Reptile Fight Club - Instant Gratifaction vs. Hold out w/ Lisa Farinha & Noah Richardson

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Justin and Chuck tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of Instant Gratifaction vs. Hold out w/ Lisa Farinha & Noah RichardsonWho will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

all right welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. We are joined today by a couple guests, which is nice. Insufrina and Noah Richardson have joined us on the pod this evening, so we're happy to have them both, and thank you guys for coming on. Welcome, whoop, whoop. Thank you, thank you. All right on welcome whoop whoop thank you thank you all right thanks thanks guys should have a fun little uh discussion but this shall be yeah we just got done uh doing a recap of the trip uh the utah trip with the npr boys and um what a trip it was man we we uh found

just about all the all the rare stuff we missed out on some of the more common things, which was interesting, but yeah. Yeah. Good problem to have doctor. For sure. For sure. Yeah. It's always nice to have, you know, many eyes looking, you know, for sure. When you're down there on your own or something, you just got your own eyes and you might miss things. Many good eyes. It's fun to have a lot of people. But I don't know.

We got Gila monsters and speckled rattlesnakes and lyre snakes, which is kind of like the trifecta of rare, hard to find species down there. So it's kind of the big three which um so we were very happy to hit all those and find those so i hadn't seen a liar snake uh in utah so that was a first for me i've seen one in arizona but um trusty dusty found that one yep dustin got that one we had the ustin ustin juices flowing i got the heel in the Uston juices flowing. I got the Hebel and the Speck. And then Dustin got the Lyre and he found a pair of Pyros mating. So that's hard to beat. Just a pair of Pyros. Yeah, we call that the Uston factor. The Uston factor.

Uston power. You guys are too cute. Uston power unite, you know, that kind of thing. So I gotcha. I gotcha. It was good times. We had a little challenge of, uh, keep, who could keep their feet dry and, uh, you know, Canyon that had water running through it. So we're spider manning on the walls trying to stay, stay dry. And I lost, I slipped on one spot and dunked a foot but man and i'm double his age

that's kind of sad to think like yeah i was kind of just a number it's just a number justin it is wet socks yeah yeah we they're on that hike uh we got done and we were kind of comparing like oh how far did your watch your phone say you went or whatever and his said like eight miles and mine said nine miles i'm like yeah i just i just went the extra mile man nice nice i'm double your age but i still go the extra mile that's good yeah uh it was a great trip. That was a lot of fun, but, and then I went out this afternoon on my lunch break to go look for snakes and found four snakes at lunch. So kept, kept the ball rolling, I guess. But yeah, I was walking along and, and I, uh, happened upon this huge gopher snake and I'd seen a huge gopher snake a couple of weeks back. So I

just assumed it was the same one and then i got home and was comparing pictures and their neck patterns were completely different they were different snakes so and they were found within maybe a hundred you know yards of each other hundred meters of each other if you want to make nipper happy and using metrics but uh um so pretty close to where they were found so i just assumed it was the same animal but so it's kind of cool that there's two big big gopher snakes uh roaming the same area so i feel like you're gonna be like sussing out a population of gopher snakes or something that's kind of what i'm trying to do is so you know yeah people come herping. I can go, I know where we can find snakes.

Right in your backyard. How far do you have to travel on your lunch break to get to the spot? It's maybe two, three miles up the canyon. So it's not far from my office yeah it takes me about five minutes to get there and then i jump out of the car and and maybe hike for you know hike around the area for an hour or so and get back and and uh maybe eat something real quick along the way and and that's my lunch break so it works out pretty nicely yeah but so three of the four were uh yellow-bellied racers uh western yellow-bellied racers so uh, Western yellow belly racers. So, and they're, they're just liquid lightning, man.

Those are fun. So I found a couple of them didn't see me coming. So they were kind of doing their own thing. I was trying to see what they were doing, but when I got closer, they noticed I was there and just took off like a shot. So I was lucky to get some video or, or, you know, stills of those guys. And I didn't get any video of the last one I saw. it just ducked down a hole real quick and into the rocks so um still hoping to find a gray basin rattlesnake i've seen them in the area but i haven't found any this year yet so

i need to find some or at least up here we found a couple on the on the trip last week. Are you a little cold for that yet? No, it should be warm enough. Yeah, I don't know why I haven't seen one. You know, it is a fairly – so there's a fairly well-traveled trail, and the road is pretty well-traveled as well that's down below. So I'm trying to hit the trail, the upper trail where not many people go. And so I'm hoping that will make the difference and and but you know you never know maybe they're down on the lower trail when i roll

the dice julander exactly yeah but i'm thinking with all the people down below you know i have a better chance up higher and so yeah it's not it's stat sig logic man yeah there you go well and i i got way off the trail you know this this kind it's kind of like a road but i i went up and just hiked up through the rocks and stuff and that's where i found that gopher snake and just right above where the gopher snake was there's like this old like uh hut thing like built out of uh logs and rocks and stuff and i'm and i see like all these like shell casings around there i'm like so they've got guns and they're living in a you know some rock hut up the up the canyon so i'm like maybe i don't want to be hanging out by this thing but it looked pretty abandoned so i don't think anybody's lived there within the last couple years and i don't think anybody could survive there this last winter it

was just like the never-ending winter and lots and lots of snow up there so um but yeah i'm not seeing any snow up there i'm on the south facing slope so that probably is why but there's still some snow across the valley there so it's still hasn't melted off yet and man the the rivers are flowing crazy it's hard to hear much because the river's so loud but yeah i guess it's a good problem to have i was gonna say yeah yeah we broke records with our snowpack this this last year that's good that's good yeah but yeah so trying to get a little herping out when i can and try to get my backyard herping in i think uh looks like you've done a few trips lisa where you yeah i do some lunch break herping too um i don't know if you know who chris sharp is

um i recognize the name he actually used to work at the zoo with Steve. Okay. So he lives out like near that in Fresno. But he told me about a spot near where I work where there's a board line. Oh, cool. So I can drive there on my lunch. If I remember to pack my lunch. If I don't pack my lunch, then I don't have time.

But the boards for the board line are getting really old and I actually have some old pieces of plywood out in my garage and I was thinking about bringing them over there and just like adding them to the board line but um I feel a little paranoid about um I wouldn't do it at work because I'm in a work truck so I don't know how the company would like it but I would go go on my day off. But then I got paranoid that someone would see me putting the boards out there and call the city and say I was dumping garbage or something. But maybe if I just go really early in the morning.

Like how early people go when they dump garbage? Like how garbage dumpers do, yeah. They get away with it. It's down, obviously. And then I found another spot on my own that is a, it's like there's a bunch of garbage and it's under a black

walnut tree. So there's a bunch of like rats and stuff under there and there's boards and garbage. And I found a king snake under there, but I also found a rat that was like the size of a football. Oh, wow. I lifted up. It took off running.

And I was like, I was almost ready to leave. But I'm glad I did it because that's when I found it. A few minutes later, I found the king snake. And it was a really sweet one. But there's also, I found out that there's also burrowing owls that live right along the area i i think they migrate um in this area so they weren't there yet but i'm gonna go back there at a later time to see if i can see them because they're so cute when you see them in there poking their little heads out uh-huh yeah that's they're fun species i we have we have some around here as

well out uh kind of a little bit further south. There's an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, and they are out there seasonally as well. Go out there and check them out. Fun species for sure. Noah, Chuck, you guys been out

herping at all lately? A a little bit i was able to do some work herping that was pretty cool nice yeah i felt left out and uh we got to do a test event at uh this ranch that we rent and during a lunch break i was like all right time to go look for snakes and it was super funny because it was the fastest time i've ever been able to i went into this bush and i found just a super pretty king snake just crossing this path. And I grabbed it, ran back to my coworkers.

They're like, dude, how did you do that? You were gone for two minutes and now you just have this snake. And I gave them all an unwanted lecture about snakes. And I kind of tell the difference between males and females sometimes. And they're like, that's cool.

Gross. Go put it back in the bushes. i've done a couple just local stuff i've really been trying to just go with my cousin uh we both try to just uh go together and just find some stuff and he's been finding gopher snakes like crazy out at lopez lopez lake he he's been sending me them almost every other day of like babies and then he found one that was probably close to like six, seven feet. It was absolutely massive of a gopher snake. But my goal is to find a ring neck this year. I have not found one.

