Reptile Fight Club - Haranguing the Herpers w/ Christian Diedrich

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob have another installment of Haranguing the Herpers w/ Christian DiedrichFollow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIG https://www.instagram.com/jgjulander/Follow 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/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQWebsite: https://mprnetwork.transistor.fm/

Welcome to Reptile Fight Club. This is Justin Glenn, your host, with me as always, Rob Stone. How are you doing, sir? Doing great, excited for tonight. I'm excited that I've worked out of them. Yeah. You and Jordan finally warm me down.

Yeah. We tend to do that to people. Yeah, it'll be fun times down there. Are you up? Sorry, I guess I'll bring on our guest. Christian, Diedrich, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of your backyard to some extent. Are you planning on going to IHS? It is. Yeah, I'm going to go to one day. I'm going to do Saturday and go for the talks. I think that's the day you're talking. Zach's talking. And then stick around for the banquet. And then I'm getting out of there because, you know, Cape Creek Road is going to be a traffic jam. There's going to be like 200 herpers out. I'm leaving. Yeah. We've been talking about. where to go to get away from the crowds rather than follow a line of cars up Cape Creek. And I mean, we'll hit on that location.

Yeah. We'll give it some space. We'll mark that. We'll come to it because I have plenty of thoughts and or questions on that. So, yeah, maybe continue. Yeah. We'll come back. Yep.

Well, I mean, I've got jungles hatched out this week and I got some Western Stimpsons, wheat belts that hatched out as well. So that's been nice. The last pygmy python finally took its meal on its own. I didn't have to assist feed. So that was good. And I don't know. Other than that, things are going pretty well.

I got some Centralian python eggs. I don't know how great they are. Some of them look like they're crashing. But, I mean, there's 24 of them. So maybe if a few eggs die, it won't be the worst thing in the world. but a bunch of mouths to feed, but what do you do? And then, yeah, business as usual, I suppose. We've had some kind of storms and storm fronts move through,

and I really wanted to get out and hurt, but I just haven't brought myself to do it. So I just see those gas prices and go, I don't know. Kind of wimpy these days, especially with no grant funding coming in. So, yeah, that's been a little hard to take. But I don't know. How are you guys doing? I'm good. So the monsoons have kicked off in southern Arizona. So last few nights have been fun.

Nice. Neglecting all my responsibilities and spending all hours of the night on the road. Yeah. But yeah, I can't complain. We moved to Tucson back in March. And it's just been great. I love it out here. That's awesome. Yeah, I saw your post. And I'm like, my backyard. He must be on a trip.

And no, you've moved there. That's cool. Yeah, it's crazy. So I guess for folks that don't know me, I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio. I spent most of my life in Southwest Ohio, which is great. But, you know, it's kind of mind-blowing being out here. And, you know, you drive in. You're coming from the grocery store and there's just a heal a monster crossing your driveway.

It's like, this is not real life. Yeah. This morning I got my first ever horn lizard in the backyard, which was. Nice. Which species? It was a regal. Regal. Okay. They're cool. I haven't seen those yet. Yeah, I need to see a regal. Yeah. Oh, they're all over the place. Come out here. You're going to get a regal. Cool. Yeah, I love phrynosoma. I love low desert stuff. Like, that's my jam.

Rob's the one who kind of introduced me to the high desert nonsense, you know, the mountain stuff. So, I mean, it's been fun to see all the montane rattlesnakes and stuff. I really enjoyed finding those and seeing the, yeah, different species. up there, but I think it's time for some more lowland desert herping. I need to find the sidewinder down there. I haven't seen one of those yet, so hopefully on this next trip. Yeah. It shouldn't be too difficult.

It's just I haven't gotten out there more than once or twice. Yeah, I don't know if I was in the right spot. This was a while back. So, yep, about time to get out there again. And also a Gila. I haven't seen a healer since like late 1900s. In terms of the reticulate.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We saw bandits up in Utah. But yeah, and I haven't seen one at all, Christian. So, yeah. We're coming to my driveway and. Yeah, that's the, I guess that's a, right, that's the beauty of living there is, you know, yeah, when it starts to rain, you can get out and see, see stuff or stuff comes to you or. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I'm at four since moving here. And honestly, the one of the worst parts living here is I see him dead all the time on the road, all the time. I have seen one dead. Yeah. And it is exactly that question, right? Where it's especially, I mean, so the spot I saw it, I suppose there's not all that much alternate. Like, you know, there's no shoulders and stuff.

But at the same time, it's like you didn't fail to see that, right? Like. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's the worst thing about, yeah, herping, road cruising in general, seeing dead, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's all I've seen for some, one of my big targets in Australia is the Centralian Blue Tunks Kink.

And all I've seen are dead or dying, you know, on the road because they just got hit or they've been hit for a while. It's terrible. Yeah, yeah. We live off, if you're familiar with the area, we live off Svala Road. And it's kind of a two-lane highway that, that, that, connects 83 and 19 and so there's so much traffic on it and it goes through like pristine sonoran desert habitat and just the road mortality is devastating yeah i hate that yeah that's rough what do you do i guess you you cry a bit and move on yeah yeah that's cool though i um when i went

went down and saw all the healas it was actually with uh frank ritus and he took me to his study site made me put a bag over my head so I didn't know where I was. This was back before we had location services and phones and stuff. So it was like, I really didn't know where I was and I still don't know where it was. He did leave the bag off my head when he took me out of there. But it was crazy because he'd go, okay, look under that ledge. And I'd look under, oh, there's three helas lined up there. Oh, look under this ledge.

Okay, there's two more. I saw, we saw five to seven, somewhere around there, like a good handful of, he was it was pretty sweet. And he knew, like most of the individuals, I think we saw a lyresnake, a mating pair of Western Diamondbacks. It was a nice outing. Not to mention his monitor collection at the time was pretty phenomenal as well. So I saw my first Parenti.

Yeah, pretty cool. But yeah, I have a fondness for Tucson. Although my dad and I went down to visit Frank and we just camped out. like we didn't even bring a tan or anything so we just kind of laid our sleeping bags out under the stars at uh you know somewhere between phoenix and tucson and i think we got kicked off a road for trying to sleep on the on the side of the road we were road cruising and stuff but it was uh february so it was a little chilly and uh it got really cold in the night i think we woke up and it was in the 40s or 50s or something we're like yeah we got a hit our warm up a bit but it was kind of crazy so

Kind of a whirlwind trip there, but it's pretty fun to see. Very cool. Yeah, you don't get sick of that area. It's really a cool place. Yeah. Yeah. My wife and I wanted to move somewhere where we could just have kind of a more active outdoor life. And like for probably four years, five years, we were, we really wanted to.

We were really motivated to move, but we never really found the place. We thought about Florida for a while. and then for a number of reasons, Florida had seemed unappealing. So we held off. And then I actually came out here for the first time last August. And it was like, I don't know, I was just like one of those moments where everything clicked for me. I was like, this is my favorite place I've been.

I mean, I think I was here six days. I think I slept for like 12 hours. I couldn't get enough. You know, like the desert's dangerous because, you know, especially when there's elevation, because you can start your day. You know, early morning, you can walk around the desert. You know, it gets warmer. You can just go up the mountain, walk around, hike for snakes.

It starts to get dark. You start cruising. And then you can literally go down low and find snakes at all hours of the night. So when you lack impulse control like me, it's kind of dangerous to be. Right. That's fun. Yeah. Definitely some good herbs there.

I mean, it's a, and also in the west, you have, you know, BLM land where you can, you know, go and walk around. You don't have to worry about trespassing on private property, you're getting shot at or things. I mean, you still do, but like, it's, you know, there's places where you can roam and get off the beaten path and go kind of explore, which is nice. I love that. Yeah. I mean, I was joking the other day because I had a border patrol stop where they held me for like 20, 25 minutes the other night. But I was joking with a friend. I was like, I'm used to back east trying to convince law enforcement that I'm not looking for snakes.

You know, you're always herping state parks and whatnot. Like out here and trying to, it's the opposite. Like, no, I'm a snake hunter. Let me go. Yeah. Really? Look at my phone. Look at all the pictures.

Yeah. That's cool. That's great. Do you want to give us some of your background? So I guess I will give the context, right? the admission that I heard your episode with Zach and Clint on Calibroids and Calibroid Radio back last fall, early winter, something like that. And I thought it was great.

I was really impressed with your verve. It took me to the Instagram page, and I saw all these great pictures. And I also saw in their watch-along that there were a whole bunch of albums that you guys didn't wind up getting to talk about. And I said, well, I have just the context to talk about. Both some of the material you already covered and then all those things that you didn't cover. And I'm sure what wasn't even in there. So you want to give us your background a little bit and then we'll do this as a ranging in the herpers.

We got lots of different hopefully good prompts to get you talking about your different ideas and things. Sure. Yeah, sounds good. So I grew up in Southwest Ohio, you know, I think as long back as I can remember, I would, we live right in front of a creek. And my dad and I would go out and walk the creek, flipping rocks. for salamanders and snakes and crawdads. And that was kind of like my first introduction to what I would much later learn as herping.

I think we had a little property like 25 minutes from where I lived where we actually had an eastern Massasaga population. So I think maybe the second ever snake I saw was a Massasaga rattlesnake. Wow. Which was cool. I am totally lost on me at the time.

But unfortunately, that population has since been extirpated. But that was kind of my intro to it. I think kind of all grown up, I kept lizards, I kept leopard geckos. And actually, I think my first reptile was a Chinese water dragon, which I wouldn't recommend as a first reptile to anybody. But yeah, I would, you know, I've always been kind of into the outdoors. And once I got into my professional life and I had a little bit more freedom, I started. taking trips, places to look for wildlife.

And somewhere along the way, I realized herping was like a hobby that other people did. And I wasn't the only weirdo who, you know, poked around the wood for snakes. So I really probably got much more into it around like 2018, 2019. And I also keep snakes. I've got what I'd probably say a medium collection. I've got probably about 150 animals right now. I breed on a small scale. I sell under a storefront called Select Snakes, which is also the Instagram.

I post all my field herping stuff too. So I mostly keep New World Calubrids and Cullabroid snakes. Also have a couple of the American boids. But yeah, I've been herping pretty much my whole life. I think starting around 2018, I started actually taking like dedicated trips, to places. Definitely like a shameless lifelister. Chasing the list is a big part of what has gotten me to see a lot of the country, places I never would have stepped foot in, which I think is such a cool part of this hobby

that kind of gets overlooked. Yeah, for sure. So I've probably herped in at least 30 states. And now I live, like I said, I live in Southern Arizona, like 20 minutes south of Tucson. Very cool. What kind of progress are you making on like the, I mean. Yeah, what's your list, right? That's a big part of the question too. I mean, I know both Justin and I, well, I'll speak for myself, but I think Justin feels the same.

That is the beauty of the list, right, is the idea to get you to places that you're not otherwise going or to ideate. What do I do next or whatever? But what does that list specifically look like? I know you mentioned snakes to the U.S. Is it more finite than that? Did you work out to that? What does that look like? Yeah.

So for me, it started with Snake. of Ohio when I lived in Ohio. And I eventually checked all those off. I didn't get them all in Ohio. I never got arithragaster, which may or may not even exist in Ohio. And I never got a Brachistoma in Ohio. But I've seen them other places. And eventually, after like seven or eight trips to Youngstown, Ohio, I was very okay living with the fact that I probably would never see one in Ohio. Yeah. Not my favorite city. those two species, give me the common names. Oh, sorry.

Retrogastor, is that a neurodia? Plainbelly water snake. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then the short-headed garter snake. Oh, okay. Okay.

