Reptile Fight Club - RFC - Is it Unethical to Herp in Large Groups?

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle the topic of Herping in a large group. Is it ethical? Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow 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

all right welcome to another episode of Grubbuff Fight Club. We are back from our trip. Rob and I are here yelling at you in our microphones. So it's good to be around again. How's everything going for you, Rob? Yeah, it's awesome. You know, we'll go through it a little bit but trip couldn't have turned out any better yeah we all survived that was step one um you know and uh found all

the principal targets yeah including including things that uh you know relative long shots and all so yeah i thought i thought it was excellent The only surprising bit of information was it turns out that there are biting bugs that I wasn't anticipating. Yeah. Between Utah, the Arizona Strip, and Nevada, somewhere along the way. I don't even know where it was that we really got into it, but someplace, and I'm sort of still dealing with those. It seems like, yeah. So Rob's talking about chiggers and I, I was unaware of this, but he informed me that there are many, many species of chiggers. 52 species.

That's crazy. Yeah. So, yeah, I think all of us came away with some, you know, assortment of bites and constellations on arms. I think it was over on that Hovenweep road and maybe, you know, assortment of bites and constellations on arms. I think it was over on that Hovenweep road and maybe, you know, I assumed they were biting gnats when, when I was there, you know, 15, 10, 15 years ago. Um, but maybe that was chiggers. Cause I didn't seem to be a feeling like I was getting bit by anything, but we kind of laid down on the ground, you know,

put our arms on the, on the dirt. So maybe that's where we picked them up. I don't know. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Someplace along the way. And I, yeah, I know Nipper was really getting a histamine reaction and stuff on some of that. And certainly there was, uh, seemingly biting gnats, mosquitoes. We saw a whole host of different things, but yeah, I didn't, unlike New Jersey, I didn't see these if that's what indeed caused these. Well, I was also told you can't see chiggers. So if you were seeing things, I was told that those are ticks. They're a species of tick. Yeah. They were these little orange,

tiny orange ones. So chiggers are invisible to the naked eye, but that could be wrong. I don't know. I heard that from a friend. So we can look into that as well. But yeah, so if you're seeing something, it was like seed ticks or something. So I don't know. Crazy bugs.

Well, this is not Peds on the Pod or any of those insect invertebrate podcasts. So, although we did have some really cool invertebrate encounters on the, on the hikes as well. So we'll have to talk about a few of those as well. But so, yeah, I thought today we, we'd kind of, Rob sent me a meme that was kind of a small brained person yelling yelling at a large-brained person saying, it's unethical to herp in large groups. And so, you know, you're, so that's kind of what prompted the discussion today, as well as kind of an excuse to talk about the trip thrown in there.

So we'll definitely get to that and get some, some nice details about the trip. Uh, another amazing, uh, stone production adventure trip. And, uh, he was, he was correct in saying that it was, uh, a good step that we didn't all die. So if you don't get much more adventurous than that, I was near death, uh, experiences. And, um. But it was a lot of fun and just a fantastic trip. Great group of people and finding all the things we were looking for was just the icing on top, of course. But spending time with good people was the primary thing, I think. That's always a good time with those guys. So it was Rob, of course. He planned and executed a wonderful trip. I drove, so I picked everybody up in Vegas and drove us around and then went back home.

And we had myself, Rob Nipper Reed, and Eric Burke, you might've heard of that guy. Um, and then Dustin Gron, um, the, uh, NPR field herping consultant guru, whatever you want to call it. And together, uh, Dustin and I formed the Austin power. And so, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Good trip. We learned how to hurt better. And what other slogans did we come up with? But, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was excellent.

Yeah, as you say, great group. And, yeah, just super, super awesome vibe all around. And, honestly, then we, you know, even had the good fortune of trying to plant. So we had planted multiple days to try and hit those targets. And, um, I think in each instance, we actually found them, you know, where there were multiple nights or multiple spots or whatever. We kind of found them that first night, which takes the pressure off and then shifts us into, Hey, let's go early to the next place. And that's the thing. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, ideal, ideal. Yeah. Yeah.

You can't get much better than finding it on the first try or the first go around. So we didn't have many slow nights. I think maybe one where we just didn't see much, but that was about it. And we were shooting kind of for even a longer shot target that was kind of a plan B if, if we found plan A. So, um, but we didn't find it, so we won't talk about that, but, um, so I, uh, I guess we can just dive into it. Right. I mean, um, we, we spent most of the time in,

in Utah, in, uh, kind of Southeastern Utah around the the Canyonlands, arches, some of the nice national parks in our state. Well, my state, I guess. Rob's close, but he doesn't get to call Utah home. He's over in that eastern, east of the Rockies, city of Denver, that area. So, um, but we, uh, started out in Moab. Well, they flew into, to, uh, Las Vegas. So, uh, I drove down from Northern Utah and on the way down, I met up with a friend, Thomas Wilder and, and went out herping with him for, for the first time. And, uh, he's a great guy, just really a nice guy, um, took me to a few spots and we had some good herping together, found a few rattlesnakes, a bunch of yellow-bellied racers. And then to kind of top off the couple gopher snakes and then to top off the evening, we found a pyro. So that was probably a really nice way for me to start the trip because if you'll recall last year,

Rob and the crew, I was a day late and a dollar short to the Herp trip and they went and found a pair of mating pyros on their first day. So that kind of set their trip, the trip off last year. And I got there the next day for them to rub it in and thank me for not being there so they could see such a wonderful site. But so I got my pyro on the way down this time and it was a really crazy looking thing. So we were road cruising and Thomas said, you know, I haven't really seen him after dark, but we were going to take one more pass. And I saw this little black line across the middle of the road, which looked almost like a tar, you know, line. It was very thin and dark. And I thought, ah, that looked like a snake.

Let's check it out. So we turn around and right as we turn around, a truck comes around the corner and is right behind us. And so Thomas being the wise herper that he is pulled way off of the road. So the truck didn't have to swerve around us and go in, you know, to the middle lane and he missed the, the snake. It turned out to be a snake and it turned out to be a mountain Utah mountain King snake, which is a really nice find, uh, regardless of, uh, you know, um, and so he missed it by a few inches. So that was very nice. And, was very nice and we went over and checked it out and I mean it this thing looked like a California king snake had very very little red and so a lot of the Utah specimens are known especially at the northern extent of their range for having a lot of

black in their pattern and this one was a prime example of that. Just, yeah, like I said, very little red, some on the neck, some on the head, and then a few little triangles on the sides, but there were some bands that had no red in them going back. So it was just black and white, really a cool looking snake. So I'll have to post some pictures of that on Instagram or something down the road, but really a cool thing i i didn't get the best pictures but yeah it was great to say i don't know maybe i was just excited for you or maybe it's the fact they looked really good to me and you took them on kind of that granite type stuff right

and then i thought they turned out really nice and obviously a beautiful thing yeah yeah really a unique look to it and um so yeah we we took a few pictures and then let it, uh, kind of helped it to the way it was headed down, uh, towards the river and got it off the road. It was, it was so hard cause it was such a narrow section, you know, it was not much other than road and then a steep hill to the, to the, uh, one side and then a river to the right side with, you know, just a little bit of bank. So I was, it was so such a hard thing to say, I'm going to put this thing, you know, towards the river, knowing that it's going to probably have to cross the road back over to get back to the mountain side and thinking, ah, if this thing gets hit, that's just going to be a very sad thing. But I guess that happens every day, you know, or frequently during the season. But really cool to see my first live and happy Utah mountain king snake. So beautiful, beautiful species.

So then after that, I headed down. I had planned to sleep in my car. And I got, you know, after I left that, I was kind of high on adrenaline from finding that snake and then, um, you know, getting to herp with, with such a legend as Thomas. And then, um, heading South, I realized I don't, I didn't bring anything to sleep in my car or, you know, a tent or anything like that. So I just got a hotel room in St. George and slept there. So it was only a few hours from where we were, uh, herping. And so just slept in a hotel room in St. George and slept there. So it was only a few hours from where we were herping. And so just slept in a hotel. And then of course, all the flights or several of the flights got delayed and you guys were a little later into town. And so I thought, well, I'm in

St. George, why not go look for St. Georgie animals? So there's a lot of good spots. And I went and hiked one of the popular trails in St. George. Of course, right off the bat, there were a few chuck wallas and I hiked a little bit further in, saw a couple of desert tortoises and then came across a beautiful leopard lizard sitting, long nose leopard lizard sitting on lizard sitting on a black lava rock. And so you got this yellow lizard on top of a black rock. It was such a perfect pose and just a nice looking lizard. And so I got a few nice pictures of that with my zoom lens. And then around the corner from that, there was another one, an adult female that appeared gravid,

had kind of the orange blushing marks of a gravid leopard lizard. And so that was really cool to see. And around the corner from that was another little baby desert tortoise. Saw several species in a very short hike. And then as it got a little warmer, I headed back to the car and then made the drive down to the Vegas airport to pick up the guys. But yeah, we, uh, picked everybody up. It's always fun to, to make a, uh, an airport run, but, uh, it was nice to have everybody there and in fairly good shape. I think Nipper promptly fell asleep and which was not unexpected considering

his flight across an ocean, but, um, it's good to have them, have them all in the vehicle. And then, uh, we made the long drive up to,

uh, to Moab and stopped along the way for a little, little herping. And we dropped, uh, Rob and who was, it was Eric and Nipper were with you. Yep.

