Reptile Fight Club - Justin & Rob May Check In

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob check in for a quick update on what they have been up to.Who 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, welcome, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. My name is Justin Julander. If you didn't know that. And I'm your host for this evening's podcast with me on a bit of a host solo venture here for recording tonight is Mr. Rob Stone. Ahoy, hoi, ho. Good times. We've got some adventures to report on. and so I think Rob got the better end of the herpetology or the herpetological adventures,

but I had some pretty cool stuff happen as well. So we'll kind of chat about that and any other fun things going on. Yeah. So I guess let's get into it. I just had my first clutch hatch. So one of two, I don't have any other clutches in the incubator. I've got two clutches. It's so weird.

It's a very slow year. And all I can think of is just that mild winter just kind of trashed everything. But I guess we'll see if anything else lays. I thought I had a few more gravid females, but they're not really acting like they're very gravid. So we'll see what happens. Hopefully it's not a bunch of slugs waiting for me. But yeah. So on the, I guess, herpicultural side, it's not too exciting.

What hatched out? Some of those funky eastern Stimson's pythons that I've got a few black-eyed individuals in there. And these are the ones that the first clutch, they had like pied tails and black eyes and kind of a cool project, the little side dinker project. And so I've bred the male and female and produced several of those black. black-eyed looking things, but they didn't really have the pied tails after that. So I'm not sure why the change. But, yeah, they're pretty interesting and sold a few of them. So they're getting out there.

But, yeah, it's not the most dramatic thing. Maybe similar to the black-eyed children's, I guess. They're all children's, right? So, yeah. But so, yeah, that's, I guess, excitement and fun. And the other clutch I've got in the incubator are those piggy. me banded so I'm excited for them to have. They're about maybe 20 days after the first clutch.

So we'll see how that goes. But, um, and yeah, I've been gone for a couple weeks. So I need to get out in the reptile room really do a thorough check and clean and all that good stuff. Yeah. So see how that goes. But yeah, it's, uh, I'm, I'm still dragging a little bit, a little jet lagged and tired. Yeah. keep waking up in the middle of the night, two or three a.m. for some reason, it doesn't

correspond to any, like, active time in Europe. So, but, yeah, so, I don't know. Do you want to go first, or should I? Well, my first question, just to highlight the weirdness is where we live. I'm guessing, actually, I know the answer, but did you get snow yesterday or today or will you tomorrow? No, we didn't. We got rained on a couple days ago. I think it was, yeah, it must have been Monday or maybe it was Tuesday. Yeah, we got rain in the morning and then it went away and it was clear in the afternoon. I think I mowed my lawn later that day. So it had grown a little bit while we were gone. So it needed a good mo. But yeah, so, yeah, no snow. But you guys got snow on. Yeah, I think, you know, variably in the local area three to six inches. Oh, wow. I think because it was a mile winter, yeah, because it was a mile winter, you know, all the schools were red, they had snow days burning a hole in their pocket. Right.

Local kids got a, you know. Darned. Yeah. That's cool. At the same time, classic Colorado fashion where you get a snow day and then the roads are dry by the afternoon. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, I'm glad we took the day off for this.

Yeah, I mean, I think Right, yeah, they got to burn them anyway. I'm likely to use them, you know. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, I mean, common for here too. You'll get a, you know, early spring or late spring, I guess, in this case, a snowstorm or, and it'll be around for a day or two and then it's gone. Yeah, you don't even, yeah, notice that it snowed, but. Brought down some branches and things, you know, was a lot of heavy.

Yeah, heavy wet stuff. It was a lot of rain that then turned into snow. So, yeah, it was. And things have bloomed and all that. So it really catches them. That's hard when, yeah, when things have already bloomed and you got a bunch of flowers and then it snows and then you lose all that. Yeah. We've had some pretty bad fruit years when that happens too.

So hopefully that doesn't happen out there. But a lot of the trees don't even have leaves on them yet. So it's kind of, yeah, like they're growing now or something. It's been a little colder this week with this, with the, with, the rain. So I'm a little surprised it didn't. It may have snowed up higher, but didn't snow in the valleys. Yeah. Yeah, it's typical Utah, Colorado. You know, whether you can see a snowstorm just about any time of the year, it seems kind of crazy. Yeah, I mean, other than, you know, you could even get it in June and then other than July and August, you know, it can happen. Yeah, fair game in the other

month. But yeah, this is an exceptionally mild winter. So I'm hoping that's all it was and things will be back to normal next year. We'll see. But yeah, how about you go ahead? I think you left first. Hopefully people haven't noticed. We were able to put some extra shows in and having them come out. So I think we'll only wind up missing one week despite going about three weeks without having recorded one. Right. Yeah, because I think I left on the 30. Thursday that you know, we're supposed to record, which was, what, two and a half weeks ago? So we flew over, flew into Prague because that's where my conference is. So we rented a car at the airport and then drove about an hour.

So we got there later at night. And so we just got a hotel room near the airport and then grab the car the next morning and head out to Pilsen, Chechia. and man, what a fantastic zoo. Like, it was really cool. I mean, we walked straight to the reptile house pretty much. And just to, the main attraction there, at least for me, was the spider-tailed vipers, pseudo-cerastis, or arachnoidies, or uracognities, yeah. And, man, they did not disappoint.

It was pretty. pretty cool. And I mean, you walk in the building and these enclosures are pristine, fantastic looking enclosures. You walk past the tortoise enclosure and then you've got this big Mangachan viper enclosure that's huge. And I mean, this thing looked like it was posed. It was just on this branch. It had looked like it had been rained on, you know, and it's kind of covered with water droplets. Oh, incredible. Like beautiful display, beautiful animals on. on display. They all looked really nice and healthy. And then you walk around the corner and there's the spider tail viper enclosures. And it looks like the hills of Iran. It's like these jagged, you know, rock cliffs out of 10, you know, eight to 10 foot enclosure. And the rock face goes pretty much

the entire height of the enclosure with, you know, little holes and nukes and crannies. Yeah. And so I see one up on the top, and it's kind of behind a rock, so it's hard to look at. So I'm like, oh, you know, it's cool, but you're not really getting to see the tail or the head or anything like that. So I'm like, well, that, you know, it's kind of a let down a little bit, right? And so, you know, we walked around to some of the other enclosure. And they had a lot of venomous snakes in that. I think it's like the, I don't read Chegg. So it was a little hard, and I didn't have my, I.

had my phone out to take pictures instead of videos or translation or whatever. But I think it's like the kingdom of venom or something. So they had a lot of, I mean, they had, you know, the green, the green mambas and black mambas, inland tippans, you know, death adder, all sorts of cool venomous snakes. Some blackheaded bushmasters and really cool stuff. And like not just one or two, they're like four in the cage. and then, you know, and this is a good sized enclosure. So you're kind of trying to find, you know, all the different species. And so then I see a zookeeper.

And so I went back to the spider tail viper and he was kind of looking in there. So I'm like, because there were two enclosures. And I'm like, well, I don't see anything in this one. Is there anything in there? And he's like, oh, no, no, this one's empty. But look up, you know, you can see the one up there. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I saw that one. And this one down here.

And there was one sitting right in front of the glass at the front of the cage. I completely missed it, you know. And I mean, they're so, so cryptic looking. They just look like a rock lump, you know. And so, yeah, I was just right there. Its tails kind of splayed like right next to the front of the cage. So I'm like, oh, thank you. I'm really glad I talked to you, you know.

And then they had a baby on display that they'd hatched out, you know, fairly recently. Yeah. So I was pretty, pretty pumped to see those. It was really cool. And, you know, they had an amazing bird collection, too. They had these, like, crazy parrots I'd never heard of, you know, this New Caledonian parrot or parakeet or something. And it had like this feather sticking straight up out of its head, you know, this like single spike, you know, feather spike going out of the top of its head is kind of like a quail or something. Pretty cool.