But yeah, so that's how it started. Eventually, it turned into all the snake species in the U.S. And that's probably like the one I'm most focused on. Yeah. I'm at 116, and I think my list is about 174 or so. Nice. Yeah. becomes the other part of the fun and the question and things.

I don't know that I've even defined what my number would be. So, and I don't know if you've heard the show, but I talk about it in the context of forms because I don't want to be beholden to taxonomic anarchy, right? So that's a lot of looking at old right and right from the 50s I take is really instructive and then kind of looking at it critically and saying, does this still make sense? What is the South Florida specifically, the Miami-Dade County Coral Snake really its own thing? Or was that kind of the fact that we weren't in a globalized world, right, at that point? How do you take that?

Yeah, I keep it at the species level. And I do kind of a background goal of seeing them in every state they occur. So that's more just to give me something else to do as it gets harder to check new species off. So I generally comport to SSAR. I think, you know, when I read papers that are very compelling, I probably am a little quicker. to adopt splits and such than they are. But I think my list generally tracks theirs. And I include some of the stupid stuff I'm never going to see, like the, you know,

the Baja, California, rosy rat and the yellow-bellied sea snake. So I think my goal is like substantially all the snakes. You know, there's probably a good four or five I'll never get, but I want to check off the rest of them. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, I'm working. I'm almost to the point of seeing.

and all the snakes in Utah. I think I have five or so left to go, like the blind snake and, you know, ringnecks are surprisingly difficult in Utah. They're, they're one of the ones that's just unpredictable and you've got to be lucky or something. I don't know. Although my buddy, Pat May, he and Rye Jones found like five or six on one day, like ridiculous crazy event where maybe it was even more than that. Like it was insane. And they're like, I don't know. what happened. Those kind of things are fun, but yeah, it doesn't happen to me too often. Do you get the great big regal ringnecks?

Yeah. Yeah. I had my very first encounter with one of those last night, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. It was almost three feet long. My Midwest mine was blown. Right.

I believe what I was seeing. Yeah, and that was kind of the, I was going to make a point regarding, you know, herping to the species level is like, you know, you see a ringneck back east. and you see a ringneck in Arizona and they are not the same animal. Like they shouldn't even be the same species probably, but it's kind of crazy. So that was kind of the other question is, you know, do you? Yeah. There's a lot of, I guess.

And I think SSAR has quite a few different subspecies and things like that. So, yeah. Yeah, and that's part of the reason I keep track of the states. I see stuff in this because I, then I can, it's a little easier to remember, you know, after a split. have I seen that? Like, I think Arizona, elegance got split recently. And so I know I've seen them in California. I've seen an Arizona.

I have not seen a live one in, like, Texas. So that's a new species I need now. Yeah, it's funny how that works. I mean, the species count just keeps going on. But I guess that gives us, you know, more targets to go out. I can always use a good excuse to go to Texas. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Yeah, I mean, I'm curious, actually. I don't think I've taken the time. really to break those out. I'm curious what right and right, if that's been, that's the interesting thing, right? I'm actually very curious. Maybe I'll take a brief break here to look and write and see whether the Texas form was described back in the 50s as a different thing, right? Or if that's something where we're re-recognizing something that previously existed and either had a name or didn't, you know, but showed up as, oh, these are actually, we do see a cliental range, you know, from the California stuff through Utah and all that, which is I think

where we've seen them. Justin, I don't know. And elegance is the glossy, right? Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there are, what, three, three different forms or subspecies or whatever.

Yeah. I was looking at that as well with the patch snow snakes as well. They seem to kind of follow a similar trend where they're different, you know, in Texas and Arizona. Almost like there's a reason. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There might be some reason of that.

Yeah. I don't know. Like I've been thinking probably too much about taxonomy because I don't know enough about taxonomy to really think about it. You know, but some things just don't make sense when you see, you know, some of these papers come out and you're like, that makes no sense to me. Like, I can't see how you're doing that. But I don't know. My worldview on taxonomy is pretty unpopular among herpers. I think I have a lot of friends, honestly, in the Burbrink lab.

And I think they're at the forefront of molecular. work and I don't think anything tells a clearer story about evolutionary relationships than the genes themselves. So I think almost all the work that's come out of that lab is good work. I recognize all their splits and I know I know people like to look at the snake and know what it is, you know, absent location or whatever, but I'm definitely on the Burbank side of things. I think maybe a critical point and maybe this is the change that we're starting to see over time. So we just actually did our second from our reconstituted Boas Boas Boas podcast. We just had our second episode last night, recorded that, which is good.

And obviously, so Dr. Warren Booth is one of the co-hosts there on the show. And this is one of his various, you know, many areas of interest. But I think one of the profound changes we're having over time is that we're actually sequencing the entire genome. And that tells so much more. I think the thing that I previously have taken issue with, right, is the idea that we're isolating three genes within a snake and saying, oh, there are only five million years different. Who cares? You know, it's not a big deal. And it's like, well, hey, you're missing, I don't know, probably 90% of the remaining, you know, genes that exist within that animal. When you're saying that, you're making your determination. And then you're also understating the impact of five million years of divergence, right? Both those things are things I take issue with, but to your point, to the extent that we're, man, so many advancements, we're getting so much closer to actually looking at the full picture, I do find it a lot more persuasive. And I think the Burbank Club is doing that much more so than, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. So that is much more persuasive.

And from that perspective, then I tend to be more deferential to it for sure. Right. Who knows, Justin, we're almost working into a fight here. You're right. Yeah, it's Maybe next time. Well, I think the thing that I continue to harp on and it kills me is, is it depends on who's doing the research. The changes that are made depends on who's doing research.

You know, if you don't subscribe to the idea of subspecies or whatever, then you're going to lump stuff or you're going to, you know, do things differently than somebody who has a different view of species concept or different species concept altogether. So that's kind of what's, you know, that kind of bad taste in my mouth is it's just not consistent. consistent. Like, it's hard, you know, and so it's hard to say, oh, yeah, that works. Right. Right. There's two different orders. There's a completely different tolerance for subspecies and local variation. And mammals, forget about it. I mean, you know, if we based the, the, the taxonomy of mammals, we'd just all be, you know, apes. Like, it would just be one species of ape and it would include us and chimpanzees and gorillas and stuff. I don't know. I'm being a little dramatic there, I'm sure, but, you know, it's, there is a little bit of a lot of bias in taxonomy, which, you know, I don't know. I don't like biases, but I guess they exist. So what do you do? And, you know, I mean, the data can kind of, I, Jordan kind of made the comment like, you can take anything, I mean, down to the individual.

We're all different from each other in some way, you know. So where do you draw the line of what, here's a species? And this is not a, you know, this is a different species or you're all the same species. species or whatever. It's all about the structure. And if we don't fundamentally disagree about what the structure is, it seems like we used to agree more back when we were in school than we did now, right, in terms of species concept and all those things. It seems like there's more tolerance for a wider range of paradigms than there was

four years ago. Yeah. Well, in the species concepts have expanded. You know, we have a better understanding of how things are actually interrelated. And just because something can breed to another, you know, thing doesn't make them in the same species, you know, there's all sorts of different... The culture has proven that. Yeah, exactly. That's like the tough part of it is it's essentially a semantic argument at this point

because, you know, there's the data set where we can literally look at every base pair. You know, when we have genetic tissue from two animals, we can look at every base pair. And so we can, you know, we can observe the biological fact of what genetic material these animals share and don't share. So everything past that is just an interpretation of it and, you know, semantically deciding what does a species mean? Right. There is like a very fundamental disagreement on that. And I think that drives the inconsistency you're talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And that's so I think back to Rob's point is, you know, forms are important. Like that's, you know, localities or forms. Like you said, if you find a species in the state, then you've probably found all the form. you find each one in each state, you've probably found all the forms of that species. So you're, you're covered. Yeah, I think I'm just still been out of shape that they changed chuck wallas from

obesity to adder. I just don't agree with that change. Obesis is just such a great name. Anyway, yeah. So have you always been into reptile? Sorry, Rob, did you want to add anything to that? No, the last thing I was going to say, no, was in that same vein. And speaking of Warren again, right, is just the idea that they're showing heterozygosity variation, right, just based on random mutation and things amongst asexually produced offspring, which is pretty wild, right? And that's kind of the paper. I think that's still forthcoming. We had discussed it very briefly. But, yeah, I mean, to that point, right, Christian, that you're making that if you take it to the narrowest level, even in something that should theoretically be, you know, clonal, that we're seeing variance.

And that's really, you know, so if you took it to the most, the most extreme splitter position, then nothing is the same. Yeah. Even those things that are theoretically clones are not actually the same. Yeah. And, I mean, if you really want your mind blown, I was visiting with an ant researcher, and he was telling me this crazy, like, population structure of this ant colony where there's basically a species that has taken over. over another species and also a third species, like taking them over sexually somehow. So when they're producing workers, it's this one species. But when they're producing queens, it's another species.

And then one of the species doesn't even have to be present to be produced. It's bizarre. I'm like, you know, I had that. I need to ask him again because I think I've heard it twice and I still don't understand what's. But yeah, he published. I think they published in nature. science, like a pretty high-profile journal. But he was like looking at the genetics going, this, this doesn't make any sense. You know, they're not from here. Like they're not in this

colony. Like we collected from a specific colony. And then looking at it, it was some bizarre, weird triangle of different species. And yeah, really blows the species concept, you know, out of the water for in a lot of ways that way. So kind of crazy. But that's cool. Yeah, nature is amazing and fascinating. And, yeah. Nature is amazing and fascinating. And, yeah, if only I had several lives to lead, maybe in one of those lives, I could be a taxonomist or hiss everybody off, you know. But, yeah, anyway. So, yeah, have you always been into snakes? Have you always been into reptiles?

Definitely, yeah, from a young age, walk in the freaks. I mean, I love finding everything. Snapping turtles were killer. But a snake's always had a special place in my heart. I don't know why, honestly, I have no idea. I've gotten Freudian on that. Part of me wonders is like, you know, I was a kind of precocious, you know, awkward kid like most people that like reptiles.

And part of me wonder is like, and snakes are kind of like an outsider. Like, I wonder if that played a role. But I don't know. But I like everything too. Like I've gotten really into birding recently. And like that's, yeah, that's honestly like, My biggest herping tip to people who really want to see a target species or something is become a birder.

Right. I think the broader you cast your interest in the natural world, the more time you want to spend outside looking for stuff, the more enjoyment you'll get being in the field. And I'm a firm believer that time spent in habitat is by far the best predictor of success when you're looking for something. And so if you go out and you can entertain yourself on a day where you don't see snakes, like it makes it way easier to grind day after day in that habitat to see that thing you like. Yep.

Yeah, for sure. Like living out here, like the mammals, the birds, like everything. Like I don't care when conditions are bad for snakes. I'm still outside. Nice. Yeah, I just. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, Justin.