Yeah. And then Dustin and I did a little road cruising. A little Uston road cruising. Yep. And sure enough, the Uston power charged up and we found a rattlesnake, a leutosis on the road. A really nice one. Yeah, it was a pretty snake for sure. I didn't get the best pictures of it but yeah it was was cool to see and we had a nice little bucket so we could bring it back for

you guys to check out and then released it back where we found it and you guys didn't did you see anything on your your hike as much no i mean it felt pretty good so it was going into dark right and yeah as we were you know that spot there's it's i mean obviously it's nothing like what was to come but there there are a couple of spots where it's a little washed out and you've got some maybe you'd still go 20 or 30 feet you know if you took a wrong step and i didn't uh figured with nipper being out of it and er Eric uh you know kind of the same way long travel days and all this stuff and him coming right off work and doing that I was like we don't need to be doing this in the dark um and that wound up being right because you know

he was then talking later in the trip of saying like yeah he just had an odd feeling and I was like well I think that was just your subconscious saying like yeah we should probably get down before it gets truly dark. So I had, you know, I guess that was percolating in his mind when I said, hey, let's turn around so we can be full, you know, fully down. And then, yeah, then you guys turned up with a loot in a bucket. And that was good. Yeah. And yeah.

And so we took some photos. You guys kept looking and then we headed out. And on the way out then with a false start on my part where i thought i'd left something and then dustin did leave something uh we didn't realize that one though and uh but then we saw another another loot that was smaller and a little less uh you know they're all cool but a little less visually impressive uh on on our way out as we went on to moab hey yeah so started off the started off the trip with two lutes and made our way into Moab pretty much just in time to kind of hit the hay and get some rest for that first night.

I think it was about one in the morning. Midnight, one in the morning, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So it didn't seem primed to be doing anything. And holy heck, that road that goes north-south into Moab that's just into the state, I could not believe the traffic that was going through that road. I mean, that wasn't going to be a cruising road anyway. You know, you can get a sense for it where you say, okay, this is going to have more activity than what would be ideal for that. But I honestly couldn't believe the volume of traffic at one in the morning on that road it's nuts yeah and and i mean uh you

know moab used to be a quiet little town and not very well known but i guess having a national park so close and some very uh enjoyable activities for a lot of people, you know, rock crawling and mountain biking and all sorts of stuff over, over the red rock. That, that is a very popular activities out there. And so lots of people just flock there. Some people, not really my thing. At least those two specific highlights. Yeah. You're generally love it. But yeah, a lot of that stuff, not really my thing. Yeah. I, so I, I was always kind of frustrated with the, you know, the, the vehicle traffic and trying to, you know, climb up cliffs and stuff. It's like, okay, you know, whatever. I guess some people get excited about that, but that was never, definitely never my thing. Cause it would bust up the rock and just look terrible and so luckily it's kind of

restricted to a certain certain areas and you know there's you just kind of avoid those areas because that's where the car people are trying to climb their trucks up the rocks and stuff and then usually flipping and rolling down the rocks you know getting out and cracking a beer or whatever but um so and then the mountain sound good to me yeah mountain biking uh i i i guess i had i you know i enjoy mountain biking but i think i went with the wrong people because they were really good mountain bikers and they just took off and i'm i'm trying to figure out what i'm doing you know and i i don't know if i was in the best of shape at the time and yeah it was not enjoyable and then then I think the first time I was with a group of youth and we were kind of taking these youth out. And so these guys were walking there.

We were on the first kind of practice run, you know, on the slick rock. And everybody was walking their bikes down into this wash. And I said, oh, come on, you guys, this is how you do it. You know? And I, and I, I rode my bike off the little ledge and my front tire stuck in the sand and I endowed over the front of my bike and, uh, hurt my neck. And I'm like, well, okay, I guess you do do it that way. You know, I look like the biggest idiot, but you know, uh, that's, uh, what old people are supposed to do, I suppose. So the kids laughed at me pretty good. And then one of the younger kids is like, nah, this is how you do it.

And he did the exact same thing I did. But he was, you know, 16 and jumped up and brushed himself off, got back on his bike. Me, I couldn't move my neck left or right for probably a week after that. So I paid a little bit more of a price and I wasn't able to mountain bike for the rest of the trip. So luckily we only had, I think one or two more days of mountain biking. So I hung out with the old fat guys and did not mountain bike. And I felt like a big loser, but what do you do? Um, so, uh, yeah, Moab has, has changed a lot since I was a kid. We used to go there quite a bit.

But we also found that if you go to the most busy areas, the busiest hikes, and you go about a mile beyond where the hike is or off trail about a mile, you don't see anybody because nobody goes beyond where the normal trail runs. You might see one or two other people. So there's ways to kind of have your own spot out in these popular parks. As you saw the next day, not to short run it or whatever, I just wind up doing that inadvertently. Oh, the trail is signified as being closed by this three-inch tall sequence of rocks. Not for me thank you that is very true and we probably uh made a little off-road where we probably shouldn't have been but what do you do

um when in rome right so absolutely and i think you could probably plead ignorance you know like oh i am ignorant there's no question about that what's what's this stack of rocks across the trail i'm just gonna step over them because it's not like a wall or another obstacle yeah i i was saying i think that means we're not supposed to go this way but oh well when we went that way you know so um but unfortunately at that point we were already well down you know like yeah i think that was one of those i had taken a burst and was just like hey what was that and i was like i don't even know what you're talking about yeah and then you know i i wasn't too worried about it other than well i guess they they had said something about bighorn sheep and you know the breeding grounds or something but

we didn't see any sheep so i think that was a different different offshoot probably the canyon yeah it's probably the other way yeah yeah so uh we you know it was a nice hike and we saw a few you know smaller yeah the scoloporous species uh some side botched lizards some tree lizards uh a couple other species plateau lizards but what you know a few different species in that area and you know i enjoy the little scoloporous lizards they're they know a few different species in that area and you know i enjoy the little scoloporus lizards they're they're fun to chase absolutely and started getting some physicality in for the week which is good we can come to that in the end the summary summary stats that we got that was pretty good i was impressed with some of those figures that we got back so yeah all good for sure i i was a little like confused so i we were going up the trail so we went back to

the normal trail started going up the side and i was you know a little bit up up ahead and then i looked back and everybody stopped and i'm like basically why am i clear up here and everybody stopped down there you guys not coming up and then everybody kind of sat down or laid down on the rocks i'm like oh i guess we're uh taking nap or something. So I laid down and took off my shoes and had a nice little rest on the slick rock and kind of waited until about dusk and then headed back to the car. Got back to the car right on dusk and then promptly started cruising. Now, I was a little excited to cruise because I had attached a nice little light bar on the front of my car. Incidentally, I was talking to Steve, and he said that in Arizona there might be laws against that, like having fixed lights on your vehicle when you're out driving.

So we might have to look into the laws if we're ever cruising through Arizona like we were. Interesting. On this trip. I mean, we didn't cruise in Arizona. That's true. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

But interesting. Yeah. So, but the light bar worked out fantastically well. It lit up the whole road, and you could see very well. And so, yeah, we drove quite a ways, and where we thought we might see con color, we didn't see any. And we had an interesting interaction with one of the park rangers. We asked if there had been any sightings lately. And one of the park rangers said, I've lived here five years and I've never seen one.

Like, OK, I guess you must not have been looking very carefully because there's all sorts of records in here and well we just saw a dead one on so yeah so we skipped that bit right is that morning as we were coming into it there we'd seen a big adult which was done really nice to see um that had been hit not necessarily in the place that we'd expected although it wound up then being meaningful and so hey we can come back to that in terms of lessons and whatever but um yeah that was unbelievable that a park ranger could live there taken at its face value live there for five years and not have seen one of these snakes because well we did a lot better than that yeah and i and i had seen um you know, Concolor in the park.

So Concolor is the midget-faded rattlesnake, Crotalus lutosus, or Oregonus Concolor. Sorry, not Lutosus, but very closely related to Lutosus. And I don't know, there's always kind of back and forth on whether these forms are legitimate or not, or, you know, really subspecies or not. And I think it's kind of gone back and forth for a bit, but for all intents and purposes, they are a unique, have a unique look, a unique kind of natural history. And so we are considering them something,

whether that be taxonomically designated or not, we, we recognize the midget faded rattleslesnake so we went out and looked for those and um this was a a pet of my youth i actually uh found one down in in southeastern utah on a on a backpacking trip when i was a kid and begged my dad to let me take it home this was before i knew laws and regulations existed about snakes and reptiles. And so, and my parents were very accommodating and let me take this guy home. So I had a con color or midget faded rattlesnake in my bedroom for several years as a kid. And I think the statute of limitations, I think I'm okay to talk about this and

potentially get myself in the hot water. But, um, and once I found out it was illegal, I gave it away. Um, not to mention my, uh, future wife, we were dating at the time. She said, yeah, no venomous. And so I said, okay, that's fair enough. But, uh, it was a really cool snake and never calmed down. It would always rattle when I would come into my room. It was my little welcoming party, but a beautiful snake, just really nice looking rattlesnake. So I, when I collected it, it only had a button. And by the time, you know, I'd had it for several years, it had, you know, quite a few rattles added to that. So he did pretty well. I think I must have had him for at least five years, six years, something like that before I gave him away. So really cool snakes. So I was, you know, I'd seen a few since that time. One in, down on the Cedar Mesa area. We were on a hike and saw one kind of down in the canyon there. And, and then I'd seen a DOR in Canyonlands and also a live one. I was, uh,

looking, you know, looking around in this little overhang in Canyonlands with my dad and, um, and some friends. And all of a sudden I heard what I thought was a hornet nest. And so I'm like, oh crap, you know, I just stumbled into a hornet nest. So I backed out of this little overhang and, uh, looked in and I saw where the sound was coming. It was in a bush and I'm like, oh, that's a rattlesnake. Oh, cool. You know, no big deal. So I went back to my searching, but yeah, we, we checked that snake out and took some pictures and stuff. Dad, can I keep him? Well, we were in a national park. So he said, nope, sorry, not here. And, uh, but yeah, it was, uh, I was, I've really liked the con color.

