick. Yeah, you care less about the animal and more about the paint job on the animal. Yeah. I have a question for Owen to maybe, I don't know, lead you in a direction but what do you what do you think about like um people working together you know that uh if if somebody's got this rare morph and all or a rare species all of a sudden this

morph pops up and they kind of work together do you think that those kind of things foster people you know working and networking with each other yeah i mean i would say a great example of that is that will leary had the jags and jason balin had the tigers and they had to work together in order for us to get the tiger jags which led us down that whole path and this was prior to granite zebras things like that popping up so that was that was the thing it was that you know that that working together, that forming that community or that partnership just for that one project helped bring it several steps forward. And I would say that when a morph does pop out, it kind of forces us to figure out the animal. Because anybody who just has a species can get lucky and get a clutch once.

And then God help you if something weird happened and popped out of those eggs because now you have to repeat it and you have to repeat it with this mutant so it does cause you to go into a deeper dive into what caused this what did that and i mean there are species that have no morphs that we still haven't figured out yet um and i would just say that that's mainly because some of those species no not because there's no morphs that we still haven't figured out yet. And I would just say that that's mainly because some of those species. There's no morphs? No, not because there's no morphs because some of those species are so high priced that only a certain number of people are working with them.

So things like morphs increase popularity, and then it also spreads out who's working with the animals. And you've got more hands. You have more, like Justin was talking about, you have more of a community. You have more people thinking about it,ying with it messing with it if bowl and i were a thousand dollars a piece we could all be kind of we'd all have a pair and see what happens like it's one of those things so just because there's a morph involved doesn't necessarily mean that we're not working with it or not figuring it out so well balin and leary

worked well together i bet shut up don't don't did he work well with anybody that's what i'm talking about are there tiger jags then that's where we stop talking okay i think carpets were a little bit different though back then no I mean they were you know there was no I think that's sort of really kind of one and we had gray looking ones the good old days oh yes I know let's all go back to the MP days where we can all sit there and be like

what the hell is this well I think too if there is if there is an expanded interest due to a morph, you also have maybe an increase, if it's available, an increase in importation. Because right now, importers just go, oh, nobody cares about that species. They're not bringing in homoheras. They could be bringing them in.

They could be very commonly. Well, they're bringing them in. They're bringing them in. I mean, how many? Just a couple. Well, not a lot because I – Well, they're bringing them in. Yeah, but – They're bringing them in. I mean how many? Like just a couple handful here and there? Well, not a lot because I don't think they're – They're kind of a specialized thing. But if there was a morph and people were all excited about them, then that would start bringing in the imports, which could be good and bad. I mean that could put more diverse people –

I got two examples around this, and I'll throw these at Eric and let him think it through and just respond the way he wants. So I think about this in a Somalia kind of way, right? So you think about Clastolepis, right? Clastolepis has had exantics since Yasser was doing it way back in the day. And then you have Marcel Hawkins hatched out exantic so we have probably no more or no less exantics in class to lepis than we had 15 20 years ago right so so there's an example where it hasn't gotten out of hand it hasn't it's just kind of coexisted but how often have we seen class to lepis bred on the same token nada uh hey tell tell the tell the listeners what the species names are

referring to the common name okay so class to lepas would be the the malucan scrub python um and then uh somalia nada is is going to be the tanambar python right um bread a little bit more frequently but it has a patternless form. And how many pattern nada do you see anymore? I like the pattern ones, the non-exotic pattern ones. Fairly rarely bred, but you don't see the pattern ones anymore. So I think those are two examples that kind of hold in my hand the two opposing like, okay, you can see it work, but you can see the problem too, right? You agree with that?

Yeah. Well, my first question is if you have a maluccan scrub python, why the hell do you want to take the yellow out of the most prettiest python? They're the best looking scrub. I will concede that. I don't understand what it is about human beings that when you see, again, it's like you take it for granted. We're taking for granted this beautiful, there's lavender in the tail. I mean, oh, and me and you have had multiple Moroccan scrubs, you know what I mean? Like tell me that they're not one of the prettiest pythons

around. I mean, just hands down. And now the coolest thing about it, you're taking it away. Why? Because you think it's cooler? Because now you can say, well, I have an exantic one. Like, I don't know. It just doesn't make any, doesn't make a connection to me. The other thing I would say, and maybe this is just a different way to think about this is that we're always under you know under the gun from animal rights people and all this stuff and i think that a lot of times and even even like if we wanted to um you know uh work it hand in hand with say the academic side of herp to culture i think that a lot of times the morphs turn those herp those academics off because they're like do you even care about the snake i mean you know what i'm saying like have you ever picked up a paper

that i've read about the species that you're sitting there you know i it just i don't know it just seems like we're not going to be doing anything together because in their mind i think that they're thinking thinking that we're looking at it as just a way to make money and i think i don't know man i gotta be honest i think a lot of times that's the driving force behind it you know is it's either ego or money and it it negates the whole species thing like i'm not anti-morph at all like i think there's beautiful ones and beautiful examples but like the perfect example is the maluck and scrub like why do you have to do anything to it retics or another one why do you have to do anything to a retick? I've seen some pretty crazy retick morphs that look amazing.

