Reptile Fight Club - Herping Ethics - Only Look? No, Touch! Or not! W/ Rob Christian

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob discuss Only Look? No, Touch! Or not! W/ Rob ChristianWho will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow 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/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to Reptile Fight Club. My name is Justin Joolander, if you didn't know. And here with me as always, Rob Stone, how goes it for you, Mr. Stone? That's going great. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Another exciting show, really good. I'm excited to talk to Rob. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, we've got the double duo Robbs tonight, so got Rob Christian on the podcast again. Welcome back, Rob. How you doing? Thank you. I can be here. We got Rob squared. It's not Rob Stone. It's Rob squared.

Yeah. We can have to find a way to... Yeah. We'll figure it out, yeah. Advertising. It's just Rob versus Rob. Rob versus Rob. Brother versus brother.

Awesome. Well, yeah, glad to have you back, man. It's good to see you. I guess for me, I get to see you, but the listeners just are hearing your sultramers. voice. Suckers. But yeah, so I don't know, I got out herping. So that was kind of crazy for Utah.

March is not a great month to herp, especially northern Utah. So I went out last week because it like hit the 60s. So I'm like, man, this is probably ideal. And I went to a spot and flipped rocks for several hours and saw a bupub. kiss. It's like, oh, man, I guess maybe it's not the great time to go out. But then the next day I met up with some, with Pat May, who's legend, you know, Utah Herper, really big into milk snakes, finds a lot of milk snakes in Utah, which are not,

you know, not the easiest snake to find out here. Much easier in like Kansas or even Colorado. But, yeah, the further west you go, the harder they are to find. But he has a knack and finds, you know, quite a few. And then he had his buddy Parley, and he's on a lot of Pat's videos. So I gave a shout out last week, and I'll reiterate that. He put out some good content, and he finds some crazy stuff. He had one day where he found, like, now this won't sound too exciting for an East

coaster, but he found a bunch of ringnecks in Utah. That's like a very rare snake of mine. And they found like several in the same area in one day. Like, I think he said, like, six or eight or something like that crazy. In addition to that, found a bunch of milks as well. So kind of, you know, he's a legend herper. And then, yeah, it was a great time out. So the Saturday, I was hanging out with him and a couple other buddies and just kind of herping around up in the mountains looking.

I was kind of focusing in on smooth green snakes. but then the weather was cloudy, you know, there was no sun on Saturday. And so it was a little overcast and it started, even started snowing on us a little bit. But so he's like, maybe we should kind of tailor it to rubber boas. And so we went looking for rubber boas and got, he got a rubber bow under a rock. So it was kind of cool. That was the earliest I've seen a herp in Utah. He got, I think he went out just for a few minutes on Friday and found a crow.

He got a lutosis, so great basin rattlesnake. Damn. Yeah, middle of March. It's really crazy. But what do you do? So good times, good people. It's always nice to meet kind of the newer, you know, new guys that I hadn't met. The other guy that was with us was named Jeremy.

So, yeah, drove a nice Lexus, cool guy. But, yeah, it was fun to hurt with some new guys as well as getting out again with Pat. So good times. But, I mean, not the most successful herping. We did find a few lizards as well under rocks. So we got a couple Western skinks and a couple sagebrush lizards. So one of the skinks was a juvenile. Just the whole tail was bright blue.

It was crazy. I had a difficult time photographing it. Like, the tail just, like, almost closed. It's so, so cool. Yeah, good times. I was wondering what that blue tail was that you had texted me. You only had a little tip of this tail, and I was like, is this a dead, smooth green snake that's gone blue? You know, it was the other thing out, or what is this supposed to be?

Yeah. It was a mystery for you to solve. Yeah. I figured that's what I figured you kind of the idea. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I'd taken a picture of it after, because we kind of pulled it out and checked it out, you know, it was dug in. So all that was sticking out was maybe, you know, a quarter inch of a blue tail.

And so we pulled it out and took some photos and stuff. But, yeah, I thought I'd had one of the whole skinks. So I thought that's what I was sending you. But then I looked at all it's just the tail sticking out of a hole. So, yeah. It's the mystery. Yeah, but that's what I figured it was. Yeah.

Not many options out here for, yeah, a blue. tailed animal. Although to that end, right, and I saw it on my rare foray into Facebook that you had reposted something from the Gordy posted. Oh, yeah. This is your opportunity to plug in terms of things relative to Utah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm excited to, I mean, we're putting the finishing touches on the field guide, so that should be out. I keep thinking it's soon, you know, and, you know, it's one of those processes that always takes longer than you think it's going to take. So, um, But yeah, the field guide to the reptiles and amphibians of Utah should be coming out here, hopefully in time for herping season.

So, yeah, we actually got Joe Mendelsohn to write the foreword. So listeners will remember him from a few episodes back when we did grilling the expert. He was a professor up at Utah State in herpetology and then moved out to Georgia and was at the Atlanta Zoo for a while. and one of the universities out there. So really cool guy. He's a rock star. It was a lot of fun herping with him. So it was sad to see him move out to Georgia,

but yeah, cool that he was willing to write the forward. So looking forward to getting that wrapped up and out there. And I think it should be pretty affordable too. Bob tried to keep it, you know, around 20 bucks, which is, you know, hard to do these days. So, yeah, we'll see what happens. But, yeah, hopefully very soon, we'll have that at your nearest national park.

That's kind of the exciting thing for me is Bob has connections at the national parks. So my book will be sold in national parks. And co-authored with Nipper Reed, our old buddy Nipper from Venom Exchange Radio. And so really fun to work with him on this as well. It was basically his idea because he went looking for a field guide when he came out to Herp, Utah. And he's like, there's no field guide. I'm like, yes, there is. And I looked and there wasn't.

So, yeah, he's like, well, let's write one. I'm like, okay, let's do it. So, yeah, and shout out to, again, Pat and his good buddy, Ride Jones, and some other, you know, great Utah herpers, Joey Muggleston, Chris and Aspen, you know, there's a few photos from our own Rob Stone as well in there. So that'll be fun to have that out. There's also a picture of Rob Stone in there as well.

Wow. Yeah, we got the crew out herping in southeastern Utah. So you and Dustin, Nipper and Eric. Yep, hanging out in a little wild horse canyon, I think. Somewhere on there. But good times. So, yeah, check it out. Hopefully soon.

Yeah, Gordon put up a post, Gordon Shoo it, and then I shared that as well. I was hoping it was the pre-order link, but it was not. I wish, yeah. Yeah. Not quite yet. So, yeah. And then I'm pretty sure they'll have them at the IHS meeting.

So at least be able to, you know, maybe sign a copy or two or something out there. That'll be fun. But, yeah, good times. Have you gotten through the Piro book? I'm about halfway through. That was kind of funny because I had to walk a little ways when I was herping on Friday, the nice day. and so I was walking along this dirt road. They had a gate, and so I had to walk on the road.

And so I was reading the book while I was walking. And then I heard a car, and there weren't many cars on the road because, again, the gate, but he had a key. And so I threw my thumb out, and he was nice enough to pick me up and take me the last mile or so because I was pretty spent, you know, from, and hobbling a little because my ankle was bugging me where I'd broken it a few years back. and things like that. So very nice man. But saved me the last little leg of the journey. I'm like, and I haven't hitchhiked in a long time.

Most people probably have never hitched hiked in their life. It's, you know, one of those things where it's like, oh, that's sketchy, that's dangerous. And my wife's like, why would you hitchhike? What are you thinking? And I'm like, I saw the dude. He passed me, you know, going somewhere. And then he was coming back with his daughter. I'm like, you know, unless he's a serial killer in training or something, you know,

It's probably safe. That's how they're living in, man. It's just me and my daughter. Yeah. And I figured it's on a dirt road. If worst came to worse, I'd just bail out and jump out. There you go. But yeah, and you had to stop for the gate anyway.

But, yeah, it was crazy. I actually went out today at lunch as well. Took just drive up the canyon, trying to see if I could catch some... There's supposed to be a Lutosis den, a Great Basin Rattlesnake Den up the canyon a bit. And it was in like a climbing guide. There was mention of a rattlesnake den close by.

And I've kind of searched up there a bit. So I thought, ah, it's, you know, this might be the best time for them to hang out because it hit like 78 today in my town here. It was mid-80s yesterday. Yeah, it's crazy. super hot. I guess all around, well, some places and other places are colder than normal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I, yeah, I didn't see anything today either. I don't know if it's my old eyes or I just wasn't in the right spot. I'll continue to search that area.

Because there's, I mean, the place I was had some great crevices and it was southern facing and just hit all the, ticked all the boxes. Just didn't see any snakes out. So, and that can that can have. happen, you know, even if you're in a perfect spot. So I'll be making my way back out there at some point. Maybe earlier, I don't know if maybe, you know, first light or something, they're coming out to sun or maybe after it hits 60s or 70s or something, they'll be out. But, yeah, I'm getting anxious to hurt more. Yeah, a year ago, we were in Central Australia finding some really cool stuff.

That was another post. I threw up that black-headed python that we found on Jordan's birthday. So that was pretty fun. Good, good birthday. I guess now I'd be back home. But, yeah, year ago last week, we were in Australia. Hitching to get back there, too. But what do you do?

How about you, Rob, does the, Rob Christian, does the herping ever end? And you're in South Carolina? North Carolina. North Carolina. One of the Carolina, yeah, the Northern Carolina. All right. Yeah, the more dignified Carolina. if you will.

Honestly, the spot where I'm at, I find snakes year round. I have, since I moved here, I've kind of made it a challenge for myself to try and find at least one snake every month of the year. And since I moved here in the end of 2021, I've only missed two months, like basically. But last year, every single month, I found at least one snake. And I've already found multiple snakes for James. you know, January, February, and March. Nice.

And like literally today, I came across a big female garter snake. She was trying to get some water out of someone's French drain at their house. I do past control for work. So I'm, like, walking around. I'm a supervisor now, so I don't do a lot of, like, walking around houses as much as I used to. Yeah. But when I get to get out there and do some services, I'm always like, let me check under this board for termites.

Let me look at this. Let me check out of this piece of tin over here, make sure there's no mice on. underneath here. Right. What we got going on over here? So, like today, yeah, I found that garter snake. And then yesterday I found two DKs, brown snakes, just chilling underneath someone's

downspout. Because, like, a lot of places where bugs are going to persist are also going to be great places to look for snakes. So I'm very lucky in that way where I get, while I'm out doing services and doing this and doing that, I get to take a look around, see if there's any snakes, and then educate customers about it because my company doesn't deal with any like wildlife stuff. Right, right. Get permits for that.

So you just deal with bugs almost exclusively. And so when I get people who have got tin in their yard or pieces of wood, I'm like, hey, are you trying to attract snakes to your yard? Because this is how you get snakes in your yard. Right. And so I can take that tin off your hands and put it somewhere else. I had one customer who, like, I go to their house and they're wearing one of these green, like, EcoWare hats and it's got a copperhead on the front.

Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, cool. You guys are cool. I can talk to you for a minute. And so I asked her, I was like, hey, like, where did you get that hat from? She's like, oh, I don't know. I was just like, you know, at the museum and I picked it up because I thought it looked cool. I was like, oh, damn, okay.

And then I go to outside and they've got cardboard laid out. on some leaves on their side yard. And so I talked to them. I was like, hey, this is probably not great. Like, if you are not trying to get snakes here, you will get snakes here. And she's like, oh, we're just using it to kill the weeds. And I was like, okay, cool. And then I come out there three months later, and there's a big copperhead underneath it.

And so I went to her, I was like, hey, if you're not, like, if you're done with that, you should get rid of it because I just pull this big, like easily like a two, plus foot copperhead out from underneath that piece of cardboard and I was like you guys should probably move that because they have a little like a two year old right they probably don't want them cruising around lifting up things and looking under stuff so you know I'm very lucky where I'm at that there's a lot

of a lot of like herping to do there's a lot of natural state parks close to where I'm at a bunch of them closed last year because we had some serious storms that flooded them flooded them out and a lot of them kind of follow the river systems around here and so the trails got annihilated my favorite place to go got absolutely

annihilated just completely wrecked and they haven't opened it back back up yet so I have to go to like a couple other ones in different sections of the river right but so much good herping so much good herping there's

like most common snake I usually see down here is either northern water snakes middle water snakes or queen snakes The Eno River area is like central North Carolina, central northern North Carolina, and there's tons of queen snakes there. Really? So many, so many.

And I'll find them down to when it's like 40 degrees outside. As long as it's sunny, they're out, like sitting out in the open, which is really freaking cool. And then black rat snakes all over the place, out the wazoo. There's so many of them. The only downside to where I'm at is that if you look like a different, distribution map of venomous snakes for North Carolina. Like the mountains are over here and they go like this and they dip real low around the central

portion of North Carolina and they come back up to the coast. Right. So where I'm at, the only venomous snakes we get for like an hour drive from where I'm at is Copperheads. Okay. So I have to go elsewhere if I want to see Cambridge's timbers, the pygmies. Right. Supposedly there's Eastern Diamondbacks and coral snakes and stuff.