I saw you posted a ringtail last night. And that is awesome. Yeah, as Justin. alluded to. I'm not that much into the birds at this point. You know, there's walkie birds, you know, flyy birds, swimming birds. But I do do like all the, you know, it's not that I don't love all those other things. It's just the level of appreciation, right? But, man, that ringtail looks pretty sweet. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the mammals out here. One of my first nights out here,

I watched two mountain lions chase each other down. No way. And I was like, this is cool. I've seen bears. The skunks, we have like species of skunks. Last, like, last week I saw a hooded skunk, which is like a super elegant, large skunk with two kits that were kind of like, she was like walking and they're like trying to suckle and she was kind of grabbing them by the nape of their neck, like kittens. I mean, it was like one of my favorite things I've seen. That's awesome. I just picked up a thermal camera. So I want to, I'm excited to try that out in southeast Arizona.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's supposed to have a. pretty good range so you can just see, you know, whatever's warm-blooded. So birds and mammals should, I should add a few more species this way. That's very cool. Have you seen the trogan yet? Yeah, yeah. It was kind of crazy because, yeah, these guys had left me. I was walking down the trail pretty slow because I knew trogans were in the area or whatever. And I was just frustrated because I think I saw a painted red start. So I was pretty excited about that and trying to get pictures of it and stuff. And that's my

failing, I think, is trying to get pictures of birds because every time I get them focused, they fly away, you know? But the, so I was walking out of there, it was getting dark and I was like, oh man. And then all of a sudden this bird just flew up and landed on a branch, like right in front of me, just, you know, well in

viewing range. And I'm like, oh, is that some pigeon or something? What is that a dove? And so I zoomed in on it, and I'm like, that's green. That's red. That's a trocon. I was like, oh, sweet. So I got got my trogan and I've heard that you you know got gotten their calls on on eBird or whatever but um I haven't uh seen one since I've just seen that one if I yeah yeah very cool birds I've seen a

couple of difference we we went to Costa Rica and that's like I bet that's amazing yeah gosh we saw three or four of the kettles which was pretty phenomenal you know they like take it to the next level with that long tail feathers and stuff. But really, yeah, I agree 100%, you know, just adding the other interests. And I mean, I'm getting into all sorts of different bugs. And I mean, Jordan's heavily into spiders. So he's kind of influencing me that way like, oh, check out this. This is a North American, you know, species that, you know, typically found in Australia.

Yeah, undescribed, you know, he's like, oh, this is definitely something that is a different thing that's unique to this place. Right. You know. Very cool. Right. And well, and Dave Barker was going to write a moths of Texas or moths of U.S. or something. Well, he started doing the lights and the sheets and everything. And he counted 700 different species on his own property.

And so he went, there's no way I'm ever going to make a moths. So he went, moths of my backyard. I think he changed it to like an introduction to mothing or something. Okay. Yeah, but kind of cool, cool stuff. Like, they're just such diversity. I mean, I was walking back to our car at work, you know, on campus, and they've planted a bunch of milkweeds, like, on campus.

And it's kind of cool, you know, some more natural native plants. But I noticed this bright red bug and it had, you know, spots on black spots, like a ladybug, but it was long and had really long antenna. And I'm like, what is, you know, so I, you know, I love INAT just for that reason. So I threw it in there. And it's like a milkweed boarer or some weird, you know, beetle species. And it's, you know, bright red and just really a nice looking beetle. And that one that we found out in St. George, Rob, with, it was just this bright yellow large beetle, you know, flying into the tree.

I'm like, oh, this must be one of those invasive Asian beetles. But no, it was a native beetle I'd never heard of. And, you know, pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Well, and even speaking of Aynat moss, all these different things were my mind. was going as, I think today, right? We got an INAT email that was like, there's some moth within New Zealand

that had been thought extinct for 50 years, and now there are 20 INAT records. It was realized that it wasn't actually extinct based on the first one, and subsequently there's been 19 more, and it's just, that's pretty wild. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool.

Speaking of INAT, is that something you utilize or contribute to? I don't, I don't post-observation signet. I did for a little bit. Same with Rob. Yeah, I'd really worry about burning spots. And I mean, I think that's like one of the big negatives of herping. And even, you know, even well-intentioned people who, it's just you can overlove sites.

And I've seen it happen where, I mean, there was some beautiful habitat Missouri comes to mind where I just watched year after year, the habitat got worse and worse. But, you know, it was a glade where there's. all these rocks and you know such great density of like speckled kings and stuff and you know even when people reset rocks in their spot if 20 people flip a rock in a season and like there's no coming back from that and right well and even in a humid state right so you're talking about Missouri that's entirely different than flipping rocks in Arizona you know which is different from Utah and Colorado in terms of that that moisture seal right how many times can that be flipped and still be efficacious. But

simultaneously, right, so I've been rereading, I love the Carl Caulfeld books, and I've been developing thoughts around this, right? Because some of those things are explicitly highlighted, including Down by You. Others are not, right? They're presented very generally. We just

talked to Dallin Kohler, who wrote the really good kind of book in that same vein, Piro, who was a student up in Utah, and then talks about his challenge of finding pyro is in the field in Utah. And it's an interesting question because I do wonder if sometimes, and I don't know how INAT fits into this, right? It's not necessarily one for one. But if we talk about in those coffelled contexts, we've seen it at Crossley and the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.

He put that in there, and that's a, well, and it's something I definitely want to talk to you about is just finding stuff in Longleek Pine Sand Habitat, right? I think that's difficult in the best of times. and if we are seeing sort of overuse of a specific spot, that that can have a detrimental effect on that population. Simultaneously, if it's driving everyone's effort toward that specific place, rather than looking for their own spot, is that sort of localized negative impact actually saving other positive places

because people aren't looking in those other non-sort-of-highlighted spots? Yeah, it's a good question, and something I've thought about. You know, I think it probably varies. I definitely think Herpers are a little bit like Lemmings. Like we just, we love the easy win, known quantity. I think, you know, I think we could all do with being a little bit more creative. I mean, I see it down here, man. There's like there's like five or six roads that are famous roads.

And there are literally roads off of those roads, which are pretty amazing. And no one knows on them because they're not the road that people talk about. So I like, it's now a local and a, in a kind of herping destination. I kind of like it because I'm finding all the other roads where people don't know their name. And, you know, in the whole world's down here in the monsoons. I can be on different roads. But like I think there's something to that. It's hard to.

I mean, it depends on how general the habitat is, right? Like the habitat I'm thinking about in Missouri, you know, there's not many examples of it. So something like that is probably a bit, a little bit more detrimental just because, and it's different like, like Canyon Habitat is a dime a dozen out in Arizona. But this kind of habitat in Missouri, there might only be seven or eight properties that are really pristine examples of it. And so it's probably a little bit more vulnerable. But I think there's something to that, right? Like, yeah, if everyone's herping the same stuff, the snakes that don't live there are probably living a little bit better lives. Well, and it's one thing, right?

If it's the popular book, certainly, you know, snakes and snake hunting was the book for the 20 years after its publication in terms of influencing field herpers. INA, if you have pins for all seven or eight spots that have that sort of habitat, then it's, it doesn't have that same utility, right? It is sort of a different thing. So I think I think that's a fair point as well. But by the same token, like if it's private land and they're developing it for, you know, whatever, then they're probably, you know, removing it completely. Yeah. Like herper is the worst thing. Probably not.

But, yeah, we definitely could improve our ethics a bit. And also like placing, you know, artificial cover. I mean, obviously those, those, a lot of those places are state parks or, you know, that, you know, that. you shouldn't be putting junk out in state parks, but if there's private land where there's good habitat, maybe that could actually help. Right, if people are willing. You mentioned Christian early on that the Massaga population that would have been one of the first ones that you'd encountered, that that's gone.

Is that a reflection of habitat modification? It's probably not coaching, I would assume. It's hard to say. I think Massasagas in particular, this has happened over a lot of their range where they just wink out. And I know there's been some talk that there might be a blood parasite that they really struggle with. They might be particularly susceptible to like genetic bottlenecking. I don't know. I know pesticides have also been floated that the property that I used to see a man was surrounded by ag land. So could play a role. But it's really, it's hard to say. There's

nothing obvious. You know, it still, to this day, looks like good massasaga habitat. There's still really strong Clonophis population, you know, all the other snakes held on, but the sagas just disappeared. So, yeah, I don't know. Have you seen them elsewhere at this point? I know there are a couple on your Instagram. I have, yeah. Some of my favorite observations I've seen, I think, three different times I've seen females very shortly after giving birth still with all of, you know, the neonates. And very cool, very, like, meaningful observations for me. I think about two, three years ago, I stopped looking for them, in part because they're

just so imperiled. And I didn't want to feel like I was playing any role in having a negative impact on the the couple populations that are still going strong. So I kind of encourage people not to look for them because that really is, you know, I think we can quibble over some snakes and their different designations, but that really is a very threatened species in a lot of its range. And it's, and there is some evidence that, you know,

maybe they're particularly susceptible to pathogens for whatever reason. So I stopped looking for them because I didn't feel good about it. I didn't want to risk, hey, maybe I'm the asshole that transmits something into this stronghold and ruins everything. So that's kind of how he ended things with Massasagas. But it's definitely like a snake that's very special to me. We were fortunate, thanks to Justin's effort last year, to be able to see our life for Easterns in Pennsylvania. But to the point that you make, right, we're talking about something that even within the last 20 years has gone from almost double digit. viable populations down to, you know, half that or less.

Yeah, it was fascinating to hear. So we actually, well, Nipper was the one who put us in contact with the Ranger there. And he kind of chatted him up a bit. Yeah, the English charm. And so he was talking to us and telling us, you know, hearing their life history and things was incredible. And just how predictable they are, like when they're going to come up out of the and when they're going to go down and how much fire, you know, good fires play a role in

maintaining the habitat they need and, you know, all these different things factor in. So I could see any one of those going wrong and seeing their populations decline. It's kind of a sad state of things. But, I mean, that population is at least managed pretty well. And, you know, they're doing a good job at conserving them. And so we got to actually get hands on it because since he chatted up, the ranger, the ranger said, oh, we've got a college class coming. And so we're going to, we're going to be looking for him. You're welcome to join us. So the other guys kind of,

I kind of shadowed him a little bit and was following. I talked to the professor of the class or whatever and was just kind of chatting with her. And then he said, all right, everybody kind of spread out and we're going to tromp across this field of grass or whatever. I'm like, oh, sweet, you know, because, you know, in this area, you stick to the trails. You don't go off trail, you know. And so this is how they find them, I guess, and kind of march in a line. And somebody had said, oh, there's a snake. And so I went to see what it was, like a garter snake or something else. And then so I'm like, well, I'm out here.

I might as well help out. You know, so I start walking. And there was one just curled right up. So I think I stole the thunder a bit from the class. Like, here's one. I'm like, oh, come on, the weird old guy jumping in and still in our thunder. But so he got it in a rubber made container. We weighed it.

I got to insert a chip, you know, a pit tag. Yeah, so it was pretty fun. And, yeah, the kids were a little bug that I was doing that. But, you know, in my day job, I inject lots of animals, you know, from New York. So, he used to a needle. And then on release, he let us, he was very accommodating in terms of, you know, and letting us take, you know, pictures of it within its natural habitat and things as we let it go. So, yeah, it was very cool.

Sat and made sure we were, you know, treating it well and kind of hung out with us. And he's like, are you good? And we're like, yeah. And then he kind of, and it was crazy because, yeah, it just took off. And then we, you know, we were kind of hanging around the area, just chatting with him a bit. And then we're like, well, let's see if we can find it again. It was nowhere to be found. It was gone, you know.

Yeah. pretty lucky, I guess, to see those. That's cool. So, you know, I, it's tricky, though, because, you know, there's very few herps where people will go to that length, you know, they, they had all sorts of different monitoring systems out there. And, and they, you know, they were burning different areas, different ways, removing trees to make sure that stayed in, you know, this marshy kind of grassland.

Monitoring year over year, they were restoring additional adjoining habitat to try and expand the area that was acceptable. And I know Zach's involved with that, too. I was getting involved with that. Yeah. Yeah. With his crayfish knowledge, that was the other crazy thing is how, you know, in sync they are with the crayfish burrows and using those burrows that overwinter,

pretty amazing interaction there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think one of the big things that really got me excited about your interview was was talking about natural history and understanding a species natural history is so critical to, you know, A, finding them and B, you know,

understanding what they need. And so you're not damaging their, their habitat like we're talking about or, you know, so we're not putting them at risk, like with, you know, the boots.

