Reptile Fight Club - Pro vs. Con: Laws Protecting Handling Wild Reptiles

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle the topic of Pro vs. Con: Laws Protecting Handling Wild ReptilesWho will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. We are back. Well, Rob's back. I was always here. Rob went out on a trip. But yeah, we're excited to be back recording. And I'm very excited to hear about how your trip went, Rob. Yeah, so it was really well. Well, glad to be back. And, yeah, it went really well, especially so the sort of object of West Texas version three for me was to see a mottled rock rattlesnake, a credulous lepidus lepidus.

And that mission was accomplished. And with a beautiful animal, had a great time with phil wolf who joined me on the trip unfortunately dustin gron and brandon valentine turned up a week early so we weren't able to have them as uh you know fellow conspirators on the trip but uh it was still it was a great trip with phil he and i had a great time we got to go to a lot of places that we've been before and actually the lep this came from a place that we hadn't gone to before kind of probably three hours further um east from where we were staying so definitely a hike uh from alpine and we definitely considered going out there before in fact we went we probably went halfway there

before on the night of all those a trucks if you remember when we were going out of sanderson we saw all those um that from that point we were probably an hour and a half away so about halfway from there um but yeah that was that was certainly a highlight we saw another central texas whip, this one just in a cut at night, which was interesting. Yeah, Phil spotted it in this crevice. Was it sleeping or was it active? Well, certainly it was responsive to my flashlight. Sure. But yeah, and in those temperatures, I don't know. I would guess that it was probably sort of semi-estimating, right?

But it was still fairly warm. So it's possible that some movement, maybe searching for food amongst those crevices. Yeah, certainly possible. That's cool. I guess Masticophis was one of the other main forms of the trip because we also saw Coach Whip. Yeah, so that was good um was the back to the central texas i i just really am fascinated with those was it colored similarly to the other one we saw with the the different almost bands of kind of darker yeah so it was so phil had seen i don't with his flashlight, if he had seen movement or if he had seen just sort of the maybe something reflection off the eye.

I don't know. Something had caught his eye to it. And he said, hey, can you take a look at this with your flashlight? You know, the the stronger powered illumination. And I did. And at the back of the crevice yeah i saw this sort of that wine you know port burgundy colored tail and uh but the light caused it to move and it kind of cut to the left and um so i turned the light off and phil was like well well i was said yeah it's definitely a snake and he he said, well, what was it? And I was thinking through it, and I was like, well, it's absolutely a colubrid. I thought it was a Masticophis of some flavor. And thinking through it and then flipping through reptiles of the Trans-Pecos,

the thing that I thought of was, yeah, it's a Central Texas whip snake. So So we had gone to the car to look at the, look at the field guide and then had gone back, you know, five minutes later and I flashed it again and I got the face, the face was sitting there looking at me and, uh, yeah, that's absolutely what it was. Yeah. It had the, um, the black, sort of the black towards the neck area with the, um, lateral white striping. And I was like, wow. And so, again, it moved.

It didn't love the 5,000 lumens in the middle of the night. Why not? Yeah, I can't imagine, right? Having inadvertently shined that in my own face, I can understand and appreciate why that would be the case. But, yeah, that's absolutely what it was. So that was really cool. And it was a spot by, you know, Phil had seen something that had given him an indication, even though he couldn't make it out. And, yeah, we wound up seeing the entirety of the thing. We didn't even attempt to get it out of the crack, you know, obviously, but it was very cool to just based on the tail i was like yeah i think this is what

it was and sure enough he turned around so we could see him and definitively uh get that id that's awesome oh very cool and that was just on the cut one of the nights yeah yeah that same night actually so at that same spot out at iran so um yeah that was very cool um brandon and dustin had seen a couple subox and phil loves subox so that was something we had put in a lot of time to try and find um but were unsuccessful they had seen one each at different places yeah um big ones yeah absolutely dustin with the uh a video of trip, so it's showing you on the different finds. And with the endemic or the specific tick species, right, for which subox are a host, and they're not only specific to subox, but are specific to where they adhere to the tail.

So it's this tail of subox, you know, this tick that's specific to the tails of subox. And the first one that they found had a whole host of them. That was super interesting. Yeah, that's crazy. Wow. That's funny to think of a tick specializing in the tail end of a certain snake species. Yeah, absolutely. Pretty amazing how nature works.

Yeah, I mean, it's truly fascinating. So I was really happy for them about that. They also found one of the Transpecos copperheads, which is really cool. Again, we put in that same spot, actually. Theoretically, they're there that's kind of people were surprised we didn't see them actually dustin and i was talking today and i feel like lepidus probably tend to be in either drier habitats or habitats they express themselves when it is more dry so i think maybe that was a countervailing factor against seeing a copperhead at that spot in these conditions.

If you're seeing copperheads, you're not seeing lepidus and vice versa. Probably so. That would be my sort of intuition based on the habitat and just how we see them utilize their habitats generally. I think that's probably the case. Cool. Yeah. Well, any other notable finds on the trip? A couple blacktails, a handful of atrox, one big Mojave, which was cool.

That one, I look kind of a fool. So, actually, we did get the opportunity to meet up with some local her folks. So when we were in Alpine, we met up with Steven Valick and Frank Portillo was out there with them when we had first come upon them. And so we hung out with the both of them together for probably half an hour, 45 minutes walking cuts and stuff. And then we hung out withven for several more hours and

that was awesome he was a guest we had him have had him on the show previously and um it was really cool part of my interest in that beyond just getting the chance to meet him and talk to him was um kind of seeing the locals how the locals are uh evaluating Texas herb spots, right? How they're engaging with it, how they check it out. Is what, quote, walking the cut, what it sounds like, or is it, is there a subtlety to it? Is there a method to what they're doing? And the answer to all those things is I'm sure yes. And certainly I said, okay, Stephen, what, how do you shine this cut? What does that look like? What do you, we're in this context, can you show do you shine this cut? What does that look like? We're in this context. Can you show me what you would do?

And certainly there was a method and practice to it. But part of my question was, am I fundamentally doing something wrong that's leading us to see millipedes and little beetles and things as opposed to Alterna? And sort of the big picture to that i think was no i think a lot of that is it is what it uh how it presents itself um and uh so that that was super interesting and it was good to know that we hadn't wasted all the time on the previous trips

by doing no no we we say walk the cup but in reality it means repel it or something you know whatever right um i guess points of interest with the lepidus would be uh phil had had the ideation of hey rather than being on the face of the cut i think they'll probably be kind of seated up at the top um and obviously that's one thing at you know nine miles north of sanderson when you that puts you a couple hundred feet in the air or whatever. But the spot where I found this one is probably 10 or 12 feet up and had sort of a possibility to between walk and climb the front of it to get up to the top. And I know we've had experience walking along the top and things but the thing that had stood out to me uh when phil had made mention of that was that craig trumbauer had recommended that as well for

lepidus in particular he said often they like to sit on the tops of cuts yeah um and so that kind of called that to mind phil was uh a little ways down from me and there was actually a big semi truck coming and it's a very fairly narrow spot so you'll remember that pretty well right being yeah with having those trucks shake you yeah when you're you know they're 10 foot away from you or whatever and um especially this it was kind of the beginning of a decline so you and you smell those brakes and the you hear it it's very visceral and you that's the one good thing um about those semis in that area is you hear them from a long way away so you know it's coming it doesn't sneak up on you by any stretch of the imagination so i knew it was coming and i just

sort of arbitrarily picked a spot to start you know climbing the front of this cut to then explore the top and sure enough as i came sort of to the intersection of the top of the cut, my appearance there caused it to move, which made it visible to me. It was coiled in either an ambush or a retreat position around this little plant. And as I'd come, you know, I got within two foot of it or whatever. It said, whoa, OK, I'm going to move based on this. And you certainly wouldn't have seen it from not having done that. I wouldn't have seen it, uh, in the sense that it was, as I say, 10 or 12 feet up coiled into this plant. So perfect, perfectly camouflaged. It was the movement that made it visible to me. So, um,