Because I want a lavender 18-foot torpedo coming to kill me. That's why. Just create it to a super dwarf and you're good. There you go. And then it's smaller. So let's say you got a clutch of

malucans that's hatched every five to ten years, right? And half of that clutch is Xanic. And somebody goes on to get two pairs of Xanics, and those happen to just be great breeders. And the rest of them go to people who just don't quite hit it or they're in the wrong part of the country. And then all of a sudden what's being pumped out is xantix how quick could that go bad for the captive you know uh malucan scrub pythons in terrible around there right it could it and that's and that's kind of my point and that was where tandem bars i feel like you know the the pattern versus the patternless it it those things bred and they went out people bred those and now that's all you see you don't really see

very many uh patterned animals anymore so it's like that's and that's where my concern would be around like the the the tracy a albinos Like what would happen if somebody just got lucky and everyone else just struck out with the more wild type forms? Like could it tip the balance and all of a sudden, you know, 50% to 75% of the captive bred population is albinos? And how fast would that screw everything up? You know, and if it's pure, does it screw everything up? I guess and if it's a if it's pure does it screw everything up i guess that's the other part of it too and if you can keep getting out of the wild does it

screw it up right right that's fair too that's fair too i i think the the i guess the point i was i'm gonna regroup back to the retic thing is sort of the idea with the morphs is is that you know i that we're so can and again, I was going to say the same thing about green trees, right? We're so, like, we're so, like, we have to make a black, you know, it's got to be black and it has to have blue. And it's like, man, I don't know anybody that thinks that a green reptile is not cool. Like, I mean, I don't know. When I was a kid, a green reptile is not cool like i mean i don't know when i was a kid a green reptile was where it was at and now again you're trying to change this and i don't know if

you're changing like i don't know if people's intentions i i'm sure there are people out there that that their intentions are good or maybe they just like different things and that's great you know but like i don't know i just i'm afraid that those things get lost you know the species of retics right now they're i don't think that there's any kind of work done or anything where they've sort of divided all them up but we all we i mean you can guess that they're kind of going to at least be subspecies and now they're all bred together why because we wanted to morph and the idea that you're somehow going to make the big flashy thing i i don't know i don't know just sorry

that's right you're giving me time to gather my thoughts um i am i'm trying i'm trying i'm trying i would say that i know i know this is tough for you. It is. It's so hard. At least you're not just throwing it. I'm trying not to. I'm proud of you. I'm trying to at least make some arguments, but some of my arguments are just becoming morph bad? Question mark? Yeah, but I would say that a lot of the times a morph or a mutation ends up getting the brunt for what we do to the

reptile market you know we create the scarcity so in the one thing where let's say all the exanic you know malucans are produced then what would happen you see a shift like you saw with nada where all of a sudden the normal pattern ones become the ones that people want and they get put up on that pedestal so the normal malugans would have bumped up there and then that. And also we've seen projects where all of a sudden there's a rush on a species for no fucking reason other than that somebody put a picture of it out on TikTok. So like a couple of years ago, I could throw a rock and hit 12 macklots of pythons that nobody freaking wanted now good luck finding them like you're and that's the way it goes same thing with blackface white lip and it wasn't because a morph popped up it just became these species had some sort of inherent value over

others so it's not necessarily a morph thing do you think it's the rarity thing? What is rarity? Morphs are different. Morphs are, you know, like, I want this thing that nobody, or something that's different from what everybody else has. And then when you overbreed the morphs and everyone has them, they're like, ah, fuck this. Everybody has these things. I don't care anymore.

There's that part of it, but we also create rarity. Right. I blame NPR. Yeah, well, exactly. All the time. But the people who live over in Weetar have no problems finding Weetar pythons. We do. That's why they're all of a sudden on a pedestal because that's the way it is.

I would say that there are certain python species that are considered rare that are bred way more often in the country than most colubrid species because that's not what we don't want that one well yeah what's the difference so i would say that there's that whole thing is not necessarily morph doesn't necessarily make or break the project i think we make or break the project because we suck and numerous times we've torpedoed projects for no reason and you know the mac lots python did have a morph and the thing died and they're still climbing up in price and things like that no more at all yeah exactly oh wait i'm sorry yeah the fick. I don't agree with you on that one. Yes, thank you. Point Owen.

This is where we... I got one. It's like one to twelve. It's a god damn it. Owen's hoping there's a buzzer somewhere that all of a sudden we have to switch sides. And now you have to go, yes, my time has come. And then Justin's like, that's all we have for today.