So I'd seen that species or subspecies before, but this would be your first go around with this one, right? Yeah, absolutely. And they are, you know, kind of fit with will or die in terms of being species or forms, species, subspecies, form, whatever. I think they are even on INAT as a subspecies at this point for that one. But, you know, from 20, 25 years ago, right, something that was of peak interest. And maybe it goes back. I think Josh Parker wrote a RepSales Magazine article. He then later talked about, yes, on a podcast, he had Wyoming, what would basically around the time that I met you, basically 20 years ago. Right. You know, that same with the same I think the same guy who I went to meet you with for the first time 20 years ago was with me when we went over to Southwest Wyoming to give a go over in the Green River area. Yeah. Unsuccessful, but unsurprising. I meanful, but unsurprisingly, shockingly.

I mean, talk about a waste of gas at a waste of time, but I guess it was all just fun and good. Gas was cheap back then, right? Yeah. Compared to what it looks like now relative to putting together a venture, laughing doesn't begin to cover it, but that's all good um and as much as anything it would then be last year right we did put in a lot of time and a lot of miles both driving and on foot last year and i think we did learn you know in terms of uh you know a the weather

the climactic conditions of this year i think made a big difference in terms of last year was unseasonable. I use this word a lot. Last year was unseasonably wet and mild. And that wound up being really good for what we were trying to do in southwest Utah. I think that gave us a ton of opportunity on that. But in terms of when we were looking for con color in the eastern part of the state it it just wasn't going to happen relative to those conditions i'm convinced that they if there's that level of moisture and temperature that they're just not leaving the

den site until there's been a break of several weeks because you know both in colorado and utah we can get those you know late may snow storms that can be fatal if they're, you know, if they get caught out in that. So that was something, you know, I think last year's trip was the between the two were on the perfect end. Right. We got a hot and dry summer this year. And we that really fit with sort of the Eastern stuff we were looking for. If we were trying to find a Gila monster. I mean, we found pyros. No pyros, listeners. But found those, but I think that's a lot tougher this year than it would have been last year. And the Gilas, I don't know what those, well, certainly,

as you were meandering about, not in the same spot, but certainly within proximity. You didn't happen to see any azolla on your first day. I bet those are a lot harder to find on the ground. So maybe it's just hard to find all the Utah herbs in a single temperature regime or a single go. Things that are good for one isn't necessarily good for the other. Yeah, and I think that speaks to your level of planning and understanding of the natural history of the different species. And I think that's an important part of this whole thing is that if you can understand their

natural history, you're going to be a lot more successful in knowing when they're going to be out surface active and have a better chance of finding them. I mean, obviously, it takes a little bit of luck and timing and nothing you know, that's nothing's necessarily guaranteed. But, yeah, I neglected to mention we made a little pit stop on the way down to an interesting den site that we, you know, had been reported to us by actually by some climbers. So we were we wanted to check that out. The year before. Yeah. We thought it was going over.

Yeah. Yeah. And it might have been successful last year in may we probably would have seen quite a bit there yeah yeah and and i mean we found where they were supposed to be but saw we saw some signs that they had been there recently there were some droppings that looked you know suspiciously like a snake dropping but, and we did find a very nice, uh, big great basin gopher snake. Now last year in Utah, that's kind of what almost the guaranteed species that you're going to see because they're so common and they're in so many different areas in the state. And so to go, you know, on, on a week long trip through Utah and not see a great basin gopher snake is very

strange. And so last year, that's what happened. Yeah, we saw one dead on the road. That was it. It had been hit a lot by the time we saw it. Yeah. So that was really cool to get the life for the rest of us on that. You know, on your several hundredth, if not thousandth. But yeah, no, that was that was awesome took some really

cool pictures that whole environment's really cool so yeah that that was uh really noteworthy yeah so i i wanted to throw that one in but yeah it was i think that was a lifer for everybody again but me yeah i mean yeah lots of experience with gopher snakes and and uh having kept a few in captivity as well. They're one of my favorite snakes in the state. So I was very happy to, to find that he was just out on the crawl kind of over, um, by the den site, but yeah, it was fun to, to find that. And then I also did a little as well. That's funny that that's into that box of, Oh, I've actually kept those.

And then, you know, seeing a wild one. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I also had us make a little pit stop because I'd heard there was an area where you could find lesser earless lizards. And that's a species that I haven't seen in Utah. And so we went over to the area. And, you know, I was kind of thinking we started looking in certain habitat. And I was thinking, you know, I think they're from kind of more sandy areas. And so I headed down more into the sandier type things.

There were a lot of prairie dog burrows and things, you know, we were falling into the holes, you know, you'd sink down into the sand where a burrow was near the surface. But we were able to find a few of those as well they're almost they were really cool lizards i was really stoked to find those and like little horned lizards without the spikes you know they were kind of fat had those stubby little faces and uh you know the they're really uh very horny toad looking things with short tails, but just no spines, you know, they had pretty smooth scale. So really colorful lizards had some nice orange on the feet. The females that we found first were gravid. And then the next day we added a male to that and found a male. And,

and was, so we were able to kind of see what the both sexes look like and really cool little lizards for sure. So back to Canyonlands, we were on dusk and we started driving and we did several passes through kind of Canyonlands area and within the park and didn't have any luck really seeing much there. And so we were thinking, well, you know, let's head kind of make our way back towards the Airbnb, maybe, uh, do a few passes where we saw that DOR and that's actually where we hit Pater. We, we saw one on the road and, uh, we're, we're all very happy. That was a nice little moment, but, uh, yeah, it was a beautiful young, um, juvenile, uh, uh, midget fader rattlesnake or Crotalus oregonus

concolor and had that classic kind of faded saddles and blotches on it kind of faded out and really a nice looking snake totally gorgeous so the spot

that we had initially been going was and again sort of fitting into the mentality of why do the creatures that exist in a certain area look the way that they do, right? We were kind of, some con color can be pink, right? And that certainly would describe the base ground coloration of the area that we'd initially been cruising maybe that was just uh you know we were trying to will it into existence or whatever whereas the one that we had seen that was dead was a little bit more of the brownish dirt right just talking about the iron quantity presumably that's in the soil or whatever and uh yeah so we'd really been hitting that part whereas the one that we the big one that was dead from either the night before or early that morning, you know, was more of that brownish color.

We get out that way and it was obviously a baby of that type, although exceptionally nice. I would say exceptionally clean and light background. Certainly beautiful. And, you know, as is your want in particular, especially with me when I'm taking hundreds of photographs to try and come up with one that I'm happy with, eventually it reaches a point where you say, okay, I'm going to leave and try and find some more. Yeah. And yeah, it didn't take too long.

I drove up the road a bit and found a bit, a larger individual, maybe, you know, double the size. Probably a large sub-adult. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not quite a full grown adult and not the size that we saw, uh, DOR, but a pretty good sized animal. And so I was able to bring that back again. We were outside of the park, so I could put it in a bucket and show the guys and we, we released it back where we found it. Um, found it um but uh yeah it was a nice looking animal as well and in a different way i mean it was darker and and kind of more like you said kind of that upland uh form i guess of of con color um i'd seen one in the in the park at dor again

but it was that classic you know pink faded out uh splotches just a really beautiful snake so i was you know along with you hoping that we would see something in that red rock area that would just be that pink faded out look to the that really gives the con color kind of their um reputation i guess as a beautiful form of rattlesnake right which is funny because they are super variable right if we're talking about the ones up by green river kind of actually you know uh odd uh etymology or what they kind of have a greenish cast yeah you know so there's a whole bunch of different looks but the one that sort of uh captures the imagination is that salmon pink i think for the most part not one that we saw coming later in the story.

We did see another one and that looked distinctly different and much darker than any of the, you know, certainly than the baby that we or the youngster that we saw. And I will highlight here that, you know, sort of the. The high of success or the high of the activity having been accomplished, Dustin and I then, as we're cruising even further out or just headed out, say, hey, okay, we're done now. We've seen two of these. This is awesome. You know, functional full night one. We've hit the target for this area, all that stuff.