I don't know to what extent then by just walking along the basic cuts and things in other spots that um i didn't cause that movement and didn't see them but but that was pretty cool but the the truck was coming right as that happened so i had sort of had an exclamation and i had to call the field no just stay there don't you know i didn't want him to be concerned about you know and he was like well i didn't know if you were talking about the truck or what um so i let the truck pass and then told him what it was and he excitedly came over and helped me uh check it out very cool oh that's great yeah there uh that was a beautiful snake i nice uh nice to see you guys found one. A little jealous. I should have been there, I guess. But, you know, when you don't have any PTO, you got to enjoy it. It is what it is.

It is what it is. Absolutely. And the other one that was, I suppose, notable, mostly based on our effort in Utah, was I did see my Leifer emery eye, which was very cool. So that was the first snake of the trip. And that was possibly the first non night snake that I've ever found sort of crawling along the vertical surface of a cut. Yeah. Which was interesting. So, again, fitting into that, is this really what that presentation would look like? You know, is that what walking the cut entails? And do you see this thing? And would you notice it?

And all those sorts of questions that we always have when we fail to see something. The answer in that instance was, yeah, absolutely. It stuck out dramatically, even though it was probably a yearling. And it wasn't sort of the very picturesque relative to that display where it's fully emerged on this cut and that sort of thing it was coming out of a plant and was maybe the first eight inches of its body were visible against the wall and it was enough to spot it and see it and yeah so that's really cool of course yeah yeah as per nipper you know per nippers request well that's very cool what a sounds like a nice trip um too bad there was the disconnect you know but i guess you know it is interesting to compare kind of what you know uh what was moving and our

conditions were different yeah absolutely um you know kind of they theirs was for the most part drier. I think we were kind of getting almost what you would call like a cyclical cyclical afternoon monsoon conditions, whereas I think they had one really heavy day of rain or heavy evening of rain. But otherwise, it was, I think, for the most part, pretty dry for them. And actually, their copperhead was maybe there had been a morning shower that morning and so my uh understanding from when they had gone was wrong i thought they had flipped it but actually it had been seated out in the late afternoon evening um amongst sort of talus slope so we'd gone to the same spot to try and replicate their luck although as i say i thought there was no chance of that if they had flipped it.

That seems very arbitrary amongst this big hillside of rock that I would be able to replicate that. But yeah, so that was – they had a great trip. We had a great trip. We saw different things. You guys saw box turtles, right? Yeah, we saw a couple box turtles, which is really cool. And the first, I don't think so. Okay.

They saw other turtles, but I don't think they saw any box turtles. Okay. And the first of those was a little bit sketchy. So that was on 90 West, you know, headed out from Alpine. And, you know, in the sort of late morning time, we were headed over to Pinto Canyon Road, which you'll remember well. And, but so we were on 90 West and I saw it and straddled it and then tried to pull the Dr. J and sort of disincentivize people behind us from, you know, kind of, kind of sending them to the left. And that only marginally worked. I would say people in Texas weren't super responsive to that. And man,

we watched a, a big truck, a big pickup. I mean, it must've been within an inch or two of the front of that turtle. Like it, I don't think it must have just been arbitrary it certainly wasn't uh aiming to avoid it because it wouldn't you wouldn't run it that close if you were trying to not hit it it seemed it didn't seem like it was trying to hit it but it was just sort of arbitrary and we were you, 10 or 15 feet away saying, OK, are we about to see this turtle explode? You know, basically. But very fortunately, no one, we were able to get him off and gave us beautiful green face. He gave us the stink eye associated with it. Actually, I do have an interesting anecdote kind of of a situation going the other way was. And then subsequent to that, actually, actually on pinto canyon we saw another one

uh so those were the two live ones that we saw um the next day uh in the late morning again on pinto canyon we had um we had gone through an area and then there as you remember there's not much traffic going out that way but uh we had uh cruised in one direction turned around and as we're coming back the other way we see a a really big pickup with a flatbed trailer and it was like oh man this is that's bad news and sure enough um a box turtle that hadn't been there on our way in had obviously been on the road when that had come through in that direction um and i what i saw on sort of the second pass so it you know just totally smashed but um that's really made clear because when we so we had passed back seeing the situation identified the situation but left it because it was so

all over the place and uh but as we're coming back through in the other lane um i stopped for something and said you know so i had it was non-distinct it wasn't a snake but it was like oh what what's this i don't remember noting this previously or paying it, you know, having observed it and looked at it closely. Yeah. And it was a reptile egg that had been punctured. And I said to Phil, you know, so I'm looking out the window, you know, looking out the window and then I picked it up, you know, from the car. And I was like, Phil, is that turtle right where you are? And he was like, no, I don't see it. And then the answer is that it was so close to it,

that it was like underneath the car. And the answer is that it had been like shot six feet out of it, you know, expelled like toothpaste from the darn thing, you know? Um, so that was kind of wild. Um, that's tragic. Yeah, man. Yeah. I mean, it was certainly interesting to road crews, a reptile leg. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You wouldn't expect that. No, that was, that was very odd to, to see in the road. And, but then, you know, I had that context and it was just like, Hey, Phil is this turtle over there. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. That's, you know, it's interesting some of the things you can see, you know, and,

and also learn from, you know, DORs and I don't know, you know, this case, but yeah, there's, um, when we found that children's Python that had been hidden in Darwin area and then, um, palpated out a meal so we could see what it eaten and stuff like that so i guess you make the best of a terrible situation but yeah it's interesting observation for sure yeah so um that was that was something of a down especially you know of course it's one of those mornings where you then i don't think we saw anything else that morning you know we drove it for several hours or whatever and that was the one thing

the only sort of consolation i had was that um we had seen on the way out there and maybe even the day before that there was a a vehicle with its um hood up you know suggesting sort of mechanical issues or whatever and sure enough the you know the pickup with the flatbed had come out to tow it so it wasn't like it was out there for nothing so i was actually that that did give me some solace that it wasn't just sort of you know flippantly out there it was out there for a purpose or whatever so because i when we had seen it coming the other way i was like why is you know my initial thought is why is that here? You know, but there was sort of a, there was certainly a valid, valid answer to that. Not still not what we're looking for, but at least there was a purpose.

Yeah. One burning question I had is, is, was that legitimate that Phil was actually wearing a shirt with a cornudum with a Texas horn lizard on it when you found a Texas horn lizard? Or was that? Indeed he was. Did he hurry and put it on when he saw the lizard on the road? Did he put it on that morning?

He put it on that morning, I think, to try and encourage it. That worked, right? Absolutely. encourage it yeah it worked right absolutely and we had our you know benny hill moment to uh wrangle him up to yeah um and it wound up being the uh the patented hat throw that got the job done okay all right yeah so that that was pretty good but uh hopefully somebody got that on film or got it recorded i guess i don't think so. Unfortunately. Yeah, no, but but that was good. It was good to see. There were nowhere near as many as we had seen previously going.