And, I mean, we had Joe Mendelso on here, who was a professor up at my university and, and he was, a big amphibian researcher and like was monitoring all these sites in central and south America and just noticing there's no more frogs here anymore like what is going on and noticing like even with streams like when there were when there was moss in the stream oh that means

the frogs have disappeared from this area because the tadpoles aren't eating the moss which you know crazy stuff and then finally figuring out it was a fungus and that they a lot of a lot of times some of the researchers were the reason that the fungus was there because they weren't sterilizing their boots between sites or whatever. So kind of crazy how that all panned out and very tragic. You know, it's seeing the effects of that. But so I appreciate that you bring that, you know, to kind of the attention of like, you know, you never know what you're transmitting or moving around. Yeah. And it's, it is a different experience when you, you know, witness it. I mean, you can read all the stuff.

studies you want with numbers and figures and percentages and it's all an abstraction. But, you know, when there's a place you want as a kid and you sell rattlesnakes and then you go back to an adult and there's no rattlesnakes, like it feels different. It feels more like a loss. And I think it gives you that kind of perspective that, hey, these really are imperiled animals and, you know, everything, you know, as hobbyists, I think one of the premises that, you know, we appreciate, we respect these animals. And so, like, we have. have some duty to, you know, go about our herping responsibly, ethically, and do what we can to protect these animals because, like, they need all the help they can get, really. Right, right. And that's

no more disappointing than finding just a habitat that's been trashed, but obviously by herpers, you know. I guess we've seen a few in the mountain ranges there in southern, southern Arizona, to all these rocks were overturned and logged. I'm pretty sure it was a bear, but you kind of have it in the back of your mind. It was a little bit back of beyond that was not the kind of the normal ones. Yeah. And yeah, we're seeing all these giant rocks. I'm just going, who would have gone to the effort that it is taken to get us to this point? And then just not put a rock back.

And then it was like, oh, this is actually probably a bear. Yeah. It was looking for me. I was like, stupid herpers. And then it's like, oh, wait, this. is probably there. But I mean, I guess maybe talk more to the natural understanding natural history. That's one of my favorite topics of, you know, if you understand their natural history and kind of their interactions with other species in the land.

And yeah, how's that? Yeah, real quick before you got into that, I did find, you know, profound, if not moving, your idea that you would express on your CCR appearance, the idea of being in the right place, the right time, and then detect. or your ability to detect things within that space. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, you know, that's the secret formula, right? That's herping. And natural history is, it ties in a couple of those prongs, right? It's, you know, if you know how an animal behaves, you know, you can know the right

conditions to be out, you can know the habitat it wants, you know, where you want to be to see it. And then when you're in that habitat, if you understand how it behaves, you know, specifically where to look for it. But yeah, I mean, I think it's one of the rewarding things, right? I mean, I'm on a lifelong, you know, bookworm. I love learning. And I think the more you can learn about a snake,

the better you can understand it, the better you can find it. There's so many good books out there to tap into. And I don't know, like for me, hiking is my favorite method of finding snakes because you get the context of the animal. It's pretty hard to see real kind of behaviors when you're road cruising or you're flipping something or 10, you see, you know, one behavior. But, you know, when you actually get yourself into the habitat, I mean, all my favorite herping memories have been when I see something in its habitat,

you know, something eating, something, you know, mating or whatever it is. I just think getting the whole context for the organism, where it lives, what it's doing. Like that's kind of what it's all about for me. I still rode crews and stuff, but it's just not the same. No. Yeah. And what are some of your favorite natural history moments that you've witnessed? Yeah.

Let's see. Last August I saw a Willard Eye, a very young Willard Eye eating a tree lizard. That was very cool. That's cool. He already had, I think, two food bowluses too. So he was doing well. Predation's fun. Yeah, for sure.

At one time I was hiking a trail and I saw a getchula with its head down a hole. And I panicked, you know, because you're her, you're like, oh, this snake's about to escape down a hole. Right. Like, I grabbed the snake. I yank it up and it's got this turtle egg just in its mouth. Wow. And I have it in my handle. It's swallowing this turtle egg.

It was so cool. That's cool. I watched a rough green snake catch and eat a dragonfly. That was pretty awesome. That's an impressive catch. Yeah, and it took it about 50 minutes to swallow the whole thing. How was cool? I've seen mating.

I've seen a big breeding ball of the outer banks water snakes, which are some of my favorite water snakes in the world. And I was just sitting there watching. It was started as like two males and a female. And as I like sat there videoing it, I think it ended up being like nine males were just emerging. It was a coastal, coastal riffraff. They were up on a rock that was on the sound.

And males were literally emerging out of the sound to like join in. And I don't know. It's like I feel like a Nat Geo videographer. Right. Right. I did get lucky once road cruising, though. I came upon a King Brown or a mulega snake that was eating a road killed death adder. And so it was like, and I, you know, I got all excited.

I'm taking pictures and stuff. It just looked like, you know, it was weird, but then noticed it eating something. And then it like stopped and noticed the lights and the commotion. And so it spit it out and took off. And so I got a hook and I took the death adder over to it and put it in front of it. And it ate the whole thing in front of me. So I got to sit and take pictures. It was pretty cool.

That's cool. You know, we don't think of snakes as scavengers, but I've seen at least four times snakes scavenging very, like, dead things that are not even close to living. It's kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. I actually just published that observation in Herp Review last year. Yeah. Finally got around to it.

We saw it in 2011 or not 13. Yeah. They're 12. Yeah. Somewhere on there. That's very cool. That was a fun, fun experience with my wife out herping,

you know, in the outback of Australia. Kind of crazy. So I guess, you know, I, in that context, too,

like, if you understand, you know, what they're doing at certain times of year, and all those kind of things just really factor into it. And how does that,

I guess, affect your trip planning? You know, are you pretty obsessive about, you know, I need to be here at this time so I can perhaps catch, you know, basking whatever in the morning. Or, I mean, or do you just go, I'm going to hit this area and hike all the cool trails and if I find a snake great? Or, you know, how do you go about your trip planning? Yeah, it's simply both for me.

Because I actually like going out sometimes when I know conditions are like, you know, bad. Sure. And in their quotes, just because you never know what you're going to see. And sometimes you learn interesting things. Like I think one example I've seen so many Brown eye since living out here and it's part of it's because I road cruising

conditions are bad and those are the saddle turns out yeah Saturday yeah yeah yeah they love warm drive June nights really no one else is road cruising but but on the flip side like it is fun to really dial in specifics and like when you're really investing

time resources into a trip you kind of want to maximize your chance of having success. So for most of my non-local herping, I do try to hit the best conditions I can. And I'm pretty spontaneous. So I really, it's kind of like, you know, if I'm on a slow period with work and the stars align, and I see, oh, hey, like West Texas, just got a bunch of rain. And it looks pretty good out there. Like, I might decide a couple hours before a trip that I'm going.

Right. And like that, like being able to be spontaneous really helps. Oh, yeah. Scheduling herp trips way in advance is like a fool's end. Yeah, so that was going to be my question. So you sort of alluded to this on the CCR episode, right, that a lot of it is you're being reactive to that. And we actually just talked about it.

I think both the last two episodes that we've recorded, you know, we've brought it up. In that I think that's particularly important in West Texas. And it probably is super helpful to you in long leaf habitat. just because in those spaces, we're mostly talking about things that you have to find while they're active, right? And that five, I keep saying the 5 to 15 percent when they're active because you can't find them sort of estivating. In the same way, you can find a lot of Rale-Synics in Arizona when they're estimating, right? Because they're not necessarily below ground. They can be tucked away in a way that you could also still find them.

But relative to that, are you generally just watching the weather across the U.S.? Or is it that you have kind of ideas, a priority list within your mind and you're thinking, okay, it is this season and I'm interested in still seeing animals in this area. So it's kind of there are a handful of spots that you're checking out and saying, hey, do any fit into the box? Or is it that you're just totally attuned to the entire U.S. map of weather and saying, okay, yeah, drop it all. I'm going to Idaho.

No, definitely. Definitely I have a couple spots in mind, usually, that I'm watching. You know, often informed a little bit my list or species I really like or places I really like. So like the Outer Banks, for example, is one of my favorite places on the planet. That was one when we were living in Ohio. I would constantly be watching. What did things look like in the Outer Banks? The Sinus trip you're talking about, I very much was, hey, I'm going to take a trip down to Longleaf this fall.

I'm going to watch the weather in a couple spots. I like and really, you know, try to hit the perfect conditions. So, yeah, it's very much like I usually have an idea of a couple places I want to go and I just kind of watch those places and see one of the times, right? What apps do you use to kind of track the weather patterns? What are helpful apps for you? Yeah, recently I've been using weather-wise a lot. It's got a lot of the, like, different NOAA models built in.

You can get a radar composite. of the country. You can get almost all the outlooks. I like pre-sip. It's the best app I found for actual accumulated rainfall, which is kind of hard to get good data on. Right. Yeah. Those are probably the main too I use these days. Cool. Well, and a lot of that comes down to they're not necessarily reporting stations for all the places that are exactly where we want to be. And there is surprising variance, right? We saw it when they were down in the pelonsio's in the fall, is that we got kind of a late monsoon that I think was good for the Pells generally, but not necessarily for us turning up herps. But literally, curtain herds, yeah. Right. Yeah. The turtles were great.

Certainly it changed the turtle abundance, if nothing else, over the course of the week and whatever, but more so, you know, kind of above the road, okay, I would see the storm coming, and then below the road there wasn't rain, which is kind of wild, but in that sort of an area. And we don't, absent really good modeling, as you say there, we don't have visibility into that from a distance. Yeah, and that's been a big adjustment out west, because, you know, conditions matter everywhere. Out west, it seems, it would matter much, much more. And, like, back east, a lot of our weather systems were very frontal. So, you know, generally you'd have pretty accurate forecast. They weren't super location specific.

Like you said here, I mean, you know, it can be raining on one side of the mountain and not the other. So you really have to be much more in tune with, you know, following throughout the day. You can't rely on the forecast. You actually have to see what's happening on the radar and understand where the rain is actually falling, you know, get the actual localized conditions in a way that I just never. really worried about back east. Right. That's interesting. And you mentioned of rain and generally being good. So I'm curious. Let's dig into that a little bit in the sense that. So what we've seen a variety of rain in a variety of different places, right? In North Queensland and Australia, it seemed like rain was a suppressant for everything, save scrub pipelines, because they, you know,

it's not dominated by dry. So it's not this sort of life-bringing force. Instead, it's something to be, oh, I can, you know, carpet pythons can look at it and say, yeah, I'll just sit it out for a week until it's not raining and, you know, it's fine. They don't need it for the moisture. Simultaneously, we've seen rain, you know, other people will present a rain in the desert, that means it's great. But in our experience, and Justin, I don't mean to override you on this. I'm curious your input is that, like, it's all about the timing. Yeah, when it rains. It rained today, did it rain and still warm up in the afternoon or did it just crush the temperatures

into the evening and now nothing will be out but maybe tomorrow if it doesn't rain will be better for it having rained today yeah um it depends it depends i love road cruising the rain sometimes sorry something just happened outside um storming here right now um yeah i don't know some of my best nights in the yeah some of my best nights in the outer banks were very rainy nights you know rainbow snakes mud snakes aquatics love the rain. Well, it kind of makes me laugh, honestly. A lot of herpers are like, you know, oh, the roads are wet.

I'm not going out, which is great for me because I'm going out and there would be less cars in the road. Even down here, I've had good nights in the rain. I mean, I found the thorn scrub hook nose in the middle pouring torrential rain, 70 degrees. I was going to ask you about that one. I was curious what the certain snows around that was. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think.