There was absolutely a second little baby, seemingly essentially identical to that first con color that we had seen that was in the road we stopped but stopped more slowly than if we had failed to see a snake uh you know at that point yeah and uh you know this is kind of the the fade out and once you've already achieved the goal um you know you're just not quite as quite as on it and so it was a little bit slower a little bit slower to uh stop and we ran out and it was gone so what we had seen was gone and absolutely even from the back seat and from a distance you know this is not calling it a female uh schmitty style this tank that's absolutely you know that's an identical twin to

what i just spent uh i don't know what solidly a half hour photographing on that first one and saying, yeah, that's what that was. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I, I, uh, you know, I guess that's always the thing, you know, yeah, you're all a little bit slower to stop and it's like, was that something? I don't know. Was that, Oh, I saw that too. And, you know, kind of the discussion leading up to it, whereas if it's clearly a snake, stop snake, you know, you slam on the brakes, but so you kind of slowing down or do you want to go back? Are we going back, you know, reverse and that kind of thing. So, yeah, it's, it's, and this was one where Dustin and I were both absolutely like, absolutely.

That's what it was. But man, uh, for the good news was that, you know, it just booked it and it's like well there's you know that's three live right in that small stretch that we know we're there and doing great and all that so you know and we'd already seen two so you know we didn't need to temporarily alien abduction you know another one for photos or whatever you know so it's just as well but uh yeah it was really cool that sort of we got validation on that DOR. And while they were not the, you know, it's not pink habitat, so they didn't have that look to them, unsurprisingly. Man, they were excellent.

And that one juvenile in particular, that small one, I couldn't be, you know, as I say, in terms of satisfaction of targets, it couldn't be a, despite not being pink, I couldn't have found one that I would have been happier with as a life for a con color than that one. Absolutely not. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so that, that target one. And so we had, you know, the following day, kind of back, we released that one that we'd, uh, um, back in the place where we found it. And then we headed over to Colorado, uh, to go look, uh, kind of, um, for, for target too, but also to kind of check out some other, uh, sites of interest, right? Yeah. So unexpectedly, right. So I, this was sort of a weird deal as we were going to go i had noticed on i natural so that i had so we're looking for now the what i would call the four

corners prairie rattlesnake is basically the way that i frame it right so this is the nuncius form that has been called the hopi rattlesnake uh previously that i believe is sunk sort of by most taxonomists at this point. They definitely are their own look, but there's a range within it. And that's sort of what comes comes about of saying, hey, are we just talking painted desert Arizona animals? Are we talking about essentially all the bearded that are in the four corners? There's a if you study the range map closely, you'll see that essentially that Colorado plateau on the southwest side of the Rockies in Colorado through southeast Utah, northeast Arizona, and above, what is it, Albuquerque, right? There's just sort of this little offshoot of the prairie rattlesnake population that shows clear isolation.

But amongst itself, there's no physical barriers that seem to limit it to only the Painted Desert. I would say unsurprisingly, right, there's a major highway that runs through there. And otherwise, you're talking about either Hopi or Navajo land. So there's probably, there doesn't seem to be a ton of scientific, quote, scientific exploration, right, in that area. So I think we're probably talking about like data deficiency as much as anything else relative to that condition. And the fact that we see phenotypically equivalent animals in the Cortez area and southeast Utah, San Juan County, all this stuff.

So to me, it makes sense that really it's the Four Corners variant of the prairie, if you want to call that a form of subspecies, however a species, whatever your taxonomic preference would be. But I think clearly they're a thing and all those things to me are the same. So anyway, we are looking on there, right? Because we transitioned out of target one, despite having an extra day there because, hey, we just had all this good success. Can we get lucky again? And let's give you even some extra time on that venture. So we were going to go to a spot in southeast Utah where there was a concentration of records. That's a cool place that I've been. You've been. But Eric and Nipper had not. Eric, Nipper and Dustin had not been to. So it was like, hey, let's go there. And then as I'm pulling it up on the map app, it says, hey, just FYI, that place is closed for the next two days.

Like you can't you know, you can't access that. Yeah. So that was interesting. And it turned to a hey, let's pivot. I know this place in southwest Colorado. Let's go over there. It's a really cool spot in terms of I had framed it mostly in terms of ancestral Puebloan pottery that to me is just mind blowing to have that on the surface. Definitely not my lived experience in Denver for sure. Really cool. So that was the framing I had. Additionally, there's a ton of cool fossils in that rock. The rock that was utilized for that area is heavily fossilized, right? It must've been the seabeded you know in terms of the way that that sandstone's put together and all that so just a really cool area by itself and

then also has not coincidentally has four corners prairie rattle thing yeah yeah so i know that uh nipper and dustin perked up quite a bit when you said, you know, ancestral Puebloan ruins as well as fossils. And they were definitely in heaven looking around and finding different things and getting very excited. So some of us were a little worn out and maybe took a little bit of a nap in the car where the others looked. And it was fairly hot. So we probably went we went early and then we went later before dusk um split by a meal and cortez one of my favorite talents in the world and uh yeah highly recommend and yeah but on that second one i think basically

everyone but me was just yes saying it out whether in, whether in the car or in the field. Yeah. But, you know, it was really cool to see that excitement. And, you know, when, you know, it got a little cooler and the sun started to set, we took off and went looking for, you know, finding a nice road that would connect us back to where our next Airbnb was, but also put us in prime habitat. And, man, that paid off with dividends. We were cruising just as it was coming. You know, the sun was setting and found them. Well, we spotted another gopher snake. Well, actually, on the way out of the site in Cortez, we saw that garter snake.

So we got to see a wandering garter snake. The local vagrant. Did we just straddle a snake? You know, vagrants in the road. And then, you know, a little further down the road, we spotted a gopher snake in the road. So we got to see another gopher snake, which, you know, is more in line with my experience. You see one, you know is more in line with my experience you see one you know every other day and uh and then um further down the road we we spot we saw the most beautiful hopi hopi rattlesnake

uh nuntius or variant of the viridis whatever you want to call it in the road um we stopped we're very happy about that it It was the most gorgeous snake. I don't know. That was one of the highlights of the trip, I think, for my part. But just a really nice-looking snake. Again, not a lifer for you, but was for the rest of us. And I would definitely firmly, I agree with you, put it in the same categorization of saying, couldn't be happier with that animal being my lifer for that form just truly spectacular yeah and i'd actually uh seen a hopi rattlesnake on

the hopi reservation so that was kind of a i i've got a little uh history with the hopis where my grandfather was adopted by the tribe as an honorary member um not blood member of the tribe, but honorary member, I guess. They thought his lifestyle fit in well with their lifestyle, and so they thought he should be part of the Hopi. And so through that, my dad and then me had this intense interest in the Hopi and their culture. And so we'd visited the Hopi and their culture. And so we'd visited the Hopi land quite a bit growing up and had some pretty neat experiences down there,

being able to see some of the dances and things. And, of course, one of the most fascinating dances and cultural attributes of the Hopi was the snake dance. That one always got my attention, of course, because it included snakes and the Hopi, uh, the dancers. And it was, uh, within two different, uh, groups or, or, uh, clans within the Hopi, um, the antelope clan and how, what's the other one? Maybe the snake clan. I can't, maybe, I'm not sure what the other clan was, but I know the antelope are involved in that or were involved. I don't know that they perform that dance anymore. A lot of their history is kind of disappearing because nobody wants to take up the reins to keep those traditions going, which is kind of sad to see that culture disappear. But so anyway, they would take

various snakes, including different rattlesnakes that they would kind of spread out and go searching for over the course of months or weeks or whatever, and gather these snakes, bring them back and kind of ritually cleanse them and get them ready for the ceremony. And then the dancers would actually put the rattlesnakes in their mouth and they had kind of an attendant with a feather that would distract the snake and keep them from biting the dancers. But they would dance with the Hopi rattlesnake in their mouth, presumably a Hopi rattlesnake, perhaps bringing other types in from wherever they were out searching, potentially the Grand Canyon rattlesnake or the con color or various forms. And potentially resulting in intermixing or release, because I believe after the ceremony

is over, they just kind of released the snakes near where they were. I don't know if they brought them back to where they found them or not. So that was something to think about, I guess, kind of an interesting thing. But quite an interesting dance, and I'd always wanted to have seen that. My grandpa was able to watch that dance after he was inducted into the tribe, and my uncle was a young boy and was able to watch that dance when after he was inducted into the tribe and my uncle was a young boy and was able to see that as well but my dad and i we always had hoped that we would be able to see that but never were able to see it but kind of a cool tie to my past and so on one trip when we were down on the hopi reservation we were driving along this dirt road to go to this spot called Bluebird Springs where the man who had adopted my grandfather actually lived and had kind of some land out there where he was from.

And so we had gotten permission from some of his relatives to stay out there and camp out there. So that was really a neat thing. We kind of had a little mini family reunion, me and my parents and my sister and brothers and a couple of my cousins went out there and stayed out on the Hopi reservation and went and saw, you know, the different, uh, uh, mixes and villages. And we're also able to do a little service project where we help somebody repair the roof. And so it was a nice little, uh, trip down there, but on the way in, it was getting dark and there was a rattlesnake in the road. So of course I went over and I took

a bunch of pictures and, and I, um, I look over and my little three-year-old daughter sitting next to me, squatting down, looking at the rattlesnake. My wife was a little panicky about that. I definitely kept her back out of the danger zone, so to say. But really cool experience. But this one blew that one out of the water. It was a nice and faded,, light colored, just beautiful snake. Yeah, I couldn't ask for a more clear version of the form, right?

