Reptile Fight Club - Best first venomous with Phil and Scott

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Justin and Chuck tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of what is the best first venomous with Phil Wolf and Scott Eipper.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

so if i could here we can shit we we gotta Oh, Michael. Shit. I'm just fucking caught up completely. You better start again there, mate. That's it. No, we're keeping it. Fight through it, boys. Fight through it. If you hadn't noticed, Scott Iper's with us. And Phil Wolfe.

Salutations. Should be a fun show here. So, I don't know. What's up, gentlemen? How you doing? Oh, well, I don't know. What's up, gentlemen? How you doing? Oh, well, I'm okay. I'm just watching my opponent here to smash a cancer stick. I didn't know they still have those these days.

You must be a millionaire being able to afford them. Oh, no. See, I live in a free state, so they're still relatively inexpensive. Mate, you live in Florida. You better make out that someone doesn't come through your bulk gun your snakes oh too soon too soon too soon what a messed up thing oh what a fucking joke yeah yeah actually jokes not a ride torment for that is it's it's really really sad. And the overreach was ridiculous on that. That's typical. Typical government overreach. I guess that's – there was a guy in my state that had a bunch of rubber boas, which nobody really cares about, especially when he was keeping them back then.

And had a very extensive collection of you know a bunch of different localities all collected with permits under the proper thing well they they caught a guy uh that was was you know collecting gila monsters out of the wild in utah which is highly illegal and so to to lessen his sentence he turned informant and he went to this guy's house and he said oh yeah is this looks like that illegal population of rubber boas and he said oh no it looks similar but it's not it's here's the paperwork here's where i collected it from he's like no it really looks like this illegal one and all of a sudden the feds are knocking at his door while the state you know wildlife authority

is knocking at his door they collected or they, his whole collection of rubber boas, took it and each, you know, they just kind of slowly died in their care. And I think he ended up getting about 10% of his collection back. And they had a certain amount of time to make the case. They didn't make the case in a certain amount of time. They needed to do all these things. They just kind of went against protocol. And so he sued him and lost and so then he was out you know legal fees and all that nonsense and had nothing you know no there was no accountability so

yeah that that happens from time to time but i don't know what do you do that's i talked well they came and inspected my uh facility when i was getting a business license and um i asked him about that i said hey, hey, you know, what if I did have something illegal? And they said, well, you know, we kind of learned our lesson from something back. And I said, the rubber bow is now like, yep. So they said, we would leave it with you until we made a case for it, you know, take pictures, document everything, but you would take care of it until we could make the case and, you know, find you or whatever. So I'm like, well, at least you learned something, you know,

that's crazy. It's actually interesting. I was, I was just talking with my local inspectors and they were actually telling me that contrary to all the crazy Florida nonsense that's going on, a lot of the investigators are petitioning to lessen some of the fines for captive wildlife because some of the things are just extreme and uh one of the things that they were noticing was with the venomous and the dangerous animals uh air quotes was uh labeling if you sold the animal or the animal passed away and you neglected to remove said label from that enclosure, that is currently a misdemeanor. And they want to drop that down to just being like a ticket, almost like a speeding ticket. And I was like, well, why is that illegal?

The animal's not even there. And they said, well, if there's an issue where the fire department has to go in or we have to go in and we see an open cage or an empty cage with no lock and it says you know cobra on it well we're to assume that it's escaped so therefore we're going to issue manpower to to recover and all this other stuff and i was like all right well if you think about it like that i guess but i still think it's kind of asinine you know what i mean yeah maybe just so so what you how do you label your temporary holding enclosures? The same way that we would label anything else. It has to legally say danger, venomous, reptile.

If you leave off the word reptile, or reptiles depending on quantity, that's a crime. And then depending on the room, obviously the cage has to be escape-proof. The room may have to be escape-proof. So the way around it is that every cage you you just have danger, venomous reptile. Right. Hang on, hang on, hang on. And then you have a label that says quantity. And then all you have is either zero or one.

And you just have that filled in with a whiteboard marker. But you can't. So it has to have the quantity. It has to have the common name then what the whole thing so when you hang on so when you put a snake out when you clean out one of your serastis right right and you drop your serastis into a fucking bucket right you've dropped your serastis into the bucket you put you right on the top of that bucket saying that you have danger venomous reptile sarastis vipera times one into your holding bucket see i don't even have to do that but that's but that's what the legislation you're telling me says no no what they're trying to say is that they come to do a routine inspection right and i have more cages than i ever than i

have animals for and let's say i sold doc sar Sarasties and I neglected to peel that label off. And they walk in the room and they see a cage with a sliding glass door cracked open with no animal in it. And the label's still there. That's the crime. Because I didn't neglect to remove it. Or let's say I'm not even home and I neglected to remove it and there's a fire in my neighbor's house and they decide to break my door down just to see if there's fire in my house and they go in there and they see an open cage with a label and no animal, that's the fine.

Yeah, it's a – So, yeah, it's an easy fix. When the animal is gone, you peel it off, right? But like, dude, sometimes I'm lazy and I don't feel like it. Or send the label with the animal, you know, like – Right, exactly. Attach it to the box or whatever you're shipping it. I mean, and that's –

Velcro labels are fine. The whole point is that – again, I have the Velcro labels. I got the idea from you. But it's just one of those things where a stupid law like that is a hefty misdemeanor that they're actually trying to drop it to just a ticket when in actuality it's it's a dumb law but it is the law we have to follow the law so i just thought it was interesting that they're actually trying to lessen some of the fines because of the the strictness of it regardless of whether it's moral or not the inspectors have tried to drop the fines the fucking the people that can actually make that decision will not be dropping the spines make no mistake there's two people there's two there's two camps here and

there's one camp that won't drop you took a trip up to the the northern cape right scott you have yeah i was up do you find what you're looking for um oh yeah i got i found scrubbies and a few other bits and pieces from up there. But I got a stunning lesser buck whipsnake and a few other bits and pieces, but nothing too exciting. I was hoping for some more venomous and a few other – I was actually hoping for some of the unusual blind snakes up there as well. So, you know, one of the very few people that does trips for blind snakes,

I think, around the world. Yeah. Well, you and Doc have that in common because when we were in West Texas, he was just chomping at the bit to get a Tentilla. Yeah, but blind snakes are like a whole other level. At least Tentilla is like almost like a – at least it's got, you know, reusable eyes. Some pattern and color and eyes, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Blind snakes are the most foul-smelling things on earth, too, I think. They're horrible. The shweez of a blind snake. I don't know. I've smelled Eric Burke's ass before. I reckon that's probably the most fucking...

I don't know. I'm not going to ask about that story. That's good. That's good that's good that's funny well you got your your herb season's kind of winding down right it's getting colder out there are you not so much i'm in queensland mate there's there's no such thing as we just change our herping style um no it is cooling down a bit i had to put um i put all the hay bales and stuff into the parentis and stuff like that this this week but then they're coming out anyway and they're just

basking on top of their fucking hay bales but yeah so it's it's getting down we're getting overnight lows of like um what would it be say 12 degrees something like that and then daytime highs of about 30 so it is cold yeah but it's heating up in the day yeah oh it's just this time of year and then we'll it's it'll get down another month it'll probably get down to about five or six at night and then daytime highs of about 25 so you know horrible weather, but everyone else is going, that's not cold. Yeah. We drove down from Utah, took a dip in the ocean down in California,

and there was nobody on the beach. It was windy and cold. The water was pretty chilly. There was another family out there kicking around in the waves and i went up to the parking lot and they had a utah utah plates as well so we were we were escaping the snow to come down to the ocean it wasn't that bad but yeah from for the californians they were all bundled up uh crying in their bedrooms because it was too cold i was gonna say chuck he's shaking his head right now.

Chuck knows. Every time I complain about snow, he's like, why do you think I live in California? So, yeah. He's got me. He's muted, though, so he's trying to talk. You're muted, Chuck. No, I got it. Yeah, I got it now.