I found a couple of ring necks in California last I was down there. It was like green and, you know, there was moisture under the board line. And there were like there was a couple ring necks under just about every board so that was pretty cool yeah hopefully with all the rain that we had hopefully it'll kind of retain a lot of that moisture when it warms up underneath like fallen logs and oaks so hopefully we can i can find some this year nice now i just need to find a utah ring neck that's uh they're cool ring necks are so small that you have to flip leaves to find them. Cause I've done that before. Yeah.

Is that what I'm doing? Is that what I'm doing? I was looking in the wrong spot. I was hiking this little trail with my family and I said, Oh, look at that leaf. I bet there's a snake under there. And there was a ring neck under there. Yeah. They were amazed. My family was like, how did you do that? And I'm like, I don't know. It just looked like a good leaf.

That sixth sense of finding snakes, that's the way to do it. It's always great when you can predict it too. You can call it. I personally was amazed too. I was like, I did not expect that. Usually the best ones are like, yeah. One of the cool Yeah. Usually the best ponds are like, yeah. One of the cool things about all the rain that we've been having is on my cousin's ranch,

there's finally been like enough water to where there's some ponds. And they have a lot of like California toads and some of the tree frogs out there. And there was so many of them. There was literally hundreds of thousands of toads. Wow. Just toadlets. Like jumping. Well, it's cool until you have to walk across it and you have to just kind of like shuffle your feet because there's like 30 to 40 toads underneath every single footstep you do

wow it was it was probably close to like the millions of toads it was insane that's crazy the ground would actually just move underneath you and you're like oh no just don't think about all the ones you're accidentally stepping on just keep just keep going yeah what species of toad are they out there i think the american toads i guess the ones we have out here okay yeah that's just they're cool little suckers when they're adults yeah i've seen that with the red spotted toads out in the desert like it's like you know sandy areas and there you see all these little toadlets jumping across the sand i'm like holy how do they survive out here they're just these little tiny you know

but it's fun to see the ground move you know these little toadlets running around so yeah yeah and it's usually bone dry out there so it's just a huge trip to see ponds and then just millions of toads yeah that's cool. You should see reed necks. I bet out there. I'm hoping like a good spot. Yeah. It hasn't really gotten warm yet. It's still like 60 out here.

Okay. Yeah. We don't, we don't get very warm in the central coast. Yeah. Nice. Now, how close are you guys to each other?

Four hours. Okay. So not, not close. We've actually only hung out in person at the Pomona show. We know each other through social media

and we just talk to each other that way. We finally spot a meetup that was close to both of us, which was Anaheim. Yeah, I thought San Luis Obispo? Yeah yeah i thought it was closer up up further up north but it's pretty close to la right yeah we're like right in the middle between like san jose fresno and la okay it's like two hours plus both ways okay he had an uncle that

lived in san jose but we didn't we didn't we went out there a few times to visit him but yeah it's a cool area i still need to visit steve in fresno me too be fun to go i just i actually just yesterday i went to the fresno chappie zoo with my friend kathy but um i they're actually doing a lot of construction and redoing. So half of the zoo is closed. So it was a little disappointing. So don't go now. Yeah. Yeah. He was telling me about some of the woes of the construction and stuff.

So, yeah. Yeah. I was, I was like, where did they put all the animals while they're doing this? They must be at other zoos or something. I can't remember if he said they had off-site places where they can keep them or if they have to move them on while they do all the stuff. Yeah, I think they might send them away, but I'm not sure. I'll have to ask him about that. It looks like it's going to be really nice though yeah it is finished yep he's uh he's pretty excited for the new new uh new buildings and things so hopefully that'll

that'll be a good change i don't know they did they did a bunch of construction at the san diego zoo and they got rid of like all these reptile houses and i was a little uh disappointed yeah because what they replaced it with was like very uh just a fraction of the number of displays that they had yeah but it was more it was more like um you know geared towards what the native wildlife or native reptiles conservation versus like man they had so many like little vipers and just like cool crap all the way to go into those like little buildings. And it's like, Oh my God. And remember Ben, Ben found those,

Ben found all those baby vipers that they were in there. Yeah. It was cool. On top of the enclosure, like getting out and the guys, they used to have tons of stuff back there. Yeah. It was so cool. Jeez. Yeah. It was so cool. I saw that a little baby

condor was hatched today in the wild. Really? Yeah, at Pinnacles National. So that was cool. I was like, whoa. Because they have a camel on it, and so you can watch it

with the mom there. It's have a cam on it. And so you can watch it with the mom there. Like a California condor. Yeah. My wife and I were in a Zion national park in Utah and we got flown over by a baby number 1000, like the, the, I think it was the 1000th chick that is hatched. And so it's tag number on its way. They all have 1000.

Yeah. Yeah. So it flew over top of us i've never i've never seen a wild one yeah yeah it was pretty amazing pretty thrilling i mean they were huge and they were way up there but you could tell that you know those are contours there's nothing that big around here so yeah it's pretty cool yeah lots of cool animals out there for sure. I guess that's I love this time of year, but it's so hard because it's such a limited amount of time to get out and see everything. And her if I use up all my PTO during the spring and fall, it seems. Yep. Good times. I don't know. How's everybody's season going you got some good stuff going my my black headed eggs should be hatching any any moment now i'm i'm hoping i keep hoping i'll

see a little head sticking out of the egg here soon but but you're definitely going to be in town for this one which is uh maybe yeah what are you freaking serious dude i'm going going back down south again my wife's got a work trip and so i'm like oh maybe i should go down and join you and okay okay okay i'm gonna just say this right now that you do this to yourself okay yeah i'm just saying this to you as your friend you do this to yourself and i don't want to hear oh if i would have been there i don't want to hear i want to hear it yeah well and then they should i mean if they hatch out they should be good right so they'll be okay to hang out in the box i'm only gonna be gone a few days so it's not too big yeah no i i i think actually your your partner in crime there is plenty capable of handling those

babies yeah yep she was summer my daughter was the one that found them last year and unpacked them and put them in cages for me and everything she was pretty stoked and then i came home to prothensis eggs some some pygmy python eggs, and some inland carpet eggs. So that was nice to come home to those. And they both look good. They're doing all right. There were a couple eggs that the female inland excluded out of her coils, and I don't know if they're going to make it. But the other 13 or so will look really good.

Did they desiccate? Is that what happened? A little bit, yeah. They desiccate pretty quick out here. It's pretty dry. And I'm not sure when she laid them because I was gone the whole week. And I thought I had a little bit more time before she was going to lay. And then I had a Western Stimson python female that uh slugged out so she had a bunch of bad eggs kind of a bummer because she was bred to my stripe male and

last year's babies were really nice so do you have any do you have any thoughts as to what would cause that for her um i it might have been um too warm for her i This year? It might have been too warm for her, I think, because I had that rack and I found out that the thermostat was malfunctioning and was really hot.

I think that probably was the issue there. I saw the photo you posted of your inland clutch with the mother yeah and um that female is really beautiful everyone always says oh they're so blue and i'm like i don't see the blue but you can really see it in her when she was wrapped around the eggs like that yeah it's it's really hard to get capture that in a photo but do you know is she a certain line because i know there's the mog line and the is the other line called shu it or what is the

other line besides mog i think it's a mog line that i like that i think is really pretty i've i've worked with both of them and they both look pretty similar like you know there's some variation but yeah they all kind of look yeah because I was trying to decide should I go after the Mog line or should I go after the oh god why can't I think of the line

anyway yeah I just I thought I've kept back held back from both and they both look very similar. Yeah, better to mix them, huh? Sure. Schofield. I did that whole thing where I was trying to talk into a muted mic again.

Thank you. Yeah, names just don't stick in my head for some reason. Me either. Yeah, I'm excited to see a match and last year's babies from uh the same pairing turned out really good i've got a hold back male that just blows my socks off every time i see him you know he's just really nice looking even as a juvenile so i'm excited for a repeat of that so yeah cool chuck how are the how are the hounds doing? Hmm.

I don't know. Well, I mean, I do know. I mean, I don't know what's up with her. She looks kind of gravid to me, but she's not acting like she did the other couple years, and she's in a different spot, but it's in, it's the, one of the cages that I have connected to the big cages is, is a cage that they bred in, in the past.

So I don't know if it's something about that cage. I don't, you know, and so again, I've seen this like before I bred them where it looked just like this, where you're like, Oh man, there's something just like this, where you're like, Oh man, there's something going on and you get what looks like, Oh man, I like, like I should, I should be getting something either in the next couple of days or not at all because I saw the prelay shed and you know,

she looks like it, but she's not really basking or acting the same way she used to. And before they ever bred, it would be like this, where it was like, OK, they're hanging out. She looks like she's cycling. She cycles, reabsorbs, and that's it. And it's like, what happened? Like, you just, you know, and it's like, so I don't know. I don't know if that's what's happening or whether she's going to dump out probably a small clutch of eggs.

