Reptile Fight Club - RFC - Ethical Herping in areas with SFD

Episode Date: December 13, 2025

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Hello, fighters, and welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. This is Justin Joolander, your host, and with me, as always, my co-host, Rob Stone. How's it going? Well, it's going pretty well. We got our first substantial snow of the season. this week. Okay. Yeah. So that was exciting. I don't know if you got it up there as well. We did get some. Yeah.

Not, I mean, it stuck. It was on the ground for a bit. A couple inches on Sunday, but I think it's mostly gone now. Okay. Yeah, I think we had that one too. And then this one was Wednesday night. We, I think we probably

it was actually, yeah, Wednesday, no, I should say, started late Tuesday night into an early Wednesday morning, went through must-day Wednesday. So we probably got, I don't know, four or five inches. Okay. Maybe it's headed this direction.

I don't know. Right? Yeah, we didn't get any, at least nothing substantial during the week. Yeah, tis the season, huh? It begins. I always maintain. If it's going to be cold, it might as well snow. Give the skiers a reason to be happy.

Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, it is getting colder. That's the downside. So, yeah, I guess dreams of Australia or warmer times for herping and are running through my mind for sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Lowe's in the mid-teens, have you thinking of spring with a great funness. Yeah. And, I mean, I've had this cold. I'm pretty much over it, but my voice still sounds a little froggy here and there. And I, you know, I played water polo today, so that didn't help. yeah got got beat up on and a little tired after that but so my voice may reflect that a little as well but fair enough how did the tournament go uh i mean it was it was good the the other teams um were more cohesive as a team we had a number of players that had never played before so it was a little

um imbalance that way so we ended up uh yeah losing to every all the other other teams. We should have won one of the games that we just, I don't know, we didn't get it together. We had another guy that was supposed to be there Friday night, but he didn't end up showing up until Saturday. And so, you know, we, we fared a little worse than we thought we might with kind of the team building we did. So we had invited people from other, you know, other areas to come play on our team. And I mean, it's kind of a double-edged sword because we've got these guys that are coming every week and a couple of them had never played before, but they've come to practice

every day, you know, every time we have practice. And then, you know, it's, I feel bad not having, you know, not having them play. And I mean, there's some. They just, they're in there for five minutes and they're, the person that they're guarding is scoring and, you know, so it's really kind of a hard thing. you know we let them play and so we lost the games but i think it's more important to let them enjoy the the tournament as well but it was fun i uh i i was still a little under the weather so i wasn't you know to full capacity so i had to sub out pretty quickly but i think there were a lot

of eager people willing to get in there i think there were three bloody noses from on our team from aggressive people on the other teams yeah one was a blatant just punching the face under the water because he stole the ball from him or something so yeah and they had to get out and go get it taken care of from the lifeguard and stuff like that it's a it's a rough sport but rough and tumble yeah yeah um BYU you came with I mean I think they won the whole tournament they were just unbeatable they were really a good team On the plus side, the master's team, all these guys are probably over 50 or at least 40, you know, and they took second. I can't remember if they beat the BYU at the last game.

I went home early, so I didn't watch the last game. But, yeah, BYU had a pretty stacked team. I don't know what it is. I guess a bunch of Southern California guys got into BYU that know how to play water polo pretty well. There is, yeah. Okay. It was fun. Cool. Yeah.

So for all you water pole fans out there, I'm sorry we're going to change the subject now and get on to other things. Well, just wanted to give the update right. Yeah, yeah. No, it's fine. You mentioned you were headed out. So it could be a little bit of time to shine. Right, right. It was a good time.

So it's always fun to, I mean, that's, I mean, that's the whole reason I'm enjoying playing is like you don't get pick up water polo games in northern Utah. I mean, maybe in Salt Lake or something like that. They do have a master's league in Ogden that gets together fairly regularly. But you still have to drive an hour or more to get down to one of those. So in my neck of the woods, that's about as good as I get as practice with the club team at the university. Okay. Yeah. One of those neglected sports in Utah.

But it's big deal in other places. Hopefully it keeps increasing and getting bigger. Utah. That's where we are now. I remember a few tournaments we did in Colorado. There was some pretty, they had one pool that wasn't chlorinated. It was like reverse osmosis or something, you know, one of those kind of things. And so it was like no chlorine. Your eyes felt great after the game. Yeah, fun stuff. All right. Cool. How's everything going for you? Yeah, just busy. A busy time of year with You know, various things across the board, not the animals for the, you know, as we've

stuff, all my stuff goes in the spring. But, yeah, just work stuff. And obviously, when we start getting the weather that throws things a little bit discombobulated. But, yeah, all good. Right. Nice. But you, with stuff that's being paired now, how's that going? Pretty well. It seems like things are moving in the right direction for a number.

I've seen a number of locks. And so, I don't know. I never really count my eggs until they're coiled around. Until they're chickens. Yeah. I really want to figure out the blackhead incubation. So I need to really, I've got some good advice from Jordan. And so I just need to make that happen, try to figure it out and get a better hatch rate out of those this year.

That would be awesome. The ones I have, I'm still limping. The one hatchling from 2025, he's, or she is still not eating on her own. And so I'm assist feeding right now. But I just got to get to that point where she realizes, oh, this is food and goes for it. But yeah, though, the ones that I hatched out two years prior with the smaller eyes, I've kept that pair just to, I can't sell them, you know. But they're looking phenomenal. Like the black and white on those things is incredible.

So, yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. And speaking of the blackheads, right, hasn't been thinking about Keith. He had made mention of Kate, what, it was Casey, right? Yeah. He reached out with some advice around egg incubation because he's been struggling. I think he has some Swiss animals.

Man, they sure look cool. Yeah. But he hasn't. Maybe he's hatched some, but not the success. he's looking for but uh you're thinking about i'm really right because tomorrow he's um undergoing his treatment and uh so yeah we're thinking about you keep yeah best of luck with with everything uh hopefully everything goes smoothly and i'm sure we'll be on the end and just got to re-motivate him you know i told him he could take a lion for a couple days and then he's

got to get back to training for for the death marches so death marches in australia yeah yeah it's fun to herp with old Keith so yep um wish you well man um yeah so i've got a a new project that i'm hopeful for to get some offspring from things look like they're moving in the right direction there too so hopefully i'll be able to have some good news on that front you know as as things progress and um so yeah it should be a a fun year at least uh um But, yeah, it's just business as usual, I suppose. Okay, fair enough. Things are going better at work, so that puts a little less pressure on selling snakes, you know.