Sorry. I was protecting you all from the from the dog apocalypse that just happened here i think if we get ruby out of here start trying to throw up in the living room oh that's fun scott scott's got his dog as well i'm keeping my dogs out of here too She decided to come in What is that thing? It looks like a cartoon It's a Jack Russell cross bug

Yeah that's about what You would expect it to look like That's a bug eyed wombat She's a lot friendlier than Jasmine Who's the one outside We had a pit bull crossed with a dachshund or something like that. It was pretty entertaining, a little bug-eyed thing like that. That is a different dog.

That is a different dog. That's wild. Come on, moose. Nice. Well, Phil, how's your year going? It's going. Critters are the same. I've never bred pythons on purpose.

And this year was going to be my first attempt at fuscus. And I think they're just too small. They didn't attack each other. They really didn't care. They were kind of indifferent. And no locks, no beehive, no nothing. Just chilling. No inversion. What's the weight uh i have no

idea i'm just winging it man no realistically they're almost three years old but i kept them real lean they're probably four foot ish but maybe i don't know less than three inches in diameter yeah about that yeah about that about that too small wait till inches in diameter. Yeah, about that. Yeah, about that. About that? Too small. Wait until you get, once I get to about that big, that'll be that. Okay. The male will be all right that size,

but the female won't. She won't produce the eggs. Okay. Well, I'm glad it didn't stick. And Leasus too. I find Leasus is probably four years at least. Okay. You can do them younger, right?

And people will. But I find just going that extra year, getting that extra bit of mass on them makes all the difference. It's not so much the length, but it's the mass there. That's good. I don't know. I think, too, we try and breed our animals too young i'm much rather try and do four years old and you know lose a season out and have an extra two or

three seasons on the back end with the animal because you haven't fucking screwed up their reproductive system too early especially something like a fuscus man man. Yeah. Those guys, a few years ago. We saw a monster female up in the Darwin area, big old fuscus girl out crawling around in the woods. It was a pretty cool snake. A lot of smaller ones on the dam there, the fog dam. Well, they get to eight feet. Yeah. And you don't tend to see eight-footers in captivity.

And then you see an eight-foot one, and you're like, holy shit, I didn't realize they get this big. And it's like, yeah, they do, but yeah. Also, I mean, they're such a horrible thing to keep for the most part. I love them. They're awesome. Elliot sent me a video. He was working in this wetland area, and he's like, hey, man, I got a Fuscus video for you. And he sent it to me on Facebook, and it's just like a video of his two boots in, I don't know, 8 to 10 inches of water.

And he's got to be a size 10.5, 11 shoe. And all of a sudden, you just see this monster band of body slither in between his two feet and you're like what is it looks it's like retic size and then he goes over and like kind of moves the the reeds or the grass with his hand and you see it's it's a fuscus and it's just gargantuan thick as his leg crazy that's cool yeah yeah you get those big big ones uh every once in a while they're pretty impressive animals out there yeah yeah well it's herping season in full bore out in florida you got uh yes and no um i recently did a little bit of not even road cruising more just like scouting with the missus and uh haven't seen any pygmies yet i think it we missed like

a couple march windows but we're getting crazy rain and even though the areas that we go herping are they're naturally meant to get that much water i still think it keeps stuff at bay um even less mammals and there's so much water now that even places that were known for like a lot of shore birds like pink pink spoonbills and sandpipers and stuff like that they're just not around because it's just too wet um but saw a bunch of nerodia and saw some garters and we saw a pair of juvenile florida panthers two weeks ago which was crazy yeah i did hear you talking about yeah and uh that was the closest i've ever been i've been really really lucky to see a lot of silhouettes over the past 20 years but this was like full color like could i could have hit him with a rock you know what i mean and to see two of them was wild that's a rare event i think i've seen one yeah cougar up here

and it was the back half of it as it was crossing a road, diving into the forest. I caught the tail and the back legs, and that was about it. Yeah. They don't stick around much. That's all the proof you need. And Anna Maria is like, that wasn't a panther. Those weren't panthers. Those were bobcats.

I was like, there's no spots, and it had a tail. She's like, I don't know. And we drove another 20, 30 minutes to get some cell service. I'm driving, and I see her in the passenger seat like looking at her phone scrolling with her finger and she's like yeah yep that's they were panthers yep nice yeah we we had we found a uh baby um cougar that had fallen and uh and died in in zion it was in we were doing some canyons and down into zion and and uh it was just kind of laying in the wash you know the creek bed and um but it was still cold so it was kind of frozen and you know rigor mortis had set in or whatever

yeah so we set it up like like on the edge of a rock to see i don't know i would just you know probably warped sense of humor but of course that would be hilarious to watch people yeah but no no people were coming while we were hanging out so we we took off but hopefully somebody got a good start a lot of that but yeah maybe another predator got a quick meal maybe so yeah but yeah they're they're amazing cats i i read somewhere that there was somebody doing research on them and they had some collared and so they knew where they were you know and uh they they uh i can't remember oh they were they were you know looking at them through a scope and they were, they were, you know, looking at them through a scope and they were probably mile, two miles away and they find this cat and it's looking directly at them. Like it knows exactly

where they are two miles off. You know, those things are not going to be snuck up on or something. Well, I was listening to, it's funny you mentioned that I was listening to a hunting podcast and Steve Rinella or one of the guys you know and they were talking about how at any given moment the state of florida the biologists they know there's a between like 40 and 50 adult panthers in the state and they assume there's more that they just haven't like seen or or interacted with or whatever but they know for a fact from that and from roadkill because there's a lot of them get hit by cars especially on highway 29 that goes right up the middle of the everglades and the the hunting podcast they're talking about how this is one of the most elusive animals on the

planet and we know from roadkill and science that there's at least 50 adults a year how come we haven't found bigfoot and basically they did like the they did like the backyard statistics and it was like okay if you've seen a panther you're do you if you've seen a wild florida panther that was not in like a zoo or a park or something that means you're 2 000 times higher chance of seeing sasquatch something to that extent so i was like man i've seen a lot of panthers so i should i should see a lot of bigfoot you know sorry owen there's there's no yeah you gotta stop chasing bigfoot man it's it's ridiculous it's getting ridiculous or as casey cannon likes to say american bears yeah exactly yeah for sure i yeah the only explanation is they're shaving and just

blending in among us. Yeah, exactly. My theory was that Owen is part Sasquatch, and that's why he doesn't want anybody looking for him because they'll find him. Exactly. He's got that 5% Sasquatch blood. Exactly. His grandpa was a Sasquatch. Yeah. All right. Well, you guys have kind of – I think it was Scott that kind of sent out the challenge, the glove slap to –

Yes. My cheek still hurts. Goad you into a discussion on – or a fight on is there a best first venomous snake to keep? Is that the kind of sum it up there? Yeah. best first venomous snake to keep is that the kind of sum it up there yeah look i suppose anyone that's been around venomous a long time it's like this is like the ultimate debate that goes around i'm sure anyone that's been works with venomous and had this bloody conversation at some point in time where someone goes oh what's the best first of Edmunds to keep? And someone says, it should be this. Yeah, so.

Anyway, without tipping my hand, you know, I've I have my own personal opinion on this, but then I have argued with many a decent person over the years, so I think I know both sides of the argument pretty well.

Scott, you have your own personal opinion on this? I know. Let's just stun the thing completely. The answer is clear and cliche. The best first venomous snake for anyone is someone else's snake. All right. We kind of talked about that back with you a while back, huh?

Mentoring under venomous snake. We touched base on it a little bit, yeah. We did. I also feel like there's some stipulations to this question, too, because I feel like there's a lot of... There's always stipulations. like there's a lot of I know but just because I want this conversation to go as as clear as we can as clear as we can hey look if you can't if you can't articulate it clearly that sounds like a you fucking problem no more stipulations flip the fucking coin Justin and let's get started. And then we can stipulate as much as we like.

All I'm hearing is just you bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch trying to make up. I can't. Look, a guy or a gal who's getting into venomous can't afford a death adder as a first venomous because it's fucking two grand. So if we take money off the table and just look at the animals themselves and assume that everything is a dollar, I think that'll make the conversation better. All right. Well, let's flip the coin.