That was I think maybe we saw one other that sort of because of the way it was standing. I thought it was a piece of trash instead. So we'd gone slightly further than I otherwise would have, you know, it wasn't a, maybe it was more of a fill stop than, than otherwise. Um, and, uh, yeah. So when we circled back, that wasn't there and it was like, well, then that wasn't trash, uh, which might've been another one that was standing up facing us. But, uh, I think that was after we had seen the first one okay and probably would have been the same thing so yeah well now we didn't see any of the first trip

right we only saw him the second time with yeah we only saw him the second time but i think oh phil was there for those too so yeah it wasn't his life or anything but okay yeah no but it was it was still really cool it was interesting um so it was in the middle of the road and I don't think had moved. I, maybe it did move to a different position based on the car having gone by. But, um, what I was going to say is it's always interesting what, uh, how lizards in particular respond to being engaged, right, in a road situation like that. The frail dragon that we saw in Queensland on the last trip, it just hunkered down into the, so that was on dirt rather than on pavement, but it hunkered down. This one had inflated, but yeah, the second I went to try and pick it up,

it started, you know, we started engaging in the shenanigans. Yeah, nice. Well, you got to chase a lizard around once in a while, right? That's half the fun of it. Yeah, absolutely. You'd think they'd be a lot easier to catch. Then they're pretty good at evasion. Yeah, absolutely. So it gives them a little bit of practice, right, and a safe fail.

Yeah. Very cool. Well, I'm glad you had a good trip. And Phil is a wonderful, lovely man. So I'm glad you guys had a – Absolutely. Of course you're going to have a good time with Phil. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm kind of jealous. Those guys are all out at Daytona right now. It would be kind of fun to be there as well. But I was invited by Jordan Parrott. He's like, you can come and bring some animals and have them at the table and stuff and come hang out with us. And I'm like, I'd really love to, but just have no time off. But I guess I might have been able to do it just for the weekend, but this is a busy weekend with, with work and, you know, things in my department head is going to notice if I'm not there, you know, tomorrow. So, yeah, probably so, huh? Yeah.

And I'm actually going up to Monroe, uh, tomorrow afternoon. So we're going gonna go up on the mountain my my cousin has a sawmill up there and there's a bunch of downed wood from the beetles uh and this beetle killed wood um has an interesting kind of blue uh grain to it and so we're gonna go slice up you know the dead wood and and put it on our ceiling. So we're going to have a piece of Monroe Mountain on our ceiling in our living or family room. So it should be fun. Hopefully it'll work out. I'm a little, yeah, I'm like, ah, is this, you know, it's a pretty good size room.

So it's going to be a bit of a wood, but my cousin's like, there's no end to the wood up there. There's so many down trees. And, you know, we're just kind of help cleaning up the landscape a little bit by sawing them up and putting his sawmill to good use. And he's nice enough to come up there and help us do that. So really cool guy. Yeah. We did a trip to Yellowstone. I had a fantastic trip. He'd been there several times and knew when to go and where to go. And we saw a lot of cool stuff on that trip. So yeah, he's a good, good cousin to have good. Yeah. Sounds like it. Yeah. And he did very well business wise. I think he sold his company and made a bunch of money. So he's, he's got some money to buy a sawmill and he's building

the cabin up on Monroe, up on the, on the property up there. So it's kind some money to buy a sawmill and he's building the cabin up on Monroe, up on the property up there. So it's kind of fun to see that happen. So looking forward to seeing his work up there, but really going to be a fun time. So I'm going up with my dad. So that'll be nice, too, to go up. So, yeah, should be a busy weekend, but we'll just go up tomorrow night and then stay the night and saw some wood tomorrow and then come home, you know, Saturday afternoon. But a little bit of a drive, a little bit of a time. But I'm thinking maybe tomorrow night I'll try to make it down somewhere in the area to see if I can do a little road cruising or something.

But we'll see how tired I am and how much energy I have to do that. But it should be fun. Just mind the fingers. Hey, although I'm sure with it being a sawmill, that there's probably features to, to help keep you safe and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. And, and yeah, I think he's, he's pretty versed with it. So we'll, I'm sure we'll be safe, but yeah. Yeah. I don't want to lose any any limbs. You those for catching lizards and snakes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You don't need to be looking like Schmitty's freehandler T-shirt.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I always thought that was funny. And Eric Pianca's book. I don't know if you've read that, The Lizard Man or I think that's Lizard Man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a good book. It's an interesting read. But yeah, he he was he was missing digits and had issues from a landmine or a bomb that had gone off that he and his brother had found out in the desert or something. And they were playing with it and it went off and he had to be bedridden for a couple months while he healed. And so he would go to these conferences and he'd be around all the venomous keepers or handlers or whatever, and they'd be missing digits because of the venomous handling and he's like no i didn't lose mine from that i had a different reason i'm missing fingers or whatever so but yeah really cool to hear his adventures in australia and

um some of the stuff he did out there pretty pretty cool that's cool i had gotten his book that book at bob ashley's place it was in sort of the used but um it's been sitting on the shelf i'll have to check it out okay yeah it's it's a it's a good read i like his uh i think he talked about he was on um nature or one of those programs on pbs or um and he was oh lizard kings i think that's what it was called it was on veranda lizards and he had a part in that but he was saying that he had a dream that he died and was sitting in front of a lizard judge and all these witnesses you know oh my goodness from all the lizards that he'd killed in the name of the research. Yeah. And so he's like,

he was, uh, not in, in good shape there. He was worried about, but kind of a funny, uh, funny thing to do.

Yeah. But I think he said the judge was a parenti, which would be fitting, right? The kind of King. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so anxious to get back over there and find some veranids that'll

be a lot of fun monitor lizards it's so cool to see in the wild so hopefully we can get a few lifers out of it too because uh i wasn't very lucky there yeah yeah still haven't seen a mertens so i need need to check that okay i think that should be a pretty straightforward venture and if you guys don't want to go back to the same area as you've been i can and we haven't seen one by the time you guys take off maybe i'll go there on my own and check them out but oh it's fun i mean yeah it's just sort of you know that it sort of depends where you see them, right? There are places where it'd be a level A. Yeah, that's the ideal. But yeah, seeing them in a public park is still cool, but yeah, not quite as cool as swimming through a gorge with one.

Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully we'll get both experiences. All right. Well, speaking of interacting with animals animals we'll we'll get to our topic here so um we're gonna chat a little bit about uh legality laws and things that are in place to um you know in in theory protect animals and and keep you know have their well-being in mind, I guess you could say. And the other side being that most reptile people, if they find these animals, as long as there's no federales nearby, they might interact with that animal in a technically illegal manner.

Not that they're hurting the animals or doing anything, you know, to, to, um, harm them or, you know, they, they have the animal's best interest in mind. They just want a nice picture or a posed picture rather than, you know, watching, you know, having a picture of the tail as it escapes into the bushes or whatever. And, and so I guess the, you know, the duality of, you know, we want to be law abiding citizens and we want to, you know, but we also have that desire to interact with the animals. So, you know, kind of the pros and cons of either the laws or our behaviors in response to those laws. So I guess we'll take kind of a pro-con to interacting with protected animals. I guess this arose from a meme that was kind of like...