And just, you know, bright, beautiful, nice-looking animals, very healthy looking, you know. I see a lot of American zoos and things. Things just look like, like, either old half dead or, yeah, like huge and much bigger than they should be. But all these seem to be active and out moving around and like moving through just a beautiful planted enclosure or whatever. So, yeah, I was, I was very impressed with this. And so, yeah, we spent a little bit of time in the reptile house there just kind of drooling over stuff and really enjoying it. And then we, oh, the king cobra enclosure was massive. And this thing was pretty huge king cobra.

And he was moving around the cage. You know, it was pretty cool. And then we went and we were walking to the next area. And Heidi's like, oh, I need to use the restroom. So we go into this place that had a sign for restrooms. And we walk through these doors. And like, I look over and there's a big giant Meritans monitor enclosure. And I'm like, oh, that's cool.

And then he's like, oh, I see a little monitor poking his head out of this log. And I go over and it's Mitchell's water monitor. I'm like, oh my gosh, they have Mitchell eye on display. And then over on the other wall, we're like a couple velvet geckos and leaf tail geckos, you know, other Australian geckos. I'm like, man, I'm sure glad you had to go to the bathroom because we wouldn't have seen these otherwise. Yeah, I would have missed it completely. So that was pretty cool.

And then we went up to this desert dome type thing. It had like a lot of plant, like succulents and like Madagascan cacti and stuff like that. And then at the very, the end, they had like some, one of those South African like padloper tortoises yard. That is very cool. They had a couple of those. And they were in the same enclosure were some agamids and, you know, all sorts of cool stuff. And then along the side, there were more, you know, agammas and like a lot of them, you know, so you can just sit and watch them moving around interacting with each other and kind of hiding from.

people coming by. A big, a big, uh, gidgey skink in one, you know, just hanging out on a rock. And they were all like multi-species enclosures with several different kinds of, uh, lizards or, you know, like a pancake tortoise in with the, the gamids and stuff. Really cool. One enclosure had a few heel monsters, you know, it was, it was pretty amazing. That's neat.

Yeah. Um, they had a, like a cliff face that was all, you know, fenced in, but they had a snow leopard. And like it could climb up this cliff face that was pretty sheer, you know, like, and we couldn't see it from the bottom. So I went up to the top of, you had to kind of go up this path, a pretty steep path. And then you can look over the enclosure and there's just this snow leopard like, you know, spread out, just kind of laying on the top of this cliff. And, you know, if it fell, it would, you know, probably be hurt pretty badly. It was a pretty good, you know, 30-foot cliff or more. Pretty amazing.

So, yeah, I was really impressed with that zoo. And, you know, we were, I, this was Heidi's trip, so I didn't want to, you know, so I felt like, man, you're, you know, you're letting me go to the zoo. That's pretty cool. Not that, you know, she, she offered a lot more zoos along the way. She's like, oh, we should go to the zoo in this town. I'm like, it doesn't look like that. It's that impressive, you know. But we ended up going to three zoos.

So we went to the Plin Zoo, the Berlin Zoo, and then the Prague Zoo. And, man, really cool stuff, you know, all three, basically. So the prison was right on the front end. And then the other two were kind of on the back end. So you can talk about those in a bit. But we made our way through, like, Southern Germany, hit some kind of medieval towns. Rotenberg was a really cool. spot. That was really fun, walled city, you know, and staying right in the middle of the center of

town. We had to, like, park our car outside the gates and walk into town with our bags and stuff, but it was pretty cool to be right there in the center of this town that's like, you know, started, I think they started building, like, in the 1300s or something or the 900, 800 AD. You're like, holy crap, that's an old place, you know. And then went down to, you. Heidi land. So Heidi was very excited about that, but that's down in Switzerland. And then on the way out, we went through Austria and what's the Liechtenstein. So we got to hit these kind of cool little, I'd never been to Austria, so that was kind of nice to poke into there a little bit and see Austria and Liechtenstein. But, and when we were in France,

we kind of did the same thing where we just kind of went into Switzerland a little bit. So it was nice to get into actual German speaking Switzerland instead of that French speaking nonsense. I speak German. So it's, you know, it's kind of fun to get back. And it's kind of frustrating, though, because everybody starts into English if they hear your accent or whatever. So it's like, I'll just speak English. I'm like, I'm trying. I want to speak German.

I don't get very many opportunities to speak German. So I'm thinking, I'm in Germany. I get to speak. And, you know, a lot of people would speak German, so that was kind of fun. So we went back north and hit another town, and then we were supposed to route to this mountain. I think it was Bergels, or Els, something like that, another castle area. And I typed in Bergels into the maps, and it routed me there. And so I'm driving, and, you know, we're driving maybe an hour, hour and a half.

And I'm like, these mountains look familiar. And then it's like border crossing. I'm like border crossing. I'd gone to the wrong burghals and was down in Switzerland again. So I was like, no wonder everything looked familiar. You know, you're like stupid. So I was like, oh, that's kind of lame. So I, we pulled over, went to a gas station to fill up or whatever. And I hear this noise. And I'm like, they got kooka bears back there. It sound like a bunch of kooka bears calling. And it was really loud. And so we go wandering back and there's this big pond behind the gas station. It was kind of like a part of the gas station where they had like a little patio and chairs set up, you know, so you could get something. It was pretty good, good size, like complex of like a gas station and shops and, you know, restaurants inside this area.

And so I'm looking in the pond and there's these big, you know, aquatic frogs and they're calling and, you know, this stuff. And so I'm like, oh, that's really cool. So I'm video on taking pictures and stuff. And there's probably, you know, a dozen or more in there. And we saw quite a few of them. And, you know, you'd miss them until they'd jump. And they don't know. There's another one, you know.

But it's kind of fun. They had the two little side. Like air sacs or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, that they're inflating to make that cool noise and, you know, chasing females around. It was really fun to sit and watch them. So I guess a happy little accident. And then we drove a little bit through Leichtenstein and went down by the river and, you know, kind of got out and walked around and saw some cool birds and stuff like that.

So happy little accident. I'm trying to ID the frogs, right? So I put them into INAT. And INAT comes back with Marsh Frog. And so I asked Nipper, I'm like, you know, what would they be in this area? He's like, oh, Marsh Frog, you know, because I think they gave me a couple choices. But Marsh Frog was the top, you know, choice or whatever. But then I looked at some of the other records and it just was the genus.

I can't recall off the top of my head. So I'm like, okay, you know, I guess what is there some dispute of what they might be down here? And I asked Nipper and he's like, nah, that's the only thing that could be there. That's the only thing that would be there. He's like, they do interbreed. And so sometimes it's hard. But down there, it's pretty clean. And so I put up, you know, several records on NAD.

And then, yeah, this guy gets on and takes it back to the genus level. I'm like, oh, what's the point of that? You know, like, unless you have firm evidence that it's not one thing, then, you know, why, why do we go with that rather than just go with Marshfrog, which is expected in that area? It's just silly. Yeah, the fun bit of this, right, is that I get to play along a little bit at home, subscribed or whatever the right language is, to your INAT account. So I see, you know, there's the daily email update or whatever with things that have been added. and I see you put six of these on there. And, you know, so I click on one and I see that this has happened, right?

