Reptile Fight Club - Does it count? w/ Brendan Hettinger

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Follow 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

All right. Welcome to Reptile Fight Club. I'm your host, Justin Newlander, here with me as always. Rob Stone. What is? Yellow. Oh, nothing. This is great. I'm excited. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm having a good week. My proposal is done, so it's about ready to be submitted. So hopefully we got some funding coming in because things are not looking great right now.

We're in pretty dire situation, I guess. Science in America is not doing well. It's a little sick right now. But I guess those kind of things happen. We'll see how that goes. Hope for the best. Yeah, hopefully some funding is coming soon. But, yeah.

Cool. So tonight we've got Brennan Hedegger with us. Heideger or Hediger? I say Hedinger. A lot of people say it different ways. That's kind of what I said, I think. Yeah, I'm sure you get a lot. I get the same thing, Juliander, Jolander, Jolander.

Yeah, but yeah, welcome. Thanks for coming on tonight. Yeah, thank you. It's always good to talk herping, so we're going to spend a little time on that topic in a fashion, I guess. But, yeah, so I don't know what's going on in your guys's realm these days. Not much, just working and trying to enjoy the herping season while it's here. Yeah. Yeah.

You get out much? I've been trying to get out every other weekend. I just started a new job, and it's been a lot trying to get out and go down to southeast Colorado or even further out of state. but nice i've made a couple good trips uh and i know there's a few more that are on the horizon with the season coming to a close but yeah yeah very cool i should go out tonight it it rained today so that's always good to have a little rain on a hot day but um yeah i i don't know i need to get out again i need to get out more but i guess that's always the case right oh for sure yeah um yeah uh we i went out the other night i i went out the other night

didn't see much, you know, just, I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. He gets skunked, but my area is a little less diverse, I guess, than some parts of the state, but it's fun species around. We had rob out not too long ago for some rubber boas, a gopher snake, a couple sagebreast lizards, I think, maybe a racer or two. Yeah. That's awesome. What part of the country are you in? I'm way up in north of Utah, so your neighboring state. state yeah nice yeah okay yeah because i know rob went up to wyoming and i went up there earlier this year to do uh to participate in a midget faded rattlesnake tagging project oh cool very yeah yeah that's awesome i'd love to go look for him around uh was

around like flaming gorge that area or yeah i want to i want to get up there rob took a little trip through there yeah yeah and brend didn't come out your way i think a little further to the southeast but earlier than I did in the year trying to look for rubber bow as amongst others right and with no success so I'm sure he'll be open to pointers from you yeah that was uh like one of my first first pets uh when I was a kid was a midget fader addlesnate well maybe not the first pet but I think I was a junior in high school and I found one on a hiking trip I didn't realize it was against the law to keep them so my parents were really cool let me bring it home and I kept it for a long time.

It only had a button when I found it and it ate mice and survived and look. I mean, it was a nice looking snake, really red and kind of really faded out and stuff from down in southern Utah. That's really cool. Yeah, it was a fun pet. But it never settled down. It would always rattle at me, which is kind of the opposite of the ones up near Flaming Gorge is like I've heard they're really pretty chill up there.

Like they don't. Yeah. I guess it can probably vary like anything, but, you know. For sure. But we found, like, between 40 and 50, 50 snakes within, like, a three, four-day span. And I don't recall a single one striking. We had a couple individuals that were actually missing their rattles. Right.

Large, large females that were missing their rattles. And, yeah, they were all relatively calm compared to, like, Virdis and Atrox. Right. So it was really cool to see those. That was the first time I'd seen the species. and it was just it was a cool time yeah they're a neat snake for sure but yeah obviously uh sounds like a little bit of differences because all the ones that i've seen down in southern utah been kind of hyper at least you know to some extent i guess the ones we saw on the last trip weren't

too terribly bad like that that hopi rattlesnake that both of them i guess were pretty on yeah just keyed in but feeling the viridus influence yeah yeah exactly but yeah they're fun species for sure yeah well i'm i've just been uh assist feeding pygmy pythons and uh trying to get uh picky antarisia to eat but things are going pretty good all the jungles are eating now and most of them are on rats and um got got some inland that started and you're looking good and so yeah the the captive herbs are doing well do you keep any uh any herbs Yeah, I actually have some rubber boas, rinerad snakes, what else? I have Egyptian tortoises, the enemies black-breasted-leaf turtles, some radiated tortoises,

ornate box turtles, three-toed box turtles, and a group of Russian tortoises, just to name a few of the species. Right. That's very cool. I've always been interested in those Egyptian tortoises. That's really cool. Are you involved with the Egyptian tortoise preservation group? Yeah, I'm actually a founding member for. It's called Cap, the Clementine and I Assurance Program. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ralph Till was the one that kind of organized that and got us all involved.

Yeah, that's where I heard about it from. He was on Ryan DeMoss's podcast. Yeah, he's been on a couple podcasts talking about. I know like the Animals at Home podcast and some other stuff. Yeah, it's really a cool project. Really neat to see that, you know, people are doing right with him. Trying to. We don't have much genetics to work with, but we'll try and make it work.

Yeah, that's cool. Nice. Well, it's a good group, it sounds like. Yeah, so far so good. We've donated some other animals across the country to some other keepers this year. And we've gotten some animals and some AZA institutions. So we're trying to hopefully get some more participation with the AZAA. But we'll see where that goes.

That's cool. I saw an interesting method of keeping, though. Somebody had like their Vyvarium set up with like a fogger in like a height area, like kind of a mimicking a borough system or something like that. That was really interesting. Is that a common practice or is that just kind of a some one-off thing? I think I think that's a Garden State Tortoise that did that a while ago that I saw in video. I usually, I used to use a fogger that would turn on for about 30 minutes every morning.

And now I've just been spraying them in the morning when the lights come on and spraying their food. And that seems to be enough moisture to get some good smooth growth and get some active and eating in the morning. Right. Yeah. So some people do that. I think it's just they like the higher humidity in the morning and it decreases throughout the day. Right. And they seem to do pretty good on that.

Otherwise, if they're kept too wet, they don't thrive. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's kind of like a, I guess, a desert thing, right? You get that deep dew point and then fog. or dues or whatever you call it. Moisture accumulates. And then, you know, so they have that brief time of being, yeah, wet, wetter than normal.

And then it gets real dry after that, yeah. Yeah. I guess that's probably part of their life history then, if that's what you're trying to replicate. Yeah, kind of trying to replicate that kind of coastal desert area, getting that coastal mist is our thought process behind it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a cool area out there. I spent a little time in Egypt back in the 90s kind of on the Red Sea. We stayed in a kibbutz right on the Red Sea. And I was with a study abroad program. So we stayed in Jerusalem for a couple months and then went down to Egypt for a little tour thing. It was pretty sweet. But I'd love to go back and Herp. That'd be really a cool place to go Herp. I did some incidental Herb.

There was a, we went to the zoo in Jerusalem or in Israel somewhere. I don't even remember where it was for sure. But there was a chameleon crawling across the top of a, of like a building. And so I like climbed up on top of the building and caught the chameleon. So I've got these pictures of me, you know, like with a film camera holding a chameleon and trying to do a selfie back in the day. That's crazy. That's really cool.

And then I found some snake. I didn't know if it was venomous or not. So I was just trying to be careful with it. And I had it in the bathtub of our room and then took a picture of it. Again, with the film camera, it didn't turn out the best. But then I released it. It was kind of sketchy maybe. I don't know if it's like I think it might have nipped me or something.

Like it tried to bite me. But I, yeah. So I need to dig out those pictures and try to see if I can ID it someday. Yeah. That's super cool. Yeah, it was fun. But a lot of cool herbs out there for sure. I guess not many Egyptian tortoises in the wild these days, though, maybe in certain areas.

Yeah, there's some, according to eye naturalists, there's some left in Israel, and then there's a lot in Libya. No more, as far as I understand it, in Egypt, they've been extirpated from there. And apparently they're also getting smuggled from Libya to Egypt to be sold in the markets there. And I think they're trying to crack down on it, but I haven't heard of. much success or anything really being done right yeah that's that's kind of i guess the failing of the endangered species or the cites thing where you're protecting them outside of their habitat so people like you can't breed them and you know there's no commercial incentive to do so but then folks in their country will trade them back and forth illegally just for food or whatever are they

eating them or are they keeping them or what are they doing with them yeah they just sold them for pets. And in the markets, someone posted in the Turtle and Tortoise Preservation Group a little while back that went to Egypt that they were like kind of in bird cages, like the kind of metal screen stacked on top of each other. And they were selling them for like the equivalent of like $10, $10 US. Just as pets. And there's a lot of people that join the Facebook groups. And they're like, oh, I got this tortoise from the market. You know, how do I take care of it? And they're like, oh, probably shouldn't have that and they usually end up passing just due to the stress and improper conditions. That's frustrating. You'd think they'd just be able to keep them in their yard or something, give them the right habitat or something, you know, like, yeah. Do okay with them outside, but, yeah, I think there's a few people there that are doing good

with them and trying to do something, but I think that's a many years down the road before they start reintroducing or create any kind of breeding groups in C2. Yeah. Yeah, that's the, I guess, the big argument against that, you know, like listing of Blue Tree monitors, if the people just decided, ah, we're going to start, you know, just killing them or selling them or whatever, you know, not much that anybody could really do to stop that and where they're kind of a limited range. Yeah. Listing them here isn't going to do a thing if the country doesn't have any buy-in. I don't know. That's true.

But I think it's a pretty interesting point for the hobby as a whole. You know, if you can't sell them across state lines, take the incentive away. And if you really care about a species, you know, you kind of propagate it and hope they fall into the right hands when you gift them to someone else in the other state. Right. That's pretty much what we're doing with CAP is gifting them to people that have shown extreme interest and dedication to hopefully keep the species going here in the states. That's cool. And I think everybody should have some kind of project like that where it's not making me. many money, but they, you know, try to do something for the benefit, you know, just to know about it

or keep it or keep it alive. I mean, I guess that comes to mind when you think about like imports that are just, you know, it's hard to compete, but then all of a sudden they disappear and then nobody has them or very few people have them. I shouldn't say. Oh, for sure. I'll get in trouble with Rob if I say nobody, but, you know, yeah, that's really cool. Nice. I'd love to work with tortoises at some point but yeah I just I don't know I don't have the the focus for tortoises right now you know well we'll have to talk after after that episode if we can set you up with something right um are they are they more fecun than like larger I mean I assume they breed earlier or as a smaller species that yeah they tend to mature within like five years

okay uh of age so slower than I'd say a sulkata maybe a little bit on part with a sulkata, but they have to be roughly five years of age, and the females need to be roughly 300 grams, 350 plus to really produce. And they can lay a couple clutches, but their eggs, like the clutches are like anywhere between one to three eggs, maybe five. And they can lay about three times in a season depending on the season and how the female is doing. but a lot of breeders don't get much more than like 50% hatch rate. There's been a couple of people this year anyway that had 100% success hatching every egg they got, which has been unheard of here for a little bit.