We'll see. Did you move her back to the old cages that you built? No. So I'm keeping them in the large, I'm keeping everything kind of the way it is. Just, just cause I kind of, I mean, they're pretty big, they're pretty big. They need those bigger cages. So I think it's probably, and they're doing fine in them. They're pretty big. They need those bigger cages. Um, so I think it's probably, and they're doing fine in them. They're just not, they're just not breeding for me. So I don't know if that's like, you know, they do fine. They're not, maybe not as adjusted cause they haven't been in there long enough. But, um, if they're doing well, I don't want to move them into a smaller cage for kind of, you know, my selfish purposes. I do, I do think that would help though.

I do think that they, they like those environments where it's nice and, you know, you know, they, they have a tight box where they can live and then a tighter box where they can go and, you know, they can kind of peek out. I just think it makes them feel secure, like, you know, all around. Cause how big is your female um she's probably six six and a half maybe seven feet okay the the the males are you know pretty i mean they're they're probably nine oh nine, 90, eight, nine, something like that. They're really, they're really skinny though. I mean, they're not like, you know, you're talking like,

yeah, like they're not like that. So their head is ginormous though. It's like, it's just like huge head on the skinny body, but it's weird. You know, when I cycle feed, like once I start feeding here pretty soon, I'll just feed the crap out of them. And they'll look so huge and like, oh, my God, that's bad. And then I stop feeding them when I start to cycle them. And they look so lean and like so like – but they're – fine i mean it's great i think that's i think that's the ebb and flow that kind of a lot of keepers miss in in uh in keeping is is how how lean their metabolisms can be and how well adapted they are at just cycle feeding she probably just needs a few years. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like it's so one of my males, like he got underneath it when I had him out. He got underneath a door and then he just clamped under this door and I was trying to get him out. And I tore like I tore his skin.

It was it was it was crappy. So he's pretty much all healed now looks fine, but, but that happened right around the times that, that probably good copulation would be. So I'm, you know, I wonder if that had any effect, you know, I've messed up his mojo, uh, something like that or, um, or, or not, you know, I don't know. So yeah, whatever. We'll see. Hopefully it happens. If it does, that's, that's, that's a good sign. And then, you know, I think probably next year the, the ones that I've been raising up, I'll start breeding. So we'll start breeding like F1 animals. So we'll see how that goes. I've got probably

four females that could go if they all keep on pace. How old are they? They are 19, so they're four years old now. How are their 20s doing?

They're good. They they're all fine they're they're kind of in the that medium stage uh tubs that that i keep uh in so mostly everything stays in tubs until they go into adult enclosures i that's i think they like that again it's the tight space it's the you It's the easily confined walls. Yeah. And I don't know what I was saying. What was I saying? 19s and 20s.

Yeah. So the 19s are looking great. I mean, they're as feisty as the 20s. And then I got to start shaking some of that out. Cause once, you know, if these, if I, if, if I can get eggs again, then I'll start selling or pushing animals out. But I just don't want to, you know, kind of hold the project a little, hold the project. Yeah. Yeah.

So are you working with any any helma harris noah no i that's one of my dream species i would love to right now i have a really really small collection and i'm looking for a male female or a male southern scrub uh for my female because she's about three which is kind of what sparked this topic today, because I am being extremely selective about the one I'm looking for. And Lisa is saying, get one. I'm like egging him on. I'm like, don't be so picky. Find a nice, you can find a, but.

Well, that was a heck of a segue. Maybe it's time to start fighting, right? Well, I mean, if there were hounds available. I know, dude. I'm working on it, okay? I will drive down to pick them up. No worries about shipping. It's just a matter of

getting it done. We'll get it done. Oh, yeah. Especially with the captive bred. Yeah. We'll get it. I just don't want to rush. I feel like the slow approach with these captive bred and yeah. I just, I just don't want to rush. I just, I don't, I, I don't, I take, I feel like the slow approach with these is the right way. Extreme patience, man.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's been the thing that I've, I've applied, which is great for the topic today. And it's been, it's, it's been reward. The, the, the, you know, the tree has bore fruit man you know so i'm with it sorry that we're turning this into us interviewing chuck no chuck so turn this back around don't worry your original um female how old was she the first time she laid for you? So she was, I'm guessing she was a 2011 animal. So laid in 20. Yeah. Eight years old.

See Lisa, I got five more years. And, and, you know, again, like I didn't, you know, I didn't hurry them, you know, getting their feeding, but like, I had a lot of issue because I mean, I guess it wasn't that bad. You know, I had probably six months where they weren't like eating regularly to get them adjusted. And then they start feeding and then they start kind of picking up steam and they do fine. But, you know, I fed them pretty slow and kind of took my time. Quite frankly, kind of, I don't want to say ignored them, but like didn't, you know, didn't put a lot of like, didn't, you know, bother them a lot, throw a lot of caging in there, didn't disturb their cage, but just kind of, you know, minimal interaction. Yeah.

Seems to have worked. We'll see. We'll see. I think if we could third time charm it, that would be a proper yes, but not yet. We'll see.

I mean, yeah, changing up their living situation, that's going to throw them for a loop. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that, but I think, I don't know. You know, you see them breed two years in a row, and then, like, what is it? Like, what's the, you know, like, oh, everything has to, the stars have to align perfectly, or they won't breed? Like the you know like oh everything has to the stars have to align perfectly and or they won't breed like that you know what i mean like yeah i mean well they are known for being very uh sensitive right yeah well i just think they're more than others yeah i just

think they're very high strong if you you know Rob Stone kind of really talks about how you, how a lot of people take the nervousness of scrub pythons as a, they see it in, in visual aggression of striking and things like that. But really the, the, the, the nervousness and scrubs in, in, in home of Harris anyways, they freeze and they just like stop and they won't move. It's like, it's almost like he can't see me. He can't see me. He can't see me.

But like, if you were to touch them, then, then it's on, then they're fighting you over it. And that's very similar to like chondros. I think that's at least, that's how my biot chondros were, was they were very shot. Not, not, not at night at night. And, and I think that's at least that's how my biot chondros were was they were very shot not not not at night at night and and i think that's the way for scrubs as well like anything that you know hunts out of a tree at night like you you know that's a different that's a day and night day and night different things right yeah but i i feel like chondros are a very good Way to think About

Homo Haris In a lot of respects I always compare my southern To my dad's ATB just bigger Yeah yeah I mean it's not a bad I mean it's you know I never see mine on the ground ever Unless she's in shed and even then

She has like a coil on this branch right next to her. It's like her security one. That's how I can tell she's in shed because she doesn't go in the color or she doesn't go blue very much, but there's a specific spot in the back of the enclosure to where she can still get like two coils on the stick that ramps up. And I know exactly when she's going in shed. Other than that,

she is either in her like suspended hide or on her perch she's probably in the same spot she's been in the past four days and that's that's been my experience is they're fairly predictable with like the way that once you kind of get understand their pattern like you see it over and over and over and over which is why it's weird this year for me because i'm not seeing my female do the things that she did in the two in the years prior when she laid so now it's like messing me up like what what's that about yeah yeah I one of the coolest uh natural history observations on scrubs that I learned about several years ago was the that the uh um king horn eye in in Australia would use those epiphytic uh ferns as perches

like way up in the trees so they'd be up you know 20 30 feet in the tree uh coiled up on top of these ferns uh basking so yeah i don't know with a head with a head just over the edge like that just looking down just wait it's the most predictable it is awesome yeah so cool cool snake i think living zoology they recorded a video about king horny and i think it's one of the best examples comparing them to atvs just way bigger because this thing was i would say no bigger than a 50 cent piece and it was well over nine feet i mean they're not they absolutely can take these big meals but i don't think they are or should be as routinely in captivity at least yeah i think they're just snagging birds

and then just eating those guys and the occasional one will eat something you know huge that's when you capture like a photo of them yeah yeah and i think i think that's really old animals that you see taking like, you know, big, big prey items. Yeah. I mean, there is a there was a study done on gut contents in, I think, DOR scrubs and comparing it with the diet of carpets in the same area and in the Atherton table lands. And the scrubs had a pretty big diversity of sizes of meals and, you know, different species that they took. You know, of course, the scrubs were taking wallabies as well, but they'd also take smaller birds and mammals in addition. Yeah, it's pretty interesting.