In terms of saying, hey, we're not in that, if you took the strictest sense, right, what that form is supposed to look like in terms of or locality associated with that finding one that uh maybe it speaks to the theory that what i'm talking about of all those colorado plateau in that area being not geographically distinct so why would they be different uh speaks to you know that phenotype was absolutely on point so that that was really good no no questions there and yeah i was super happy with it man although it was spunky yeah yeah it was very feisty yeah yeah no doubt and it i mean it launched itself off the ground and flipped around kind of landed on its back and it was a little bit awkward but yeah it just was not not not as excited to see us as we were to see it. Absolutely true.

Yeah. So we spent some time photographing the snake and led him on his way and headed down the road a little bit further. And by the time we were done photographing, it was getting dark and not too much further down the road. We saw another one on the side of the road. This one was a bit larger, but no less spunky. He was also just happy to rattle at us and be a little excitable. So we moved him well off the road and did another photo shoot. I would say that one was probably you know maybe even into an

adult not necessarily as big as they get but certainly mature yeah good size and another beautiful one you know in terms of representative of that form with the sort of a lot of it comes down to right both the coloration both in the base and in their pattern elements but additionally they have sort of um obfuscation whereas a traditional viridis has a pretty generally has a pretty clean pattern these we're talking about there's a lot of irregularities uh bow ties little inclusions stuff like that and both of them certainly fit into that box easy enough to imagine although it was very beautiful the you know the the off the young that we had seen turning into with size something like that adult though maybe a little bit lighter but yeah very very consistent across

those two things and very consistent with the the peanut type that we were looking for. So couldn't ask for more. And again, you know, kind of on the early end of that. Yeah. And the second one looked a little bit more like the Hopi rattlesnake that I'd seen on the reservation, where it was kind of that little bit darker pattern, but, you know, similar in a lot of ways to that individual. So that was pretty cool. Yeah, and there you go.

All the more backing, right, for sort of my own pet theory about the taxonomy slash the range of these things. And super interesting. Yeah, yeah. and super interesting. Yeah. The one I saw in the Hopi had kind of white outlines along the saddles, which kind of is another nice look for the Hopi rattlesnake.

I don't think any of the individuals, the larger one, the smaller one, the smaller one may have some of that element, but yeah, that's another kind of characteristic, I guess, the lighter outline. I guess the larger one had a few kind of scales around the saddles that were lighter colored. So fitting in with that phenotype, I guess. Yeah, it seems like it's probably just a more variable phenotype,

right? And this is all a lump or splitter question because at this point, right, we're talking about, in theory, if you just went to Wikipedia, something that doesn't exist, or at least exist as its own independent entity. So, man, we are down the rabbit hole at this point. For sure. All right. Pulling out of the rabbit hole. um so we made our way to the airbnb and and you know got some good sleep and then um the next morning went back to canyonlands and uh with i mean of all things we found our so what was the look at but some really cool lizards so um there's a spot that i knew of where I'd seen some really nice, uh, collared lizards. And so we went, um, to that spot, um, and checked out the collards

and we found quite a few there. There's more than a dozen, um, collared lizards along this, this short stretch of road. And so we got some really nice photos and beautiful lizards. And this was in the park. So, you know, of course, no collection allowed. But it's nice to know that, you know, kind of they're in a protected spot and hopefully will remain protected and high in number or whatever, a good healthy population. So that was fun to see and kind of played the spot a game, you know,

drive along slow and see who can spot the lizard first on the rocks. And it was a lot of fun. And then see how close you can get. A lot of those are very bold and will let you get within a few feet. And so we got some really nice photos of them. I'm really happy with the photographs of the eastern collards so we got some really nice photos of them i'm i'm really happy with the the photographs of the the uh eastern collards that we got in the in the park there so really fun fun to see those yeah absolutely those just totally gorgeous and as you say a couple of them right could get uh

real close to seeing some of them that have sort of the orange neck pattern uh just the all of them right could get uh real close to seeing some of them that have sort of the orange neck pattern uh just the all of them kind of with that incredible base coloration with the blues and yellows and greens you know just blue yeah so beautiful yeah and most of them were males but we did see a few gravid females and and a couple of juveniles that, you know, it's hard to tell for sure whether they were females or males, but really a fun, fun spot. So after that, I think we did a hike in the park that turned out to be a little warm and a little exposed. So we went back and headed further north. So we went up looking for rat snakes up kind of near Moab. And, you know, we were there

right on dusk and right around the perfect time. There was a little bit of traffic. So, you know, we had to kind of hope that cars weren't going to go through and hit a rat snake um but we weren't fortunate enough to see one of those but uh we we gave it a shot you know for one of the nights and then kind of made the drive back we did stop by uh kind of where we saw the calm color on the way back and had another look but uh didn't see much after a couple passes and i think everybody was kind of tired so so we headed back to the Airbnb and called it a night. But what a neat day filled with some really cool lizards and some neat habitat for sure. And the only bummer of that was when we were up at that Intermontana spot was you, I had still, you know, know again my perspective is different i'm sitting in the back this is before i'd sort of worked out that i need to get additional verticality you know sitting on my

leg and all that to really you know feel like i'm in the zone with you um was you still somehow picked out a baby con color that was even smaller than the ones that we had seen previously, but was super dark that, uh, you just, it was, you know, just the most, uh, minuscule squiggle that you had picked out. But unfortunately that was a real bummer in the sense that it was, uh, it had been, you know, basically crushed on the back half. Um, so it was a, a dark con color, uh, baby con color, probably, almost certainly right. coming out of that rock outcropping having been born in the fall over and overwintering with the mother and its litter mates

and all that and just making its way into the world and you know that again that road you know has not not nearly as bad as the other one that we've been talking about but one of these where it's like how is there this volume of activity essentially in the middle of nowhere? And sure enough, it was enough to effectuate a con color or at least cause it so that we had to assist in that process, which is always a bummer. But I mean, you're doing the right thing. But man, if we hadn't seen the previous two, that would have been absolute. I mean, it's already crushing enough. That would have been unspeakable. Yeah. I mean, it definitely would have been a much better experience had it not been hit, you know, to see a beautiful little juvenile with only a button.

It couldn't even rattle. But, yeah, it's heartbreaking to see him having been hit by cars. But, you know, to know that we were in the right spot looking and, you know, there were other cool, cool snakes out there and see one kind of a bit far field from where we'd seen the other ones was kind of neat to at least have seen, you know, a different look to say, I don't know, just feel compelled at this point in the dialogue to mention that as a PSA, despite that condition and being, you know, certainly on the way out, that, you know, certainly I was glad that I had utilized a hook to manipulate that animal because, you know, I could have been going with it because because it it struck repeatedly you know was repeatedly you know being in that condition right it's obviously could not be more stressed and all that so um yeah don't get don't get clever even though it's all of four or five inches long and half crushed man it easily you know easily could have done some very serious damage because, you know, it's feeling its feelings, you know, for sure. Well, the next day began our wild adventure. So we started the drive down towards the Grand Canyon, the north rim of the Grand Canyon,, headed through some really cool habitats and neat areas, uh,

ate some good food and, um, crossed a bridge, uh, the Navajo bridge and was able to see some condors flying some California condors flying over into the red, the red rock cliffs. So that was, uh, exciting. I think that was, uh, you know, at least for, for Dustin and, and, uh, you know, at least for Dustin and Nipper, but I think everybody can appreciate a California condor flying and landing on red rocks. An impressive fly, you bird, no doubt. Yeah. And really cool, you know, the Colorado Gorge there through that area is just impressive. I mean, it's very tall cliffs and green river down below you. It's a really neat sight, at least to see walking over the bridge.

Nice and warm, though. And then we got to the north rim of the Grand Canyon around maybe 7 p.m., 7.30, somewhere around there. So about an hour before dark. Went and got our permit, which promptly got sucked into the dashboard somehow. My vehicle does not have a barrier, apparently. So try as we may, we weren't able to get it out. So Dustin hand-written a note, wrote a note that said, bought the permit, got sucked down the dashboard. So put that in the window, hoping we wouldn't get ticketed, which we didn't, which was

nice. But so we started our descent into the Grand Canyon. Maybe you can preface with kind of the plan or what the goal was, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, the ideation around this and the thing that brought some level of trepidation to me was that the night before, you all had expressed reservations about the extent of this plan, both in terms of, I guess, I hadn't communicated clearly enough to Dustin and Eric. I know Nipper was well aware, and I think you were as well. Yeah, yeah, I was aware. Essentially, we had two nights out of functionally Moab, two nights functionally out of Blanding,

and then there was a night on the itinerary that just said, GC, I could have written the ditch, you know, however we want to frame it. And, you know, so Nipper took one look at that and was like, what exactly is it that you're suggesting here? And certainly, so it's not, there are campgrounds in the Grand Canyon in terms of as you go down. You need to book those in advance. And if you're going to stay someplace, meaning like certainly if you're going to pitch a tent or whatever, you got to stay in the campground. You know, I don't think there's any rule against taking a 20-minute little break or siesta or whatever. And certainly, I mean, this is the, at this time of the year in particular, like what

all the guidance was saying, essentially you don't want to be out and exposed at all between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Right. Well, that fit neatly into my anticipated activity for rattlesnakes. In this case, abysses. That one I think really isn't taken at this point. So that's, I think it's conflated with or mixed into taxonomically with leptosis at this point. Certainly they're at worst sister taxa.