So I'm hoping that'll change. And as husbandry changes, it gets better with them, that they'll hopefully be better, more offspring. Okay. Yeah, I guess you know, you think about like the Greek tortoises or the Russian tortoises or something. It seems like there's seems to be no shortage of those, you know, like in the wild, they're pretty dense in their populations. And I mean, they sustain a fairly heavy take from the wild, at least with the Russians. I don't know if that's a problem or if that's becoming a problem or not. But it seems like they come in pretty readily.

So it makes you think they're fairly abundant in the wild. they're bringing that many in, but I don't know. Yeah, I did hear a rumor that Russians were going to be no longer imported into the States just because the number of take has been so large. And there's a lot of people working with them now in the States. But, yeah, they're a super hardy tortoise. They can live here outside all year and do just fine. Yeah, I have a friend down in Salt Lake that keeps him in his yard,

and he'll just have babies hatch out in his yard in the spring or summer or whatever. it'll just go out and the little baby's crawling around. But I think he puts like hay bales and tarps over them in the winter, you know, so they have somewhere to kind of burrow in and escape the freezing temperatures, I guess. But pretty cool. Yeah. They're neat. I had one for probably 30, 35 years.

Wow. Yeah, she was a cool, cool tortoise for sure. They're fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're a neat species for sure. well um any other thing oh let's let's hear how you kind of fit into herpeticulture oh goodness i like to say i'm a 50-50 split between herper and keeper i have a big background i worked as a rattlesnake biologist relocating rattlesnakes tracking pit tagging rattlesnakes

here in colorado uh i was a temporary zookeeper at denver zoo for a little bit i worked for philip leeds at Erd's only doing some stuff with euromastics. Oh, cool. Yeah, Phil's a good guy. Yeah, really good guy. And I'm part of Colorado partners of reptile amphibian conservation co-park. Steering committee member for that. So we do a lot of projects with our native herbs tracking and conservation related.

But I also keep a fair amount of species. So I'd say I'm more on the turtle side of the hobbes. be anything else but yeah that's cool everything well there i mean the the turtle and tortoise keepers seem to be the more hardcore you know scientific minded you know definitely working with more rare and threatened species for sure so yeah that's cool yeah they're a pretty big commitment you know you're not going to get most of these animals to reproduce until they're five or like my radiates until like they're 10 years old right something like that really really long term. Yeah. That's, and I think that too, weeds out the people who are just trying to make a

quick buck or, you know, that kind of thing. Unless, I guess there's flippers that sell plenty of turtles and tortoises, but, you know, people that are breeding them, they're kind of in and dedicated for the long haul. It's not like a passing fancy, like, ooh, I want a tortoise, you know. Sure. That's cool. Nice. Well, sounds like you got some really cool projects, and I've always love radiated tortoises. I remember when I was a kid, I was, what, around eight or nine, and my friend found a Chalonian in the ditch. And he's like, I found a snapping turtle. Come see it. You know, I was thinking, oh, cool. I want to see a snapping turtle. I, you know, I didn't have any idea that they weren't native or anything like that, but ran over there and it

turned out to be a desert tortoise. I'm like, this isn't a turtle, you fool. Give me that, you know, so he let me take it home. And my dad actually knew, knew who's a it was, and it was a desert tortoise that they'd collected before, you know, they were illegal or whatever. So it was this ancient old male. He was huge, you know, and so they let, and my dad went and talked to him. They're like, ah, you know, he can keep it. It seems like he's really excited about that, you know. And so that was my first big reptile pet, you know, that I was able to keep. And it was a fantastic animal, just a really cool desert tortoise. He was, He was around for a very long time, and I just kind of keep him in the yard during the summer and then bring him into the house in the winter.

I had these, like, two dig marks in the corner of my closet from where he'd just sit and dig during the winter months. He'd dig through his, like, box that I had him in or whatever. Not the best care in the world. I mean, I was a fairly young kid, but he did pretty well. But I remember taking him up to, we called her the Turtle Lady, and she lived up in, you know, up on the bench. near, near my town. My dad heard about her somehow, but she let us come over to her house, and I got to bring my tortoise out there and put it with it, her females. She had a bunch of female and male desert tortoises that she had, you know, were on rescue or something like that.

And my male went around and just flipped all the other males and made it with the females. And she's like, well, if they lay any eggs, you know, we'll give you some babies or whatever. And I was like, oh, sweet, you know. And then she moved to California. She, like, got a herd of Galapagos tortoises. So she moved to California to keep those happy. But she had a radiated tortoise. Back to the origin of why I was saying that story. But yeah, she had a radiated tortoise. And I just was in awe of how beautiful that thing was. So cool. That's really cool. Yeah, they're fun. Neat little species. Right. Yeah, it broke my heart to see that whole thing over in Madagascar was like 10,000 radiated tortoises that were in that house thing and they raided and confiscated. I mean, that's just me.

messed up, you know. Yeah, it's unfortunately still so common with a bunch of other species. I think right now within the states, our native box turtles are the most, our biggest concern at the moment just because they're, they really want them over in Asia. And I think there's a large confiscation of eastern box turtles, some ornates, and some three-toed box turtles. Right. Yeah. That's unfortunate. Yeah, that's always the struggle, I guess, is.

to, you know, keep them safe in their native habitat. But I was really stoked this year. I got to see my first wild box turtle. Oh, yeah. I've been in their range plenty of times. Just never had seen one. So what species?

A couple of them. It was an Eastern box. Oh, Eastern. That's cool. Yeah, they're so beautiful. Yeah. Gorgeous. Yeah. But I've missed out on the deserts and the, um,

some of the others. I think the ones in the Arizona ones are desert. They're the Texas ones, deserts as well. Yeah, subspecies of our Nate. A lot of people like to debate whether it's valid or not. Yeah, as always with taxonomy. Yeah. Cool.

Well, we're going to fight about herping. So let's introduce the topic, I suppose. We're going to talk about whether or not, you know, you can count a species. that you see in the wild depending on the nature of the find, I suppose. So I guess we've had a guest on before that we were talking about

her, I think it was Zach Baez, talking about herping it with a tour. So I think Rob kind of formula, maybe you can fill us in on the topic, little Rob, where it was your kind of brainchild. Yeah, absolutely.

So the genesis for the idea of the progenitor was when I was on a little excursion with Brendan. He had mentioned going down, you know, just in terms of talking where you've been, what have you been doing and all that stuff. Talked about going some years ago, right, down to Costa Rica,

associated with a tour, and I don't remember if it was the same, it opens its own can of worms, but if it was the same tour company that is associated with funding local science, conservation science, and whether that changes things, but going on this tour,

Costa Rica and had gone and found a black-headed bushmaster, which is amazing. And I'm sure it was amazing to see in the wild. And the question was really most of the, what most of, if not exclusively, the herping that I've done has either been a reflection of going out with friends of mine and that is either going to places that they're aware of or it's trying to ideate around places, but that could incorporate research and information, does incorporate research and information. Or, you know, as opposed to being in this sort of commercial context, right? Whatever that commercial is going to.

It might be funding local science broad or it might be, you know, just money in someone's pocket, whatever that is. And so the question is, how did that feel? How was that amazing, how, if at all, was that amazing feeling moderated by the context in which you'd found it sort of in that tour context that, okay, well, the guide obviously has familiarity. with that area is aware there's at least generally speaking that being a relatively sedentary species okay it's going to be in this area justin you've previously talked about going to cost rica and literally it was well you can look for the police tape and inside of there this is going to be the viper right yeah so it's to what extent is the experience of the research and the effort to kind of find and identify that um bringing utility to your own experience of it or is it just

just about hey if i'm seeing it in its native context it's not a captive animal that that's that's good enough that's really kind of the degenerator for it yeah yeah well it's uh it should be a fun topic either way so i guess we'll maybe frame it as um more stringent versus less stringent you know we can kind of fight about it but i'm sure it'll just turn into the umbaya discussion of the topic more than a fight but we'll flip the coin just for uh for the sake of the podcast, but go ahead and call it, Rob. Tails. It is heads.

I want to hear your take on this, so I'll, I'll moderate this one. Okay. All right. And then Brendan, go ahead and call it. Oh, tails. It's heads again. Oh, my goodness. All right.

Well, Rob, I guess you get to take the more stringent or less stringent side. was as usual I'll just defer so Brendan you take whatever side you want and I'll do the other one and we can kind of chat through it where I want to start

though before you get into that is I want to hear about the blackheaded Bushmaster yeah of course yeah not only that's the whole thing I want to hear it okay yeah so

the trip it was through this conservation organization from Colorado the KD. Adamson Conservation Fund they do stuff all over the world

with not just reptiles but primarily mammals and birds and all kinds of things. But I was going down to Costa Rica with a focus on moving some sea turtle nests, Olive Ridley Sea turtle nests. Oh, cool. Yeah, to save those from being predated and poached from people, as well as releasing baby sea turtles when they hatched from the hatchery

and doing night patrol on the beach. Another focus was going to a couple different snake organizations, because Rescate Serbientes is kind of a newer one. They're doing road surveys, trying to figure out what species are in the Osa Peninsula. Where is that located, do you know? Or do you remember? I'm so bad with like the ocean. But on the Osa Peninsula?

Yeah. In the Osa Peninsula, yeah. Okay. So that's kind of like there. South West, I guess. Or basically south. You just come down the bottom of it. Yeah.

Yeah, a little southwest. Yeah. Yeah. In the Pacific side. Right. Yeah. And they just do, like they relocate for lands from people's properties. Do they do that for free?