Yeah. Well, we appreciate you coming on the show chuck and yeah thanks for having me guys it's been great all right well are you guys ready for your time chuck this is something lisa and i text like every other day is they just talk about all your all your animals and all the hounds really oh wow yeah i mean i'm like your number one hidden fan dude well that is thank you uh i now feel so much more pressure to perform here all right i'm counting on you in the next four years when i could possibly get some i'm counting on me too. And I'm worried.

I'm worried. We believe in you, Chuck. We believe in you. Chuck the challenger. She just needs to get used to her new home. Yeah. I think I kind of F'd the whole thing up. Extreme patience is virtue.

Yeah. But what was I going to do? Breed her three years in a row or keep them keep them you know another two years in that small you know give them a year off and then breed them again in those small cages like it's just yeah it was time for new cages i'm i'm doing i'm kind of doing this a similar thing with my white lips um rather than just keep repeating the same thing over and over i didn't move them but i i have i'm gonna try pairing her with another a different male so i'm like oh it's because they're supposed to be like mate pair bonded and so i'm gonna test that theory and see if i can get another male to

breed with her and i'm gonna try also i'm i want try, because both times she went in the spring, I want to see if I can get her to go in the fall to change it up, to just test both of those. Because she keeps going in the spring when everyone else's white lips seem to be going in the fall. And it seems like this time of the year, she's acting like she wants to go. So I'm pretty sure i could do it like i think i could change it up like if i if i faster during the summer and then start feeding her heavy because i fed her really heavy right now and she's acting like she wants to go but i think if i just do the same thing in the fall after the summer fast, maybe I can get her

to go. But if not, I'm just going to say, Oh, well, it's not my fault. It's that new male. Yeah. That's, uh, how many of you held back? Are you holding back many of them? I have one hold back. Um, well, actually I, so still i have i have a few that i'm holding back but they're not for me they're for someone else um and then i have one that i held back from the last clench okay but i mean i'm not i'm not doing like i i don't i don't feel like i'm in the same position as chuck where it's like so there are other people breeding them successfully. Have you done any bloodline swaps with others? Yes, I have. Oh yeah. So I have a male from Ryan.

Okay. I have a male, but I, I, I need them. I need, I guess I should get another, I should have held back one, a female for my original clutch, but I was, but I wasn't thinking like, Oh, I want to do like this big breeding project and have white lips all over the place. Cause I don't, I don't have a lot of time and a lot of space. So, and, um, I, I like to keep other things besides white lips. So, you know, I'm interested in other things too. So, um, yeah, it's always the, always the struggle, always's always the struggle, finding that balance between keeping a project viable.

Because when you do something well with a species that maybe not very many people do well with, you do have to kind of consider those things, I guess. Yeah. Chuck's a great example. That's why I go on the podcast and try to talk about it a lot because i think other people can do it one of the things i think that people go wrong is they are a high maintenance snake because they're they do their they deserve their reputation it's not like oh i can just go in there take take it out and you know you have to pay attention to their mood you have to go in there during the day don't go in there at night it out. And, you know, you have to pay attention to their mood. You have to go in there during the day.

Don't go in there at night. You know, all the things I have. A lot of people will make fun of this, but I actually have a hoodie that I call my white lip hoodie. And I put that on when I'm cleaning certain snakes cages because I don't trust them. But I mean, not that they're biting me every time, but I have been bitten before and I don't trust them. But I mean, not that they're biting me every time, but I have been bitten before and I don't, I don't like that. So when I put that hoodie on it, they usually, they don't see the heat signature, so they aren't reacting as much,

but yeah. So if you want to fight Noah, we'll just do like 30 minutes of interview with Chuck and Justin, and then we'll do like a five-minute fight. Well, Noah and I fight about this all the time. Anyways, we're always bickering about it. We had our own that just wasn't recorded. It was like, what, two and a half hours long? Yeah, we have discussions about it.

All right. We kind of agree with each other. We're like, yeah, I see your point other like we're like yeah i see your point i agree but it's your point you're just wrong so see this is this is these are the fights that i love where people have like had the fight already and they've had their side but now you don't get to pick the side you get the side kind of well i mean i guess you could potentially pick this one. If I win, I'm swapping it. If I win, I'm swapping it. This is what I like. I like the little twist, you know?

Yeah. So we let Noah call it then. Is that the deal? No, it's Larry's first. But if I – oh, no, Lisa gets to call his first. Okay. All right. Yeah, I guess – do you guys want to have a quick blurb about kind of where you fit into her culture?

Yeah. Shoot. We missed that. I think we kind of did. I think. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. All right.

He says a well-established breeder is super successful and I'm just no one in the hobby. I just like to occasionally post some stuff and I keep a couple of snakes. That's about it. Oh, I'm getting a new snake, though. That's kind of cool. Oh yeah? What are you getting? Puerto Rican boa from Eric Hernandez. Oh, cool. Nice. My first step

into Kyle of Othrus. I'm really excited. Cool. Okay. Yeah. It's a boa. Whoa. You say that about Jamaicans, man. No way. I've been on a boa trip.

Jamaicans and Puerto Ricans. Have you? Yeah. I'm converting her. No, I'm happy to see them, but I don't know why. Just not interested in keeping boas. I got some Amazon tree boas, and I got some. Well, I'm hopefully going to get some boa sigmas, the little ones.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Those are cool. I looked for those in Mexico, but wasn't lucky enough to find one. Yeah, boa, boa morphs, retic morphs, all that stuff is like things that I like to look at and are nice. And there's nothing wrong with. I don't need to own. I don't need to own. My favorite animal is my normal common boa, the improtter.

Yeah, I mean, they're cool. Yeah, the improtter. Yeah. They're cool. Yeah. I had one as a kid. I think that might have been part of it is I kept them as a kid. Yeah. And then my boa was the one that I could never figure out. It was always unpredictable to me.

And so I'd get bit and I wouldn't know what was coming. And the pythons, I can tell when they're going to bite me. But the boas, they just would like, they were like sneak attack. And I'm i'm like i don't like that i'd like to be like a little more predictability so you don't speak boa all right i guess not yeah i'm a python town or he's the easiest one man i just opened it up and scooped him out he's the house pet he's the only one like the household or other people will even consider like touching especially some of my friends that are not very snake enthusiasts a good a good emissary for for non-enthusiasts yeah yeah everyone's like he's huge and he's like four feet all right all right so we're uh we're looking at instant gratification versus long-term planning and and uh holding out until you get exactly what you want. So, yeah, let's flip the coin.

So, Lisa, you want to call it? Flip it. Heads. Heads. It is tails. Oh, no. We're stopping. Oh, no.

I love it. So that would mean Noah is taking the the instant gratification and make it work. And Lisa is taking the pull down. How could you, Noah? Hey, this is why the people listen, right? He fights dirty. Unpredictable, dirty fighting. Yeah, that's the good stuff.

All right. Well, Noah, where you won the coin toss, would you like to start or would you like to allow Lisa to go first? I'll let Lisa go first. Lisa's first. All right. So I went first last time. Okay.

I need to switch my frame of mind, my frame of mind my frame of reference so um people um one of the main reasons why it's good to wait and find exactly what you want say it's a certain uh phenotype you say you have a really beautiful um white-lipped python that has a usual color palette like there's some out there that are high gold um and so we don't know that much about um there hasn't been a lot of field work done on um a lot of the species over in places like uh new guinea so if you go if you want to breed make sure that you're not going to um make like crosses like species cross species it would be good to try to stick with a phenotype because it's more likely that the species would be the same like since they look alike um that would be that's my main argument why it's better to wait and find the exact animal that would go with the animal that you have is the possibility that you could

accidentally be making hybrids when that wasn't your goal in the first place. We've seen it happen in green tree pythons. They didn't know that there was actually a bunch of different species. I'm not even talking about localities, actual species. So that's why it would be good to stick with, to wait it out and find the exact animal to go with your to mate with your animal um that's my argument and i'm sticking with it all right noah yeah how would you respond i guess uh well i think in in terms of i'm not super familiar with green tree pythons my dad has uh a pure Aru and an Aru Biak. But I think one of the things that you can kind of say about having more instant gratification in reference to green tree pythons is some of the designer stuff we've come up with. I mean, if you look at some of the crosses, like the sickness, if you look at the parents, they were kind of complete plain James.