But the ideation was, hey, as it's getting on dark, let's go give a wander. And basically we'll have this one night where we're going to be here. And I don't imagine getting much sleep as that's going. And hey, it's not nothing to come back out so between all those things like yeah i don't think we're really going to need to book a place to stay because you know we're gonna we're gonna be in the ditch and uh the night before what the the part that gave me pause was the fact that uh i mean eric was game it was it was you nipper Dustin, you know, people that I view as extremely well qualified to handle such a situation, expressing reservation.

That then was like, I was like, why, why are you all taking this? It's so weird. I get that. I just sort of, you know, rush headlong into some of this stuff, but it's not, it's not totally foolhardy. I thought this through. That's just sort of what I think i think is yeah i recognize we have the capacity to do this task and we'll do it like but that wasn't how it was playing over so uh but nevertheless you still you still came through and agreed to agree to come on down dustin and eric bought uh what sweatshirts or or similar zip up sweatshirts or whatever to have a little bit of extra protection um you know i had packed ahead i had a waffle shirt that i didn't use uh nipper had uh some something you know his skin condition now he

doesn't have a skin condition but he won't love me saying that um as he went on at length about that uh you know he he had prepped materials he had he had extensively asked me around that and so that was all good uh and you knew that we were going to do this as well and because you've driven down you you didn't have sort of a limitation on what you could bring so right you were pretty free to free to free to bring that along but uh yeah the ideation was hey let's the north rim uh and down about half the records on inat uh etc are coming from that area but it's something like 95 of the people who go to the grand canyon go to the south rim right yeah and certainly people have seen abysses at the south rim of the canyon, both up on the rim and then down as you walk down into it and all. But if there's roughly equivalent numbers of abysses records from the south rim, where 95% of the visitors go, and along water bodies from the north rim down, where 5% of people are going hey you know me and it's not just uh an insistence on adventure i'm going to look at that and say wow i bet you those densities along

the north rim are pretty good and uh so that was the plan and and just to just to mention the at 5 000 feet and north rims at 8 000000 feet. So you've got a 3000 foot differential between the North and South rims. Yeah, certainly it's a little easier walk from the South, but again, that's just not really my style. So I don't know what you're talking about. So, but you know, I was, I was excited because I hadn't seen a business. Well, maybe I'd seen a business. I was young and it was hard. The arguable. Yeah, exactly. So I wanted to make it, you know, unarguable. And so and I was excited for the adventure, you know, to go hike. How many people can say they've hiked on the Grand Canyon? And and I hadn't done that even as close as I do to the Grand Canyon. So I'd been to the North Rim and been to the South Rim, but I hadn't hiked down into the canyon, down the bottom. So I was excited for that, regardless of my trepidation. My trepidation mostly came from no sleep, because I know I don't do very well without sleep.

And so anyway, we started our hike down there, and less than a mile in, I looked down on the side of the trail and there's a mountain king snake just sitting there. And so I was quick and, you know, my brain was working at that point. So I was able to grab the snake and be able to take a look at it, you know, before it bailed down the side of the Grand Canyon, which was, you know, a fairly steep area there where we saw it. Although it would have probably just gone down on the next section of trail. So probably could have rounded the corner and caught up to it. But I'm very happy to be able to see that and take some pictures. This one was much different than the one, although it the same uh subspecies uh um it was uh much larger much more uh red less black so really beautiful snake so and it you know sat still and nice for us while we picked

pictures and got plenty of pictures and sent him on his way but that was really an exciting encounter and got the adrenaline flowing and got us thinking we're on the right track and this is going to happen. So made our steps a little lighter. Well, of course, going downhill is much easier anyway. But I don't know. I was getting kind of looking side to side on the trail. My neck was getting a little sore and my eyes trying to focus and find an abyss on the trail. My neck was getting a little sore, you know, and my eyes trying to focus and find an abyss on the way down. And then some areas you're just thinking there's not going to be any

snakes. This is just too steep, you know. And I think for people like yourself that are maybe a little nervous at heights, that maybe it was a little better to do it at the dark because you weren't seeing the full extent of the risk, you know, awaiting you if you made a misstep. Yeah, that being, yeah, another PSA, right? So that trail is definitely doable. For the most part, it's actually pretty wide. You know, it's probably, what, four to six feet wide, variably, you know know for the most part um it's relatively steep so that like by the time you're talking about even getting to the uh what second potential water stop i guess where you

cross the cross um bright angel creek um you're taught you've gone five just over just under five and a quarter miles in terms of distance and you'll have covered 3 800 vertical feet yeah so it's pretty steep um the the trail itself then is there's a couple switchback sections um you know four to six foot wide but heck man you take a take a step on a loose rock all of it is covered in sort of dissolving uh sandstone so there's a ton of slick on or there's a ton of loose on top of slick and and some of those you take a false step and you're going to be going a long way without much to stop you especially the lower you get there's there's no doubt about that a couple hairy sections uh you know i got into it

a little bit with a couple rim to rim people people it was basically empty you know and uh given my proclivities i was able to get into it with 50 of the four people that we saw you know it caused a negative interaction or i would say for a minute they caused it and i just effectuated it uh but that's all right we made it through um but yeah uh definitely i don't know if night was better or worse. Certainly coming up. Yeah. Better coming up, I think, in the dark. Yeah.

So it was just kind of the black void that I was trying not to pay attention to and instead trying to look for a snake. So that was my mind was I was able to override my. Yeah. So that was, my mind was, I was able to override my, yeah, override my lack of confidence based on saying, hey, well, I got to keep my eyes peeled for this and I got to focus on this direction and all that. So that was all good. Yeah. And I think just afterwards, I think somebody died the next day or two days after or whatever, you know, of exposure and of heat exhaustion or whatever coming out of the Grand Canyon on the north. Yeah, the rattlesnakes won't be out. So, yeah. Yeah.

So we got down to the to the bottom or the little Colorado. Yeah, part of that creek. Yeah. And walking along there towards Cottonwood Campground. And Dustin and I were kind of behind. You guys were a little bit ahead. Right. Yeah, at this point, right, at this point in the venture, Nipper was getting – he just didn't seem to be in the best of moods.

And presumably it reflected his concern relative to the task ahead of us. You know, and that makes sense. But so the mood, as you say, was lightened by Pyros, but was still a little bit grim. You still had that looming hike up in the background of your mind yeah i honestly i thought that wasn't super concerning to me but i understood where other people were coming from with that and uh i was like hey i'm gonna i'm gonna bolt this and get as far as i can uh and and see what happens and before i probably eric and i eric was with me and i was like hey you stay you know you'll stay at the campground we'll'll see how far I go or whatever,

but you know, give it a rest. You just feel it a little bit. And it was like, we probably only made it a third to half a mile and get the walkie talkies essential kit. And Dustin calls and says, he's got a good one. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I, you know, I was pretty close to where he was. He had kind of gone down this hillside closer to the river and right on the embankment was this beautiful abyss. This Grand Canyon rattlesnake just curled up on the side of the big one. Yeah. For that form. Oh, yeah. They're not that long, but very thick they're not that long but very thick yep yep and he wanted to move we we kind of had

to follow him and wait till he was uh you know kind of sitting still waited up a little bit yeah yeah and he you know he he complied pretty well and we were able to get some really nice photos of him and had a had a nice little uh photo shoot with him and uh it was a really really cool experience what a beautiful snake though just uh and you know not not quite the uh i guess that classic form of the faded out uh with you know slightly darker uh saddles but um very within you know what you would expect for abyssus right um kind of the darker color yeah i think the ones that the because you don't see that many of them even in you know photos and books and stuff um you don't see that many of them and i think the it's the handful of the same picture right like so in the grand the rattlesnakes of the grand canyon book there's

that beautiful essentially pattern patternless animal. And I think that's the exception rather than the rule. So if we're measuring, hey, you know, does ours look like that? No, it was that same color, but it still had far more hint of blotching. Not nowhere near like a leutosis or something like that. But in terms of there was uh hint of blotching but in the exact pattern as it should be and certainly a no doubter so yeah again three for three relative to no doubt or uh targets no doubt or lifers for for most of us potentially not any of them being lifers for you but all you, you know, giving certainty to that last one, at least. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, kind of had a more lighter,

kind of yellowish tan background color. And then the blotches were maybe a little more red, but not really standing out, but the outline around the blotches was cool. Kind of that thin line around the, the outline or, or scales, darker scales, kind of giving it a little bit of an outline, really a neat look. I think that might've been some of the flashlight, you know, that's the other thing. We all have these different flashlights.