Not a whole lot of that going on in the state, but they're supposedly there. And then hog-nows snakes, but those are usually around the lakes. And I've found one hog-nows since I moved down here. Yeah. That's cool. So, I mean, do you have any goals to kind of tick off all the reptiles in North Carolina? Are you just kind of herping for just to get out into nature and to enjoy it? I'd like to get out into nature and to enjoy it.

I feel like if I was to try and get every single thing, I'd be too, like, obsessive about it. Right, right. Because, like, I don't know, I'm a little bit younger. I grew up with Pokemon, and they're like, catch them all. And I'm like, there's too many of them. I don't like a bunch of them. Why do I have to catch?

I don't want to catch all of them. I just want to catch ones I think are cool. Right. So that's kind of how I look at the herping, too. I'm like, I like this stuff, so I really want to see this stuff. So I think this year I really want to find mud snakes because I haven't found any mud snakes. since I moved here and then along the coast you get the muds and the rainbow snakes and stuff and I would really like to see some of those I think they're really cool with the red and the black

right uh it's like a america's version of the red belly black snake yeah they're so freaking cool yeah so those I want to see more venomous snakes I moved to north carolina so I could start keeping venomous snakes but just seeing them in the wild is cool right I grew up in Massachusetts where there's no wild lizards, like no native lizards. So you don't get lizards ever. There's the only turtles we got are like the aquatic turtles. So most common turtle I would see is like painted turtles. Yeah.

And then if you know where to look, you can find like spotted turtles or landings or wood turtles or whatever, but they're not common at all. Right. Yeah. Difficult to find. North Carolina, I get Eastern box turtles crossing. I live at the end of a dirt road. I get them crossing my road when it's raining. They're like walking in people's yards.

There's so many different things. There's like river cooters. There's so many cool different things to see around. And lizards all over the place. I think it's because I grew up in a place where there's no lizards, every time I see an annuli, I'm like, Anoli. There's a lizard right there.

Holy crap, that's so cool. It's so cool. So I get hyped for, you know, the random stuff, I guess. But as far as goals, I guess mud snakes seeing more. venomous snakes. Yeah. I would love to see some more cane breaks slash the timber rattlesnakes. I love those guys.

Yeah. I still need to see a cane break. Yeah. I mean, some people don't differentiate them, but I think they're different. I don't care. Right?

That's cool. They're like bonobos and chimpanzees are the same thing. Come on. They look close enough. Right. Yeah, that's, I don't know. I've been having a little bit of a back and forth with the taxonomous.

and kind of that vein of like, well, you know, bonobos and chimpanzees are different. We've got Neanderthal DNA in us. Like, how are we not just Neanderthals? Yeah. I think that people get a little bit caught up with one way or the other. Right. And they're like, well, it's not enough genetic difference. And it's like, do you know how much genetic makeup we share with a banana?

Like, this is getting a little bit. You're losing the plot there, buddy. Right. Yeah, you have to be like 20 million years ago, you have to have diverged or something to be unique enough. And it's like, well, I don't know about that. Yeah, I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess that's the fun of. There's also kind of a veneer science to some of that, right, where it's like, oh, it's X number of, and it's almost like creating a, rather than an argument with sort of equal weight or merit, you know, kind of equal positions. Instead, it's almost used as a Trump card or something where it's saying like, oh, well, I have three nucleotides that are on my side, therefore nothing you say matters. Yeah.

Exactly. I guess that's the beauty of being herpers is we can recognize whatever forms we want, you know? We don't have to publish on it. We can just say, hey, I like cane breaks. I think they're neat looking. I'm going to count that as a form and I'm going to go find them, you know. So I guess you can say, well, I found a timber, so I found that species or whatever. but I don't know.

I think that variety is what's fun. After seeing the timbers from New England and then seeing a cane from down here, that is a different freaking snake. There's no, they're not even close. They're not even close. They're so different. I don't know how people still classify them the same.

I don't. Yeah. I was talking to Jordan and he's like, I mean, you can kind of, you know, backtrack. with taxonomy or whatever all the way to the individual. Like every individual is unique, you know, and where do you draw the line of, you know,

what fits with what and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. And, you know, obviously some things adapt to their environment, maybe in their pattern or their color or, you know, their shape or whatever. But you would think. The texture of their scales. Right. Yeah, you'd think like some of those things would be a bigger deal than they are to, you know,

I don't know. It's the children's python, Stimson's Python thing that I'm just like. Oh, no. Yeah. I hear Dominique talking about that on his podcast. Don't say Stimson's or Children's or Juleander will get upset. Is the, in North Carolina, do you get kind of the timber phenotype to the west and the cane break more to the east? Is that how it sort of breaks out?

or, yeah. Yeah, the habitat is so different. It's so, so different. Even just from where I am to the coast and from where I am to the mountains, it's like three different zones completely. We get a little bit of hills here, but not really anything close to mountain or like even serious hill areas. And then once you get closer to the coast, it's more that like clay sandy kind of habitat, more like, definitely more coastal. And so it's so different. And I guess you could say that there's like integrate zones where they're looking a little bit more like one or the other, especially because like the, if you look at the distribution map, they're like heavy along the coast, dip around Raleigh and Durham and then pick back up towards the mountain area.

So you get like towards the sand hills in the center, south, you get like a little bit of that integrated kind of look, I guess, and you'll get some that look more one way or another. but from what I've seen kind of the ones in the mountains you get more of that typical timber look and the ones towards the coast you get a little bit more of that cane look to them yeah and they're not really a sandhill snake right they're more of like a marsh around water snake even if they're in sandhill habitat it's going to be kind of the lowest lying portions of that sandhill right from what I've seen I've only found one since I've been down here but from what I've seen looking at things kind of looks like that Yeah, I think in South Carolina, you know, reading the old Caulfeld and stuff, that was sort of the description.

Diamondbacks will be, you know, in the upper, higher elevation areas within Sand Hill Habitat, whereas the cane rakes and things would be lower, closer to water. As Justin said, similarly, that's one of three crow forms left for me. So, yeah, got its way. Yeah. Old Bobby Pebbles has almost completed the list. Well, we'll see, right? So we got, you know, the spread from should be easy, should be medium, and should be hard.

I've actually tried now at this point for all three, and yeah, all three are still going begging. But, yeah, we'll see. See what we can do. Yep. It's a fun little competition. But, yeah, I think Rob's pulling ahead. He's ahead of everybody. I think is Dustin?

the closest or who's the closest to you? Yeah, you and you and Dustin. Or maybe he has one on you. He might have one. Yeah, you're either tighter as me. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

It's fun though. All good fun, right? Yeah, something to do, man. Right? That's the whole idea. It's ideation around, okay, what do we do next? Yep. Yeah.

Y'all are light years ahead of me because I've seen, like, the, I've seen the red pygmies. I've seen a bunch of those. Yeah. I saw the one cane in North Carolina. I've seen some dusky pygmies. down in Florida and then

I guess there say the timber up in Massachusetts and then the lutosis out by you guys yeah yeah that's pretty much it

I'm really not this year I just got my tax back and I'm like okay I need to plan this trip to southeast Arizona so I can see some of those Kyle and stuff I really need to see Willard I

yeah they're so cool I think that's my favorite I love the they're easily my favorite easily yeah just the bold markings.

All of anything that's got contrast, and the contrast between the, like, darker color and the white markings on them. Yeah. Yeah. Does something to me. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

By still... Oh, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, the funny thing with those is that all the captive ones that I've ever seen have been pretty placid, and all the wild ones that we've seen have been very willing to put a tooth into you. Yeah.

Yeah. Which has been funny. You know, just one of those weird dichotomies, you know, so on. I wonder if that has to do with captive breeding and domestication, you know. Could be, could be. What were you going to say, Justin? Oh, I just, just, I need an Eastern Diamondback. I'd love to see one of those.

They've got kind of that same deal where they're just so contrasty, you know, that the bright white scales on them. And, yeah, they're really neat looking. Yep, I need to make it back out there. Yeah, we'll have to figure it out. I have to mix it in. I was just talking to KJ, and that was a good conversation, as always. And, yeah, it certainly brings it to mine and trying to bring up, even, heck, Indigo's, man.

Right. Indigo, short-tales, an egg, so, plenty of cool stuff on there. For sure. Yeah, the easy one I'm missing is the Southern Pacific. That should be easy to knock out. Really? Yeah, I'm surprised I've never seen one. I've been in the habitat quite a bit.

And just bizarre how maybe it's just because I go ahead to the desert, but you think I'd have seen one way now. That one was harder for me. You know, obviously we had a shared trip on that. And then it took us a lot of work on a second trip to get it done. Right. So, yeah, that should be easy. So Northern Pacific, which I know you have, is what should be my easy one. So we'll see if we can knock that out next month.

Yeah, you should be able to. If you can, I'll give you a spot where, you know, we saw 30 in a day, like they were everywhere. It was crazy. Yeah. I don't think we'll be where you, you know, where you were, right? Because you're up in Washington, right? Well, between Washington and Oregon. Yeah.

What is that? The Columbia River Gorge area. Yeah. Yeah, that's a cool spot. But I'd like to get back there sometime. That'd be fun to hurt that area again. Yeah. Yeah, the disappearing northern Pacific.

Or none of us had a snake stick. So we were just like using this towel to kind of brush them off the road. And I swung the towel to get it off and it disappeared. And then it swung back and the snake had its fang sticking in the towel. Swinging from the, I'll go. This is not the best tool for the job. But I got him off without any incident. Like you kind of let go pretty, you know, on the swing back.

Luckily it wasn't onto my legs or anything like that. But yeah, it's kind of funny. snakes, nature's quitters. They'll let go eventually. Snakes, makers, quitters. Well, so I guess what's your favorite thing to find out in your area? Specifically where I'm at,

I'm trying to think of what I would see my favorite thing to find is. It's like your kids. You just can't pick one, huh? Well, I think that where I'm at, I don't get as much variety as a lot of other places, especially because, like, just the pocket around Raleigh and Durham seems to be just pushes things off. I guess copperheads. I love copperheads. They're so freaking cool.

And the ones down here get, like, a nice kind of pinkish wash to them, which is really nice. It's not, it's not, like, eye grabbing, but it's subtle to be, like, get them under the right line. or look at them real good. They get a good pink wash on the face, and they usually get a little bit of pink highlights in the sides, like a light pink. So I like finding those, and copperheads are endangered throughout New England,

and so they're really hard to find up there. You just don't see them, and down here they're much more common. So I still get super excited whenever I see one. I'm just always excited to see those guys. And they're the only venomous snake I get in my specific area, area. So I love seeing those, probably my favorite. I feel the same about the Great Basin Rattlesnakes.

They're probably one of the more common species around here and the only venomous species in my area. But I still geek out every time I find one and see one. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully I can locate that den. That'd be a lot of fun to see multiples, you know, a bunch of them in one spot. That's always fun.

I found a little copperhead den in the woods near my house. Oh, cool. And it's right next to an elementary school. Like, maybe not, I shouldn't say right next to it because it make it sound like it's like in the parking lot. Yeah. It's probably a 10, 15 minute hike from the parking lot. So it's pretty close to where this elementary school is. You may expect him to disperse to the elementary maybe, or do they?

I would surprise if they caught on on the asphalt every now and again in that area. But, yeah, there's a couple like maybe February. days where it's kind of warm out, not hot, but just warm and sunny. And I just catch them right outside, just sitting right outside of that little rock pile, and then

right back in there. That's pretty cool. Yeah. They're beautiful snakes. I mean, it's hard to beat that pattern and color. I mean, we saw one in, was it Delaware, somewhere up there? Yeah, I was going to ask you, Rob, are the,

so what you have there, I haven't looked into the echinodon very closely in terms of defining forms and things, you know, either by species or by form or whatever. What you have, is that the same species slash form as what's up in the northeast, or is it different? And I hate to put you on the spot, but if you have any visibility into sort of, you know, your take on eustodon in terms of what's what or how many different things there are, whatever, I'm happy for anything you have. Yeah, the ones here, I believe, are considered northern copperheads,

just like the ones up in Massachusetts and New England. I have seen a lot of them in Massachusetts, a lot of them. I spent so much time out in the woods out there looking for them, and I found a couple really good spots where I would see them. And I've seen mothers with babies and all the different stages of them up there. And the ones in New England are definitely darker overall. They typically have a little bit more like spotting in the pattern than the ones down there.

here, they're more like uniform, like wave pattern on them. And the ones up there have more of like a copper, like a darker copper color to them. And the ones down here tend to be lighter tan with a lighter copper color

to them. But they are considered the same thing. And I could see how the argument could be made for them being the same thing. They don't look really drastically different. Like some of the ones that I've seen like pictures of from Florida or, you know, Texas or, you know, elsewhere.