I didn't really see don't know if they were what the locale was, but I think those were, you know, some of the prettiest snakes in the world. I, you could even show this like people who don't really care for reptiles. And even they would be like, wow, that thing looks photoshopped. Those things are so cool. All the offspring from those guys. I think, and now with imports still being alive and well, they've definitely slowed down in the past couple of years. But I think since we are still able to get imports,

I think we have the ability to be a little bit more relaxed with some of the pairings that we're choosing to be. We don't have to be as stringent with some of the stuff that we aren't really getting imports at all, like the hounds. I mean, I cannot remember the last time I've seen an import hound, if ever. So I think it's okay to be a little less stringent or like a little less strict with what you're choosing to pair because we do have some of the resources available to do that. Yeah, I think that's a good example. You brought up an Arubiac. That's a good example of a hybrid, right? Because the Aru's and the Beox are separate

species now. They've been recognized as genetically different enough to be separate species. And you typically see that with hybridization, especially in the second and third generations of hybridization events, is you get some crazy looking animals. I remember seeing some like F2, I think they were blood pythons crossed, you know, different blood python species crossed with each other. And they were crazy looking yeah really weird looking patterns maybe they were ball python blood python hybrids but yeah really weird looking and you see that with like the carpondros and stuff and um you know you can get some really crazy phenotypes but yeah that's what you're shooting for i guess well i would push back on the whole thing saying that, oh, since we can get them now, we should just be willy nilly about breeding whatever we want, whatever has a cloaca to whoever has a cloaca. Like, I've been a Patreon member of Dan Malary's Patreon shut down because of something with the airline that flies out of that one port because they didn't like something that happened. I'm not going to go

into specifics, but then you won't see animals from that region for you don't know how long. I remember when I first got my Southern White Lips, it was 2017 and I was really lucky I got them. And then I wanted to get a second meal and I had been watching and watching and people were desperate between 2017 and 2020. People were super desperate. A lot of people were desperate between 2017 and 2020. People were super desperate. A lot of people were getting scammed because they just weren't coming in. I don't know exactly why, if it had something to do with ascites or if it had to do with all of the taxonomy that was changing all the time or if it was some weird thing that happened. So if we're just breeding, making hybrids all the time, we could lose, potentially lose rare species that we don't even know that we have.

That's part of what the argument is, is we don't know yet because there's so much, there's such a lack of field work and scientific work that's been done in that area so we could you could potentially be taking a super rare species and breed crossing it and then losing it to herpediculture for forever you can't just count on them coming in the retics are a good example of that one because you know there's so many different you know especially especially after they've been researched a little more and we see all the different species and subspecies and, you know, and we just kind of crossed them all over the place to make morphs. And we've lost a lot of that diversity and uniqueness. And I mean, re-ticks are beautiful anyway. But you got to look back at what the goal was was the goal ever to establish you know a you know locality um mosaic of retics

in in captivity or was it i guess for some people yeah i mean like uh garrett he was he's trying to you know maybe do some of those like Kalatoa localities and stuff. But at least, you know, that was kind of. I just think the Morph thing really, you know, it really drives the bus once it gets going. And that kind of goes to, I guess, Lisa's side, right? No, Noah's side of instant gratification. Well, I could make an argument against what for morphs, because if you have a, say you have an animal that it's a,

whether it's a wild caught or if it's like, for instance, my friend Kathy, she has a really beautiful, he's like some type of a morph crested gecko. And she really wants to find another crested gecko that's up to par with him. So that way, if she bred them together, she knows she's going to get top quality animals out of that pairing. Rather than fighting a subpar animal and breeding them together. If your goal is to make really beautiful, you know, high quality morphs or high quality line bred animals that you're going to get faster results if you take the same phenotype

and breed them together, then going the long route, breeding line, slowly building that phenotype up. If you start out with one striped carpet python and you can't find another striped carpet python and you breed it to a banded carpet python, you're going to have to work a lot harder to get the results. That's why you should be picky noah okay can i throw this in here really quick because this is absolutely all right so so out of the first clutch of of halma harris that i got right i have and i've posted pictures of them i'm sure people have seen them but i have a female that's like i mean the pictures that's i mean i'd call it nothing short of a hypo like it's very very light very light animal um kind of looks caramelly you know kind of

has that look to it right and then i have kind of the standard look that phenotype that i got out of it and then i have kind of this little bit more melanistic where kind of the darker pattern on it is just more pronounced and darker. And so here I and granted, it took me a long time to get the F1s out. But now I have potentially have three routes of, you know, phenotypes that I can breed out. What do you guys think? Like what? You know, obviously it took me a long time, so that's maybe not like the best, but like the idea that you could take something, you know,

not being picky and reproduce it and capitalize on the, the, the, the kind of variety that we get out of our clutches. I don't know. All right. I'll take the lead on this one. First, I want to say, Chuck, if you produce the first US morphs of Halmahera, I think you'd be your own worst enemy. Oh, I probably would.

And that's why I'm not like Mr. Oh, yay, albino Halmaheras. That's awesome. I just think there's so much refinement you can do with the natural animals. And I've just seen, you know, some of the sarong stuff and, like, some of the stuff that David means and all the, you know, like Chris and, like, that stuff. Some of it's just fantastic. Oh, phenomenal.

You know, I just think there's so much good work you can do without having to go to Gene Jockey and then, you know, mutations. That would have been one of my arguments. Oh, I'm so. No, I mean, if I had been. What did you get for interviewing Chuck? If I had been on the other side of the coin well i think in in your case chuck like yeah you absolutely have the three the three different routes you could potentially go but at the same time i think it's it's you and who else are are actively producing cat oh you and shane are actively producing captive hounds

so i don't know if if you guys because of the weight of the shoulders that you guys kind of carry right now i don't think you guys i i don't want to say should but i don't know if line breeding this early in the game with hounds would necessarily be the greatest idea because for me i'm okay with waiting another you know two three four years to find the right male for my scruffylon because she has a phenotypic line going down down about half of her her back from half to tail and i've reached out to dan millery and thomas from rockabird and a couple other different importers and scrub keepers and so far i've only found one other guy in the u.s that has a a blind scrub like that except his is only opposite to where it's from the neck to the mid-back but for for you i think you and

shane kind of as like the the legacy keepers should kind of be more focusing on getting into maybe keeping those three back obviously i wouldn't necessarily let those guys go but i would probably say you know you should focus on growing those up and producing more healthy viable babies that can go into other keepers hands and then then finally, once you're like, okay, now it's not just two to three different guys that I know of that have captive pairs that are doing well, it's, it's like 20 to 30 or if not more, hopefully more.

But I would say I would, I would kind of have leaning towards the instant gratification of just raising up the pairs to produce the offspring in this sense, rather than start line breeding at this point. That would be my retaliation yeah i like you know i thinking about uh some of the conversations we've had with with like uh ron saint pierre where he'll get like 30 or 40 animals to start a collection of certain species or whatever you know and alan and Alan Rapache, he's a big, um, promoter of that idea too. You know, if you're going to start a project, do it big so you can, you know, get the, get, get a diversity out there instead of like just everything coming from one

pair, you know, that's so, and sometimes we don't have that luxury, but let me tell you why i i did it this way um and and some of it just has to do with my feeling about closed colony keeping and not bringing stuff in and you know those those tracy were great so the risk to me you know they're breeding they're doing great why would i introduce a wild card you know of um, you know, wild caught into my group once they've already meshed. So, so if I'm working with the genetics that I have, and I'm not adding genetic diversity yet, then I might as well parse out what my phenotypes look like to create phenotypes. And then those phenotypes, they're all still the same, you know, bloodline, if you want to call it that early on. Right. And so that bloodline could have

multiple phenotypical looks, be the same bloodline and accomplish, you know, it allows once they start going out like that, it allows people to take, you know, one, start diversifying the bloodline and to select from their animals in which direction they want to go. You know what I mean? I gives for me, like it puts three phenotypical looks potentially out there for, um, you know, whoever wants to keep keep that was kind of my rationale because i'm not i i think it's just safer you know i i really don't want to bring an animal in and burn the barn down because you know something snuck in that it seemed fine and and then all of a sudden it wasn't so yeah um you know i was on the other side of that argument saying you should be trading bloodlines with you know shane or whoever else is producing

these things and i and you know when shane gets to the point where you know he's you know i'd like to see him i don't want to like trade bloodlines with him and then you know take an animal from him like i i you know i don't know i mean. Yeah. Well, when we're talking about these types of rarely bred species, it's like we're talking about, we're trying to run before we can even walk when it's just a few guys that are actually successfully breeding it. And we're already trying to talk about line breeding and phenotypes. And really we just want to see like we,

and there are different phenotypes that come out of the wild. And some of those might be locality or island specific animals. You know, like I said, we don't know like what we're dealing with. But yeah, I mean, I would argue the three phenotypes I have are three phenotypes that come right out of the wild. So, yeah, I mean, absolutely. You get you're definitely getting multiple right out of the wild. So yeah, I mean, absolutely. You get, you're definitely getting multiple looks out of these animals. Sorry, I just have to throw this in there, but Noah and I,

we sometimes do this thing. Well, we only did it one time actually where we did internet herping where we get on the computer together and we go and we look at, uh, I naturalist, we tried to do it on Google maps too, but, uh, our, our no, not Google maps. The, uh, but anyways, we went and we looked at all the different, um, the different ones that were on the, um, islands and, um, we found one and Noah was like oh wow that looks just like the holotype and I was like which one which one

and we looked and I'm all I'm all oh yeah it does and then I looked and saw who had posted it and guess who it was it was Dave Parker I was like it is the holotype it wasn't the same picture but

do you have one that looks like the holotype by chance because that one's like super it looks when you look at it it's like aberrant and striped fake it's like super um high contrast like really dark but also really light and that's kind of like reddish eyes almost i've seen those i've seen those i don't have one i have an animal that has like in that first third of the back where you know right back of the head where striping seems to start like there's some striping there and there's like maybe like an inkling of maybe some striping. It's just really not very visual.