And they're trying to get to funding to study a various species. So we did a tour with them trying to figure out how the organization as a whole is going to partner with them and fund them going forward. One of the scientists, she's actually out in Colorado right now because they're having a big presentation this Saturday to talk about all the different projects are doing all over the world. So I'll get to catch up with her and see how things are going. That's cool. So that was like the main one. And then kind of like a side, a total accident. We were staying at a hostel and it was a bio hostel.

So they have their own biology work that they do. farm work and they ask that people that stay there work on the farm and that's just what helps feeds everybody and kind of pays a little bit more for your stay. And one of those biologists, she really wanted to see, she was offered by the, from a scientist from the Blackheaded Bushmaster project to go tour and see one blackheaded bushmasters in the wild and see what else they could turn up. But no one else wanted to go with her. And then we showed up and we're like, oh, yeah, we love snakes. Yeah.

And she was like, oh, my gosh, she was losing her mind. She didn't speak any English. I got kicked out of like Spanish three in high school. So my communication skills were awful, but we stumbled through. And she set up the tour and we got to go on this hike with our guide. It was her, our guide. And then my friend, Sean, he's a Colorado herper. All of us went out.

and we were hiking around because he hits his job to go out every day and locate the Bushmaster, see where it's gone, where it's moved. And I think they did have a tracker on it previously, but during our time there, they didn't have a tracker on it. So it's kind of like, he's like, I'm not sure if we're going to see it or not if it moved, but I'll try my best. And so we go hiking in, we find this Ophaga Pamilio species, is Euphaga Pamilio Granunus? ulyphra so it's like red and blue not the strawberry but they're just a beautiful species and he just picks it up and puts it on a leaf for us to photograph or like are you okay like he's like oh yeah I'm fine you know I do this all the time and he showed me pictures of his kids who live on the property because they own the property holding coral snakes by the tail and all kinds of crazy

stuff excuse me just on the property yeah and then we just we just keep trekking along I'm using by broken Spanish to try and figure out like does he has he seen eyelash vipers on the property fertile lands like what other species and we're most of the messages are getting through and we understand each other and then he takes us to where the the black head of bush master was it was chilling under this kind of stump on the edge of this creek and it was kind of tucked back a little bit. Mind you, we're not allowed to hook or handle the snake. We're not allowed to use flash photography, very strict rules on the tour. We had to sign a waiver and pay. So he's kind of messing with us and he's like, the Bushmaster is around us. It's here somewhere. He's like, do you see it?

And it took, it took me a minute before I saw it. And when I saw, I just, I just lost my mind. The thing was huge. Like, it was coiled up. And I've, like, I wrapped my arms in like a circle. It would be bigger than that circle, just of how big the snake was. And I just lost my mind. And then my friend Sean, it took him a minute to see it. He wasn't feeling good. He got food poisoning, we think, the night before.

So he wasn't doing too great. But once he saw it, he perked right up. That just made our trip. And we spent probably 30, 40 minutes with it before our guide was like, okay, we got to start moving back, you know, who could try and look for some other stuff. And the snake was just, it was beautiful, coiled up under there. We were allowed to put a flashlight on it and photograph it that way.

So the photographs were of the Bushmaster in C2, and it was huge. Just one of the prettiest, biggest snakes I've ever seen. And on our way back, we found a eyelash viper, which was really cool. That was only the second one I'd ever seen. I mean, because I saw one from another trip when I was in high school that I went down there to do something similar. Right. Was it a yellow one or greenish? This one was green.

Yeah. That's the one I saw too. My daughter saw one that was bright yellow, though. Like, I was so jealous. See, I want to go back now and try and find more variations of the eyelash vipers. And I want to try and find my own blackheaded Bushmaster by myself. Yeah. speaking of the topic yeah yeah yeah but we saw some some other snakes uh on our way back

we did when we went to uh a day or two previously to corcovado national park but also there not allowed to handle anything right can't use flash photography you got to have a guide yeah we didn't end up going into corcovato but yeah it's i i kind of regret it it was mostly because the kids didn't really want to go and we didn't want to hear him whine the whole time so we're like fine we won't go but that was kind of bummed out we want to go back just to go there but yeah you have to we went there and we saw a mom and baby taper right off the boat yeah on the beach we saw another taper that we got to go up close to in photograph all the primate species yeah big red tail boa that i think was eating uh digesting a kawati oh wow yeah that's crazy uh they're not smart

animals. No. No. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, we saw the primates down there. They're so cool. At least the, you know, the four main monkey types, but yeah, that was fun. It's crazy to see monkeys out in the wild. Hear those howlers, like, go off. Oh, yeah. That's pretty crazy. And they were coming, like, right up to us. Like in Corcovado, nothing cares that you're there. Yeah. Which is just surprising. We got really close to a Tamandua, which is like little man eaters down. there, yeah. We saw one of those, but it ran away too quick. I couldn't catch up with it. I was on there. Yeah. That was an amazing trip. Costa Rica is probably one of my favorite places I've ever been to. Yeah, it's really neat. We stayed in this tree house thing. It was like an Airbnb, but it was a like a four-story tree house and this huge like rainforest tree. It was a crazy. It was a crazy. cool experience. We had like monkeys like I was in a sudden to hear this little like you know that like screechy little whisper type monkey thing and I'm like oh cool there's squirrel monkeys coming like everybody wake up you know and we go out on the deck and they're just like passing by screeching at us it was it was really cool like you're up in the canopy so you're like eye level with the monkeys making their way through the through the forest and you know different bird species would fly in and you know land on the

You know, nearby, and it was really cool. And then down below, they had some, like, trails. So we saw, like, dark frogs and smoky jungle frogs and all sorts of lizards. And it was really a neat, neat spot. But that was around, oh, what's the town? Puerto, not Puerto Jimenez. That's the bigger city, but it's, like, kind of the smaller. My daughter taught English down there on the Osa Peninsula.

So she went to Corcovado and saw Tape here and went, she was the one that saw the yellow viper. But I can't remember the town she was in. Just a smaller, smaller town just north of Puerto Jimenez. Okay. Yeah, really cool place, though. Yeah. No, it's not saying, no. Anyway, yeah, my memory is not the best.

You'll listen to the podcast will know. But it was really cool to stay in that tree house. That's really cool. It rained a lot, though, those days that we were there. And I think they had like a minimum of like three nights stay. And it was a little pricey, but you know, what do you do? Right. When you're in Costa Rica, you might as well sit in a tree house.

Exactly. That's really cool. Oh, another thing I forgot to mention that while we were down there, a gold miner had been bit by a black-headed bushmaster. Oh, really? Yeah, and died from the bite. So all the locals were kind of not very happy when we said we're looking for snakes. Like we want to see snakes.

And other people were like, oh, come to our property. We have a lot of furtaleance. Like, move them off my property, that kind of thing. Yeah. Because like every other person we talked to using my awful Spanish, they were like, yeah, I'd been bit by a fertilance when I was a kid or a couple years ago. Like, every other person we talked to had been bit by her. for lands, which is just wild.

Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. Yeah. I guess that's what happens when you're living in the bush like that or living so close. And I mean, it's really a cool system down there where they've really embraced that environmentalism. And I mean, I guess the downside is you've got to pay a guide to go anywhere. But other than that, it's it's really good for the habitat. I mean, I'm happy to pay because it does go back into protecting wildlife. And it's really the tourism and in a big way that does protect their wildlife. And, you know, you go to some of the neighboring countries and it's just not the same there.

You know, you can't see the wildlife that you can see in Costa Rica. So that's kind of a cool, cool thing. Yeah, we got to see three kettles in up in, where was that, up north, not our north. all, but the Monteverde. Wow. That's cool. That was a cool thing. We did a bird tour there. And so same kind of idea, I guess.

We had to do, and I think that kind of plays into the topic, right, is that when you go to Costa Rica, a lot of these places, you have to have a guide, you have to pay somebody to take you out. You can't just go wandering around in the forest. So, you know, you don't have really, I mean, I guess you. technically can, but not in certain places like Corcovado. At least if you get caught, you're probably going to be in big trouble. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how it is in the rest of the country. I imagine you could probably go out road cruising or something. We did a few nights of that as much as I could talk

my family into. It was kind of crazy. We went surfing down on the Osa Peninsula, and as we were coming back onto the beach, there was like this trellis that went over, you know, the, and it had vines and stuff growing on it and one of the vines was moving and i reached up and grabbed a vine snake i'm like oh spent all this time looking for him in arizona you know then all of a sudden it's just waiting for me you know on the beach right on the path it was crazy kind of a weird unique way to find one but yeah and it's just that whole area is just crazy because we talked about trying to talk to like a fisherman be like hey can you pay us to go see some sea snakes and right try and catch it put in the boat and then photograph it on the beach somewhere and then let it go again

or something but we we didn't feel like we were our Spanish was good enough to try and do that yeah uh well the the nice thing about my so she was in La Palma that was the little town that she was in and uh she had like a friend that was kind of leading the the um english you know program or whatever so she'd take care of all these American girls that would come over to teach English to the kids in La Palma. And she set up a boat tour of the Gulfo, the Dolce, Gulfo Dolce, or whatever the little Gulf is, you know, between the Osa Peninsula and the mainland. Crazy.

That place is just flat water. Like there's no waves or anything, but you can see, we saw like dolphins, you can see whales out there. And then we were driving along in the boat, the guy that was taking us out. He just took me and my wife and our three daughters and three of our daughters, the one that was teach in English, didn't go because she'd already been on the tour. But he's like, snake, and I'm like, what? And it was one of those yellow Gulfal Dolce sea snakes. And I was pretty stoked.

I was like, can I jump in with it? Can I swim with it? He's like, no, no, stay in the boat. It was really cool. Like something I was not expecting to see. I was, you know, of course, hoping to see one. But, like, yeah, it was pretty cool. Just kind of random occurrence.

He's like, yeah, we usually don't see him this time of year. That's cool. And the water there, too, is so warm. Yeah, yeah, we swam there. And compared to, like, being up by the open ocean, it was so warm, so nice. Yeah, yeah. We go out at night and, like, you swish your hand around and all the bioluminescent creatures or whatever glow. And so, like, water turns blue when you're swishing your hand around.

