Reptile Fight Club - Reptile Talk & Local Recap

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

In this episode we catch up about local trips and some reptile talk. 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 edition of Reptile Fight Club. I'm your host, Justin Hulander. And here with me, well not with me, with me, but like across the state with me is Rob Stone. How's it going? with like across the state with me is Rob Stone. How's it going? Oh, hoi hoi, soon enough, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Another couple weeks or week and a half? A week, a week basically, right?

Before we take off, yeah. All right, I'm looking forward to that red-eye flight. Get us there nice and early. Absolutely. And then we get right into it. Yeah. Because it's be damned. We're going to love it. I say it so much that half the time that's what I say. Triggers and ticks is what I meant to say. But yeah, half the time I say tiggers and chicks. So there it is. Well, they can be damned too. Who needs tiggers and chicks?

Winnie the Pooh has no pants. These pantsless animals. They can be damned. Good times. Good start. Solid start. Love it. Well, maybe a little better than Nick and Ryan on MPR Start. Oh, man. I guess the secret to get Nick to speak freely is to not let him know you're recording.

I mean, you still say that you're recording and you still, you know, turn on the flash light. Nevertheless, you have to say attention, attention. We are now beginning the recording. That was pretty good. I just wonder, he was already going when he started recording. I would love to hear the front end of that. Yeah.

Funny stuff. Well, yeah. love to hear the front end of that. If that's what it makes it that. Right. Yeah. Funny stuff. Well, yeah. How's everything going with you? Yeah, all good. Just the usual kind of, I guess it's starting to warm up, but the weather's still nice and putting some plants in the ground and things. Yeah, all good. You had an exciting trip that I'm excited to hear about. I went with Brendan Hediger on a local excursion and had a little bit of fun associated with that. We got a little bit of, I think this is mostly a proof of life show as opposed to fighting stuff out, but cutting through it and all and hearing the updates.

Yeah. We'll fight about something I'm sure, but you know, there's something in there to fight about. Yeah, exactly. Um, it was, yeah, quite the whirlwind tour. Um, I did come home to a hatchling blackhead, so that was nice. Um, unfortunately just one hatched and the rest were like full term, dead in the egg. These blackheads, man. They just-

That's crazy. Yeah. I don't know what I'm missing here, but yeah, I don't know why they'd go full term and then die in the egg. Once the first one pipped and was out for a day, I opened the other eggs, just made a small slip, but I didn't really check to see if they were alive because I didn't want to know the answer maybe. But yeah, like looked like they were ready to crawl out, you know, pattern and color and I don't know,

maybe next year if she plays again. But this is wild, man. Yeah. Well, the eyes are closer. Yeah, yeah, it looks great. It's a good on the one. Yeah, yeah. It looks great. It's a female, so you know, can't be too sad about that, I guess. One is better than none, so yeah, what do you do? I think they were earlier by probably a month than the other eggs, so I still have to have a bunch of eggs coming. I got another clutch of pygmy pythons.

So that's nice. And then it looks like my woma female is finally in a lay. I was worried about her for a bit, but I think she's in the lay box now and looking, you know, contorting herself. So hopefully eggs are imminent. I need to check on those again. But yeah, pretty standard, I guess, for this time of year, getting ready for hatchlings and such. But it should be fun. All right. Well, there you go.

Yeah. Well, mixed bag congratulations. Yeah, right. I'm still a little trying to catch up on sleep from the trip and just played a little water polo this week. That was fun. We went down and played. So down an hour south and played some polo with some like the Masters club or whatever. So good times. But now I'm sore. But I think I was already sore from flipping rocks because I stopped at a spot on the way home

looking for milk snakes and I flipped rocks for maybe an hour and then didn't see any sign, any reptilian sign. And it was kind of cooler, but the sun was out. So I was hoping I'd get lucky, but yeah, I was kind of on the fringe of their range anyway. I know they've been found in the, you know, somewhere in that area, but so I thought, Oh, that's a good south facing hillside with lots of rocks. It looked like the right habitat and thought I might get lucky, but to no avail. Okay. Well, it's worth a poke around, but I guess that's starting with the end.

So yeah, we can go back to the beginning of my, I don't know if you'd call it a misadventure, but definitely a little bit of a misunderstanding adventure. So Alan Rapasci contacted me and said, Hey, are you coming out to Herpeton three or I guess Herpeton two never happened. So I don't know if you call it Herpeton three or, you know, since Herpeton two was canceled. But anyway, I said, Oh, I didn't know. He said, I sent you an invite on Messenger or whatever, and I checked and I couldn't find it. And so I never really got the information. So I looked up online like, you know, reptile symposium or talks or something.

And of course, the reptile talks came up. So I'm like, oh, that must be what he's talking about. And so I signed up for the reptile talks and it was a good weekend to go down. So I was just going to do like, I left Thursday after work. I worked and then took off and made it down to about Vegas and went and herped around the area where we found the Stevens eye, the Panamint rattlesnake. There was only like a DOR glossy or something. I herped in St. George, didn't see a thing. Not even an Uta was there to greet me. This cold front had come through and so everything was kind of chilly. So I wasn't really holding my breath.

And I got to St. George kind of later, like right on maybe a half hour before sunset. So I was walking around in the sunlight at least, but yeah, nothing moving. Yeah, at least that I found or saw. So, and then, yeah, so I made my way down to Vegas area, looked on that road, did a few passes and just that Deore. Oh, it was a Deore Longnose, that's right. Okay. And then went and made it as far as Prim about three in the morning and I was a little tired so I just slept in the car in the parking lot in Prim with the glitzy lights of Prim shining on me all night long.