But I have one animal that's like that. If I had that animal and I wanted to be choosy and wait and try to find another animal that looks like that to breed to my animal. Oh, take it, Mimi.

Yeah. It's super high contrast yeah it doesn't even like the first time i saw that picture i thought it was a painting page 347 yeah it's gorgeous animal and that and if you go on i naturalist you can see another photo of it oh cool the one on eight he put a different one on iNaturalist. So you should check that out if you have a little extra time. I just happen to be on iNaturalist right now. Yeah. I just want to be choosy and find a scrub python that has a stripe. Otherwise, I'm never breeding my female ever.

Wow. That's a bold. You don't have one. That's mine. I'm trying to be you. I don't know. I don't know what, I don't know how to argue this side. I, I think that, um, something about being choosy that's really good is, um, help me out, Noah. All right. We can, we we can that was round one round two we can we can switch because we were both doing all the better with each other do you guys do you guys know who sean carroll is do you do you guys follow him he's an aussie guy uh but he would be uh he would probably be my like argument for somebody who's choosy and why that's good.

Because his collection, like every single thing he posts is just like absolutely slamming out of the park nice. Right, Drew Linder? Can you back me up here? I guess I don't know his collection that well. Really? Wait, what's his name? Sean Carroll. Oh, no, no no no yeah yeah yeah he does have yeah yeah he just like my god has he does not have a freaking ugly snake he does or at least

you never i've never seen an ugly snake but pretty well that goes to my my other argument that i said like if you start start out with the top if you have a certain phenotype and you wait for that phenotype, then most likely you're going to get the top shelf animals for the phenotype that you want. And you're going to get those. And people are going to know you and want to come to you for that look. look um the problem well tell me the problem why like what is stopping you from doing it no like finding that exact finding it or or just like why aren't you doing it? Because I think Southern... Yeah, Noah, why aren't you doing it? Gosh, Chuck. Come on, Noah.

It wasn't me. Well, so for starters, she's not even of age. She's probably two and a half, maybe getting close to three. If I were guessing correct, she's probably vent to nose, probably four foot six. Probably getting a little bit bigger than that she's getting big her sheds are over well over six feet getting into seven feet but she's no thicker than a quarter so she's she looks just like a just like an atb my thing with the southerns is that there's enough people well i don't want to say enough because there's not that many of them but there are a good chunk of people who are successfully reproducing

Southerns on a somewhat regular basis to where I am okay with playing the waiting game. I don't necessarily want to just find something off the shelf that doesn't quite fit or something that I don't think would be a great pair and delay much longer because no matter what, I still have to wait two, two and a half years. So I'm okay with not necessarily, especially because of, you know, I have a family space and finances are definitely something to consider, especially with scrubs to where they can get large and having a six foot cage is something that I do try to keep in the

back of my mind especially because i rent i don't own this home and if we would ever move i can't promise a 12 foot wide or even like an eight foot wide wall of free space like even this house is terrible because there's only like two walls that don't have a giant window on it so i can't stack very tall. Uh, but I feel like a lot of people have played the, I'm just going to just breathe this to this and whatever I get, it's kind of whatever I get. And I'm kind of okay with just waiting and not having that instant gratification and finding a male that would be suitable to where it would, it would progress me so much further than finding a male that's good enough,

breeding it, finding one hopefully in the clutch that would be a good enough and then wait another six years for a scrub to be, in my opinion, or maybe five to six years for a scrub to be a viable breeding age versus waiting while importing is still a thing. It's definitely slowed down. And I do know of someone who has a striped male that we've kind of been talking, Justin, you actually know who it is. You're friends with him. He, he has a striped male and I, he's like, that's like my favorite scrub that he's got aside from the house. And, uh, I reached out to him and he said he, he was, he thought about passing, um, passing it up or letting it go. And so I kind of said, well, like, Hey, I have a female that would be a great suitor, you know, maybe breeding loan or potentially i would take it if he ever lets it go so yeah that's why i'm also not in a rush because i do know of one that's out there that would be a great

pair and i'm also fine with having more scrubs to where you know there could be other projects aside from just the stripes yeah i do see them come around it's like kind of a cyclical thing too yeah you know like they're just not around for a while and then you know you see some come like i'm seeing imports coming in now i saw are you now yeah triple l had a had a pair that were pretty obvious imports. Yeah. So, I mean, they're coming in. It's just, you know, I don't know how good people do with them. You know, if pet stores buy them up and, you know, people aren't really hot with, you know, acclimating wild baby scrubs. I mean, I don't know.

Yeah. I have an argument it's kind of for i'm gonna argue the wrong side since we switched sides and you i don't know why you did this we could have had a better conversation if we stuck to our sides but um one of the things so the reptile hobby and um this isn't the art that this is in our discussion today but there's a lot of gatekeeping and uh that goes on so if you just um if you're really picky before it's kind of like what i said about learning how to run be trying to run before you can walk if you don't have a name as someone who's a good keeper someone who's already been successful with this species, you're not going to be picked first for those. You know, if an importer gets in a special animal, they're going to call up the known breeders, the people that already have a reputation first before they move those out to the pet shops, you know? So one of the things about that, I would say,

my success with the white lips have opened up a lot of doors for me because people would, you know, if I said, Hey, I'm interested, then they respond to me a lot quicker than if I was just, you know, wasn't known as being successful with the species. And the other thing is, if you do, if you are successful with a more rarely bred species, you can sell those animals and make some snake money. Because I agree, like these snakes are a luxury item. And, you know, you're a family you have

a family to take care of you have bills to pay like we all do so it's a it's hard to to say I'm gonna blow all this money on this animal but if you do get your foot in the door with the clutch, whether or not it's that special looking animal, people will still start to recognize you a lot more. And that'll, that'll give you a leg up rather than just being an unknown keeper saying, Hey, I'm looking for this. I'm looking for this,

you know, rarely patterned animal or rare. Like if I, I'm looking for this. I'm looking for this rarely patterned animal. If people didn't know me as someone who had had success with white-lipped pythons, if a red animal came up, I

don't think that I would be offered the red animal because it's such a rare thing to find. I think that some of that just comes down to money though you know and i think i do think i i i think i disagree with you that i think a lot of where imports go is to retail shops because that's i mean that's who's that's who's really gonna turn that animal around i had. I had a work cohort side story. She wanted a tree monitor.

And so I put her up on Joey Muggleston had a captive male up for sale. Beautiful, perfect, just bam, awesome. But it was like three grand. And she was like, holy crap, like, I'm not used to seeing this. And I showed her one that Triple L had that was an import for, you know, hundreds of dollars. And she's like, oh, that's more what I'm used to. So I think, you know, I think that the whole, like, they capitalize on that secondary price point of imports, and that's why it's such a great – it's such an easy thing for those big retailers to just – I'll take whatever you got with this, and it's easy for the importer too. It's sold as soon as they get it okay but what about your helms will you just give them to any would you be willing to give them to someone who's never proven themselves as a scrub keeper

well of course not of course not but i'm also not uh an importer uh you know so i i mean and you know my opportunities are lost yeah and and look let's be honest without bushmaster or cam i couldn't have done what i did so you know roll the play right like yeah but that whole thing was like 500 bucks i got this trio you want it you don't i was like i'll take it here's the money and that was it like i didn't have any choice they didn't come in messed up they were great they were super small like it was it was legit but it was just like i called at the right i got on the list and i saw him and i called and i'm like i'll take him here's my money shove it in his face through the phone like and I saw him and I called and I'm like, I'll take him. Here's my money. Shove it in his face through the phone. And he sent him out.