Yeah, an Instagram post that it highlighted. Essentially, it was highlighting that people particularly... I think it was particularly trying to poke fun at people who insist that an animal is true. The shot that they present is truly in situ, yet simultaneously it obviously reflects, were that the case, that would be a one in a million engagement with the animal, let alone the ability to then capture that photo. So it suggests that they're probably manipulating that animal to to achieve that photo but at the same time they're um claiming that they didn't interact with it or they don't interact with them and certainly sort of i think the other half of that right is that they're actively discouraging other people from doing so

right so which can almost be like gatekeeping their own sort of photos and you know oh look at this beautiful photo i got ostensibly without having interacted with the animal you absolutely should under no circumstances do so um which just guarantees they won't have a comparable photo yeah yeah, I mean, first off we want to make clear, we're not condoning any illegal behavior. We're saying, you know, it's fine if you go out and break the law, that's not the point of this. It's more of a philosophical discussion on kind of the merits of, of either side. Right. So don't go out and break the law because there are definitely fines and consequences waiting. A nice example of that is a story Dustin told us of a field herper in Arizona that was on the talus slopes and found a price eye, a twin spot rattlesnake, and picked it up with some tongs and said, I got a price. I, and the, uh, wildlife officer kind of emerged from the bushes and said,

here's your ticket. Congratulations. You found a price. I, and now you get to pay the price for that fine. And so I think he got a $5,000 fine if I remember right, for interacting with that price eye inappropriately. Now, Steve was just down in the area, in that same area, and they had a permit or permission to interact with them. He was part of a field survey course. And, you know, so he had proper documents, proper paperwork, proper things in place to be able to interact with the snakes. And he said there was he was pretty sure it was, you know, maybe an undercover field agent kind of saying, hey, guys, what you looking for? You know, what what are you doing? You know, and they said, oh, we're we're looking for this rattlesnake species.

Oh, isn't that that that one that you're not supposed to touch? Yes, it is. Yeah. Those kind of interactions. So obviously that's very well patrolled and highly patrolled. But he said kind of a spot that was close to there, but just a little bit off in similar habitat had been decimated. And he said it looked like unscrupulous herpers had gone through and just flipped rocks and flipped logs and hadn't put

them back. So I asked him, do you think it might've been a bear? And he said he didn't think so. He thought it looked like targeted, you know, specific, uh, places where you might find these things. So he did, uh, he was able to find one and they did get to look at it and collect some data and take some pictures and stuff. But he said at the spot that was disrupted, they didn't find anything. So, um, I don't know, maybe, maybe that's part of the discussion, right? So let's go ahead and flip the coin before we start giving each other points, but, um, do you want to go ahead and call it? Sure, Tails. Let's see if your luck continues. I doubt it. It's Tails. No, you got it.

Yeah. Once again, you're on a roll. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. This happened with Chuck, too, where we'd both kind of get on a streak, and it would be like one person would get the coin toss for weeks in a row. So, congratulations. Well, thank you. All right. I appreciate the luck.

That's cool. Right. Congratulations. Well, thank you. All right. I appreciate the luck. Well, there's always a 50% chance, no matter how many times you've gotten it right. Absolutely. Doesn't change the odds. All right. What side would you like to defend, I guess? I. Well, this is tough um yeah i mean i think there are i will take the side that's both harder and easier and say that we should be able to manipulate these animals. And I think the first thing I'm happy to not chuck you in terms of getting us started by saying that I think the first part that maybe makes it challenging to enforce these laws or at least makes them feel more arbitrary is that often the legal language itself is very nebulous and fuzzy and maybe just references harassing an animal now they're really for the most part right there's not going to be there are it's sort of up to the individual

interpretation of whatever law enforcement officer or other person in general as to sort of how they choose to interpret what that means and whether your activity in terms of photographing from a distance without tools, you know, whether that constitutes harassment or if it's something where if you touch it in any way or even touch the area that surrounds it satisfies that legal language. I think that legal fuzziness that I have no doubt is intentional, right, by the authors of that legislation necessarily makes it feel more arbitrary and gives me a natural reticence. Whenever I see language like that i i naturally kind of pull back from that and say wow we're giving a lot of sort of independent in the field authority to a

particular person to make a determination that in reality is is going to be the binding result right even if i wanted to fight in administrative law court as to whether or not that actually constituted that the standard of deference is such that almost certainly it's just going to be sort of the whim of the the officer with whom I'm interacting or whatever that's going to define that and I I just tend to pull back from language of that sort yeah and I mean I would agree too and I think you know it's it's clear that maybe, I mean, obviously in some states there's no enforcement, right? There's not enough field biologists. They're busy off chasing poachers, deer poachers, or fish, people who are fishing illegally, things like that. That's kind of where most of their time is spent. And most of them probably don't want to go chase reptile people because it's so few and far between compared to hunters or fishers or things like that.

And so I think, you know, just the idea that, you know, there's just not enough to enforce it really makes it difficult to have such laws. Now, I guess the off chance that you do get caught, those fines can be pretty hefty. So, I mean, there is kind of that idea that something's waiting for you if you do do that and get caught. So, you know, with most people, that's going to prevent that behavior. And I think, and, you know, reasonably so, but I guess where I kind of draw the line and this kind of goes to your side is, is something like the, the, the wildlife officers releasing a Gila monster onto the road where an oncoming car is coming and would see it and want to like have compassion and move that animal off the road. And then all of a sudden the lights come on and they pop out of the bushes because you've just interacted with an animal that you shouldn't have interacted with. Now, you know, of course that's, that's, I don't like that kind of entrapment and that just seems to cross the line for

sure. But I mean, having rules and regulations to, to hopefully with the animal's best interest in mind, you know, I think that's that's reasonable. Whether or not they're always enforced well or properly, like you said, can is up for debate for sure. And I don't know, you know, you wonder if how many of these folks that get fined will fight that. Now, I think the guy with the price, I holding it up with his could just kind of photograph them and not really have to worry about that as much. But, you know, obviously it's a little more difficult to get those pictures or you have to have patience and just kind of wait until they move to a spot that is reasonable. But, you know, that's so there are ways to do it. Of course, that's that can be very difficult if they're sitting on a rock ledge and they're going to dive into a talus slope. You know, I guess you just say I got to see it. I didn't I didn't interact with it.

So being mindful of the laws, because obviously ignorance is not a defense, because if you're out looking for those animals, you need to know what the laws are. But so I guess I do like the premise of protecting animals, of having laws that would hopefully protect them and keep them, you know, obviously the collection laws and limiting and, um, limiting how many animals are collected or prohibiting collection of certain species that are, that are, uh, maybe vulnerable or, um, I don't know though. Sometimes you wonder if a complete ban on all collection even does anything except for people in the state where they're found you know and that's that's the other side of it is you know the laws don't apply once the animal has left the state

although they can prosecute and we've seen examples of that especially with something like the price eye where they pop up on fauna and then the arizona fish and wildlife goes after them because you don't find them in any other state. So they know they were illegally collected. Plus, they had the research markings on the tail. Well, the research markings are what undermined any claim they were captive bred. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. So they made that case easy for them. But I do like the idea of having something to protect herpetofauna, you know. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. I guess, you know, I think there's much more subtlety with something like Prici, right, with its really restricted habitat preference for the most part the absence of roads through there so road mortality is not sort of you know a principal driver in the way that we see in some other things i guess to me the the contrast contrasted scenario from my mind would be like australia where theoretically everything save a cane toad um you're prohibited from um interacting with that up to and including removing it from a roadway but you can uh run over as many as you'd like you know that sort of speaks to the gila monster