It was a very restless sleep, but I was a little worried about sleeping out and I didn't know where to, I didn't think that area we looked for Stevens, I would be suitable to camp on the side of the road considering it's the prison that's nearby. So yeah, prim it was. Woke up about 5.36 AM, had a nice two or three hours of sleep and then headed south. Made it to California and went straight to a board line that Aspen told me about and got skunked there. So I went to a board line that I'd been told about previously and found a nice big old Cal King. It was pretty huge.

It was in shed, so it wasn't looking great, but it was big. And I took a couple of pictures, you know, as it was under the board and then it slipped down into a hole. So I'm like, oh, well, maybe I should have picked it up and got some in-hand photos or something, you know. And then I came back to that board on my way out and it was there again. So I picked it up and took a couple more pictures and a video or something.

And then... At least the boards were there, which is contrary to previous Southern California trips. Right. Well, Aspen's spot, he's like, oh, there were boards all over the place, but I found like two boards and they were kind of like where you might not expect to find a board. Maybe they cleaned the spot up. It was next to a church or something.

So I didn't have any luck finding the boards. So there may have been a productive, wonderful board line there at one time, but it was not there. So maybe the same deal that we had seen. Maybe. Exactly. Yeah, maybe so. I didn't find them stacked up anywhere. But so I went to my cousins, I was staying with my cousin and his wife and their dog that seemed to have no end of slobber and wanted to sniff my pants continuously. I'm like, come on, man, back off. And then you try to push him away and just get slimed on your hand. I don't

know. I like dogs enough. I've got a dog myself, but I'm not the biggest fan of slobbery dogs. But good times. He was a sweet dog and he's an emotional support dog. So he's very emotional as an emotional support dog should be. But I know my cousin would get excited about a basketball game or something, you know, something going on and the dog like looked all worried. He's like, no, this is happy excitement. So now he has to watch the games perfectly still. So it's a very sweet dog, but yeah. But great to see my cousins. Great to catch up with them and well, my cousin and his wife. And then I wanted to miss traffic. I was going to head down to Borrego Springs. There was like an icebreaker activity. So we decided to skip that and go herping and found out Zach Loafman was going down there

and Roy Arthur Blodgett and a few others. Kayla Martin. Yeah, Kayla Martin and Clint Bartley. And wow, man, I'm so bad. They had someone else in the group. One other guy in the group and I don't, I'm sorry. I don't remember his name, but it wasn't a common name. We'll say that, but nice guy anyway.

Yeah. So yeah, they were going to be there at around seven. And so I got there about maybe six, six 15 or something. So I thought, well, I'll look around the boulders for lizards and then maybe I'll find something that can point them out. So I gave Jordan a call and was talking to him, you know, and saying, Hey, how do you find these colored lizards or what, you know, like just getting some advice from the master. And he was very helpful as always, but I didn't luck out and see any of the collards. Again, it was kind of chilly

down there. I did see some of the banded. Again, it was kind of chilly down there. I did see some of the banded rock lizards. That was cool. And they're always fun to see and watch. And one was fairly bold. It let me get pretty close to it to take some phone shots. Yeah, just taking with the phone. So a little different than the ones that we'd seen previously that were very wary and wouldn't let you get within 30 feet of them before they'd, you know, take retreat into a crack or something. Maybe the cold helped with that. So sometimes it can be good. A lot of the spiny lizards, the orcuti, I believe the granite spines, really those greenish dark green colored things are beautiful. Just glow in the sun. I don't, you know, it's just

really neat looking. I saw several of those, including some juveniles and really nice males. And so it was cool. And a beautiful OODA like that was orange and kind of stripey. Cool. So, and that was about it. And then I, I, when I found the banded rock lizard, I knew Roy wanted to see one. That was one of his targets. And so I called them up because, you know, they weren't there yet. And it was after the time that they said they'd be there. I said, how close are you guys? I've got a banded rock lizard. You know, I can stay here and watch it. And if you guys are close and he said, we're an hour away, we got stuck in LA traffic and, and, uh, yeah, a little bit stressful drive cause they drove

down from Northern California. They were hanging out with Lucas and they found an amazing red sided garter snake that was like probably one of the nicest red sided I've seen. Um, beautiful animal. Okay. But,. But did you see the shots of that? I don't know. I saw a lot of the shots from when they were up there, but I don't know if I saw that one. Yeah, it was really nice, nice garter snake. And then, so I'm like, okay, well, I finished looking around, you know, along the rock slope and, and started to get dark. So I went back to the car and they weren't there yet. So I did a, did a lap, you know, as soon as it was dark and, and saw right off the bat, got a red diamond rattlesnake, a Crotalus ruber,

juvenile. It was just sitting on the road and it was a fairly busy road. I'd seen several cars go by. So I was amazed that it was not hit. It was perfect, a little juvenile specimen and really beautiful. So I, of course helped it off the road and put it on the side of the road, took a few pictures and then headed back up to where I was supposed to meet the guys. And then they weren't there again. So I did another pass and then didn't see anything that pass. And then decided to head towards Borrego Springs, where they were coming from, I guess. And so I drove that way and then came around to bend and there they were. So they had just come from seeing a California king and I haven't seen a king snake out there, which is really strange after that many trips out there. At least this

was probably trip six or seven, I don't know, to that area. At least in the desert, obviously. Exactly. But I really love the desert phase, the black and white. And so I'm like, did you think of calling me? I would have liked to have seen a cow king. No, no, you've seen plenty. Yeah. So we drove down and I said, oh, this is where I saw the ruby. We can poke around and see if we can find it. And so we were looking along and Kayla spotted it curled up under some

vegetation and just perfect little, you know, coiled up. Nice for photos for sure. So we got a few more photos and then some Canadian herpers came along and they were the ones that had shown them the Cal King. And so they repaid the favor and showed them the Ruber. And so that was good start to the night. We drove a few laps around the area and weren't seeing much. And so Zach mentioned that he hadn't seen a Sidewinder and I'm like, Oh, I know where we can see one of those pretty much a guarantee. And I said the magic, wrong words, exactly. And so we drove out there and to our Sidewinder spot and where we've seen probably a good 30 to 50 Sidewinders over the years.