You put, well, I had seen your communication with Nip-Purn, right? That was on the group chat and stuff. And then I go in there. I see your post. And then I see, yeah, up to the genus level. And I had to translate the comment from our pedantic German friend. And it just says, whatever, it's, it's just like, oh, you can't define that based on this picture. But you would put up, you know, there was six, seven of them that you posted,

all really good high resolution imagery. And my point of contention is fundamentally, right, back to the silliness of taxonomy of if we're saying that looking at something, if you can't, with good photographs, you know, good representative high quality images, if you can't define something to a species level based on that, then our frog, tag autonomous friends in Europe have probably gotten a little species happy. I can understand, you know, the idea that like, oh, well, we, you know, define different, you know, frog species based on male calls and things. But if we're talking about conspecific species that look the same and that, you know,

we're defining species solely based on this, then, you know, I'm sorry for my, you know, I'm a splitter to you, but I think we're probably jumping the shark on that. right right yeah it's really kind of a frustrating thing to be like okay it's also fundamentally made me stop posting records on INA right is I just hate that one of a couple things but certainly that's a big part of it is I just don't need that sort of negativity in my life man right right yeah I mean and long as it's consistent with what should be there yeah but I did yeah so the funny thing as I was so I probably you know, especially you always come off as so calm and cool and collected in the group chat,

is I then took a step out. I just looked at the map where you had pulled it from, right, and set the, okay, what sort of amphibians are getting in this area. And there was something more than 100 records, and only 19 of them were accepted down to the species level. And I said, this is not elucidatory. This is not helpful, right? No, not at all doing is saying that these frogs, Because, you know, within this, you know, 40 square mile box or, you know, if 80% of them, 90% of them can't be identified beyond the genus level, this is, you know, it's not helpful to anyone.

Right. And my contention is if they don't know one way or another, then what does it matter if it's at a species level? Because once they do the research and find out that it's this or that, then they can go back and change it. Like, it's not that big of a deal, you know, it just seems like more of a hassle to change everything back. And that's probably why there's so much contention is because some guy did that in the first place. Like, oh, no, you can't know. So we're going to change it back to the genus level. And then I don't know why INAT sides with one person over, you know, I guess they take the path of least resistance or something.

Like, well, we know for sure it's in that genus. We don't default to the highest level. Yeah, you know, a systematic level that is group accepted or what. And that's the other thing that drives me bananas is that all the sort of the banal little labels that'll put on, oh, you're a trailblazer because you're the one going against the group. No, man, don't. Do not. Do not.

Yeah. No, Maverick. It shows you. Right. Maverick. That's right. And it's just like, no. I don't think that's funny.

Yeah. I mean, I've had those instances where I've gone on and seen people that have labeled Pygmy Bannid Python or Pygmy Stimpsons, whatever you want to call them. Technically, they're classified now as children's pythons, thanks to our friends. Exactly. The lumpers there. But people were calling them spotted pythons. I'm like, no, that's the thing they're not here.

You know, these are pygmy bat. The pattern is consistent. They look, they look to. You and I went through the whole range map situation discussion, all this stuff. Yeah. I also got on to INA and found all the, you know, the ones that are pygmy band of pythons and had a headshot where you could measure the distance between their eye and their nostril scale or whatever. And I did that for all the, you know, groups in the children's python complex.

And they're significantly shorter in their snout length. I mean, it's like there's a lot of features that can help you ID those, you know, where they don't look like a spotted Python. I mean, to, yeah, there's somebody who hasn't really looked or doesn't really know. Yeah, sure. But like I'm getting on there. I'm like showing a publication that has photos of these things, showing, you know, what they look like in that area. And I'm like, okay, compare with this publication and then come back and see what you think, you know. And Dave Barker got on there.

Okay, I looked at the publication. and you're right, you know, and he changed his answer to children's python. I also hate how it crosses out stuff. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a weird thing. And if there's a taxonomic change and it crosses it out and puts everything out.

Yeah. It's like, just change it. Don't, don't cross it out because then it makes it look like you're an idiot or something. You got it wrong. Well, no, this is a taxonomy change instead, you know. But so, yeah, I've kind of gone on that side and I've been a maverick in that regard where I'm Like look at the pattern people. This is consistent.

Like look at other spotted pythons in this area. They don't look anything like this, you know. But look at the children's pythons in this area. They look exactly like this. So, you know, I can see like, I mean, that's kind of what you're trying to bring to it is that. I for those subtle differences and things like that, you know. And I mean, I'm happy. I'm very happy if anybody like, oh, no, sorry, it's not that spider.

it's this spider. It's not that mushroom. It's this. Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. You're the expert. I am definitely not an expert in that area, you know. So I've got a very small realm of where I feel like an expert. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Or taxonomy. You know, then I'm not interested. That's the conversation I'm not interested. Right. Right. And, you know, I've seen that a little bit too where you'll put a species and then they'll add the subspecies. That's fine. But like if 10 people have just gone along with the species and it's that species. you know, I don't know how much value there is to, but at the same time, like, I'm adding dessert acola to, you know, pitioophis, uh, catanifer, you know, because I want, it's, it's that subspecies in Utah or whatever. So I'm a little picky on that as far as like the garter snakes or the gopher snakes or whatever that have well-defined subspecies. And I'm sure it's the same

thing for like a red-tailed hawk or something. But sometimes there's those new taxonomic things that you know you may not be familiar with and i think um magister the magister complex fell under that where magister and uniformis were full species and now they've changed them to subspecies of magister and so then you got to go back and you know and then you look yeah oh they crossed out your uniformis and put magister uniformis instead so whatever i mean taxonomy is kind of that fun little stepchild of yeah it was just a reminder to me of yeah you know yeah exactly Exactly. Right. So, but it was fun to see that. And then I did neglect that we did go in. We went on and saw that crazy, you know, castle area, the Schwan, Noe Schwanstein and kind of Schwan gal that area. And we did a hike up to one of the castles. And on the way up to hike, there was this billboard thing that had a little paper with a pitch.

of an alpine noot or not an alpine salamander and they're like black and look really cool and i'm like oh i could so i'm looking on i nat scene and people had made records in that area so i'm like oh maybe we'll see one so i'm you know flipping rocks and logs and stuff where where it was convenient along the trail and where people weren't around you know to say hey knock that off or whatever but you know we didn't see we didn't get lucky to see any but we got up to this suspension bridge that kind of had this view of the castle, a dramatic, you know, across the valley view. And you look down and there's this big gorge with a huge river running through. It was pretty cool. And then all of a sudden it commenced to just hail on us. It was like big hailstones that

actually kind of hurt, you know, hitting you. And so we ducked under this rock ledge trying to get out of the weather. But that was kind of a fun. And that was the only rain we got. And I was thinking, well, maybe with the rain, we might see a salamander, but no luck. But that night, we stayed in a hotel. And in the back behind the hotel, they had a pond. And I remember nipper sand, any standing water will probably have nukes. And so I went out in the morning and I'm looking in the pond. And sure enough, there's like 50 alpine nukes swimming around in the pond. So that was kind of cool to see a bunch of those. And they're bright, you know, the males have bright orange bellies. And they were interacting like kind of breed. activity going on. So they're all just kind of swimming around each other and stuff. So that was pretty cool. So that was the other one. And then in Heideland, there were wall lizards all over the place, just common wall lizards, but really neat looking lizards. So those were the three wild species we saw. So and then, yeah, at the Berlin Zoo, the big bummer was that we did the aquarium and the zoo together.

but the first floor of the aquarium was shut down and that was like they're basically the reptile collection. So that was kind of a lame deal. But I still remember going in there in the mid-90s when I lived in Berlin and seeing like this huge enclosure of frilled lizards and they're just running around and, you know, interacting. And I just sat and stared at him for probably 30 minutes. It was like, come on, let's go. But just, you know, they have some really fun stuff there. So I was a little sad that that was not open and accessible. But, yeah, so the Berlin Zoo was, you know, they had some nice stuff, but it's kind of like,

I think the coolest stuff there was like some of the birds. They had some king vultures that were kind of hopping around their enclosure and, you know, bathing in the little stream thing. And they had some bearded vultures in the same or neighboring enclosure that were pretty, impressive looking, you know, so it was pretty cool. But I think the Prague Zoo was, it rivaled the Pilsons Zoo as far as the collection went. They had just some crazy stuff. They had, I got some videos for Keith, but they had some Lantanotis, some of the Ornian earless

monitors on display. And the thing was swimming back and forth across the front of the glass. They had some pangolins on, you know, that were on display. Didn't expect to see those. They had some pretty rare Batigurs, the river turtles that are from Southeast Asia that are pretty endangered. I think that was the species that was down to like 20 individuals and they've did some captive breeding efforts. And now they've got like 500 or something, but still very threatened for sure in the wild. And let's see, we were, we went into this, they had a great exhibit with like collared lizards and chuckwales and, you know, desert tortoises, or they were Texas tortoises.