entrapment situation that you're describing is saying um well frankly and and the part of that is one thing if it's a rubber snake the notion that they would actually put out a live Gila monster and risk it getting run over is appalling to me. But, you know, the Australian example is is to me sort of very plainly on the wrong side of sort of legislation that makes sense. Right. It's it's what Nick often calls out where he says, oh, well, they just want it to be simple, right? That's making a law written in such a way that sort of just everything's illegal because it's much simpler to just say, okay, well, we saw you touching it. Your purpose, you know, the purpose, the ideation, the facts of the circumstance don't matter. You're standing there touching it, or you have a picture of yourself holding it or, you know, that's that is the case that's the

prima facie case so um i do think that's kind of crazy right what you've seen with shinglebacks where you know they're just these beautiful animals that live for decades right and only have a very low rate of fecundity and yet you'll see dozens that you've had situations where you've seen dozens of them on a short stretch of road to me that's that's truly wild that if you get out and move those so that they're not run over by the road train you're the criminal that that to me is just fun fundamentally i'm going to push back on that and say well that's obviously not a conservation i guess what all of this is to say the australian law clearly from my perspective has nothing to do with conservation it's entirely sort of a prohibitionary maybe there is a a

conservation in the sense of trying to prohibit you know illicit collection of animals um but that's only that's you know using a a blowtorch to to light a candle if you're saying, okay, well, we're just going to say you can't touch anything, you know, literally a child who goes out into the garden and picks up a blue tongue skink, they're a criminal. And that's pretty wild. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And really, it's not enforceable, you know, they're not out. And, and I mean, I think that's, that's kind of the, the difficult part is, I mean, so many people post pictures of holding, you know, Australian reptiles and nothing's done about it, you know, so then you get kind of this idea, well, maybe it's not so firm and fast of a rule or a law or whatever. And so, um, and, and really, I mean, I don't think

that's the primary purpose is to stop people from interacting. It's probably to stop people from killing or from collecting those animals. And so if they can make it easy to make a case and they, oh, we caught you in the airport with your underwear full of lizards you know obviously you you've handled them and you've touched them and so that's going to be added to the charges of smuggling you're also going to be charged with you know interacting inappropriately they're not going to go after the guy just out taking a wildlife photo and or posing an animal to get a picture, at least that I've seen or heard of. So, but, but that doesn't stop, you know, the Australians from saying, oh, don't touch, don't touch anything in our country while they're over there picking something up or,

you know, pulling it out of a tree or something. So, you know, it's, it's kind of a little bit of a double standard in some ways, it seems, but that's kind of a a gray area you know like they're using it as a secondary charge rather than going out and like arresting children in their yards for touching things you know and i i mean i think that was kind of i remember casey telling the story casey lazik telling the story about you the story about seeing somebody chopping up a black-headed python or something in their field and thinking, what are these laws protecting? They're not protecting the wildlife because the wildlife is either being hit by a car or killed by somebody in their yard that doesn't know what they're looking at. It's a harmless python, not a deadly brown snake or something. So, and even a deadly brown snake is not dangerous unless you're trying to

hack it up usually. So that's the, that's the trick, I guess. And, you know, here we see that too, you know, it's illegal to kill snakes except for rattlesnakes, you know, in our state, in Utah, my state, not our state. We don't live in Utah. But, you know, it's neighboring states. Exactly. It's illegal to collect and keep them. But if you feel like they're a danger, then you can kill them. You know, and I was talking to somebody the other week and they said, oh, yeah, you know, I like reptiles. But then he tells me, oh, but we're on my grandma's land. There were a lot of kids running around. So every time I found a rattlesnake, I'd do this or that.

I'm like, I just said I like snakes. I don't want to hear about being killed. Why is it only snakes that you can do that with? But anyway, yeah, I think I like the idea of having that mindset, but also the flexibility where they're not necessarily enforcing the no touchy rule. But it does make for kind of an awkward limbo. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just that element of uncertainty, I guess I just fundamentally don't like that, right?

Of saying, you know, and Australia has a variety of things that they do this with where, I don't know, just from my perspective, if sort of if everything's illegal, you're at some point, you know, it's the same thing as if everything's always a five alarm fire, then you've just just there is no scale the scale is god right you've just made you know if if i'm a criminal because i move a python off the road then like i just think it sort of normalizes ah well it's illegal but who cares you know we do we do that stuff and i just don't know that from a social policy perspective that you that that's really a great idea but you know obviously they're not interested in my opinion on this issue but um you know or i would suggest that or it promotes illegal activity they're like well it's illegal to touch them so i might as well collect it and bring it home right or send it to another country or yeah and for a in for a dollar or whatever that's like it for a penny and for a dollar or whatever that's like for a penny and for a pound. Yeah.

Yeah. And maybe, you know, I don't know if this is what, what leads to this, but you know, the idea that somebody is just wrecking the environment, trying to collect, you know, the twin spot rattlesnakes, maybe it's because they're just trying to get in there quick, grab a few and get out of there because they know if they get caught, there's huge penalties. But, you know, whereas if there wasn't a law, first of all, probably nobody would care that much. I don't know that there would be indiscriminate collection, you

know, for the most part. And I don't know, it's hard to say, because obviously there are some populations that are decimated when, you know, even when they're illegal to touch or look at, you know, they'll go and collect them. And, you know, there's this whole underground wildlife trade and sometimes it's promoted by the illicit, the, you know, how hot the species is. You know, people want it more because it's even more rare because nobody can get it. Or, you know, the plowshare tortoises is a great example where people are willing to literally risk their life to break into these breeding facilities and still a few plowshare tortoises and risk getting killed to, to get that species because the reward is so much you know is so great that you're almost promoting that black market certainly promoting the interest in them yeah kind of it it's almost

highlighting a target highlighting them as a target right exactly and if they're so desirable that you can't release those babies back in the wild without, you know, an armed guard sitting here watching over them, then how are you ever going to repopulate, you know, with those animals? The idea is maybe just to flood the market and then you'll have, you know, have the ability to release those babies. Once you remove that dollar value or whatever, I don't know, that maybe goes more to your side, but I think, you know, sometimes we, they protect them themselves into oblivion almost, you know, like, um, great example is with the, the, uh, mammals in Australia, they're disappearing at an alarming rate. And a lot of people would love to keep those and and probably would do a great job at replicating them and making a lot more of them that could then be potentially released back into

the wild or something if done the right way but it's illegal to keep them so they just kind of go extinct and eat around yeah yeah and and if there's no federal funding or state funding to protect those things and and have some of reproduction program, whereas otherwise you just somebody would do it out of their own bank account. So I don't know why they're so against that, but it's strange. They'd rather see. I think that there certainly are sort of, you know, to frame it as political factions where that's true. Right. You know, we certainly see that with some animal rights groups who legitimately kind of frame the idea, you know, whether they'd be honest about this or not. But it's like they do think to me, it's a level of moral certainty that I just would have a hard time having about basically anything is sort of this viewpoint that they'd rather have it go extinct in the wild they think that's within

their prerogative to push it to extinction in the wild rather than sort of any intervention or the notion that any are kept in captivity anything like that um i do think the the point you raise about sort of that habitat, potential habitat destruction associated with the prey side, that's really adroit. I like that because to me, the part that has never and I think it actually makes some sense in that context is because it doesn't make sense to me why someone who's interested in reptiles, even if it is for that illicit purpose of trying to collect them, why you would destroy micro habitat that can support them. If for no other reason than you want to be able to come back to that same habitat and potentially find some more, be it the next day or a year later or whatever it would be. Right. So that never has made sense to me why, you know, obviously, if not, everyone takes the same or operates with the same standard of care. If they're putting back a rock to make sure the seal is exactly how it was, all these things. Just not everyone's standard of care in day-to-day life is necessarily up to, you know,

what I would consider to be my standard. And maybe someone else, maybe your standard is higher than mine. I mean, I think we're pretty aligned. You know, that's sort of the people you go field herping with. You know, you learn to, you go herping with people that you, you know, where your standards align. Otherwise, it wouldn't be enjoyable, Right. It'd be very frustrating. But maybe maybe that's the answer. Right. I think you had even mentioned to me, you know, the thing that Steve had seen. And my response was, I don't get that. You know, even if you were going to collect them, it doesn't make sense to me.