I was worried about some work things there for a bit, but things are moving in a better direction that way. So that's good. And just, yeah, I got a new project, a writing project. I don't know. It's really early in the process. We'll see how it goes and see. It'll be probably a little, a long while before. I really mentioned anything more, but a little teaser, I guess. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Life's good. Can't complain. All right. Well, you saw a presentation talk today? Yeah, it was today. Okay. So we, at the university in my department, we have invited scientists that come and give talks on their area of expertise. And we co-so our department co-does this seminar series with the vet school. And so the vet school has been bringing in some interesting folks. And one of the vet school personnel brought in, let's see, I can't remember her name. I guess I should have had that prepared. but um she was from uh somewhere in the southeast i believe georgia um currently i'll have to look up the information at some point but um she talked about snake fungal disease um as part of

her uh research project uh for phd and then she's continued doing some of that work with snake populations in the southeast um i guess there's each state has their own kind of fish and wildlife or some form of fish and wildlife services statewide. And then there's also regional fish and wildlife groups that kind of oversee larger projects. And so this was one of those types. And she runs one of the facilities that's kind of a regional center for fish and wildlife studies. So one of her areas is continues to be snake fungal disease. So it just got me thinking about, you know, we had an outing in New Jersey where we found

an eastern milk snake that appeared to have snake fungal disease. And it seems to be fairly prevalent in the United States. There was some discussion on which species may or may not be more susceptible. And I guess some were maybe species of concern. including eastern indigo snakes. So that was kind of a big deal. I guess they've done some studies with the Oriane Society to look at snake fungal disease prevalence in eastern indigos. So, you know, I guess where you have a species of concern, it becomes even more concerning when they get some kind of fungal disease.

And then, you know, hearing about chitrid and all the issues with that when we had Dr. Mendelsohn on the program. Fortunately, snake fungal disease doesn't seem to be the lethal killer that Kittred is for amphibians. So that's on the plus side, that's kind of a nice thing. But it can be pretty debilitating, lots of lesions and ulcerations or what does she call them? I think just exposure of the muscle and things like that, loss of the skin was pretty terrible. you know, in some of the specimens. So, you know, I got to thinking it might be an interesting topic while it's fresh in my mind to discuss that on the podcast. We could talk about kind of ethical herping with snake fungal disease in mind or a collection of, you know, reptiles from the wild that may bring snake fungal disease into your collection.

You know, is it a big deal? Should we worry about it or since it's not as bad as Kittred, do we like, well, it's out there in the environment. anyway, so is it a big deal or not? So at least we can kind of discuss the implications of snake fungal disease in regards to field herping, as well as in our captive population. So that's kind of what spurred that on. An interesting topic, I hope, for people out there. And if not, maybe you can learn something new, and maybe it will be an important topic for you in the future. So I thought it was worthwhile. Absolutely. No, I thought it was super interesting. Certainly, I don't know that we'll have an intense fight to suit Dom and the crew who want to see legending him from both sides. Right. Obviously, in jest. But I think there are a lot of considerations combined,

yeah, that then with contravailing practicalities, right? Right, right. In terms of talking through And I think, too, I mean, a lot of these issues, like, for example, the trade in salamanders after they detected the B-sale, yeah, and I mean, fungal diseases have increased, you know, with increasing global temperatures and things like that, these things have been a huge issue, especially in amphibian conservation. when you think about the United States as one of the, you know, biodiverse hotspots for salamanders, especially, it definitely gives you pause in regard to that. But at the same time, I think you can have overreactions and overreaching. And so, you know, I don't want to make this like, so I guess that's kind of the idea of the two sides of the coin here,

is that we can have kind of an overreactive, you know, legislative or, or strict, you know, prohibitions on things. And I, you know, just kind of thinking through that aspect of it, too, in regards to the theme of the podcast. So that's kind of the fight, I guess, that I came up with in that regard. Although it is a bit bopsided. I mean, nobody's going to be like, yeah, don't worry about it at all. So that's not necessarily the issue here.

But I do want to have kind of, you know, a devil's advocate when it comes to. the other side of the coin to not overreact or not be too, you know, strict or stringent or something like that or what could possibly happen on that side of the coin. So yeah, with that, we will flip said coin and see what side we get, I guess. So go ahead and call it. I will say tails. Tails. Well, you got your tails today. All right. Had to happen at some point. You've kind of had a dry streak of coin toss wins. So, yeah, how would you like to approach this, I guess, for what side? Well, that being said, I will celebrate my first victory in five or six tosses by saying,

you should choose what you like. You just went to the presentation today. This is your topic. I'm happy to try and expand on the other side, and let's go from there. So whatever jump to you from as you were looking for it. I'll take that kind of don't. know, overreact side or, you know, it's kind of the reasonable approach to this rather than the, yeah.

So if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I will check you and get it going. That sounds good. So with these fungal diseases, I guess the bad news is, is once they get in the environment, they seem to persist. It's similar to, you know, a lot of, I guess, wildlife diseases out there where there's just a risk that they're going to get these. Now, some issues have arisen because of research into these areas, like Kittred was spread around by researchers, you know, not rinsing their boots or not washing their boots and going into areas that didn't have Kittred and introducing it that way.

And they figure that the original Kittred came in to, or spread across the world with the frogs, the water frogs, which, what are those? Oh, African claw frogs. Yeah. Zenipus, yeah, that were used in pregnancy tests, interestingly enough. I think a woman peed on a frog, and if it croaked and she was pregnant. Oh, yeah, yeah, something like that. But, yeah, there were tests that used African clawed frogs, and so they were shipped around the world. And I remember in high school, I actually ordered some clawed frogs from one of the Carolina biological supply company.

And so that was, you know, they were fairly easy to obtain and you could get them. And, you know, I think a lot of people that did get those or, you know, once their project was done, done, they'd just throw them out in the river, out back or something. It was the 80s, you know, just things were, uh, willy-nilly, you know, you can do just about anything. So that's how they figured that this, uh, chytrid fungus spread around, around the world, basically, and was, uh, introduced into many different countries, many different ecosystems and is now a part of the ecosystem, unfortunately, and prevents the re-release or, you know, the,

the release of, of, um, different frog species back into the environment. So they have arcs, you know, or, you know, set up for, for, uh, Kittred, but, uh, you know, what do you do when it's, you can't get rid of it out of the environment? That's kind of the problem. Right. It's persistent in the environment. Yeah. Yeah. A couple, couple things there. I also had, I had an albino cloud frog that got quite large. It was a great pet for a long time. Although, they're cool animals. Like, they're really interesting. Yeah. Absolutely. I love to watching them eat worms.

