Reptile Fight Club - AZ/NM Trip Recap w/ Jorden, Dustin, and Brandon

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

AZ/NM Trip Recap w/ Jorden, Dustin, and BrandonFollow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to Reptile Fight Club. How are you doing out there, fighters? Here I am, Just a Ju-Lander with my co-host, Rob Stone. How's it going, Rob? It's great. I'm excited to be here. Excellent, excellent. See all of you again.

That's great. Yeah, we've got a group today. We're going to talk about a recent trip we all took into the sky islands of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. So we'll be recounting our adventures out there. And so we've got Dustin Gron, Jordan Parrott, and Brandon Valentine with us today to chat about that trip. So welcome to the podcast, guys. hope everybody's doing well what's up South Fight Club Nation

that's good uh yeah Dustin was doing a lot of live stream down there for the for the gecko sphere nation green rat nation yeah that's the

that's probably the best part of herb trips I think you're all the fun stories inside jokes and stuff that come along with that, but I forget half of them, so it's nice to kind of chat about him here so I can listen back and remember some of the things we talked about. Getting old, guys. I'm getting old.

Yeah, well, I'm a little tired today. I had my water polo practice. I accidentally pegged a high school girl in the head with the ball. It wasn't great, but what do you do? So life is progressing here. It is hard to come back from a herb trip and try to catch up on all the maintenance and stuff that was neglected while I was gone. And so I'm sure you guys are in the same boat there. And Dustin and Brandon have herp shows they're planning for.

So what are you guys doing this weekend? Yeah, I've got the Tucson Reps Show this weekend. Nice. It's a little bit more involved with my family. It's a big part of it. so we do the setup and everything. Right. Yeah,

are you vending or you have to sell? Nice. What do you sell in there? Bring in some Oedura, some strophers, some Jani, some barons. Bring like 20 animals. Oh, very cool. Yeah. All right.

You heard a Green Rat Nation come check him out at the Tucson show. Nice. How about you, Brandon? Yeah, my poor planning, ruined that one for me. mixed up. I have a wedding I got to go to this weekend, so I'm not going to be able to make it to that show. Yeah. Yeah, the Wasatch, Utah show is this weekend as well, but I don't know, I'm hanging out with family instead. My little foray into Morph Market paid off. I've sold probably five or six snakes in the last couple weeks, so that's been good running out of stock, but getting some, moving some animals on to some new good homes, so that's always good. but making room for animals to have more space.

That's always a nice thing to do. But yeah, all my inlands are feeding well, so that's exciting. I'll probably stick those up there sometime soon. And jungles are all feeding on rats except for maybe two of them. And that came from Jordan's line. They're turning out nice already, seeing some nice yellows coming through after a few sheds. and the baby pygmies are still taking their sweet time. I think I've got two out of 11 that are feeding voluntarily on their own,

and the rest are getting mouse drumsticks. So that's always fun. But yeah, I guess things are progressing as they do. All right, well, enough of that nonsense. Let's get into some field herb report discussions here. So, let's see, I guess I'll start with kind of my start of the trip. I left Friday after work and I guess half day of work and headed down to, drove down to northern Arizona, slept the night in a very noisy campground or kind of

dispersed camping off a dirt road. And for some reason, there are these guys in these like pimped out side by sides with loud music driving up and down the road, like, until like 2 a.m. It was really an interesting spot, and I think it was just an obnoxiously populated area of Northern Arizona. So, but Dustin had put me on a spot for some narrow-headed garter snakes. So I wanted to go see if I could find, find some of those, and got there early in the morning had a look and then didn't find any so I headed down the rest of the way met up with Jordan at Bob Ashley's place the Cherokee Cow Desert Museum so yeah how about you guys

what was your path path over what I picked up Rob from the airport at like midnight on Friday yeah and then yeah we just went went east from there started to make stop and I made a quick stop for some road cruising right at sunset. She didn't really find anything, or I guess not sunset. Late night. Middle of the night. Yeah. And then hit some torrential downpour on the way there.

Nice. A decent camp spot that was completely washed out. But got a couple hours of sleep in the car and then went out that morning, that next Saturday morning. Yeah. Yeah, you guys got out first thing Saturday morning. And you went out into the pelonsios. Yeah. So we were kind of checking out some new areas in the Sky Islands. We've done a little bit down the Chirikawa's and the Wachukas and wanted to kind of expand and look around in some more mountain areas. So we selected the wonderful pelonsios. Dustin had done a few scouting trips out that way to kind of see how things looked. And so, and Rob, with his wonderful research, found some decent spots to look.

So, yeah, we're, it's got a reputation for being a little bit harder to Herp. So, you know, we were all kind of maybe had low expectations about what we might find there. But I think it turned out all right. We found some good stuff out there. so um all right jordan you you made your way over from texas yeah that was a i wish it was an uneventful trip but of course got a flat tire on the way looking for cisterous and in west texas and so i lost a bunch of time um on friday getting that taken care of um but made my way in through the Davis Mountains and found a bairds and an emery rat and a bunch of

atrocks so it was a good felt like a good sign that things were moving is heading in to meet you guys um and then of course uh as you said pulled in and and met you at the chirkaa desert museum and got to hang out with you there for a little bit before we met up with the guys and of course i think the highlight of that was getting to revisit that library it's uh it's more amazing every time I've visited it over the last couple of years. So I dare say it's, you'd call it done, though I think that will always be a work in progress if you ask about it. So, yeah, but amazing, amazing. Yeah, that was heaven. Right. That was my first glimpse of it. And I was just awestruck how amazing that place is. If you haven't checked that out, it's, it's pretty incredible.

Just, I mean, every sort of herpetological book you could dream of in one spot. And, Behind lock and key, so you know, you've got to kind of make a reservation. I think they're going to have it so you can search the library and find, you know, for research purposes or writing purposes. They might even take stuff down, scan it. I think Bob was talking about something to that extent. I may have misunderstood him there, but yeah. That's what I understood as well, yeah.

Provide certain excerpts from a book or papers or whatever. I mean, they had quite the extensive library. for sure. And just a beautiful room. I mean, you walk in and it's just beautifully decorated, artwork on the walls, you know, nice bookshelves, heavy wooden tables, would you say, Jordan? Yeah, absolutely. You got to help lift one in or bring one in. Yeah. In preparation for biology, the pit vipers, I'd stopped by and visited a few months ago and decided that'd be a good use of my time is to help move a little table in there. It turned out to be two dollies, five guys, and a whole lot of sweating and swearing to get that in there.

So some pretty heavy, very impressive furniture and artifacts in there. And like you say, the artwork's just incredible. And of course, I mean, it's a library. I mean, the library, as far as I'm concerned. Pretty incredible. And what was the book Bob pulled out for us, the series? That was Holbrooks. Old Brooks, that's right. Yeah. And from, you know, I don't remember. I've got the reprint of it here, but I don't remember what year it's from.

Yeah, old books, expensive old books. Yeah, but really nice panels and things, you know, hand-drawn, really nice artwork in there. Yeah, you can buy the reprint of it. Who did the reprint, Jordan? Is that? It's S-S-A-R, did it? Oh, okay. Yeah, in 1976, they did the reprint.