I wonder, I think it has something to do with human nature, right? We want what we don't have, right? So it doesn't matter if it's, yeah, you know. I think for me, I was always addicted to the chase. Right. And to me, it was always about, oh, man, I got to get this and I got to get that. And, you know, I mean, oh, and you saw it. You saw my book that was planned out for like 10 years.

Yeah, I know. Most of them are here. Like, what got you out of the chase? Herping. Herping. Yep. that's what it was i think it was a combination of him going out and doing herping and going to australia and then he moved and took that year off and he's like oh i got my fixes by like going outside and finding shit not from hatching eggs that's where i lost him after that it was like he's gone and i've slowly i've been giving him a lot of lee like giving him a lot

of line and then like this year i've been like slowly bringing him back in so yeah i think you know everybody goes through phases and you know what they think is cool and what they want to do and you know and they like this thing and whatnot but the the thing that's been consistent my my entire second run of herpetoculture has been carpet pythons i have never not had a car and don't you because to me they're my favorite don't you find too when you find it in the wild that makes you appreciate what you have a lot more than than you did before and especially if you were just chasing it for a morph you know you'd be like wait a second this is a cool animal you know look at this thing yeah i

yeah there's something about herping that just really uh changes you i think too like if if i'm being honest the whole it's not about to me it's not about saying that tubs are bad or whatever right um i understand why people do it and i still have animals and tubs it's it's not i'm anti that and i'm tired of that debate but the thing of it is is like again being a natural history guy i can't tell you man i i sit there and watch that diamond python that i have up in my living room i i don't know i feel like it's my little chunk of australia that i just get to peek at you know that's why i got the monitors i don't ever care about breeding monitors.

I mean, if it happens, it's cool, whatever. It is what it is. But that's not my goal. I love just sitting here editing podcasts and watching them do what they do, you know. It's like I'm sitting there in the Kimberly watching these little monitors just run around and do the thing and, you know, where they're at

and certain times of day and how, you know, certain things that I do affect them. I just feel like when I was keeping that way, I could breed and I was successful doing it, but I wasn't in tune with my animals, if that makes sense. And I used to get very... I think Keith McPeak had a big influence on me. You guys had an influence on me as well.

It's like, as you're herping, you start talking about stuff. Rob's been telling me this for years he's like what are you doing man just cut your collection down put them in bigger enclosures it's the greatest thing ever and he did it and i fought him and i'm just like no i'm gonna get rid of my jags first and he's like what are you doing man get rid of those things why do you have them and it's just like yeah why do i have them do i have them because i think i have to have them or do I have them because I want to have them? And it really was because I thought I had to, right? I think we all go through that, the kind of the Pokemon, I got to collect them all kind of thing. And once you do collect them all, you're like, I've got way too many animals.

And you whittle it down to the ones that really bring you joy and you really like whether there's a morph or no morph or whatever. This is a bunch of pokey bullshit. Pretty much. But don't get me – I mean – but there's some great-looking morphs out there, right? Like if you have a morph in your collection and that's what gets you off and you know do that like i yeah i don't think it's a i don't think it's necessarily like uh you know morphs are bad i think it's just like if you get consumed in it and you're you know it's it's about it's about why you're here right or what got you into this in the first place and if it was morphs that got

you into it cool but it doesn't have to always be that way if it like you know like if it changes that's okay too right like but i guess you know when you talk about rare stuff there's to me there's there's there's implications to that that like you know you're not we're not gonna problems. I mean, you know, relatively speaking with carpet pythons, they're fairly established. You know what I mean? Like, so, you know, I don't know. I'd ask Owen to talk about, you know, how many simply inherited mutation, they still want the selectively bred most beautiful things, right? I mean, so morphs do drive interest in things because they want to see the best example. They don't want to just see the average muddy, ugly thing, you know, and I would say too, like if you're out in the wild and you're seeing,

you know, multiple, you know, say you see 20 carpet pythons, you're going to be probably most excited about the one that's the brightest or has the best pattern or something. So morphs do gain, you know, get your excitement up a little more, I would say. I think that's definitely a point for morphs or at least selectively bred animals, the nicer looking ones. I would say with my experience at a table, you set up your collection and I've got everything on the table. We're talking carpets. Literally everything. There's a kitchen sink over there.

Glubrids, glubroids. So I would say the carpets are over here. But then like the mad hogs and mad hogs chinese king rats things like that their value or people who are interested in them are interested in them because of what they are yeah not because of color or anything like that so that's their value and that's what people come for that but carpets and other species that do have morphs and things like that that are tied into it people are definitely more of particular you know they want a jungle that's going to be black and yellow yeah and they want to know it's going to be black and

yellow they want to see parents they want to see grandparents they want to see siblings from last year and that's just the way it is so a morph does help bring attention and value to that animal so and they don't trust either like you can have a baby jungle and say it's gonna look like this one and you bring a two-year-old jungle that's bright yellow and black and they say uh how much is the black and yellow one oh Oh, he's not for sale. That's what I want. I don't want this. I want that. But it still doesn't work. Like they go, no, I want that.