Who's, who's calling it? Oh, look, ladies. I was going to say, let's, all right,

well, I'm flipping it. Whoever can call it, can call it there. Obverse. So'm flipping it. Whoever can call it can call it. Obverse. So you flipped it? All right, Chuck, what is it? What is it, Chuck?

Chuck, no, no. All right, let's go distance first. Scott, you call it. There you go. There you go, heads. It is heads. So you got the call. Which side do you want to take?

All right. I will go that there is no such thing as a good first venomous. Damn it, Iper. All right. All right. All right. And since that I have chosen, would you like to defend or would you like to start, Phil? What would you like to do?

I want you to start. This is your shebang. And there you go, Phil. You can crick off as well. Well played, sir. Well played. We call that the sneaky chuck. Yeah, that's definitely now the sneaky Chuck.

That's good. Now you can try and put your bitch-ass fucking stipulations in as much as you want. Yeah. All right. So, clearly. Blood has been drawn. It's all right. It's all right.

We're good. We're good. We're in business. So, let's start with this we if we so clearly scott and his brethren down under don't have access to a lot of the species that many other people in the world have access to whether it be because they don't work in a zoo or let the laws don't permit them to have stuff that's not native or what have you so i want to kind of take that and work with it as well as against it i also want to take the money aspect out of it too because let's say scott says

that i mentioned death adders earlier let's say that scott says the death adder is the best first venomous snake or i say that the problem is is that a death adder in australia is relatively inexpensive because a lot of people breed them and there's a lot of different subspecies and species and races and everything else about it but the united states it's very very small and they're very very expensive most of them start at least a thousand to twelve hundred dollars for a baby go up from there and a lot of people that are getting into venomous may not have those funds allocated for their first pet, right? Or their first kept reptile in the venomous regard. So in my opinion, there's that old adage of you got to crawl before you can walk. And I would say we assume that there is a lot of education, a lot of homework,

a lot of mentorship and apprenticeship and interning that goes along with all of that. And as someone who has mentored other people as well as been mentored myself, or been mentored myself, I would say that you work with whatever is available within reason. So if I'm an apprentice or an intern, I'm brand new, and I'm going to work with someone who has a very large collection, and they have a baby. They have a juvenile cobra. They have a juvenile copperhead and they have a juvenile rattlesnake. I'm not going to start with the cobra because I don't necessarily have the technique to work with those higher speed and less tolerant body mechanics.

Right. less tolerant body mechanics, right? At the same time though, it is dependent on the individual animal and it's also dependent on how well the person is being taught. It also depends on how well the person that is trying to handle has bad habits or not. Are they already a keeper? Are they already a herper? Have they already worked with stuff that was not in this genre? And are they taking those harmless bad habits and keeping them in their mind? Or do they don't have any habits at all and they're fresh and blank and starting with a blank slate? So that would be my first throw at it. Okay. So I'll take your money thing.

We'll start off with that. All right. I completely disagree. If you want to keep venomous snakes, you need to have cash. It's as simple as that. To do it properly, to set your room up, right, even a basic room. We're not talking about room. We're talking about the animal.

That's irrelevant. We're talking about venomous keeping. We're not talking about venomous snake as the individual. We're talking about venomous snake as the individual. We're talking about housekeeping, right? So I'm not talking about somebody that is sitting there drinking beer, smoking cigarettes in a trailer park that's got fucking no sense at all and go, oh, I think it would be a good idea. I'll go up to fucking White Plains or Hamburg and grab myself a fucking copperhead and an alligator and a king cobra and, you know, I've still got change out of 50 bucks.

Like, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about responsible venomous keeping, right? So let's maybe start the conversation off in that regard, right? All right. The venomous community has an expectation across it that we should be doing things in a relatively professional manner and to do things in a relatively professional manner takes cost, right? Now, at the very least, you need to set up a room, right?

Ideally a separate building, but hey, a room's perfectly adequate, right? But to set up and snake-proof that room adequately and have cages in it that suit the mark, then you're going to have significant costs involved. The animal cost is fairly small compared to the room setup cost, right? So, you know, you're talking about covering every vent, setting up either a double door system or setting up some sort of fail-safe on the door to prevent escape, right?

Then you've got to set your enclosures up. Then you need to get all of the tools that are involved, right? Then you've got to set your enclosures up. Then you need to get all of the tools that are involved, right? And then you can start to even consider keeping venomous snakes, okay? Now, it is an old adage, and it's one that is out there, the best first venomous is someone else's, it's not yours, right? Now, I know you said that earlier, and at the end of the day, someone was always going to say it, and that is the reality. So at the end of the day, that's the crux of my argument.

The crux of my argument is the best first venomous for somebody is someone else's. Now, that said, many of the venomous people, myself included, in the community, didn't start with somebody else. But then at the same time, also, too, there's lots of us in the venomous communities that made lots of fairly fundamental errors, too, that have ended up paying for it in some way, shape, or form. And it's not much fun getting any venom, I can assure you. Over to you, sir. Well, I'll give Scott the point on that one, for sure. Great, great.

My flaw in that first initial question is that I made the assumption, we know what happens when you assume, I made the assumption that they already had things set up, they already had hooks and tools and an idea of how they were going to keep it and where they're going to keep it all that because name name me one venomous one green venomous person that you've ever seen that has never spoken to another venomous person that has all this shit together name me one i think i think it's tough because the majority of the people that don't fucking exist phil well no the problem is is that in florida i have to people have to have all this stuff ready before they're allowed to buy one while as in a state like texas that they don't

i haven't really worked with those people and that's a mistake that i've made in this debate and that i see where i see where you're coming from because like I said, in Florida, you can't buy anything until all, everything that you said is already done. So they've already dished out all those expenses and stuff. But again, taking my shoes out of Florida, again, point to Scott. If I lived in Texas, I'd probably find a lot of those people, sadly to say. Well, that was my, when I was When I was a kid, we'd be on a backpacking trip or something, and we'd find a rattlesnake. And I'd say, hey, Dad, can I take this home? And I'd take it home and keep it in the tank in my room.

And I was a venomous keeper. I had a venomous snake. And fortunately, no bites or anything like that ever occurred but uh i found out of course that's illegal to to just collect a venomous snake and keep it in utah so i got rid of those snakes but uh you know i kept them for probably good five six years before i i got rid of them so yeah that's uh i think there's probably a lot of people like that out there, especially 20, 30, 40 years ago, much more so than now. I think we have much better information out there on what constitutes a responsible venomous keeper. Yeah, and I suppose that's the thing, right? So bringing back the argument to what we're talking about,

in the sense that, strictly speaking, it was what constitutes as a good first venomous, and I'm saying that there isn't. The next point to that, or the thing is, is that regardless of the species that you choose, right, whether you go with a southern copperhead, a pygmy rattlesnake, a collet snake or a redbelly or a spit-a-lapse or a viper beres or whatever, right, regardless of the species you choose,

there is always individual specimens that are the opposite to that right and then there is also the argument that if people are wanting to keep king cobras and that's all they want to keep is king cobras the king cobras is their their main focus in life working with a southern copperhead as an as an analog beforehand probably isn't going to help you that much in regards to how to manage if your end goal is to work with king cobras and so having a discussion about what you're wanting to get out of venomous keeping and what you're where you're wanting to go and what your trajectory your plan trajectory is um has a significant implication on what a suitable first venomous snake might be obviously with the exception of the and predating that predicating

that we should always be going to somebody that has worked with venomous before and ideally the best venom first venomous snake for somebody is someone else's that they can work under a mentor. See, I understand everything you're saying and I agree with it. My only thing is that if we're assuming that they have been training under someone else or with multiple people and they're learning the skills and techniques, I don't think someone who wants to keep King Cobras as their end goal, I don't think it would be a bad thing for them to keep something like a Copperhead or a Pig and Rattlesnake or a Burros because they're still maintaining the same protocol. They're still burning those muscle memory things in their mind, how to unlock the cage, how to open the cage, what tools to use, what tools not to use,

and learning those motions and learning all the muscle memory that guys like us take for granted because we've been doing it forever, that they're learning all that. And then they're still going to need to adapt it and modify it and mold it towards a King Cobra because it's clearly vastly different. But the basic foundation of the handling of the safety and the protocol is the same. So I feel like even though someone who their end goal is King Cobra, it can't hurt for them to have kept or worked with lesser intensity of snake, if that makes sense. I completely disagree. I think it can. Isn't that?