They're very plentiful there. This is the spot where Rob was taking a picture of a Sidewinder that we'd found. And then I almost stepped on a Sidewinder as I walked past Rob and was looking over to him and chatting with him. There was one right at my feet. one right at my feet. So, and as we came in, we saw another herper and we were stopped for a little leaf nose snake. And then he's like, oh, I saw you guys stopped. Did you find anything good? And I'm like, oh, just a little leaf nose. And he's like, oh yeah, I've seen a few of those. I said, what have you seen? And he's like, oh, a couple of sidewinders, couple geckos, you know. I'm like, okay. And so I thought, now there you seen? He's, oh, a couple of Sidewinders, a couple of geckos, you know. I'm like, okay. And so I thought, yeah, there we go.

Their Sidewinders are moving. It's a nice windy night, which is what they seem to prefer. And so we started cruising and man, we found the same kind of thing, another leaf nose or two, a glossy snake and a couple banded geckos. But yeah, we spent maybe an hour in the area and saw zero sidewinders. I'm like, oh man, there I go. I guaranteed it. Now you're not going to see one. You know? So. Tanner Iskra I guarantee you won't see one. Jeff Sarr Yeah. I guess there are no guarantees, folks.

You won't see one. Yeah. I guess there are no guarantees, folks. Well, we were talking a little bit about that with, I think it was just me when I was on Matt's show, not another Reptile podcast, but he was, I think that one got released. So if you want to hear me blabber on in a different format, go listen there. But we were talking about, you know, the Australians were telling me, oh, if you love strophorus, you'll see millions of them. So I told them my experience in Darwin area, like, you know, Siliaris were everywhere.

Or Siliaris, right? Were everywhere. And I always, is it Siliaris or Siliatus? The Sili's. Siliaris, yeah. Siliaris, we're everywhere on the trip in 2011. And then we saw zero on the trip in our last trip. And we only saw one in 2019. So yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, I don't, yeah, there's nothing that's really a guarantee. Seems like when you see one, you usually see more, but yeah, there are definitely no guarantees in herping. So, oh, I see them everywhere. You know, I guess same thing with Southern Pacific rattlesnakes. You know, we were targeting them and saw none of them. So yeah. So anyway, we kind of hung our heads in defeat and went back towards Borrego Springs. We hit Scissors Crossing and erped along. We found a pretty good-sized glossy snake on the drive back and maybe a, oh, we saw a beautiful Cyanactus, a shovel-nosed snake, but it had just been hit by a car. So that was a real bummer. It was beautiful. Really nice red on it and some really dark, thick, dark bands. So pretty

cool. But unfortunately it had been hit. And then made it to Borrego Springs. And then they said, Oh, we're tired. We're going to go to sleep. I'm like, okay, I guess I'll drive back. And, and it was about one in the're going to go to sleep. I'm like, okay, I guess I'll drive back. And it was about one in the morning at that time. And so I had a two and a half hour drive back to my cousin's house. And I was hoping to see a Southern Pacific on the way out, you know, once got up the mountain, but yeah, but no luck. And I was struggling to stay awake.

That was a little bit of a rough drive. I did stop along the way. I was going to just catch a little shut eye, but then I'm like, I'm not going to be able to sleep very well or quickly. I might as well just drive back. So rolled down the windows and played loud music and did everything I could to stay awake. Worked through it the way that we did. Yeah. Made it back okay, but didn't see anything else on the road. I think sometimes that helps you to doze off when you're staring at the road.

Once I hit the freeway, it was a little bit better. It did not affect you. Exactly. I don't know. And then driving, the only good time to drive in California is like four, three in the morning, because people are driving reasonably at that time and the lanes aren't filled up either. So I tell you what, man, driving in California

will make you tear your hair out. So I got up, got to bed around four, 4.30 and then got up around 6.30 to go to the Reptile Talks. No, I think I slept until about eight because I got there, or maybe even nine. I got there right at like 9.30 and it was about a half hour drive. So I must've woken up at 830. So, you know, four hours of sleep and then, um, got to the place and I'm looking for Alan, I'm looking for a Philippe, looking around. Philippe was actually supposed to give a talk and spoiler alert, he, his, uh, wife had some health issues or something, so he wasn't able to make it. So that was kind of a bummer, but Phil Goss filled in and gave a fun talk. But so yeah, no, Alan, I'm like, why is he not his own

thing? And then I talked to the Gilpins and looking for them and they weren't there. And I'm like, wait a second, is this, I checked the, check the message again. I'm like, oh, it says herpeton. Check the message again. I'm like, oh it says herpeton And I got a message from from a guy who was helping Alan, you know get a headcount and was gonna Buy some meat and stuff and he's like, oh, I just looking to see how many people are you gonna be there next week? And I'm like, wait a minute I'm a very slow guy. I guess must have been I don't know what happened. Oh, well, he messaged when we were in Australia in Alice Springs area and he said he sent me an invite.

I didn't get the invite. Did I already say this or was that? No, you were talking yesterday. And so I didn't get the invite to the Facebook group or whatever. And then I checked the message and I'm like, oh, he did say herpeton. You know, I'm like, nope, I can't be there next weekend. I thought I thought I was here this weekend. I thought this was Alan's thing. So I've been telling people, yeah, I'm going to just power coming back this time for a conference.