Yeah, conditions, like, I think there's a lot of herpers who, you know, look for excuses with conditions, like, why they shouldn't go out. Like, oh, it's raining. Oh, the moon's too bright. I'm the opposite. I'm like, ah, you know, it's 115 and, you know, there's not a cloud in the sky. But, like, it rained four days ago. So, you know, maybe we try it. And, you know, I think sometimes you're pleasantly surprised. There's, uh, I think confirmation bias is really a big danger if you want to be a good herper because I think it's pretty easy to develop stories in your head about, you know, why you saw something, why you're not seeing something. Right. And then your behavior adapts to those stories and then you just believe them more and more. I think sometimes, like, go outside your comfort zone, go cruising the rain, go drive under a full moon and, you know, maybe you'll be surprised. Well, you've run right into one of these questions. So do you think the moon makes a difference?

I think it can. I think it, you know, with certain species and certain contexts, it probably can make a difference. That being said, I've had great nights on full moons. I think it really depends on your habitat and your target. I mean, you know, a lot of the snakes we target at night have whole periods of the year where they're surface active in the broad daylight. And so to me, you know, common sense dictates they probably don't care that much that it's a bright moon. But I don't know.

I think there's some evidence that it can make a difference. I know it doesn't change my activity level. Like, you know, all things being equal, I think I'd rather have not a full moon. But I'm not going to decide to go out or not because there's a full moon. Okay. I think... Yeah, which is fair. It's more from my planning, I think, perspective.

of saying if he in the rare instance that you were you know uh all things being equal in the you know your availability you were planning a trip um more pre-planned like you're going to australia or going to an international destination where you're going to want to book that beforehand um is it something you would you think you'd account for and try and go you know third goal last quarter into new so that i mean the thing i always yeah right is it's it's not only a function of illumination, it's that the moon is literally up during the day. It's not even up at night. Yeah. When you're in that range. No, no, totally. All things being equal, I would choose, you know, to avoid the full moon. I think owls are incredible predators. I think they're more

abundant that people know. I think that is honestly a huge part of why the moon makes such a difference. I think owls are incredibly effective predators and are very good at hunting things during a full moon. So I know it's been studied in other taxa, not snakes. I don't know if anyone's really done a great deep dive into snake behavior driven by data, which would be interesting. Someone should pick that up. I've seen a couple of decades. Yeah. Yeah.

There are, I mean, people have shown a correlation with activity in lunar cycles. So it definitely plays their role. Right. Yeah. And it also depends on the species because there's some species that absolutely avoid, you know, going out on moonlit nights. But there's also some that are eaten by those species that do go out on moonlit nights. They know those predators aren't.

So like those mesic level level predators probably avoid moonlit nights because they're more obvious. They're bigger. The owls can see them better versus a tiny little thing, you know, that might prefer to go out on the moonlit nights. so they can escape their primary predators. But yeah, very, I guess that's the beauty, too, of living in a good place to herp as you can explore and expand your knowledge and help kind of dispel some of those, you know, herper doctrines or whatever we want to call them, where, you know, the confirmation bias, solid rules where, yeah, that's how Joe did it. And so now I do it that way. and I found herbs and so it must work and, you know, don't go when it's not this or that, you know.

And I think you're completely right that there's a lot of things that you can find if you're just out there anytime. Well, and pre-planning, I guess the, you know, kind of the dichotomy, right, is pre-planning is wholly different from saying, oh, well, I'm just going to stay home, literally. Right. If that's the, you know, binary choice, it's like, yeah, well, that's a whole different thing, man. Yeah. Well, and if you're putting the effort in even if conditions are, you're going to, you're going to, you're not great. You're probably going to still find something, you know, if you're out there pushing. I mean, that was our trip in, you know, March of 2025 to Central Australia. We got there and I was like,

we're doomed. Like, it's way too hot. Like, we're not going to see much, you know, and I was all bummed out because it was probably 10, 15 degrees hotter than it should be on average for that time of year. And I was just worried, okay, I planned this huge trip and now it's just going to fail. But we ended up doing pretty dang good. and there was actually a, you know, a rainstorm or two that kind of came through and helped a little bit as well. But, man, that was, I guess anytime you're in an area for a couple weeks, you're probably going to be okay, you know, things will change. Enough variance within that time. And it's not like you weren't going out either way, especially with the crew I had with you. Right. And I mean, the first area you went to was exceedingly dry, so we kind of made the choice like, let's leave this area and go somewhere else.

because, you know, and I think you're right there following the weather patterns within the micro habitats or areas or whatever, you know, or stick into places that have permanent water sources if it's really dry, you know, knowing those kind of things like, okay, well, even if they're, if they're not here, they might be over here because of, you know, this condition or that condition. I think that's very helpful. But it's, I mean, obviously hard to, you can't predict the weather six months in advance if you're going across seas or something. So how close is, I guess, local for you?

How far are you willing to drive if you see a good storm? I'm pretty up for a drive. I think, honestly, I've done day trips that are five, six hours away before. So I don't know. If I'm going to do a long weekend, I'm not scared to drive 12 hours, 14 hours. Right. You know, it's got to be worth it. There's got to be some target that I'm really excited.

about but I'm not too worried by drive. So if there's a good target and you see like weather conditions shaping up, you're like, okay, I'm going to drive there and hit it right when the hitting's good kind of thing. Yeah, as long as work cooperates, yeah. Yeah, I like that attitude. I need to do more of that. I'm excited for retirement, I guess. I'll be able to do that a lot better.

Yeah, it always seems like the best conditions are like, well, I'm kind of busy right now. I can't really get away or I used up all my PTO or whatever. So, yeah, maybe I'll have to find a way to do what you did and get on it. Yeah, more part-time basis that might be. That's kind of happening whether I want it to or not. Yeah. Speaking of natural history, one of your really cool Instagram photos was talking about Benatosis playing dead in Texas Indigo.

So Justin and I on our first, I think our first trip down there, if I'm remembering it correctly, They did look briefly for him around Brackerville and then Justin had a subsequent trip where he saw one probably crawl away. But Texas Indigo's, Florida Indigo's. I'm curious about your experiences looking for him, finding him, that event that was on your Instagram, all of that. Yeah. So Texas Indigo is one of my favorite snakes. My favorite captive snake is a Texas Indigo. He's about seven and a half feet long.

He's just a brute, his name Otis. So, yeah, we have taken two trips down to South Texas now. I think the first trip we did really well with Indigo's. We probably saw like 11 of them in, you know, a couple days. They were just the most common. So when was that? Like, meaning time of year? It was winter.

I can't remember. It's probably either early December or late November. Okay. And it was all, you know, big breeding males on the move. And literally we were seeing them on the move. like through parking lots, crossing roads, crossing open habitat. And there's nothing like seeing a six-foot, you know, obsidian black snake just cruised into the grass. Like that's just such an awesome thing.

But yeah, the anatosis thing was very interesting. It was the most convincing death thing I've ever seen. I was actually my buddy who spotted it. It was actually in a tree. It was like maybe seven feet up a tree. tree is this little maybe yearling indigo um and we we were photographing it and it just kind of rolled over opened its mouth this kind of crypt neck pose it was really cool and i had no idea they did that and you know it's just think i've kept multiple of for many years now um and that same

trip i saw a speckled racer play dead which i didn't know they did kind of have to plead the fifth about the circumstances of seeing it play dead. But yeah, well, I was going to ask you about the, obviously I noted those two, and I assume that was at the place that people go see them and all that, or at least, yeah. Yeah, so very cool. Very cool, snake. I mean, the Speckled Racer is probably the most beautiful snake in the country.

I mean, yeah, that is way up there, my favorite snakes to ever find, I think. but the death feigning thing is really interesting to me because I've seen it now in a couple species where I don't think it's really people don't think about it at least I've also seen it in Stararia Victa the Florida Brown Snake I actually flipped one and I thought I had crushed it because it was fully rigid its mouth was slightly open I call my wife over and I'm like Megan like what like what the hell I she I handed it to her she's holding it and like a minute later it just like snaps to life and it's totally fine. That's great.

I don't know. I think it's like a, it's actually a more common behavior than I think, you know, everyone thinks Eastern Hogg knows and whatever, but I actually think it's pretty widely adapted behavior. Right. Thanks.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Have you seen, so now's as good a time as any to get into your truly unbelievable trip that you turned up a dozen plus sinus. and three pines. So hold on. I heard about this on CCR, but not in a at all sufficient way. Apologies back in the plan.

What and how long were you there? This was Georgia or Florida? Georgia, yeah. Okay. And I mean, what? Yeah, I was there in three days. I don't remember the exact numbers. It was definitely double-digit sinus.

in all size classes. The pine snakes were all pretty young. I think one of them was probably that year's young. I think the other two were maybe yearlings. And we also saw a huge EBB. Actually, other herpers found it. So I'm not going to take credit for that one because that was not my fine. But it was super cool to see.

It was probably about as thick as my thigh. I mean, it was just incredible. How many of you were? were there looking? So I went solo. One of my friends from Tallahassee came up for one day. There are other cars on the road, but. So you're finding these things pretty much on your own, just out.

All the pine snakes were on my own and, yeah, all those cymas. There's just the diamond back. I did not find the diamond back. But, yeah. But yeah, it was great. And talking, I guess, as good a context as any, talk about dirt road cruising, which is generally not the most fun thing to do in the world. Any thoughts? Maybe you disagree.

Well, no. Maybe I would. It depends. It depends, like what your mindset is. So I will say the year before that, I did the same trip. Kind of. It was, I was on my way to Florida, which is a trip we should talk about. But I stopped in Georgia for a day, just me, just me, my thoughts and the dirt roads. I started cruising.

I think at 7 a.m. I was in Habitat. I went 12 and a half hours maybe. Didn't see a single live snake. I'm actually like 100 feet from the edge of the sand, like where the pavement starts. I'm stopped. I'm on price line looking for a hotel just crash for the night. And I look up and there's a diamond back just crawling like 20 feet in front of my car. And I just think that's just like so emblematic of what the sandhills can be.

I mean, it can be truly monotonous, especially when you're just alone in a car for 12 hours. So I don't know. Yeah, I love hate relationship with the Sandals. Right. Like, if you do anything for 12 hours, you're going to be bored by the end of it. So you do definitely find ways to entertain yourself. You know, maybe now I would have been stopping more for birds or something to break the time. but podcasts are great.

Music's great. Yeah. And I guess, you know, while we're here getting into specifics, what is it, are you taking long passes or you're covering a bunch of ground or you turn around at three miles, five miles? What does that look like? And obviously, it'll vary by geographical context, right? If you're out there's that, you know, but if, you know, if, you know,

you're in central Florida where theoretically there are plenty of different, there's diversity of options, what would that look like? I prefer long passes. I just, in terms of my, like, attention span. I, you know, doing the same mile over and over again gets very repetitive and boring. And, like, there are contexts where that's what you really need to do if you want to see your target. But anytime I can avoid that, the longer the past, the better in my eyes. And how fast are you, what does your cruising look like?

And it probably varies, right, across pavement versus dirt and all that. Yeah. Yeah, it varies a lot, especially on Arizona. I mean, East Coast road cruising is such a breeze in hindsight because even the sand roads are pretty good. Most of it's paved. You can, you know, I saw my first ever rainbow snake. I was going at least 55, probably 60, and it was this tiny little neonate. Out here, you don't get much pavement.

I mean, there are definitely paved roads. You can cruise. A lot of the best cruising roads are gravel or that's probably kind of overselling them. Some of them are like rock faces that you can technically get a car over if you have enough clearance. So I definitely go a lot slower on those roads. I think as I've, I don't know if my guys are getting worse. I definitely think my speed has gone down as I've gotten older. I used to cruise like 45, 50 miles an hour, no problem.