Oh, okay. So it's a little older as well. Yeah. About as old as I am. Yeah. Almost as old as I am. Jordan's, what, 10 days older than me? Yeah, 1842.

1842's volume 1 was published. Yeah. North American Herpetology. It's pretty impressive, though. Yeah, he pulled out some really old books and showed us and, yeah, it was pretty neat to see. I don't know, Bob does it right. He's got all sorts of cool, cool stuff at the museum and at the library, and he was nice enough to let us stay in the dorms there. So we kind of had our home base at the Chiricou Desert Museum.

So that was really nice to see Bob catch up with it. them a bit, chat a little bit, hear about how bad my new book sucks and how much work it's taking. So, yeah, we'll hopefully have a blue line for that soon and get it off to the printers in a bit so you can see the terror of such a crappy book. But we'll see how it goes. I'm glad they've got better minds working on it. So, all right. Then we, Dustin and Rob came came and met up with us there and at the chair-go? Yeah, well, you guys were busy checking out old books and hanging out in the Cush confines that day. You know, again, coming off a two hours sleep in whatever it was, Forest Dust, and I don't know, 40 hours, something like that.

We'd been out working during the day, and I'd sweated through my clothes twice, so sweated through, dried, sweated through again, and then we got the monsoon's coming late, and we got drenched to the skin so that when we met you for supper at the portal store, always good. I felt like, and I think I felt to you when you, we went for the embrace that I just taking a shower in my clothes, huh? Right. Yeah, well, at least, you know, you washed off, washed all the sweat off, so that was good. You know, just fixed me right as rain.

Yeah. Get all the bush smell off, you know, that kind of thing. The desert sweat smells. But yeah, it's always good to meet up. Portal feels like almost like a second home. It's just got a really familiar, nice feel to it and really great spot. So, yeah, that night, after we kind of met up and had a meal, went out and did a little road cruising that night. As Jordan and I made our way from rodeo into portal, we saw a giant DORR ringnex.

snake, which was kind of a bummer. That's one I'd really like to see, not Dior, but alive. And, uh, but that night we went and cruised up through the Chiricahas a bit and had a really nice mammal night. Um, how many species did we end up seeing? We got, um, raccoons, skunks, ringtail, ringtail cat, boxes. Yeah. I think that ringtail is probably my favorite. And I've always really liked ringtails, and man, that was about the best view I've had of one. It just kind of did its thing and let us watch it. It was pretty sweet. Those little raccoon babies were pretty cute, though, too.

Yeah, I know we've got to see either the same, the missing baby, you know, the first time we saw them or a different mile with three that time. But they were cute as well. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool. So definitely a mammal night. And then a few toads as well. we got some green toads or well do we see yeah we saw a green toad that night back at the stay and uh that one just came hopping up yeah just we were taking pictures same same thing this one was just right by the door um but a couch is spade foot and then um did a little cruising and didn't we get

that big old uh Colorado river or I was looking at their range they don't even go around the Colorado River there I think Sonoran Desert Toad's a better name. name for him or lickable toad whichever i think jordan proposed that name for him so very likable oh that's right likable toad and a cool uh wolf spider on the road that was lifting up his arms at us what what was that jordan did you idea i think i think it was a carolina wolf okay yeah out of rain was one of the angriest ones i've one of the angriest wolves i've seen And quite some time, it was pretty fun watching it to attack Dustin. Yeah, that was some cool behavior.

Yeah, that one definitely wanted a piece of me. Yeah. Didn't it sink its teeth into your... One of my flip-lops, yeah. You had a venom in your apparel weekend, or week, I guess. I guess that brings us to the next morning. We went out with Bob and I'll remind me the other guy's name. Chuck.

Chuck. Chuck. We forget that. I know, yeah. Buddy, Chuck. My fixer check. But they talked us into going up and looking for clobbs in the Cherokales. We thought they might be going out to the palanseos with us that day, but that, yeah, they thought the conditions were right for clobbs.

And it was. So we got to find my first clob in the Cherokows. Yep, mine too. That was cool. Yeah. Robin of mine. Really nice specimen. Had some that, you know, mossy green color along the dark bands.

Really nice specimen. I don't know. That was fun, fun find. Any other words about the club? It was a good one. I've seen it in that range. I haven't seen very many of it, but. Yeah, it was a beautiful animal for, I think, the contrast of

pink background and then that lichen green mint green and um you know there's certainly greener ones out there there's certainly pinker ones out there but there's something about the combination of it and very uh still well patterned and yeah it was just a really really good-looking animal um i think the animal was as good looking as the habitat was slippery and brutal all that the lichen covered wrongs that were that were soaking wet and that lichen just it was like on river slimy river rocks it was wild yeah it was a little treacherous um yeah i don't think anybody got injured right no no we all made it through and fatalities maybe the cool part was paying off that spot because we certainly have been out there well do we figured out five

six seven times something like that to no effect so hey i guess they actually are there it makes perfect sense that they are but yeah we hadn't been able to pull it through so that was good Yeah. Yeah. And it was it was extra satisfying that Chuck had just walked past. And I was kind of behind him and I heard the rattle. And so I guess maybe he startled it a little bit. But yeah, we got to kind of check that out for a bit. It was pretty cool. And then on to the palencios. We got in, hiked up a canyon that looked like some nice habitat. a scloperus. Which species was that again? Oh, that's Clarki there. Clarki, yeah. Yeah, that was the first year we went up and over.

That was the treacherous up and over. Yeah. That was, we thought that was the, well, I guess it was the shortest distance, but you had to go up and over a ridge to get there, which was not the easiest venture. I mean, that was still an easier up and over than what Dustin and I had done when they showed up Saturday morning. That was a much worse up. up and over but just that one time for me was enough to say i think i'm going to explore the alternative routes that i have here at my disposal so yeah and rob did just that and found another way i said you guys have fun i'll meet up with you and we'll see what we choose to do so that was yeah

that was good good exploratory uh least trying to figure out where where the best route to go was so yeah i was uh at least seeing a little herb life there and and with all the rains uh i think I guess we didn't have much luck in that canyon as far as reptiles or wildlife much at all, I guess. Saw lots of backpacks and blankets from for some reason. Some legal is coming through there. Yeah, it was kind of a crazy route to take, I think. But, yeah, lots of, I guess it's typical of the border mountain ranges. But Dustin found a big centipede.

Is it a heroes? Yeah, it's a big heroes. They're just out on the crawl. Good size animal. And so he called me up and I ran up to check it out. And we were kind of looking at it, watching it for a bit. And then there was this cool oak tree kind of on the edge of a rock. And I'm like, I want to go check out that tree.

And so I took a couple pictures of that. And then I kind of looked down while we were chatting. And there's this big blacktail, molasses sitting on this rock face, like just kind of coiled up in the middle of this. giant boulder so that was pretty uh pretty fun to see just kind of sitting there so we got some in situ photos and it didn't really get too freaked out um but while we were there taking pictures of it uh all of a sudden dust and i started hearing this like like it said it was like a deep rattle like a big rattle yeah yeah and it sat it was like hard to place where it was coming from but then we kind of look down at our feet and there's all these like tunnels in the dirt underneath us.