They just like gobble it, like, pack, you know, just shoving it into their mouth. Yeah. Yeah. So, so fun to watch. Yeah. And, you know, as you say, kind of in the same way, the, my understanding of aphidiomyces is that it's persistent in the environment. So it's actually treatable in animals in captive settings with an antifungal, a specific antifungal drug. There's been success treating it.

But as an organism that can survive in soil conditions, it's really persistent in those environments, as you say. So it's not practicable to be like treating a population and seeing good viability, seeing it be no longer an issue for a given population. Right. There was some indication that I remember seeing like treatment of like the yellow-legged mountain frogs in California or red-legged frogs.

I can't remember the specific frog species, but they were up in, they were, you know, one of those vulnerable... Yeah, yeah, and they were being hammered by Ketra's and just decimating their population. And so scientists found that if you dip them in an

antifungal dye solution, it's like a blue, something blue, that they would resolve and and the fungus would be eliminated and that they were actually resilient to reinfection. They could go back into the environment and they wouldn't get chitrid again. Now, I asked that question, you know, if you treat the snakes with snake fungal disease, are you able to, or can they get it again?

And the answer was they think, yes, they will be able to. And they didn't have, I guess, they, um, She said that snakes don't have a very good adaptive immune response, so they're not mounting antibodies and having memory T cells and things like that to prevent reinfection. So I don't know, you know, it's not a lot as known, so it's hard to say if they're getting a different fungus. There are actually a couple different fungal diseases of snakes that present very similarly with, you know, lesions and scaled, you know, issues. But so I guess from that perspective, you know, if it's not going to be removed from the wild and you've got, you know, a chance that the animal will be re-exposed even if you, you know, bring it into captivity and treat it. And she said that the treatment options are not great. So like the treatments take months, you know, so you've got to pull a snake in from the wild. And they were doing a nebulization of antifungal.

So they would breathe it in and also get it topically. It would kind of go across the scales. And that was the treatment. But, yeah, it took weeks. And then also they could just get reinfected or it didn't cure it completely. So the other. So I guess from that aspect, you know, it's like, what do you do? It doesn't seem to be, I guess there are some species that are more susceptible, just like with Chitred.

Like your bullfrogs don't seem to be very susceptible to Chitred, whereas the red-legged mountain frogs were highly susceptible. And a lot of the tropical frogs were highly susceptible, and their populations are just decimated, you know. Yeah. Even going back to that conversation, we alluded to it a little bit earlier here, is talking about, that temperature, right? Is some of that the, and thinking of snake fungal disease in the, I think the context that maybe I was first exposed to was timber rattlesnakes in the northeast and the idea of essentially that the conditions in their hibernation conditions, particularly with the expansions, over expansion due to fire mismanagement of sort of woody understories

that are shading out the basking platforms that the snakes require, you know, particularly and fall and into the spring to warm up. Because it's really mostly, in terms of their condition, the capacity to get off a clean shed and at least draw back a lot of that, the superficial impact of the load that they're carrying, right? That's a big part of it is the capacity to just sort of not get back by shedding. And obviously, the biological process of shedding requires the ability to achieve higher temperatures and things.

And there's actually this interaction of factors with sort of the ecology of where they're hibernating that also is interacting with SFT and potentially making it have a more dramatic impact than it would in an area out here in the West, we probably see less of that because they have a greater ability to access the sun and warm up and expedite a shed process or not be sitting in a lingering process for as long. And obviously humidity also can have, you know, stagnant humidity can have a deleterious effect on snake's skin. Right. So as you highlighted, right, not only are there multiple things, well, there are multiple things that can cause kind of a similar appearance of those lesions and things. And sometimes that could just be being exposed to excessive stagnant humidity for too long, right? Particularly in cold temperatures. Right. Yeah.

And there was a map that she showed where snake fungal disease had been reported. And I think there wasn't how maybe the U.S. map was snake fungal disease in the wild. And Utah and Colorado were had absent. You know, they haven't had snake fungal disease reported. So I think, you know, there's a lot to what you're saying. And yeah, I mean, depending on where you live, it may be more of a problem. And also by species, you know, there was made mention of some neurodia in, you know, the water snakes in Florida and things. that were, you know, tended to be more wet and, you know, water-loving and they tended to have more

severe outcomes when it, when infected with the snake fungal disease. So yeah, that's, uh, and so I guess kind of my, my original point there is that if it's in the environment and they're going to get exposed, you know, I guess, you know, it's probably a courtesy to maybe try to prevent spread if, especially if you're handling a snake that has snake fungal disease, you know. Or it looks like it might. Right. Or potentially has snake fungal disease. And that's the other thing is you can't always tell, you know, there.

So. False positives and false negatives. Right. Her answer, because I asked that question, I said, how do you prevent spread? You know, if I'm out there, you know, photographing snakes and, you know, obviously we're not handling timber rattlers. So that's one thing where you just kind of get them as they go. But the other thing, you know, like with that Eastern Milk Snake, yeah, we did, you know,

handle it to some extent, posed it for some photos before putting it back under the rock we found it under. And, you know, we did what we could. We had some disinfectant wipes and some hand sanitizer. And so, and that was kind of the answer. or if you do handle wear gloves and replace your gloves between snakes. And I mean, I guess you could go herping with gloves on, but that wouldn't be too great. And also, she mentioned that bleach was an important disinfectant. So that'll knock it out pretty quick.

So I thought, you know, if you had some Chlorox wipes or something, you know, you could, you know, wipe your hands if you're handling. the bucket. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, wiping it out and stuff. So that was kind of the answer. But, you know, even then, you're not curing the snake fungal disease on the snake that you saw. And they don't really have a great grasp on how it's transmitted. So you may not even be transmitting it between snakes, even if you're not washing your hands or cleaning your hands between handling snakes. So, you know, I think. I wonder if there could be a measurable impact due to herpers or not. And I would probably suspect that it's probably a very minor component because the number of snakes out there, you know, the ones that are infected, how much are they being handled? And I would think if you found a snake that was severely affected by snake fungal disease, you're probably not going to necessarily want to pick it up or handle it. it anyway so or or pose it for pictures and things like that i guess the the caveat there was the the eastern milk was our lifer our life or eastern milk so i would say in my recollection of

it anyway it was um not we didn't uh spot it and identify it as such at a distance so in terms of saying oh this is a snake with usfd it was kind of in the process of taking pictures of it and things that we said this one maybe there's issues here right and it was it was fairly minor if if it was infected i mean you can see kind of some a couple patches yeah yeah and that and i guess that's that's part of the diagnosis of that you know is that um mainly you've got to get a swab and and run some PCR and look for DNA from that snake and see if it's got snake fungal infection and you can get false negatives false positives things like that as well.