I don't trust that this is going to look like that. You know, I don't. Every show where I've brought an adult, like mom or dad, is when the babies sell. Yeah, definitely. And that's just because the animal sits out and it's bright, impressive adult self. And even then, like I brought an olive python to a show, one of my males, and that's when all the baby olives sold in one whole show. So that happens. People are attracted and drawn into this kind of a thing.

And sometimes it's a morph. Sometimes it's not a morph. But morph helps. Morph definitely helps. So there's that. All right. Owen, I'm going to give you and I'm going to argue with your side for a second. Okay.

Go ahead. Take your time. I think sometimes that when you have people that are coming into the hobby, right, because I'm thinking about this, as you said, like seeing morph in a show. Don't worry. I dangled that out there hoping you'd grab that hook. So go ahead. I mean, think of the shows we've been at,

right. You know, we're, we're selling even, even, even though I had morphs, I didn't have the gamma jag or the, you know,

that, uh, you know, I'm thinking of Riddler, the, the jungle jag, you know, or Mike Curtin's, uh, you know, ocelot jags. I mean, you, you're, I'm thinking of Riddler, the jungle jag, you know, or Mike Curtin's, you know,

ocelot jags. I mean, you're looking across the, you know, White Plains show and you're like, holy shit, what is that? So, yes, I think that the good thing about morphs is, right, it may attract somebody that really doesn't know where to get into reptiles and then sees an animal like that. Cause I think of when I first saw Bullwinkle, right. You know, remember the early days when you go to that Anthony Caponetto's how to breed carpets page or whatever, and you'd sit there and there's Bullwinkle right at the top. And you're like, Oh my God, what is that? You know? And, um, you know, but, um, I, I but I think it's good that you would get people into it that, you know, it's their stepping stone. Right. And then they're going to want to learn about the animal or whatever. But we're talking about rare species where I think that with the rare species, you need to have that passion for the animal to begin with.

I mean, think about the teamwork, Python. And again, I don't understand this for the animal to begin with. I mean, think about the Timor python and again, I don't understand this for the life of me, but why does anybody give two flying shits about an exantic Timor python? I don't get it. I just don't understand. You've covered that, Eric. Asked and answered. Move on.

It's an exantic Timor. So what do you mean? It's the Moroccan and the Timor. I think you just don't like exantics, dude. I don't. So would it be better for Bologna if a morph showed up? I mean, it makes the argument right there. I think, too, if you're I mean, bull and I are already extravagantly priced as it is. Right. Let alone if it's an albino. Like, where do you go from there? Yeah, where do you go?

It's albino, another 12 grand on that thing. Yeah, the only people that are going to be able to afford that are the YouTubers or whatever. Oh, my God. Go fund me, Paige. Yeah, please buy my albino bolins um you're not gonna get it just because you have a passion for the the rare species you know that'll be a i would say the downside of it is that if if a rare if a morph hatches out of a rare species you are now the custodian of that so it is up to you responsibility exactly it's up to you. A lot of responsibility. Exactly. It is up to you now to reproduce this because if you don't and it dies, you're the reason we don't have X.

We don't have albino this or morph that. But you were the reason they had it in the first place if you had it. Exactly. But the problem is that you don't ever want to be – Nobody's looking at that aspect. Right. Nobody cares. But the problem is you don't want to be that footnote in the book that comes out.

It's like, well, we had this. died like because of owen like god damn it like but you know you know what i'll tell you this if if i hatched out an albino tracy a i would shelf that thing i would stick it in an enclosure and i would watch it but i would never reproduce it and sell it oh i've i've said for years that if i hatched out any kind of brand new carpet morph it would be out of the egg in a box and shipped to nick mutton with like a sticker that says please don't kill this like it just because i i don't want to be that guy who's like we had albino coastals but owen fucked it up like now see this is this is really why i got out of morph's game is because you know owen had somebody that he could send that box to that he knew that he does

a show with every week for the past 10 years but he decides to send it to nick you're right i see the game here. At that point, I keep it myself. A little tender still. A little tender. It's like, but then there's also the thing of like, if the morph itself is bad for the animal. Like if I hatched out the scaleless rough scale python, I'd put it in a freezer. It's like, I couldn't do this yeah even if somebody offered you two hundred thousand dollars for it

that's the part right there is owen can very easily be bought okay let's just say that most reptile keepers can i think that's yeah yeah i think that's i think. I think that's the thing is that's when your why are you in this really gets tested. Especially right now. If you were to shelf a potential morph for just the love of the species. Like at this point in time, I cannot put this out. No amount of money. I'm still doing what I want to do. And when that starts taking off and there's no longer any concern in my mind ever of a morph mucking up what I'm trying to do, then maybe I'll sell it.