So I could see it being. And I think that the Nerodia here, we get, like, northern water snakes here, and they look really different from the ones in New England. And there's, I think, Midland water snakes in this area, too. Like, to me, they look like Midland Water Snakes. And then a lot of the, like, old field guides that I've seen, they're like, no, they actually don't occur there.

But when I look at it, looks just like a Midland Water Snake. and those tend to congregate in a lot of the same places with the northern water snakes here. So are they integrates? Are they, you know, something else? I don't know. But the northern water snakes here look pretty drastically different than the ones that I see in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine. Those ones are like a completely separate thing. In my eyes, it's a completely separate thing.

Right. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. The copperheads is, I can see the argument being made both ways where it's like, they look close enough. If you put two of them together and you had somebody who knows a little bit about snakes, they'd be like, yeah, those are the same. When you get to people like us, we'd look at it like, is it the same? No? Like, they look kind of, yeah, the cane break timber thing. Right.

If you really get down to it, I bet you you could see some significant differences in them. But I think that these are more similar than the canes and the timbers. Like the copperheads are more similar. Right. But, yeah. It is fine. Yeah, it's variability. And, I mean, Massachusetts kind of the northern extent of their range anyway, right?

Like that's kind of as far north as they go. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's crazy. I never realize their distribution was so huge. You know, they cover the lot of ground. It's pretty cool. Yeah. I still, I still feel like I've missed out on our Texas trips,

not having seen a broadband and copperhead. I'd like to see some of us, too. They're beautiful. Oh, I'm sweating. I love broadband and copperheads so much. Yeah. So there's some fun variability and just, I guess that's a, is that considered a different species or subspecies? I think it used to be, but now it's been folded in. Yeah, it's kind of Western variant or whatever. Kind of gone back and forth.

Ooh, tomato, tomato, tomato. Yeah. I think that's a, certainly as a form, it would be one. The bummer is where Phil and I had gone and actually turned up the, um, our lap lap. Yeah. that's supposed to be sort of one of the spots to find one. We also went a week later to where Dustin and Brandon had gone and without similar success. So, yeah, I'm ready to find a couple, didn't they? Didn't they find a couple of them?

They just found one. Okay. Yeah, it was sitting out on this unassuming hillside, unassuming, relatively unpleasant, not unpleasant as West Texas can go, but relatively unpleasant hillside. Well, on INAT, they've got them as separate species. The broadband is Zerlatasynctus. A lot of synchis, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Iskivores. Yeah. Yeah. Or no, no, that's Godmouth. Sorry.

Yeah, the, um, but they're the, what, the contortics. Contorctics. Contorctics. Yeah. Contor tricks. Yeah. The tricks. The trickies.

Yeah. That's cool. Very good. Do you remember the Osage? ones, those, those like super weird pattern one, and they're like a completely different color. I would love to see some of those things. They're so cool.

I haven't even seen pictures of those in a hot minute. I saw, there was one person that had one, like a captive one, that posted it recently, maybe a year ago. And I was like, where the hell do you get that from? That's freaking cool. But aside from that, I haven't

even seen pictures of those in a hot minute. Those are really cool, though. Yeah. Right? I think that's more like Missouri, Arkansas, that's sort of, yeah, yeah, which is, yeah, so that's why I say, I haven't really looked at it closely enough to have a defined forms list in the way that I do for the Croats and Cestros and stuff, but at least it makes sense to me, but always happy for input on it. Yeah, most stuff. Yeah, the coverheads here are really nice, but they're not as different as somewhat like the Osage or the Broadbans or the Transpaco stuff. That stuff is like very distinctly different. Right.

And the ones here are pretty, but they're not as different. To my eye, that doesn't mean they're not different. Right. That's cool. Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's cool. I love just chatting herping. It's so fun to just hear, you know, different experiences and different spots.

And, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's nice you get a herp all year round. It's amazing. It's so cool. I don't know a whole lot about birds. So I'm sure that there are cool birds here. I've seen Bald Eagles nesting, which is pretty neat.

There's a spot near me that is supposed to have lots of hog-nosed snakes. And so I've gone hard there looking for hog-nose snakes. And I found copperheads and green snakes and ribbon snakes and black rat snakes and everything besides the hog-nose snakes. I see bald eagles making nests, but no hognows snakes there. Yeah. A little disheartening. I've only found DOR hog nose, so I'm, yeah, I'm pretty frustrated. That's the worst.

And I think my daughter might have clipped one. Against my better judgment, I let her drive. And then I saw, I'm like, oh, I think that was a snake. And I think you clipped it. And then we went back and there was this perfect little hog nose. I'm like, dang it. You want to hear something that's almost as best. bad as that.

So we're in New England. I've talked about this on a couple of different podcasts, but in New England, there's no real road cruising for snakes. In my life, I never besides that black rat snake that got hit in the middle of the road, the only reason I saw it was because it was four foot long. Right. So I have never road cruise

until I went out to Utah with you guys and did some road cruising. And then moving down here, I've started doing some road cruising. And when I've gone to Florida, I've done some road cruising. But when I'm driving, snakes do not register to my eyeballs. I don't know what it is. Because if I'm walking on a path, I will see this much of a coil sticking out from underneath some leaves.

And I'm like, snake right there. It's right there. I don't care how well camouflaged it is. I'm on it. I can't tell you how many times that I've been driving, like road cruising here in North Carolina. And I drive past something, I'm like, I think that was a snake. I turn around and it's like a two-foot copperhead, a big one, a huge one in the middle of the road. And I drove right by it.

I was like, I think that might have been a snake. I don't know. And so there's been two times where one time I was working and one time I wasn't working, but I was driving down the road and I passed something. I was like, I think that might be a snake. It kind of looked like the shape of like a hog-nosed snake. And I was like, no, I was not a hog-nosed snake. And then one time, the one time when I was working, I circled back and went back.

And it wasn't there. And I was like, oh, it was a big snake. melanistic hoggoste, just in the middle of the road, midday, just cruising, and I drove right by it. I was so mad. I was so upset. I was like, oh, man, I really got to get better at this because this is embarrassing now. Yeah, it's funny how that works.

Like, you know, your eyes just miss it for some reason, you know, I was getting frustrated. I was at herping in South Australia with Jordan, and he kept like, oh, I think that's a gecko. And we go back and there's a gecko. I'm like, I didn't see them. What are you looking at? Yeah, how are you seeing these things? And I'm not, you know. But, yeah, it's a little frustrating sometimes.

Yeah, and I don't know. I think, I mean, road cruising definitely has its place, you know, especially depending on where you're at. But I'd much rather find something on the, you know, out in the natural scenery rather than cruising it on a road or flipping it under a piece of tin. I mean, those things have their place for sure. We were kind of having that a little bit of that debate with Pat because, you know, they have a spot where they're putting some tin out and stuff. And he's like, you know, it just, it's a little easier to find them.

Like if you don't even know if they're in the area, and all of a sudden they have this tin site and it's easy to check and find them and you see them. And you're like, okay, they're here. You know, now we can look under rocks or go to greater efforts to, you know, further find others or something. So, yeah. It saves you a lot of time. And when it comes to herping, especially if you're going to a destination someplace to herp specifically, you want to see those species. And if you're wasting a whole lot of time, like, I think that one of the things through me when I moved to North Carolina,

I spent a lot of time when I first moved here, just going to parks and just walking around, just looking at the different habitats and trying to scope out where I think things would be. I spent so much time looking in this habitat. that looks good to me, but never ended up producing anything. And so I spent a lot of time. And if I was just coming out here for a week, and I spent a week in this place where I'm like, it looks like good habitat.

Right. I'm going to be so mad. So once you get that stuff dialed in, or if you have a way to get closer to where that specific thing is, it makes it more enjoyable, in my opinion, So at least you've got one under the under your belt. Yeah, you've got to be able to see one and then you can look in other spots for it. Yeah.

I mean, I guess I, you know, I could see tin being important for like a study site or something, you know, where you're trying to document usage or numbers or something like that. But if if you're just herping and you're just going to your tin site and seeing the same stuff, it's like, well, isn't that kind of boring? You know, like go, go challenge yourself or find them somewhere else. I don't know. That's what the snakes congregate. at because think about with edge habitat.

There's so much edge habitat where snakes just gravitate to. I grew up near an industrial park and at the back of that industrial park they were always throwing away like this and throwing that and there was like a big pile of shingles at the end of this road down there

and when I would go herping I would go flip rocks in the field next door and I would go look over here and look over there and flipping slate and doing all this stuff and I would find some snakes here and there but you go over to that that shingle pile. Milk snake, milk snake, milk snake, milk snake,

ringneck snake, ringneck snake, garden snake, tons and tons and just so many of them. Right, right. And so if I had somebody who's visiting and they're like, I only have an afternoon to go look at some stuff, I'm going to be like, hey, let's go to this. I got a single pile over here. Go flip a couple things.

Guaranteed milk snake, guaranteed ringneck snake, guaranteed garter snake. You're going to see some stuff. And then if we want to walk around afterwards, we can roll our dice and see if they're actually in the spots in the field where I, find them, but sometimes you just strike out hard. Yeah, exactly.

They're going there for a reason. It's not like just for us to find them. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Like all the unnatural stuff in the environment is what, you know, you're going to find stuff under, you know, old carpets or mattresses or something like that, you know? Yep.

Yeah, it's crazy. I think it's also, yeah, go ahead. Like cover in an area that otherwise, you know, maybe only has subterranean activity, right? So like the plains snakes here in Colorado where it's like, yeah, those boards and things are super productive. Probably because if they're for the most part, not under those boards, they're just underground. And so you have no visibility or accessibility to them at all. And that's probably, I'd imagine the Utah milks is pretty similar to the milks here in terms of, so if you can, although you have more rocks, right?

Because that's how you're normal absent flipping them under artificial cover. You'd be flipping them under rocks and things. And certainly when you're out on the plains, that doesn't really exist. And even the Kansas thing, it's interesting that, like, everyone's going to those rock formations and things because it kind of has that same function. Yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting idea. I will also say it was very funny that when Dr. Lofman and his crew were out here three years ago, I guess, now, looking to do their hog-nose thing. And he loves gartersnakes.

And, you know, oh, he needs to find vagrants, the local, you know, local species that's here, same same that Justin has. And initially I said, sure, yeah, you know, they're easy enough to find if you go walk along this creek. And it was, and he was sort of nonplussed at my answer. And then I remembered, oh, yeah, there's also actually these two, literally it's just two plywood boards that are at this one spot. There was, you know, 75 minutes from where he was saying or whatever. But the idea of changing the context from, well, you can walk along this creek where I know I've found him too. I have two boards that almost invariably turn some up. He was like, okay, it's worth it.

We're going. We're going to drive an hour. Yeah, they were like, I think they found six or seven underneath the two boards. Oh, yeah. So crazy how that works sometimes. And, you know, I think during certain times of the year, it's really hard to find stuff under cover, you know, under our official cover because it's too hot or, you know, just. But I think, you know, those tin stacks where you have multiple layers and they can choose the different temperature, you know, where they want to be and things like that, you know, it's, I mean, that's what they look for for overwinter sites, you know, places that get down to where they need to get down under the ground and stay a decent temperature.

But, yeah, it's kind of crazy. All right. Well, yeah, it's good to catch up a bit here about your local herping there and your new spot. We'll move on to our topic if that's all right. So I've really been impressed with your posts and things, you know, tickling the chins of different wilds. snakes and that are normally fairly pugnacious and a little defensive or so. But so, yeah, we wanted to kind of, you know, include some of that talk in this. But so we kind of went with the topic, you know, should you just observe the animals?

Like if you spot something, do you just watch it or do you get in there and pick it up and handle it and check it out, you know, those kind of things? So I thought that would be a great topic for you where you've got experience doing both, I'm sure. Yes, yeah. The way that I hurt now is quite a bit different than how I hurt when I was younger. Right, right. I understand both sides of the coin here.

Exactly, yeah. So, okay, well, we'll flip the coin to see who gets the pleasure of debating you. Go ahead and call it, Rob. Tails. Tails. It is tails. We're going to make you? Yeah, with my dog going all, you know, pull up.

Reminiscent of Chuck here. I think I will let you mainly lead the discourse, and then I'll jump in with you guys as appropriate. All right. So no Rob versus Rob tonight. Okay. All right, go ahead and call it there, Rob Christian. Gotcha. I'm going to say Tails again.

It is Tails. I'm a double loser. I was a double winner last week and a double loser this week. Yeah, which side would you like? To touch or not to touch? Man, that's tough. You know, I'm going to go with to touch side. Why not?

Why not? Sounds good. Would you like to lead us out or do you want to chuck me and have me go first? I don't mind going first. Okay. All right. Yeah. Go for it.