So we're like, is there a giant, another rattlesnake right below us here? What's going on here? So, yeah, that was kind of unnerving a little bit to think we were just standing over top of a larger rattlesnake. But this one behaved pretty well. It kind of sat and let us take pictures. It was kind of funny because it lifted its coils and stuck its rattle out just to kind of when we got a little too close. or whatever, so that was kind of a neat thing to see and watch, but really cool snake. Oh, I forgot to Dustin, the clob got your hat and injected a little venom into your hat. Give you a little superpower there, I think. It was cool being with Bob with this handling permits to actually be able to look at one.

They get closer look at it. Yeah, but yeah, getting it to kind of coil up and sit still, Dustin put its hat over. top and he had a swipe at it and injects a little venom there, so it's kind of crazy. I think you had a few, didn't we get a scorpion in there, stinging your hat as well, or something like that? Yeah, something like that. All right. Well, we checked out the Blacktail for a while and made our way kind of down the canyon

looking as we went, and as soon as we, well, I guess, I won't say as soon as because it was a fairly grueling effort to get back to the vehicles. And so eventually when we got back to the vehicles made our way up and over the rise and started to drive out, Dustin and Jordan have our next find there. Oh, yeah, we've got another molasses on the way out on the road. Yeah, this one's fun. I've had this happen a few times with this species in particular, but we were, driving with the windows down and talking, and he just buzzed us from quite a ways off the road. And so I called it out, and we turned on and go back.

And, yeah, he was a fair ways off the road, but a decent size, you know, Black Till just chilling on the side, on the slope. And wasn't going to let us pass without letting us know that he was there and that he was in charge. So another quick photo opportunity there. and then we headed on down. Yeah, took the long way around out of the, out of the palencios and came across a few other herpes along the way, got a snoring gopher snake that was fairly well-behaved,

sat and posed for some photos and stuff, and then got a reasonable-sized atrox. It was pretty fat, maybe, I don't know if it was a graph, A avid female or just a fat individual, but it looked like it had been doing well regardless. So that's, and then on the way home, back on the paved road, got a very large and stinky garter snake. Yeah, we learned that Justin is very fussy about Sweens. I wouldn't necessarily have predicted it, but I guess, you know, at this point, I'm inured to it so it doesn't bother me but uh you seem to quite put out yeah i am no zach loafman i will

admit that freely i do not uh openly handle uh them nofus uh regularly i don't i don't enjoy the smell something like that right i mean that big it was it was good size for sure and it definitely had the equivalent uh shooze yeah big snake big shooze uh rob was almost riding in the back of jordan's truck after that one. I'm like, I don't know if I can let you back in here. My wife might not let me go on any more herb trips if I come back with the car smelling like this. But, yeah, nice. We got to the swamp conditions. Yeah, you can't forget about that. Well, tell us, yeah. Well, we'll get there, you know, when we went the next day or whatever. So when you made your car a swamp. Oh, yeah, that's right. So covered up the shui smell. That's your point, I guess.

Got one more A-Trox on the way back. Did we see anything else? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You guys got a really nice painted desert glossy. The Iberna sub-species of glossy snake. So that was pretty cool. Really nice.

That's my first time seeing that subspecies. That was cool. Yeah. Yeah, they're neat. I've seen them in southern, just on the border of Utah and Arizona on a backpacking trip once. But, yeah, they're beautiful. Yeah. And I'm a hobby as well, I believe.

That's right. Yeah, there was the Mahabia. Where was, that was kind of on the way back as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, yep, a little sleep. And, oh, I guess I'll mention, too, that I was under the tutelage of Jordan

learning how to take real pictures with a big boy camera. My brother loaned me his camera. so I got to try it out and Jordan was kind enough to supply me with a flash that I could try out as well and get to get to revisit learning how to take real pictures. And I think it turned out pretty well. I'm pretty happy with the pictures for the most part. So, yeah, thank you for that. And that was a lot of fun learning that again.

Yeah, stuff you've been posting that's pretty good. Yeah, turned out, turned out all right. All right. Then we were back into the palencios the next morning. Got out a little earlier this time and kind of checked out a new spot. That's when Jordan left us to go visit better things and see, visit family and such. Yeah, I got an opportunity to meet my grandson for the first time. So that was an opportunity I couldn't pass up and head up to Phoenix, which turned into, you know,

I thought it was going to be a nine, eight, nine hour a day and it turned into, I think, like 15, 16 hours driving up there and driving back. So I was sure you guys were going to see all kinds of stuff without me. Well, we were on the right track, I think. We hiked up another area that looked really good. And Dustin and I opted to kind of take the higher out, and Rob took the low route. And I don't know, there were a few, like, whip tails running around, saw some nice tree lizards. They were really pretty out there, really nice patterns. And got another hero.

I don't know. Do you guys see anything else up there? No, just lizards running around. Yeah. And then some thunder and lightning started. And right when we were, Dustin and I were kind of up on the ridge and, you know, not a great spot to be when thunder starts. So we kind of started moving along with the front, just right at the edge and moving out of the line of the rain and lightning and thunder. We did get a little rain on us, but made it back to the car.

Just, I guess Rob was kind of waiting for us a little bit under a tree. But yeah. So it started to downpour. So what did we do? Made the best of that. Thanks to Dustin's preparation. A nice little spot to throw out the awning on the side of the car and cook up some some sonorn dogs. Yeah.

Tasty stuff. Dustin's quite the cook. Made us some bacon wrapped hot dogs and, yeah, it's good stuff. Nice enough to share those with us. And I was impressed with your kit, your setup. You had a lot of good stuff. Cook stove, everything was nicely organized. Yeah, it's been kind of the goal this year just to have a nice, everything to set up

so I can go out for a quick weekend and go herping. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you put me to shame. That's good stuff. I'm like a fly by the seat of my pants. You did a gas station and get out there and hurt. But I think I like your method better. Yeah, the goal is to not have to go to the gas station.

Yeah, there you go. Not that there are any of them going. There's one that's kind of open here and there. Well, yeah, and then it wasn't. Yeah. Oh, cool. Awesome, yeah. Not many options out there for fuel.