I think it can, right? i think i think it can right because this is the problem right if you if you were to go all right my safe zone is is two feet away from this box and then if i open this up and i'm going to have a a distance of i need to set my room up so i've got two feet of distance and i need this and i need that and all the rest of it and then they go to work with the king and they need six foot of distance and they don't know how to open an enclosure and they're not used to having a snake that moves eight feet at them. Right?

You are now putting yourself in a completely dangerous situation and the learnings that you need to have are completely off. All your distances are off. Everything's off. Yeah, but you have to extrapolate for the difference of species and the difference of size and the difference of animal. People are idiots. They don't extrapolate at all.

Right, but we're assuming, see, you're assuming that they're not going to think about this at all. I'm assuming that they've already thought about this and that they're working towards it. You see what I'm getting at? How many venomous keepers you met like okay you can stop stop thinking about the 80 90 percent of venomous keepers that are decent and think about the 10 fuckwits out there sorry i shouldn't swear but that but that's that's where it's at it's the i'm not worried about that the 90 of the people that are decent out there they're fine i don't care about those ones it's the 10 that are they're

the ones that hurt us in the hobby they're the ones that let bloody zebra cobras go fucking walk about for three months and not tell anyone and they're the ones that cause us issues true very true right yeah but i don't see how do i phrase this i don't see someone and maybe i'm maybe i'm naive maybe i am i don't see someone being like yeah man my first snake's gonna be king cobra let's do this and they just go out and buy the first 13-footer import Indonesian snake that they come across. Like most people are not going to do that because of what it is. I literally know people that have never kept venomous and their second venomous snake two weeks in was a coastal type ant. That's right.

And, you know, that's in, they literally did that. And I sat there and I just, and, you know, they had to have their first aid and they had to have somebody do a reference to say that they were suitable for keeping animal snakes. They got that shit and they literally got a coastal toy pan two weeks in. So every, yeah, well, it didn't go as planned, put it that way. Let's leave it at that. Right. Yeah, well, it didn't go as planned. Put it that way. Let's leave it at that. Right? And so as much as you say people shouldn't do this and they're not going to do this and all the rest of it,

time and time again people show us that they do stupid shit. Isn't there a tiered system in Australia for what you can keep and when? Don't you have to have a certain number or is that state by state in some places yeah state by state so some places got tiered systems we've got tiered systems now but we didn't historically um victoria doesn't have a tiered system you get your you pay your money for your advanced license you're over 18 and get yourself a saltwater crocodile and a coastal type in tomorrow and there's people out there that will sell them to you wow not not every venomous person is responsible

to like we're anally you know mean tire anally retentive when it comes to choosing who our venomous snakes go to um because we want the animals to survive and we want the animals to be looked after properly. So it's not everybody's responsible, unfortunately. I feel like, and I totally agree with you, I do, and you're bringing a lot of light to what I was being honestly naive to, and for that I appreciate it. I just think maybe because of all the newbies that I've seen over the years, especially in Florida, most of them, if not all of them, had extensive work with a wide assortment of different species, regardless of what their end goal was. And then they they worked up to that.

So like someone who, again, we'll use King Cobra because it's so extreme. Someone whose heart and soul wants to, the end result is King Cobra. They've worked with countless different sized species and then fully and found someone who had some big diesel kings and learned from them they they didn't just go and buy it and and i feel like that's my that's my flaw in this argument is that i was not considering or thinking about the yahoos at hamburg going man look at that 12 foot king cobra in that box i'm taking that home i got 1200 bucks in my pocket so yeah but that's how you know that's how someone ends up with a fucking tiger you know yeah it's the same and this is the same thing right someone goes and you see it in big cats you see it in all sorts of stuff you know someone goes oh i'm gonna bring myself a tiger home or i'm gonna do this and okay yeah it's a snake that's this long in a box initially but in 18 months time that snake is now eight feet long nine feet long and it doesn't go back

into that plastic box very easily anymore and then suddenly you're dealing with an incident because somebody either and there's one of two things happen right the person either catches up and learns how to deal with it or they don't learn how to deal with it and if they don't learn how to deal with it two things happen then right you either have an animal that's neglected right or you have a person that gets bitten it's one of the two that's that's the reality right and so unless there's some sort of support network for the people that are working with these things, that becomes an issue. So again, it comes back to, I don't think there is a best first venomous.

I think it's the best first venomous to someone else's and then you gain the experience to then work out what your trajectory is going to be. Because you might come into working with venomous and go, all I want to do is keep a king cobra. And then the first time you actually work with a king cobra or you see someone else work with a king cobra ideally, right? And that king doesn't behave itself and it charges at the person and it growls at them. That person then walks around and go, you know what? I don't want to go down that road anymore.

True. And I've seen that with people with tie pans. I used to have people come and say, oh, I want to keep tie pans. And I'd pull out a tie pan that is spirited, shall we say. Spunky. And you pull out something that has a little spunk to it, and you see the people's face, and they go, no, I don't want to work with Thaipen anymore, right? And, you know, these things, and when you explain to people,

is it, yeah, okay, you might get anivine, you might survive, but it is a may, it is a might thing. It's not a guarantee, right? And then suddenly, you're like, well, actually, maybe I don't want to keep those things anymore. So if only about 10% of the venomous keeping population are morons and the rest of them are doing things the right way or moving in the right direction. Let's talk to that group. What would you recommend or what would you think is a reasonable first venomous snake for somebody that's just getting into it? I mean, does that argument still stand that if you're trying to get into it legitimately, that there is no best first?

You know what i mean i still i still say that there's no best first venomous because it's a case by case basis yeah but it's still a case by case but you can also argue that if you're if you have someone who's completely novice and that maybe they've worked with a little bit of harmless stuff i don't know corn snakes ball pythons whatever and they want to dabble to see if they really like it there i would much rather have them interact with a copperhead or a pygmy rattlesnake or a death stuff, I don't know, corn snakes, ball pythons, whatever, and they want to dabble to see if they really like it. I would much rather have them interact with a copperhead or a pygmy rattlesnake or a death adder than I would say a baby cobra or an adult western diamondback or an adult collets.

You know what I mean? And I feel like even those species are more tolerant of us, especially someone who doesn't know what they're doing, than, say, species that aren't. There's species out there that provide less risk for the most part to people, right? And they would be more applicable as a first venomous, right? But what that species is for me versus you versus justin versus chuck may all be different sure and i'm not even talking about toxicity i'm talking about like riding a hook or general husbandry how how how easy it is to feed them opposed to

other species that need more uh attentiveness and i feel like it someone who wants to end goal type hands it would dynamically behoove them to start with something that will ride a hook and eat every time and work with that for a while whether it be someone else's or theirs whether it be a copperhead or a cotton mouth or um sarasties you see i'm saying and then they say that's interesting right so you're saying so all right so i'll ask a question here from based on what you just said then sure is you if you're wanting to get somebody to learn you want them to start with something that rides a hook if they have no idea what they're doing, absolutely, because I want their experience to be a good experience. No, I'm the exact opposite.

Hang on, hang on, let me finish. You want somebody to be able to deal with something that's a problem. Eventually. No, no, no. You're wanting people to deal with problems, right? Not the easy way out, right? Yeah, I could hand you a death adder that sits on a hook every day of the week right and then you'll you'll have the pre-misconception and it is a misconception that you know how to handle death adders because the death adder that you handle

sits on a fucking hook yeah but right if i give you a death adder that's like a piece of wet spaghetti that is never going to sit on a hook and you learn how to hook that and learn how to manage that snake, right? Then when that death adder that usually sits on a hook sits on a hook, you're like, oh, well, this is easy. But you still have the tools and the ability to work with the animal that doesn't want to sit on the hook. Because that death adder that always sits on a hook won't sit on the hook one day. Sure. Right? Sure. Right? Sure.