And also, just because it doesn't have signs or scale issues, it can still have snake fungal disease. So, you know, and the Eastern milk was in shed. It was, you know, had the blue eyes. And so, you know. I suspect if we had seen it a week later, it would have been shed out, would have looked totally fine. It would have been none the wiser if indeed it did have it.

Yeah. But it could still be covered with snake fungles. Yeah, exactly. So that's the, you know, are you finding it right after a shed or, you know, right before a shed? It depends on a lot of things there. Or how severely it's affected already and, you know, what time of year it got infected or those kind of things all kind of play into that. So I guess there's no guarantee that even if you find a very healthy looking snake with no

obvious signs of snake fungal disease that you're not transmitting that to other snakes that you may handle in the field. So it's probably just good practice to clean your hands between handling animals in the wild regardless of whether there's a snake fungal disease to pass along. But at the same time, it's like I really don't think that field herpers are going to play a very large role to spread the disease because it's already spreading without our help. Absolutely. And I would say only half ingest that I think, you know, the best preventative measure is relative

to that eastern milk snack was that we were herping in New Jersey, which meant I don't know that we even saw another snake the rest of the day. Right. Yeah. That actually wound up being sort of the solution to that problem. I don't think we posed any risk whatsoever based on that. But no, I guess I would just posit, you know, really it brings up the issue of are you handling things unnecessarily, right? We're back into the conversation of are you going for the grab or are you trying to kind of ideally your, you know, Kimberly Rock Monitor situation that we were just talking about a week or two ago where you're going, okay, your enjoyment of that experience was really not going for the grab.

We were able to see it engaging in its natural behaviors and things and you still got photos you were happy with and those sorts of things. to the compulsion to grab and restrain every animal that you encounter, right, I guess would be, so it's yet another factor in the, hey, maybe consider don't grabbing everything that you see. Yeah. It's just as a, again, acknowledging all the points that you made relative to the probable lack of influence that this would have as a risk, it's still maybe just one more little tidbit on the side of don't just go grabbing everything.

I'm willing, you know, hey, even our life for northern watersnake, you know, look awesome and all those things. But it's if you see and touch one, then you don't necessarily have to see and touch those other ones. Right. You know, even if they are at the same pond. So I have no doubt that they're exposed to the, you know, exposed to it should any of them happen anyway. Yeah. That's a, that's a great point. You know, I think, yeah, I agree fully.

Like, you know, you don't need to be grabbing. every snake. And I think that might come with, again, like, if it's your first one, you might be a little more excited. You might want to check it out and look at it and handle it. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, like, if it's your 50th water snake, you don't need to jump on it and grab it and wrestle it. You know, you don't need to Steve Irwin it necessarily. So, yeah, that's a good point. And again, not not handling. is going to be a very effective way of not transmitting snake fungal disease from one snake to another. And, you know, a den situation or a highly, you know, high density population like the northern water snakes is a great example of that.

You know, we've got a den maybe five minutes from my house of garter snakes. And you can see both the valleys as well as the wandering garter snakes there. and it's pretty cool. You know, they've fairly high numbers, and so, but, you know, I'm not a big fan of handling garter snakes anyway, they squeeze quite a bit. So, you know, there's, and similar to Nerodia, you know, if you grab a Nerodia, you're probably going to get squeezed on and bit, so, you know, more reasons maybe to leave them in situ and take pictures of them in their natural.

habitat as you found them if if possible you know yeah absolutely i i do recognize and acknowledge that like the glowered eye right is much more likely to not once it didn't immediately skitter for shelter based on your presence that it was more likely to hang out and engage than most snakes i think the compulsion to grab is because they typically their typical response is not to sort of appreciate that you're actually not a threat right and engage i know robert Christian does some super cool stuff in terms of watching, you know, wild snakes and having them not, not be afraid of them and still engage in natural behavior. But for the most part, that's the, but, you know, for the most part, I think we, we go for the grab because of the idea that it's going to be gone. If we don't, it's going to be gone, right? Or we're road cruising, right? And you don't exactly want to, you know, you don't want to leave it there under, you know, even under that circumstance. So I suppose it does raise an issue of, do we need to be gone? You know, do we need to be. be wiping down our hook, should we be wiping down our hooks after, you know, if heck, we're in, you know, southeast Arizona, southwest New Mexico and we're just moving atrox and

Mojave's off the road. Do we have, you know, should we be, have the, you know, container wipes, as you say, and between each one, you know, just wiping it down real quick just to try and help, or is it such a negligible effect? And they're probably, to the extent aphidium iases is already in that area that even if it's a half mile down the road realistically it's probably persistent in the environment and it you know is not a making a negligible or it is a negligible difference right so it doesn't justify the the effort and the cost and and all those things are those wipes you know right yeah my my problem too is remembering to do that you know yeah you uh get back in the car and you're high from just seeing a cool snake and then

oh yeah i got to wipe down my hook or i guess you could have a spray bottle with a 10% bleach solution but then that's going to go bad after or or degrade the bottle or the spray mechanism you know all sorts of fun with uh bleach solution it's it's very caustic and i guess that's why it's such a great disinfectant but um so you know i guess maybe a squirt bottle or something Yeah, as I was saying it, I was, I came to picture that same thing of, oh, you got a five-gallon bucket that you're dunking your hook into in the back seat every day. When you slam on the brakes, you know, that just happens to the dusting gets covered in bleach solution or whatever. Yeah, that would not be great. I guess you could clean your whole self really quickly that way.

You know, being a water pole player, I really do enjoy the smell of bleach and chlorine. But, yeah, I don't think I'd want it permeating my car like that. The ice bucket was bad. The ice water container was bad enough. If only it was bleach solution. Right. My car might have been a different color on the interior after that. So, yeah, is it really that big of a deal?

And, yeah, I mean, it's probably a good idea, like you said. just for to make sure you're not part of the problem. Right. A lot of disease causing organisms have kind of like a threshold amount of, you know, what you need to be exposed to before you're going to get sick from it. And it's hard to say, you know, what you're actually getting off of the snake onto your hand or onto your hook or whatever. or if the hook is a good foamite for transmission to other things is another good question,

you know, does the, does the, um, Ophidiomyces stick to your hook or does it just kind of slide off with the snake or whatever? So that's another thing that's kind of unknown. So we're, we're kind of, it's, it's always hard to make recommendations when the knowledge isn't there, right? And I mean, we saw that with COVID where, you know, first they said, oh, masks don't work. And then they said, well, we told you masks didn't work because they do work and we only want our health care people to have those. And it's like, that probably wasn't the best tactic to use to lie or or or and then, you know, then everybody, oh, masks don't work because, you know, people still get sick when they're wearing masks.