It's pretty cool. Super cool. Yeah, cool place. Yeah, that's awesome that you've gotten to go down there and see such cool stuff. Yeah. Hopefully I'll go back down in a year or two. Yeah. I can't stay away from there.

Right. Right. Yeah, I have the same kind of things in my brain. Like, how do I get back there and, you know, want to go see some cool stuff? Because my wife was really interested in going into Corkavato as well. So we want to go back down. and see that National Park at least. So I guess, you know, I'm talking too much as the moderator, but I guess that kind of brings up

another thing is even more so like the radio tagged animals, you know, where they know approximately where they are, but then they can have the means to like pinpoint their location almost and find them that way. So I guess what are your thoughts on that? Maybe to start out the debate a little bit, you know, does that? Yeah, how do you feel about that? I think I would count it. I did count it while I was on there.

I've tracked rattlesnakes with telemetry and stuff before. And, you know, that snake is still a wild snake. It's had some human interaction. But a lot of the snakes that people are finding these days, if they continue to go to the same spots, have interacted with people before. They've been found before, photographed before, still living wild lives.

but you know with using telemetry there's still a good chance that you might not see that animal you might be close to it but you still might not see that animal even though it's being tracked and that's what our guide told us so in that case i did count it i know there's a lot of other people that are stricter than i am right everyone has their own uh uh value system i guess yeah Yeah. Yeah. I guess the other side of that is you did mention you want to go down and find one on your own, as you said. So maybe Rob can take it over from there. no agreed and i yeah so i'm genuinely fascinated go from that perspective what would you say right because yeah that was your commentary so i'm curious what why would you say that what do what was it about either the experience that you had or the sort of contrary experiences you have when

you just go afield yourself yeah i guess it was because of the experience i didn't have like i didn't get to hook the snake and really see the power and intelligence behind the animal by getting to work with it, manipulate it, whatever. I guess that's the part to me that I really crave when I find an animal or am with a group of people because I want to, I want to interact with it a little bit. Depends.

Not every time I'm not going to mess with every animal I see, things like that. But it's your life or you know, like you want to get those photos. I've never hooked a bushmaster before so that was just a kind of like a bucket list item in a way it being such a big snake

such a rare snake just to go see it and just experience it that to me is something that I feel really like I lacked I didn't get I got robbed from that in a way but you know

that's why I just want to go back and find another one that That first one will still be my first, but there's still more to learn, I guess, is why I want to go back and find more. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's a ton of truth to that. Obviously, it's your truth, but I think we can all, you know, appreciate that. I appreciate that as well.

And a big part of, you know, honestly, the joy for me in Herping is sort of the research angle and the ideation and trying to figure out the what's and where's, even in the context, right, the non-commercial context of, hey, let's go to this place or whatever. You know, finding the thing, seeing the thing is the principal joy. But there is sort of the type A joy in the research on the front end, the kind of building anticipation to the point where the first time, often on Australia trips, but certainly the first time that I'd gone to the Northern Territory, I'd been thinking about it so deeply for so long that by the time the trip actually came, it was almost like my enthusiasm had flagged because it was so excited for so long and then we get there and have this amazing experience but it was almost like I got to have two periods of joy the research and then the actual effectuation definitely yeah yeah oh go ahead sorry I was just going to say you know that I guess when you've planned it even though you know you may be basing it off of or, you know, known localities or things like that. Well, I mean, some things, there's only, you know, so many places you can find them anyway, you know, like the, the Brettles Python from the spring, you know, we, we knew where to look.

That's not the hard part, you know, is just, you know, locating one. There's probably plenty that we're walking past, but they're in a tree hollow or up too high to see, you know, or those kind of things. So, you know, the fact that one was waiting on a branch that was about eye level, you know, just where we wouldn't miss it, you know, and that's just kind of that rare event of everything kind of coming together and getting lucky. But we also had some advice from a seasoned researcher who had studied Brettel's pythons and knew kind of how he said actually, like, just drive your vehicle down the creek and look up the tree. I'm like, yeah, I think the rental company might frown on that, you know, like, I don't think that's an option. But he's like, well, that's kind of how we did the research. That's how we looked for him back in the day. I'm like, that's cool.

But, yeah, I don't think we're going to get away with that. So we just walked them instead, you know. And some other advice that was shared, you know, of kind of where the more effective places to look are at different times of year was very helpful and helped us locate that animal. But, you know, I still, we still put in them miles. I mean, it took us a solid week of looking to find one. So, and that's the only one we saw. So, you know, and we'd gone to other areas. And another group of herpers actually found one in one of the gorges we were spending a lot of time in.

So they, they were there at the right time. You know, we were in the right place, but they were there at the right time. And so it just kind of, you know, there's no way to really predict where you're going to see something like that. you just have to be have a little bit of luck but also put yourself in the right place for sure absolutely and i mean another critical component to this right and it applied in the context of your black-headed bushmaster is the sort of and i think obviously this is even more specific than sort of a general herb tour or whatever and maybe some of those companies the outfits to do that do engage with sort of local stewards in the same way of your experience but we're talking about

the context of private land or other barriers to entry just in terms of access. It could be language. It could be needing a requisite guide, you know, within the National Park. You guys have hit on some of those points. But, I mean, you wouldn't have access to go and find that one because you'd be, at best, certainly not legal, probably not safe, you know, access to just go do that. Yeah, definitely not. Right.

So, I mean, in that context, then, I suppose it's sort of, there are things where you can, it's sort of both, right? There is a public access population, and then there's non-public access populations and things. And in those contexts, maybe you draw a dichotomy in a different way than if you just looked at it and you said the only play, the thing that jumped to my mind as I was talking through it is it's like, well, if you took a real hardline view on this, then it actually would be. be impossible to ever see a Komodo dragon, right? Because there's no non-mediated context where one exists as a wild animal, right? So you could never see one. It could never be on the list if you took a real hardline stance on this. Yeah. For sure. And I have a friend that when we go herping, if it's a lifer, he has to be the first one to touch it. And if someone else touches it, he gets pretty upset. He may or may not count it. Kind of depends on the mood he's in. But

everyone kind of I feel flexes on their on how they count lifers a little bit you know everyone still kind of has their specific path that they want to take but that's not what always is presented so they kind of have to flex a little bit

like I went to Utah earlier this year and we went looking for Sir Talus Fitch I found one my friend Hunter found one My friend Miles found one, but then we're all giving my friend Sean shit for not finding one because he and Hunter are very similar where they like to, they count it if they find it a little bit. But he still counted it at the end of the day, but he wasn't as happy about it. He still wanted to find one. We still spent a couple hours trying to find just one more snake for him just to count.

You guys just sort of sat at the car and let him go look by himself. No, we try. we're like if we found it we just point and yell right but we just found like a big rated slider crossing the road that was the whole thing yeah that's and we all found yeah that was where were you in utah oh my gosh i'm totally got we were in salt lake city just south of the big salt lake i can't remember it was some big nature preserve okay uh yeah and then we had all found a rubber bow we stumbled upon a rubber boa hibernacula and as soon as one of us spotted one another one another one

another one another and then another and then we had to wait we photographed and brought it back and then there was another boa in the same spot wow so we all got our found our own boa which is pretty nice yeah yeah very nice I've got a den site by my house so if you're If you're ever around here in early spring, I'll show you where that is. It's pretty cool. You can see both Sir Talis and Elegans at the same place, but they kind of segregate. You know, you'll see mating balls of one or the other, and it's pretty cool spot. Definitely.

That's really cool. Yeah, rubber boas and right-rass snakes, two favorite snakes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In the other context, right, that was germane for Justin and I this year was our experience looking for Eastern Massachusetts in Western Pennsylvania, right? So there's a handful of counties that theoretically still have them.

And there's theoretically more than one publicly accessible spot, but certainly there's one that is sort of the spot, right, that you can go to. And you could hope to stumble onto one nipper sort of. wound up facilitating ranger taylor for us and justin then you know as part of the the squad trying to out there to turn one up did so and that was great and got to pit tag it you know as part of that process and it's sort of you know that wasn't didn't look like our normal situation right in all sorts of different ways but you know in many ways to the extent that this is a question of is it sort of upgrading or downgrading your experience right when you're talking about oh this is different. All those things, I think, I think we want to have sort of take the positivist approach

that all those things are upgrades to the context, that our interactions with Ranger Taylor and with that, you know, with the class. And you get into, certainly it was an upgrade to your experience, right? It wasn't just, no, I got to take a picture. I got a pop a bit tag in this thing. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Right. And I think so, too, like before we were engaging with the the group, you know, like, um, we were limited to the, the trails. And if we had, we were limited to the trails, we probably, we probably wouldn't have seen that individual. Um, but they, I'm like, they're walking through the grass. So I'm going to do the same, even though I'm not necessarily, you know, part of this group. And I guess the other thing that kind of ran through

my head was, well, if somebody else finds it, you know, is, is that count. Exactly right. How how would they feel? Yeah. And I think, you know, we didn't have to consider that because I was, you I was fortunate enough to spot one before everybody else. But that was the only one that we got to see. And obviously, like, once we found it, we went with the Ranger to do the pit tagging. And, you know, you got to touch it because they tubed it and stuff like that. So, you know, we wouldn't have been able to do that if we would have found it on our own. And then Ranger Taylor facilitated us taking pictures of it.

You know, he let us kind of lay down in the grass and shoot the animal for, you know, 5, 10, 15 minutes or whatever until everybody was happy and just super, super helpful and very facilitative. So, yeah, there was nothing about that experience that I think could have been improved by doing it on our own, you know, out somewhere else, you know, not inside a park. But so it was a cool experience. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, again, to harken back to the, sort of the context of it. What, Brendan, you know, so you're considering going on other such ventures that support sort

of conservation and things. So obviously, you know, despite say, hey, maybe I want to try and look for a different one in the context of the blackheaded Bushmaster. You're also, you know, more than happy to pursue those ventures going, those being the way you see stuff going forward. So, you know, how does it, is there any additional joy actually brought along by the fact that, hey, I'm funding, you know, the maintenance of the. property associated with preservation of the species or even research associated with the species

facilitating that research, does that actually bring its own sort of positive element to the party? Oh, definitely. Yeah, it was very fulfilling in that aspect. And to me, it kind of solidified that, like, you know, they're not dumping the Bushmaster out of a bag or something like that. Like, it's still living its wildlife and this money that I'm paying, happily paying, to go see this species is protecting it and a plethora of other species because we saw several other species on the property that we didn't

even see on the trip, which was just a huge bonus. We found those. Our guide found another snake. I can't remember. It was a rear fanged venomous snake. And it was just, yeah, that was just incredible. I know I'm hoping

to go to Nepal next year to join some researchers on the offseason. of tourism during the rainy season. They go out to the national parks and stuff or kind of on the edges because they're not supposed to be in the parks during the rainy season.