So I didn't see a Texas tortoise before. So that was kind of cool. Jordan and I were in their habitat and looking for them, but didn't get lucky to see any of that trip. But so I know I really want to go find some because they're pretty neat looking. But it was a really cool exhibit, like multi-species. You know, I love those kind of exhibits. They had some, um, some of the giant horn lizards in there, too, but they'd already dug in or something.

I caught, I caught a zebra-tail lizard just kind of disappearing under the sand, like, right as we got there, because we kind of, we were towards the end of the day, unfortunately. I think if I would have known that those things were in there, I would have gone there first because the other big enclosure kind of across the way from that American deserting exhibit was an African or I think Middle Eastern exhibit, but they had the Sara Lorikata, those, Euromastics type, big, wordy looking things. Yeah, really cool. But he was under a rock ledge. And so I only got kind of a glimpse of him, you know, his little face sticking out or whatever. So that was kind of a bummer. I would have really liked to have seen that. And Heidi was like, oh, you can come back tomorrow. And I'm like,

I don't want to, you know, take two to in. There's no guarantee he's going to be out tomorrow either. So, but they had those, uh, to, or the tote headed again is the mysticist with the side, you know, frills. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was really cool to see those. Because one kind of popped out of the sand and he actually kind of flared out his. Yeah.

So it was pretty cool to see that. And they're, they're neat looking little lizards to the flat heads, you know. Yeah. Um, but just some really cool, cool exhibits in these zoos. It was, it was really impressive. So. Very cool. Those were my herpetological adventures.

Yeah, well, and neat that they, the portal working to good effect, you know, I'm sure all that's legitimate legal and whatever. But, you know, a lot of those things are things that you just don't see here even in zoos. Yeah. Which is really neat, you know. Yeah, for sure. And that's, I mean, that's the thing is like, you know, you just have this, I don't know, I guess Europeans really kind of know how to do it upright. Like they had some really impressive enclosures. Yeah, yeah, it's not just the same stuff, you know.

And I mean, you know, they had lions and gorillas and stuff like that. And we kind of breeze through that a little bit. But yeah, it was their reptile collections were really stuff you just don't see everywhere. And it was like cage after cage. And I missed quite a bit at the Prague Zoo because we got there. We let we got there around one. And then they closed like at five or seven. six and so it's like we didn't have that much time and i was spending way too much time you know

staring at the lanthan otis or that kind of stuff i was like oh boy but what do you do yeah 100% okay so i'll be hopefully putting together some videos here soon and and getting those out yeah checking stuff but all right well let's hear about your herp adventure yeah so a couple or two right yeah he did two trips the first one went out to northern California second time out there you know herb focused or at least you know largely herb focused

even more so this time right because did you go with your family this time or were you solo no solo this time we'd gone family trip over spring break so it was two years ago so it was even earlier and it wound up being we had a couple good days that could have been okay but it was like probably high 50s, low 60s, and overcast when we had been there two years before.

So it definitely gave the impression of being a couple weeks early. It did turn up some cool stuff anyway. Lots of Coast Gartersnake, on the trip two years ago, Coast Gartersnakes, California red-legged frog, banana slugs, which is cool. Yeah, they're neat. The Ancetinos that look like, Tarichia, no Tarichia, but. and Satina was cool. But yeah, consciously the goal this time was to go, you know, four weeks later or so to try to be more firmly in a good weather window. It actually had been coming out of, not as dramatically as here, but they had had warm weather and then it cooled down.

And then it was just warming up when I did go back out there. stayed with our friend and network co-host, young Mr. Lucas Lee, which was amazing. Now, did you stay at his house? Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's cool. Yeah, so that was cool.

I saw you on, were you on carpets and coffee? Is that what it was? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From his place. Yeah.

So that was Friday. He had to work on Friday. He had taken Thursday off. We went up to, you know, a couple hours north from there to go meet up with Roy Arthur Blasje. Oh, cool. Really cool, dude. Yeah, I like Roy. Yeah, so the three of us and Roy's Wolfdog Hybrid were out in the field all day on Thursday, which was good.

Nice. From a Lister perspective, the principal objectives was, you know, two things that should be very easy. The Northern Pacific Rattlesnake and the Pacific Gopher Snake. But I didn't have either of them And you just got to, you know, it was a function of only having been there The one time previously in the weather just being just that little bit off You know, I was certainly in the habitat for both of them And had at the time, you know, the great frustration of feeling like

I know you're even up, but you're just not out right now Or I'm not seeing you And it's like if it was five degrees warmer or that cloud moves Then we're okay. But it wasn't to be but that's just as well because this trip was really great. You know, when we were out with Roy on Thursday, it wound up being a more than 40 snake day, which was pretty good.

That's awesome. Yeah. And not something that is, I don't know, I don't know if it's indicative of where we, I usually go herping. I don't know. But, you know, we hear that kind of more so on the East Coast or East Coast and Midwest. You know, people will talk about 100 snakes in a day. And then they say, well, 85 of them were ringnecks or what, you know, and that's fine, but it's like, okay.

And I just, it's pretty rare for me to have that experience. So that was a little bit different. It was a good mixture of things. Lots of Coast Guardersnakes. That was probably the singular, you know, the form that we saw the most. Other items of interest, the ringnecks, talk of ringnecks. The ringnecks out there are really cool. You know, they're that light gray with the bright neck band and then the very bright ventral orange into red.

Yeah, really neat. Yellowbelly racers, subspecies Mormon. I was actually talking to Brendan about that. I guess that I didn't realize that those are lifers because potentially, if I'm failing to remember something, I knew we had been in Colorado, but I guess only on the western slope, the ones that I've seen locally are a different subspecies as well. Okay. Flavvy Pinterest, maybe? Maybe. Yeah. I don't know. That was news to me. I need to poke around it a little bit. We saw some in Utah, right? Those would be Mormon. Yeah.

I don't know if. The ones in my area are. I don't think we got a very good, I know we spooked a couple and they took off, but we didn't get a very good look at them. Yeah, we did see. I don't think I got photos. I'd have to look. Yeah, I don't think you did get photos. But yeah, we definitely saw them. They disappeared pretty quick. But yeah, they were there. Not as I hoped.

I thought we might get a better look at them. But, yeah. And I was just checking. When I was on the gorge, the between Washington and Oregon, I saw a Pacific, northern Pacific gopher snake as well. So I'm on the board with that one, I guess. the board for that one too. So, yeah, those were the two principal targets and, you know, really kind of the area of focus. So now what on your list, you mentioned the list, you're pretty close to completing the United States crotolis.

Yeah. Yeah. So. Mainland, I guess, right? Yeah. Well, you, for crotelists, yeah, U.S. should be entire U.S. form. So obviously not Mexico. But I have that as 27.

I counted as having seen 25. Probably need to do. I have one more that, you know, in that 25 that I count that I, you know, before going to press or whatever would want to get more photos of, kind of the same thing. Okay. The kind of color thing. But, yeah, that's 25, 27, cane breaks and obscures. That's awesome. So, yeah, we'll see.

One easy, or fairly easy, one not so fairly easy. Yeah, we kind of, you know, I guess following up on previous conversation, it was like easy, medium hard. Well, the easy one is now gone. Yeah, I'd say it's medium. Medium and hard. Hard to, you know, just the side of impossible. So, yeah, we'll see. The pituitous, I think, is now seven out of ten.

Okay. Yeah. So that, there is an island form. in the U.S., which doesn't seem that difficult. It's more the venture. It's almost the nipper style. Did you see that? Yeah, did you see that post about the island night lizards?