And so I think in those – for me, it was a chance encounter that I had to be willing to pull the trigger. And for $500 for a trio, he's like, oh, it's a reverse trio. I'm like, sold. Well, those things are gone. The imports cost a lot more now. Absolutely. And I think as they should, because it's very easy to be like, oh, I keep killing these Halmaheras when they're 500 bucks for a trio.

But, you know, when they're five grand or whatever, I don't think they'll ever be that. But I'm just saying it gives one pause for for error but that goes back to my other argument of getting a clutch with the animals that you can get like you said if you get a clutch with the animals you can get not the animal that you want if you're trying to be picky and you're like i only want this once but you get you get the animals you can you want to pick healthy ones you're not looking for a certain look and then you breed those and then you can sell those and then you have play money because you made snakes yeah and then you can fork over the money to the importers say hey look i have cash call me when you get this so i think it's a sticky

business of both because you yeah you you do want to sometimes have that or like you have to be less choosy like it's not too many at least nowadays it's not too often you get to see a reverse trio of hounds for 500 bucks yeah chuck you're you're captive bred alms honest to god from from the prices i've seen of captive bred southerns because they're so all over the place you could sell them for like eight grand easy no one about nine yeah i know i've been thinking about that i know people have asked me like everyone's asked me like how what would you sell them for what would you sell them for you can sell them from whatever you at this point because why but i think one of the things

i think as a hobby and a community, I think we could choose to be a little bit more picky, especially cause I am somewhat active, at least in terms of scrolling, kind of keeping tabs in the scrub groups is I see a lot of people that are just kind of, because also because we don't know a ton about localities and the, the difference between the Southerns and the Barnacks Northerns.

I'm seeing a lot of people just either starting to cross localities and produce stuff that looks like both localities. I mean, you can't really tell the difference locality-wise, or they're crossing Northers and Southerns. And because there hasn't been a lot of research, they're saying, oh, it's the same species as both Amethystina. They're not hybrids, even though you can clearly see there's something extremely different with those babies yeah and so i think just being a little bit yeah

maybe not as fruit or specific as i'm being but at least having a bit of i'm gonna wait for a good male to breed with my adult female and go that route versus uh well i have this and i have this i don't know if it was necessarily for science or just availability or something, but, yeah, the scrubbery has been blowing up about that cross of the northern and southerns. Chuck, I'm pretty sure you've seen them. Yeah, I mean, well, and listen, I think, you know, I think there's going to be a book coming out that's going to, you know, do some taxonomy on, on scrub pythons pretty soon. So wait, tell me more.

Right. I mean, it should be forthcoming. I believe so. I believe so. I believe a man. We all know. But it might be some other. It's not a book.

Is it a field guide? Maybe it's a paper. I'll take a pamphlet. Is it a field guide? Maybe it's a paper. Is it a review? I'll take a poster. Yeah. It's like a postcard. Now, I think a lot of these, you know, a lot of the discussions and things are around species that maybe you wouldn't consider like commercially viable or suitable for all purchasers kind of, kind of projects.

Do you think the argument changes if you get more, I guess commercially for, for better term commercially viable or more popular species? I would say it would still apply. Maybe not as tight, but I would say it still applies. I mean, look at some of the people that are crossing, I mean, or not crossing, that are waiting for the specific animals that they're looking.

People that have specific lines that they were very patient for and worked really hard over a long duration of time. I mean, you have Owen's caramels, you have Eric Hernandez's reds, his coastals that everyone is, I mean, if you've seen that, they're freaking amazing. I just looked at Sean Carroll's jungles that he's got,

even his jungle diamonds. Those things look phenomenal. So I think having that focus of I could get this for maybe a little bit cheaper or it's convenience, but I'm going to wait it out and get the animal that I know will better me and potentially better the hobby once it's more established. I think, I think it gets to apply. So we really have full switched, haven't we?

Yeah, we pretty much. What do you guys think about the, the red white lip Python? Because we don't know if it's a species, if it's a morph, it's a species if it's a morph it's a if it's a hybrid yeah that's the trick because i remember those uh uh junglots the maclot jungle crosses that looked like some weird morph of a carpet python and everybody was all excited and started buying them and then they found out that they were a hybrid and they're like oh you guys were in anaheim in 2018 do you guys see the super retic yeah that was super team or super team or that was horrible i'm like what was the purpose for a low price of 5k yeah exactly

and that seems to be kind of what they do and And, you know, I, I guess, uh, you know, it's still snakes in boxes. So we're not, we're not curing the world, you know, whatever, but we're, so it's not, we're not going to, we're not going to end the mass extinction. We're not, we're not in conservation by any stretch of the imagination but so you know more power to them but you know when when it's kind of like stuff that's rarely bred and then they're hybridizing it's like okay like that bollins hybrid is like what you know okay great but yeah nobody wants a hybrid bollins they only want Bolins. What happens when taxonomy comes through and does a hatchet job on you and gives you a hybrid to no fault of your own, you know?

Yeah. I mean, well, and I think it was mentioned before. If you're paying attention to those things, you're probably going to see that coming. You know, you're going have yeah it's easy with some things like kalma haras where they only come from one island and you're not gonna probably see a split within the island necessarily but i guess anything's possible you could sink everything into children eye if you're an anturesia taxonomist but so and by the way that photo on on inaturalist is pretty sweet along with the one eating eating a bird hanging from the tree that's pretty cool too so one to look at too is uh look at southern's

uh look at the amethyst unit in the tamika range uh those ones are off the charts but i can bet you a dollar that if those were imported into the hobby, those would instantly be thrown into highlands. Even though they're equally as flat. They're like a couple of meters above sea level in the Tamika Ranch. But there's one example in the Tamika that's just phenomenal. It almost looks like a diamond with that kind of patterning it has, that just intense fishnet with just the widest belly with just gold along the sides. It's like one of the prettiest southerns I've ever seen. That's the other thing is a lot of the phenotypes that we get out of um these places they're labeled they're labeled as a locality

when really it's just a wide-ranging phenotype so people will be like oh um i want to breed this cameron highlands ridley eye with another cameron highlands but then the people who live in Cameron Highlands say, that's not how they look here. We just put that on there. So, if we're trying to keep a locality or are we just trying to breed for a specific

phenotype, be basically a morph kind of breeder. That's the other thing is that it gets mixed up i don't know what side i'm arguing right now maybe both i think along with that the kind of line breeding gives us a false sense of everything looks like this you know this is what that looks like whereas we've line bred it so we've selected us for a certain phenotype and it could

be much more diverse or it could be have been different in some way and you know change compared to the wild type so yeah it's hard to we don't want to back ourselves into a corner that way yeah i saw there was a lady over in france on the timor python facebook group she just got a clutch of timor eggs and her female has this really aberrant um like reduced pattern on the neck where she has stripes and like little uh like the little uh saddles coming up the side rather than the normal pixelated look that a lot of the timores have but she bred it to a really pixelated male so so i'm really excited to see what's going to come out of that clutch to see the two phenotypes bred to each other like to me that's pretty exciting

rather than just breeding like two similar ones i I'm like, what's going to happen. You should want a hundred percent. No, not breed it again and just wait until she gets a suitable male. That's a similar pattern. Why further the species when you could have cool animals? Well, and I, you know, I think it's maybe, does it just come down to selfishness? You know, do you want to provide them for other people or do you just want to get what

you want? Hold on to them all. Sit in your, sit in your snake room and go, I have the whole collection. I'm learning from the great shuckles, man. Oh, wait, I'll a hundred percent Burke burk the clutch yeah there you go and before it was burk it was yasser yasser in the clutch yasser i feel like chuck definitely burped the the hounds oh yeah back to back burk yeah yeah i would definitely move them on but i mean i would i

would keep the stripe yeah i don't i further that, especially because it sounds like they are a natural occurring phenotype too. It's not just a... Well, now I've had striped carpets where I bred the stripe to another stripe and didn't get very striped animals. I would be sad. didn't get very striped animals, you know, I got, and so, you know, it could go the other way where I've also bred stripes to banded and gotten stripes out of it. So I think, uh, originally that's kind of how the tiger morph was shown to be polygenic is it didn't behave in a predictable manner and meaning that you had to have more than just one gene line up to make that phenotype. And so, you know, you could wait all this time and get another striped animal and they could be incompatible stripe genes.