Just make sure you get the $200,000 before you send them the frozen scale. Yeah, of course. You got to do it right. Make it look like a shipping accident. I think a really good example of how popular oddities are is the whole two-headed snake, two-headed turtle market. You hatch out one of those, it's not reproducible, but people will pay huge amounts of money because it's an oddity and it will bring people to your table to look at a weird thing. And it gets people's attention and stuff like that. People love one of a kind stuff.

It's, oh my gosh, nobody has this. It's the novelty. There's a sulcata that is twisted halfway down its body so its feet point up. Its name is Helix. It has a wonderful little following and all this other crap. It doesn't need to be like a genetic mutant for us idiots to keep it alive and go look at it like it's you want that draw which it doesn't necessarily need to be a morph am i helping eric right now i don't know what i'm doing anymore i've lost no that's that's a point for you because morphs draw people in, get them excited about what you're working with.

So just hatch a freak. It doesn't need to be a morph. That's what a morph is, is right? That jab a snake's eye out. There you go. Give him a YouTube page. I think that would just say that us as content creators, if the only thing that somebody can find cool about a reptile is the color or the pattern, then we have failed. Yeah.

Period. No. Mic drop drop you need to be excited you need to be excited going through your cages whether it's like a because i have like a super caramel jag and then right underneath is like an angolan python and it's like awesome awesome and then like a corn snake it's like yay i keep going and i i think that kind of goes to the whole like youtube influencers thing like they take away from the animals themselves because it's about them of course more than it's really about the animals at that point as as long as they can bring you that animal and you're like oh that's a cool thing it makes it less about the animal and more about them but isn't that i mean isn't, it makes it less about the animal and more about them. But isn't that what we're all about,

is trying to get people excited for the things that we're excited for? I mean, anytime Owen talks to somebody on NPR, he's getting that species that they were so excited about. That does happen a lot. You get drawn in by somebody's excitement. So, yeah, just because they have a big following on youtube doesn't make that wrong i don't think as long as they're doing it for the right reasons you know what i mean like well just saying this is a cool species you know that can be a good thing well but

they're they're i guess they're influential yeah they're influential and it's how they use their in their influence i don't think them promoting reptiles is necessarily a bad thing. It's the way it's done, I think, is where I would tread lightly. I think on NPR for years, I've been known as the IJ guy. Yes, definitely. And face and facts, right? Back in 2009, 2010, nobody really cared except for me, luke snell julie yasser i mean even nick didn't have really a good collection of ijs you know um there's probably people i'm forgetting that that did it as well but i'm just saying like to me that the people that stand down right and it was sort

of the odd group of the carpet python world. You were shunned. It was like, yeah, because, I mean, how do you compete with a yellow and black screaming snake? I was always supportive of you. So I guess I've always been that person that's promoting the idea. The dark side. Yeah. I think the same thing.

I think the same thing with Inlands. I also think the same thing i think the same thing with inlands yeah i also think the same thing about anteresia holy shit what cool pythons and they're small and you can you can keep them in a naturalistic setup without anything but because they're what called dirt snakes that somehow they're not cool anymore. That's just bullshit. Quit calling them dirt snakes. They're awesome. Stop it. Owen, you remember the first time I came over to your collection. I'll never forget it.

You had that rack that was in the corner and you still have that rack that's like that white rack with those, you know, the one that goes this way a long way. And in the top of that rack, you had a granite spotted by them. Now, spotted now granted that's a morph i get it granted that was it was an adult no it was way too big it was yeah no no no i know what i'm saying is it's an adult and you pulled it out and i looked at it and i was like that's

an adult python you know because at that time i'm used to burmese pythons reticulated pythons like all the big ones african rocks stuff like that and i'm like wait you can have them in a small size like i don't have to shovel the shit with a shovel and like i just don't think that those species you know so to me that's where i think you know uh us as content creators i guess if you want to call us that have sort of that responsibility to get people excited about it. And, I mean, years later, I see more of a surgence in people wanting to get IJs than ever before, you know. And, oh, and to you, you know, all the liasses that you're always talking about, you don't think, I guess we talk about it and think, like, we're just shooting a shit, like me and you are talking or whatever. But, like, at the same time time you're influencing people to want to get

that species why because you're excited about it and why you're excited about it not because of the color or the pattern because of what it does or what it is or where it's from or what the natural history behind that is or like oh my god did you this thing does you know this behavior or whatever um and if you set it up like this you can see it or whatever i mean think about like the the first time you saw even if it was in a tub you had a baby carpet and perched up on the perch and it's just like waiting for that mouse to come by you know and you're just like you know or i think about how cool it would be if you had an owen pelly python and it changes colors you know from day to night. I don't know. Does an Owen Pelly have to have a morph?