Exactly. Yeah. So I was kind of bummed out because it would have been a fun event. But the Reptile Talks were a really nice consolation prize. It was really a great time and got to meet Lisa Farina and Kathy Woody. They were both just really great, fun people. That's awesome. Yeah, I got to catch up with them, sit next to them at the talks and really great. So that was fun. That was worth the trip down to meet those guys and some of the other folks. Lando, the gecko, uh, Landon, um, I know, uh, he, he does a Reptile podcast,

I believe, and keeps some really cool, um, OE Dura. So very cool. Met him and Brandon was down there, Brandon Valentine. So good to catch up with him. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, he seemed to be doing great. And I, I, you know, got to talk to him a bit, but yeah, it was like, mostly the talks. And he came down with like the crew, you know, they, Alex and his fiance, I believe, and her dad and to kind of the, yeah, wow. Okay. Yeah. They were the same group that came to Tinley with Dustin. So the only person missing there was Dustin, it seemed. Yeah, they were all of the fun group. So it was good to catch up with them. And so, yeah, Alex is very well connected. He seems to know everybody, like be everybody's favorite.

So yeah, he's fun to talk to and catch up with as well. But yeah, I'm probably missing a few. Oh, Ari was there. Oh, that's cool. And his wife, Ryu. And so yeah, it was good to catch up with him. Hear some of his stories and tales. It's crazy.

So, so fun. And I'm sure there's a few people I'm forgetting, which it's not surprising considering my affliction of age and memory. Age, memory, lack of sleep, all the compounding factors, blows to the head from water polo, all those things. And then, yeah, the first talk, so I got there just a few minutes late and the first talk was on Boland's Python, Mark Miles, or is that right? The car? Mark Miles or is that right? Never fear, I wrote things down.

That's the only way I can remember. Mark Miles, yeah, talked about his success with Bollini. I guess he's produced several clutches. Yeah, he's produced a couple clutches over a couple years as well. And so he kind of went through what he thought. I wanted to ask a question, man. It was really a good group and everybody was asking questions. So it was really, I guess that kind of maybe speaks to our last podcast about our reptile

talks. The reptile symposiums. Exactly. podcast about our reptile talks. Yeah, the utility of the reptile symposiums and things. Exactly. And I think obviously you don't get that with a podcast. You can't ask follow-up questions if you're listening to a podcast online. So yeah, unfortunately I didn't get to ask my questions, but maybe I'll have to email him or message him or something.

Maybe I'll come on and we can talk to him. Right, yeah, there we go. email him or message him or something. See it. But come on and we can talk to him. Right. Yeah, there we go. Um, I, uh, but yeah, anyway, it was, it was a good talk and wrote down a bunch of notes from that one, but pretty cool, pretty cool stuff. Um, Roy gave a really cool talk on, um, multi-species caging. I mean, he showed videos and pictures of his naturalistic setups with

area-specific animals and plants. Showed a really cool video of one of his puffing snakes drinking from a bromeliad that was filled with water. So I'm like, that's pretty cool naturalistic behavior to witness, you know, in your cage or something similar to what they're doing out in the wild. But I mean, he had those puffing snakes and some lizards all in the same cage, you know, that would overlap in the wild and the snakes aren't messing with the lizards and all that kind of stuff. So it was kind of fun. And yeah, really neat talk and interesting stuff. There were lots of great talks.

I mean, you can kind of see the lineup online. And they had a little magazine that went along with the talks, like with a summary of the talks. Oh, that's very cool. I thought that was a neat idea, you know, so it's like volume two. Yeah. And they had, they had, they gave us also the one from last year too. So I guess this is the second year of the reptile talk. So I don't know, I might have to make this an annual thing. If hopefully Alan doesn't do his a week after every year or something. Maybe I'll alternate

between the two or something. Yeah, very cool stuff. Bonnie Person talked about like enclosures and plants and that kind of thing. She mostly works with dart frogs and dart frog enclosures. So, but really interesting. She has a huge amount of knowledge. So that was, that was pretty cool, but really good advice if you want to grow plants. And she, I think she has a website. I can't remember if I wrote that down or not, but I imagine searching her name would bring up her information. And then Ari talked about his Bollini and his studies in the field and stuff. So, really cool. Yeah. Did he talk about just going back out there or was it

mostly kind of the previous trips and stuff? Mostly previous stuff. Yeah. Looking at nesting females and things. Yeah. I guess that's hard to give a Bollini specific talk when you didn't see them on the Goodenough Islands, you know, and aren't sure if they're there or not. So, but we did talk about his trip, you know, on the sidelines with me and Lisa, we're grilling him pretty good about his trip out there. That was fun. But just, it's fun just to sit back and listen to all these stories of what's going on and the fun he had out there. There was a neat talk about tricolor hognose snakes. I neglected to write down the speaker's name, but that was cool. I didn't realize there were a couple different species that are very similar

in appearance, but are completely different in their habitat. People are keeping them one way or there's different advice on how to keep them because you're advising one species versus the other. He showed the differences and how to tell them apart and things like that. That's very cool. That actually happened to him. His first clutch was... He got one from one person.

Yep. And he did, I mean, they did hybridize and produce offspring. So what a fascinating species. I know Ben kept them back in the day. And so I got to see his- I mean, they were very popular, what, going back 20 to 22, 23 years ago. And it was like, wow, these weird h hog nose that are tri-colored look and all this stuff. Well, they're not quite. Dr. Zach, I'm sure has opinions on this topic.

Right. Completely different genus, probably. I don't even know if they're in the same family or if they're in something else. But I didn't realize, because Zach talked and he talked about the split of the different families like with colubridae and so that's why there's colubroids and colubrids and you know, was it, is it Xenodonte or something? Anyway. Yeah. Well, and they used to be Lestrophis, right? And now they're, yeah, but there's Xenodontine snakes.

Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't aware of those changes because I don't follow colubrids that closely, but yeah, yeah, kind of interesting. Yeah, so great talks. I went to the auction, but man, it's too rich for my blood, so I just, I left early. I think Brandon, um, bid on a, a cool Bologna skateboard. I think Ari donated that, but it was, it was pretty awesome. Like the deck had a, a Bologna on the bottom, you know, on the underside as well as on the top. And it was cool. I'm like, man, that would be kind of fun to get, but yeah, it was, I had 50 bucks in my wallet and not that everything

went for more than 50 bucks. So I didn't, so I'm like, Oh, I'm going to go hang out with my cousin. So I went, went back to their place and hung out and chatted with them, went to dinner with them and stuff. So that was fun to catch up with them a bit. Sunday, you know, the talks continue. That's when Ari talked and Phil Goss gave a talk about us arc stuff. So that was cool to see all the recent things that they've done and they're doing good work out there. So I don't know. I'm glad that somebody's out there fighting for our rights and happy to donate to them and have an annual whatever membership or whatever you want to call it, you know,

I would encourage everybody listening to support US ARC if you like to keep reptiles or amphibians and you would like to continue to keep reptiles and amphibians. They do a lot of they fight a lot of those laws that are trying to be put into place that don't make much sense. So some do. And I think they've worked with like wildlife officials on some things like the salamander ban. Like, I think to protect the biodiversity of salamanders in the U.S., I think that's probably a smart thing not to allow import of salamanders from the wild where they could

bring over the B-sal or the analogous fungus. Yeah, I've talked about that quite a bit on the podcast and stuff. There's something to that. And Phil's so entertaining. He's just so good at that position. I really enjoy it. I can't remember the guy before him, but I was not a big fan of that dude. Phil is, he's great.

Andrew Wyatt. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Forgot that dude. He was okay upfront, but it seemed to go to his head. Like he was the man, you know, I don't know. I just kind of got that vibe. Yes. I shouldn't be naming names or not good podcast etiquette per previous fights. I'll stay positive. Phil is awesome. How's that? But yeah. So then as soon as the talks were basically over, I think Ari gave the last, no, the, the, um, tri color hog talk was the last one. So I just, I skipped the questions and got an early start on my drive home.

Beat the crowd. Yeah, exactly. And then I hit Vegas and there was like this ridiculous amount of traffic all through the whole town and on the way out, I guess. So I thought, well, nuts to this, I'm not going to sit in traffic. So I exited and I went out to Herp again at that same spot that I hit on the way down. And again, nothing moving, nothing going on. So I'm like, well, you know, and it was like 1130 or something at night. And I'm like, ah, or close to midnight. So I'm like, I don't think I'm going to try to make it all the way home, you know,

the next six, seven hours or whatever it takes to get home. So, uh, I thought, and Heidi talked me into getting a hotel room in St. George. There was one for 50 bucks or something. So I'm like, all right, I guess I can swing that. And I think it looked like rain or else I would have just slept in my tent. So I'm like, yeah, I don't really want to get rained on tonight. I'm not feeling that. And she's like, you want to get a good night's sleep in a bed. So I'm

like, okay, fine. And so I got back on the freeway and the traffic was still there. And so I, you know, had to sit in bumper to bumper traffic again and drove several miles. And finally, it turned out that everybody was trying to get off at that North Vegas exit where the Speedway is. There was some big to do there. I don't know if they're racist, but I'm like, what are they coming here at midnight? And enough that it's backed into the town of lots of it like yeah all the way into town and and two lanes like you're taken up by parked cars waiting to exit and So then the traffic starts moving once we get past there But then it slows down again because the next exit cars are lined up

They're taking up two lanes and so I get out of the dang road at least, you know Let let people who aren't going to this wonderful festival by. So then after that, the drive was pretty smooth to St. George and got a good night's sleep, got up and drove the rest of the way home. Oh, I stopped on the way and I was going to give a look for milk snakes. And so I turned over enough, uh, rocks to give my triceps and my forearms really nice and sore and felt that during water polo, but, uh, found no snakes and it was a little cool, cold dairy pot. Again, is this before we started? When is when and where is what? But, um, so yeah, no luck there and made the rest of the drive home.

Yeah, came home to a hatchling block headed Python. There you go. Very cool. Good times. Quite the adventure. And you're ready to do it for Alan this coming year. Unfortunately, I wish I could because it would have been fun to herp with the gillpens and see Alan and whoever else was attending, but I still don't know.

I still never got the information from the group or whatever, but I hope they have a good time out there. Sorry, Alan, if you're listening next time, buddy. I'm just kind of dopey, especially if I'm traveling in Australia with very little sleep there and yeah, lots of heat. Yeah, it sounds like there were misconnections on both sides or whatever anyway. Right. But it was a happy accident, I guess, to go to the Reptile Talks and I really enjoyed them

and I would recommend everybody attend if you can. It was great. That's awesome. I'm hoping to attend again next year. It was really cool. Very cool. Yeah, that's great. You had a bit of an adventure yourself with a little more high risk. I suppose. I'm sure so. Or at least, I don't know, maybe the nightivete, right? Carries you through as it usually does. So yeah, I was planning to go Saturday with, so we've been talking about it for, I don't know, a month, six weeks, to go with Brendan Hedegaard, who used to work for Phil Leets

of Areds Only, right? So he's often mentioned on their podcast, right? In terms of, Phil's always talking about it while I was talking to Brendan about X, Y, or Z. He's a local guy here, great dude. I met him several times through the co-park events and things. He's on the committee associated with that, does a great job. We'd finally made it work and it was going to be Saturday.

I was like, oh, I got stuff going on Saturday, let's do Sunday and we do that. And we were going to go in the afternoon and that morning we're seeing weather reports that are saying, oh, severe weather as you head out east. And as usual, sort of downplay it or ignore that. Well, it's supposed to be fine where we're going, ignoring what it's going to be like along the way. So yeah, we're on the east side of the Denver area. And as we're going along the highway, there's very obviously a tornado kind of top down from the clouds coming to the ground, probably half a mile to the south side of the highway.