And if you don't have the ability to be able to do that, right, and deal with that snake, then you just shot yourself in the foot. Well, all right. So let me say this. I don't know how the driver's license system is in Australia, but let's assume you have a 16-year-old human being, okay, who has driven with their parents, who has driven in a car with friends, who has been a passenger in a automobile their entire 16 years. Do you say, hey, here's a set of keys. Let's go to a parking lot and learn how to, you know, idle the car and put it in drive and maybe shift and use the clutch and whatever else and learn in a controlled environment in a parking lot? Or do you say, here's the key, key start it up you're on the side of the highway traffic's booking it you know 100 kilometers an hour figure it out like no i want to start them off with a controlled scenario in a parking lot and then

say oh yeah you didn't know that if you let go of the steering wheel it's going to move on its own it's going to right itself that's the same way that i'm looking at it yeah they may have but the controlled situation here is the species that you're choosing right the species that i'm choosing as well as the individual animal that i'm choosing because i'm not going to give them the wet noodle right out of the gate because i don't want their first experience to be a negative one i don't want them to get frustrated i want them to to learn basic mechanics yes yeah i want them to learn basic mechanics and and and learn the muscles and the techniques and the thought

process of how it's going to go. And then eventually, once they've gotten pretty good at that, then we'll give them the wet noodle and say, look, here's the same exact animal that does not ride a hook, and now you need to have a container within a container because it's going to slide right off, and you may need to have rubber-tipped forceps or two hooks

or whatever it may be and work their way through that parking lot before you throw them on the highway you see what i'm saying you say but didn't you say that these people already have exposure to snakes well and that's the thing is that they may have exposure to snakes but that may not be anything that may be as simple as i have a corn snake in a 10-gallon fish tank and my extent of handling it is reaching in and picking it up and taking it out. They're not using tools to open the enclosure. They're not using tools to remove the – You can do that with venomous too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You make a mistake. It's a problem. Yeah. And I see what you're going. I 1,000% see what you're driving at but for me if i'm if someone is has bad habits from keeping harmless or no habits at all because they've never kept snakes or kept reptiles before i can't just give them the keys to the maserati on the on the shoulder of a fast highway and say knock yourself out man so the thing

is right is that if you're working with venomous right you should be you should already have some clue as to what you're doing right and so you should already if you from a captive point of view you should be working with non-venomous snakes beforehand and so when you're saying about in using your analogy they should already be able to drive a car but see that's the thing is that there's i would rather teach someone who has never driven a car before and has no bad habits than someone who has been driving wrong for 20 years. You know, and I used to get guys in the in the in the pet shop because we used to do the venomous classes in the pet shop. And I'd be like, hey, man, I've kept boas. I've kept pythons for like 10 years.

I really want to move on to venomous. I kind of want to, you know, expand my horizons. And I'm like, all right, cool. Show me how to take out this, you know, rat snake, you know, and they just do everything wrong. And I say, all right, cool. Now let's go do it to this pygmy rattlesnake. And the mindset changes, right? Because they know it's dangerous. They know it's actually dangerous, but they have so many bad habits that are very difficult to undo that they, that it takes them twice as long to undo them, to learn the correct technique in the correct proper way. So I would rather train someone

who's never kept a pet snake, they've only had lizards their whole life, than someone who has kept boas and pythons and harmless colubrids, personally. I don't disagree. I don't disagree that it's easier as a trainer training somebody

that's a blank slate but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to be a better starter. Does that exist though? I mean are there people out there that just go I only want to work with venomous reptiles and so they're waiting to start that journey? From a catching point

of view yeah yeah, definitely. I teach people all the time that are completely green. Yeah. You know, so when I'm teaching people in the industry how to catch some of the most toxic snakes in the world, I suppose, you know, I'm teaching them and they have no interest in working with snakes and they're actually really easy to work with. They're really easy to teach

because they listen to what you actually tell them to do. But working with a venomous snake you know in a wild situation versus a captive situation is very different and you know the reality of it is is that if you work with venomous snakes right and we and i don't really care which which species it is in a captive situation at some point in, you need to use these things, your hands, right? And you're going to put your hands on that snake at some point, right? Now, it's all a big learning curve on how you put your hands on those animals. And it's a big teaching thing on how you put your hands on those animals.

Because the minute that you take away the hook because the minute that you take away the hook the minute you take away the tube the minute you take away the jigger etc is when you're actually going skin to skin to scale so to speak that's when the the the risk level completely heightens and that's where i start to look at you know best first venomous that's where it becomes an issue because one of the you know people say death adders are a good first venomous, that's where it becomes an issue. Because one of the, you know, people say death adders are a good first venomous in Australia, and I've heard them say it overseas as well. You know, you want to get into keeping venomous, you know, death adders if you can get your hands on them. Because they used to be cheap, right, Phil? They did used to be a $50 snake.

Sure, absolutely. Poblenogini retail for $150. Yeah, but they used to, right? So they used to be a fairly cheap animal. Death adders are great. They're a great, easy, venomous snake to keep when everything's going right. But at the moment, I'm currently, me and Ty, are force-feeding a shitload of baby death adders at the moment.

We're putting our hands on them all the time. And that's a dangerous activity because you've got to pin them down and then you've got to try and pick them up and then hold them in the right spot and they've got large mobile fangs that can pop out the side of their jaws or pop out from underneath their jaws and if you don't know where you're putting your hands exactly right you're going to get yourself into a position that there's a problem right when you also pin that snake they spin that violently in their body that they can snap their neck, right? We've got to remember that the first venomous person, right,

the first time that they're working with venomous snakes, it's not when they've got somebody standing over their shoulder that is when they're going to perform poorly. They're going to perform poorly when no one else is in the room, right? And they don't even know that they're making the mistakes at the time, and that's where the concern is, right? And whether that first venomous is a pygmy rattlesnake, a death adder, or a fucking taipan is irrelevant, right?

But at the end of the day, it's still going to be a problem. Now, I would suggest that, you know, there's certainly a whole suite of species out there that are probably a little bit more forgiving, right? Yeah, tolerant. You know, towards people beginning. It allows people to make more mistakes without having the a the worst case

scenario event taking place right sure it's not to say that they can't do it but it's just to say that there's they're more tolerant of it right and and you know i suppose cop pairs are probably one of those um a kiss for it i should add into that yeah um so there is stuff out there that is relatively good you know boyga melanota you know the mangrove snakes are probably a pretty good case um uh hognose snakes uh lawyer heterodon um though madagascan hogs etc etc yeah technically venoms but i mean they can teach people how to work with large mobile mobile snakes with having less of a chance of a serious venomation, I suppose. But are they the best first venomous? It depends on what you're trying to get out of it and depends on what those people are trying to do.

That's true. And so to argue a particular species is a best first venomous, I don't think is a possible thing. Yeah, I think… Over to you, Phil. I think I'm not going to disagree with you at all. I'm not. I will say, though, as much as we talk about it being the species or the individual animal, it really comes down to the circumstances too. Like I said earlier, I was naive in thinking that people were doing their homework

and getting their training and doing all that, and there are a lot of people out there that are not. There's also a lot of people that are, too, right? Sure, sure. I'm not taking anything away from those responsible people. No, yeah, we were saying the 90% or whatever. Yeah. It's that sick. I feel like it would still behoove the veteran keepers to make recommendations like a Kistredon simply for the rudimentary training as well as the more tolerance of the animal, more tolerance of the species. And I would say that I have no problem personally telling people, look, you should train with what you want to keep,

but if you're super green, you should not be going right for the gusto. And one of the biggest things in the United States is gaboon vipers. Everyone wants a gaboon viper until they actually keep it and they realize that it's a super pain in the ass snake. They never move. When you want them to move there. They don't, they don't, they don't respond well to the hooks at all. You have to use double hooks for everything, wide hooks, V hooks, all that stuff. And they're extremely chill until they're not. And they lash out irrationally and everyone wants to keep a gaboon viper so

everyone's like oh yeah i'll get a baby gaboon it's great it just sits there rides a hook and it's like that is not a good beginner animal in my opinion there's nothing wrong with keeping one i keep them right it's working up to that and learning the traits of it and yeah you may be using a copperhead to start and then eventually move on from that to something in the bit of genus right but everyone wants to get this gaboon viper and then they get it and they hate it or better yet they get to the point where they're ready to get it and they've lost interest because they've already worked with a bunch of other people's stuff and it's it's lost its luster you know they realize that it takes a special person to enjoy it even though everyone has them.