But then after all the rains, made our way up a canyon, and Dustin came across our next reptile. find, which was a lifer for me. I was very excited to see these. I was, I'd hear, I'd heard dust and tell stories about finding these guys and how common they were. So, you know, I was, oh, yes, I'd look for him for a while. So, yeah, but I hadn't, hadn't been lucky, you know. So, yep, he ran across a pair of snoring mud turtles. Yeah, there's snowing mud turtles. And in, in one of the newly formed ponds, I think. Maybe, maybe it's been there for a few days. The day before, but it'd grown probably a foot in

diameter since the day before. And I hadn't bothered to check it out. I'm just not the turtle man. Right, right. I believe it's to the turtle man to explore and figure it out. Well, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have thought to look for turtles in there. Like, it didn't see, it wasn't like permanent

water flowing through the canyon or anything, so it's like you wouldn't be resilient. Yeah. That's impressive. It's a giant chunk of its shell, right? Yeah, been chewed on by something. I don't know what's chewing on something that stinky but you know yeah must have uh rob's uh nasal capacity to put up with squeeze a squeezing turtle doesn't seem like a very appetizing meal but yeah that was cool

to see those and um you know i guess the birder in me got excited to see some of the like heila woodpeckers or maybe they were no they were arizona woodpeckers uh hopping around in the trees and stuff. Yep, not much more that day other than a few lizards here and there. And then heading out, I got my other lifer Chelonian for the trip. So another one I was very geeked out about, or the box turtles. And we saw three in pretty short succession on the drive out. And Dustin was a little impatient with me. He wanted to get out cruising somewhere. So he's, he honked the horn when I was out taking pictures of this box turtle and the turtle like lifted its head up and kind of to see what what all the fuss was about or whatever what all the noise was and the the turtle had this

really bold black and white striping on its neck and so I got some nice shots of the the turtle I'm like yeah thanks for for the honk because let me see how nice that turtle was yeah it was all all good fun but yeah kind of backfired you got a way better picture of a boxer than I ever have so right yeah it was a that was a cool cool animal so um but yeah that was that was fun to add that species and on the drive out we found a really well it was we saw that uh texas horn lizard um that was not acting quite right but uh i don't know what was going on with him he didn't want to open his eyes maybe he was trying to hide from us or something and then a really large ground snake that had been hit

that was kind of one of those orange-backed ones with the kind of lighter sides. Really cool look to it. Unfortunately, it was deceased, but cool to see, nonetheless. And then out for

some cruising that night. I don't know that we found too much after... There's some Mojavis and atrocks. Yeah, kind of same stuff. A few times. Yeah, the rain's The rains kept coming, kind of a bad time to cool everything down. Right.

Right. Right. As sun was setting. Yeah. Yeah. Made for good toting, but that was about it. There was some, there was a tarantula around the stay. It was like kind of next to the walkway or whatever.

So that was cool. Big female. More spade foots around the place as well. And the next morning, we opted to. do something a little different than go to the palancios. So we went up into the Cherokawa's high elevation and looking for twin spot rattlesnakes. So of course, as soon as we got there in the high elevation, it started just pounding with rain, which turned into hail.

And, yeah, it kind of doused us. I guess typical for the high elevation stuff. But, yeah, why don't you take it over from there, somebody? Yeah, it was, we waited for like 30, 45 minutes for the rain to stop, and it's quite a drive up there, so he just kind of figured, oh, well, we're here, so we'll wait it out, see if it warms up a little bit as the sun comes, comes, and it was very soggy. I didn't quite expect to see it in, but. Yeah, it was, it was really wet up there. Dustin. Well, and I had the best service that I had the entire trip up there, so I was able to see that it was a quick form.

storm that it just, you know, basically come from nothing out of the West, run super intense up and through us so that, yeah, as we were getting hailed on, it was like, well, this should stop in 15 minutes, and then we'll give it another half hour, 40 minutes, and, you know, in Colorado, the same in Utah, you know, all these things, is like, okay, well, give it a bit and conditions change and those sorts of things. Right. Yeah, I admit, I wasn't all that optimistic, but there you go. Well, and Jordan and I were chatting, and we'd,

We'd all but given up because we kept thinking the sun might poke its head out and warm it up a little bit. And that would be probably ideal for the area and bring stuff out. But it was not. And we were not being very patient with it. And so we thought, well, let's go chase the sun elsewhere. And why you take it from there, Jordan? Yeah. So just as we were having that conversation, between, I don't know, it was my words of your words, we heard buzzing at our feet.

and sure enough, right where we were standing, there was a very large female price eye just chilling there looking at us. So that was fun to be able to see that when we were all but given up and ready to head back to the vehicle. And it was, like I said, just right there at our feet where we had been standing and talking. So that was pretty fun to find rattlesnakes that way. Right. Yeah, very coincidental.

Like, I'm surprised we were rewarded after we were so wimpy and given up, you know, getting to go chase the sun. Yeah. She posed well for us. We were able to snap some shots of her as we saw her there. And then we just moved on, hoping we'd hear another buzz on the way back. Right. But that was it.

Yeah, we went down a little lower elevation and maybe looked for some clobber eye. And Dustin had a really. nice spot when the sun was out kind of hitting through the trees and I mean it looked ideal looked really nice like I was expecting a buzz at any time but we walked around for a good hour or two and yeah I got another life for bird which was nice but it was not a clob so not quite as exciting yeah this is one I'd been chasing for a while a brown creeper because they occur up here but I've just never seen one in my own backyard so I had to go You know, 15 hours south to see my first one. But it's kind of cool. Some really neat mushrooms out there, too. So almost looking like a cow pie or something, but bright yellow and just weird shape. Really cool.

So I hadn't really seen southern Arizona, New Mexico in the monsoon season to see all the mushrooms. Kind of cool. And the cacti were really nice, too. a lot of flowering or fruiting cactus out there. So really neat all the plants in the area. Then we went out looking some more. I think also while I was there, I was able to photograph the straight plateau lizard. Oh, cool.

The little sculloperus that was on the side of one of the slopes there. Right. Yeah. They're cool little lizards. And then, We went out and Jordan got an interesting text. Hard to decipher what it was, but we figured it was Bob asking us to come to dinner.

So he fixed us some food. Oh, I didn't mention a few mornings before that. He had fixed us a breakfast because I think everything kind of closes down on Sunday. So he's like, nothing's open. So I'll just make you some breakfast. And very nice guy, very accommodating. Super generous. And Bob's.

true fashion. Right, right. So he invited us over the house. We went over for some really tasty Mexican food, some really great dip. I maybe ate a little too much of, but it was, it was fantastic and had some visitors over as well. Anybody want to talk about that? Yeah, that was pretty good. So we got, I know Dustin and I were talking to Chuck Smith for a while on the front end talking through old, old herpers, old herp books, those sorts of things. That was pretty good. And then there were a couple folks that had been over in the living room that I hadn't seen. And as one couple left and another couple had come through looking for new folks to chat with.

And it wound up being Wolfgang Worcester and his wife, who were still in town. The students had left a day or two before, but they had four or five more days. And so we wound up talking to them. I think the whole, well, and that's when Brandon turned up, having come over in Southern California. And then I think all of us wound up talking to them for at least, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 minutes, something like that. So, yeah, that was great, obviously. That was pretty cool. And Adeline Robinson and her husband, Chris, were also there.

So that was fun to catch up with them. Chris answered the door when we knocked, and I'm like, he looks familiar. But I, and then I see Adeline, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's who that is. So it was cool to talk to them and catch up. And Adeline was nice enough to put out like a bunch of her stickers of her artwork and just let us take what we wanted. It was pretty sweet. So Heidi's got some nice stickers on her laptop now, a Komodo and one of the rain frogs. So that's pretty cool.