They're not 100% effective, but they definitely reduce the exposure and things like that. So, I don't know, there's a lot of different things. And are people wearing the mask properly, you know, are you using an old bleach solution to, to disinfect your hook? Or do you have freshly prepared bleach solution? Or did you dilute it too much or not enough or things like that? You know, it's interesting that, you know, like 100% ethanol, we use ethanol a lot because most of the viruses we work with in the lab in the virology lab are susceptible to ethanol. spraying. But there's also the question of contact time, you know, are you letting it sit long enough? Basically, if you're spraying your hands with ethanol, you're just waiting until it evaporates.

But sometimes, you know, you're not very patient. And so, you know, we have backup mechanisms to prevent any, you know, exiting of the lab of viruses. So some facilities that we work in are shower out. So you have to shower before you leave. the, you know, as you leave the facility. So same, same kind of idea. Even if you are disinfecting, are you doing it properly? You know, are you giving enough contact time to let that bleach solution work its magic? And I guess the nice thing about bleach solution is it has a fairly low contact time required, but it differs for different organisms. You know, there's, if you've heard of chronic wasting disease in elk and deer and animals, you know, the bovine spongoform encephalitis, the BSE that we had in the cows, in some instances, a big scare over in England

and some of those transmissible encephalopathies that were these preon diseases. Preons are just misfolded proteins that are normally found in your body, but they somehow can convert other proteins to misfold in the same way so and they are very stable bleach solution doesn't do a thing to them you know and and there's no approved treatments or anything like that so these are pretty scary things but you know and they're out there you can see some deer affected with chronic wasting disease here and there and they're pretty prevalent in the west and and even in like mountain lions and other predators that are eating the deer So kind of scary.

But so, you know, it's hard to, hard to say if you're making an impact or if what you're doing is meaningless. I guess I brought that up in regards to disinfectants and using them properly. And some things just can't be disinfected very easily. And others, you know, some things are very resistant. Others are pretty easy to treat. So I think fungus kind of falls in the middle there. you know, they're pretty resilient organisms and can persist in the environment pretty well. So, yeah, it's hard.

Yeah, it also calls to mind the idea of sort of reservoirs for disease, you know. Right. You mentioned the COVID situation, the idea that now deer, right, in the East Coast in particular, have COVID and is now essentially just going to be persistent in the environment because we can have. you know, it's consistently, now it's present, right? It's in that population, not causing disease, but it's, it's present as a, as a risk and just means it will never go away, right? It will continue to adapt, but same with the, like the bird flu, the highly pathogenic avian influenza strains, um, they've become endemic, you know, because of migrating birds and,

you know, they're just very difficult to control what bird flies into your airspace or near your chicken farm, you know, and they actually found that bird flu was being transmitted on the wheels of the trucks that were going from farm to farm. And so they would drive through a puddle that had bird flu or whatever, and then they would drive to another place and transmit that virus to the other place. So they've actually deregulated the virus to some extent because it used to be a Southeast Asian problem and you know only people who worked in bird um farms poultry farms were at risk but now it's pretty prevalent in the wild birds in north america um and it's also made the jump into cattle and so now you have a bovine form of bird flu and it's being transmitted from cow to cow and it actually reduces

is milk production and things like that. So, you know, now instead of having it be this highly regulated select agent virus, they've downregulated just to a normal BSL3 agent. And so you don't have to go through all the hoops to work with it like you did before. So on the plus side, that means we're going to find answers quicker and easier and less expensively than we will if they're a select agent. But, you know, at the same time, it's like some of these select agents or a select agent for a reason, you know, in the highly regulated form is necessary to prevent bioterrorism and things like that. But I don't know.

So interesting to see those kind of changes. And I think that may have some analogy to this, you know, where like the more we know about it, the more we study it, you know, that might be a better thing. And so instead of worrying about the minutia, let's worry about the big questions that we have and try to get answers to those. And I don't know, that's a hard thing, you know, when you have a fungal disease of snakes, you know, the interest of the people in funding that, you know, probably not very high. But glad there is some research being done. So some of this conversation calls back to, again, a recent conversation we had in the context, or you're, commentary in regards to Nick's comments on serpentovirus, right? And I guess I would just see how it engages in similar or different ways in terms of saying if we presume that it's existed for a long

is the question our knowledge and awareness of this as an entity within the world, right? Or is it genuinely spreading? Is it that we're now watching for it and paying attention? I don't know if you have any thoughts as to that. Sorry, can you repeat that? I was looking up the name of the researcher. Sorry about that. No, I was thinking, like, this calls back to the conversation or the position, right, that you wanted to clarify a couple weeks ago associated with Nick's comments around serpentovirus and whether something is sort of, is it our awareness of the thing, right,

is causing us to see it more commonly, but it's actually existed for a long time, has been in these environments for a long time, or is it genuinely spreading before our eyes, Right. Yeah. And I don't think that it was quite the problem that it was, that it is now back, you know, 20, 10, 15, 20 years ago. But again, yeah, did we just not have as many observations of wild snakes or people noticing it, things like that, you know? Oh, it's just a dirty, ugly snake, you know, rather than it's in. And, you know, you get the same questions around, yeah, things like. Serpentovirus or autism, you know, like, is autism just easy to, or we have better diagnostic, you know, identification of people with autism versus what we did in the 80s? Or is it really increasing because of Tylenol or any of a variety of things? Right. Or is it just that, oh, prior, yeah, 70 years ago, you were just considered to be spastic, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I think that's a good, good question. And similar to the serpentovirus discussion, it can be absolutely drastic and horrible if you get the wrong strain and the wrong snake. But at the same time, just because you have a positive diagnosis of serpental virus, or it doesn't mean you should, you know, euthanize your entire collection because one snake had a positive PCR for for

serpentovirus I think in this regard the snake fungal disease just because you have it doesn't necessarily mean that snake's going to die it could shed out and get rid of the snake fungal or live with the snake fungal disease

on its skin you know for years or longer. So it's hard to say, you know, how much we should panic about this stuff. And in regards to collection of wild snakes, I mean, that could be a consideration. There is a chance that you could bring in an animal that would pass a fungal disease to the rest of your collection and definitely underscores the need. Another reason to quarantine your animals.

and things like that. So think about that if you're out there collecting for the pet trade, that kind of thing. Or buying wild collected animal or even from someone who is, right? Right, right. We talk about purchasing from large dealers that have wild caught animals next to captive bread animals and those things and what that quarantine looks like. But again, in a state where it's only given within specific conditions, right, the sort of lower temperature, higher humidity associated with hibernation. that you're actually seeing the visual signs

is actually some risk that, right, it is, you do have snakes that are potentially spreading that, that condition and there's no visualization to it. Right. And this Captain Red snake that was next to that wild-caught snake, maybe. Again, you talk about loads and those sorts of things.