No. Somebody got out to one of those islands off of the coast of California where there's this giant night lizard that's found. And apparently they're pretty plentiful once you get there. They're not hard to find. But it's just getting there. because there's no, you know, cove or sandy beach to land on. You've got to climb up rocks and, you know, kind of find your way up the island. But then once you get up there and they're impressive, they're really cool looking.

They are huge compared to, you know, the typical night lizards. But it made me like, okay, I think I want to do that. Maybe it can make sense. Yeah. But I wonder if it's the same area where you're going to see a different kind of gopher snake as well. We could kill two birds with one stone. as it were, but kind of cool. Yeah, maybe so.

So, yeah, that was great. I'm trying to think of what else. We did not, notably, did not see at any of those places on Thursday with Roy, any of the red-sided garter snakes, which is a bit of a bummer because they are beautiful. Yeah. We didn't go to the, you know, kind of what's categorized is the spot to find them or to find particularly beautiful ones and didn't turn up any valley garter snakes. But, yeah, you know, and again, based on how I count my list and things, you know, it's common venture and all of that. So I think, I think Lucas got my life for Northern Pacific rattlesank with a little juvenile, probably a young from last year that had gone through some of the color, you know, some of the color change. It is interesting how much the organist complex crotolists do have a common phenotype amongst, you know, as Needs.

in particular. Right. And then Roy turned up a couple at the sort of the den site.

So the, oh, and in terms of other snakes that were about, we managed to flip kind of all life sizes

of rubber bows. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, probably a great time for flipping them. Yeah. Yeah.

So there was a juvenile from, probably from last year, and an adult male that had a very battered

decoy tail. Oh, yeah. In the way, you can really see that it, you know, all the scars. Yeah. Yeah. And then a, it's worked. It has worked.

It has worked. It has effectively worked. And, um, a, just on the front end to be in Gravid female, where you could make out three or four, um, you know, lumps, but, uh, yeah, really, really neat.

Um, saw the, uh, I think it's, San Francisco or northern alligator. lizard and the southern alligator lizard at the same spot. So Roy turned those up and so got to have some of the cool comparative shots. One interesting thing with those is that one lays eggs and one gives live birth. Okay. That's cool.

Kind of neat. So they're visually distinct in terms of color pattern sort of size, although I think it was a female northern and a male southern. So not exactly, you know, equivalence or whatever, but in terms of. of their physiology, but still neat. Mm-hmm. For sure. Yeah. And always the weird, the weirdness of, that was on that first day, the weirdness of, you know,

needing something for a life list. And then within 20 minutes or half an hour going from needing to see one to seeing so, haven't seen so many that you're not really properly taking pictures or even kind of taking it in. So I think we were up to a dozen, you know, went from. zero to 12 Pacific Gopher Snakes in the course of a half hour or something like that. Yeah. The noted flip site, listeners may remember from Calubrid and Calubriads adventure in Northern, well, all of California last year. This was the site of disputes or whatever.

Yeah. So we made it up the hill, Lucas, Ryan, myself. How many Smitty tears did you give it? I gave it, well, I don't know. It's a couple of smitty tears. but certainly, certainly worth the effort, and, you know, as ever, right? Thanks are where they are. So that's the thing.

If you're finding 30, 40 snakes up there, then I think it's, yeah, that definitely reduces the amount of Schmitty tears because you're, you know, financed that. Yeah. If you're not fine anything, that's, yeah, a difference. That is always the, it makes it feel all the more. So, yeah, absolutely, totally, happy with that. Great day out. The next day, Lucas had to work. I was down by him.

and there's a bunch of open space out his way, and certainly lots of records for Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes. So I'd gone to a spot that a couple of different spots that he had been to previously recommended, you know, kind of all about those areas. I think I was out there for, this was before we recorded the show, but I think it was probably out there for five hours or so, and did manage to see a pair of Norpaxx that were cryptic basking. You know, it felt like a perfect day and, you know, kind of low to mid-70s,

intermittent bright sunshine with light clouds and stuff. And they were sitting. It was not, you know, ledging, which is kind of the usual context for rattlesnakes to be, you know, in our mind, the visual image or whatever. But it was sort of big boulder stuff. And they were just, you know, had their cryptic basking with just a couple loops thrown out. that sort of idea, but yeah, it was great. So, you know, able to get a couple myself and in that, you know, beautiful context,

not out moving around, just living their lives and being properly cryptic basking like a rattlesnake should, like a proper rattlesnake. There you go. That's awesome. Yeah. So then after the, we'd recorded then Friday night and we went out on Saturday for another little adventure, not rice errone but another San Francisco treat. And there are a couple places you can go to go see San Francisco gartersnakes.

Mostly you can go to European zoos. I'm a little surprised you didn't run into any. For European collections. Yeah. Or even Canadian collections maybe. Right. Collections maybe. But yeah, that's, you know, certainly they're amazing.

You know, visually stunning animals. and something that has going back even to, you know, getting the Audubon field guide in the mid-90s and saying, like, wow, holy moly, that is a, you know, probably one of, if not the most visually striking American snakes. Oh, for sure. Yeah. You know, we had gone when we were out there two years ago as a family. Actually, Lucas had met up with us, and we went to one of a handful of the kind of known public spot. that you can go see him. And he actually managed to see a small yearling. Oh, but it kind of got away before you?

Yeah, so none of the rest of us got to see it. But so he had at that point seen one. We had some ideation around, you know, trying to make it work. Obviously, you know, there's not all that much public land out there. So that's a little bit of an impediment, you know, and certainly not wanting to do anything that's not above board. So, you know, definitely there are places that it's easier or harder to see them, but you can, you know, be slightly closer, you know, than other places and things like that. So, yeah, Lucas and I went out there and did manage to see two of them.

Only one of them was in a spot where we could take pictures of it and things, but it actually had us in a position where I had seen the first one. but was unable to take a picture and it was not even, it was gone before he could see it. So then we were even, you know, in terms of both having seen one, seen one, no photos and having sort of let down the other person, but he was able to spot one then that was, you know, seeded out in a way that we could then, you know,

take pictures and stuff. So that was really cool. Yeah. The downside, as my body learned associated with that one, was not so much in the physicality itself. Lucas had asked me, you know, when I, probably before Thursday even, but certainly before Saturday, when we're in kind of mid-peninsula or, you know, upper mid-peninsula or whatever coastal stuff, he said, do you have, have you ever been exposed to poison oak? and I said, no, I don't think so, not knowingly. And I said, well, it's the same at Eurasia or whatever, the same chemical compound that's in Poison Ivy.

I've had exposure to Poison Ivy, particularly when we're on the East Coast and stuff. Right. It's probably here as well, but particularly on the East Coast. And sure, I'll get a little bit of a contact dermatitis, you know, same thing as most people. But I've never, it's not something that really sticks into my mind as, you know, you know, notably. Well, somewhere along the way, and Poison Oak is a tricky, tricky creature, I thought I was fine in the sense that I had, you know, long sleeves, long pants, all that. And maybe if you're all sweaty, that oil, you know, it's going to cross that dirt.

Transpers too. Yeah, those pictures were horrific. Oh, my goodness. Well, it got even worse. So the excitement was that, yeah, I wound up just going full bore into some. But nothing happened for like two or three days, which I guess is not all that official. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I was home. And all of a sudden going, what's going on with my left side of my body? You know, my arm from the elbow down to my wrist. my back, the back of my leg, you know, and I'm going, this is quite interesting. Just red and inflate, like, real heavy-duty contact dermatitis. The funny thing is I was listening to Reptile Rejects, and Dom, I guess, had, so he moved recently. Yeah.

And part of that was manipulating a shed or something, and he and his son got heavy into Poison Oak as well. And, you know, he's been sort of fighting that off or whatever. So about a week and a half into this, the redness was going down and, you know, it looked a mess, but, you know, it seemed to be sort of running its course. Yeah. That was the point then when I'd gone with Brendan Hedegaer, who's been on the show, great guy, local guy, used to and still does on occasion or whatever, help Phil eats out with stuff. Also, interesting guests. we'd gone up to Wyoming to go to Flaming Gorge to, you know, again, Concolor. So we'd seen, you've seen Concolor in your life, you've had them go far enough back.