But the point you just had made, maybe that's the reason, right? Because exactly that, that timeliness factor, particularly if you have one or two in a bag in your backpack, you probably don't feel like you have the time to be resetting that moisture seal on that rock that you flipped. I think there's something to that. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to say, but I think, you know, a lot of times, sometimes if the laws are too strict, they almost promote that illicit behavior. So, you know, could make sense that that might be the possibility of what's going on there. And so I think, you know, common sense laws are important, but that's really hard sometimes to convey. And, and, you know, we, I think we're viewed a lot of times as just wanting to do whatever we want. Nobody can tell me what to do. You know, I'm going to do this and that, but I, I think Utah has, has been a good example in the past where, uh, you know, other than a few examples, but where we've kind of moved for common sense laws and changes in the law to allow for some collection. And I'm really encouraged by the results. So, what, 20 years ago, it was illegal to collect the mountain kingsnakes and milksnakes in Utah. It prohibited

to collect and own those in the state. Now, they'd been collected and bred outside of Utah, um, prohibited to collect and own those in the state. Now they'd been collected and bred outside of Utah and they were available in the hobby. It was actually technically illegal to own a California King snake in Utah because they come into, you know, just the Southwest corner of the state. There's not, you know, we've seen them there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so technically it was against the law to go to any pet store and buy one of the most commonly bred species in herpetoculture, the California Kingsnake. And so, you know, we said, this doesn't make sense. Why, why would you have this be prohibited when they're sold, you know, and so they've changed the law. Yeah, exactly. They've changed the law to make sense to say, okay, you know, you can, you can collect,

you know, X number and, and, uh, own this many. And, you know, if they're, you know, purchased from a store or whatever, they're captive bred, then that doesn't apply. And so they've changed the law to make that, make it more common sense. Same thing with the mountain King snakes and the milk snakes. They've, they've allowed, you know, a moderate or a minor small level of collection. You can't collect 10 of them or whatever, but you can have two of them and you can breed them and sell the offspring even within the state. So very, very common sense law.

And I was encouraged because I talked to Thomas Wilder, who's seen, you know, a hundred in the wild and is very good at finding them. And so he's and he told me that one of these hot spots where he sees a lot of people coming in and he understands that they might be there to collect, he says he hasn't seen a drop in the numbers. Now, you know, that's not necessarily going to apply to every species, but that's encouraging, right? And it shows that, you know, once we understand the natural history, and that's another part of this is that they, they used us as field herpers, excuse me, to go out and do a survey and to find, you know, milk snakes and mountain king snakes in

the wild and kind of report on when they were fine and how many there are being found in a year. And when, you know, what conditions they're being found under. And they realized these animals are not necessarily rare. They're just rarely surface active, or they're rarely found under. And they realized these animals are not necessarily rare. They're just rarely surface active or they're rarely observed, you know, other than a month or two in the spring, you know, you're really not going to see them in numbers. And so they, they've realized that, yeah, you, you, they're already protected by their natural history. You know, you're not going to over collect necessarily, especially if you're limited on, you know, just collecting a couple out of the wild. So I think that's been a really nice example of common sense laws and how this can work to benefit both the animal,

as well as those who are interested in keeping the animal without saying you're punished because you live in the state where this reptile lives that you like, you know, so it's, it's been really nice to see that, that it can work. And I think, um, and, and in addition to that, they not only made it legal to collect some of these, but they also put up at the front end before you get a permit to collect it. Um, you have to take a quiz. You have to understand what this means, what you, you know, when you're taking it from the wild, you have to think about what am I going to keep this in or how am I going to keep it? Do I know, you know, that kind of thing.

So it, I think it's just one step to make people think twice before collecting something from the wild out of Utah, which is, you know, a nice, nice way to do it. So it can work. And unfortunately there's probably less examples of how it works well like this than there are of how my, it may not work so well, but, uh, you know, that's, that's, uh, um, kind of a cool example, I think lately. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think so in terms of pros cool example, I think, lately. Yeah, absolutely. I think so in terms of pros for this, I think framed as simply as possible, right? It's it's partially just that we enjoy doing it. We, in the broad sense, right, want to to go find these animals and enjoy them. And sometimes there's a level of interaction required, even if it's flipping a board, right?

We might be literally flipping trash, right? And uncovering this animal. And then rather than taking a photo of it under that, you know, plywood board or under that cardboard box or whatever it is, right? You know, ceramic toilet, whatever it might be. We want to set it up to be an example of that species in its native habitat minus the minus the garbage right and so if we're in a space where that's entirely prohibited i think that fundamentally that that's um failing to acknowledge sort of our our human selfish need you know for some of us to to do that and that it certainly has ripple effects in the context of saying okay well then if we if we can't do that if that's entirely impossible and is entirely prohibited particularly universally then i mean that's going to discourage us from

engaging in those trips from embracing that wildlife from you know trying to take compelling images that promote uh conservation right so many of these animals are from uh from a distance the the subtlety that they present is potentially not that sort of awe-inspiring in the way that it is for us as as really reptile sensitive people right we can appreciate even from 10 feet away we could appreciate some of that subtlety in a way that i mean, some of the macro photography and things that people are doing is, you know, really shows the incredible features of these animals that I know are compelling to a broader audience, right? And we even see that in terms of photography, wildlife photography contexts and things where where generally speaking, that audience

is probably not interested in a photo of a shingleback, but, you know, a particularly compelling shingleback, maybe even like Scott's photo, right, where he's got the rusted out trucks or whatever that they're in front of these sort of, you know, these sorts of things, you know, that's really compelling, you know, but taken at face value, some of those things aren't even possible. And I really think taken to its illogical extreme, right, which might even just be what the facial language says, right, in some of these contexts, that my side, or the ability to have some level of intervention is to say, we need to be able to do this to, there's a greater good, right. Then sort of five minutes of, um, suffering to indifference on the part of the animal to when we take that photo. Right. Right. Right. Uh, yeah, I, I, I can definitely see that. And I think, you know, it is important for us to be able to interact with nature and to get, you know, get out and enjoy the things around us.

Now, I've always kind of compared, you know, ever since getting into birding a bit, I've kind of compared and contrasted herping with birding. And obviously, it's a lot harder to collect a bird. You know, you're going to have to go to far greater effort to catch a bird as compared with a snake or a lizard, even though some of the lizards can be very difficult to catch and require a little Benny Hill action there. But, you know, that's part of it is you know there's there's no or or little um pressure of wild collection on on birds in in the united states at least and uh at least as far as i know you know and so and live specimens right yeah i mean certainly we have a hundreds of year history

of even wiping out species right as i understand associated with collecting them for hat ornaments and things like that but that that's not what birders are doing at this point right yeah unlike a herper and and i you know i almost think that herping is kind of moving towards that once, especially in the context of so many things are captive bred and commercially available that way that, or, or that people have interests outside of their home range, you know, so a lot of people like, like myself included, and, you know, we want to keep these exotic, you know, cool pythons from Australia or something like that. And so,

you know, I don't really have a huge desire to go out and collect snakes from Utah. I'd rather just go see them in the wild and enjoy them. And then, you know, rather than that. So maybe there's a part of that component. So, you know, I understand like why I can't keep a Gila monster. I'm not very happy about it because I see their habitat being paved over and, you know, the populations are displaced in a permanent manner versus, you know, me interacting with one in the wild is a temporary thing or something. I'm not going to,

you know, result in its demise most likely. So, and the fact that, you know, the, we've seen the same Gila monster three times, speaking of us collectively in our group. Over years.