So basically, well, when you're out herping, there is a huge opportunity for us to learn about the creatures. that we're looking for. Specifically, I'm usually looking for snakes, but it doesn't always have to be snakes. There's lots of other cool critters that we can find around. I know that when we're out there, snakes is number one for me, but I still really like finding salamanders

and lizards and turtles and all sorts of other stuff too. And there's like the personal aspect of a lot of times I like to try and get my hands on stuff so I can get a good picture of it, especially face pictures. I really like getting up. close you can see all the details of the face especially in different types of snakes and

stuff and to be able to, you know, get your hands on them and some things you can only understand well when you've got your hands on it. I don't know if any of you guys have you worked with rhino vipers before? No.

They have the craziest keeled scales you have ever seen it. It feels I can't even describe it. It's so unique because of how heavily keeled they are that it's one of those things where you have to have them in your hand to feel. And I'm not saying free hand alone. You should hook and then have your hand on the other side.

But the scales are so unique. And so things like that, you would never, like, just even describing it to you. Right. The skills are like raised up. They're so freaking cool. If you get the chance, you should do it. It's really, really cool. The most unique scales of most of the things I've,

work with. And I've touched dragon snakes, and those are not even as cool as Rhinovipyper skill. But, you know, getting your hands on things, not only good for, you know, think about young people getting into the hobby. What's most of the way they do? Out in their yard, they find a snake, they pick it up, and they're like, oh, man, look at this thing. And you tickle something in your primitive brain of excitement and like, you know, something cool is going on right now. And when I was doing education, I had a lot of people who were afraid of snakes. And they'd be like, I don't know, when I see them, like my heart starts pounding, my skin starts sweating, and my mind starts racing, and I'm like, okay, those things can all be framed

as fear, absolutely, or your body does almost the exact same thing when you're excited, right? If you're on a roller coasteraster, you know you're not going, you're excited, right? Your heart starts going and all the stuff, though. If you think about it, a lot of that is the same. Maybe you're misinterpreting what your body's telling you. Because for me, when I see a snake in my heart starts pounding, and I'm like, yeah, let's go. And when my dad sees a snake and his heart starts pounding, it's, I got to go.

Right. Fight or flight? Exactly, yeah. And I think that for a lot of people, especially getting into the hobby as far as reptile keeping, maybe not so much herping, because some people get in and they're like, I just want to observe. That's fine. Right. But especially even keeping reptiles, getting your hands on things really builds a relationship.

with you and that animal, even if it's just a momentary one, like the videos that I've posted over the last summer of me interacting with a lot of water snakes, where I go up to them. And instead of like grabbing them, like most people would do, I have actually. Top down predator style, right? Exactly. Just the way to make sure that they hate you. Or are terrified of you. You know, they're like, I'm going to come right over the top and grab this thing right in the middle, right where it's, you know, sensitive. Warrable, right? Yeah, where

it can't get away. And so, you know, the snake panics, and it's freaking out, and you're excited because you got your thing, but the, you know, that interaction is no longer a positive one for half of the participants. So,

what I've been doing over the last year is taking a slower approach, and when I find wild snakes, I will get down close to their level, and then I'll slowly, like, inch my hand closer and closer and closer to the front of their face. And that's something that I learned from working with monitor lizards. Even if you've got really confident monitors that are fairly well socialized,

if you come towards the front of their body, they're confident. They're like, oh, something's approaching me right now. It's not trying to attack me, very, you know, confident. It builds confidence in them. But if you come from the back and try to grab their tail or their back, legs or an area that's not close their head, even really confident animals will react defensively. Because it's that natural.

Like if someone walks up to you and they go, hey, they extend their hand and they put it out and they say, hey, how are you doing today? Cool. If somebody walks up behind you and gooses you, grabs your butt, you're like, you know, it's a different interaction then. So there's different ways of touching things and interacting with the world. But what I've been doing is just kind of getting down to their level. And I've done it with so many, like from big adult northern water snakes down to juvenile queen snakes, green snakes, garter snakes, black rat snakes, and giving them the option of the interaction.

And I've had literally, there was like a three and a half foot black rat snake that I saw coming up to a dirt road that I was walking down. And I got down on the ground, and I sat down on the ground, and it stopped. and then it started tongue flicking and then started coming a little bit close to me, a little bit closer, and I put my hand out and it literally came up to my hand and was tongue flicking my hand and then after a minute it was like,

I don't know about that. So it like turned around and started going and I put my hand in front of it again and it slithered right over my hand and then I was able to pick it up. And it didn't panic at all. It was just like, oh, I guess I'm in the air now, you know? And it just cruised like up and I let it crawl

over my shoulder and then I went down, and I just let it go. And so, building, having an interaction with animals like that is so cool. It's so unique. And I have found a lot of joy in that. And I feel like a lot of people, when they make that connection of picking up a snake or picking up a lizard or getting to look at it up close,

it's a little bit different of an experience for them. And it creates that connection in our present. primitive monkey brain of like there's something going on here and I need to know more about it. We're naturally curious creatures and getting to interact in that way builds more of that connection. That's why I think it's really important for people to do educational programs and to get snakes into people's hands and get people to pet tortoises and to see them in person because it's like one of Steve Irwin's like, you know, you see the thing. you know, a million miles away

and it's a creature over there but if you can get it up close with people, if you can like build that connection with them, they want to know more about it. They want to save it. They're invested in that creature. And I think that's one of the major things that's missing from our society now

is we're so far removed from nature in, I'm not saying every single person should go out there and pick up a snake that they find on the ground. Right. But I think that a lot of people will be better off. They did go out there and interact with a little bit of nature and and get built some of that connection with the world around

us. We're so far detached that I think a lot of people need it now. And so opening argument, I'll leave there. I think that's some great points. And I really, you know, I think, you know, you demonstrating that behavior and having people see that, you know, snakes aren't just waiting and lying in wait to bite us or to grab us or whatever, you know, I think that's, the media has done a disservice. Even some of the wildlife programming has done a disservice, making it like, oh, danger, everything's dangerous.

And, you know, and obviously you need to respect, you know, and be cautious around the venomous snake, of course. But, you know, my good friend posted a picture of a Western Diamondback that he came across on his run, you know. And he said he just gave it a wide berth and kept moving. And the snake just stood its ground and stayed there. it, you know, but everybody, like, it seemed like the majority of the commenters were like, oh, man, see, that's why I don't go running or that's why I don't go into the hills or it's like they just have this perception, this misperception that the snakes are just waiting to grab them, you know? So I think that's, that's very valuable, you know, first off to demonstrate that behavior. And frankly, I mean, if you are scared of a snake, if you sit and watch it, you sit and look at it, you know, you're going to see that it's not a scary evil. creature that's out for blood and, you know, death and destruction. And, and, you know, you'll watch it probably move away from you or, you know, and, and I guess that was maybe one thing that kind of came to mind is if, if you're building these relationships with snakes, you know, as the next person

that comes along, if they're going to be like, oh, here's this, you know, I recognize this shape, you know, this is a, last time I got my chin tickled. And this time, he's coming at me with a shovel. What the heck? Shovel, yeah. But, you know, I think snakes, you know, have that in them, you know, that something coming over them is probably

a predator or danger to them. And so they're either going to defend themselves or flee. And usually it's flea. You know, that's for the most part. So, you know, and a lot of times snakes are hard to detect. So, you know, you're alerted to them either because the rattlesnake rattles

because you're too close or you see something moving through the brush, you know, you hear it slithering or away and you try to. So, you know, there's been times where I've been out herping and I'll find like a gopher snake out on the crawl. And I'll just sit and watch what it does, you know, and just kind of enjoy seeing it go about its daily routine. Now, I mean, if you come upon like a rattlesnake coiled up just sunning itself, it's probably not going to be that entertaining to sit and watch that. You know, maybe though, maybe it'll do something cool or maybe it'll, you know, you'll notice, oh, there's a noughtonet one right there. Oh, I'm at a den side or something like that, you know. So there are some

cool things that you can maybe observe without disturbing the animals. And I think there's another level to that too, where you can see they're going to do things differently if they don't think, you know, something's coming towards them or advancing on them. You know, they might be more normal behaviors if they don't realize that even anything's they're watching them kind of thing. So that's easier said than done. You know, you really have, you know, be lucky to spot something before it spots you in a lot of ways because snakes are so good at camouflage and hiding. And maybe, you know, lizards would be a more germane subject for sitting and watching. You know, I think one of the biggest thrills of my life was sitting and watching a

Kimberly Rock monitor just cruise across the rocks. He's going through the valley. And he didn't seemed too bothered by my presence. You know, I was kind of, you know, filming him and getting up as close as I could without spooking him. But yeah, he just did his thing. Didn't, you know, I probably could have easily reached out and grabbed him, but then what's he going to do? You know, then I get, you know, get him in hand. He's going to be stressed. He's going to be freaking out, you know, and then when I release him, he's probably going to go shoot, shoot off to a secure place. But this way, I got to sit and watch him for, for minutes, you know, while he did his thing, went and hunted. And my friend

that told me how to find him this way, he's watched them catch frogs and eat frogs in like this little area. Yeah, just like cool behaviors. Like I didn't realize Kimberly Rockmoner's ate frogs. Like that's kind of a new thing to me, you know? I knew they, you know, chase

lizards and bugs and stuff, but frogs, that was kind of an interesting thing. And he's got a video of this one hunting a frog in the leaf litter. It's pretty cool. So you know, if he would have just ran over and grab the lizard, he never would have seen that behavior. He wouldn't have been able to, to observe that. Now, I mean, I'm sure there's, you know, overlap. And I think as I get older and, you know,

especially if I've seen the species many times, there's less of an inclination to run over and, you know, pick it up or interact with it that way. It's more of an inclination to kind of sit back and just see what it's doing, see what it's, or it's headed or where it's going, you know. And if you're finding something, you know, snake moving in the day, it's probably headed somewhere, you know, so you can potentially learn something. Important snake meetings. Right. I think you really hit on the, hit the nail on the head with that point, though, Justin, is it's a lot easier to be calm and laid back when it's not a life or animal that you fully into it's a bolt, right? Right.

You know, and much like part of it is the context, too, right, if we're talking about cruising something or flipping something, then there really isn't the opportunity to do that because it's probably, it's natural response. is going to be the total way. Well, and our natural response is get it off the road before he gets hit. Exactly right. Yeah. Or even you know, in the context of the Kimbo's right, it's a distinction there between the Mitchelai that we

saw that very obviously did not have the, despite being probably more habituated in terms of CMR people on a regular basis, those things were very skittish and giving you the classic monitor response of a second you look away. That's when they're going to make

their move. They're going to freeze, wait for you to look away, and then bowl. You know, so it'd be really hard to see them engaging in natural activities for sure. Definitely. Yeah, I definitely think there's a species-specific context to all of this as well. You know, like, yeah, some snakes are under rocks. You know, you're not going to see them unless you lift up the rock and look underneath, you know, unless you get really lucky and they're out on the crawl. But that's for every, what, you know, 50 milk snakes, you might see one on the crawl versus one, you know, the other 49 under rocks. And so, you know, you're not going to see many if you're just looking to have that interaction out in the open like that.

Yeah. And sometimes depending on how you see them as well, it calls to mine the first eastern coral snake that I saw where, you know, I'm hiking and hiked up to it and it's on the movement. So then we're kind of, that simultaneous movement doesn't really facilitate that either because now it's giving a defensive response to run for me. and then it's seeking, you know, cover and then a hole, right? And to begin, right? Because I'd sort of startled it as it was moving. There was no, it's kind of that ideal situation with the glowered eye where you have the, you know where to look.

You have the ability to do it. It's a species that's really resilient to that, right, is willing to engage in natural behavior with human presence, you know, at a distance. But nevertheless, right, Globopoma, very clearly or not, as we saw ultimately. Yeah. Yeah, you might look out. and get the one like Matt teaching. Yeah, but that seems one of one of one from our experience. Right.

Yeah, it's, well, I think I didn't, brother nature. Oh, stop just making me feel worse, man. He found that one that just sat and posed for him and stuff. Yeah, I mean. I can't believe it, man, after our experience with them. Right. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. But, you know, I guess if they're in an area where people are

trying to grab them or check them out or something, then maybe they're going to be a little more wary, whereas if you're in a more remote area, there might be more curious. Like, what is that thing? I've never seen one of those. You know, you go to check that out instead of running away from it. Yeah.

And yeah, definitely species to species. You're going to have better luck, you know, watching and observing certain species versus others. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I agree. And even, yeah, just the weather, too, right? So that, like, I'm a imagining, you know, Calyver or Mastikophis of, those probably would be some of the most engaging critters to watch if you could time it upright so that they're just sort of, they're exhibiting their natural behaviors.