And they're discovering new species every year. So I'm hoping to join them. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah, see what we can find. They discovered a new species of gecko and new species of frog this last year. So, yeah. Yeah.

To me, that it makes sense. And when I was down, in Arizona last year. I met up with Dustin and something that kind of struck me is there was this German guy that we had met that day and he was cruising around. We had just gotten our second green rat snake. And he came right up and he's like, he's like, can I photograph it? We're like, sure, you know, like come and photograph it. And one of my friends kind of made the comment was like, are you going to count that as your lifer? And I'm like, In his case, being from Germany, given the amount of time that each of us has on this planet and the money that we have, you know, something like that, I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't count that. I wouldn't do that just for myself. But, you know, if he counted that, I wouldn't be offended or anything because there's only so much time we have. And to see something like that is pretty special.

Yeah, you're going exactly where I was thinking of. It's kind of as a natural next step of on the spectrum. spectrum of things from or of approaches from having to be the one who sees it or touches it or finds it or whatever to the other end um you know of saying or even further than that right going to a place that would represent a range extension dr jode brought that up as saying an even more you know outside perspective where you know charing cognita for this for the species of their form or whatever that's like a jordan parrot ideal you know like going i i've seen it so many times here, I'm going to go, you know, find it where nobody's found it, you know, that kind of thing. It doesn't even count if it's not where nobody has ever found any of them,

not let alone this particular animal, to exactly, I mean, even a more extreme case, right, Brandon, of saying, okay, it's one thing when he was right behind you guys or whatever it is, as opposed to, you know, and there it's a matter of a moment or two, and it's literally just, oh, your car was in front of his or whatever. Right. Okay. You know, sometimes with the tour, the commercial tours, as I understand it, right, if they can safely do so, collect it, bring it back, and then, like, people are, they're taking

pictures in the morning and things like that. So that's a whole other range, right? And then what if, you know, even within that, you could kind of parse out and say someone was asleep at the house versus, you know, being on a different trail. And so then they see it back at the camp instead of, instead of that. And it's like, well, is it different if you were walking someplace else than if you were asleep? Or if you turned up in the morning and just, just got to see it when you weren't even on the property when it was found. Right. Those are all kind of different answers themselves as well.

Definitely. And I guess, too, if you were to look at it from a birding perspective, when people put stuff on e-bird, hundreds or thousands of people are seeing that same bird in that same area, and they're all counting it as their lifer. You know, they're not as cool as us and get to handle it or anything, but they're still counting it as their lifer because they saw it and lots of people are seeing that throughout the day. So that's always interesting. I know kind of the same thing could be said for the popular

milksnake spot in Colorado. You know, people come from all over the country and find the same milk snakes year to year, usually. And people count those as their lifers and everyone has a good time, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know we've, like one of the spots Dustin took us to, like one night we were there, herping and all of a sudden this tour, tour bus rolled in with like, you know, eight people jumped out and start combing the, you know, this area. And we, we just found a clobber eye, a band of rock rattlesnake. And,

um, just next to a log or something. And, and we were like, just kind of watching it. We took it, taking some pictures and, and we thought, you know, they, they didn't even come over and ask, oh, are you guys looking at a reptile? Like they, they were not curious at all, you know. So I, I, I think, uh, you know, from that perspective, like if you're, if you're there, you know, as a group or something, but I guess there is some kind of ideals of like, well, we're going to respect their space or whatever. We're not going to jump in their business or whatever. So I think it could go either way.

I'm more of like a curious person like, hey, what's you looking at there? You know, and it's interesting too because in Australia, we found that Boyd's Forest dragon and we were just sitting staring at it, taking pictures, like just watching it. you know, and several people walked by on that trail and paid us no mind, like, no mind at all. You know, it's like, people just really aren't very curious, you know, like, it's, it's kind of interesting. Or, or they respect our privacy, which either way is kind of, yeah. Well, and Justin, the one that jumps to my mind sort of in the same vein, right, when we were in Joshua Tree, and it was a coach whip that was in a bush, right? as we can go on a hike and it was meandering through this and I was trying to

corral it and these footsteps you know we were we were out out there ways and these footsteps won't you know stop coming I'm like stop moving you know this is this is not helping you know they're super reactive snakes anyway I'm like stop moving and Justin eventually you're like telling me it's a group two people that aren't you know it's not us man it's not us quit yelling it people, Rob. They didn't even engage back, guys. Maybe that's just California for you.

But, yeah, they just kept, kept, you know, making, making their noise doing their thing, you know, me be damned. Yeah. I guess, I think, you know, a lot of people have the idea of multiple lists, right? I've heard of people doing this where they have a list of things they've seen. in the wild, things that they found on their own in the wild, you know, and that nobody else are. So they have different, like, they'll count it a different, yeah, gradations. So what do you think about that?

Yeah, no, definitely. I'm kind of working on a separate list right now where I'm trying to see different species in different counties throughout the state and record that. So for the Western Masasaga, I'm trying to find those in more counties. Like I've seen them. I've had other friends find them like in Otero County. and I'm just minutes behind him. I still haven't counted them because they'd give me shit for it.

Normally I probably would have, but it's happened on two, three separate occasions at this point. It's driving me nuts. But I've only seen them in two other counties in the state. And I'm trying to find them in more. And there's been more county records. Like I know there's a couple counties that I'm never going to find them in just because I don't have the time, you know, getting older,

trying to put more time into my career. and get a house someday or something like that. I can't spend every weekend down in extreme southeast Colorado trying to find every snake in every county. But that's definitely, I have, I'm starting a second list for at least things in Colorado for counties. But I agree with those. I think those are fun. My friend Hunter and Sean and I have another friend Hayden, they're all working on their list because they've seen pretty much everything in the state at this point. I'm not one of those where I'm necessarily trying to find everything in the state.

If I see the species that's native to Colorado outside of the state, I'll count it as I've seen it throughout its range. Like eastern hog gnom snakes, for instance, they've been found in Colorado. The spot where they've been found at has kind of been decimated due to they're trying to rebuild the habitat and remove invasive plants, but might be hurting the snake's population as a whole. But I'm probably not going to be able to find snakes there for, like, Eastern Hognos anyway, for another 10 years or so just because all the work that's been done. So I'm trying to go find them in either Kansas or Nebraska and just be like, okay, they're close enough to Colorado. I've seen them. Yeah. Whatever, you know.

And we have California king snakes in Colorado, the stream southwest corner of the state. I've seen them there. I've seen them there. You know, so I've counted them. I've seen them. I've seen them everywhere there at that point. Yeah. But that's still, there's still more, I'd still like to see those species again.

Yeah. It seems like there's, when you, when you're herping a lot and you found, you know, like pretty much everything you can see in the state or whatever, then you kind of get more great, what, fine-tuned or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, granular. And you're looking, like I think about like Dry Jones in Utah with the milk snakes or Thomas Wilder with the Mountain Kings or Brian Eager with the Milk Snakes or Mark Hazel with the, you know,

the tricolors are really popular in Utah and they're kind of a harder find, but they'll, they'll just try to find one in each county, you know, and try to extend the range and try to find them in mountain ranges where they haven't been recorded and things like that. And they make some really cool discoveries, you know, and I think to some extent, like if you're just like, okay, check and move on, you know, you're not, you're not really, um, maybe doing much of a service, it's more selfish. But if you're out there, like, pound a new mountain range is looking for a new range extension. Jordan with his boas, you know, that rosy boas, like same kind of thing is, you know,

you're really kind of adding something to the knowledge or the science, you know, where you can identify them outside of their normal range. And I think that's a useful progression, you know. I guess it's hard with me because all my, like, my interests lie in Australia. So I spend all my free time, you know, for a couple weeks over there and all my time off of work. But I think the pandemic really kind of made me appreciate the backyard a little bit more where I want to see all the species in Utah. You know, it's like, how have I seen more species in Australia than I have in my own state, you know, like comparatively or percentage wise or whatever? So, yeah, I kind of had a, had a more of a goal, especially during the pandemic, to find everything in Utah.

And then especially if, you know, I'm releasing a field guide, I might as well know, and I've seen, you know, as much as I can. I'm still missing a couple species, but someday I'll, I'll get there. But yeah, it's, it's kind of a nice goal to have to, you know, get familiar with your state. Because really, I mean, you can't, if you're going to Australia, pretty much all you can do is tick them off. you know, there's not really a lot of, you know, scientific value you can add to some extent. I mean, obviously there's things. Depends what it is and what's the, I mean, I mean, heck,

the, uh, oh, you're eating the high rate. Right. Right. You know, that's pretty cool either way. Right. And it's not that it's unknown, you know, the Jemada, you know, with that consumption. But at the same time, you know, that you're getting closer to a, uh, what, what's the anecdote in the, um, the journal anecdote you have a couple

right yeah yeah like the field or natural history notes or like range extension you can do I know Shane Madsen did one for his find of the the leaf nose snake in Utah you know that kind of thing

it's funny because like earlier this spring somebody else found one too down in St. George area or in the same area where he found his so it's like you know it's kind of crazy yeah yeah once in a while that just get lucky i guess but yeah those kind of things uh that can add value i think that's something to at least consider you know when you're when you're thinking about where you're going to go spend time herping

and yeah it was within the last couple weeks we were speaking maybe it was before after the show right justin i was talking to somebody and Brendan to the point that you're making on you know it's getting harder and harder to go to you know be a herper bro down in southeast colorado that whomever it was that oh um it was uh casper right um i think is when we were the the context we were talking about it that um

I had um the question was have you seen all the stuff in Colorado and it was like no with all the the you know functionally Kansas snakes that are in southeast Colorado and the number of trips it would take to find those that I'm far more likely to see you know all the pythons in australia before I am to see all the snakes in Colorado, just based on how far away, you know, Southeast County is. And my interest in time and resources and commitment and all those things, right? Yeah, yeah.