It takes a certain individual to keep them long-term, if anything, if that makes sense. I suppose it's interesting. We've published on working with venomous snakes and keeping venomous snakes and stuff. Literally wrote the book. Wrote a book. Wrote the book. Wrote a book. Wrote the book. And so, you know, we got asked by the publisher, could you recommend First Venomous? And we said no, right?

And the reason that we decided that we would not say this is a good First Venomous is because we don't know the people's situations. However, what I can do and what I'm always happy to do is tell a whole heap of people, a whole heap of snakes that aren't good first venomous, right? And so I can tell you a heap of stuff that is not suitable as first venomous, but I can't tell you what is a good first venomous, right? So anything that's in Chitanea, anything that's in chitinaya anything that's in oxyrhanus any of this in dendroaspis any of that stuff you know protobothrops um both rocks itself um all of that stuff is just a fucking no you don't work with that stuff as a first right um

so there's a lot of stuff out there there's not a good first venomous but at the same time it's not to say that you can't work up to working with those species that's what your end goal is so yeah do you find that um more experienced keepers get a little lackadaisical. And so you almost have a better student with somebody who is less experienced because they, they're acutely aware of, you know, the danger that they're dealing with. Like in the, in the lab, you know, we have new, new people working with viruses and they're always kind of on their best behavior and always wearing their PPE and, you know, those kind of things, because they know, you know, if I mess this up, I might get infected. I might die of a viral

infection, you know, that kind of thing. So do you have a similar situation with venomous keeper? Whereas, you know, the people who have been working here for five years, things often happen to them because they just stop, you know, focusing on the danger and they start getting into the mundane routine of it and that's when they get, you know, have an incident in the lab. Yes, yes and no. I think the problem is that it's a trajectory, right, and each person is different. So to make assumptions on people as a whole, it's a pain in the arse. But I've worked with a lot of venomous people over the years

and I've had a lot of people come from overseas and things like that and come around and I've worked with venomous snakes with them and seen the way that the experienced people have worked with venomous and it's pretty clear that some people are experienced and it's pretty clear that some people are experienced and it's pretty clear that some people aren't um at the same time um you know i also experienced it recently where you know we we've we went overseas and you know we were catching vipers and and all sorts of stuff um and you know know, I'd never handled, you know, Trimiserious Insularis before, and I caught them just fine.

I didn't get myself in any positions that I was in any risk. And then we were catching Latte Cordata, and the people were freaking out. And, you know, like, mate, this is a lapid. I'm used to working with these things. And they were like, oh, really? Oh, you can handle it? Yeah, I'm just handling a lati quarter.

So it's not hard. I was a hell of a lot more comfortable, though, dealing with a lati quarter than I was a trim assurance. Right? And a trim assurance is something that is, you know, I've seen before people have said, oh, yeah, trim assurance, keep them. They're not a hard thing to keep well yeah i work with type bands i don't find them them hard to work with either but you get the wrong person around the type and they have trouble so so it just

depends on your experience levels and it depends on how willing you are to understand that you are a novice with things and so when i approached that trimissurus i approached it with a good safe distance i judged the length of the snake and this is what experience does allow you to do is it allows you to to look at the length of that animal and go well if that animal is is 450 millimeters long I know it can't strike any further than 450 millimetres. So as long as I can manage that animal outside of that strike distance, then that's fine. And you see the same thing day in, day out with people that work with pythons or something like that, and then they come across a rattlesnake. Well, they may not work with

rattlesnakes but they've learned that they need to stay outside that length of that strike range of that snake and they judge that strike range to a point where they can still curl up said rattlesnake so they can get their photos and all the rest of it but they're not not really experienced venomous people at all the other thing to remember as well is that a venomous snake bite is like a swiss cheese effect right you can put layers of things in front and layers of controls in front and all of those holes have to align for you to actually get that bite so you could have a you need a snake that actually wants to bite in the first place you need a person that gets within the strike range. You need to get the snake on the right angle for that snake to actually strike in the first place.

And so all of those things have to arrange. If those things don't arrange, the person doesn't get bitten. And half the time they don't realise how close they came to getting bitten. And that's what you see experienced people all the time, where they get so close where they could have been bitten and they don't realize that they were in that position. Yeah, that's well put. I also think that speaking for the majority of bites in captivity

or even close calls in captivity, I feel like the majority of the people that have those interactions are either very, very young, meaning early 20s, full of piss and vinegar, think they know a lot, maybe they're just getting into it and they haven't learned as much as they should for whatever junction they're doing, or people that have been doing it for 20-plus years and they got complacent.

And the majority of the bites in the u.s believe it or not are actually after 10 p.m because they're like oh man i forgot to change that diamondbacks water bowl always on the other side of the four-foot enclosure i'll just grab it with my hand real quick and it's like no it's already late you've been working all day you're groggy the snake has no idea what's going on. Now this giant heat source just walked into its enclosure, and accidents like that happen. So just to kind of add to what Doc was asking, I feel like the veterans that keep, like Scott, who have an idea. Again, he'd never worked with Insularis before, but he had an idea of the parameters so that his swiss cheese was really wide and didn't have that many holes you know what i mean opposed to somebody who's brand new

and doesn't know the swiss cheese effect or has been doing it forever and not to mundane it but forgot about the swiss cheese effect if that makes sense oh look and it's the thing it's the same thing when i'm cleaning enclosures on baby death adders or something like that right yeah if i see that the death adders on one side of the tub i know that it can't physically get across to where i am now i should by rights take that snake out of the enclosure put that into a holding container and then pull out the water bowl but i don't do that i just pull the water bowl out right that's that's the reality right i can bullshit you and say that i don't do that but that's that's that's the reality now do i put myself at risk yes there is a risk there but

it's a controlled risk and it's a risk that's mitigated by my experience right but but make no mistake there is still a risk there but there's a risk when you open the enclosure as well as soon as you open that that enclosure there's a risk right um so you know we anyone that's working with these animals i suppose that there is a level of risk it's whether or not what what level of risk you're comfortable with and how you mitigate those said risks. Yeah. I also feel like there's a way to not diminish. I don't want to say that. There's a way to eliminate some risk and make that window of risk super duper small. But what happens is people get lackadaisical and they say, you know what?

I should use hemostats to remove that water bowl. But you know what? The snake's on the other side. I've done this a million times. I'll just use my hand. And oftentimes there's distance and sometimes there's not. And I feel like that goes along with it. And I'm not telling Scott not to do that.

Scott's been doing this way longer than me. Scott knows exactly what he's doing. But there are some people that don't and they should have used the hemostats, and they didn't. And I think that's a fact. So the thing is, it's ingrained in our own, in our lifestyle. Every day we use safety controls in our being, right? How many of us have had a car accident in the last month? Any of us have had a car accident in the last month any of us no but the last time you

drove the car though you were wearing your seatbelt yeah yeah right so it's not a um it's not a bad thing to use safety measures and safety protocols right and even if they are ingrained and all the rest of it at the same time though we don't necessarily do every everything we should at all times the way we should yeah right and setting ourselves to a position of an impossible standard to maintain is also too something that needs to be articulated as well right is that you are always going to deal with animals at some point in time when you probably shouldn't right and the risk level is higher for those that have less experience than for those that have a greater length of experience the problem is is that the longer your amount of experience the more likely you are to cut corners on things because you do

become lackadaisical when it comes to opening something you know you watch somebody that the first time they open up a venomous enclosure and you know they can be shaking right they can be absolutely shit in their pants the first time they do it and they should be they should be it's a scary thing to do until you do it every day for the last 30 years and you sort of go oh yeah okay it's like falling off a bike you know you just do it um and so that's that's where it becomes an issue too is it but we're not talking about how experienced people get bitten by venomous snakes we're talking about best first venomous and so that has a connotation of novices so yeah well all right so to – I love what you said. But just to go back onto the initial debating topic, are we factoring in – you had mentioned earlier about how death adders are – people say they're great for sphenomus and blah, and GI issues because they're not getting what they need. They're only getting a pinky leg or a pinky head or whatever it may be or a lizard tail or something.