It's probably not a function of, you know, just being in deli cups next to one another on a table. But if those represented being continually maintained next to or exposed to one another with the same tool, and same, you cross-contamination, basically. Right. And we know a lot of times with those flippers or what are, you know, people who purchase large volumes of wild caught snakes, they oftentimes will house them communally, you know,

in a trough or something, have 50 individuals, you know, crawling around each other, which would definitely increase their stress levels, their potential for spreading of diseases like that. And I think which a lot of times, that's what gives that, you know, wild-caught pet trade kind of that bad reputation and well-deserved reputation of being risky and just not having long lifespans and things like that. So it's we don't want to, we don't want to further the spread or infect populations of captive animals that may not have that. Sometimes, you know, it's maybe worth the risk, but just make sure you quarantine and keep an eye on stuff for at least several months, you know, to prevent or avoid contamination or spread of a snake fungal disease. Yeah, absolutely.

But at the same time, we need to know more. We need to understand better how it's spread, you know, in what context and things like that before we can make those calls. And I think, you know, we're getting there with serpentoviruses. We understand, like, yeah, they can be pretty severe in some animals, and you can lose animals to serpentovirus despite mixed claims that it's nothing to worry about. So, you know, I, we, they're definitely a risk of ophidiomyces as well, the snake fungal disease. And so we ought to take it seriously, but not, you know, overblown until we have, information or knowledge to let us be a little more worried about it or concerned about it.

Now it looks like, I mean, at least in the, so this researcher that gave the talk, her name is Dr. Ellen Haynes, and she works as the southeast area fishing wildlife, regional wildlife health coordinator at the University of Georgia. So that's who she is, Dr. Haynes. And so, you know, she said that it's not really impacting snake populations as a whole. I mean, it's a problem and it's having some impact, but not a, you know, tragic or dramatic declines. Yeah. Or enough that it's worth, you know, taking drastic measures to prevent this.

So, I guess, taken together. Yeah, yeah. But there were some of the herpetology group there, and they made some comments to the contrary, like there are some populations that are being hit harder and a lot of animals are dying of snake fungal disease. So, you know, and you could have different isolates that emerge that are more pathogenic and do cause more problems similar to what we see with serpentoviruses. There are some serpentoviruses that are pretty benign and others that are very leaf. so yeah it's something to keep in mind yeah and to highlight as i did previously right the idea of environmental conditions and sort of the nexus of those things so there might actually be something about the conditions in which that the population exists that also exacerbate the effect

right exactly pulling those things of those inextricable seemingly inextricable things apart is always difficult right teasing those apart so exactly and that's i guess i guess You don't want to make a big deal until there's a reason to, you know, make a big deal, I guess. But, you know, six snakes are not great. So maybe we make some deal about it. And I guess people like Dr. Haynes are researching it and trying to find answers to or solutions to the problem. So that's good. But, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I think just being cognizant of it. And even in our situation with that life or Easter milksnake, right, where when we did notice that, which was, you know, as I say, not immediately, but pretty, as we were taking photos of it, I think it really highlighted kind of that we certainly did limit our interactions from there. And we did, as you say, kind of try and clean, I cleaned the little photo lid and things in a way that I probably wouldn't normally. there was no obvious issues with it and again as you say was it actually a potential fomite did it have a sufficient load to cause problems i don't know but i think um in instances like that minimizing contact and then trying to take the steps that are available to hand certainly seems reasonable i don't know right right really yeah and you know it doesn't

hurt to have a box a disinfectant wipes in your car or in your herb kit we can come up with plenty of uses or situations where we need those anyway. Exactly. So I think it's, you know, better safe than sorry and maybe give you some peace of mind that at least you're not contributing further as best you know, you know, without doing a full swab and diagnostic test to find out. But, you know, just doing your part is never a bad thing, I would think. but also don't break the bank or don't you know don't I guess if you can't afford some chlorox wipes you're probably not going to be able to afford to go out herping too often so you know but yeah and you know a lot of herping or interactions with reptiles getting them off the road may be incidental you might be on your way to work and you know there's a snake crossing the road

and you pull it off the road and put it in the bushes and it had snake fungal disease but I mean Unless you're going to work at a zoo or, you know, a reptile facility, you probably are not going to pass it on to other snakes that way. And she did mention one of the big ways to transmit snake fungal disease to other areas is actually through the soil. So if you're getting muddy boots and muddy shoes and not cleaning them between areas or, you know, disinfecting your shoes, That could be a possible, you know, probably a more likely route of transmission of snake fungal disease to new areas. So something to keep in mind. And that's an interesting idea, right? Yeah.

And that was one of the big things with vegetation, you know, all sorts of things that we try and get the spread of invasive. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. But I know going into Australia, they sure take a look at your shoes or hiking boots or tents for any kind of soil or seeds or anything that.

that could be deleterious, you know, in the wrong environment. So, yeah, just one more thing to think about, I guess. If you're out herping in the mud, clean off those shoes before you go to your next area and make sure you're not introducing that, potentially aphidiomyces containing soil to new areas. Yeah, as you say, probably best practice anyway. You know, with the correlation that already has with those other potential risk, being a vector for other potential risks, that probably is just best practice as a person in the outdoors. Yeah. And I guess, you know, I don't know that you need to go all the way of having a water bat, you know, a tub that you dip your shoes in bleach in the tub.

But, you know, if you can do that and it's feasible, then why not? you know it's again it's it's kind of an ounce of prevention so um i guess you can do your part as much as you want to but yeah so i don't know i i think those kind of sums up my thoughts on the topic i i'm trying to think if there's anything else that was mentioned that was um applicable to the discussion today there i think i mentioned there were a couple different um fungal diseases that snakes can get and they're not very closely related if I remember right like they were pretty just divergent but could both cause you know fungal disease in snakes there's a turtle fungal disease now as well and it causes like pitting and the lesions on the shells of turtles aquatic turtles

so that's not great you know um and so you know there's there's all sorts of nasty things presented as being novel potentially novel or is it is is that an awareness it seemed like it was a new thing at least in north america and i i she didn't say much about it just showed like here's another fungal disease of of herbs you know and this turtle uh fungal disease so um Maybe like aphidiomyces or snake fungal disease, it's becoming more commonplace or prevalent in different populations. So another thing to keep an eye on. And, yeah, I mean, water, like Chitrid in the water is like, I mean, it's just almost impossible to remove from the environment. And I think that's the common thread with these things is once they get in the environment, they're very difficult.