She's decorated up her new laptop. And I put a couple on my incubator. So, yeah, very cool. And just chat, you know, herb trips and finds and artwork and all sorts of stuff. And just admiring the artwork in Bob's house, he's got a giant cassori painting in his living room that's pretty impressive and that Tell Hicks did. So really a cool, cool experience to hang out with them and visit with them a bit. But, of course, you know, the herping calls before too long. So we wanted to get out and Adeline wanted to get out as well.

So she went with us and we went out and to see what we could find, which resulted in another lifer for me. I was excited about the Great Plains towed. I hadn't seen one of those. Yeah, you should also give the context that somewhere, I don't know, an hour and a half, two hours into us being over at Bob's, it started absolutely poor. That's right. yeah so yeah cruising is that was certainly destined to be towed cruising save for the centipede right yeah that was kind of an odd find too out on the road just this big was it was a scolopendra what was this piece polymorpha not a hero yeah polymorpha yeah it looked

looked as big enough to be a hero's but it was a polymorpha yeah it's the biggest polymorpha I've seen yeah that's cool and uh other we saw green to What else? Was that three or four different species? Both couches. Yeah. Yeah. We saw a multiplicata, the New Mexico, the spia, as well as scapeopas, the couches.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the toads are fun. They're just very personal. Those green toads are especially cool looking with their little flat heads. And, yeah, they're fun. But, yeah, last no reptiles that night, but went out the, the next morning, found us back in the Pelancio's, checking out a new canyon.

Again, to not much moving, another heroes in the canyon. Jordan and I were walking along and got buzzed by, it sounded like a rattlesnake, and it behaved like a rattlesnake, but we couldn't find it. It went down into the grass clumps and couldn't locate it, and it stopped rattle snake. after a bit. So we moved up the canyon. And I think the next day, we found like seven whip snakes.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It was the first thing that it turned up. And then Dustin, yeah, it turned up seven whip snakes or whatever. So stuff was moving on the, not where you were. Yeah, yeah, on the other side of the. Stuff was moving, sure.

Yep. And walking back from the canyon, I came across the atrox kind of pancaked in the trail and, you know, came a couple steps of it before spotting it. One of those living landmine experiences, which always gets the heart racing a bit, you know. But really, really nice Aetrox, a nice pink color to it. So that was pretty cool to see. Unfortunately, my camera had, the batteries had run out. So that was, didn't get to try out the, the, the,

my brother's camera on that one but um definitely cool to see and then we um got a whip snake in hand a snorn whip snake uh and got to check that a little closer um i heard it kind of moving through the brush and kind of went down it was went up a tree so dustin was able to grab it and it uh he'd only bit him a couple times you know so yeah as they do you got to go in for the catch expecting a bite or two Yeah, at least he wasn't a wimp. I mean, he went in just no worries at all. But it had a big lump in its belly. We were tempted to try to get it to regurge or something just to see what it ate

because it looked like it might have eaten a snake or something. Yeah, very snake-looking. Yeah. So I guess with a lot of whip snakes around, they're snake predators, so they eat a lot of snakes and lizards. and just about anything they can catch, I imagine. Probably frogs and toads if they can find them. I don't know if they eat toads.

Do you know if they'll take a toad? I don't think so. Yeah. I think mostly reptiles and animals. Yeah. But a really beautiful species. They have kind of a like bluish green head and really nice striping. Cool looking.

The snakes for sure. Very elegant. They're the snake that if someone says the green, rack got away from them that's what it was yeah right very very quick snakes yeah i think uh out of all the ones that was the only one we got hands on right was yeah yeah they're uh fast and smart yeah well um then another mud turtle another mud turtle that uh dust and i walked right past and rob found uh making its way to get out of the way of all these big guys walking more lizards I don't know where he was going where he was coming from whatever

it was but that one was not even near a puddle or anything yeah yeah just going to that's why we weren't paying attention to thinking turtles because yeah there was no water really present there really nice yellow belly on that one um stunk nicely as well so that was good um another good sized trantula or two in the canyon as well. Yeah, too some bronze. Yeah, the mantis was cool as well. The grasshoppermented.

Right. Yeah, they turned into a bug knife. Yeah. And then the big Campanotus O'Creatas, it's in the carpenter ant family. Okay. Real beautiful, red and black, huge, huge ant. Yeah.

But a little stick bug. Yes, assassin bugs, too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I stick into it. Lots of fun invertebrates up. Yeah. And then you guys got to check out the library that night, right, when we got back and see that. We went in and bought a few books and I think did a little cruising, but didn't find much that night, did we?

No, we left pretty late. We went to the library the next morning. Oh, that was in the morning. That's right. Yeah. I think we got out. It was rainy. Yeah.

Didn't think it was really worth too much effort that night. That's probably when the Diadelphus and the Mountain King were crawling around just waiting for us. Like, I thought they'd be out this night. I don't know. You've got to turn in early once in a while just to catch up on rest, I think. Well, and this might be a good point to go back a couple of days because you missed one really cool story, Justin. You and I were cruising up into, yeah, on the east side of the Chirikawa's, and we saw what looked like a miniature frilled dragon. Of course, us two Australian guys.

Yeah. Addicted to Australia, I should say. Yeah. And I was like, was that a bird? What was that? And you're like, I don't know. So I handed you my camera with the long lens. and

and what did you see why don't you take it from? Yeah so yeah it did look like kind of a funny like frilled lizard run to it you know because it was with a red head right like it had this bright red head way up off the ground and was

but it still had like like you couldn't tell if it was two or four legs on the ground right and it was kind of running but with this huge red head sticking out yeah and so I look down on the hillside with Jordan's long lens and there was

this sclopperous uh was it a sclopperus yeah there's a clark's clark guy um with a giant uh grasshopper horse lubber yeah the horse lubber grasshopper yeah which are crazy colorful yeah yeah their their wings are really red i we actually saw one up in the palanseos with yeah that kind of it would display and kind of raise up those red wings as kind of a flash or a warning or something an apisomatic or something. I'm not sure because that lizard was happy to eat it or at least try. I mean, that was a big meal for that lizard, but it was pretty cool. Yeah.

I forgot about that one. Yeah, that was on the way up in the Chiricabas. Yeah, those lubbers are supposed to be pretty toxic, as my understanding. Oh, really? Yeah. Hmm. I wonder how he fared or if they have some kind of mechanism to withstand the toxins. yeah pretty cool pretty cool to see that kind of stuff though

see see those predation events and you know get some pictures i don't know how the pictures turned out they turn out okay they did turn out pretty good yeah i'll send them to you i thought i already had but i will do that yeah yeah i'd forgotten about it because i don't have the pictures to remind me oh and i forgot to tell the story of justin's gulch so we were Oh, yeah. My first drive or drive into the Pelan COs, and, you know, there were some washout areas where the water had come across the road, across the dirt roads. And most of them weren't too bad.