And I feel like that is something else to look at in terms of a good first venomous snake is how much – go on. This is why, Phil, there is no such thing as a good first venomous yeah but what i'm trying to say is that there is there there is such things as good first venomous snakes and maybe maybe again maybe i'm being naive and thinking it's not that it's a good first one is that there are several that fit the criteria of a possibility, right? In terms of being tolerant of human interaction, of drinking enough and eating enough and pooping enough and not having to have crazy environmental conditions set for it. You know what I mean?

And then going back to post. So would you argue, would you argue fair, in fair point, right? Yeah. Southern copperheads, northern copperheads whichever they kiss for it on copy right would you argue or would you agree that both them and pygmy rattlesnakes are probably the two most commonly recommended first venomous snakes out there i would say that in the united states they most definitely are but i would argue against the pygmy because of the baby feeding issues.

I was going to say, right? So what's it like grabbing a copperhead by the head? Pan the ass. Because I've never handled, I've only ever hook handled them, right? Yeah, they twitch bite. You know, they're very reminiscent of death adders. But I also feel

like the, and again, this is all anecdotal, the odds of you having to assist feed are less as well as the odds of you having to get hands-on early in your training, early in your experience are less. So – and again, we're taking toxicity completely out of it. I'm not worried about the toxicity. Toxicity is irrelevant. I'm not worried about the toxicity. I know we discussed earlier about how the price of the animal is completely anecdotal because you have all this initial startup cost to get up to speed correctly, right? To get your room up to code, to get your tools and everything that you're going to need to pursue this endeavor. But I feel like a lot of people that get into this, they are not made of money. And

as much as they want a death editor to be their first one, and they took what we said tonight, not you, what we said tonight, if they make, they do make a good first snake because that's what I want. And that's my end goal. They may not have 1200 bucks to dish out for it. So the question is, do they just save their shekels and wait and maybe still train with some other stuff or not keep anything at all? Or do they start with something else like a $50 copperhead that they know they can give back to the pet shop or they know they can give back to the breeder and work with that in the interim while they save their pennies to

get to the end goal of, of death adder. I bet they're spending their shekels is what I bet. Well, and we're also, I think a lot of creeping in is like talking about feeding babies and things. We're not talking about breeding.

First, an early keeper breeding these animals, so that kind of takes that out of it, especially for the novice, having to worry about assist feeding. Unless it's a wall-caught snake that has of it, especially for the novice, you know, having to worry about a cyst feeding. Unless it's a wild-caught snake that has a clutch that gives birth. Well, hopefully they would say, I'm too novice for this. I'm going to turn this over to somebody who has more experience, you know.

We can hope. He would hope so. Or they see the lost lines going, I can sell each of those babies for 50 or 100 bucks each, and now I can afford my death adder. Yeah, that's true. That is true. That is true. How many times do you see that with pythons as well? Right.

Yeah, how many people have come to Chuck and go, Chuck, I want to keep scrub pythons, you know? You know, and then you deal with a big nasty scrub and you're like, yeah, I don't want to deal with scrub pythons, you know. You know, and then you deal with a big nasty scrub and you're like, yeah, I don't want to deal with scrub pythons anymore. So it depends on the people, right? So if you've got somebody that's responsible and all the rest of it, then, yeah, you're not going to have too many issues. But if you have somebody that's not responsible, then you're always going to have issues. And that's irrelevant to the species but aren't you always going to have somebody who's

not responsible well i i think too like if if you're you know if you want somebody to have a good first experience you're going to recommend something that you know doesn't just like you know for pythons you're not going to say get a white-lipped python they're wonderful you know doesn't just like you know for pythons you're not going to say get a white-lipped python they're wonderful you know because they squeeze on you they i mean yeah and i mean scott would you honestly be like so if i'm like scott dude i want to get into venomous what what do you think i should do would your response to me truly be there is no good first venomous and walk off. No, my response would be, why? Okay, so you're looking at this from like a... And that is my response.

And kind of like an end track, like a track or more like a goal, whereas like when I hear this, what's the first venomous? It's somebody who like doesn't know shit you know what i mean and they're just like i don't know what's the best first venomous like they don't they're not they're they're kind of even outside of like the knowledge track to even get into that kind of like thinking you know what i mean and so my response to that right when someone comes to me right well we can play that out if you like chuck right if you say no no no what's the first best venomous i'm going to turn around go well what do you want to keep what are you wanting to get out of this chuck what do you want to keep because there is no good first venomous

right that's the reality now i can teach you how to keep venomous snakes. That's not a problem. But do you want to ask yourself, are you fit to work with snakes every day? Do you want to spend $20,000 on setting up a facility and getting antivenom and all that sort of stuff? Or do you want to turn around and go, hey, it's cool that I keep a rattlesnake? Right. Yeah. Right? And that's how i start that conversation right now if that person is is half serious about it they turn around and go all right well i'm

well can you explain a little bit more i don't quite understand where you're coming from and i'm more than happy to go down that road but if the person goes no mate i just want to keep her i want to start keeping venomous snakes because i want to keep tie pants all right cool no worries well i'm not the person you need to talk to you need to find someone else to talk to because you're not going to have a good conversation with me and i'm just going to get frustrated and waste my time so you kind of stratify that conversation to kind of uh you know weed weed out the the people you're not, you know. Yeah, 100%. I'll talk to anyone about it initially, but if they want to be a fuckwit about it,

then I'm not going to waste my time. I'd rather spend time with somebody that doesn't, that actually wants to do it properly. And if they want to do it properly, I'll spend all the time in the world with them. I'll help them as much as I can. And I get emails literally from across the fucking globe about working the venomous snakes and i'm more than happy to compose a message and

talk to somebody on on message or talk to somebody in person or whatever for as long as they need and i'll do it for free it doesn't worry me right but at the same time i don't want to waste my time with the fuck with and i think and i think that's the and it's the same too, I don't want to waste my time with the fuckwit. And I think that's the... And it's the same too with you, right? If I said to you, I really want to work with scrub pythons and I want to know about it and all the rest of it, and I go, yeah, but I just want to keep them now, you're not going to waste your time on talking about the finer points

of scrub python husbandry with somebody, right right if you think that there's going to be no value in it right but if you think that that person is actually genuine in what they're asking and that they're going to you know they've already got somalia or they're looking to get somalia and this is how they want to set them up and they're wanting to some information about how they're going to keep them properly or whatever then you're going to generally be more conducive to wasting, spending your time, wasting your time, however you want to call it, spending your time on teaching that person on how to work with scrubs so they have a good experience.

Because at the end of the day, we want everyone in the hobby to have a good experience. But if people aren't willing to put the effort in, then, hey, it is what it is. Yeah. And there's a lot of that out there, man. I mean, we used to have the class at the retail store, and everyone and their mother would be like, man, when do you do the classes?

I want to take a class. And I'd be like, oh, we do it on Tuesday. Come Tuesday. And then you just never see them ever again. Or they come two or three Tuesdays to watch, and they're like, hey, man, when can I start handling stuff? Give it time. And they weed out because it was a hot ticket item that they saw on their instagram reel

and they they're not actually in it they don't they're not passionate about it they just want it for the likes or to say that they have it and that's not the people that you want to interact with or work with you know it's always a good question to ask them, do they like their fingers? Yeah. Yeah. Do you like them? Do you like these fingers? If you don't like these fingers, then you keep working with enemas.

Yeah. You know, and particularly with new people, right? Because if you make a mistake, there's, you know, with some vipers, there's a chance that you are going to lose those fingers. Yeah. Right? Or die. Do you like your house? You know? Oh, yeah, I, there's a chance that you are going to lose those fingers. Yeah. Right? Or die. Do you like your house?