I mean, you can't just clean up the forest, you know, once these fungal diseases are present. So that's, again, maybe a reason to be more cognizant of if you're tracking mud from one location to another or, you know, walking through a pond and you're, you know, not cleaning your boots in between ponds. That could be a risk, you know, of transmission. And again, that's how Kittred was spread by scientists. were studying the effects of chitred you know that before they really knew how it was transmitted um they were walking in the same boots you know between different water bodies and transmitting unknowingly transmitting chitrid uh from one place to another sad but you know if you don't have that

information you don't know that you're causing harm you're trying to help the problem but at the same time you're making it worse it's uh that's that's kind of a no wind battle like you know i don't know it's hard to hard to fault anybody for that when the knowledge wasn't there but that's the importance of research people yeah absolutely well i certainly appreciate your insight and perspective given your background on all this stuff that you know i learned so much just hearing you talk about it so it's yeah to me hopefully folks find it interesting just from a perspective of someone who you know is an expert in things in this vein at a minimum to kind of hear sort of a learned perspective around these things. So I think there's

utility to it. Yeah, there were some questions about treatments, other options. You know, I mean, you can do an antifungal, but there's also topical one of our veterinarians at the university. He's also a raptor guy. He's a falconer. A really cool guy. He's from Netherlands. And Dr. Dr. Van Weddery, but he asked about F-10. He said in the bird world, they nebulize F-10 and use that as a treatment for different fungal diseases of birds. And so I wondered if that had been tried yet. And I know that I've seen F-10 used in the same way in Herps and as a nebulized treatment

or also just topical. So, you know, bathe your... in a diluted solution of F-10. And he said it's pretty safe as far as it goes for birds. And I believe it's the same for reptiles. But I guess don't run out and buy gallons of F-10 and start bathing your animals, sick animals in it. I don't know that that's a good solution either. Right.

That sort of takes us back five or ten years when people were kind of doing that. Yeah. And I mean, it is an effective, you know, quaternary. disinfectant. So, you know, there may be some reasonable. I mean, once it gets in the lungs, like if you've got a virus in the lungs, you know, your F10 is probably limited use. Maybe if they're inhaling it or, you know, a nebulized form or something that might have an impact, but, you know, could also have a very negative impact depending on dose and things like that. So not something to be done willy-nilly for sure.

But I guess if there's no other solution, you know, it doesn't hurt to try some things like that. So I don't know. And F10, I mean, you can get it off off of Amazon these days and, you know, it's ready to spray formulation and all that good stuff. I think there was some differences in like nebulized F10. You don't just use the common spray or whatever. You know, there's little different differences to the solutions or something like that. There you go. Highlighting details.

Right. Who has done to that? Right. Exactly. I mean, that's, I think it was, oh, I had those rough-scale pythons that had mites. And I didn't realize, I didn't expect the rarest python in the world that have mites on it. And then had full-blown mite infestation. And this was, what, 20 years ago or 50?

15 years ago or something, but I was treating, you know, the animals with the frontline spray. Oh, okay. And, like, it was too much, you know, I was, I was desperate. Like, I got to save these snakes. These aren't even my snakes. I didn't even buy these things, you know, is for a customer in Europe. And then so I sprayed them with the front line. And then I went to check on them and they were like both non-responsive.

I'm like, oh, crap. You know, so I rinsed them off. and resuscitated them, and they, they, uh, regain their, uh, their faculties and, and, and we're okay. They went on to reproduce and, and everything, but yeah, that scared the crap out of me, because this was like a, you know, seven K pair of snakes, uh, back in the day. So not, not the best situation, uh, to have there. Kind of scary. So yeah, know what you're doing. Don't be like me. overreact and do the wrong thing but yeah yeah there's certainly something to that just generally

right i know often the where things really go sideways is overreacting but right right and i think that was kind of i you know given nick a little bit of the benefit of the doubt that's kind of his you know suggestion is don't overreact i mean obviously he's maybe a little under estimating the the damage that serpental virus can do but at the same time, you know, some of these are maybe innocuous forms or some of our animals might just be carriers. They may not be severely impacted by the virus. So to euthanize an animal just because it has a virus is not, you know, the best idea either, you know. Good to hear you say that. Again, with the perspective. Right. Well, I mean, just put it in

human perspective, you know, if you go in with COVID, they're not going to euthanize you at the hospital because you test positive for COVID. At least maybe that's what some people thought was happening at the hospitals. We need those deaths so we can get our funding. Let's put this person down because they have COVID. I'm sure some conspiracy theorists have that in mind. Yeah, I don't know. It's all kind of take things with a grain of salt and do things, you know,

in a reasonable manner rather than some. over exaggerated way probably good practice for life in general don't get worked up over things too quickly and think things through and get more information and

study things. It's best approach I think. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Well, have we covered the topic? Any other thoughts in that regard?

I think so. Yeah, the only other things that jump to mind is that Bob Zappalorty, who we had on the show, coming up on a year ago, has written some research papers on SFD along with Joanna Berger. So if you go to Bob's website, Herpological Associates, there are some interesting studies available to read there. So I would recommend that as a resource. And additionally, and I don't know how this fits in, but it certainly has been. interesting to me. So Adam from the expert and idiot has talked quite a bit

about wanting to keep diamond pythons outside and he just had an episode with Dr. Zach Lofman where he was asking him essentially the risk associated with pentostones with potentially doing that. Right.

So he and Zach had a really good conversation around that that I would encourage folks to listen to the whole episode is really good. And the pentazone problem that's from the introduced Burmese pythons

that have kind of brought that with them. That's my understanding. And then it's spread to the native flora or fauna, native snakes. And so the potential for a diamond python being housed outside to be exposed to a Burmese python traveling through the yard or another snake. Right. Is the thing. So now, I think it's had a, I understand it, to have had a profound impact on black racers. Take me rattlesnakes, these sorts of things.