You know, you could kind of slow down and then just drive through them about 30, 40 miles an hour. The gulch was not one such crossing. And I had brought a cooler, like a little, with a little spigot, you know, to pour water out of. and had the great, you know, the great idea to bring this big orange cooler and fill it with water and ice. And, you know, so I could have ice water anytime I got back to the vehicle. And we hit that thing and I look in the rearview mirror and see the cooler, rise about, you know, hit the ceiling about and then turn sideways and just start dumping water and ice throughout the vehicle in the back. So I ran back there after making sure the front end was still attached. and opened the back

and shoveled out all the ice and as much water as I could get, but it was pretty saturated. And then with all the rain, like I took it back to the place and Jordan drove the next day, but I left the windows down so it would dry out, but then it started

to rain, so it was kidding. Well, I think the first day I had the windows up, and it was kind of hot that day, so I opened the car and it smelled like a complete swamp. So that was the reference to the swamp that Dustin mentioned earlier but that was a fun experience yeah i think it was mostly so i was riding with you and this was what yeah so it was either second or third day that we were going down there so

i had been through this previously and dustin always showed great care going into all of these dips and across all the cattle guards and you did not operate with the same level of regard universally across all of these that Dustin always showed based on his sort of lived experience of it and so I was just taking good fun and enjoying the ride of like we took this at half of this speed

and I saw that one coming and was like well I guess we'll see how this goes and you know more or less stop the vehicle yeah it was not one that you could easily cross over I think it ripped off something that then was dragging around the front. Yeah, yeah.

Some of the undercarriage. Yeah, the trim stuff, just plastic, sheeting or whatever. But yeah, nothing vital, thank goodness. And the car is still running okay. I did have to replace a tire when I got back and along the way. Luckily, I had one of those little inflators, you know, the small rechargeable ones. So I filled up my tires a few times on the way. home. So I don't know if it was that event, you know, I know if you hit a curb too hard on

your bike or something, it can make these two little holes. They call it a snake bite or something. So I did get a snake bite on my vehicle, I guess. And so, yeah, fortunately, I had road hazard on the tires and they just fixed it for free. So good times, but yeah, kind of a pain. Yeah, you were out there scraping the ice and I was laughing maniacally as I'm wanting to do. Yeah. Well, it was, it was very funny. Jordan and I were, we were cruising behind you guys, and we'd come up over the hill and like, oh, they got something. Pulled over. It's just just a scooping ice out of the back to his car.

Yeah. I think one more time during the trip, I think, Jordan, were you driving in your truck? Yeah, it was in my truck. I didn't slow down quite. I thought I'd slowed down enough for it with my bigger truck and the big suspension. And I was wrong. We had a good bounce. Yeah. Got bounced around, a bit of tossed around. No, no major issues after that one either.

No. Yeah. Yep. So, yeah, again, the next morning we got to check out the library again, see that. Bob talked about the possibility he's having a giant statue of a mola, was it? Or an elephant bird? Yeah, from Madagascar made to put in there, I think that was kind of the idea. But so it should be pretty cool to see all the developments going on there with Bob and his ingenuity and cool stuff going on.

So heading back into the Cherokawa is another box turtle on the way in that Brandon and Dustin and Rob. had found. And then we're hiking up canyons. We're checking, looking, not finding too much, but... That was the day with Bob. Oh, that's right. Bob went up. Was it?

Yeah. Yeah, Bob and Adelaide. They took him on that... Yeah, short hike. Yeah, straight vertical death march. Yeah, just no water necessary. No water. required, you know.

That's all right. Just a kombucha. Yeah. Glass bottle of kombucha. Yeah. You're prepped for it. Yeah, Bob had one bottle of water or something, glass bottle, and carried it the whole time. I'm like, don't you have more water?

He's like, eh, you know, it's pretty overcast. I don't need a lot of water. And then, yeah, we went up the face of the hillside to get up to into the rocks above. And it was a bit of a steep hike. but Adeline and Chris handled it pretty well, but they didn't spend much time up there because I, Brandon and Dustin and I were up there and kind of looking around like, where did they go? And they were already halfway down the mountain by the time we realized that they'd gone. They were already down by the time I got to the top. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, we each kind of found our own way up, I think. We came up different ways. I, uh, Dustin was ahead of me and he went up to like to the right. Right. Yeah. You went up the center and I went up to the left. Yeah, that's right. So we kind of found independent paths up and then, uh, but yeah, it was a cool area, but just, yeah, nothing, nothing moving. I guess it was kind of overcast, but, uh, highlight for me was as we were going up there, could hear an aircraft flying over and, you know, Growing up there, an Air Force base could tell that that was not a commercial jet that was flying over.

And so I'm looking up and trying to spot it. And it's an A10 whart hog, which is something I'm not, I don't see very often. I know people in the Phoenix area see them more frequently than a Southern California or Texas guys. But, yeah, it was really cool to see that flying over. And as we're hiking a little bit farther in, I hear some more. And I look up and they're doing dog fighting. training above us. And there was at least three dropping flares and pulling all kinds of tight, tight G turns, high G turns and lots of fun seeing A10s being put to task over the

mountains. It was really neat to see and got some good photographs. That was a highlight as an airplane guy. Right. Yeah, we got buzzed a few days by jets out there. And you'd hear you'd hear the jet coming, but the jet was actually a, you know, a good distance in front of the sound. It was kind of trippy to watch the plane fly by with no sound, but then the sounds following it. So definitely faster than the speed barrier there, but pretty cool to see and flying pretty low. Sure, it reminds me, we just mentioned a couple times, and it reminded me that we didn't mention that when Saturday, when Dustin and I had gone out there for the, the first day made a inadvertently made a couple border patrol agents put in uh put in more than they probably expected to for a day's work uh we had gone as i say up and over uh the brutal way

and then we had been in i would probably been in there three hours something like that and i'd gone up on a ridge and come back down it was just sort of you know hanging out casually poking or poking around as i want to do and i see a uniform you know someone in uniform come really trying to put the work in to get up to me and uh he did and i said this is this is interesting and um his partner who was probably carrying an extra 100 pounds or so and was probably 10 years older it was you know uh how to describe it uh hands on his knees you know keeled over uh really regret the day's venture day's misadventure and uh he's got to talk to them for 10 minutes or so and left with a or we left on the note of oh by the way can we see your proof that you

can or should be here legally and whatever and I said sure not a problem at all you're it's a good thing you're carrying your birth certificate around too so exactly man I was fully prepped ready to go yeah yeah good adventures out there you got to you know you're gonna probably see border enforcement agents out there for sure and yeah there's a guy in my neighborhood that's being sent down to the border with the military. So they're getting army patrols out there as well. So kind of crazy. They couldn't believe or understand not only why I was there, but where I'd even come from, where we were even parked in relation to them where I was and how we possibly would have done that. And they had recommended that,

yeah, that I'd go down the wash rather than. Oh, up and over. They were concerned for my sanity. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny how... They took my word on it about Dustin. You know, there's another guy here, and they were like, absolutely now. We're turning around going to do you want to go find him? He's up that hill. He's up that canyon somewhere.