You know? Oh, yeah, I like my house. Oh, good. All right. Well, have you got $100,000 in the bank? Because that's what it's going to cost you for any venom. So you start going down those roads, and then suddenly the people that are really interested in keeping venom start to really go down.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I think we've done this to death. Yeah, I think this is a good kind of a natural stopping point there. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you guys, your insights, and that was definitely some good points and things to consider there. So thanks for coming on and discussing that.

Thank you. Thank you, Phillip. Thanks for both coming on. We try to talk about anything new in science or anything new, exciting that you're looking at lately in herpetoculture or herpetology or whatever. I'm getting ready to go out and look for some midget faded rattlesnakes, concolor, out in southern Utah. I've been thinking about those a bit. It actually led me to reconnect with an old friend, Louis Porras,

who is kind of a pioneer in American herpetoculture. And I had the great fortune of meeting when I was a teenager, just kind of getting into keeping and breeding stuff. And he, he started a place called Zoo Herp down in Salt Lake. So I reconnected with him and he hadn't made the connection of that young, excited boy and the, you know, the guy writing books, uh, and, and, uh, studying viruses up at Utah State. So it's been cool to reconnect with him. And I guess I shouldn't be shocked, but in his 70s, I thought he just stayed that same guy when I met him as a teenager.

That's awesome. Unfortunately, I didn't get him to go out herping with me or anything, but it's been nice to converse with him. But yeah, looking at the different aspects of midget fader rattlesnakes, and there's a population maybe two or three hours from me up in Wyoming. It's kind of the northern extension of the habitat and reading an article that louis wrote about con color up in wyoming and how they're like you know out on these very very cold nights and just kind of cruising around not not very defensive or you know at all and um kind of gets me excited i want to go check out that population drive out there and see if i can find some to just watch and see what they do. But what a cool,

cool snake for sure. So I've seen them down in Southern, Southeastern Utah and there, um, seen them a few times. I actually kept one as a kid. I was on a backpacking trip and we found a little juvenile that just had a button. And I asked my dad, he let me take it home. And I kept that for five or six years. And, um, it was a beautiful snake, but that thing never settled down. It would always rattle when I came into my room. It would just start buzzing, so kind of crazy. But, yeah, really cool snake. Hopefully we get to find a few and get another bucket item for Nipper. I think that's what he's most excited about.

So we'll see if we can find him one. That's going to be awesome. Yeah, it should be a good trip. Any new stuff you guys been reading or any new discoveries you're aware of? No. I've been trying to find papers on a monotypic genius from South Africa called Macrolapse, which is the Natal black snake. I got one, and it was imported to the United States legitimately.

And I guess people didn't realize how venomous it was. And I had friends message me saying, hey, we have this thing. Is this, like, spicy? And I said, yes, and I'll buy it. Just I'm coming there right now i will i'll take it and uh i got out to eat two pinkies so far and i'm setting it up the same as i'm setting up the uh atric daspis but there's just no there's barely any good what's that which species of macrolapse i think i think it's now currently i think it's monotypic. I think it's a micro lepid.

Micro lepid. Micro lepid. Yeah. Yeah. So and dude, it's incredible because everyone pooh poohs them in in in KwaZulu-Natal. They're like, oh, yeah, you pick them up in the garden and throw them in the other side of the yard. And these things move, man, under under dirt. It's like almost like sandfish fast it's super

incredible um and very very reminiscent of the actor thaspis but finding papers on them is very very slim and fighting any kind of you know toxinology of it or like any kind of bite reports they just don't exist so i've been like deep diving Google Scholar trying to find stuff of merit. But other than that, man, status quo for me. Nice. Scott? We've got baby Achanthophis welzer at the moment and Achanthophis antarctis. Hell yeah. You got the shirt on.

Let me see the shirt. Let's see it. Oh, fuck. There we go. There it is. Look at that. Are they the black--headed wellesley yeah well it's it's a black male over red female so she spat um

uh nine nine black-headed babies and four reds so um so yeah getting them all feeding and the you know the largest one's 2.7 grams yeah so they're they're not big they're not big um compare them to the antarcticus babies which are like 4.9 to 10 um so they're a little bit easier to work with um so with those um submitted danger the second edition of dangerous creatures ofures of Australia yesterday. So we're working on that. And then we just finished up, we just had Frogs of Australia come out, the second edition came out of that.

It came out like three weeks ago. And then, you know, working on another project now, working on two other projects at the moment as well. A couple of papers in the works as well. Funds and games never stopped. Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. Chuck, you're muted, Bob.

You're on mute, Chuck. That's exactly what's happening. Muted Chuck. Yeah, yeah. that's exactly what's happening see muted check yeah yeah all right nothing going on with me no no yeah um just just got eggs out of his uh coastal carpets he's keeping outside that's kind of cool yeah why are you frowny face bro that's awesome no it is that's okay i'm glad you know it's just uh you know there's one eggs from other stuff just don't want to talk about it i don't want to jinx it i know the feeling yeah i know the feeling yeah you got you got some time still right Yeah. This should be moving along pretty good here. Are they postulating in the right way?

Are they sitting in the right way on that or not yet? Yeah. But, you know, I'm in that period where, like, before it's all just gone away. And it's like, wait, what? Wait, what just happened and it like yeah so i don't know i'm like i'm not i'm still that's why i'm like you know i the way i look at it right i always look at that as a benefit anyway right so if it does go away you know the following year yeah right that the female had a year off she year off. She's in a better position.

It's less damaging to her body. Not a bad thing to have a year off, you know? Yeah. And, I mean, you've repeated it, right? It's not like you've only ever bred them once. Yeah. And, you know, before I bred them, I mean, the female cycled probably, like, I don't know,

three, four years before she actually got gravid. So, you know, whatever. You've already repeated it, right? It's not like you don't know the formula, so to speak. So just give it – if it doesn't happen, man, it's all good. It's the females decided for whatever reason that she didn't want to go that season. And so that's not a bad thing. The only thing I think about

is going back to the original cages that I bred them in because the cages are a lot smaller than the cages I have them in now. And I've always felt like the cage size really matters with them, even though they look like it looks not good to have an animal with this giant head and this long body and this tiny cage. I really think that helps them feel secure. It helps them feel secure it helps them feel you know confident um and you know it maybe maybe i'm wrong and hopefully hopefully uh hopefully i am but um i have the option to go back that way if i want to but i don't know you can always you can always have a really tight hide box in there

as well for them yeah and that's the security thing that's how you get away with it they have a cage that's large enough for them to be able to function remember they breed in the wild right in the wild they've got a pretty big area to walk around it yeah and and it's it's weird it's just like i'm just not seeing the same things that i saw in the previous years but it doesn't mean that i'm not seeing good things. It's just, things aren't happening the same way as they used to. So I don't know. I don't know what that means exactly yet. So we'll see. Well, if it makes you feel better, I have six Sarastis Sarastis that I held back because they were primo gorgeous specimens. And I've got a very large collection of them with my friend Marcus, and those six are finally big enough.

I was like, you know what, let me put them in a container and really sex them. Six boys. Oh, good. Yeah. That's called pulling a Jewelander. Yep. Yep. I know the pain.

So if anybody needs Serasti Serasti's males, let me know. They're choice specimens. All right. Yeah, we'll give a shout-out, the obligatory shout-out, to the Morelia Pythons Radio Network, and thanks to Eric and Owen and the guys. Check them out on their social media sites and all that good stuff, all the good podcasts.

Did you confirm before that Owen is actually just a shaved Sasquatch? Is that what we said before? I think that's the leading theory. That's the stuff going around campus. Worst case scenario, there was a Sasquatch

in his family tree at some point, so he's like one-sixteenth Squatch. Something to that extent. Are you suggesting that Jim from Morgantown is a Sasquatch? I would certainly do that. Quarter-blood Sasquatch, yeah.

He's swirly enough. I love it. Oh, well. Cool. So stop looking for sasquatches you might find one alright well thanks for listening we'll catch you again next week for reptile fight club

later all you 10% nitwits Thank you. Outro Music