Over years, yeah. So obviously us taking pictures of it or interacting with it has not negatively, that animal hasn't died or it doesn't look any worse for the wear. So I think that speaks to that to some extent as well. But, yeah, I love interacting with the reptiles, even if I have no intention of collecting them. I really like the idea of getting a picture, at least to remind myself of that event, you know, that I saw that animal and got to enjoy it and and remember the time that I found that or whatever, you know, that kind of thing. So I, I, uh, appreciate the laws, but I do think there needs to be some flexibility to allow people to, and, and if you don't have that option or you don't get that, um, fascination, then you're, you're not going to care as much about their environment. You're not going to care as much

if their habitats paved over, you know, you're going to, you're going to just kind of say, well, who cares? I can't, I can't interact with them anyway. So why do I care about those things? So I think that needs to be taken into account as well when, you know, making laws or, or certain things like that. So common sense is, is a rare, but it should be prioritized, let's but i i wonder too if you know i don't know it seems like the the wild collection is is i don't know that it's necessarily fading out but you don't see it as as heavily as yeah i agree so that's encouraging um so you know hopefully that movement towards you know captive breeding and our knowledge and getting better at these things will result in less pressure on wild populations. There won't be a looking for copperheads and,

and we found one and we were kind of, or we were looking in other rocks, trying to find others. Cause this one was just in a deep crack and, and somebody called the cops and, you know, I appreciate a concerned citizen and, and I was happy to talk with the cop and, and she was, you know, reasonably, I mean, she was a little, uh, more, more gruff at first, but once she found out we were just there to take pictures and enjoy the wildlife, she was a lot nicer and actually recommended other spots to look for them. So I thought that was kind of, kind of cool. But the fact that she had to come and hassle us, you know, in, in our, in our interests, I mean, if we were taking

pictures of birds, would she have done the same thing? Probably not because there's no risk of us collecting a bird. So, yeah, but then, then that gives us kind of, and, and I will admit that there's a lot of reptile people that are, I see, I see a lot more dirt baggery, I guess you could say, maybe, maybe not, maybe that's not the case, but it does seem like there are a few dirt bags out there that are just ruin it for the rest of us, you know, that result in some of these laws being passed and, and making it difficult to keep things because they're not doing it the right way. But I don't know,

I don't know whether we're going to get rid of that because it's kind of human nature for some people yeah yeah absolutely i think the other thing that that um came to my mind when you were talking about the gila is i can just think of instances where um in terms of like what level does us you know even manipulating something for photos what level of disruption are we causing to that animal? Are we causing it to abandon its home, you know, or leave safety or change its behavior? It just calls to mind all the instances I've seen where we've found an animal undercover taken photos you know posed it for photos even like on life for animals maybe for 10 15 20 minutes something like that returned it to that piece of cover it will come back two days later and it's still sitting there as though the entire first scenario

didn't happen at all right and that suggests to me a resilience to these things in general that we probably are underrating if we're saying no if you you know sort of some of the language we've heard previously of like oh if it's interacted with at all then it will inexorably climb 10 miles the you know it will just go to beeline 10 miles in a different direction because it's been scarred for life and it's like well we did while that could have happened in some instance that leads, leads to that sort of language, we've definitively seen on multiple occasions that not to be the case. Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, you know, the, the legality of maybe interacting

with an animal is there on the books, but interacting with habitat, you know, lifting up a rock, that's not illegal. You know, you can lift up all the rocks you want. And, and technically they couldn't punish you if you didn't put them back how you found them. You know, you could go out and rip up a hillside and they'd just go, well, you know, it's not, there's no law against it or whatever. So I think, you know, maybe something to deter that would be probably more important than saying, don't interact with this animal or at least give some kind of guidelines. If you're going to interact with an animal, see that you, I don't know, rehydrated the animal or fixed the spot that you found it in and make sure that you're not damaging it. That kind of thing makes a lot more sense, I think, and would be kind of that common sense law. Um, maybe there's too many instances that

it's very difficult to do that, but yeah. Um, I don't know. I do like that, that, uh, thought though, that, you know, we have seen animals interacted with them extensively and then put them back and found them there in the same place so they're not yeah they're not hightailing it out of there abandoning things so yeah absolutely and the you know this is your story so i only prompt it here but right so in australia land where you can't even touch them i mean if you touch on for a second sort of the habitat destruction you saw in the wheat belt, uh, where the Stimpsons are. Yeah. There's, uh, I mean, again, you know, it's illegal. Is that habitat protected anyway? So not only the animals,

but that habitat itself, right. Is protected. Yeah. And, and the only protected habitat is the stuff that you can't grow wheat on. And so, you know, it's just extensive fields and, and, and obviously, you know, the, the, uh, Stimson's pythons range far and wide in Western Australia, but, um, in a lot of those areas, they're, you know, locally extinct. I think the Womas are a great example of that, where you can only find them basically in shark Bay in the kind of lower Western Australia. Um, and they used to be found

throughout that wheat belt region but they're gone now and nobody's found one since uh the 70s or 80s you know they're they're pretty much locally extinct there except for small areas of holdout where the habitat was actually protected or wasn't good for farming or, you know, growing crops or raising livestock or something. So, um, and, you know, I think a lot of those studies that, um, have been done to show that, you know, burrow systems are important, um, for, for Womas and, you know, they climb trees and chase bearded dragons and things like that, you know, so we, once we understand what their habitat needs are, but back in the early days, you know, so if, so if people went out and collected all these wheat belt womas and we had a big population of pet wheat belt womas, what would have happened? You know, they, they, there would have been some wheat belt womas around

rather than having them, uh, only found in a small area in the region. So that's, yeah, that's the problem. And I see that in St. George too, where it's just one of the fastest growing cities in the nation and people want to live up on top of the rocks or whatever, you know, it's like, come on, why, why do we have to, why do we have to litter this beautiful landscape with your house? You know, that's going to look out of place and very little time or look old in very little time. So kind of a sad state, but I can't go collect a Gila monster from a construction site. They'd rather just pave over it and call it good, you know, and get their, get their cash or whatever. So I understand people need to live in the area, but it just really is hard when they're

paving over this really good habitat where it supports animals with specific needs. Another spot there that they're developing is, is a great spot for sidewinders, you know, loose, red sand, beautiful area area but they're building the road you know big housing development going through there and so you're not going to find those sidewinders and even if you do they're going to probably kill them because they're in their yard you know it's a rattlesnake so it's just kind of a sad tragic thing now there's there's the good side is they they've put in their Rock, no, what is it, Red Desert Preserve out there, which was set aside for that purpose. And it's not going to be infringed on, at least that's the idea.