We're all looking at them differently. I tell you from my photos, that's a salmon animal with beautiful pink or beautiful little graphite style fading untouched, you you know just sort of came through beautifully so i think that that is another thing right we see when we see photos what are those photos um both there's intentional manipulation and then there can be um unintentional manipulation where depending on people the illumens coming off of people's lights and all this different stuff can all kind of play tricks on the camera, and that's before you get into the sensors and all these different things.

Nipper's got his crazy nice camera, and so it's always we can take that as sort of the beacon of truth relative to what do we see, maybe even sometimes more than our eyes, where we're looking at it, especially in the dark under headlamps and all that. Very true, yeah. And I think all the snakes are going to look slightly different as well or in harsh sunlight or something. But beautiful regardless of, you know, what the true colors may have been. But, yeah, very, very great experience.

One I won't soon forget. The hike out was quite arduous. So I knew I was going to be driving, so I thought sleep as I can for you guys to get there. I'm rested and I'm resting while I drive. So I made track. You know, Dustin kind of went with me and I was thinking, you know, he was going to pull ahead of me or something, but he said, oh, I'm going to stop for a rest. And I said, well, do you care if I keep going? Because I feel like if I stop, I might not be able to start so easily, you know, as you're half my age. And so, so I just kept going. And, uh, after a while I'm like, are you

still back there? He's like, yeah, I had to stop for a few things and I'm looking at the stars and stuff like that. So he was maybe, maybe 20, 30 minutes behind me. Um, so I, I thought, well, I'm going to stop around the place where to refill your water. Um, turned out I didn't need any water. Like then I drank and I for nothing, just to bring it back down and carry it back out again. Um, but I did go through about two liters of water, two and a half, three liters of water, um, during that hike. Um, but my rate on the way out was about the same as my rate on the way in. Now, granted I was searching and looking on the way in. So we were moving a lot slower than we normally would have, but, um, I but I booked it out of there pretty good. And so I hit that water spot and thought, well, maybe I'll try to get a little sleep

here. And I thought there was like a picnic bench or something, so I was going to lay down on that, but I couldn't find it. So I chose a rock and I kind of get comfortable, start to snooze off, you know, doze off a little bit. And then I hear voices and I see headlamps and I'm like oh i guess people are coming down the trail and so i kind of sat up and i turned on my i was debating whether or not i should prank them and like play a rattlesnake rattle or something and get them startled and i thought well they could be back in heat or they

could take it a little far or not think it's a funny joke and beat the tar out of me or something. But so I decided against that, turned on my headlamp and just kind of was sitting there when they came around the corner. But I asked them, oh, you know, how far have you come? They said a mile and a half. I'm like, oh, I'm going to go to the car. I'm just going to get out of here and be done with this. And so I made the last push, but man, last push, I passed probably 30 people coming in about 4 a.m. It seems like 4 a.m. and 3.30 a.m. is about the time people start making their way down the trail to avoid the heat during their hike down, putting them down by the river, probably just around sunrise. Probably a smart idea.

And if I do it again, I'm choose that way. My daughters are really upset with me that I didn't take the grant that I went without them, but I think I learned some good lessons. And, uh, so that was, uh, um, it was, it was quite the adventure, but, um, so I, I did the flowers asleep and you guys came out and that was that. We got our third target and I rode a boot. So not a bad, not a bad adventure for sure. I will admit towards the end of that. So we drove from there all the way to Vegas.

And I must admit, I was feeling it. I was getting a little tired. I don't know if you noticed, but I kept having to kind of shake myself away and turn up the music. Yeah, absolutely. I definitely did, and I certainly appreciate it. So when we had come out then, nipper wanted me in the the far back so that because as i say so so eric was feeling it a little bit so we had come up relatively slowly we had come up then by we got to the top about six in the morning and uh physically i felt

great you know mentally it having uh having found the snake and thus lost the motivation, it became, you know, especially to the water spot, everything until the water spot, every step, I was very conscious of the black void to one side or the other. So that was kind of my, um, you know, my Idaho, so to speak, right. Of, of the, that part of the venture was not the physicality. That was totally fine. It was the consciousness of the impending void on the other side, however real or imagined that that would be. And I would say it's both kind of depending on where you're at, but, uh, nevertheless,

um, it, uh, I was still tired. So I'd fallen asleep in the way back until my own bag hit me in the face to wake me up around some curve, probably just past Jacob Lake or wherever that would put us, maybe 10 minutes past there or whatever. And then I was like, yeah, we stopped, got some breakfast, lunch, whatever we'd call it. I think we had two meals that day. That was all right. That was a good day. That was a positive. Bounteous feast of the day.

Yeah, absolutely. But when we left there, I definitely perceived that. And I know you've mentioned this before, but it is certainly, to me, something that's an important perspective for people to have, you know, is the difference it can make for, you know, a person who's driving, if they're driving a carload of people who are asleep, or if there's at least one other person who's also awake at that time be that even just the knowledge that that other person is awake even in in our instance right as we're driving from again when my bag hit me in the face to um when we're going to get some food so that was probably what a half 20 minutes something like that is like yeah i might be in the way back but just the fact that hey it's not me trying to do this myself there is somebody else here you know it's not a solo pursuit i do think that makes a big difference um you know in that same vein uh as we're going from saint george

to vegas you know where it's you know that that was definitely a key priority of mine it's like not only to be awake with you as a uh companion despite being right behind you but sitting there going hey uh you know i'm making it known to you that I also am awake here, you know, and I think that does do something psychologically to say, like, this is doable. I can be awake. It's not a big deal. For sure. Yeah. But, um, my first priority when we hit the Airbnb was to go to sleep. I ran and jumped in a bed and was dead to the world for a few hours. But, yeah, what a great experience to be able to say, you know, we've gone down to the Grand Canyon and back again within the course of it. Found a pyro and an abyssus.

Yeah, two very wonderful and amazing snakes. And then, yeah. Couldn't give you too long to rest rest though i had to keep you keep you uh you know from resting on your laurels yeah that's true so we we uh got up that uh got up and and went to a spot. Well, we went to meet up with we went to have some supper. Again, our second meal

with Chris Allen Jensen, Lindsay and Aspen Mahan. Yeah. Which was great. Always good to see those guys. Yeah. That was good. Yeah, that was a nice spot.

And then as it got dark we headed out to to this spot to look for our fourth and final target uh of the trip uh crotalus steven's eye so the panamint rattlesnake and um of course you know in par the trip, we found one a few hours after we started. And this beautiful. Right. You know, kind of hitting it on perfect, you know, feeling good about it. Saw some more gopher snakes probably. Well, we saw easily what a dozen of them, at least one more than once, the same one more than once. But I guess that would be forthcoming in the venture. But yeah, a couple on the outward bound, a couple of great basins.

Then kind of, hey, we touched base on where is it that we expect to actually find them relative to the habitat we're cruising through. Oh, it's back that way. We turn around. I would say that was within five minutes then. Boom. Three foot animate rattlesnake right there. What a beautiful animal, too. turn around i would say that was within five minutes then boom three you know three foot animate rattlesnake right there what a beautiful animal too it had had a blue face i mean yeah gray the white just totally gorgeous and that one was very mild-mannered yeah yeah just

behaved itself just kind of sat there um really beautiful snake, kind of had some red banding towards the tail, orangey red. That blue wash over it, I think that's my favorite part of that snake was that wash. It was just really neat looking. Looks like it had been through a few scuffles or something had some uh scarring um but just i mean they have kind of that grumpy uh face that looks like you don't bug me um i'm crawling here whatever but what a what a fantastic animal and and really kind of the cap off to a fantastic adventure and just a great trip so um we had one more one more oh go ahead yeah well i was just gonna say you know as a memorable memorable point for me right is i don't remember if it was before we found the concolor or so in the in the run-up or if it was

after or maybe it was after the leads i don't know um but uh dustin had said hey dude if if this comes through and you find if we hit all four of these targets you know that you flam this trip around uh then i'm gonna kiss you and sure as shit man i found that span of mints and the next thing i know i got dustin give me a big old kiss so that was all good. I missed that one. Where was I? I don't know where you were, man. Yeah, that was the reaction was saying, hey, you know, you delivered on, you know, I made this promise. If you could deliver the targets, we did. And I was like, well, there you go, dude. No worries.

That's hilarious. Yeah. Well, I missed the trip, I guess. But yeah, that couldn't have been much better than that. We had one more night of cruising, went up to a different spot, kind of up higher in the mountains, got a little quite a bit cooler than the previous night. And we saw a few gopher snakes, but that was about it up there. We didn't find another appanement. Didn't pull another one. Couldn't make, yeah. It went from three, we had three doubles, and then it went to singles of the other two rattlesnakes. Yeah, the abyss and the appanement, yeah. So five species of, or four subspecies, whatever you want to call them, of rattlesnake on the trip, which was, yeah, can't beat that,

especially if you're looking for all the crudeless species in the U.S. Which we all, coincidentally, are. You're getting pretty close. How many more do you have to find? Four. Four more. Four by my count. One is there's a plan for. I've looked for three of the four to this point. The one that I haven't, I'm sure anyone who's looked into it can imagine what that would be. We'll have to see how that comes together. We'll certainly get there.