Yeah, I mean. Ah. Well, that's the thing, too. Is it popular because it's rare or is it popular because it's cool? If you're buying something because it's rare, you're probably not going to stick with that thing, I would think. Right. I think it's the same you're probably not going to stick with that thing. I would think, you know, if you're not,

I think it's the same mindset as a morph. Now, wouldn't you argue that it's that same mindset that you have, that you want to have something that somebody else doesn't have. And somehow this is going to set you apart in the reptile community. Well, how about just be a positive person in the reptile? I'm sure that's going to set you apart. You know what I mean? Like instead of going on and arguing with everybody about what they're doing wrong why don't you teach people

about what they're doing right or how they could do it right without being an asshole about it and maybe you don't need a flashy morph in order to be somebody cool in the reptile hobby it's true nice oh man that was working i think i got a little chubby over here listening there we go that was that was i knew it was not going to do well if he gets passionate and gets on his sofa i love it when the fire comes up and that's i mean that's what it's all about, right? That's why we're in this in the first place, because when we were kids, we saw some, you know,

snake in the wild, or we caught a garter snake, and we got really excited. Now, somewhere along the lines, we kind of lose that excitement, and we turn it over to morphs or to rarity or to, and I still love to just issue this challenge. Get something that's not commercially viable, that nobody cares about but you. Get something that's not worth $10 and work with that animal and just be passionate about it and love it. I think that brings more excitement and fulfillment than trying to chase down and make money off of snakes, frankly.

And I think if you do it, you're going to enjoy it. I've got some shovelmose snakes, and they're so fun to keep. They're just really cool snakes. They're brightly colored. They're gorgeous. But nobody's breeding them. They're doing good for you still? Oh, yeah.

They're fantastic. They'll take roaches off the tongs man they're just crazy awesome snakes you know i mean an insectivorous those are really pretty those are really yeah i mean they have the same patterns of coral snake for crying out loud so yeah and my my uh buddy local buddy he he found somebody that would you know sell him a bunch so he bought a bunch on off of some guy that catches them, you know, I'm like, Whoa, I don't know about that, but you know, he gets to work with them too. So now my local buddy has a bunch of them too. So yeah, it's pretty cool. But they're, they're a fun species, you know, they don't need a morph.

There was an albino that Jeff Lem had, and I think he produced from it, but you know, it hasn hasn't as far as i know it's not widely available or anything so you know but i don't i don't want an albino i want the normal wild type stuff with you know nice red on it and stuff it's just cool snakes yeah i feel like i've gotten to the point where i breed for myself and then y'all can fight over what i don't want so it's like it's gotten to that point now where i used to not keep anything from like pears and things like that now i'm going through it and i think i have like six or seven holdbacks from this year because i'm just like oh that's a caramel tiger boy i don't have one of those you stay mark oh but this girl's pretty too

mark it's like okay so i think that's i think that's my big issue now is it's now when i had something out i want to hold back as much of it as possible watch it all kind of grow up and just it's soak it up you know soak up as much as i can before i finally have to come to the realization of like okay i can't keep i don't need five male tigers yeah and then oh by the way unless it's an adult it's easier to get rid of when it's colored up if it's a carpet. You know what I mean? So it's like kind of a side benefit. And it's easier to sell when it's colored up.

That's also known as birking the clutch. Birking the clutch. Birking the whole clutch. I wanted to birk all the inlands, but everybody wants them. I'm like, gosh, dang it. I don't necessarily want to feed all these babies either. Yeah, I was going to say. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, space, which is, yeah. I mean, it's really cool to see something like the inlands where they're less appreciated. They're not as flashy as a jungle, but they're just cool in their own right. They're calm. I mean, they're so awesome. And only like a handful of people gave a shit about them five years ago. Frankly, I was one of those until I saw them in person. I was going to say, like, four of them are right here. When I saw them in person, I'm like, oh, I was wrong.

These are not just weird-looking Coastals. These are something special. And just the fact that they're so easygoing. wrong these are not just weird looking coastals you know these are something special yeah and just the fact that they're so easy going i mean my kids will go in the room just open the cage pull one out you know and show their friends and then they drape it over their neck and they don't have to worry about getting bit you know they're they're they're just such cool carpet pythons unless they got food in their hand and then they then it's on yeah these babies they're all taking off really well they're all taking off really well.

They're all eating on their own, no issues. And some of the past clutches, I've had some issues getting them to feed sometimes. The worst carpet bite I took was from a maugan. Oh, really? I had food in my hand. Oh, yeah, that female. She drilled me.

Oh, it was horrible, dude. I was just like, and they're so docile. They get food crazy. They definitely do. That's why I like them. They're good feeders and cool snakes. I will add them eventually.

Dude, they're so... It's one of those things where you can't show anybody. You can't tell them. When you see them in person, you're so – it's one of those things where you can't show anybody. You can't tell them. But when you see them in person, you're like, oh, these are fucking insane. That's the problem. I've seen them in person because – and they've been in the back of my head because I did a show with Ben once and we split a table. And he had some and they were like gnawing on the back of my head then.