But my recollection from the conversation that Adam was having with Zach was that it's mostly, it's the sort of vector species. So it's actually, essentially, Zach's suggestion was as long as you can keep, I think he was principally talking about frogs as being a potential vector for this. So if he could keep the frogs out of the cage, I think there was also frogs and I think he mentioned annoles as well, but the thought process was at least if these were mature or, you know, juvenile to mature diamond pythons, that they probably wouldn't, it wouldn't be a tremendous risk that they would eat a green and all. But if we were talking about, you know, obviously babies,

that that would be a potential risk. I think they kind of talked through that. Right. And he's probably not housing babies outside. Yeah, that's not likely. Yeah, right. But yeah, that's a good thing to think about, you know. one of those things you may not consider, and then, yeah, that's good to consider.

So similar to, you know, I imagine it would be a risk housing things outside for serpentia, or not, phyomycese, yeah, safety infection. So, yeah, and I mean, there's all sorts of things that can happen. You know, you think, oh, I'll just keep them outside. That'll be no problems and they'll do, but I mean, their behavior is different. the there's risk of fire ants or other you know diseases or other things in the environment um predators i remember helen rapashi saying he bought a bunch of shinosaurs and and raccoons broke in and just chewed off the heads of all of them you know like uh that would have just out of spite yeah

yeah that would have been horrible you know so there's uh there's things to consider yeah But also keeping them indoors, you know, you have risks and fires and all sorts of terrible things can happen. So just keeping things in mind or planning for those kind of things is important. Understanding what you're up against when you're designing an outdoor cage or something. I mean, people do it to great effect and great success like Ron St. Pierre. Yeah, yeah, he's a great example of making that work. But he also talks about the effort he goes to to make it work and all his cage redesigns and all the challenges that he faces or tree, you know, blocking the sun at the wrong time of year, you know, that you don't want it to block the sun and, you know, all those kind of things factor in and make life interesting. Even soil and draining, right?

Like all of those things is the, yeah, but also potential benefit. But I still geek out about the cockroach in the leaves where the blue tongue skinks were getting fat and happy on the wild cockroaches in the leaves. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah, it was in the leaves but under like Cypress mulch bags, right? He was using as an insulator. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, pretty crazy.

Well, I guess life is complicated sometimes. But I really think it's important to learn. and to understand, you know, what you're up against. It can be overwhelming or, you know, scary or things like that. So, and, you know, some people are hypochondriacs. They learn about some disease and then all of a sudden they feel like they have the symptoms of that disease. And, you know, I think maybe we have that to some extent with our herps like, oh, I learned about this. Does my snake have this?

You know, and we go to drastic measures or spend a lot of money to diagnose stuff. But, yeah. My friend is a doctor, and he was doing a service thing in South America, and he was ordering all these tests for kidney issues because everybody, you know, was complaining about their kidneys. And he learned that it's just a cultural thing in that country. If something's wrong with you, you complain about your kidneys. Even though the kidneys had nothing to do with it, he was wasting all this time and money and resources to test people's kidneys. But that was just what they said. Oh, my kidneys are hurting.

My kidneys are having issues. And so he's, you know, he's, he had to learn that, like, people just say that there. Yeah. It's not a real, they don't really have kidney issues. They just say that when they have a malady, you know. So it's kind of, kind of an interesting thing. And as we learn and grow and, you know, we can become more capable of facing these issues or dealing with them. And I mean, sometimes you don't, you can't foresee something that's going to happen.

And that can be pretty devastating. And I know a lot of people who are not in the hobby anymore or not breeding reptiles anymore because of tragedies that have struck. And so, I don't know, it's hard to prevent everything. But do your best to shore yourself up where you can. Yeah. All right. well anything cool in herpeticulture these days that you've come across um well i think those are the things that jump to mind a lot of podcasts that i've been listening to expedited i don't know

maybe someday my episode will come out but uh not still on still in the bank so i'll come around on the guitar so uh we'll see but uh yeah i love i love what adam's doing uh i love the reptile rejects what michael and dom are doing yeah you and eric did a great job on on his podcast and their their podcast yeah um fun fun to hear see more people out there doing doing the podcasts and hopefully uh having a long lifespan in that regard yeah yeah absolutely how about you um i don't know i've just been geeking out on uh biogeographical barriers again So learning more about those and, you know, some of the new ones that I didn't know about and how they play a role in maybe speciation.

I don't know. I've been revisiting the Antaresia paper and thinking about those kind of things. So the new layout of, you know, kind of conceiving what that might entail, not lumping them all together, but actually looking at the separations that they did identify and how those could, what you could call those things, you know, so that's kind of what I've been involved in you're thinking about lately. So I've listened to, who did I listen to? I haven't really been listening to Reptile podcast too much lately, but I need to get more, more into that, I guess. The other thing that jumps to mind, actually based on you bringing that up, you know,

prompted the thought of carpets and waterway associations. Chris Jolly has been posting more on Aionaturalist lately, and he seems to be presently in the NT, in the NT variably, but I had just seen today that right outside the Crock Hotel, seemingly on the boardwalk, there must be a lot, it looks like on the map, there's a waterway that's directly to the north of that, basically coming in through town. And sure enough, there was like a three- or four-foot, Darwin carpet.

Oh, really? Yeah. It posted up that was just on the sidewalk. But it was, you know, an immediate association with water. Right. Trees and water. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. There's been quite a few people finding Darwin carpets.

I think Ryan found a couple juveniles or something up there. And Paul Duren, didn't he find Darwin as well? And, yeah, pretty cool. I still geeking out about that Matt Somerville Darwin that he has in his captive collection that thing is just glows orange

it's insane there's some nice looking snakes out there yeah absolutely so yeah and so hopefully at some point we'll have to try and make a work to hear about Paul's adventure

yeah yeah I'm excited for that I talked to Ryan a little bit after he'd come back from his trip and I guess he's already signed up to do a variety of podcasts to talk about that trip so we'll get to hear about that so that'll be good yeah he's kind of heavily involved in the in the j's ventures and podcasts so as you know get scooped up there and a few different ones but it'll be good to hear hear about his trip and

yeah yeah yeah yeah well thanks for uh be good stuff uh you're on some good stuff yeah right so yeah well good times and thanks for being willing to discuss this fun sad topic. Never fun talking about diseases necessarily, but it's important and good to learn about these things and have some knowledge, I guess, about them. So hopefully that goal was met and we know a little bit more about them and we can behave accordingly in our herping and collecting ventures in the future. But I appreciate you listening, and thanks for supporting the show. And thanks to Eric and Owen for giving us a place to record and put out our stuff.

And we'll catch you again next time for Reptoffite Club.