There's no flight response. They're super smart, super interactive with their environment. Simultaneously, most of the context where you're going to see them, you'll never get that experience because they're going to bolt from you and just be gone. So it's kind of, maybe there's a one in a hundred, one and it thought, whatever that, you know. But is it 70% of the time people are convinced when you make up a number? You know, it's some infinitesimally small percentage of the time where you could have the most amazing experience possible, where you get to see it engaging with this environment.

But for the most part, it means you're just not going to see anything. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But some of those species here, if you want to photograph me, you've got to get your hands on it as long as I am. That does seem to be kind of the main way we interact with reptiles in this day and age. You know, you're finding stuff and you have to take a picture.

If you didn't take a picture, it didn't happen. Did you actually find it? Exactly. You got to share it on social media and get the likes and get those clicks. Got to get them clicks. But, yeah, I mean, I think there's nothing wrong with that, obviously. you know, and that's, it is cool to see what other people have found. And you're not getting that if you're not taking pictures of them, you know.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'll say that if you can get your hands on stuff, it makes getting pictures of a lot of different species of quite a bit easier. And then that also has a downside, too, because you get some people who just, like, pick them up and wear them out real good, you know, for a lot of these species, and then they're stressing the animal out.

Yeah. And, you know, they got the picture, but at what cost, you know, that animal is exhausted now, waste a whole bunch of resources and energy that it probably didn't need to for a picture on social media. Come on. Yeah. I've heard of some people posing them to death where they just keep, you know, they overstay their welcome and interact with them too long and keep them and basically cook them, you know, they're just out and they just wear out. And all of a sudden they are no more. So, yeah, you've done a disservice by that kind of thing.

And, you know, you can get a little overzealous and with your timing. But, you know, I'm sure. A real Pine Barron Street there. Exactly. You can interact with them a little longer than some people think. Yeah, but be wary of that, you know, be cautious of overheating them and wearing them out. Right. I do think that's one of the big factors, right?

So we had seen a Gould Eye up in the Northern Territory on our second trip over there. And you could tell, and so it was a hot morning. It was sitting on the road, and then we had gone over and, you know, caught it off the road. But we're posing it right off, and it was in direct sun and things. And you could, within 60 seconds, it had, it was holding its mouth open. And it was like, okay, well, that's it. We're done here. You know, and let it run off.

And it posed, actually ran up halfway, you know, five, six foot up a tree and stopped and posed out. And it was really beautiful, you know, we're able to take pictures there. But it was in that shade. But it was amazing how. quickly it was overheating, right? Just when you're talking about NT, you know, NTE, it doesn't take long.

Yeah. Not long at all. Yeah. Yeah, I've been very overheated out there. It's how warm it is. True. True. I mean,

as far as like getting your hands on stuff, one of the things that I've seen people do too, I've only done this maybe a couple times. You find a snake that's a creature. that's fairly dehydrate and then give them a little bit of water. Yeah. Really interesting just to watch them guzzle down some water out of a little bottle cap or something, you know?

And, you know, some people would argue you're supposed to just let nature take its course, and then I don't know, I don't know, where we fall on that one. So, you know, I think that one of the other things that I've seen that you probably wouldn't get a good handle on if you don't, like, pick the creature up to take a look at them is some of the like ailments or things that are potentially wrong with them like snake fungal disease is something that is prominent to at least in the eastern side of the Midwest. I know it's kind of into the Midwest or as well. But several of the snakes that I've found during wintertime have had SFD or I suspect that they had SFD. I didn't swab them or

anything, you know. Have some patchy skin. Yeah, stuck shed on them and out basking when it. it's 38 degrees out when no other our creatures are out there doing that. Yeah. And so if I, like one of them, I thought it was like fine, totally fine. But it was a cold day.

And I photographed it before I picked it up. And I pick it up. And I'm like, all around the cloaca is all swollen. And it's like got sores on it. Right. Shed skin from about an inch past the cloaca all the way down to the end of the tail is all stuck there. and if I had to move that snake, if I just let it sit there,

I probably wouldn't never know that that was going on. And so getting your hands on and be able to do a thorough inspection on them can definitely help figure out, or at least get a feel for if something serious like SFD is happening or if they've got old injuries on them or things like that. Or take, remove a tick or two. ticks. Yeah.

You know, all my years of finding snakes, there's only been maybe a handful of times where I found snakes that actually have ticks on them. I've gotten ticks on me a lot looking for snakes, but on the snakes themselves, I've not seen a ton of them. Right, right. Yeah. I've removed a few, you know, ticks from wild reptiles. Monitor lizards have, you know, they usually have a tick or two on them and some of the snakes out in Australia. but yeah, it's a little more rare here. I haven't noticed it too much here.

Yeah, I wonder why. I mean, there's not as many ticks out here anyway. I don't know. In Massachusetts, there, if you walk near grass, you've got ticks on you. I had a lot of people tell me that North Carolina is bad with them, but I've only found ticks on me a couple times while I'm out hiking out here. It's not a super regular thing that I see. But I'm very paranoid about it because I used to get them.

on me all the time. It was out looking for copperheads or black racers and stuff. You go anywhere near some long grass and you got three or four ticks on you. Right. Well, that said, I was out, you know, this weekend herping and I was getting in my car and I look over and there's a tick crawling right on my shoulder, like a pretty good sized one. So, yeah, they must be out moving in March with the warm weather. But yeah, I was like, oh, crap.

Now I got to check more early when I get home. And now I feel like they're crawling all over me. You know, I'm itchy. Yeah, that wonderful feeling. Yeah, I guess. Well, after our northeast trip, right, it's funny you mention that, because we always kind of frame it as, you know, ticks being relatively rare out here, but then we had really dug into the water chiggers, right?

And how Utah had 53 is like the most populous, most specious state for chiggers. It's got 53, 54. Yeah. So crazy. Which is wild, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We got heavily into them based on heavy exposure. in the pine barons. And when we were... And in southeast Colorado, or southeast Utah, in Colorado, you're just like kind of lean your arm on the ground or against the dirt or something. Then you got all these little like chiggers on your arm. It's kind of crazy.

They've whatever bit your arm or... They dissolve your skin from the inside or the outside in. And as soon as they're on you, you're done. Yeah. So I have. always wondered like what is that you know what's doing am i like you there's like some kind of stickers or something you know some kind of plant that's annoying my arm but it was most likely chiggers you know that's crazy wow yeah rob rob told me that and i'm like wait a second utah has a high number of

species of chicken crazy to think so you're trying to get all of those on your on your yes you know that's probably a natural consequence maybe it's the answer well and i i think to conversely like, you know, when you're handling and finding things, if they do have some sort of disease, especially if you're not able to detect it, you know, you might be unwittingly spreading that if you're going to the next site and grabbing an animal, you know. That's a lot of how Kittred spread to a lot of areas because the scientist didn't realize they were tracking it in on their booth. They were the vector for Kittred to spread through it.

And then the, what, the, what, the clod frogs were another. Yeah, the zebras, yeah. Yeah, they were releasing those because they were using them as pregnancy test, and then they'd release them into the environment, and then now they're spreading Chitred to different areas. So, yeah, I mean, knowledge is good, and so, but, you know, there's something, like, we can't blame them. They didn't know what they were doing, you know.

Yeah. They were trying to solve the problem or figure out what was happening, you know, why these amphibians were disappearing and at the same time they're spreading it to different areas, which is kind of crazy. It was us. Yeah. And it's weird to think, like, how these things are taking hold where they weren't there, you know, it's like, what is going on?

How is the environment not fighting back or, you know, I guess it's just too devastating and insult? They just can't, you know, overcome it through evolutionary processes or whatever. They just die out. And I guess that's the history of our planet, right? Lots of extinction. Right. Usually it's sort of a, we've seen the, you know, 10,000 years on at least or whatever view.

Right. But yeah, I wonder if you could go back and, you know, learn how many species actually died because of some infection or, you know, some outbreak, you know, and all of a sudden it just decimates the population to the point of no return or something. You know, who knows? Like usually nature has that balance, you know, where, yeah, some are going to die, but the most of the most of the moment. all survive and, you know, they can move on. Or there's this arms race, you know, between your immune system and the bugs. And, you know, sometimes the bugs win and sometimes you clear the bugs. Or they find that homeostasis where they don't kill you, but they can infect you and make

more of themselves kind of thing. Yeah, kind of crazy. So, I guess me from Rob's thing, right, that our life for Eastern Milksonnick fell into the same box of what he was described. It wasn't probably quite as. as what he was describing, right? But in terms of, so we had flipped this one over in the Pine Barrens, and, you know, we're photographing the things, and it was only sort of maybe halfway through that, but it became,

hold on, is this thing quite right? And then to the point that Justin was making of like, okay, now we got to make sure that we're, you know, kind of disinfecting our hands and our little, the hooks, the hook, the cup, you know, that's all those different little things. Yeah. It was good that we sort of discovered that instead of just kind of proceeding about our day. Right. Yeah, maybe bring a little, you know, athletes' foot powder with you, dust your equipment or your hands or something.

I don't know. I wonder if that would be effective. I guess I did ask, so there was a researcher that came and spoke at our university, and they were talking about snake fungal disease. And, you know, how, and I was asking, like, how do you disinfect, you know, is like alcohol, you know, 70% ethanol or something, a good way to disinfect. And they seem to think that would be reasonable, you know, especially if it's just surface. And it seemed like it's a little harder to transmit.

They weren't even sure if you would transmit it, you know, handling and then going on to the next animal and handling it. So it's still kind of hard to say. We don't have all the knowledge. And, you know, that makes it a little tricky. But, you know, better safe than sorry, I would say. I agree. Yeah, even to the point if you see something that's obviously snake fungal disease, maybe don't pick that one up, you know, if you can help yourself. Yeah.

But yeah, obviously, we wanted to handle our life or milk snake, you know, we weren't going to pass with that opportunity, but we did take the precautions afterwards to kind of try to disinfect our hands. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and since then I have seen, I saw a black rat snake that very clearly had some SFT going on. And that's one where I did not touch it. I filmed it where it was at because it was like climbing up some vines. And so I got some good footage of it, but I was not inclined to touch that one. And I was like, you know, there's a lot of snakes in this area. I would like to maybe touch some other snakes today,

and I don't want to have to worry about having that all over my hands or my phone or all the different things. So I think that it has its place. And in general, I tend to err on the side of checking things out and getting a little bit closer look to it. But I also see the value in there's situations where you're not going to be touching everything. We're getting close to spring salamander migration out here. So I'm waiting for a good rain and for it to be above 60 degrees in the evening time. So I can go looking for some – there's a big migration of spotted salamanders out in the area where I'm at.

Cool. And so I love going out and checking those guys out. And you see them, it's like a six or seven, you know, eight-inch salamander crawling across the road. And getting out and helping those guys across the road, I love that. It's so cool. It's so, so cool. And that's one of the few times where I'm like, I got to touch it.

I got to grab it. Because usually when I see salamanders and I flip them and stuff, I'm like, okay, I'm going to scoot you out of the way so that you don't get crushed when I put the log back, but I'm not going to pick you up or touch you because the oils on her skin and all that is. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's another point, you know, like if you're, to be aware of, if you're handling amphibians, you know, sometimes our, you know,

the oils or the, you know, on our hands can be irritating or, you know, detrimental. Intentionally detrimental to their skin. Yeah. And so, you know, having a pair of plastic gloves or something, you know, that you can keep, keep them safe from your skin, I guess. Yeah. Yep, exactly. Advisable.

For a lot of the places where I find spotted salamander, now I'll grab like a big oak leaf and I just like scoop them up into it. Right. Make a little burrito out of them pop them out over here. Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. An amphiburito, you know.

But, you know, I think that, you know, it's really easy to get excited for stuff if you can get your hands on it. I know that, you know, finding rattlesnakes when I was out with you guys out in Utah, I'm like, oh, man, I just want to scoop it up with the hook. I want to interact with that. I want to check it out. And it's definitely harder for me when I see something I'm really excited about to be like, I'm just going to watch it from over here. Yeah, yeah, for sure. the other thing that occurred to me, right, kind of as the conversation was going, is, and maybe it is a function of being, not that we don't all appreciate, you know, again, amphibians, lizards. I think it's groups that are more compelling in this way, that, like, lizards, that's compelling, right, for the most part.

And other than the Mitchell and, you know, our global palma, they're probably pretty willing to engage an activity. I was thinking when we've gone with Robert and family to the Poconos, right, and there's a particular, crack by a waterfall that was just full eastern milk snakes and northern water snakes and all these things and for the most part snakes just particularly in that context where they're tucked into this crack they're just sitting there waiting for us to walk away they're not exhibiting their behavior is solely having you know being within the crevice and trying to um expand their body so that there's no possible way that you're going to pull them out but that's all that they're doing all that they are going to do and so that's not necessarily

you know, that's cool behavior, and it's cool to see them, but it's in some ways not as compelling as sort of what the vision I have in my mind of watching a big coach whip, navigate the landscape, or glowered eye, be cruising the rocks or a level palma that just walks up to you, you know, or even, I was thinking of the Mertons, right? In the Mertie, the one, there's a big male that almost climbed Ellen, you know, is just like, oh, you know, those are like semi-tame ones that, you know, that are in that part. But, yeah, you know, I think that's part of it too, right?