And so. I was really sad to miss this trip, too. Yeah. Especially when you started showing the photos. Yeah. I just need to take a weekend and get up there. You know, that's probably the. Just do it.

But, yeah, we had. we're driving up there and as we're doing so. So again, this is a solidly week and a half, almost two weeks after my initial exposure to this Poison Oak stuff. We're driving in the car and I noticed that I'm getting swelling between my elbow and my wrist through my hand up to my knuckles. So that by the time I come back on Saturday night, so two weeks. So that was two weeks since exposure. my forearm forearm through to my knuckles

were like one and a half times their normal size. Holy cow. Because so apparently which was particularly incorporating my wife's prudent advice had sent me to the urgent care and the diagnosis was yeah

the contact dermatitis had shifted to like a systemic reaction that was causing this swelling and then you can take oral prednisone or whatever and actually within a dose let alone you know now several days into that into the prescribed um there you know course um it you know basically went down right away certainly within two doses it was basically gone uh and really does seem to be making a difference but uh holy molly man that's terrible lucus was very adamant about And I had to admit that I had not taken it sufficiently seriously.

Going forward, I will bear it in my, you know, make note of, okay, I need to learn what that looks like and do my very best to try and avoid it because that was. It definitely sounds like it's Lucas's fault. I mean, if he knew that, he should have, like, guided you around that, like, really got you out of the way of harm's way, you know? I think you really need to have just a tiny patch. of it. Right. You know, just in the course of our adventures, he had managed to get some light exposure, it sounds like.

And then, you know, I don't know, we were in that long grass and stuff. Somehow we had all sorts of, we got into something that was given us biting wounds around our ankles. So he had had those two and all of that. So it's, you know, I think the big takeaway was really the idea. And we've talked about this. little bit before, but that really, I guess I did see it, you know, in terms of the output of like, okay, this is something I wanted to see my whole life. Yeah.

And, yeah, it was awesome. It was hard, you know, which is great. But it really is the reminder of like the fun is in the doing, right? It is the practice itself because, yeah, you know, show people pictures and it's nice. Yeah. Okay, right. I, if I were in the, if the roles were reversed, right, that that's, we oftentimes have a hard time. So anything I say is going to be insufficient, right, if someone's showing it to me, right, to recognize sort of the work and effort that goes into it.

But it was really a strong reminder as to all these things that it's like, we're doing this. We should be doing this for ourselves and for our own satisfaction and enjoyment. it, but mostly enjoyment in the pursuit itself, right? And it's like this, even when it's hard, or maybe most especially because it is hard, that it's like, yeah, you get to be outside. And I was outside in Northern California. And then, you know, two weekends later up in the gorge. And, yeah, to that point.

So, you know, Brendan has been up there a couple times, had some good ideas about it. I had first been there 22 years ago. not knowing what I was doing looking for them and didn't find any, you know, and turned around and went back to Northern Colorado. So, yeah, it's been a long time in the making. I do now having, I guess, you know, cutting to the end, we turned up on Thursday evening, early evening, still some light, but cloudy, 55 or so. and we went around for a bit probably an hour or so, and Brandon managed to turn up a young from the previous year. So again, fitting into that box of organist complex,

you know, neonates having a consistent look, and it certainly had sort of that look. So really cool, definitely a yet another photo, and that would be acceptable. I would say, right, going back to our, it was our Utah, saw 24 trip that we saw what we thought was to Concolor. I over newspaper Rockway, but as you come down, you run into the prairies slash hopeys. That's its own conversation for another day that we can have at some point on here.

We've had it plenty of ourselves. But that first one, to me, now especially having seen 10 of them over those two days. So we saw one that first day and nine, the second day that we were up there. Wow. Was, you know, that first one, certainly there's concolor in the mix. I call it con color, all that white background, the irregular block chain down the back, all those pattern irregularities. That's concolor stuff. So I'm, again, it's harder to tell because that,

the one that we had seen, you know, was probably a yearling or so. So coming out of that sort of uniform organist look, but between the blotching and the coloration that it was displaying and all those things, at a minimum there's concolor in the mix. And I would just say that that's the first concolor I saw. We then saw one northeast of Moab, but it had been nicked between the vent and the tail when we were cruising, You know, kind of one of those shocking instances where you go, how is there so much traffic on this road in the middle of nowhere? Right.

Nevertheless, you know. Although that was then, you know, the instance where despite being super frustrated in things, I was glad that my prudence had worn out. And I had used the hook to get it off the road because it sure bit the heck out of the hook. And, you know, we'd be the paradigm of some people's what counts and doesn't count of saying. I've been bit by a con-color, but I haven't seen it. So, yeah. But anyway, yeah, on Friday, we went to a couple different additional spots around the gorge and turned up a couple. And then at another spot, turned up seven of them.

Wow. But partially at one of those spots, actually, another guest that we had on, our first haranguing the herpers. Hey, he was out with us for that day. Nice. He did wind up joining the Concordian team for this year again. So, yeah, we saw those guys, saw Travis and Anthony as well. Good to be out with those guys. Were they just out there just to hurt with you guys?

Or were they doing like some kind of study or something? Well, it's about, right? So they spend, you know, I guess it's already started. So I don't know they're calling it the summer. does justice to it or whatever and certainly it's their deal not mine so i you know we defer on some of that but um they're out there uh as part of steve mackasie's uh northern colorado lab driving around a school vehicle trying to find con color to take data from cool yeah so all the you know but their their route has them between western colorado Wyoming and eastern utah

or central Utah, I guess. And yeah, so they said, yeah, we agree with you. You know, fortunately, it was a pre-picked date that made sense for other reasons and whatever. But, man, we kind of had perfect weather. It had been cool. You know, they had the same as here. It was warm four or six, eight weeks ago. I think that probably had maybe it led to some being dispersed more than they otherwise would have been.

But it had cooled down then, sameness down here. and when we had went, it was just coming off the backside of being cool. So it was like, yeah, this seems really good. And they thought it was promising, too, with all their con-color experience. And so, yeah, they just sort of said, hey, based on the conditions, and the fact that you guys are going to be out there, yeah, we'll go, you know, we'll make that the target for today sort of thing. That's cool.

Yeah, really cool. Yeah. So I saw a whole, by the end of the day, had seen a whole variety. of looks and phases and sizes and peachy ones and yellow, straw yellow, super faded ones, adults of both sexes. Yeah. So really cool. And definitely now there's no controversy, as Nipper would say. You know, but again, I stick them off the list.

Yeah. The first one is the tick. I count that. But, you know, I had it as need a new photo just to feel really good about it. Right. Actually, I didn't have been there. There's no doubt. Yeah.

Yeah, there's no doubt. And one of those ones was, Brennan and I were talking about this a little bit is one of the ones that we had seen on Friday was really hefty, heftier adult. I will say the whole midget component of the common name was interesting. They're thin snakes relative to their length. certainly compared to other organists like Abyssis, right? The abysis was a tank of a thing. Whereas Concolor, they're sort of the presentation. It's amazing to me that they're so they strike as small,

which again, maybe that's why the name is what it is. You know, I guess it was good, too, to be able to really visualize and understand that in a way that I didn't. How was their temperament? Mostly pretty calm. one Neo from last year was very spicy. Okay. But generally, I would describe them as pretty calm.

Even ones that were calm probably got strikes out of 30%, 40% of them. But one of the 10 was a firecracker. Yeah. He, she hit, it meant business. and actually wound up dipping on me, you know, which it's never ideal, especially they're trying to collect data on these things. And I got a few photos of it really beautiful. A lot of really strong white in the background, high, you know, high background color, which on the neonate is really bright white. And it dipped and I decided to, you know, kind of leave it be.