Yeah, for some reason they weren't interested. They were like, we'll take your word for. He's fine. Yeah. It's funny how some of the border agents, like, know, you know, when you say, oh, I'm out looking for snakes. They're like, okay, yeah, they've heard that before, seen that. before and others are like freaked out like what there's snakes out here you know you see the kind of the run of the especially the ones that patrol like heavily herped areas yeah

look for snakes like cool have a good night yeah pass on through yeah good stuff um all right and then uh went back kind of in the uh chiricow area or guess between the chirocows and the palanseos and did a little road cruising and that was uh another fun experience i guess brandon can tell us that story um stopped for a box turtle that was on the side of the road and uh why don't you take it from there brandon do you remember no i do not remember oh okay yeah well when when you uh stepped out of the car to look at the uh Oh, yeah, Rob was getting out and I looked down because there's a big old thornbush And I just see this little patch nose just a hauling his little ass back to the hole he probably came out of

Yeah, and I was like, oh Yeah, a tiny little Yeah, a hatchling with a food bowlist, so he's right off to a good start Got to a good start, yeah, really nice looking snake too really but tiny yeah oh i guess we did did a little lizarding too on the way back and found the other color yeah yeah good baseball dive for a for a colored lizard yeah right on to his flashlight yeah you got it yeah and and he actually sat and posed nicely for some photos was doing some head bobs and like couldn't be bothered uh less by us it was pretty cool

cool looking lizard those are the eastern collards out there right yeah yeah cool stuff but yeah tortoise or box turtle and the patch nose

and we did a little cruising Jordan and I went up a little bit north and saw what a really nice H-Rox some really shy scloporous light like white colored

And I'm not sure if there's Clarki out there or if they're probably Clarki. Yeah, I know at least a couple of them were Clarki, but there was, yeah, like you say, there were some very, very light ones. I thought they were Euros at first. Right. But then they were definitely scleroporos. Smaller than most of the Clarki we'd been seeing, but didn't get a good photo of them. The light was failing us.

and yeah we were had bigger lizards we were hoping to see yeah and the atrocks was really light too really kind of a light yeah it was a really beautiful animal for that area didn't have any the peachy pinks that you sometimes see in that area it was just a very ghostly it was a really neat looking snake yeah really unique um yeah and then i can't remember what else, I think we got skunked that night as well, not much moving that night, or remember what were the other guys? Yeah, of, you know, potentially the scoots on the prairie. That's right. We were certainly in that zone, and as Jordan pointed out, really, a lot of it comes down to the head scalation and does it fit neatly within those?

I'm sure your pictures are the best situated, at least on the one we brought you, probably the one that we didn't, was actually even more likely. or higher percentage of a mix based on the sort of combinations from just the camera shots that we had. But the head scalation on the one we did photograph was certainly in between the two. It definitely looked very Mojave, but I think it was your point. It did have a little more extra of the side blotching than what you'd expect from some of the other ones that you saw there. The tail was a little bit muted, not as much of the cream and black, but still overall it would, you know, my initial gut was Mojave. And so I took some good head shots so I could look at scales.

But, yeah, that was that was Domp Mahavi scolation on the head. You know, you had way too many scales in the prefrontals and in between the oculars. And it was so, yeah, really neat to see that. Because I, of course, heard lots about that. And I've spent a lot of time of that area and photographed a lot of animals there, but I'd never really thought of there being hybrids. And now knowing that there's hybrids and you look at it, it's like, oh, yeah, that's that's not i i mean it's uh if i had never heard it i would never have guessed a hybrid i

would have said oh that's a cool looking mojave but yeah as soon as you look at the escalation it's like oh yeah that is not your typical mohavi so that was cool yeah and wolfcon was out the next morning they were getting ready to go um look at like collect venom from the different from from the hybrids as well as the different species to kind of compare doing a venom study or something and And I asked him, like, how do you, how do you tell the hybrids? He's like, oh, they just kind of look in between, you know, some might look more like a scoot and some might look more like a prairie, but they're, yeah, they usually have some characteristic of both in there. So, you know, you've got to look kind of close. And yeah, photos from Jordan's camera are ideal for that.

You can, you can definitely count the scales from his pictures. Yeah. But you guys also, oh, go ahead. Yeah. I was going to say, as I say, the only bummer of it was, you know, in hindsight, we would have kept the second one, which was actually the first one as well. It had more of a crazy pattern. The head was more typically singular, I would say, but, you know, the body pattern and things were more strange. So, yeah, probably both just.

And what, Dustin, they were within a thousand feet, a quarter mile, something like that apart. Yeah, it was kind of one right after the other. you guys got another species too that night didn't you i think a scoot although i think we got we had gotten a scoot and then we got the hybrid oh didn't you get a long nose as well no am i thinking of that night or then the night before yeah okay that was that night you guys got the long nose or the night snake oh that's right yeah i think it's after i forgot about that one yeah yeah that was that night that we found the night snake was the was the hybrids too the hybrid yeah we did find that and there was an a

drop that we didn't get photos of that we just scoot it off of it was probably again in that same framework a thousand feet quarter mile in front of that first of those hybrids that we kept and uh you know wasn't thinking it reacted really strongly when i put a hook to it and um yeah so it wandered away really quick so that was probably i think that's the only um non-whips snake and coach non-Mastikophis that we didn't get pitchers up online. Then nobody got pictures. Right. All right.

Well, the next morning, we cruised a bit kind of around animus and such. And Jordan took off for home or to go meet up with somebody in West Texas maybe or to go Herp Elsewhere. Yeah, I was going to spend a few days, Herp in West Texas on my. way home and and found a notable DOR, found a full five-foot sub-off in the flats south of Van Horn that had just had its head clipped and was dead, but in very good shape. But I put a tape to it and it's one of the heaviest bodied largest. I have seen a couple bigger, but it was certainly in the top three biggest ones I've seen

and was, like I said, in the flats. Quite a ways away from any rocks, not what I would consider typical sub hoc habitat, almost to the point of where I'd be, you know, start looking for the cisterous down there. So it was really, really not what I was expecting to see there. At first I thought it was an ornatus and thought I was going to, you know, go have a good look at that. And no, it was just a big, beautiful, unfortunately dead suboc on the road. and so that was that was disappointing but uh right did spend uh that evening on the cuts and had one one of the most incredible mammal nights i don't think i even shared this with you guys but found

six ringtails whoa um in one night i was able to photograph one of them and then shoot some video that i was maybe eight 10 feet away from uh at first i just saw some eyeshine it was wearing my head lamp and saw these eyes looking at me from across the way. And I was like, well, I need to know what I'm, what's looking at me. I didn't know if it was maybe, you know, I've got a friend who'd found some young mountain lions, some kittens, not far from there. And I was like, well, that would be kind of cool. But I also want to know that that's the situation, if that's the situation. So, you know, can I ignore? of these or do I need to pay attention to what's happening? So I walked over just to get an

identification and it was very, very curious ring tail and kept popping up and looking at me. So I got some photos, shot some video. And as they start walking away, about another 20 feet away, there's another one. I turn around and start walking back to the cut. And there's one on the face of the cut. And then as I walked another 20 feet down, there's one on the top of the cut. And I look back to see if it's the same one as the one prior. And note, that one was still on the face of the cut. So one time, you know, within five minutes, I'd found four. That's crazy. And then before the night was out, I'd found two more.