And then Eric has – Eric. He just has them all. and he had some and they were like gnawing on the back of my head then and then eric has eric um he just has them all oh let's go to the inland wing of the collection so you know there's that we have two point two it's still there i mean come now um so that male i have is stellar because he's got a red tail yeah there have been several animals where i turned to eric i'm like you were never allowed to show me this animal again okay if you do i will take it and i feel like the the the the the selective breeding potential of metcalfe is largely untouched i mean they're still like oh my dude those things could be insane If you even look at what Bread Lie is, you could do the same thing. Yeah. I think this might be a side with you a little bit, Owen, but I think if you want to look at jungle carpets as like the color of them and how they've been refined and selectively bred to look the way they look and they don't look like what's in the wild to me that sort of gave the blueprint to what

is possible with the rest of the carpet python complex that nobody i don't want to say nobody but few people really cared about those like the inlands would be an example darwin's would be another one i think me and justin are probably the only ones that wanted the ones that weren't albino i'm like screw the albino shit i just want a darwin like that's a darwin you know everybody else is focused on the albino part of it um but like to me all those you know subspecies species whatever they are um races let's let's go let's go to the post to be determined when the book comes out hold on uh on. But I just think that there's so much potential in those untapped subspecies of carpet dragons. I don't know.

I will say, too, I keep hearing like jungles aren't what they are in the wild. But I hope the new book will kind of give a little better appreciation for some of the wild jungles there's just some crazy looking jungles out there that have some just beautiful black and yellow coloration um i don't know i can give you page numbers if you want like yeah well there's only two people three yeah i don't know i don't know why we're doing that planet and have this book so all right the page numbers down for when my book comes in two months. Exactly.

I gotta be honest, when I first opened it... We're not talking about Pete Call, Ruby. Calm down. The one from Lake Mars? The one that Scott took? Oh my god. Did you notice it was missing its tail?

The tail? It got its tail not off by something and it's still one of the most beautiful carpet pythons you'll see i love that one by shane black on page 37 too i mean it's a little it's got a little black you know kind of fish netting but it's gorgeous oh yeah on page 36 that lyle nailer took i mean i prefer the one on page 38, honestly. The one on 40 that has more black on it? Can I get a 52, 52, 5, 5, 4, 3, 1, 10, 7? 94. That Paluma, the Paluma locality from Skypher, the northern coastal.

That thing is nuts, isn't it? On page 38 that Owen was talking about. That thing is crazy. Out of all the pictures you picked of me for the book, I dislike it. Oh, yes. You didn't like that one? I thought that was cool. Well, I mean, I'm wandering around aimlessly in the desert.

Like, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Man, that's wild looking. Yeah. Yeah, isn't that crazy? Yeah, and to me, that's the fun part of carpets. It's like, you know, all that variability is there, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm really excited about the variety. You can still have that, but with a variability. It's like all that variability is there. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited about the variety. You can still have that but with a morph. Yeah. Yeah. I mean – Well, and I am of the – and I know this is a very unpopular thing to say. But there's so much potential when you step across taxonomic boundaries with carpets and start putting stuff that isn't normally together and you see that i mean like people who've seen stuff that isn't normally put together

and it's sacrilegious and it's you know it's it is against you know all all forms of better judgment but damn those snakes are nice are they not i mean there there are some killer ones there's also some i look like yeah right there's also some very ugly ones too you look at the head all yeah you know brettles that are like listen justin we can't all be pretty okay yeah there's some hits and misses for sure with with hybrids but you do get some crazy intergrades or hybrids that are just phenomenal looking. It seems in all my morph clutches, I got the misses. Hey, but you had that gene. I got the misses.

That's the other side is when you're one of the first ones to get it you're also the one you haven't refined it yet and so the babies you're producing gives the next buyer a leg up and so you almost have to keep those but then you got to compete with the other guys who bought them and and are trying to make their money back faster you know that kind of thing and it's just i don't know yeah it's a it's a race in multiple directions it's a weird race it's a numbers it's a race in multiple directions. It's a weird race. It's a numbers race. It's a quality race. And that person who imported it and sold it to you is always holding that card. I think the Morph thing is for somebody that – because you see some people in the hobby that are like this.

They're like really into the business side of reptiles yeah which is i i think that's awesome right you need that i think you need that in a hobby but uh you're gonna make a go of it yeah it's definitely not the fun side yeah no no no no no no no and i i think i realized this you know a few years ago it's sort of like you you're you're approaching it like a business and that means that you're not necessarily doing what you want to do you know um but but but what if you like reptiles and and you really enjoy business and you can yeah that's what i'm saying ways to make both of those things work and i think there are those people out there you know what i mean where yeah yeah you know who comes to mind with that lori martin

yeah yeah you know when we were talking to her she's very very like business you can tell that she's just a very business type of person right but you know and she's got ball pythons but she also has like poplin pythons like real poplin pythons not not the, you know, not those. So she has those. So, so I think that she's like, to me, that's where I see that side of her where she's a reptile keeper, you know, like you can tell that she's into the reptiles that she's into. And then there's the business side. And I see a few people like that that are, that are really in that.