It seems like those developers always find a way. There's always tomorrow. on at least that's the idea you know there seems like those developers always find a way there's always tomorrow exactly but for now there's a lot of land that's set aside for and and we've herped in those areas and it's been very effective and and successful in those areas so yeah it's it's hard to say but um i don't know it's always hard to see things get developed where you used to go find snakes or, you know, now there's a super Walmart there or something. Reminds me of the Simpsons for liability purposes. It is the ocean that will kill you, not us. Exactly. Yeah. It's the truck digging up your burrow, not the herper that's, yeah. Or not the, you know, not the people making those decisions. Yeah.

But, you know, I would, I do like to see when, when they allow kind of, and even relocations aren't great. I mean, anytime an animal's relocated from its home permanently, you know, they often fare poorly poorly so at least a lot of the studies have shown that i'm sure it depends on the the species but species and area and yeah corridors and all these things yeah and and also if you're if you're introducing more you know if you don't understand population dynamics and you're just right willy-nilly yeah then how how much how many can that area support and are they just combating with each other and killing each other or you know talk about stressing out an animal put it in in another thunderdome locale where we just perpetually add more exactly so i don't know why uh yeah it's it's a it's a bizarre thing and i think a lot of

reptile keepers and breeders feel that way like why why relocate it and just have it die rather than place it with somebody who can breed them and make them available so people won't want to collect them from the wild yeah but common sense doesn't often prevail in government right unfortunately yeah well have we litigated this topic to death or i think so yeah i mean we kind of felt the obligation to i know that yeah i mean it's kind of um they're obviously pros and cons to to both on this one pretty clearly. But yeah, we had raised it as an issue associated with seeing that Instagram post. Unfortunately, I can't think to mind what the account was that sort of presented it.

I know to look through and circle back at some point and highlight that. But yeah, it was definitely something that felt like, regardless of how well we could debate through it on either sort of side, it felt like a topic worth, you know, kind of talking through. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I've enjoyed this discussion. And anybody listening, if you have ideas or ways to kind of spin off this topic, let us know. And we'd be interested in hearing what what you what you have to say on the topic especially if you were the one that posted that meme you know have have an idea of how to improve that or you know that kind of thing um but yeah definitely uh an important and and good topic to to discuss um cool well um i've enjoyed all the uh world lizard day yeah i was waiting for this to come around

let's see what you have and because i have one that fits exactly into this window that you're about to reference so let's see if it was the same content no i'm curious go ahead oh i i mean i i've seen several and and posted one myself so i i've just enjoyed it. I think it was how Jake Mannies really stood out to me. He had some really cool lizards in his post. I think, did I see one from Scott Iper as well? And some veranids maybe? But yeah, lots of different ones. What was your, uh, the one, the one that. Yeah. So the one that jumped out to me in that same vein was, and it might've been a story. So maybe that's more transitory. I don't know. I'd have to look through it, but it, it was the account Aussie underscore Herper. And it was Buranids as you say. And the image that really jumped out was a Northern territory Gloward Eye. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it was the second or third image um and i think the text on there said kind of spoke to the effort that it took to to find that animal or whatever and it yeah i was kind of like maybe we need to come up with either a fight topic or you know a to be discussed in future i suppose context of maybe other shows we'll be doing on this channel or on the other channel or whatever. But if there's no fight component, then we'll put those onto the other feed. But yeah, that was prompting lots of thoughts in my mind, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see an NT Gloward Eye. That would be really cool. I am planning to go look in WA after, uh,

our stent and Kakadu and stuff. So hopefully we can see one of each, uh, or I can see. You can at least. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a, that'd be a thrill to see any wild glowered eye for sure. So, and, and obviously, I mean, with them being so separated, you know, geographically. Yeah. And even the sort of the phenotype is radically all that orange. I mean, you can if you look at that post that I'm referencing. Right. And presumably that, you know, that was kind of a compilation, as you say, associated with Lizard Day and all this stuff. So I don't doubt that the actual that there's other content associated with that on the page itself. But. Yeah, I mean, that doesn't look like a W.A.

Gloward Eye in really any sense of the word. Yeah. And it's got that really clean, beautiful banding. And what was funny is that popped up right after Brandon Shifflett had posted a picture of one of his captive bred Gloward Eye. And yeah, they look completely different, you know, phenotypically. So I'm surprised Sam Sweet didn't do anything with that, where he studied that NT population. Right, to call it a different form. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, describe it. And also the habitat usage, you know, the NT forms tend to use the trees more frequently, it seems, than the than the W.A. forms. But I don't know. That was it's always cool to just see your feed flooded with lizard photos. And I tried to contribute that. I put up some pictures of some of the notable lizards that I've found within the last year, including some nice Australian stuff, as well as some fun Utah lizards. A lifer even for me, it was that lesser earless lizard that we found in Utah. Very cool species and really excited to see that.

Some of my photos were truncated and I'm not sure what happened there, but they were like the head and the'm not sure what happened there but they were like the head and the tails not showing up on the one of the shingle bag posts that shingle back was fantastic but yeah um very uh very fun i i enjoy seeing lizards in the wild for sure absolutely i think i mentioned it to you when i'd gone down to southeast colorado that i had seen earless lizards the the lesser earless and that the the one was missing an eye you know which made it much easier to catch but then spoke to sort of the impressiveness that it was still adult size despite the fact that uh that handicap had made it substantially easier for me to catch would presumably would make it

that much easier for you know a predator to catch although i suppose for the most part they don't have sort of the the two arms the one to distract you know that that works really well if it turns out lizards you know both the loss of depth perception from having two eyes and uh you know with two hands and that that distraction trick works really well if they only have a single single eye right yeah that's uh yeah it's uh helpful if they can't see the side you're coming up on and where you know okay i see one eyes out i can use that side to make this capture easier and and really they didn't they didn't seem to i mean as far as lizards go like compared to a whiptail or something they weren't right you know hardest things to, it was more like a horned lizard,

you know, kind of that squatty fat. I mean, they're still a little challenging and again, referencing the Benny Hill moments, but you know, as far as lizards go, they're maybe one of the easier ones to grab, but yeah, pretty cool. Yeah. I'm looking forward to finding more, some more veranids in the wild here soon. So good times. Anything else?

Any other topics? No, that was the one that was fresh in my mind. And, yeah, I'm glad you were seeing that same content. And, yeah, really cool stuff. Sometimes it feels a little trite when we see those sorts of things, but as you say, to have a, to me, random day in the calendar pop up and then all of a sudden there's a popular incentive to be posting a lot of that cool

Blizzard content in this case. That was really cool. Right. And another one that stood out was uh doug duary i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that right um d-u-e-r-r-e i don't know him personally but i follow him on facebook and um he posts a lot of those uh really white specs and he posted a horned that is white, black spots. Yeah. Very blends right in with that white granite. It's beautiful shot though.

A little desert horn lizard, I'm assuming, but yeah, really cool shots. Oh, nice stuff. Of course, our buddy Keith McPeak is working with some really cool lizards and he's trying to get some other really cool lizards. Yeah. Aquatic, fun aquatic lizards that I probably wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole because I don't do aquatics, but I love to see them. I'm glad he's having fun with those but looking forward to picking his brain about that when we're in Australia again absolutely absolutely good times all right well um I don't know I guess we can end it here and thank Eric and Owen and hopefully Owen's having

a good time in Daytona and uh seeing some fun animals and interacting with some good people. Phil out there as well. It's his own stomping grounds out there. That's his show. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm sure he's got the gazebo all set up and ready to go. Permit and all. Yeah. Wish we were there to enjoy it as well. Well fun guys and i guess you're hearing this after you had fun so uh had fun all right well well uh thanks again for listening and we'll catch you again next time for reptile