So it's mostly snake guys. I think the, maybe there's something to, we need to up the, up the interaction. Because for the most part, as we see in the captive context, right? What do snakes mostly do? They mostly sit around. Right. A lot of this. A whole lot of this. Yeah, definitely a lot less compelling to sit and watch something sit for three or four hours, you know.

I sit and watch the ambush predator sitting, waiting for something. Like, Pogu and stay, come on, do something. Do something. You keep catching ambushing something. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Right.

Absolutely. Yeah, and that's, I mean, especially for pythons or, you know, other ambush predators, yeah, versus a coach whip or a, you know, racer or something that's out moving and hunting actively during the day. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a different thing. Or even being properly ambushed. I'm thinking of that roughie, the picture of the roughie where it's hanging down. And it totally makes sense their color pattern.

And they have ability to change, right, day to night and things. But it just looks amazing. amazing in that as it's S curve down, you know, head down. Right. Right. And I was listening to Matt Somerville was on with, is it Joe Mack? Is that his name? Out of Australia.

What podcasts were they on? So it's here, yeah, Joe Mack. It's under the heat lamp with Joe Mack. So Matt Summerville was just on there. And he talked about watching, so finding green pythons and seeing them at night. And then Geo Going back to that tree Going back to it during the day

To see where they go up during the day And then seeing them as they come back down at night Seeing their movement across those patterns But he is noticing that they would Essentially come all the way to the ground Fully stretched out And then they would back up So that they're sizing up the distance from the ground

That they need to be So they actually calculate how far they need to be When they're curled up To have that strike distance Yeah, truly amazing Right So that's the sort of absolutely don't be grabbing that thing because you want to see that, you know, even just that understanding, right? That it's not random.

It's not random chance that they're perfectly aligned to smack the rod that runs along that tree fall or whatever it is. Right. It's that, no, they actually crawled all the way down and then they backed up into the position they're sitting and knowing that they're now perfect distance to nail into it. Right. Yeah. That's so cool. That is really cool. And I think, you know, there might be some options.

to make that a viable thing, like the rattlesnake cams, you know, where they have them focused on a den and you can watch them doing their, you know, they might not move for a few hours, but if you have it kind of set to record, you can go back and find, you know, when they're moving or when they're doing something interesting. And I've done that in my reptile room where I have a camera focused on the igernia cages. So in the, you know, depressa move. And I actually caught them mating the other day. Well, you know, it was kind of a cool thing. So I can, and I can sit in my, you know, at work and put it off to the side. And if something moves, then it triggers the camera to kind of record the event. And so I can go back and either watch them live or I can go back and see, you know, when something was moving.

It recorded that little segment. So it's kind of a neat thing. So, you know, I guess that might, you know, it might be a little more difficult in the context of stuff. out in the wild, but obviously, you know, they do that with bird cams at feeders, and if you, like, you're a den site or something like that, you could put out a, or put out a trail cam and, you know, something moves past it and you can see what's moving. I think who's the guy out east that does the timber stuff? He's... Mark Lauderhan, I was just about to ask you, you guys have seen his stuff. It's so cool. Exactly. He's got so many cool behaviors and interesting observations.

And he sets up cameras, right? And watches them from, yeah. So that might be the answer to, you know, how to deal with these ambush predators. And, you know, some great footage on some of the, you know, planet Earth or something, or where they're, I think it was Planet Earth, where they're watching Rattlesnake set up ambush. And they're trying to film a successful predation event, you know. Oh, wow. You know, watching lots and lots of footage to catch that one event.

where they'll actually grab something. Once every six month thing. Right. Yeah, exactly. So maybe, you know, something like that might be more of a reality these days with the expanded availability of these cameras that have battery life and can sit out on the trail for a long time. Capture some cool things. And while we're there, he was just on the Snake Talk podcast within the last handful of months and that was really interesting. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Talking about those.

And mostly it was focused on the weasels that are coming in while they're over and training, pulling them out and stuff, which is wild. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, you never, never know that was happening, you know? That's so crazy. Because to the same one or is there like a population that's learned? Yeah. These weasels that they can do that, you know.

Right. Truly. Yeah, because there was. It's really savage. Yeah. It was what, like dolphins that would, that would. go and make it like a net of mud, you know, they'd kick up the mud and make this net, or like the orcas that go hunt in the, you know, go up on the beach and grab the baby seal or whatever,

you know, like that they've, and those are the only populations that do that thing. Yeah, that would be interesting to see. Yeah, kind of crazy. Yeah. So, I don't know, it'd be pretty cool if you knew where like a green tree python was setting up and you could put a camera and everybody in the world could watch this green tree python come down and set up ambush and then go back up the tree in the morning. That would be really cool to see.

That would be really cool. I would definitely tune to that. Yeah, we've got to get mad on that. Yeah, right? Well, and maybe while it's thought, I don't mean to disrupt the fight or whatever, but Rob, I know you had may mention, I know it's been a thing that you've done without, I know there's a lot of, politics and things behind it.

But if you want to talk about your own looking for timbers in New England in any way that you feel comfortable, I'd be happy to hear it, man. Yeah. Yeah. I was not very successful finding timbers in New England. I found one. I found it twice, like a couple weeks apart. Right.

But I only found one. I found way more copperheads when I was up there than timbers. But yeah, they are, they are elusive, very, very. elusive creatures up there and you can't touch them because it's illegal and the wildlife officers are very serious about the timbers

and the copperheads up there. They're like, you look at them too close and we'll arrest you. I was not anywhere close to those guys. I did find them twice, which is really cool. And one time I was

with a guy who was doing some research with the state on them and he was actually able to pin it and he had some nail polish, polished the end of the tail so that we could identify, or not we, but so that they could identify it in the future if they do find it so they could track it and see where he goes and all this sort of stuff because I'm pretty sure they were doing some telemetry stuff with some of them but not all of them because it is still a decent population up there. And so that's how I know that I found the same one because I went to like a similar area and it wasn't the same area, but it was like, you know, maybe 100 yards away and coiled up in a very similar area.

And I was like, oh, there's some nail polish. Like I saw, I saw a snake first and then I saw the nail polish after. I was like, oh, that's the same snake that I saw a couple weeks ago. Yeah. So are they really reduced populations? And then also is it largely also an access question? So it's really fragmented habitat, real, a lot of persecution. The historical persecution.

Yeah, yeah, really fragmented habitat. There's only, you know, certain, they basically stick pretty close to their dens. I think I don't want to speak out of, like, just making, I want to say they usually stay within like five miles of their den site, typically, throughout the summertime. Because summer is so short in New England, they don't have a whole lot of time to go out and be moving all over the place. Do they tend to be darker up there? well? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

The one that I found was like almost black. Yeah. It's so cool. So, so cool. And a lot, but you do get the yellow phase ones up there as well, but they're not as light yellow as like the canes are. They're still like a deep kind of coppery, dark tan color to them. Okay.

That's so cool. There's such a beautiful species too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. all the looks. I love those dark ones, though. They're so neat looking. They're incredible.

They're really, really cool. If you are ever up in Boston and you want to see some without having to go out hiking for them, the Museum of Science in downtown Boston has a few on display, and it's in an area where it's free to see. So you don't have to pay for a ticket. You can just walk over. There's like a specific stairwell. You kind of pass the ticket booth.

go down to the stairwell and they have a little science learning center area where it's got floor to ceiling glass windows and they have a couple timbers on display you know eastern box turtle and a couple other native species and sometimes they have some exotic stuff down there too but they have a couple of those early black timbers on display so you can see them fairly close yeah and i think i mean that that's that's uh definitely a an option for viewing reptiles you know in a captive setting and, you know, in a zoo type thing. I know when I was at Reptile Gardens, Terry was showing me a, I think it was either a rhino or a Gaboon, uh, viper.

And they would like, you could see their eyeballs move. Oh, like you do this first twisting and then they'd like do their little head. Like what's like, rhino viper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting behavior. You might miss that if you come upon a wild one or something, but if you,

have them in a captive setting, you can see some of those behaviors potentially that you might miss. I don't know, because, like, if you walk in the room, they start doing it. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's so cool. We had a rhino set up in the, like, event room at Nerd. And so sometimes I would just go in there to look at it. I walk in the door, and then all of a sudden it's doing the, a little head twitch. Right, right. And you walk a little bit over, and it's looking, it's following you with its eye.

Yeah. And another minute later, doing a little head twitch. That's, yeah, it's really cool behaviors, you know, seeing that. And I was, I had some Hosmer's skinks, I Gurney-Hasmeri born, and I was feeding them. And all of a sudden I look over and one of them's got its hand up in the air, like waving its hand and then grabbed the cricket with its mouth. Like it's distracting the cricket or something like that. It was really crazy, yeah. And they would only do it when they were hunting.

It wasn't like a signaling to their clutch mates or whatever, or litter mates, but they would do that when they were chasing down a cricket. They'd do this little hand motion, kind of like I do when I'm trying to catch a lizard. You know, you distract it with one hand and travel with the other one. And so, you know, that kind of thing. But it was really crazy. And, you know, I don't know if that's been observed in the wild or, you know, that would be harder to see outside of a captive setting.

the other thing that you brought up and needs to be made mention of is, yeah, some places it's illegal to touch stuff. So, and people have been fined hefty fines for grabbing their wrong thing. You know, the twin spot rattlesnakes, you know, somebody like, hey, I found one. And then all of a sudden this, you know, wildlife officer comes down, yeah. Emerges out of the bushes and goes, here's your fine, you know, $5,000. Oh, thank you. That's great. I don't know how many herpers would just be like, oh, $5,000.

That's no big deal. I'll take that ticket. You know, like, yeah, it's a serious fine. So no, no the laws. Between that feeling and herping is very small. Right. Yeah. We're not burgers here.

Yeah, right? But so, yeah, definitely be aware of local laws, especially when you're out herping. And, I mean, even when, I don't know, like so many Australians are posting videos of them, catching stuff and holding stuff. and then, you know, I've heard of people, well, oh, Kyle, what's her name that was over? I'm so, Corey, Corey Martin was over in Australia. And somebody had said, oh, I saw those guys picking stuff up and they're, they've captured them or whatever. So the officers pull them over, search the van, confiscated their phones and like memory cards to their cameras and all this stuff.

And I don't, she never got, the last I talked. or she hadn't got it back. And it's like, wow. My goodness, it's ridiculous, you know. So you definitely need to be aware of those things. And, I mean, she thought they were safe because they were with a tour and all this kind of stuff.

But, yeah, it didn't stop the police from confiscating all these phones and memory cards. Like, golly. That's wild. So, yeah, be aware. And what? The real Tarzan, he got booted from the country, I think, for picking up a freshwater crocodile, you know, and. filming himself, catching it and stuff like that.

And I'm like, oh, man, me and me and a buddy did the same thing. You know, I was like, oh, I mean, it wasn't the same thing, you know, but it was not quite similar. Yeah, not quite. We were a little more respectful, but yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, he picked it up and I got to do, have a wanker shot and then we let it go real quick, you know. But yeah, probably technically illegal, not something I should be doing or saying on a podcast. I mean, I wasn't going to say anything.

I mean, I already posted pictures of it. So, yeah, I mean, obviously there's so much of it that's done anyway, and it's impossible to enforce the law. I mean, they just don't have enough officers to go around trying to find people out in the middle of nowhere, picking up a freshwater crocodile. You know, we walked miles in this dry river. For three seconds to put it back down here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, and, you know, it was a smaller one.

It wasn't, you know, too huge. and it wasn't difficult, you know, we weren't chasing around or trying to corral it or anything like that. It was just like opportunity kind of came and picked it up for a second and put it back down kind of thing. But, yeah, still, if I would have got caught, I probably would have got fined, you know. So there's all sorts of things like that. So, yeah. And just because the majority of people are not getting caught, that doesn't mean you're not going to get caught, you know. Like they might try to make an example out of you.

And that's, you know, that's definitely within their right. Yeah. And the other thing that's disconcerting is kind of the entrapment that some officers have used, like putting their pet helen monster on the side of the road and, you know, trying to entice you to get out and move it off the road. Like you're just doing a service trying to stop the animal from getting run over and they're going to pop out of the woods and give you a ticket. So, you know, be aware of these things. Be aware of the laws. and don't pick stuff up that you're technically not supposed to pick up if you can help yourself. I know that's hard. But, yeah, be careful. Absolutely.

Yeah. There we go. Maybe the other thing, too, would be, you know, handling venomous reptiles. I mean, I was out herping in Southern California, and I rode up and there were some other guys, you know, on the side of the road. And I pulled up, and this one guy's free handling a sidewine. And I'm like, oh, you've got a sideminder in your hands. I'm like, have a good night. I'm out of here.