Let it go. Yeah. It was not, yeah, it had intent for sure. Yeah, risk was not worth the potential reward, yeah, especially when you'd seen several or, you know, would be many more. And then, you know, Brendan, and he's the man at finding those things. He turned up even with so it was one thing, you know, one thing when it's just me. But I think he turned up nine of the ten. Oh, wow.

Five of us out there. Wow. Way to go. Brendan. Yeah. He was just, you know, hammering it. And in one crack, I think he turned up five. Wow.

So five in one go. That's impressive. Yeah. So he did awesome. He's really got that search image locked in. That being said, the one of the 10, not mentioned in that 9, was found by myself. Oh, nice. The third of the 10.

And that was cool. Hayden and I were actually, you know, we're, trying to switch spots, meaning we were going to go from one place to another around the gorge. And he was walking in front of me, and he must have caused it to spook from one ledge to the next so that, you know, I was behind him, and I just saw an inch of tail on a yearling duck under this ledge based on, presumably it had shifted from the one above it to the one below it. So, you know, it wasn't that he didn't see it or whatever. It was him walking prompted the action. And then because I was five feet behind him, I saw it slide right in to underneath that ledge. And fortunately.

Which goes to our discussion on, you know, walk speed or going second or first or, yeah. Exactly. That's cool. So, yeah, that was really neat and was really fond of that one. It has a, again, speaking of blotch regularity and things, it has, like, had a conjoint blotch in the, in the nuclear region. So, yeah, very distinctive, really cool. about a yearling at a guess. Yeah.

Oh, that's fun. I'm glad it was so successful. I mean, 10 midget-faird, that's pretty impressive. That area, as you know, those are kind of the common snake. I think turned up two great basing gophers as well. One of those was actually a really charming, you know, baby from last year with a really interesting pattern. I don't know if you noted that picture, if you had looked. it, but very...

Not very closely. You look to check that out again. Yeah. Yeah, really atypical. So that was cool. And then there was another one when we were still in the concholier pursuit. The team had joined. So they were split off and they said, hey, you know, this great pacing gopher is going to dip down into these rocks.

You want us to try and impede his progress so you can see it or whatever. And I said no. But I think, yeah, total snikes over the two day, day and a half, was two. great basing gophers and 10 conquerors so not complaining yeah that's not a bad outing for sure well that's very cool yeah i just checked the map and it's three hours from my place so that shouldn't be a that can be a nice weekend adventure i think so yeah i don't know if how is it it's a little bit further for you yeah it's about five and a half okay so not yeah i guess that could be a long weekend maybe. Right. Well, I mean, that's, and that's what we had done, right? We had gone up on

Thursday and we did spend, you know, got there late in the day and, uh, so we spent two nights, but, uh, just, and then just headed out Saturday morning, just so we weren't trying to, it gave us the flexibility to really push ourselves. Right. Right. Yeah, I've, I've seen them in, in southern Utah, so I'd really like to see him in, you know, northern, northeastern Utah or or Fleming Gorge, Wyoming area. That'd be cool. Yeah, well, and tomorrow I'm headed down to KNAB to do a little site visit. So there's some property that the university is looking at. And so I'm going to go down there and check that out.

I think it's going to be kind of like one of those behind, you know, a gate or something. So only folks that are affiliated with the university and have permission. Yeah. So I'm kind of excited. And, you know, it looks like there's some fun stuff that you could find out there, notably like a California Kingsnake or some shorthorn mountain shorewarden lizards or things like that. So hopefully I can get lucky and find, you know, a wide variety to kind of, you know, make it worth them paying my way down there and getting me a hotel room and stuff like that. So kind of get an initial record of like, oh, here's some of the stuff that I found down here. you know, I'm adding some birds and other mammals or things like that to the list probably wouldn't hurt either.

So I'd kind of like to have some little, you know, informal report at the end. Like, here's what I found. And, you know, maybe that can start a naturalist club visit or, you know, research project or something like that. So I don't know. That would be very cool. Because it was just kind of a passing comment because our department had said, hey, is we're looking at this property. and as a university and what would you do with the property if you could? And I said, I'd take a group of students down there, you know, like a naturalist club to go look for reptiles or birds or something like that.

And so then that's all I heard or I didn't hear back or anything like that. She's like, okay. And then I get this invite from like somebody on the college level and they're saying, you want to go down and check out the site? I'm like, heck yeah. Yeah, they're going to pay, you know, the gas and lodging and food and all that kind of stuff. So they basically get to go down and hurt a bit.

And I'll be back in time for Mother's Day. So that's another bonus. Important. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. So I'm excited. I'll head down tomorrow around noon. So that'll be a good time, I hope.

And I was going to take my daughter, but I think she's got to test or something. So I'm just going to be flying solo. They asked, initially they said, oh, we have a couple people if you could give them a ride. I'm like, yeah, I'm happy to, happy to do that. But then they said, never mind. So I'm going to be driving solo and, you know, listening to tunes or chatting with folks on the phone or something like that while I drive. So it should be a good, good weekend. Okay.

Cool. Hopefully, hopefully it'll be good weather and I can find some herps. I like it. Yeah. And hopefully the property's cool and there's some neat features and stuff like that. Yeah. to go explore it and check it out. So kind of fun.

Absolutely. We drove through there, right, on our 24 trip. Is that the town that has the interesting barbecue with peanut butter and jelly? I think it was, yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if we're eating there or not, but that might be worth checking out. I do like Canab. I've always thought that was a fun town.

It gives a mountain town vibe, even a desert town vibe or whatever. For sure. They had this old antique shop that was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. Like the guy that ran the shop, he's like, oh, you know, there's nobody in here. Do you want to go check out my personal collection next door? Because his house was adjoined to the shop. And we went over there. He had like original like Remington, you know, sculptures and stuff.

He had a, he slept in like a 15th. century opium bed or something like that. Like that was his bed. He had like full skeletal remains from, you know, that he found up in the canyon or something back in the 1930s or something. And just crazy, um, amazing collection. I was just in awe. It was pretty crazy.

That was, you know, 30, 40 years ago. So a little bit back. But last I checked, the shop was closed and it looked kind of abandoned. So I don't know. You must have moved on or passed away or something. Moved on, passed on. Who knows?

Yep. Oh, the other fun thing, I don't know how I even saw this, but maybe like on Facebook or something. But I finally subscribed to that responsible herptoculture journal that is put out by the Ukraine group, the Bayon. Bion. Yeah, and it is quite impressive. I think the thing that got me was they had an article on the spider tail vipers written by the guy at the at the prison do that reproduced them. So I'm like, I'm going to look into this and I ended up subscribing and they give you like the, a bunch of past issues.

And it's kind of like one of those you can page through, you know, each of these. Sure. It's really, really pretty well done. And, and I mean, each, each issue is, you know, typically over 100 pages long. Oh, wow. So it's, you know, not a, and several really high quality articles. And, you know, so I don't know, I'd recommend checking it out and taking a look, but pretty cool. Responsible Herpticulture Journal.

Yeah. Well, there you go. Any, I'm trying to think, there's something else I listen to or, oh, Ryan Young's report on his latest trip with Nick out to Indonesia and listen to that over on the other network. But yeah,

it was pretty, pretty fun to hear some of their adventures. Probably, I didn't listen very closely on my first pass. I need to go back and listen to it again, but it's pretty, I haven't listened to it yet. Yeah.

And I think Nick was on the same, the same, you know, same network. Oh, the other one was the monitor, Chris Applin talking about the three new things. I think that was with Ryan, right? They did it separately or whatever. Well, this one was with an Australian guy talking about the three new monitor species in kind of the east, east, eastern area. Yeah. And Queensland. That's been a topic that's been going around, right?