And now I find myself, you know, probably more in the like 20 to 35 range. Because you miss stuff. Snakes can be pretty small, especially young snakes. And a lot of the snakes I'm looking for these days are a little bit cryptic, even on these roads. So I'm definitely tending on the slower side these days. It's interesting. We did some, like, you know, kind of more of that joke thing where you throw the rubber snake out on the road and, you know, wait for your friends to find it. And I think we did that back and forth a couple times.

yeah, we passed it by a few times and didn't see it or didn't know where it went or whatever, you know, maybe an owl got it or something, but it was like, why didn't we see that, you know, bright orange gummy worm that we threw out on the road? Yeah, that three-foot ringneck I was telling you guys about. I watched some Herper from Texas driver right past it. And he wasn't even going fast. He was bright going to 15. And I've seen a, I've seen a very, you know, well-followed YouTuber, drive right past an adult, Mountain King. You know, it happens.

Yeah. But I mean, you can only look at too many places. Right. So long as it doesn't mean that you hit it. You know. Right. Yeah. I've seen that too, unfortunately.

Yeah. That's frustrating. Yeah, I mean, I guess it happens as the best of us. I still feel bad about that. Yeah. I mean, well. I clicked, but my co-pilot was asleep. Your co-pilot was asleep.

I don't mention who the co-pilot was. It wasn't me. But part of that question becomes if you're kind of burning it both then. So this actually does lead well to another question that I know they hit on there, but I'd like to get into because your answer actually fit really well with sort of how I feel about these things. What's your ideal length of time for a trip? And so the context Justin was talking about, I felt. like we probably were burning at both ends day and night for probably longer than we should.

And that was as much as anything, kind of the distances we were covering, that was the end of a really long day. What does that look like for you, Christian? Yeah, I think a good trip is, I mean, it depends how far you have to travel, but like I think an ideal length is like four to five days. I think after five or so days, it's hard to kind of keep up with it. I mean, I'm one of the people who, when I'm out on a field trip, I'm, I'm out. Any chance I get, I'm stretching, you know, the definition of acceptable conditions. I'm, I'm, like, maximizing my time for sure. And it's hard to sustain that any more than four or five days, I think. Yeah, that's true. I got a kick at it. Like, I think I feel the same way. You almost

forget to eat and drink when you're herping, you know, and then you're like, oh, man, why am I so? you know, hungry. Oh yeah, I guess I've been herping straight for like eight hours. Yeah, I do a lot of solo trips. And like, there's definitely been times I call my wife and I'm like, I feel horrible. Like I feel lightheaded. I feel weak. And she's like, when did you eat last? I was like, I don't know if I ate today. I should probably go eat. I mean, I definitely that way. It's like I totally like mistreat myself on her trips. Yeah. I'm the same way if even if I'm at the zoo. do. Like, my wife's like, we need to stop and eat. I'm like, stop, what?

Eat. What are you talking about? It's not how this works. Yeah, I mean, like most of these trips were out in the middle of nowhere. Right. You don't have much of options. Like, like $17 beef jerky from a gas station. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, if you're wanting five-star restaurants and stuff, yeah, her trips are not the place to go for those. Yeah. I'm not one to eat McDonald's at home, but on herb trips, I eat so much McDonald's because, like, you always know what you're going to get. They're open at all hours. Get a, get an egg McMuffin, get you through the day. Exactly. Yeah, it's definitely the time to take advantage of those garbage places. Sorry, McDonald's. Big stomach egg to me, but yeah, I don't know. It's better with other people. Well, we've had some stories about eating and having the after effects.

Yeah. There's no question about that. I'm just saying. I mean, even some of the best food we ate came back to haunt us later. Where's the bathroom? I got to get there now. There he goes. Yeah.

If toilet paper is not in your herb kit, like add it today before you regret it. Oh, I just- Something you want to have before you know you need it. Yeah. I just bought these little, like, tablets, and you put a little water on them. They expand into, like, a foot by foot wet wipe, basically. So I'm excited to, well, I'm not excited to give them a try, but I'm excited to carry them with me because they're, you know, they don't take up a lot of space. They're kind of dehydrated toilet paper sheets or whatever.

So it's kind of nice. I know. Well, and I remember what this time last year, when Nipper, who always talks about his bog roll and it takes great pride in it. And I said, dude, I'm going to need that. And he was like, oh, I just used it. And I was like, I thought you said you came prepared here. He was relying upon you. And that was to my misfortune for sure.

Prepared for himself, not for his whole party. Yeah. But he hadn't clarified that. So, yeah. You said, you bragged about your roller toilet toilet paper. And then in my moment of need, he let me down. Yeah, there's been some, yeah, some of those issues where I don't know, a lot of times I've gone in unprepared to, you know. I haven't got to the point where I've like gone on a big trip without like a headlamp or something.

I've definitely like forgotten important things or things that would be really helpful. I'm like, I really wish I would have brought that, you know. One time we were in southern Arizona and I was, yeah, just south of Tucson herping and I got. there a couple days before the guys so I was out you know looking for stuff to try to get the party started early and uh I went to go to sleep for the night you know I just couldn't road cruise anymore or whatever and so I like pull over and I'm like well I'm going to get into my sleeping bag I can't find my sleeping bag my pad my tent like I can't I'm like I swear I pack this stuff so I'm just like shivering you know like just laying on my car seat in the night is and then you know we we have the

trip. It's a great trip. And the rest of the nights were in like an Airbnb type situation that Rob booked. But I get home and I lift up my seat and there's my sleeping bag and my pad and my tent just squirled away. He folded it down. I pulled it down. And I had like, I think I had books for some. Yeah, somebody. That's great. Left them under there too. I'm like, oh, I'm an idiot. Yeah, that's figures there. So even when I am prepared. Yeah. Yeah, I've definitely been out on the middle, you know, middle of the night on the road with my iPhone flashlight because my dumbass forgot my had lamp or flashlight.

Yeah. I've all been there. I guess, too, if you're chasing weather and you're like spur of the moment trips, that's probably going to happen. I, I just need like a checklist that I can like refer to really quick to make sure I don't forget anything. And like, if I get something new. I have to put on the checklet, like these toilet paper things.

I just remembered I had those. You know, I'm like, I need to put that on my list. So I don't forget them at the end of the month here. Yeah, so I was embarrassing to admit, but I actually have like a, like a sterolite bin in the back of my car that never leaves the car that has all the essentials in it. Because I don't trust myself. Right. And I'm a little bit of a prima don't know with the windshield. So I've got like my own, you know, windshield squeegee and white.

paper fluid and everything I could want. Oh, that's awesome. I don't have to remember. It just lives there. Yeah, that's perfect. Jordan had a similar setup. And Dustin, too. Dustin had like his cook stove.

He pulls out, makes us these bacon wrapped hot dogs in the middle of the, you know, the Pelonsia. Yeah, it was really great. Yeah, good guy. So, yeah, and like he had like an awning that he set up so we could have some cover while it rained on us. And it was pretty much. Which we needed up.

that the spot actually so this kind of is a natural transition so going back to the conversation about publicly known spots for specific things in that snakes and snake hunting coffield talks about finding price eye at our foot right and our own lived experiences and this aligns with what other people have said is like it's a question of the utility of a public spot particularly when maybe that's somewhat of a red herring it's not that it's entirely wrong, but it's a slight tweak on that concept. But I have noticed that

Price is not something that's on your Instagram. Is that something you've found at this point? Nope. I am not. That is... Have you gone out that way? Or is that just not a priority? No, it's a priority.

I've been a habit of time for them many times. Spots, I know they exist. Yeah. Let's chat about that. So, yeah, and take, you could, you know, read into what I said. But the other thing that would fit into those same boxes, and then we'll talk about specific animals that really drew me from what it is on your Instagram.

So you found all the scientists that there are to find, and then you've seen a bunch of eastern hog nose. Have you found Westerns? I have not found NASICUS. I have found a lot, or not a lot, a couple of the eye. I've been in a range of NASICUS literally one day. herping, which is weird. With Kansas, like Western Kansas, is that

where you're? Yeah, I was in Hayes, Kansas for one day. I didn't find him. Not shocking. I've, I'm actually, I've looked for them in the Kankakee-Sands area. It's one of my, it was one of my fascinations out there.

I've got a buddy who lives out there, and he posted an INAT observation one day of a hog-nose, and he just assumed it was an eastern, which is fair. And a lot of time passed. And someone was like, hey, wait a minute. That's not an Easter Hognos.

That's an esacus. And it definitely was an assacus. He found it roadkill. He didn't collect it because he didn't think anything of it. And he actually reached out to IDNR, try to report it. They totally blew him off to like, I was a release pet. I was like, this is one of the most impoverished areas in the country. This is a road.

that, you know, the butt's perfect nascagous habitat. So I guess I've looked for NASCAR a lot there. I've never found one. But that is on my list. I need to like go up to Colorado or New Mexico or something. Yeah. I'll tell you. Yeah.

Which is funny. Relative I haven't seen. So where have you, well, a couple quick thoughts, I guess, right? It's obviously so the study site was Zach's stuff. They're turning up both of them, which is interesting. And it's, it is funny in the context of Illinois. just because, and I don't know if the law has changed, but it was selling captive bread Western Hog knows that Tinley was always an issue because theoretically there were existing animals.

So it's really weird that DNR, it doesn't look, that's not a great look for DNR that they weren't interested in that record, to be honest. I agree. No, I agree. And it was right against the nature conservancy property, it would be so easy to set up a drift fence there and try to figure it out. but there was just no interest. So I think they live there.

I mean, probably not in large numbers, but just Occam's razor. Like it makes way more sense that that was a wild snake than a raised pet. Right. And on the Kennerly eye, so where have you seen him? Because that's the heteronon that's missing from my US forms. Well, yeah. No header don't. Yeah.

Dang it. I've seen him in West Texas. and then technically New Mexico, but like the very edge of New Mexico. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. I think I know the spots. I've looked at right now.

I haven't been able to turn one up. Well, we've seen a couple DORs, but, yeah. Yeah, and I'd love to hike one up. So I've hiked up all the other, well, three of the four, if you took it as species, and I got to look for Duskies, too. But, yeah, that would be pretty great. great.

Yeah, that was another. Another example of Herper's missing something right in front of them, right? Three people walking and two miss it and one spots it. Well, three out of four. Yeah. I hiked up my first ever simus, and it was one of my favorite moments in herping. It was, we were on this trail, and I was looking for a specific habitat feature, and I pulled up Google Maps. I was like, you know, a couple hundred feet off the trail.

It was exactly what I was looking for It was this little, you know, six-foot patch of bare mineral soil And I was like, okay, I'm gamble, but I'm going to go out there So I hike out there and it was like someone had placed it Just like right in the middle of this sand patch, just this little hog nose And so I'm yelling over to my friends And my buddy Peyton, who lives in Southern California So we're out there

I'm part of this like nonprofit called SCB Yeah, I didn't want you to talk about this a little bit. Yeah. So this was like a group field trip. One of, one of our friends was out there. Her name's Tyler and she inventories go for tortoise burrows for the state. At the time she did. That was her whole job. She surveyed, I think at that point she had surveyed like 4,500 tortoise burrows in her life. She had never seen a cooper eye. Well, my buddy Peyton on his way out to see, like, comes to the sinus. He's probably about 10 feet from me. Pokes his head, you know, down, just kind of like does that, looks down this tortoise burrow that's like 10 feet from where I found the sinus.

Third one, he'd ever look down. And there's just this big eastern indigo coiled up. Just under the mouth of this burrow. And so he calls me over. So I run over. I have this, my life or sinus on my hand. And I'm looking at, you know, my first ever Cooper eye. And I was like, well, this, you can't beat that. And my friend Tyler, like, given her job, she kind of went up the chain of command, got permission. You know, it was some meaningful observation to see an indigo anywhere in Florida. She got permission to bring the scope out.