You have finite resources, finite time, so you got to, you know, make choices. And I guess, you know, our interests play into that, you know, where we're spending a lot, you know, maybe an extraordinary time, amount of time looking for crotolus or, you know, other things that might be, you know, most people would consider a waste of time because they're very difficult to find or whatever, you know, maybe not in the area anymore, but we're going to give it a go anyway kind of thing. I guess same kind of thing with the Pythons of Australia. You got like one shot to make it happen in a week and you might get lucky. You might not.

So it's just the way it goes, I guess. Everybody's got their own lists or their own goals or, yeah. Well, and just to interject, I do know, sorry, Brandon, before, because I feel bad. Franklin, Erickson, I was thinking of Casper, but Franklin, so now you don't have to look at me like I had two heads. Sorry, Brandon, go ahead. No, you're all good. I guess just kind of going back to the point of, you know, what people count and don't count. I've found it pretty interesting, at least from what I've seen, that people have found, like, clipped, like, snakes,

snakes that have been hit by cars and stuff like that, but they're still. still alive, and they tend to hang on to them until the morning and see if they're still, if they're still kicking then and if they're still kicking at that point, they tend to count it. If not, then they usually don't count it. But I always think that that's kind of like an interesting

morbid part to the hobby, you know, because you might have been moments. You might have seen the snake been hit. You know, you saw it there alive, but then it got hit by a car. Like, that one is, morally I'm very conflicted on that point if I would

counted or not. Right. Here's another scenario. Dustin and I were walking on either side of like a vegetative area and we both heard the rattle at the same time and kind of there was a price eye. You know, it's like, well, I guess this is a joint find or, you know, like, does this count as a my find or, you know, my find only? So you got to kind of asterisk that, I guess, and say, I don't know.

I think, I think, you know, for me, that's, that's. fine. But I was, I was happy to have, I guess, legit, my own price eye, not long after that, you know, the third one of the day was just me, you know, that was there and found it. So, but, you know, I guess the same kind of thing. Where, uh, the first time we saw a price eye, um, Dustin was actually standing over top of it and Chuck heard it. And so, you know, Dustin spotted it at first, but Chuck heard it first. So it's kind of like one another, you know, kind of kind of, kind of, kind of, under him or whatever like what do you do with that yeah is the detection by sound more important than seeing it or that's pretty funny too that you bring that up because when i was with dustin down

in uh southeast arizona yeah uh we went looking for price eye we went to his his spot where he normally finds him we didn't find one we went further down kind of the mountain in an area he hadn't checked out before and then i turned up a price eye and a couple other friends turned up a price i on the way to me when i was like i found one you know and yeah the that i think that's always kind of interesting too in the spots it's like going to the milk spot in colorado right to me now it doesn't feel as special just like you know because it's like okay you're gonna find them someone else did the work to to make this spot uh so i go there and i try to look for box turtles or hog no snakes but i don't i don't really take photos of the milk snakes there anymore and i'm trying

to really focus and hone in on, like, why are milk snakes at this spot? What is it about that spot? Yeah, what is it about it? You know, and I think, I think it's because the boards are in a lower-lying area and the water collects more, a more humid microclimate is provided under those boards potentially. So I want to try and replicate that elsewhere in that same county, but I also want to try and figure out how to get a better grasp of the species throughout the state.

Because I've cruised them in southeast Colorado. I flipped them in the adjacent county to where I live. And I can never seem to find them very consistently. And I think that's always something that I think a lot of people are starting to strive to at this point. And herping is they pick one thing they really like and they're trying to replicate success. And I think that's one of the harder parts. Like once someone shows you like a spot and then you kind of start asking these questions, like how can I find that? elsewhere.

If, for me anyway, I know a lot of other people do it. Some people might not. Some people might just be fine at the, you know, the given spots, but. Right. That level of expertise, right, that you're talking about, highlights the point Justin's making, whether you share it or not, right? You're kind of cultivating that scientific knowledge, that understanding of, you know, the spot that you're alluding to, right?

Brennan, I'm saying both in the, so there's the super micro that you're talking about of like okay this is what's happening but like take a half step back and it's why this area as opposed to this area that's a mile away you know or five miles away or what what's the confluence of factors and it's really the ability to deduce what that is and then prove it out is is really cool yeah definitely yeah i saw i saw a post by uh noah fields where he flipped uh coach whip and uh um oh what it's it's a tricolor but not a milk snake Scarlet Snake under the same rock, right? And the coach was in shed. But he was making the point of like, I rarely flip these rocks because, you know, if you keep flipping them over and over, you kind of

almost ruin the habitat underneath them. So he's like, if you find a rock like this, cherish it, you know, don't, don't overflip it. Like resist the urge when you go to this area, you know, because, you know, you might ruin it for the animals that do shelter under there. So, I kind of have a hard time with that sometimes because, like, it seems like you can go into disturbed habitat and they'll use these board lines or what board lines are probably a great example of that, you know, like that they just keep using the same areas. You can find the same snakes under the same boards or things like that. I was in California and was told about a board line from a friend, so I go there every time I'm in my cousins because it's like a 10 minute drive, you know, and it's like a spot where I. I know I can go and find stuff at least, but there's like, I lifted one board and there was a Cal King and it shot down a burrow and I came back like 10 minutes later and it was just under the board again, you know, came back up. So very accommodating snake, but things like that were, you know, I wonder how much of that is dependent on the area, of course, and depending on the nature of the cover.

Things like that, it's hard to say. But I do think there is something to that. You know, if you're lifting a rock in the wrong area, it could dry out underneath and ruin the, you know, the suitability of the rock for shelter for a certain species. For sure. And I think now just seeing how the hobby of herping has grown so much in Colorado, that spot for milk snakes in Colorado has been hit a lot. I'm seeing people post pretty much like every week at this point. still this late into the year when we're not receiving much rain, but they're still hitting those boards. And this year, when I went out for my one time that I tried to go in the

spring, it was different. It was not as, there were not as many snakes. The habitat was a little more disturbed. It wasn't as, as nice as it was before. And I think that's kind of an unfortunate, you know, like we all want to find stuff. We want to keep finding stuff. But at a certain point, I think we all need to challenge ourselves to move forward and try and find stuff elsewhere because, like, that spot's special. Like, I think that that's pretty amazing, right? You can go to a spot and pretty much be guaranteed that you're going to find what you're looking for if you're looking for a milk snake or something, you know? And that'll be cool to, like, take people out of state, you know, to share that with them. But when you're, you're hitting a spot too much that's causing that much damage, it really, it kind of puts damper on the spot.

the community as a whole and people get angry and it causes drama and I think you know I think I don't know where I'm going with this I guess but it's just it's just kind of sad to see you know when I was shown the spot you know it's like respect it you know do this do that and it's just interesting to see how herping is going to continue to change in terms of that and what people count as lifers because like people count all those spots as lifers they're given They're easy. And then it'll be, it'll just be interesting, I guess. Yeah.

Well, and so bringing us back slightly in the conversation, right? The thought had struck my mind or talking about all these different lists. And in some ways, it's sort of like fantasy football and that, you know, no one cares about your team. You know, or what it's like. It feels so important. Yeah. I was about to say, but only to you, although your previous remark, Brendan, had made me, hold my tongue on that was to say and the people that you communicate it with right it only matters to you and all the people that you talk about it with who are going to judge you for whatever you're saying or doing right oh you know did you count it on your list well yes except when you're talking to the person in the other car exactly yeah and i i do like that point you hit on like when you're out with dust and um you know you might go to a spot where it's you've seen them before or might be a guarantee

area or a really good board line is there so it makes it easy because you just lift up the board and Noah on that post with the rocks he did make a distinction between like a board line and a rock line he said you know the under the board or the tin or whatever is a little harder to you know mess up as compared with under a rock for some reason he's found at least and he's pretty you know accomplished herper in that regard but um so you know having that knowledge of where a board line is or, you know, that kind of thing makes it easier because it's a little harder to find him in more natural settings. And I think that's common knowledge, you know, with people is like, you look under garbage and you find snakes. It's kind of a,

makes it a lot easier than having to try to lift some giant rock that you may not be able to get in the right spot again, you know, and you're messing up habitat kind of thing. So I think, but if you're local, I think that point you made of like, don't, don't, don't, don't mess with those spots. Don't mess with the easy spots. Go to somewhere where it's a little more of a challenge. If you've already seen the species, why do you go back to the easy thing just to see him again? I don't know. It just doesn't seem as cool in my mind. Like it just seems like the guy who goes back to high school to beat up on the, you know, play basketball against the little kids and he's in the NBA or something. You know, like who cares if you can dunk on a 17-year-old

if you're in the NBA, you know, you don't get any, I don't know, that's kind of a stupid analogy, but here we are. Yeah, but there's like no benefit. Yeah, exactly. Move on, move on to another spot, get your, or make your own spot, you know, find your own area or set up your own board line or something like that where it can just be you or you can study an area and get to know like, oh, I've seen that snake before. I've seen that helo monster three years in a row or whatever, you know, you can,

You can kind of get to know better and actually make, you know, more of a contribution in your observations. Like there's methods to publish even just, you know, certain observations you make in the field. I just published one where we found, my wife and I found a MOLGA, a King Brown, that was consuming a dead on the road, a death adder, you know, was peeling it off the pavement and trying to eat it. And it actually, when we started taking pictures and stopped the car, it took off. So I took the death that her over to and it finished eating it. So it was like kind of a cool observation. I'm like, I need to publish that sometime.

That was like in 2011. So, you know, 14 years later, I published that in. And it got accepted recently to Herpetological Review. Now, I'm not sure what's going on with Herpetological Review, but I haven't seen like an issue come out for a few months. Like, I see, like, the January issue, but I haven't seen anything since then. So I'm like, did they, did I? You finally getting around to it. Push the journal out of friend or something.