And so I go, that's interesting. Probably two miles back from where it's at, you know, and oh, I hope it stays to the right. And then all of a sudden the road starts cooking and it looks like, you know, pot boiling right in the middle of the highway. And sure enough, one formed from the bottom up. That was what that sort of percolation was. In the road or in the street in front of you? Oh my goodness, that's crazy. So it goes from the bottom up and connects to the clouds and fortunately went, I don't know, at least a eighth of a mile, quarter of a mile to the north and ran off the road

or whatever as we're coming through. And then it just got... That was something. So I've been through a hurricane, seen and felt that. Daytona. Yeah. Hadn't really seen the tornadoes in effect. Right. I'd always sort of been like, yeah, it's fine, or whatever.

And then you had to have one form right in front of you and then go off. And apparently both were EF2s. They just released that today or whatever, wind speeds 135 to 111 miles per hour or whatever. Those two were the fourth and fifth in the Denver area in the last 28 years. So that was exciting. Yeah. A rare event. Yeah. It turned

out they were both, you know, well, I can say that second one was the bottom up one, man, just seeing the, um, the revolutions and power in that thing is sort of, it's right on the other side of the fence as we drive by. And it was like, Oh, that's definitely moving some stuff around for sure. And well, I guess that's what 135 miles an hour gets you. Well, those things are going through some revolutions. And yeah, so that was cool. And we went out and- I'm sure you might be getting a call from Matt about that.

Yeah. So that evening, so we go out there, we cruise around for a long time, have a lot of great conversation. It was awesome. Awesome dude. And yeah, so we had done that, found, we were looking for Mastasagas, saw one prairie rattlesnake that was doing its best Mastasaga impersonation. It was a small one. I was staring at the thing, I think in my heart of hearts, knowing that it was a prairie. But I was like, man, you're sure trying to look good for this. So yeah. Sneaky snakes there. Sneaky snakes, sneaky snakes, sneaky snakes. Yeah.

So it was a prairie rattlesnake, but doing its best impersonation for sure. Came back after a while and yeah, so I'm still over on that but we'll work through it and get there and certainly it was exciting but yeah I did I did message Matt right because it was on the back side of our conversation with him and I was like hey man here you go lined up I was herping and wanted to storm chasing you know he used to go storm chasing all this stuff. So it was really good. That's crazy. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you're safe. It didn't form underneath your car or something. Lift you with it. Yeah. It was kind of like, I mean, and it becomes one of the, people kept stopping under the underpasses and stuff. And I was like, yeah, I don't think that's a great plan. Unfortunately, Brendan and I were aligned and like,

yeah, I think keep going is the plan. It definitely got much worse in the rear view, which is interesting. I did watch Twisters, the most recent movie on the plane from either to or from Australia. And yeah, it was a little better than I was expecting. I didn't know what to expect because I had to watch the first one, but it was pretty entertaining. But yeah, they went under the underpass and spoiler alert, the tornado still got one or two of them, I guess. But yeah, kind of scary weather events for sure.

I guess, yeah, just not something I think about very often at all. So definitely had me looking at the clouds in a way that I haven't in the other 40 years of my life. So, right. Yeah. Weather's pretty powerful. Absolutely. pretty powerful. I mean, I guess this earth is the big mountains and valleys are from pretty impressive natural catastrophic events. Pretty crazy. It reminded me of when we went to Capitol Reef, that was two years ago. There was all that lightning and all this stuff and there's nothing that's going to catch that, save a person when we were there.

Folks are coming up in sandals as we're trying to haul ass down. I think I told Phil and Roy when I was on with them, I was like, yeah, just because you bought your park spas doesn't mean that you're not going to die here. That was the vibe. like, yeah, just because you bought your parks pass doesn't mean that you're not going to die here. Right. That was the vibe. Yeah. Oh man, there's some crazy stories of that in Southern Utah for sure, like canyons and can be very dangerous places with those kind of storms.

I mean, we weren't in a canyon at the time, but you know. We were on the top, you know, better in those conditions for the worst, but yeah, you know, as opposed to the water. Right, right. Or a Zion Canyon or something where there's nowhere to escape, you know, you're in a sheer cliffs on both sides of you. Yeah. Oh, good times. I was in Zion once when the the rains were falling pretty heavy and I sat and watched the river rise about, you know, two feet in very short amount of time. And, uh, we went hiking the next day and the, I mean, the water was just red.

You couldn't see it stained my shoes and like, yeah, I was walking down the middle of the, the, uh, river and all of a sudden, you know, you couldn't see where it got deep. And I went in a hole over my head. Don't walk there. It's nice and deep. Luckily, these were the days before cell phones and electronics devices. I just got wet, but yeah, good times. We were walking on that same trip. We were walking up Angel's Landing, right? And it was starting to get cloudy and looked like maybe start raining. And so we're trying to hurry to get up to the top of it, right? Which is a very exposed area if you haven't seen Angel's Landing or what, go watch a YouTube

video of that hike. It's pretty intense. I think I'll pass. That's all right. You guys can handle that one. And so we start running towards the end to have the view or whatever. And then lightning struck and the thunder was almost immediate. It was right on top of us and we just all unanimously just turned around and ran the

opposite way. Like, never mind, we're out of here. Run away, run away. So yeah, it was stuck with me for sure. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Good times. Yeah.

Well, I guess we didn't really plan to fight today, but good to catch up. calendar dates. Yeah, exactly. Repeat or recount our adventures in the last little bit. Yeah, life, you know, it's good. Yeah. Oh, anything cool in herpetoculture that you've seen lately? I saw something really cool yesterday that I thought was pretty incredible. I'm curious to hear yours first. I'm sure those would be more insightful than mine.