So I've got video of three of them and photos of two others. And it was really an incredible night. And of course, it's a good area for spiders. Found some more of the big-eyed hognas and the giant crab spiders, the huntsmen's out there. Nice. Gofer snakes, atrocks, a bunch of scoloporous on the cuts. but uh nothing nothing gray on the cuts that's cool i'd be curious to see the the ringtail footage that yeah yeah that's great yeah well cool yeah i went in uh to the pals for a bit uh and on the

way got a couple more box turtles and i think three uh Texas horn lizards um one was all muddy that was the only one I could get pictures of, but the other three made their way off the road. There's also a havelina crossing the road when I was making my way in to kind of almost complete the mammal diversity for the trip. But no, none of your pets out there, Jordan, the, why can't I think of the... The colladis, yeah, the quadis. Yeah, we didn't see any of those this time around. but yeah so i was i was happy to see a havelina i got a kind of a crappy picture with my cell phone

through the front windshield but that was about it and then uh making my way into the canyon to meet up with with uh the rest of the guys i came across to hatchling mud turtle in that same pond where dustin had found the pair so i guess they're doing their job but it was just the tiniest little thing about the size of a maybe a silver dollar or less really so a really small individual and then saw one of those lubbers that yeah where they they kind of have their green but they put up their green wings and you can see the red and black underneath it's kind of cool but then it was time to get out of there and drove through some pretty torrential rains along that road and saw a couple more box turtles moved one out of the road and

and then went up to kind of head back home, and I wanted to go look again for the garter snake, so I kind of made my way north as far as I could. Got a couple nice atrocks on the night, a couple DORs, and then slept over near this reservoir and woke up to a really nice scenery. It was really beautiful. But then made my way the next morning to the spot. with the garters and found one and decided to drive the rest of the way home. So that was the end of the trip for me.

I think how did you guys end your trip, Rob and Dustin Brin? Yeah, so we didn't stick around. I don't think that too much longer on the day that you had departed from us in the Pels. We went down the other way and found an A-Trox that was staring at the border wall. So we got to take a few photos. That was pretty good. the road a little bit got to ride a pony that was good too then we saw some uh those frogs in that that raging river that was gone underneath that

bridge i pretty sure they were lowland leopard frogs oh cool nice on that way into a week on that way into we saw that uh short-tailed hawk oh yeah that was nice yeah yeah so that's good um I don't know. I think Brandon was on restaurant duty as we came into town and picked an interesting place and kind of with a cheeseburger the size of his face. That was pretty good. There's that pony ride place on the way in, too. Yeah. Yeah, the pony was good.

Yeah, you guys had some fun pictures of Rob for your contact photo. Well, there's one guy. I didn't expedite sharing them, so I'm going on to hold that whole bag. You just have dirt on them for future. Yeah, I guess so, huh? They used up their dirt capital there. There's has been spent. Yeah.

But not the other way around. It really looked like you knew what you were doing there, Rob. A real pro. Yeah, pro-rider. So it's, and then, yeah, we got way, way more rain and thing, you know, that whole area. The fun bit was really what there was. So that A-tracks, there was another scoot. I think that was basically it.

when we went down in the morning yeah tried cruising a little bit but it's a limited effect and then in the morning we were driving back down to give it one more go and it was a good thing that Brandon was paying attention because what was that

probably 20 foot of the southbound lane on the improved section was just gone like a shark you know shark bite out of it and the all the asphalt was on the other side of the road oh god that's crazy

So you definitely, yeah, that would have been bad to just drive straight into it, for sure. Right. Yeah. Then every wash on the way in was full of dirt. Like, it was bad. It's amazing how powerful nature can be. Like, it just, you know, it rains a little bit or a lot in a short amount of time and just washes away. And, yeah, it fills up the washes.

Pretty crazy. I guess you guys are used to that down there. Our monsoons aren't quite so dramatic. We'll get a little bit of rain, but that's about it. All our dramatic stuff comes in the winter in the form of white stuff. Well, cool. It was definitely a good trip. Yeah.

More mud turtles. Then we'd gone back and one more portal store lunch. Yeah. It was good. I think spirits were mixed, right? I'll get things, but no, it was a great trip as always, and appreciate you guys. I think what? We had probably four solid meals over that eight days, Dustin.

Yeah, I think so. Four square meals, so that was all right. Typical, typical of a Rob trip. Yeah, some good death marches in there. Yeah, I think it was good. for all the you know difficulty i'd heard of people having in the pals it seemed like we found you know quite a few snakes and some cool turtles and stuff like that i i don't know it was i thought it was a worthwhile week out there so yeah it's a neat place that was my take yeah i enjoyed

the trip yeah no definitely worth a trip back you know yeah yeah maybe not a whole week but you know it was it was a lot of fun so yeah i would like to get back out there and check it out again so good stuff well anything else to add you guys want to put out your contact information people want to see your pictures your pretty pictures of the palencio's um yeah i'll have mine up on uh parrot reptiles on facebook and uh and phonotography for the non reptile pictures cool All right on Dustin

I just post On Instagram Gecko dot sphere Okay So mostly herping these days Not a whole lot of my captive stuff But I know I'm kind of the same way

I don't put enough enough of I'm JGJLander on Instagram by the way If you want to see my photos Yeah How about you Brandon? I'm cult underscore serpents On Instagram

Yeah A lot of herbs Captive stuff Yeah Yep, and Rob is High Plains Herp on Instagram. Good times. Well, thank you, guys. It was fun to recant some of the stories and, well, relive some of the stories.

I guess we didn't recant anything. Good times. I don't know. It's always a great pleasure to hurt with you guys, and I really, really enjoyed the trip. I think that's what made it bearable and fun and excited. as I got to hurt with you guys. So, yeah, good times. Yeah, it's always a pleasure.

Yeah. Thanks, Rob. Yeah, even when it's not, right? Yeah. It might be fun. Makes for some better stories when it's not as fun or when there's mishaps, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, it was great getting in the field with you, uh, both Brandon and Rob. It was, uh, first time that I've been in the field with, with either of you.

So, uh, good to, to, to, to, uh, good to, to, to, uh, press some flesh and get out there and suffer alongside you in some brutal country and looking at some beautiful animals and can't wait to do it again. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, man, the cold is moving in fast here, so I'm not looking forward to a Cash Valley winter. It would be nice to get out to Australia or something like that. Yeah, the mornings are starting to get brisk here.

Yeah. Kind of crazy, but I... Not over here. It's still burning. Yeah, I imagine Jordan's probably not too cold yet. Mid-90s in the daytime still and mid-70s at night is the low night, so still plenty of warm. Yeah. Hopefully it persists until you're able to come out here next week or late to this month. Yeah, it's not even next month anymore.

Yeah, we got a couple weeks and back out into it. So looking forward to, yeah. Yeah, hitting the Texas Carpet Fest and meeting some of the Texas folks and seeing Reptalandia, hopefully getting out to see some maybe herps in your backyard or in your area. Yeah, it should be fun. Maybe we can knock out a Texas coral while we're at it or something like that. That'd be cool. With any luck, we might find one on the doorstep.

There you go. Yep. All right. Well, thanks, guys. And thanks everybody for listening. and we'll catch you next time for Reptile Fight Club.