I'm out of here. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be associated with this kind of nonsense. So, you know, and then if one of them were to get bit, I'm guarantee they're going to the hospital, getting an antivant and that kind of thing. So they're plugging up the system where somebody that might need it legitimately that was out hiking and got bit on accident rather than being stupid. and free handling a snake. You know, that's how laws get enacted and, you know, those kind of thing. So be smart, yeah.

Don't just freehandle. We saw the same thing on the subsequent Southern California trip, although it was with a speckle rattlesnight, where, you know, they were trying to do the hat trick, you know, on the side of the road with the little speck. And it was just like, all right, dude, you know, this is the, you know, coming up on the fourth one or whatever, we'd seen that. And, you know, we had found three and then this is a four.

And it's like, we definitely don't need to be hanging out while this is happening, man. Right. Yeah. It's like a Tiger King. Yeah. You just saw a disaster happen right in front of your eyes. Right. Yeah.

Behave as though you want other herpers to respect you, I guess. Yeah. I guess some people are contrarians no matter what. Yeah, pretty much. Unfortunately. Be smart. Yeah. Yeah. I'll say on the tick of like the side of interacting and to get hands on stuff,

can't do research without getting your hands on it. I mean, you can do probably some aspect of research, but if you really want to get numbers of weights and body condition and, you know, length, you know, all that sort of stuff, you really do have to get your hands on them. And a lot of valuable data is taken from that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, we got lucky. when we found our life for eastern Massasaga in western Pennsylvania, we got to be basically involved in a scientific study after that.

You know, and they tubed it. I got to inject a pit tag under the skin, you know, that, all that. It was pretty cool. And we, I mean, we kind of horned in on a class. So thanks to them for letting us do that. But, you know, the field biologist or the park ranger there was really nice. He's like, yeah, you're welcome to join. us and then I noticed he was letting them kind of tromp through the undergrowth looking for

Massasagas. I'm like, I'm in, you know, I'm going to do it. Yeah. So I got lucky. I was the one that spotted it, you know, I'm like, hey, here's one. I was pretty exciting. That's why you guys let me hang out. Yeah, exactly. And then he, he, yeah, hooked it into a bag and, and took it over into the pavilion in the shade and we tubed it. And so everybody could kind of feel the skin And, you know, same kind of thing. Like, feel those keeled scales on, you know, like the credulous have. Or I guess this was not a credulous. It was a citrus.

But, you know, the, you don't often get a handle, you know, feel the scales of a rattlesnake. So it's pretty cool. And, you know, weight it, measured the length, all that kind of stuff. And again, you know, put in a pit tag so they could record data later if they found that same animal. So pretty cool. That's so cool. It's now a study animal. They didn't find a, you know, they didn't find the tags or a pit tag in there.

They scanned it before. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Thinking we got a new study animal for their site. Speaking of Cisteros, Rob, you had an epic trip last year that made, was that last year two years ago that he made me exceedingly jealous? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, getting out there and seeing those red pygmy rattlesnakes with my buddy Kyle and then with Gary, that was, that was a really cool day. And I'm very grateful to those guys for taking me along.

And my buddy Kyle really, really likes herping that area of North Carolina. And he was like, dude, I got to get you to come out there. You're going to love it. There's lots of cool stuff that we can see out there. got the opportunity to see this and this and this and this. It's like there's just red pygmies all over the place. And I was like, I am down. I'm so excited.

So drove out there. It's like a three-hour drive for me. So I drove out, get up at 6 o'clock or 5 o'clock in the morning or something. And I might have left earlier than that because I got there. We got there like just after sunrise. And it was still pretty cool in the morning. and I was like, okay, cool, like, parking this little park in a lot, we'll meet up with them. And it's like, okay, we're going to, like, blast it out.

We're going to do all day herping. I'm like, cool. He's got a bunch of spots where we're going to go check things out. And we turn on to the road to get started for the day. And there's a red pigmy right in the middle of the road. Just got hit by a car. And I was like, oh, no, no. Oh, man, that's rough.

And it was like maybe five inches. or eight inches long. It was not a super big one and not a particularly small one either. But first thing in the morning to get your first one hitting their house. That was pretty. I was like, I hope this doesn't bode poorly for the rest of the day. Right. But we drove around to like a little hiking spot and we started hiking.

He's like, hey, just keep an eye up because there's a lot of them here. And within the first two, minutes. We saw one and then walk a little bit further. We see another one. Walk a little bit further. We see another one. I think we saw four at that spot. And it's just like a little side place off the main road. And I'm walking through there and I'm looking around and I'm like, man, this is really good habitat. I don't know if I would see one hanging out in here. It's really dense like forest. And I walk into this little clearing area. and there's like some big pine trees in the area. And I walk over into the middle and I'm like, it looks like there should be one right here. The sun is coming, just pouring through the trees right here. There should be one right here.

And I turn around and there's one coiled up right at the base of the pine tree right there. And I was like right there. That's where one should be. Don't you love it when it comes together like that? It's very rarely. I was like, looks like a photo that you would see in a book. Like if I was going to pick a place to photograph

one, it would be right here. There's like a little swampy area. There's some down branches over, like thick branches over here. And these pine trees and the pine straw, it would look really cool if there was a pigmy rattle, a red pygmy rattlesnake right here. And boom,

there is a full grown adult male chilling right there. That's awesome. And so that was really cool getting to check those out. And we saw eight, I think, that day, eight or nine or something like that. And we saw a bunch early in the day. We took a break for lunch, and then we hit a couple little flip spots that he's got out there.

And we're driving down this long track, and there is like these not high-tension lines, but like the little bit bigger power lines going along the edge there. And we see a line worker truck pulled over on the side, and four or five got, maybe four guys outside of the truck with their phones like this. Yeah. And we're like, what are the odds of the snake? What are the odds that they're looking at a snake right now? And so we like pull over real quick, whip back and pull up to them.

And we're like, you guys see, is there a snake down? Like, what are you guys looking at? And they didn't speak a lot of English, but they're going like this. And so we're like, oh, it's got to be a snake. Yeah. This has got to be good. So we hop out and it is a cane, a really nice cane. Oh, let me see I can get it up there.

Oh, wow. Yeah, like probably about three and a half foot, maybe four foot. Yeah. Wow. They're so cool. That banding and, yeah, the white, drape. Yeah, that's cool. Really, really nice.

So we like stomped down some grass. in the area we're hanging out so we can get some pictures of it. And, yeah, just a really nice. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. So we saw. They had stopped for it or they saw it off the road or what happened? They were doing lines.

So they were electrical workers and they were working on the power lines. And so they were going from the truck trying to get through the grass to the power line and it was coiled up in the grass. And so they took a step in and like hop back out immediately. We just happened to be driving by right as that was going on. It's perfect, too. Perfect timing. Yeah.

That's awesome. That was mint. And so we got to check that out up close, got to get some good photos of that. And took a little lull at the midday. We went out and did a couple more flips. We didn't really find a whole ton. At the end, remind me, I'll show you one of the things that I got. Because I found something that I could bring home.

and it's not alive or anything. But something that we're along the coast and I found something really cool. And I was like, I'm going to take that. That's really cool. It's like a dried skull, but it's really cool. And so we took a little bit of lull for the end of the day. And then as we're getting closer to sunset, we're going. He's like, okay, we're going to go hit this dirt road over here.

And then we're going to come back and we're going to go look for some pygmies. and we hit the dirt road and we found a pretty nice size copperhead and we stopped and it made a beeline right underneath the vehicle and held up underneath there and so we're like, ah, crap, what are we going to move until this thing gets out of here and hopefully it doesn't try to climb up into the land. So we had to kind of get a little stick and scoot them out from underneath there. We had that with a bearded dragon in South.

Australia. We were filming it on the side of the road and it ran past me like under my legs and then ran right under the car. Then we were looking for it. We couldn't see. We're like, oh, I did it. I hope it didn't climb up in the vehicle, you know. And then I noticed it was in the, or I can't remember if I saw it or Jordan saw, but it was in the wheel well of the car. Like it just sits in the wheel well like hanging out.

So I grabbed it, you know, pulled it out, put it on the side of the road. And it just ran right back under the car again. He's like, shade. Restitution. You're right. It can be unpredictable sometimes. Yeah, I've got some great video of Rob chasing a horn lizard under the vehicle trying to catch it or get it off the road or something.

That's awesome. Yeah. Are the dirt roads pretty productive? Or do you find more on the dirt roads versus the paved roads? It depends where you're at and what you're looking for. I think the dirt roads tend to be pretty productive. at least when I'm looking for stuff. I mean, like I said, I'm awful at road cruising,

so the paved roads could be better. I just am not seeing it. I have a couple places that are dirt roads that I go road cruising, and I find a decent amount of stuff there, black rags and copperheads and, you know, I'm pretty sure I've seen some corn snakes where I drove right by them and all of my stuff. I still think I drove past a snapping turn.

My wife said it was just garbage on the road, but there's some invasive populations in Utah, and so I was driving, and I'm like, that looked exactly like a snapping turtle, but we were on the freeway, so I wasn't, you know, I couldn't pull over on the side of the freeway and run back because, you know, by the time I, it registered, we were like probably two-mile fast or something, yeah. Yeah. I had to happen with a mud snake when I was on my way back from Florida. Oh, really? not last year, I think the year before when I was coming back from Daytona. I'm on the highway and I'm like red and black. Was that a...

I think that was a mud snake. Why is it on the highway? I mean, it makes sense why it's dead, but why is it on the highway? Right. Yeah. So we ended out that night with one pygmy right at sunset, but it's crazy

because the color that they are, when you're a road cruising at nighttime with your headlights on, they glow like neon red. Oh man. Yeah, that is so gorgeous. Just that

kind of lighter pink color undertones and the bright red stripes or spots, you know, intermingled black spots. That is a nice look. Oh, wow. It's almost like a original's rattlesnake face there. You know,

you got the line of white scale. on the bottom jaw and on the top jaw. It's beautiful. Yeah. And that's the last one we found for the night. And I was just like, I was over the moon. I was like, I couldn't ask for a better trip in that. Oh, man, I need to make a trip out there. Yeah.

Yeah, we saw. Yeah, we saw. For him that seems to work better. Because I know I was a little surprised when you had gone and had as much success as you did. I was a little surprised. he sees he goes out there I've only been out there the one time with him but he seems to go out there all the time

like pretty regularly throughout the year and has pretty good success so it's not a certain time in the year that you're going to be able to find him but yeah I mean you're probably more likely to find him during summer than the winter right right but

yeah we laugh we laugh because that You know, in Utah and Colorado. Yeah, that's a pretty funny joke. Yeah, you could say, oh, yeah, you'd see it much better in the summer of the winter. I went up to Massachusetts for a funeral a couple weeks ago, right when they got hit with that snowstorm. Yeah, good timing.

We got 28 inches of snow in one night. I'm like... That's where all our snow went. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? To me, I see that. And I'm like, there are...

snakes out hibernating right now in that, under this, this much snow. Yeah, it's crazy. Ridiculous. That is wild that they just persist up there because when I see 28 inches of snow, I say I never want to come back here again. Right. Yeah. But that's more snow in that one snowstorm than I have seen collectively in all the time

that I've been in North Carolina. Different worlds for sure. Completely different. But that trip was great, and we got to go out with Gary. And so cool. He was like pointing out, this is where we used to pick me road right over here. And we used to go out there on our lunch break and, you know, go out there and we'd see 30, 40, 50 pygmy rattlesnakes all in one day.

And they're just all over the place. You've got to be careful where you step because they're cruising on the road. and they're on the path and coiled up over here. Talking to him was really, really cool and just hearing some of the stories from back in the day when he used to do all his herping out there and, you know,

all the different little nuanced things that he would pick up over his time being herping out there. Yeah, absolutely. I loved his book, Caulfeld letters. Justin's buddy Chuck, you know, helped him put that together. So, you know, we were then chatting with

about it at the party at Bob's house when we were down there in the fall. And really cool, you know, but yeah, such a cool book, such a cool conceit, you know, all that Coughfeld stuff is, you know, really interesting for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Such a good time. That's awesome. Yeah, I definitely need to make a trip out to your neck of the woods. That'd be fun to, you know, go see some of these things.

I just, I don't know, there's so many cool reptiles out there. It's obviously, you know, the, The message here is whether you're touching them or not, get out and find them. You know, get out and enjoy these beautiful animals. Yeah. Yeah. I would tend to agree. And, you know, I think that, getting back to the argument a little bit, I think there's a place a little bit for both.

But I think that more minds are changed when people can get a critter in their hand. That's one of the main things when I was doing educational programs, trying to get people to change your mind. And if I can get, if I can get you just touch the snake just once, you're going to go, hey, you know what? Maybe that wasn't that bad. Right, right. I can't tell you how many times where I was doing programs. And I get people who start the program and they're like, nope, I don't want anything to do with it. I refuse to even look at that thing.