Well, somebody posted in, I can't even remember which group it was. I took a picture, a screenshot of it, but it was on Facebook. Somebody posted a photo of a pretty good size MolGA, King Brown. It was entwined with a spotted python. The spotted python had wrapped around the neck, obviously avoiding predation, and ended up killing the MOLGA. It was like David and Goliath moment because that thing was... The spotted python was dwarfed by that Mulga and somehow it had gotten around its head and thrown a couple coils or something and it choked it out and killed the Mulga. I'm like, oh my goodness. So they had photos and a little bit of video of, you know, kind of the struggle, but they said they, when they came back, the Mulga was dead and the spotted python was gone. So he was the victor. So

kind of a crazy thing that happened up far North Queensland, like on pretty high up on the Cape York peninsula that some mining site, you know, as a lot of the crazy interactions happened up on those mining sites. But yeah, out in the middle of nowhere. Up on the west coast? Yeah, west coast of the Cape York peninsula, maybe to the same north as Iron Range, up there. What is it? Weepa or however you pronounce it? Yeah. I always get made fun of for saying Pilbara rock monitor. It's Pilbara mate. Pilbara. Sound like an idiot. I know.

You call them Chad Chad's wass. I would. Very good. Yeah, I think so. There was something in that vein. A couple of things jumped to mind. It's probably a couple of days back now, but there was, I think it was Utah. I think it was milk snakes, not pyros. Was it pyros or milk snakes? It was two males combating. Somebody had observed in the wild. It was either Utah milks or Utah pyros. Do you see that?

Where they were very tightly entwined. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was Rognan. Cameron Rognan? Cameron Rognan, yeah. That was cool. He wasn't sure if it was mating or fighting, but probably combat because somebody said, yeah, it was Mountain Kings. I'm pretty sure.

It was Mountain Kings. Yeah. Yeah. So the thing with that, actually a friend of mine, a guy I've worked with a lot, had seen that in Black Rat Snakes and he'd sent me a picture and was like, oh, is this mating? But it was very similar. I was like, no, in general, with colubrids, you're talking about it'll be a singular loop

and then sort of a body press, body surfing or body pressing. Anytime you have that real tight pretzel effect, it's probably two males. In both instances, I think that's what that was. The other one I wanted to call out just because it's so cool is the account njherping. Maybe it's because I'm also focused on that. But man, he's put up a ton of really cool flip videos and things with pine snakes, king snakes. I think those have been the main things of late, but in the last four to six weeks, just tonic-able stuff.

That's awesome. I just checked out his, you know, followed him on Instagram and that's a nice Eastern box. I would love to see a box turtle in the wild. I don't know how I keep missing out on West Texas. No box turtles. Arizona, New Mexico, no box turtles. Yeah. Yeah. Just East coast, no box turtles. I need to see a wild box turtle at some point. Yeah. Cool. I'll have to check that out. Yeah. Absolutely. Things to get you excited for sure. Right. Aspen did a great interview on Kush's... Yeah, the Kush's Creature podcast. That was good. I like that. Kush's Corner, Kush's Creature Corner, the KKK podcast. No. Sorry, that was a bad joke. We alluded to it earlier, but Nick and Ryan did a little trip. They had been on Chris

Applin's podcast and then done a sort of trip recap where Chris was driving the bus. This was the Nick and Ryan prototype within the NPR paradigm and it was really good, enjoyable. I thought that was super fun. Yeah. As mentioned before, Nick goes off unfiltered for quite a few minutes. The first couple of minutes, it's very entertaining. Highly recommended. Tell us what you really think. I think maybe it was so spoke to you because of the particular topic, shall we say. Yeah, exactly.

I felt the same way. You just express it very differently. Yeah exactly. Little more academically maybe. It's funny. Yeah. Wait we're recording? Plenty of great stuff there.

Yeah. It was good to hear from those guys. Just to hear Ryan's count on how many python species. Yeah, that's incredible. Pretty amazing. And simultaneously, how excited he was to see a crack monitor and all these different things that either he's worked with or hasn't worked with or whatever. But I think that's so commendable and awesome.

Is that like, yeah, that's a claim to fame in terms of where he's at in Python herpetoculture. But simultaneously, he's just as excited, more excited even to maybe find a croppani or to see a crack monitorhara in the wild. Keep the luck going. Yeah. So, no, I took that really positively. I really enjoyed that. Yeah.

Yeah. No, he's pretty a talented herper and keeper for sure. So, yeah, I've had the opportunity to herp with him a couple of times and yeah, he hits it hard. It's pretty good stuff. So yeah, there's some cool stuff out there. I think I listened to another one of Matt's. Who did he have on recently?

I guess he had, he's got Eric on, or was that, no, the, yeah. I'm just babbling now. The other, oh, Scott and Ty. Yeah, Experian Idiot had Owen and Eric on again, and then Matt had Scott and Ty. I think it was one of their, they keep doing these. Cross-over episodes. Cross-overs, yeah.

And I caught up on Nipper and Phil's Venom Exchange podcast and I thought they weren't recording for some reason. So I hadn't been checking. And then with all the trips and stuff, I needed to catch up. And so that was fun to kind of catch up on. I think I told you that Namibian one was really cool. Yeah. Yeah. They had some really good stuff, man. Those guys, yeah, had some really cool guests with some awesome stories and great, great stuff. So I would love to herb Namibia. That would be a dream for sure. I still remember like- The Namaquack-a-Million, the Golden Pythons.

Yeah. Tons of cool geckos and yeah, vipers. Yeah, very cool. For sure. Someday that'll be... Yeah, that was intriguing. Yeah, I think it's reasonably safe to herb there as well, as far as I know. I think so. Get into Angola and it can be a little sketchy with... You know, landmines. Yeah, landmines around. You just need to buy one of those multi-manual made rats, the hand pouch rat, to sniff it out for you. Good boy. Good boy.