They'd all be just normal, ugly. That was the pill. No, they would not be ugly. They didn't want to swallow right there. That's what I would just say. She's recessive for stripe. All the castings for $25. You would have been just fine

getting a normal banded animal up front and getting stripes down the road through line birding. I'm fine with any of them. I love these things. They're my favorite. That's the other thing. Who cares if you get a stripe?

They're all beautiful like oh yeah i love sending them pictures of beautiful like regular pattern southern seeing look at this one look at this one you should buy this one i really think it's hilarious that we have this idea that hybrids are or integrates i should say are you know worthless and shitty and carpets and there's actually some really cool ones but you go to condros and they're like oh no it's exactly the opposite these are like yeah the most expensive ones you can get yeah because they're so you know cool looking like it's such a it's it's such a like're so, you know, cool looking. Like it's such a, it's, it's such a, like a, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, how did you,

like how did two people that like, or like three degrees of separation back in the day on, on, uh, like MVF forum and, and really a Python's forum, you know, now all of a sudden, like we've, we, you know, we have the opposite, uh, you know, marketing strategy a sudden like we've we you know we have the opposite uh you know marketing strategy on on integrates it just seems weird yeah marketing oh you know you can see like people don't like it like the black backed uh black headed pythons and now everybody wants them yeah part of that has to do with the um for a lot of Morelia, the Australian species, to come in. And we can still get wild-caught green tree pythons.

But I bet you that it would kind of switch back if we were cut off from Indonesia. Yeah, for sure and you know we saw that with the retics you know you kind of it's it freezes in time once that importation valve is shut off and then you have what you have and you're all mixed up and crazy you know just trying to get morphs then that's what you've got now you've got morphs and that's it you know you don't have the option and and then you know people might change their mind and say well never mind i'm bored with the morphs i want the wild types yeah because the thing about the the um crosses in the green tree pythons is you see all the pictures of the really crazy like colorful like crazy blue ones and the crazy like black and

confetti looking ones but you don't see all the pictures of the plain green ones but if you could get a natural phenotype green tree python there's a they're pretty much all beautiful like they have crazy patterns they have a bunch of different colors um it's kind of a crapshoot with the and people would if they if they shut down indonesia and we couldn't get that wild type anymore i think that it totally would switch back to people wanting the wild type phenotype yeah it's always what the least produced or you know the the most in demand is usually the best the best part about all of that is is that all you have to do is wait for the long color change and they all turn green in the end. All about patience.

And you know, some of these have a really long color change time where, and they, you know, that's when you get all the pictures and look that, you know, for as crazy as those animals look in that period of time for their color change, there's people who are willing to fork out big bucks for that to be able to have that and capture it and you know and then they'll end up owning a green snake that doesn't get the fanfare that those pictures that they took ever will um but that's kind of what it is right um but you know it's it's it is really interesting that you know I mean, I don't know how much. I do think importation has something to do with it because they can get wild stuff in. But it's not like anybody like it's not like the Ed Bradleys or the old school guys that imported this stuff back in the day from Bushmaster that everybody's like, well,

if I want to do a cross, I got to import it. Like they're working from, you know, already known lines or if they're crossing it, you know, is it the biggest? So I don't, I mean, I think import plays a role, but I don't know if it's like a prime, it's not like everything that they're producing designers from comes right out of the wild and that's how they get it right um most most keepers do not want to be the over and over setting up wild caught animals to get them to you know try and breed like that would be that would be my least favorite job right there is the guy who sets up imports to get them to try and breed. So I don't know. I kind of disagree there, I guess. Yeah. Well, any final thoughts?

Have we covered everything you wanted to cover or is there something that's still in the back of your mind? Like you got to get that point out. The last word. I think we beat it we made it yeah we went full weird you know reverse card full circle but yeah we argued it up down and sideways flipped it flipped it we've definitely covered every angle all right i'm sure when people people listen, they'll find something that we missed and

they'll make that suggestion. I'm sure we'll be able to have you guys back again at some point. Word. Or someone will be like, that's not the truth. And then they'll come and want to try their hand in the ring.

There you go. All right. It was a good discussion. Thanks for coming on, you guys. Cheers, guys. Thank you for your time. Happy anniversary. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks. Any cool things in the news? Any neat reptile news you've heard? I've been looking at these T tamika locality scrubs as well they're really cool they're so pretty oh my gosh i'll send it in the group chat for other people but it's it's one of my favorite ones i've seen so far i naturalist is fun like it's really yeah it's fun to do it with your friend too yeah oh yeah it was a blast i would advise all right another one is like flicker like getting Flickr and like looking at the,

especially when they like include where they found the animal. So Flickr is like, Flickr is just like geotag photos. It's just a photo hosting site. So people take pictures and they can include information on where they caught, you know, where they took the picture or whatnot.

Do they tag? They, they tag, they, they tag them like if you're looking at a certain species they'll tag them with that species usually if it's like a herper that found it they'll they'll give it like the scientific name but sometimes you can do search for common names sometimes it's in a tank you know somebody's pet and they're taking pictures

of it in the yard or something but you can tell the wild ones. And that's when we were doing the research for the book, that's where we'd find a lot of the photos that we wanted to include in the book. We'd find it on like Flickr or something. Cause they're really good pictures and you know, cause they're photographers. It's for photographers. Noah,

what was it that we were trying to not Google maps? What is it? So you're talking about, is it Marco Shea that had had his photos he said he had yeah he had he said he had he told someone i saw that he had told someone on facebook if you need information i have all my photos on google earth like like you had him tagged but i think it's a private file yeah he can only share it yeah because we were like

oh my god we have to see this and we were trying to find it you didn't ask him for it? I'm always bugging him I feel like I'm a dork she's probably not that crazy girl again there's also like hurt mapper

that's pretty good too but I don't think you can like the photo quality and zooming in and things maybe it's better I don't know but herp mapper ALA is a good one too Atlas of Living Australia they have like a

bunch of yeah you can get see where animals were collected and sometimes it'll a lot of, yeah, you can get, see where animals were collected. And sometimes it'll be like a lot of Aussies use that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's got like the museum records and stuff like that. Got it. Yeah.

What was the Herp one called? Herp Mapper. Mapper. Yeah. That's a, that's another one that's like used. That one's in the U.S. Yeah. That's more in the U.S. But it includes ones throughout the world. So I know. That's such one that's used. That one's in the U.S. Yeah, that's more in the U.S.

But it includes ones throughout the world. That's such a name that happened during the app boom. I forget who made that one. It's the guy that does the herping podcast, right? Oh, I'm not sure. He has a herping podcast. I'm so terrible with names anyway. Me too.

I barely remember my own name. I'm like, what is that thing called? We are trying to find Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Earth. The herping podcast, the Pingleton, Mike Pingleton? Pingleton, yeah. Is he the one who started that? I think he might have been involved with, I don't know if he started it or not. I'm not sure.

Yeah, I don't know. But he was promoting it. Yeah. I think on his podcast. Yeah, he uses that a lot. Donald Becker. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah his podcast. Yeah. He uses that. Donald Becker. Okay. Yeah.

So, yeah, I wouldn't have called that. I don't. Yeah. I was thinking Mike Pingleton. You remembered him, though. Yeah. No, he's. I love his podcast.

He does a good podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I think he did like a. I had a YouTube. Where he showed his trip through Mexico. And they found all these animals. They found a boa.

Yeah, that's cool. They found Dickersoni as well. Dickerson's Collar, the blue ones that are down just by one island and one little place on the mainland. I don't think I watched that video, that part of the video. I don't know if it was a video. I just remember him talking about it and I found some photos that he'd taken online or it was on his blog or something, but yeah. I love herping.

That's too many good places to go and see stuff. So, yeah. All right. Well, do you want to throw out your information in case one of people want to get a hold of you you can find me at lisa farina on facebook and instagram okay you can find me at under or a bigfoot underscore wannabe yep or uh my other reptile account uh Pappy and the Dipsticks. Nice. All right. Some interesting names there.

First one isn't any reference to Owen, right? No, it's not. I made that one years ago. And I feel like the second one could be a Simpsons character. Yeah. That's our band, man. We're sticking to it. That's your band? Oh, nice. That did sound like a band name. Yeah, so all of my family on my dad's side are all musicians.

Musicians. And so we all made a joke. If we were ever to start up a band, it would be Pappy being my grandfather and the dipsticks. Ah. Makes sense. Yeah. That's funny.

Got it. Nice. Well, thanks again for coming on, you guys. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Yeah. We'll have another episode for you next week on reptile fight club. Later. Thank you. Bye.