And the next day, they actually got video of this indigo down in the scope. So, you know, in the borough with the scope. So that was super cool. That's right. Probably one of my favorite, definitely one of my favorite memories. Yeah. That's crazy lucky, though, you know? Yeah, well, then we got a pine snake on the way out.

Wow. Yeah, you're missing a short tail from being unreal. Yeah. Right. And, I mean, in the context of your friend, spending all that time in 4,500 burrows and not seeing one, and then somebody just poked your head down. Well, and that's what you're talking about with Dallon, right?

Yeah. You know, what, it was 45 minutes for us looking for a pyro in Utah, and Dustin turns up a mating pair on the tree. trail and Alan it took in two years right as the thing of this living in Utah and the thing of this is focus and he says us without me that that was the kicker I hadn't made it down yet so I missed and I hadn't seen one in Utah at that point because I was so desert focused I didn't realize cool snakes lived in the mountains too even though I was kind of a little upset my my dad had found one back in like the 60s.

And he had a picture of him holding this mountain king snake. And he's like, what's this snake? It's really pretty. Where did you find that? Why am I just fighting out about this? Why didn't you take me there when I was a kid? Yeah. I mean, we spent a lot of time

in Mountain King habitat, you know, either on the way to the desert or the way back from the desert. And I could have gone up the canyons there and, you know, seen some stuff when I was younger, but it didn't. Didn't know. Yeah. Didn't realize, you know, the ignorance of youth.

Absolutely. Well, and so while we're on that topic, Christian, relative to your list, and it probably varies based on either the number you found or sort of the interaction. And that's fine. I'm happy to hear sort of your personal take on it. But for your list and counting something, do you need to take a picture of it? Yes. Yeah.

Verifiable. Yeah. It's got to be an identifiable picture, for sure. So like the first Massachusetts, like, the first Massachusetts, you saw when you were a kid, theoretically maybe your date ties to that, but the first one that counts, how does that fit in? Yeah, the first time I photographed it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I don't count stuff if I can't prove it. Yeah, I like it, man. I mean, there's at least, there's at least three snakes I've seen, most of them more than once. I've just never gotten an ideable photo, so they're not checked off. Do you have to be the one who finds it?

Is it a common venture thing? What does that look like for you? So I think my paradigm similar to yours, it's common venture. I'm not going to take credit for some random groups find. And I have to see it roughly in situ. It can't have been removed from where it was found. I don't necessarily need to see it under the rock,

but it needs to still be in the place it was. And most of the stuff on my list at this point I've seen for myself by myself. There's just a couple ones, like the Cooper Eye that I have not found for myself. Yeah, so, and I was just from looking at the picture,

right, and I think I'd heard the context of that, so you had actually seen it absent, you know, being in the borough where you get the camera picture. I am curious, and I don't know really how I feel on it, in terms of finding either having found things that are found based on a pitfall trap, or based on utilizing a probe, something like that, and how that would fit into a lifeless context.

Do you have any thoughts on either of those? Yeah, that's an interesting one. Because I've never really set up a trap of any sort. I've actually thought about, and I probably will eventually set up a drift fence in my yard with a camera. I don't think I would count that because I just don't think it's the same as seeing it in person. You know, pitfall's interesting.

I guess maybe if I was the one to set up the trap and check it and find it, I think I could probably wrap my head around that. And, yeah. We just had a show with Dustin's death where he talked. So he found he was working at Zoo Miami and set up pitfalls and wound up, and I may be misremembering, but I think at least certainly once, if not twice, over the course of years. turned up Rimrock crown snakes, which are otherwise unfindable, right? So it is one of those things that it's like probably, you know, he's won a very few to have that as a record, counting it from

having found it in a pitfall that he set up, right? And in that context, and that otherwise it's probably just going to be a zero. Yeah. How that influences it. I think that's fair. Yeah, I think it's fair to count that. Like, especially if you set the trap and you check it, I think that is fair. Yeah, maybe a similar situation of like a well or something that, you know, things fall into and they can't get out. I think our friend Dustin found a thorn scrub hook nose in one of those situations where he was just clearing out animals that had fallen in there and couldn't get out. And then he lifted a rock and there's a thorn scrub hook nose, you know, I guess I think that's still, I mean, I would probably count. I would count that. Yeah. I think that isn't,

And that sounds like that was at least naturally occurring. Right? Yeah. It's an active effort. Yeah, it was an old like cattle, you know,

trough type or something to do with cattle or something like that. I mean, it was like a foundation of a building or something, you know, it was kind of, yeah. I think you count those. Yeah. I don't want to be too much of stickler.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's just like whatever like makes you feel, you know, accomplished or, you know, like, whatever you're looking for out of it, I think.

Like, if people stretch their personal definitions, I don't care. Right. If that, you know, if it's had, if someone else finding a snake and you coming across it 15 minutes later, like, if that's satisfying for you, then I'm not going to, I'm not going to police your happiness. You're not challenging anybody's lists. Yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's something my friends and I joke about all the time.

Right. I think a lot of people comport themselves as if there's some Hall of Fame that they're trying to be a first ballot herper for. At the end of the day, I like to see that list. I mean, because sometimes I think I'm a pretty good herper until I talk to people like you or Jordan Parrott or somebody. I'm like, oh, I suck. Like, I've seen nothing compared to some people, you know. But, you know, hopefully to the extent that's inspiring, right? I think that's good.

Yeah. Yeah. The aspect that I think, you know, Christian, it sounds like you're keeping a really good perspective on is that if seeing those things instead just was a disincentive for you to do it, then that's not helpful. Right. Right. Yeah. And that's important. And that goes back to the whole, you know, I didn't have to find it.

It's like, if I really set that rule for myself, that would totally disincentivize going out and finding snakes with my friends. And, like, that's not a good outcome. Like it's fun to find snakes with my friends. Yeah, you don't want to be the hermit who has to find it on his own and doesn't want to hurt with anybody because they might find your find or whatever. Yeah, I've got an Occam Razor situation with the Hognos where my daughter talked me into letting her drive and we were driving. I said, I think that, you know, I was like, oh, I think that was a snake and she clipped it. And we came back and it was a hog nose, a Mexican hognows. And so, you know, it posed up nicely for photos, but it was dead.

but I did see it alive, so if I count that or not. That is a tough one. Because I did see it, and I got pictures of it, but I didn't, you know, the two weren't. It was really my. Yeah. My first thorn scrub hook nose was even worse than that because I found it and I thought it was fine. I thought it was acting a little weird. I thought, oh, like maybe this is playing dead.

I don't know. And I, you know, I did the thing. I'm not super proud of as I bagged it to take pictures of it overnight. Right, right. And I wake up in the morning and there's blood coming out of its mouth and it's dead. Yeah. And it's like, shit, it got hit by a car before I saw it. I just had no idea.

And if I would have just taken pictures of it. And let it go. I would never know. You would never know. Right. But, you know, I don't count things unless they survive. You know, I don't count things that are mortally wounded. Right, right.

So, yeah, that was a real, real dilemma. Yeah. I will say I would like to police the idea that somebody's counting a DOR that's like permanently embedded into the pavement. Like, no, that doesn't count. Yeah. But. And if nothing else, it undermines the credibility of everything else they're saying, right? Right. That was humorous. You haven't seen that species if you saw, you know, Kentucky fried chicken. Then it removes all credibility from everything you're talking about. You're not making the Hall of Fame. fame list. Yeah, no way. Here in Colorado, we have a Massachusetts

population that's been recognized as sort of intermediate between the Western and Desert stuff for a long time. And it took me more trips than I would have liked to go to check that one off with Brendan Hediger, who we've had on the show,

who was instrumental in the project. And obviously, I'd found a couple of ERRs and things, but couldn't make a work. but the first one that I had seen live in the field didn't count for me because a different group had turned it up first, right? I had kind of, there's a western edge and an eastern edge of the northwestern and southeastern and I hadn't timed it right and was like, I'll start on the northwestern work over there. And then, yeah, they had found it first. So it didn't count for me, but yeah, he probably won't mind being shouted.

Tim Warful, who's well-known, Harper, you know, a little old to be a Harper, bro, but still kind of run. you know, runs in those circles and things, was asking me, but I didn't fully appreciate who he was, didn't know him nearly as well at the time, this sort of stuff. And he's like, well, does this count for you? But I was like, well, if I found it, then, yeah, it took me getting back in the car, leaving the group, you know, to realize, oh, his question was, am I going to count this one? And the answer, I kept obtusely saying, you know, no, that it wouldn't count for me, but I wasn't saying it explicitly because I didn't understand his question because I was photographing the snake.

You know, but he was judging me based on what I would, what my answer would be, and I didn't give him a clear answer because I didn't take enough time to appreciate his question. But out of that was like, oh, they had found, they had cruised it. Would I count it? And the answer was no, but I didn't explicitly say that. So until later, I said, oh, that was you. And my answer was no. I just wasn't saying. Hey, you mentioned your first thorn scrub hook nose.

That's the species that I'm really interesting. Yeah, do you have other experiences with that species? Have you found more? Yeah, there's a spot where, you know, if you know the right conditions and they're, like, they're relatively predictable. Okay, that's cool. Because that's one that's kind of high on my list. I love that. I mean, they're just so cool looking.

They're cool. Yeah. When you say spot, are you talking about the general spot or something hyper-specific that you've worked out based on your own sort of? It's pretty specific. Yeah, it's a stretch of a road that I think a lot of people have a general idea where, but they show up on a very specific part of that road. And specific time of... Have you found the other super interesting thing down there? The vine snake, no, I have not.

And that is a big, another white whale. So, Pricci, Cerberus, and Oxibelus have alluded to me. Well, two other things are seen. So there you go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Vine snakes, the most frustrating because I've tried the most. I've seen a vine snake, just not in Arizona.

It was Costa Rica. Oh, there you go. It was just waiting for me on the beach. We were done surfing and we were walking and we walked through this little trellis and it's just hanging down waiting for me to grab it. So, yeah, very cool. And even the thorn scrubs, right? When you're actually in Mexico, it's a wholly different proposition than it is in Arizona.

Lots of, lots of species. just come up into the U.S., you know, they're a lot easier to find in Mexico, Swataks, geckos, you know, those are the same kind of thing. They can be pretty big coastal, you know, Baja. Yeah. Yeah, that one's a frustrating one because I have looked for those a lot. And looking for them is actually pretty tedious. Well, really, anyway, you're doing it. Yeah.

That's the one of the three that we haven't passed. I think my neck never recovered. it still. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. It'll happen. I mean, it'll happen.

Cerberus. So one weird thing living out here is obviously I knew the monsoon was influential, especially with crotolus. What I really under accounted for is like, crotles are almost non-existent here until the monsoons. I mean, I would say the first three months I lived here, I saw probably four or five, atrox. I probably saw

10 to 12 brown eye you know like my perceptions got totally flipped on their head because you know anyone who's hurt that young a monsoon knows you like you usually hit a point with atrox where you might not even really stop for them or you might just be kind of

summarily scooting them off the road and moving on because you're seeing five or six a night it really is crazy how little the crotes seem to move here in the spring, early summer. So I think Cerberus will be relatively easy now that the monsoons have started, and I think priceide will

happen pretty soon, but vine snakes, I just, I have not figured them out. Yeah, the interesting thing is, and Justin, I think the same is true for you. We haven't come in true monsoon. Yeah. We always come kind of earlier or later.