Here, put this in your pouch. Oh, man. Yeah, some good stuff. I also, I listened to Reptile Talk with Rob and Jeremy. I enjoy their podcast a lot too. They have some good guests and I just love the positivity of those two. They're always so fun to listen to and just happy and outgoing. So they're great. I need to listen to the Marshall Mendez. I like Marshall so I listen to his episode. I put that on my You know download list or whatever. Yeah, so good stuff out there lots of lots of things to listen to If you're sick of listening to us, you can always find a lot of good good content out there

Probably far better than we are, but what do you do? Well, never fear there are stories for years. Don't worry about it. Exactly. All right, well, sorry for no fighting tonight, no bloodbath for you, but we'll try better again next week. Hopefully we'll get one from the field. That'd be fun to record with Eric. That'd be good. Do a herping, during herping fight. We'll see if we can make that happen. And Owen's always ready for a fight.

Nipper and Owen are both always ready for a fight. So. Yeah, we should have them fight for real. I think Nipper's been meaning to give Owen some stingy leg slaps. So maybe we just like, get Owen riled up. So when Nipper slaps him with the stingy stuff, then Owen retaliates. And then, you know, pretty soon it's just a battle royale and we can flip a coin and, you know, yeah, we can do it the emperor style, the thumb up or thumb down.

the emperor style, the thumb up or thumb down. He'll have like a jar full of ticks and he'll pour them on the loser. Oh boy. Oh, that reminds me too, as I was driving back from Borrego Springs, in my half awake state, I felt something crawling on my neck and I'm like, ah, you know, in my half awake state, I felt something crawling on my neck and I'm like, ah, you know, I'm like, and then I feel my neck and I feel something on it. I pick it up and it's a tick. I'm like, no. So I threw it out the window and it hadn't attached or anything.

So it was probably like a, you know, looking for a deer, a coyote or something. And this doesn't taste right. I don't know. But so luckily it didn't attach and I didn't have any others on me. So that was good. Well, there you go. Topical news. Yeah. So I actually went to the doctor today because I had one. So when I told you, you know, when Aspen and I had gone out, I had hundreds on me. We were taking photos of that Eastern diamond back and within 20, 30 seconds, I had them on both hands.

So I came back with 12 attached. My wife was like, okay, you got one here, one here. Half of them, I was able to get off with the tool and half of them just had it. Were they really small or how did you not? Oh yeah, they're little seed ticks and they're everywhere. I think you just get more out of it. You take off 100 and it's like at some point. I'm going to bathe in DEET, I think, when get more out of it. You take off 100 and it's like, you know, at some point. I'm going to bathe in DEET, I think, when we're in Pennsylvania.

You just sort of run through it, you know, and you see how it goes. So yeah, I pulled half of them, the two will work for and was able to work them out. The other half, I just, you know, had to rip them out. So one of those, it was sort of, you know, bigger and whatever. And then I got some sort of light rashing underneath it. I was like, oh, okay. So then I watched it sort of come all the way around.

It looks less, it doesn't have the inflammation and sort of that sort of agitated character of some of that stuff. But I was, so I called the doctor. I told him when it happened. I was like, hey man, of that stuff. I called the doctor. I told him when it happened. I was like, hey, man, just in a bunch of days, maybe I'll be in touch in a couple of weeks or whatever. Sure enough, then I was.

I went today. He was like, well, that doesn't look agitated and inflamed like that. So they- It's making me itch just talking about this. They hold some blood. And so we're in the TBD. We'll see how it goes. Update next week. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of Rob's Health Corner.

That's the excitement. That's my real excitement. Right. Well, there was that one year. So we went up to my dad's family's cabin and we all got a bunch of ticks. For some reason that year was like tick heavy. I've never seen ticks up there except this one time. And we all got dozens of ticks on us. And so he was the fortunate one. My dad was the fortunate one to get Rocky Mountain spotted fever. So that's another option for the Rockies.

Yeah, the sampler. But I guess you were in Florida, so maybe that's not applicable there. But I think he had a rash and similar kind of diagnostic. Yeah, let's see how it plays out. I don't know. I'm relatively sanguine at this point. Right. No fever or anything like that. Yeah, and the good news is that apparently this is a terrible year for them on the East Coast.

So something to look forward to. Yeah. Well, if you start getting sick when you eat meat, that would be rough. Well, unfortunately, knock on wood. Those ones, so they're much much bigger and they seem less agile. I always seem to really notice those ones. Maybe it's my own instinct for self-preservation.

I'm like, this won't be a thing. I'm going to identify those. I did have one in Florida that was trying to crawl on me, but I saw him right away. But yeah, and in Jersey, man, there are a lot of them and stuff. So strap up. Well, I guess the ticks aren't as bad as the spirochetes or whatever has gotten the other disease with the bacteria. Wait, do ticks carry sprow keats in my...

I think that's the thing. Yeah, because that's what it is. That's what that line is, is a bacteria. Yeah. Creepy little critters. Creepy critters. It's the chiggers, or the tiggers, if you will, that are not... Which do you prefer, tiggers or chicks? Yeah. So, Eric and I were talking about that that and he was like, oh, tiggers are the worst.

And I was like, well, those don't seem to transmit anything into you. They make you itch and once they're on you, you're- You're annoying. Stygosome, you know, your- Right. Stylosome, stygosome? Either. Once they're on you, you're basically done for.

Once you're pitted. Yeah. Yeah, you're pitted and they're going to liquefy your skin, but that's sort of a nuisance compared to you. Yeah. And boy, it feels great to scratch those. Rip them open, have them heal up, rip them open again. What's the Ned Flanders? You must hate mosquito bites ooh good for the scratching All right, well thanks for listening

Anything anything else? We'll thank Eric and Owen excited to see those guys and go herping with them so a Few more days and we'll be hanging with the pod father. What do we call Owen? The pod mother? The Mac and Wookie. All right. Next time. Yeah. Thanks for listening. We'll have more tales of adventure and illness next week. Adventure and misadventure next week.