So I think there was another Lamp was on. And then it was on as the species of the biweek for her pilots. Okay. Okay. All three of them. Yeah, it was a cool paper and really neat, neat monitors. I'd like to go out and have a look for them at some point.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, they're not too far from Cannes. So maybe after we find some green tree pythons up in the iron range, we can go down and take a look for some of those. It sounds like a couple of the species are pretty shy. like they'll be really a hard find to turn one of those. It was a good show. I listened to that yesterday.

So, well, I'll have to. Another highly recommended one. Yeah. And heck, when you're out that way, that's another good spot for, you know, another goanna that's up that way, the SemiramX. Yeah. Yeah. Another one I need to tick off those.

And it seems like they're just growing in number, making it harder, you know, to find all of them. Now they've split off the Orientalis and from the Tristus, you know, there's, I mean, I'm sure there's plenty in the Scalaris complex. And, you know, there's going to be just more to come. I'm not sure where are you, 50 or 60 or something. Yeah, yeah, it's growing, growing each year to more and more. I'll have to check the field guide to see what the latest edition had for number. And then, you know, plus three at least or four, with Gavin's publication on the cloud light stuff. Yeah.

Good stuff. I don't know. That was another goal I'd hope to accomplish, but is looking more difficult these days than it was 15 years ago. Right. When I first went over, you know, yeah. So we'll see, see if I can accomplish that someday. Oh, another cool thing. Got an Australian friend that's over in the Galapagos right now,

taking a bunch of photos. So that's been really fun to, I'd love to make it over there. That would be really, really great. Yeah. So I don't know for now it's vicariously through his photos so good stuff. Very cool. Anything on your end that you've checked out recently or listened to you recently that's kind of caught your attention? Yeah, I mean, there's quite, you know, I take in so much this stuff, to be honest, that then it gets a little bit overwhelming.

But yeah, I mean, there's, I guess. guess my short answer would be it feels like there's been good stuff on all the different networks and channels, you know, so I've been excited for that. Yeah, and certainly have plenty. I do want to hear it. The Indonesia stuff's really cool. You know, I'm glad that Nick and Ryan have become so interested in that. It does sound like kind of a different deal.

Right. Actually, one that jumps to mind, flipping tin, they were talking to a guy who had gone to the Solomon Islands. Hmm. Okay. And, you know, really with the goal of seeing Carusha. And I think Carusha was the main goal. And then what was the other thing?

He was not super focused on seeing snakes. And I think did not see that many snakes. But I'm trying to think what the other passion was for him. But I think it's something that he maintains in captivity. And that was really the main thing. But the Carusha was the thing that spoke to me where I was like, yeah, that's really neat. Oh, actually, I do remember now. It's the monitor.

It's the Solomon Island Spinolyosis. Spinoleosis, yeah. Very cool. The objective. And, yeah, it saw a couple of spinelosis. and a career was able to, I think, in-country get, you know, connected to a couple guides through Instagram, you know, the positive side of social media.

He was able to figure that out. And, yeah, so that was really neat. It was cool hearing about a place that we mostly don't hear that much about. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess that would be at least one that I would recommend folks give a listen to because it was fun hearing you just sort of, you know, normal guy, but he keeps spinelosis. I think he has a fair few of them.

And he just said, hey, I want to go and go find him. And a lot of Nick type adventure of like the planes and, you know, there's only, there's one flight a week and, you know, the delay and all this kind of, if, tails in that vein or people's interest, then it should be really good. Right. That's cool. I'll have to download that and listen to it tomorrow. for sure. Very cool. Oh, the book is at the printers. So the field guide should be out, hopefully very soon. I was kind of talking to Bob and he was hoping that it would be there

for the IHS meeting, you know, have copies in time for that. Is that what I, yeah, I have no clue what the turnaround time is. If it's at the printers now, what is that? Right. What does that look like? I don't know. Yeah, because then it's the printers and then they're shipping it over on a, you know, a big ship or something. So you're waiting for that as well, which can take a little bit of time, you know. You get a box or two early? Isn't that usually how that goes, though? Like mail you a box or two, meaning, you know, Bob, one of the boxes or two boxes or something. He was complaining about the price. So I don't know if that's much of an option. I think he said he had 10 copies on pre, like pre, pre, pre, pre. pre-order or whatever, like the earliest that he could get them. The earliest possible thing. Yeah.

So I might get a physical copy in my hand before the IHS meeting. Everyone else gets them to. Yeah. Hopefully it'll be there for that because that'll be nice to have, you know, so many people around and be able to, you know, visit with people. It's always fun to put it in their hand kind of thing, you know. So that would be great.

And then, yeah. So, yeah, hopefully we'll see that. sooner than later here. All right. Well, it's actually happening, which is the good thing after all the work you guys put into it. Exactly. And I mean, he's got, Bob has five books coming out. Another one that I saw that that's coming out probably around the same time is the, like, the history of herpeticulture.

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. And it's got like, you know, talking about Casey Lazzick and Dave Barker, you know, just all these different folks. I'm not sure if, I know Casey was on it. You know, why wouldn't Dave Barker be on there? But lots of different names. So that should be really fascinating.

I'm curious. And it's that Dragon Traders, Michael Berger. Is that his name? Yeah. Same, same author as the Dragon Trader book. Just shifting into, yeah, into Bob's orbit or whatever. He's done well enough that Bob said, okay, let me, you know, get a taste of this too. Yeah.

Yeah. So that one looks good, too. that was an ad in this responsible herpticulture magazine. Okay. I was wondering where you had seen it. Yeah. Yeah, because I was going to see if I could order it. I'm like, oh, that looks cool.

I'll order that. And then it's like hasn't been released yet. So, and then I noticed in the ad, it's like coming in June or July or whatever. So must be one of the five projects they've got coming on. So I'm curious to see the other three projects, what the other three are. I saw there was an email. that he had just sent out, right, with a couple books from Bob Zappalorety. Oh, that's right, yeah.

Jersey stuff. And then it looks pretty cool. Maybe it's more your vein than mine, but although the, you know, price point was good. But I guess Tell Hicks had done drawings of all the hummingbirds of Arizona, native hummingbirds or whatever. And so it's like a guide for that. I think we saw that when we were there last. Oh, really? I guess I had.

It was kind of presented there as. maybe just newly coming out. So I thought it was new. Maybe it's already out. I don't know. Maybe so. I thought I'd seen that. At least that rings a bell.

Maybe I saw a picture, you know, like the prints or something that he had done. But I thought I saw a book. Yeah. Okay. Well, and again,

maybe it just didn't catch my eye not presented so formally because, you know, it's a flyy bird. You know, fast flight. Maybe it's a fast-flyy bird. Speed bird.

Yeah, those are fascinating birds, though, like the natural history of a hummingbird is insane. Like, they, their heart rate in a day goes from like, you know, 10 beats a minute to like 300 beats a minute or something ridiculous. You know, it's just they're a different creature for sure. I always thought their bill was like a tube rather than, but it can open and catch bugs and stuff like that. Like, they'll eat bugs. And I'm like, I didn't know that.

Didn't know that. Yeah. It was Nature, you know, the documentary series on PBS that had a special episode just on hummingbirds. It was pretty fascinating. Good stuff. Ah, nature's fun. I just, I can't get enough of this nature stuff. Excited to go immerse myself in nature this week.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Enjoy the pursuit. That's the important part. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, we'd recommend you all get now. there too and go go check out the go check go get you some nature this weekend so it's a little

difficult with the gas prices so maybe stick close to to where you live but uh well well hopefully that'll come down in a in a beer my uh my good friends that are trump supporters are saying that those prices will be down so soon you know i'm hoping they're right because i'm looking forward to doing some herping here soon and it would help if it was a little less expensive to travel. All right. Well, thank you. This has been fun to catch up and hear about your adventures.

And, yeah, I'm excited to get back out in the field with you here soon. And we appreciate your support and listening to us ramble on about our various adventures. And we'll have a couple guests here soon back on the show. But thanks for listening. and we'll see you next time, Reptile Fight Club.