So, um, on the back end of it or whatever, but not sort of that late July, August. I certainly haven't been down then. I was shocked. We had come down so my daughter could check out UVA, amongst other things,

over a spring break, a couple marches back, and I was amazed that nothing was going on what you would think. Probably a marginal plus day, and there was nothing out at all. And it led me to think, okay, that area, because there are so many optimal days,

what would count as you would definitely see snakes in Colorado on a day like this, you know, these sort of conditions. There was nothing going at all, and that was really interesting. Yeah, May here sucks, which is very weird for me because I think almost anywhere else. May is like the prime time and May, June, like forget about it. Those are probably two of the worst months to be out here. You know, there's certain stuff that moves. And that's one of the cool things about living here is I get to see the patterns, right?

Like there were a couple weeks in May where there were sand snakes everywhere, a couple weeks in June where there were brownie everywhere. And with, you know, different types of fauna, like that same pattern happens. You know, you have a skunk month and, you know, the ringtails just started popping up. So it is kind of cool to see those trends. But it's surprising. And it is definitely like different than my experience. is back east. I thought, you know, usually everything kind of emerged at the same time, kind of had the same activity pattern. And here it's like very much not that.

Yeah, that's interesting. I guess that's the, again, the beauty, you know, because you probably wouldn't plan a trip, you know, if you had to drive the 15 hours or whatever from Rob's house to southern Arizona, you probably wouldn't plan it in June just for that reason. if, you know, if the only target is brown eye, then maybe so. But, you know, that might be the case for me. I might have to drive out just for that because they're so cool. But yeah, but maybe that's like fly into Tucson, her a couple days and then fly back or something. So it's spending a week.

But, yeah, that's tricky. With the vine snakes, I've always heard they really like the heat. Like, they're out in the middle of the heat. So it was interesting that you found yours like rain. and things. Well, that was the thornscrub. Yeah. Oh, okay.

It actually raises the question, Christian. So the question is always sort of the validity of the information that we're getting. Right. So as Justin's relaying. It's a red herring or. Yeah. Like, okay, is this true? Is it not?

And if it is true, is it instructive or not? Right. That's sort of feedback. Right. Yeah. And I don't know. You know. I'm not lying.

you guys. Yeah. Yeah. And that was, it was interesting. You know, that's his story to tell, not ours, not least, because I only half remember it. And I'm not sure it's correct, but the way that it had gone. But certainly we've looked for him. And that, yeah, that's a fair target to remain.

Yeah. But, I mean, Dustin's found, he's found a couple now, right? And he's spent a lot of time looking. One, maybe two, but it took a while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He got one kind of got away, but he kind of had.

its tail for a minute and then it slipped away. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But then he got one for, yeah. And a bunch of herpers have spent a lot, you know, long time looking down there without success. I mean, yeah, it's kind of the edge of their range. They're just difficult to find there. Just hard to see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's amazing habitat to spend time. Right. I don't, I don't mind looking for them. I've seen so much cool bycatch looking for those guys. Oh, yeah. The hard part is the idea of going out in the middle of day. and riding the road is tough.

Well, and is that right? That's the question I have with that one of like, so we hear that, right? And it's like, okay, even in the context of saying I'm taking as truthful, those observations, it was, you know, 110 or full blown and it's, you know, going out. But then is that the random one-off or is that the pattern?

And it's tough to say on something that's so unusual, right? Or, you know, such. I guess it's easier looking for him that way because you're just road cruising with the AC on, you know? Yeah, road cruising that road is not easy, though. Yeah, especially on border patrols careening around 60 mile an hour. Yeah. Or drug dealers. Yeah.

Yeah, I wanted to go try to shine for them, but like that is not a. Right. Unschedgy place to be. Yeah. That is a good night. Man, we saw a crazy. I like that. We saw a really nice blackneck garter snake down there that was just glowing.

I mean, that greenish color on it, it was incredible-looking snake. I'm not going to keep Thamnophis, but that one was tempting me. My favorite ever Mountain King is from that road. Really? Yeah. I've ever seen. It's just so gorgeous. That's cool.

Yeah, it doesn't, well, no, I don't say anything. But, yeah, really, really cool snake down there for sure. The answer to what you're not saying is yes. Yes. So amongst your recent finds, that mountain, you want to talk about that mountain line thing? Yeah, that's a pretty rare thing to see, I'm sure. Yeah, well, that ties in well with our conversation because I saw it right in the mouth of the canyon. I always poke around for vine snakes.

And there were two of them. I think one chase the other down the street. I followed them. One stopped right off the road. And I think you can kind of tell it's kind of like playfully like pouncing at the other one towards the end of that video. That was cool. I'd seen Mountlines before.

I'd never really gotten to like appreciate one. It always had just been like, oh, it ran in front of my car. I got a glimpse in the woods. And that is an amazing animal. I mean, the video doesn't like portray the scale of it very well. That's a big animal and athletic and fast. And it's so cool. Yeah.

That's impressive. Very cool. One of my favorite topics to hit on, ticks and chiggers. You have thoughts on those from your various, especially if you were kind of Midwest into East Coast. You know, Justin and I are lucky that. Yeah, why do you think I moved? Yeah, right? Yeah.

As I was saying, I didn't know at the time that Utah has the greatest diversity in chigger species, apparently of any state in the U.S. surprising. Oh, it's crazy. Yeah. But they're still rare on the ground. You know, only in one particular spot have we really gotten into trouble with them. Yeah. I have like knock on all the wood. I've yet to encounter a tick out here.

I found random bites show up. Maybe those are triggers. I don't care that much about that. I just, I hate ticks. And, uh, I, oh, man, Texas is the worst. I had days in South Texas where I came home and I was just lint rolling myself. Just like taping, you know, taping my. pants to my socks to my shirt.

I just hate ticks and like it gets pretty bad in the middle of the country of the East Coast sometimes. I know a couple people who have gotten, you know, Al-Figo. That is. That is. That is very. Yeah. It is.

Yeah. It would be fun. Life without red meat. That would be tough. I don't know. Although, so we were just down in Louisiana, Mississippi, the beginning of the last month and I did the tape in your pants to your shoes or we all did and all it seemed to do was concentrate the chiggers into this really narrow band right around my ankles and it actually

caused them to swell up in a way that I've never seen before is like it's scary so what are your big targets in Arizona now I love mountain kings and greener hats and yeah it goes oh like uh like uh true pirate I have not. No, I've not actually been in Northern Arizona, which definitely on the list. I want to go up and see the garters up there and. Yeah. I'll pursue them, but be in their habitat.

Yeah. Absolutely. I happen to see one on my drive north up to you. They're really cool. But yeah, no, I am. No, I've never done Northern Arizona. I haven't been to the Grand Canyon since I was like three. So I don't even remember it.

And it's very accessible now. Like I'll definitely make that happen soon. But no, like Mountain Kings are, yeah, a big obsession of mine. I could see a million of them and still not be satisfied. So that's what I'm chasing most of the time. Cool. Well, let me know when you want to go look for them in Utah. I'll join you.

Hell yeah, man. That'd be fun. Yeah, when you have to find them in my state. Yeah, they're cool snakes. I've only seen a couple, two, two, or two or three, but yeah, the one was on the north room of the Grand Canyon heads down into the Grand Canyon. We saw one just kind of.

The southern limit of the labiality. Yeah. I think that's one of like the coolest things about them that was the most surprising for me when I started researching them and looking for them is like how surface active they are. Yeah. Like I've seen most of mine just out and about. I don't really flip for them much.

Yeah, so much better than milk snakes. Yeah. That's all you do for bugs is flip. Yeah. You want to tell us a little bit more about the snake evolution and biogeography? Sure. Yeah, so it's a nonprofit run by my buddy, Alex McKelvey, who was formerly part of the Burbank Lab and still does a lot of stuff with that group. And basically, the mission is to kind of train, you know, hobbyists, students, field skills that help them.

advance, you know, science. So collecting specimens, collecting tissue from roadkill, depositing things in museums. You know, we do one or two trips a year where we, it's kind of like a workshop where we, most of our time is spent in the field, but we also teach people how to like pickle specimens, take the data you need to get value out of like roadkill.

And we do a little bit of professional. development, so helping students kind of like apply for scholarships, you know, do posters at conferences like JMIH, stuff like that. The kind of like overall goal is to get more specimens in museums because like it used to be before INAB, before HurtMapper, like that was the main way citizens participate in science is they would actually donate dead dead. snakes to get deposited in museums. That doesn't happen much anymore except by academics, people who are actively trying to do that. So there's so much more information data, like so much more good can come out of a museum specimen that could come out of a picture associated with a, you know,

location in time. It can be used for molecular studies. It can be used for gut content studies, for morphometrics, like, you can get so much information that's tied to a specific time out of a dead snake that's, you know, fixed in some engine museums. So, yeah. They do a pickle party out here at BYU. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So any random herper can bring all their specimen that they've collected on the road. And, yeah. Oh, that's cool.

Put them in the collection at the Bean Museum. Yeah, it's pretty cool. pretty sweet. That's the big tripping block is permitting. And so I've got, you know, I've got a salvage permit for Arizona and New Mexico. But it's hard to empower people with permits because states are states weirdly are very gatekeeping about their roadkill. So there's so many snakes that I've seen that I can't, you know, I can't collect because museums will not accept depositions, usually if there's not a permit associated with them. And so, you know, good, valuable scientific data just rots on the road because of bureaucracy.

It's very frustrating. Right. Yeah. That is obnoxious. But it's a fun group. We, you know, we do field trips. This year, it's actually in Arizona. So my neck of the woods makes it a whole easier.

Right. That's probably good and bad, though, right? In the sense of it's not going to some exotic locale. or whatever. Yeah. Convenient, but not. Yeah. Yeah, and all the onus will be on me to find everything.

Yeah. The pressure's on, man. Right. You're the local guy. Exactly. And then anybody who finds something that you didn't find, like, oh, you missed this one, huh? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Much less walking by it or, yeah. Yeah. So we didn't really hit on it. So glad to hear that you're into hiking stuff up. Are you a faster slow guy? Are you looking in all the notes trying to really suss that out? Or do you believe in sort of startling things or coming up on them quickly? I think like my general approach, it depends a little about species and stuff.

But I would say like the most general answer is I'm usually moving pretty quickly on hikes until I hit, you know, little microhabitats I like, places I've seen. stuff before, stuff that particularly grabs my interest, and then I'm very slow and methodical. And so I think it's just a lot of like getting, you know, obviously being observant the whole time, but getting to the spots where I think will yield the best results. Very cool. But honestly, I think there's going to be more than one of these if you're game for it. Because there's a ton of stuff that we didn't get to that's there. But we want to recognize your time and maybe chat for a little bit off air. So, yeah, certainly.

Yeah, Justin, if you want to. Yeah, we'll close it out then. I appreciate you coming on. So select serpents is your Instagram handle. People can see your stuff mainly there. Is that the? Yeah, select. Select.

Oh, so is the installation. Select. Select. It's technically for our business, but it's just my field herping pictures at this point. Okay. And if they want to buy a snake from you, is that separate place? Yeah, reach out. I took a kind of slow year this year with the move, like moving all the snakes in the country.

It was horrible. But I do, I have like 19 crevos hatching right now. Oh, wow. I just got a litter of salt marsh snakes. I think I have a, I think, maybe the first like visual morph of a salt marsh snake. I have, I popped out a, I think is a T-positive albino. Wow. Salt marsh snakes.

Oh, that's cool. That one's not going anywhere, but the siblings, maybe we can talk about. I'm going to have some bowls and some Louisiana pine. So, yeah, like, reach out if you're interested in any of that stuff. Very cool. All right. Well, thanks again for coming on. We'll thank Eric and Owen for hosting our podcast.

And we'll check you later for another episode of Repta Fight Club.