Nick was talking and I think that's good. I was talking about reading like sales, you know, books on sales and stuff like that. I'm like, Oh, that sounds horrible. Like that sounds like torture. I'm not in this to sell stuff. I'm in this to work with animals. But it really is the guy says the guy who hates to update his website. I mean, yeah, definitely.

Yeah. It definitely does help your business if you're, if you can do that as well, you know, and obviously Nick's been very successful and has done very well. And I mean, he's what, paid off a couple houses. He's, you know, got a bunch of money in reserve in case lean times come, you know, those kinds of things. He's a very, very smart businessman.

Yeah. You're welcome mr yeah that one house has a plaque for eric on it that's weird paid for by eric eric i think between him and paul i probably paid for that uh car he was working on how much how much of that corvette i wondered why you called it you see eric yeah you see eric walking out of nick's garage with just big parts of a corvette in his hand like i'm taking my shit back let's go drive the eb what that one the corvette oh my god that's awesome that's fantastic well i think this has been a really good discussion.

I mean, obviously, the morphs have taken the reptile world by storm. And they're probably not going away anytime soon, especially with ball pythons. But I really hope that anybody listening can appreciate reptiles. Go back to when you were a kid and you first experiencing a reptile, appreciate it for those reasons, you know, get, get into it for the right reasons.

It may be upfront rather than going through this long process of getting into the pyramid morph game and then realizing these animals are cool without a morph and then getting out or getting into herping or something, you know, like just, just maintain that appreciation. I think that really is what brings the excitement and the joy and the fun of the reptile hobby. But that's just my opinion, you know.

I just got in some Eric Hernandez red coastals. I looked at them, but after this I'm going to go check them out. Look at them more. Okay, time to end. Let to go check them out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at them more. You're like, okay, time to end. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. Yeah. Well, any last parting words you guys all talked out, all fought out?

I would say that you can appreciate an animal for a morph and what it is, but then you can also appreciate an animal for just what it is, base model. I got a Melendorferi, and I love the little – he's a bastard, but I love him because of what he is. And they offered me a patternless one, and I'm like, I don't want it. I want a Melendorferi. I want what it looks like. and they offered me a patternless one and i'm like i don't i don't want it i want i want the nor i want a melandorpha i want what it looks like so there's that but then also i have a blue baron's racer which is one of the most beautiful collier birds i think you can ever see and i love her just because of she's she's this blue shoelace that is all over the place and also the thing so you can appreciate her and it's an added level because she's blue um aren't they a little

spicy as well oh god yeah she's yeah there's they're we're learning things like it's it's fine it's fine they're all they're all still here so don't get bit on the ring thing. Yeah, well, you're going to need that a little bit. But there's ways you can do that, and I can appreciate my Coastals, my Carmel Jags. I can appreciate a striped Coastal I just got from Billy that the only thing about it is it's got some stripes to it. So you can appreciate other things. It's very easy to get lost in the whole thing and to get towed under. And then all you're thinking about is morph this and morph that. So like you said, get back to the base of it, of the reptile and the snake, and enjoy it for what it is.

Awesome. Yeah, very well said. All right. Well, let's hear where we can find you guys. Nowhere. Not that we don't say that at the end of every show, but I usually screw it up somehow. Nowhere. Morellapythonradio.com. And if you want to get in touch with us, info at morellapythonradio.com. That's also the Patreon on the Teespring store. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. This isn't our show. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, stop it. Well, I guess you guys in particular,

yeah, everybody knows where to find you, so we're probably good there. If you're looking at this point, I don't, yeah. Look below in the show notes. Everything you need to know is right there in the show. We have show notes. Wow. You do do a lot maybe if you've wrote oh here it comes i forgot i forgot there's the nerve the top of the show eric you

didn't you do some herping recently did you get out and that's awesome where'd you go i did you were you in pennsylvania we went uh, up by the Pocono Mountains. A couple of the NPR fans have been trying to get us up there. Robert opened us up, his house, to me, and it was awesome. His family was awesome. Just like every time, oh, yeah, there's tons of snakes here in this spot. I was like, there's going to be no snakes there, man. I'm telling you, man, there's tons of snakes here in this spot i was like there's gonna be no snakes there man i'm telling you man there's tons of snakes every time i come here i

find 10 snakes there was one snake but i got to see a water snake oh yeah yeah uh nerodia it was awesome uh beautiful scenery yeah it was really cool hang out yeah it's always good to have fellow herpers out there and herb for sure. Heck yeah, man. Especially in your backyard. Exactly. Yeah. Get to know different spots. Yeah. Well,

cool. Yep. All right. Well, we appreciate everybody listening to the reptile fight club and we'll catch you again next week for another episode. We got the, we got the pod father and the Mackinwookie.

Who the hell do you have? Thank you. Outro Music