But, yeah, so I'm hoping to see that soon. But, yeah, I don't go on there. But, you know, things like that where you can, you have an avenue, you know, there's an avenue to publish, even for, you know, just casual observers or naturalists or whatever. You don't have to be a professional herpetologist to get your note published. You just have to kind of follow the format and, you know, like I mentioned, Shane Madsen, also published around the same time, his observation of a leaf, no snake where it hasn't been seen since, you know, the 90s or something. So it's like kind of a cool observation and you just publish it. And he got, I don't know if he heard back or not, but, you know,

it's it's worth trying anyway you know why not we've got one with the the bretles python that we found where it had shed its skin the shed skin was floating in the breeze you know just above like near a tree hollow so we assume that's where it came out shed its skin came down where we could see it you know it was a beautiful freshly shed animal so it's kind of a cool thing so yeah it's a neat observation like of something in the wild and and that's the place for it you know so i think we can't contribute as kind of citizen scientists in a way definitely and I think to like for people traveling out of state right if you go to a spot where they're given or they're easy right just get your one then move on try and find them elsewhere try and find them in a more difficult location so you can count your lifer right and then count maybe on another list you know something else I found it a harder spot exactly yeah Yeah, I mean, you could make that distinction between disturbed versus natural habitat. Yeah, lots of different lists.

Man, there's this one, someone had a really cool observation of a desert king snake eating a gopher snake or predating a gopher snake on the road. Like stuff like that, you know, just cruising different roads and just being out there and looking. Right, I was going to say, in that context, it's just the act of doing it, right, doing it enough to run. into those it's not just finding the snake it's finding the snake doing something cool yeah finding the albino snake he could be jeff lamb and find 30 snakes in a crack you know yeah well to that actually i have a a friend of a friend found an albino garter snake not too far away from where i live and uh he captured it and it's it's in captivity now but uh my friend that was holding it for another friend, we photograph the snake.

We haven't posted or anything, but we're not really like counting that as our snake. We just kind of photographed it to photograph it. You know, that's kind of another lifer thing that people would consider, you know, just finding those rare snakes. Like, that's an albino snake. That was wild. That was just crazy. Right, right.

You know, stuff like that is, is always interesting. And, you know, once in a lifetime kind of opportunity that people may or may not count and are just kind of different. Right. Right. Well, we were on the grounds of the Alice Springs Desert Park, and we had a friend that worked there, and he was showing us around, and we were kind of talking about, we were outside of a building. He's like, yeah, a lot of times you'll see wild Central Net of Dragons, or, you know, the Aki monitors, the Brannis Akanthyrus, and I'm like, I heard some kind of scuffling under a rock, and I look over, and there's a pair of Aki's mating. I mean, they were wild, but they were on the grounds of the desert park. You know, it's just kind of. of hanging out and saw this somebody posted recently at their trip and they went to the desert park and found wild parenties, you know, walking around the grounds of the desert park or nearby. You know, it's within their range, within their habitat, and they just happened to be on the

grounds, you know, I definitely think, I definitely counted that as a, you know, an Acky find in the wild, but we also saw one kind of, you know, off the road on, you know, out in the West Max or whatever. But, you know, I definitely would have counted that if that was the only ACI I saw. It was a wild acke, you know, mating in the wild. How would it be any better if it was at the Airbnb as opposed to being the reptile part? You know. Exactly. Yeah.

So, you know, I think I think there's a wide range of, you know, what we should consider as viable or reasonable thing. I actually published that observation too in the Biwack Monitor Journal. It was a cool observation, you know, really beautiful Acky, too. A unique pattern on the female that was just, she blended right in with the rock. It was cool. That's really cool. Oh, I guess another point of the aspect that we haven't talked about, or like invasives, for instance. Maybe some people count that as Florida invasive, but as life are still or just on another.

list kind of thing. I don't know. Invasives. I haven't found too many, so I haven't really counted many as anything. Like, I've seen green iguanas in Florida, but I've also seen them in Costa Rica. So it's kind of like, it doesn't matter at this point. But exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I agree, though. I think, you know, there probably should be, you can go see a reticulated python in Puerto Rico. It sounds like an albino if you want. Descendants of captive animals. Yeah, exactly. Maybe, you know. Yeah.

Or to that same perspective is what about like a conservation project where they've released a bunch of offspring, you know, do you think those? If they're out in the wild. How do you know? Yeah. As long as they're not dumping them out of the bag when you come along. Exactly right. It's probably reasonable to count those as legit. Or like, I think in New Mexico, they've reintroduced Bolson's tortoises that.

were around us, like, before the Ice Age or something like that. And then when the Ice Age happened, they were extirpated from New Mexico. Like, that's, to me, it's just like, I don't know how I'd count that, you know? Is it a reintroduction or is it now an invasive? Like, biologists seem to think it's one thing. I might think it's another, but it's a, it's a pretty strange topic. Even that, that's probably on, there's probably access questions and problems with that. I would assume that that's probably on a private land and things.

So it sort of mitigates some of that, right? You have to then be kind of integrated into the experience of what that represents to maybe have that access. Louisiana pine snakes, obviously, you know, kind of has some supplementation stuff. Some of those are accessible. Some of them are not, you know, kind of the same issues. Yeah, so I'm totally with you. I think it's interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, the burden question obviously is an interesting one. I think I would have to frame it as, you know, in Florida. versus in Vietnam or whatever, you know, is probably how I would frame it in my own mind. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's probably a separate list, right? Yeah. I think it's a separate list.

Yeah. The other question, I think the thing that comes up in my mind about the tours, and maybe it's, maybe I'm too cynical, you know, and maybe that's the problem. But becomes, I have this sort of vision in my mind, you know, when we were talking to Zach about it and things of like, oh, it's just this van and then, you know, sort of spread out. and the experiences, is there some implicit limit on the number of people or is it like that you actually know the people that are within the group? Does that make it a common venture versus not knowing him? Even if you met him that morning because it's Dustin's buddy or Dustin's buddy

or whatever, is there some lack of familiarity or, you know, that combined with the commercial nature of a venture would make it so that that's different than just being, oh, it's Brendan's buddy. You know, this is our first time meeting them. I don't know him. But, you know, that makes it all right, but the only common factor being that we're paying this, you know, guy, guy number three, we're both paying money to be here. That's our only common link. Is that, is there a difference there? Man, for that, I don't, I don't think so. You know, I wouldn't consider it that way, but I think, like, the only way I differentiate, differentiate it is, like, if I'm down in Southeast Colorado, I'm cruising with you and we come across two other herpers that I know

but they found like a Speckled King or something like that. I wouldn't count that as my find or anything like that. Like we didn't organize an outing together. If you did, if you said, hey, we're all going to go, this is what we're going to do that same morning. Is that an example of a common venture? Or no, it's just hard out. Yeah, I think that would be enough depending on what we're doing. Usually in that case, if we are driving in separate vehicles, that's kind of where I draw the line a little bit.

just because, like, we're so, we're spread out by so much distance at that point. Even though the idea there is to increase the odds of someone in the group running into one. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. That might just be me being more picky. I know other people aren't like that. I think when I'm trying to go to the West Slope to look for con color, because I haven't seen my life for Colorado.

Mitherto faded that we're going to be taking two separate vehicles. and I have friends that are doing that are part of the project for going up to the whole range trying to find them. So I think if someone finds one of the Jeep and I don't find it or something like that, I'll have some tough questions to consider there. Well, in Australia, we couldn't all fit in the same vehicle. So we were obviously in separate vehicles. And I mean, it kind of worked out to the detriment of the other guys because we were in the middle. vehicle. And the first vehicle went past and was out of range. And then we came along and there was a Parenti crossing the road. And so we got to interact with this Prendi. And then the last

vehicle didn't have their walkie talkie on. So they didn't know that we were saying, hey, guys, get up here quick. You know, see this Prenti. So, you know, we were the only ones that saw that one. Fortunately, we saw one later in the trip. And so the other guys got to see the Prenti. But, you know, I guess that's the downside of it. Because if you're, you're, if you're not in the same car, you don't, maybe don't get to see that. And we missed out on one of those beautiful Western brown snakes, the orange ones with the black heads, you know, because we were not in the vehicle and we were out of range of the walkie-toggy, so it was same kind of deal.

We missed that on that one. And then Aspen and I were walking near each other, and he was tracking a mulga, and we kind of both saw it, or he spotted it in the wash. And so we both got to see this mulga, and everybody else was too spread out. and it took off before they could get back to see it. So, you know, I think there's those aspects of maybe, maybe some of those things, you know, you don't get a count because you're not close enough to witness the animal. And we're not experienced enough with the muggas to grab it by the tail or Western Browns

to grab them by the tail and hold on to them until the other guys get there. I guess in that case, too, just because that reminded me, if I am herping with other people and they're in a super vehicle, I guess if the animal is still left on the road, no one has touched it, right? You can see it kind of still doing its normal thing.

Then at that point, I would probably count it. Just because it's like, it's relatively natural, you know, hasn't been tampered with. That was probably, would be as far as,

as loose as I would get with that. Well, here's another example of that. That kind of same mindset is I came across a red, red diamond rattlesnake in southern California and I was waiting for Zach Lofman and some of the others from the CCR crew

to make it there and they showed up maybe 20, 30 minutes later and we went back to that spot and I said I found a red diamond rattlesnake was on the road right here and so we kind of fanned out and looked and I think it was Kayla spotted it and it was underneath like a downed yucca branch or something you know is her you know kind of under undercover basically but she spotted it so I think you know that would definitely count even though we kind of knew one

was in the area there's no guarantee you're going to see it again you know oh for sure I've had that a ton of time like for example with the box turtle in in in Pennsylvania we saw it we were taking pictures of it sitting watching it move around and then we left and I think I was thinking I want to see if I can find that thing, you know, again, because I wasn't the one that spotted it. I just wanted to see if I could find it, because I knew about where it was. I went back and searched all through this area. I couldn't spot it. I couldn't find it. So it's like it just, you know, either went further afield than I thought it had or blended in too well or went down a burrow or whatever, you know, I couldn't find it. So. Well, and anyone who's lost a snake in their

house, right? Can attest to the fact that, you know, it could be an entirely, you know, non-nobes. natural setting and not blend in whatsoever and it could still be impossible to find. So I think that's, yeah, you know, in that same context of once it's, what's on the loose, we're talking about these introduced, you know, where augmented populations and things versus the bolsons being different, right? We're talking about a solely introduced population. Yeah, I think it puts me, Justin, more into the spot that you were describing of saying like, okay well if i didn't know they were coming and they released them yesterday and you know i turn up