And then if I can get them to just, even just one finger touch it, and I go, oh, that's not slimy at all. And I go, that's right. You've been lied to. You've been lied to your whole life. Look at this creature. bites you. I'm like, look at how little its mouth is. Is your dog ever bit you? Even playfully, it hurts, your dog hurts worse than whatever this little corn snake is going to do to you. Like, look at this teeth. They're not forming out

of its face. They've got to fit inside this little tiny mouth, so start using your deductive reasoning skills here. This thing is not that dangerous. Right. And, you know, if you can get people's hands on things, nine times out of ten, it changes their whole worldview when it comes to critical. and animals and things like that. Yeah, definitely. Experiential learning with reptiles is as a big place for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree there. Yeah. Oh, awesome. Really appreciate you coming on and it's been a fun topic and getting to hear about some of your trips and finds and stuff. Yeah, good luck with your mud snake quest. And where can people see your stuff? Where are you at if they don't know? If you have found this podcast, you probably heard the Reptile Talk podcast.

Me and Jeremy around there. I haven't made it to the last couple episodes because I just been like literally the last one, I think I was traveling and so I wasn't able to be there. Like my grandfather passed away. He was 96 and was in hospice for two years. We knew it was coming. But I wasn't able to be there for that. And then I'm traveling and doing this and doing that.

But check out Reptile Talk podcasts or trying to line up some more stuff to go on here. We're pretty casual. We just talk to people about what they like to talk about reptiles. Yeah. I love the podcast because you guys are just so positive. Your energy is great. Yeah, it's just the fun how you guys kind of play off each other and interact. It's just great.

Yeah, really fun. Yeah. I appreciate that. Check it out. Yeah. And then if you want to see any of the stuff that I'm doing online, I pretty much only post on Instagram. I post on Facebook a little bit, but most of the stuff. stuff I do is because I just take pictures of snakes.

I'm like, yeah, snake, yeah, snake. So Instagram is kind of the best for that at the moment. So Rob is creeping it real on Instagram. I have a TikTok. I don't really use it. I have a Facebook. I only add people if I am pretty sure that you can be chill. And you only post snake stuff.

Right, right. Usually when I get a friend request, I scroll on someone's page for like at least a couple minutes of just like, what are you posting on here? because I really don't meet any more BS in my life right now. And if I'm not sure, then I've got a thousand people in friend request purgatory right now. Yeah, that seems like... And you're not included. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I've done with Instagram to some extent where it's like, if you're not just posting wild snakes, I probably am not going to follow. You know, it's like, yeah, I don't need to see more captive stuff. I can see that, you know, on Facebook. but Instagram's just for wild stuff, you know. Yeah, and there's a lot of really great herping on Instagram,

like people who just, and not even just like U.S. stuff all over the world. There's some really great herping accounts. Oh, man, there's, I don't know, there's people that basically live their life herping. I'm not sure how they do it, but, you know, it's, I don't know. I'm jealous, you know, I'd love to do that. But, yeah, Jordan was telling me about a friend of his that's trying to find, like, every reptile in every state. So, you know, you might see it in Florida, but you didn't see it in Georgia,

so you've got to go find it in Georgia. And he's about through it. You know, he's found most of them, you know. It's kind of crazy. Really? Yeah, that's pretty cool. Wow. A couple tough he's there for sure.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that would be a tough thing to do for sure. That is wild. Huh. If you haven't checked out the Herping China pages, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. It's like, I love Fezvipers, Osama Euse Zafia, and the Karini. And they see those pretty periodically and post those on that page.

And I'm like, oh, I love that. I absolutely love that. I want to see more of that. So whatever I see accounts that post cool stuff like that, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to follow that. That's cool. Right. That's cool. Yeah, I love seeing just what people are finding throughout the world.

It's pretty amazing. There's just too many cool reptiles. One of the key in the qualities is social media, right? Right, right. Yeah. And I do kind of wonder how, so obviously Herping has been a thing previously, right, in field her porn, going and back before, you know, and even reading Coppel and whatever.

But, like, how much of this is actually sort of has propagated it as something that people do, right? The visibility actually encouraging it in a way that, you know, for better and worse, but that is sort of a question that always arise to my mind. It's like, were there this number of people doing it, right? You know, it's just like the classic Instagram thing. Remember back in, you know, the 80s, early 90s, I know we all do when you fix a nice supper and then you go take a picture, get it developed, and then walk over to your neighbors and show it to them.

Like, hey, look at this. Look at what I just fixed for supper, you know. That's what we all did, you know, and in that same way, is that what's happening with this, you know, going out in herping now, or has it encouraged people that otherwise wouldn't be doing? And I think there has to be some, to some extent, right? The visibility is actually encouraging people to do it, which I think is a net positive. Right. I get a lot of people, well, I shouldn't say a lot, but I get at least a handful of people every single year who message me.

And they're like, hey, I love seeing your herping things. And I'm going herping for my first time. Can you give me some tips or like, whatever? And then they'll send me a picture of the first snake that they see. And they're like, look, I'm proud of, you know, I know that they're excited. excited in high thing. I'm like, I'm excited for you. Yeah, come to the dark side. Yeah. Just wait for you to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it does, it does get deep pretty quick. Yeah.

I get a few people that say, you know, I've seen you post-herping stuff and I want to try it out. And even if they just see an annulli or a fence lizard or, you know, something pretty common, it's still exciting for a lot of people. So I love hearing that stuff. For sure. And I'd love keeping that excitement alive, even if you've seen your thousandth in all, you know, to be excited to see in a null. Still cool. Oh, I'm excited. Right.

And watching, you know, sitting and watching them display or, you know, do their little du lap thing. That's crazy, cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really neat appendage, you know, for a lizard to flare its neck out like that. That's pretty awesome. If they were from Asia, they would be a $250 lizard. Right.

And at a bare minimum, watching your messaging around that, right, is not diminishing it for anybody, right? Because they don't have those here. You know, that's not normal. Even, you know, your experience in Massachusetts, right? So that's, I think, as, you know, responsible stewards of putting content out, if we're going to take that mantle on, then we need to make sure that we're not doing it in a cynical way.

Right. It ruins the experience for other people. Oh, it's just another this or just a way. Yeah. I get a lot of people, I see the post that sort of stuff, and it's like they're only get hyped about the cool things. Yeah. I saw some of Knowles breeding on someone's fence last year and I was like, oh,

look at this. And he's like hanging her off the edge of the fence. I was like, damn, bro, chill out. He got a, there's no safety harness or nothing. Be careful, man. What are you doing? Well, kind of at the end of the show, we like to see if there's anything really cool that you've seen lately in herpet culture or herpetology, anything that's kind of caught your interest. And I'm drawing a blank a little bit other than, you know, seeing Pat's cool videos of all his trips lately.

Pat May, Utah, I think, is his handle on YouTube. But, you know, check out his videos. Let's see. I've seen a couple cool things recently. One of the, this is like coincidentally cool. It would be cooler in content. I'll explain it and then I'll tell you that. I saw a juvenile acrochortis, granulitis, the small file snake.

I was a fresh baby at one of the reptile experts recently. And I was like, oh, man, that's so freaking cool. Because it was like the size of baby Cal King. And I was just like, oh man that's that's so freaking cool it looks like a baby cow king right yeah it looks like a little yellow lip c crate or something

the thing is so cool and so I spent like 10 minutes staring at that little deli cup and one of the importers had imported a private female and so she gave birth to like a bunch of babies and so he's had some available like

if you wanted to do a breeding project or even if you just wanted to raise one of those even if you just wanted to raise one, getting a fresh baby where it's less likely to be affected by that snake, the like white fungal stuff that they get, that's your best bet would be to get one of those little babies. And I see the Javanicus, the elephant trunk snakes, pretty commonly, even the small ones.

So like when I see a baby one of those, I'm like, yeah, that's cool. It's very interesting. I think those are cool. I think those are usually a lot bigger than most people can handle as far as setting up an aquatic setup and feed. dame, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the granulatus, so cool, so cool. I've never seen real little ones on those.

Yeah, it's cool, Mike Clarkson has bred them two times, I think, two, maybe three times. Yeah, he's been killing it with the aquatic snakes. Yeah, it's awesome. And so I want to give him mad props because I have been following that species for a very long time and not seen anything until the last five years maybe of like breeding pictures and then people producing babies

and that sort of thing and I get geeked out about that because I just think those things are so freaking cool they're so cool and then there's the albino goboons out of Africa those are pretty neat they just had another litter born last week

or something and I know some people are like they don't like them and I'm like Man, it looks like they're painted with starburst. It looks like you took a starburst, like pink and yellow and orange starbursts and melted it into a snake. It's just so pretty. And, you know, I'm a little bit on the contrary side when it comes to goons and rhinos. Because I think Rhiners smoke goboons every day of the week. But people seem to like rhinos or like the goboons quite a bit more.

but those albinos they're so cool to me they're just phenomenal looking and the different variations of the albinos are really really pretty so seeing that has been that was really really cool I've seen some

naltinus geckos come in to the to North America recently some in Canada and then some in the U.S. And I'm not sure if they were gray eye or the other one. I think they're gray eye. Probably, yeah. I don't know.

I'm not sure. Because that was really, I mean, they weren't coming in at all, really. It was really hard to get those in. Yeah. I wonder if it's all the turmoil with the government. They're just not worried about those things anymore, but I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I know Steve Sharp, he had, he was contemplating, you know, moving to New Zealand at one point. And there was a herpetologist. over there that works with a bunch of the naltinas and he's like oh we've got a ton of them they bred like crazy and you can have as many as you want once you get here he's like oh kind of cool yeah so apparently the people over there don't have any problem breeding them and you know and they can't do anything with them you know so they just giving away to their friends or whatever that's wild i made friends of somebody who lives over in new zealand recently on

Instagram and she saw some of my like herping stuff and she's like you go outside and there's just snakes there I was like yeah they're like all over the place and she's like I don't know if I could do that there's like no snakes here like even the lizards are really rare we don't really get that I was like if you see any lizards please send me a picture I need to see it yeah they've got some phenomenal geckos and skinks there's some neat skinks over there too that are really cool. But Tuatara. Hard to beat that.

I saw a couple geckos over there, some woodwardia geckos that were pretty cool. I didn't see any Naltinas, unfortunately, but, yeah. I feel like those would be real hard to find. Right, right. You'd have to get pretty lucky or know how to find him, I guess. Jake Manny was just on that Joe Mack podcast

that we were talking about earlier, and he talked about going to New Zealand. Zealand for a conference or something and finding, I think it was either elegans or gray on it. Yeah, that would be a dream. That would be really cool. Yeah. That's so cool. That's so cool.

Anything else really jumped out. I think those are the main things that I've been like geeked on recently. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Now, I've been enjoying that Pyrow book. he's a little picking up what I was putting down but yeah yeah yeah he's using

the danger noodle and turn out of that I'm like there's some modern you know it's not quite cough though right but at the same time but he has a good job like he's a good storyteller and it's it's enjoyable to read so yeah I mean

I when I started reading it I got through probably 50 pages you know just as soon as I took it out of the package I just started reading it. So it really kind of hooks you in. It's pretty fun. So, Rob, the book that he's talking about is Pyrill by Dallon Kohler, who was in Utah, and it's at BYU, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Who, as part of his undergrad, trying to get into a graduate school program, wanted to be involved in a natural sciences program, wanted to became involved with or wanted to be, interesting and reptiles and wanted to find a pyro in Utah and then I turned into sort of this quest to find a pyro in Utah. A big part of what I really appreciate about the book is that it does speak to that that is a goal and that can be difficult and it took him a whole more than one season to do that. You know, ours, you know, we found, you know, a mating pair on the trail within

our first couple hours of being there. You know, he is a couple hours from Habitat and he looked for a whole year and didn't find him, right? It's okay. But that's the nature of the thing, right? And a lot of the time that's sort of undervalued and understated and things. So that's a large part of what I appreciate. And he's actually now a graduate student at Nanjing Forestry, which I assume is as part of Kevin Messenger's lab, which is cool. Worked out for him. And it's a cool book and $10 on Amazon or whatever.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, it's worth a pickup. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. Despite which I'm going to say, I think I read it in a day. Yeah. Yes, but there is a little bit of the hypermodern now to the writing and things.

And I don't know, you know, whatever, it is what it is. But definitely an overall, overall positive rating. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Yeah, that was the only qualm I had was the use of both kind of terms. My only qualm was his, you know, willingness to accept the lumping of the block guy. Right. Yeah.

Well, thanks again, Rob. It's been a lot of fun to have you back and your insights and hearing about your herping. So, yeah, we'll have to have to. Anytime. I love this. I'm honored to be back. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.

Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, thanks for listening. Thanks to Eric and Owen and the NPR Network. And we'll catch you next week for more Rept Off I Club.