one today then i think i count it because it's like well you know that i didn't know what was happening i wasn't coming to seek that just that's how the situation we had something like that with the um the zenata on the more recent trip where we had i found it on the crawl it crawled out onto the trail right in front of me um after eric and brandon had already were you know down down the hill and then brandon had posted pictures on instagram and someone who reached out and said i think i saw that same snake today i think i flipped it you know it was under a caprock or whatever and maybe that speaks to sort of the disturbance of that you know i i don't know whether it was or wasn't the same one if but if it was it's like well maybe that actually sort of speaks to the

destructive potential for destructiveness associated with that interaction is something that was hidden away under this cap rock or whatever now maybe it was out on the move to crawl right in front of my feet, you know, hours later or whatever. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I guess to that point, kind of along those lines, my life for Speckled King Snake was a

king snake that my friends had found a year prior, crossing on the same stretch of road, almost an exact, like exactly a year apart, which was just wild, which other people made fun of me for that. It was like, oh, that's a snake that's been found before. Like, some people are like, you can never know

if a snake has been found by someone before or not. usually. Unless, yeah, the thing features of some kind. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, which we pulled up and we're like, that's the same snake, which is just completely wild. I still count it as a life for some people. Yeah, you shouldn't count that. Yeah, I think that was interesting

data and interesting observation. And then checking on I match list, like a couple days ago, I think someone had found the same king snake, unfortunately, had been hit by a car. Not the same area. Yeah, I can't for sure identify it. just because I can't zoom in as much on the photo. But I still think that's interesting data. Like, the snake is moving relatively the same direction.

Predictable. Every year, yeah, which is just, to me, that's mind-blowing. I thought that was a pretty interesting observation. No one else thought that was very interesting. I thought it was really cool. Well, I mean, we got very excited about the Gila monster that we found, you know, either us or a friend, you know, found it. And it's been found three times, you know, and had the distinctive...

Over the course of the years. Yeah, over three or four years. And, you know, I made the joke like we were photographing. And I said, oh, I've seen this one. I'm going to go find another one. Which is not an easy task in Utah. But I went around the corner and there was another one crawling across the Slick Rock. So, you know, got lucky or whatever.

But, you know, hey, guys, here's another one. They're like, yeah, right. The other one was, I think this is my favorite. favorite recapture or refined story of all is the pitcher on the cover of the second edition, the more complete carpet python is a Flinders ranges, gammon ranges carpet. And then Jordan found that same snake like eight years later in similar, you know, same area where it was found the first time. And so just so cool, you know. And one other thought that kind of came to mind was in science, you know, a lot of times you don't, you don't get to be an author

on a paper unless you've made an intellectual contribution, right? And I think about this in the context of a Rob Stone trip is like, you know, if you're not helping with the planning or making suggestions or like out there, like, okay, I know where we're going, let's look into the trail system or maybe I could split off here or look here, you know, those kind of things. Or, ooh, that looks like a good hillside. You know, if you're not, if you're just kind of along for the ride and looking at snakes when people find them, you know, is that, should you be counting that? Is that just basically an unpaid, you know, herp trip basically or, or herp? So just kind of a little devil on one shoulder thought I had.

Sure. Yeah. That's fair. And I mean, the question with that, you know, is kind of, well, if that's sort of what's fun for you as participating on those trips then undoubtedly that's good enough for your list you know that you're not engaging with people that are going to be pedantic enough to be arguing that it's not good enough in some way that somehow would have been to claim yeah but i like it i like the idea yeah i know i know there's some trips i've participated on and i didn't do it i wasn't part of any of the planning i'm like i'm just here for the ride and uh i still kind of snakes as my lifer and stuff and didn't really contribute very much. But yeah, I think that's a very interesting point.

Well, it seems like, you know, a lot of people, well, I mean, there's obviously people that prefer to herp solo or with, you know, maybe one other person that they know very well and that they hurt a lot with. And, you know, hey, I want to go herping with you sometime. They're like, yeah, sure. And then you never go with them because they don't, you know, they don't let you know when they're going out or whatever. And so, you know, I think, I think there are some people that just are wary of that. They don't want to, you know, ride the coattails of somebody else. So they're

just going to go do the work themselves and find everything on their own. And I think there's merit to both ways. Like, I enjoy herping with groups just because it's more fun, you know, it's a little. But at the same time, being out by yourself in the wilderness, you know, can't have risks, of course, but also can be enjoyable. And, you know, kind of ground you a little bit. give you some quiet time by yourself to reflect and hopefully see some cool, cool reptiles, but, um, you know, to each their own, I guess. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I definitely prefer herping with more people than solo, uh, but solo, uh, but solo, I think

is one of the, the best times to, to self reflect. And you kind of, I felt like I learned more when I'm by myself herping than when I'm with other people, but right, right. And it's not, it's all on you, you know. you can't yeah that's true yeah it's kind of a little bit more pressure that way too and i i think there is some pressure too when you're planning a trip for a group where you're like you know picking the areas you're going and how much time you're going to spend in those areas and you know there you know you're tying in you know rental places and stuff and that makes it difficult to have

more flexibility without losing a lot of money you know to say hey we're just going to ditch this area and forget our yeah you know we paid for this hotel room or whatever and Now we're going to go somewhere else and paying in for a hotel room. Yeah. Or this hotel looks sketchy. Let's go somewhere else. That's three different rooms for one night. Yeah, exactly.

Not the best scenario, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Yeah, definitely. Yep. That's, I guess the whole fun of this whole thing, right, is these things. They can make you. think and make you debate and make you question your own list maybe i don't know definitely yeah any any other things do we cover everything you have any more thoughts or i don't have any at the moment your stuff will come to me like tomorrow morning and i'll be like oh gosh right yeah well

we'll just have to have you back on yeah definitely yeah it's great hearing about your herping experiences and so many new cool trips you've been on and yeah i'm sure there'll be many more in the future so i hope so i hope so in the chat about those so yeah maybe we'll have to figure out a trip to nepal or somewhere else that's so cool that would be really cool if you yeah we'll have to definitely hear about that if you make that happen yeah i hope so yeah yeah it's been a bucket list country for ever since i've been in like eighth grade oh yeah yeah you wouldn't think of it as really like a herp spot but But, yeah, they're finding some really cool stuff out there.

Yeah, it's just not very, it's an underrated country, in my opinion. And there's more scientists. Like, we're going to go see Geryl if I end up going, you know, like that's part of the trip. So, which is a cool, yeah, crocodilian to check off the list. Right, yeah. Not many have those kind of things on their list usually either, you know. Yeah. If I could get one in hand, though, that would be, that'd be cool.

Very unlikely. good times well where can people see your herb finds or you know yeah i'm on instagram just as my name brandon at underscore headinger uh and i'm also on facebook same thing just my name cool i post some stuff there i'm not as active on facebook more more so on instagram but that automatic population feature is really nice where you can post on instagram and automatically post to facebook as well yeah I haven't, I haven't done that yet, but I just post her friends. I don't know how I came on that.

Do you want to post this also on Facebook? I'm like, yes, that would be much easier. That's awesome. Well, yeah, we really appreciate you coming on. This has been a fun discussion, and hopefully our listeners have enjoyed it as well. But I know I sure have. I can't talk about her picking up. It's a good time.

Well, I'm just excited. I'm very excited to be on here. This was actually the first podcast I had to ever listen to. A friend of mine introduced me to a long time ago. So it's pretty wild that I'm on here talking with you guys and all that. Well, we appreciate the support. Yeah. Thanks for listening and glad to have you on.

Thank you. We'll have to get out in the field now and go herping sometime. We'll record from the field. That would be fun. It's always fun. Yeah. But cool. Well, I kind of like to end the show with maybe some cool things that you've seen in herptoculture or herpetology or anything like that, if there's anything neat.

I ran across a publication that documented a unique neck skin structure in spotted turtles where they, when they retract their head, there's actually like their neck skin kind of comes over and completely engulfs their head. and it's kind of a protective skin layer. And they've called it the clemess fold, which is, you know, makes sense because it's clemiscutata. So kind of an interesting thing. I'd never thought of. And they likened it to like the hinshell of a box turtle or something like that, where that extra layer protection from their valuable head parts.

So kind of a unique thing. So next time you're handling a spot, Water Turtle, look for the Clemmas Fold. That's really cool. Yeah. Oh, goodness. I guess we talked about the other thing I was thinking of was the Noah Fields rock conversation. So I'm glad we could fold that into the discussion tonight.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. I don't know. Any cool things you've heard lately or that? Oh, man. Not recently, but something that I just think is wild is that there was a paper about the Angulate Tortus. retaining eggs, females retaining eggs or an egg and laying it on the surface of the ground just a couple days before it hatches to try and combat potentially having clutches be swayed one way or the other for in terms of sex to try and prevent them from all being, I can't remember if it's male or female hotter or colder, but the thought is that the egg is colder inside the female. So when it's laid, it'll be the opposite sex of whatever everyone else has been laying in the ground.

I can't remember where that paper was posted, but that's just something I think about a lot. That's really cool. Yeah. It's almost like, yeah, I was listening, oh, it was on Snake Talk, I think. And he was talking about, he went and studied skinks in some area and found like five different modes of reproduction, you know, like live birth. laying eggs and then there was one where they they ovulated this tiny tiny like pinprick sized egg and then it would develop and basically hatch inside the female and he's like I discovered a new mode of reproduction and his major professor's like no you didn't and then he's like here's the

here are the samples you like yes you did oh is lorry lory vitt um really cool interview on snake talk yeah that's really cool Yeah, but yeah, a lizard researcher for a long time. Really interesting stories for sure. Very cool. All right. Well, cool stuff. I mean, there's just so many, you know, neat things that happen in herpeticulture and herpetology and all sorts of stuff.

So I guess our friends that attended the Daytona show had a good time there. And it kind of, it would have been nice to go, but what do you do? I guess you can't do one. I'd rather be herping, I guess, than deli cup herping as I affectionately referred to it as. All right. Well, thanks again for coming on. And thanks to everybody for listening and for the NPR umbrella for hosting us. And we'll catch you next time for Reptile Fight Club.