And heck, we're going to have a good time along the way, right? All of this came out of COVID just in terms of couldn't go to Australia. Hey, what's the fun thing we can do? You know, that's really the point of the thing is saying, Hey, what's an opportunity to inform trips, right? Because otherwise we can wind up just saying, Hey, do we like going to Arizona? Yeah, that's absolutely great, but that doesn't necessarily push our boundaries and make us check stuff out. So that's really been sort of the genesis of that.

And yeah, super fun. Very cool. Yeah. It's kind of nice to have that extra little layer of competition or goal or whatever you want to call it to say, you know's let's do this in in addition to herping with with friends and and you know that kind of thing so uh what a what a great great trip and will not soon be forgotten for sure yeah why don't we uh spend just a couple minutes talking about the topic and and herping in large groups that's ethical or you know that kind of thing go Go ahead and flip the coin and see what side we take. You want to call it? It is tails. I'm sorry, man.

Your luck on flip has not been too great. But so, I mean, I don't know that we necessarily need it. It's just have it's just a little bit, but, you know, um, I think, you know, I, I, I will take the, of course, unethical to, uh area that was pretty well known and a lot of people hit that area. And it seemed like most of the rocks were kind of loose, you know, easy to lift and look under because five or ten people had already looked under them. And I was out there herping alone, you know. Even though you think you're going to have less of an impact, if five people go separately and flip the same rock and make it kind of loose and maybe they're reducing the suit there because everybody doesn't need to flip the same rocks and you're actually more efficient when you're searching and and actually do probably less damage or or alteration of the habitat even if you're putting the rock back as best you can you're still probably having some unanticipated or unknown consequences of moving that rock in the first place. But, um, so I would say that, you know, those are good to keep in mind that you're probably having less of

an impact if you're going through with a larger group. And, and I mean, um, I've been on herb trips with like herb classes or naturalist classes and, and, you know, you've got 15 people or 10 people and you find a lot more things too, because you have, you know, 20 eyes looking rather than, you know, two eyes. So you're just going to naturally increase your chances of seeing more animals that you might normally miss because you just have a wider swath of people searching so that's kind of the argument i would throw out there

yeah i mean i think the key point of differentiation right just in general would be what constitutes a large group versus a small group right um in general i think um certainly your argument is very persuasive relative to soloists although i guess i would the only pushback would be to say that if you are out there solo the capacity to even be hitting that number of rocks is probably reduced right just in terms of the physical strain that it takes so that it's like maybe you're only flipping a fifth of those reps if you know uh that you would otherwise because you only have this limited capacity to do it before you're kind of worn out or you missed that one you didn't even notice that it was there all this sort of stuff

i've definitely i've definitely seen that come to play you know there was at one point when we're in florida in the fall where kj was like what you didn't flip that piece of tin that literally was right in front of my face and you know i was just sort of like thinking my own thoughts or whatever. I either didn't see it or it never occurred to me to flip it. There wasn't anything under it. But nevertheless, you know, you couldn't kind of believe it. And I was like, yeah, somehow I'm walking by a three by six sheet of tin or whatever that was right there. But it wasn't in such a way or I wasn't perceiving it in such a way that it was like, oh, this is something that I should obviously give a look

under. So that can definitely be a thing too. And that's probably the mitigating factor. I would say to me, in terms of my own personal experience, I like a group of two to five. Once we're past what could reasonably fit in a single vehicle, assuming you don't have a 15-passenger van or whatever, and that's probably, relative to my taste, a diminished experience anyway because you're just, especially for cruising, it's one thing if you're just point A to point B-ing it, that's fine. But in terms of cruising, if you're in a 15-passenger van and you're in the back row, you know, you might as well,

you're just along for the ride. You know, there's certainly nothing you're going to see you know other people are finding that and you can come out and experience it which is not um to diminish that experience right it's not nothing you're still there you're still giving it the best that you can but uh to me that that is uh less than than if we're a sort of singular normative car and even if we have five even if i'm riding the hump you know we still see the the you know the viridis uh the viridis cross you know that sort of stuff you know that that experience um down in new mexico those sorts of things that's sort of the maximum group that i like whereas i love being out there with someone

else because all those you know it's one thing to take a, find something amazing, take a pretty picture and then, but you're literally only sharing it secondarily with everyone. If you at least have that second person, to me, it really raises the experience of the whole thing and, and makes me be super present in the, not only the success, but in the venture for its own sake. So to me, two to five is an ideal group. I understand, you know, sort of the limitations of some of these trip tours and things, you know, the tourist Africa and all this stuff. I just, I don't know, I can't deny that somewhere in my own feeling and experience, even if it's a deficiency on my part, that there is some, some lessening lessening associated with hey we're a group of 20 people that are crossed over here or even what mike pingleton describes right where he's saying

hey i'm uh um you know hey they found a bush master and they brought it back to camp or they go back to camp and tell everyone hey you got to come five miles down the trail and there's one sitting there or whatever that's i i get it not your style yeah in nippers um categorization right of saying okay are you seeing a wild animal in habitat then that counts i that doesn't really count to me right we wind up in a spot and it's in things that are far closer to, hey, singular venture. We're all doing this together, all that sort of thing. Even those I I've had a harder time definitively accepting things that are much closer to, hey, I found this, you know, or counting it towards my list or my experience or whatever than that. So I can't even, honestly, I don't picture myself going on an experience like that because I don't think all find it to be really filling, you know, fulfilling.

I think the only exception is maybe in a dangerous area where having a guide is probably, you know, the difference between life and death or, you know, potential issues that way. And maybe a guy, you know, a situation, as you say, if there's no alternative, right, then it is what it is. Yeah, absolutely. Or if that thing is its own thing beyond having paid X amount of money, right?

If it's literally a scientific expedition made up of zoo staff, you know, I have something very specific in mind where it's zoo staff and academic researchers and, and, and, and, right. That are going to a specific spot that also happens to fit into that box of being inaccessible and difficult and, you know, whatever, for a variety of reasons, then that's its own pursuit, right? it's not just hey this was everyone who you know was capable of paying paying the price and that's not to say being against utilizing the services of a guide necessarily but maybe i know some of the it seems like i mean there are more guides or people offering that sort of service than ever or maybe i'm just aware of it

more based on social media and this sort of stuff. But, you know, I see these things where it's like, Oh, it's a variable price. If it's, uh, to go with your handpicked group solely of four people, that's price a, and if you're just part of the cavalcade, you know, it's you and, uh, you by yourself. And then nine people who don't know joining you. Then that's price B, you know, half that price or a third of the two thirds of that price or whatever that is.

And again, maybe we have to have a show where we talk through it and figure out what that looks like from folks that offer that service. But, you know, to me, then that option A would be the preferential route on my end. And that probably means that you get more input on, hey, these are the things I really want to find. We're not just taking the road tour. It's, hey, we're specifically my particular interest or the group's particular interest. And we still have that same group experience, but it's a plus one or plus two or whatever that looks like. Instead of just, yeah, this is, you know, you and eight people who you don't know, which could turn out to be great. Right. Almost invariably out of that experience, I'm going to be meeting new people that, you know,

when we talked to Zach, right. And that was, you meet these great new people and I don't doubt that. I also don't doubt that there were people that I don't get on with and, you know, it's kind of going to be a mixed bag because usually. Yeah. Well, and thinking about, you know, my birthday bash in central Australia next year, you know, I, I hope, you know, quite a few people will come, but I think it's going to be more of a loosely associated group of herpers

out kind of in a similar area rather than everybody's piling into a bus and going, you know, stop to stop. You know, I, I think a bus and going, you know, stop to stop. You know, I think of it more as, you know, we maybe have walkie talkies. We kind of try to stay in the same area and alert each other to to notable finds. But everybody's kind of in, you know, a normal sized car and has groups. And maybe we switch around and, you know, hang out with different people on different days or something, but, you know, where it's more of a loosely defined group of, of, uh, herpers together, rather than a giant mass going all together. But, you know, I, I definitely think you,

you do see more, but also there's the, um, caveat to that, that you, you might not find it personally, or you might just kind of see it secondhand. You know, somebody says, come over here, look here. When I was in Costa Rica, you know, I guess there's kind of the pro and con of, I might not be back here soon, or I'm here for a certain reason, like if I'm on a work trip or something like that, where it kind of helps to have, you know, a guide know where things are so you can maximize your time and see a lot of things. For example, when we were in Costa Rica, the, the, I went to this place cause they had, you know, green basilisks in the area and it was this little nature preserve type thing and private land. So you kind of had to

pay them a little money to go walk around on their trails or whatever. And I said, you know, is there any, are there any snakes around? He said, Oh, go to this spot, you know, this spot on the map and you'll see a, a, a bothrops Asper, you know, a Viper. And so I thought, okay. And so I walked to that spot and there's like police tape around this area. And in the middle of the area is this viper just sitting on the ground, you know, and it's been cordoned off and hoped off. And apparently it's just going to sit there for days or something, because why else would they put the police tape around it? But, you know, you know, kind of ruin the experience a little bit because, you know, instead of having to search for it or try to find it.

Now, I understand, you know, he's not wanting tourists to go step on some little bit if you're seeing a viper in the middle of some police tape. But and then, you know, he asked, oh, are there any green masks? And he kind of grabbed my arm and said, look over here. And he pointed one, you know, next. You know, it's not as exciting as making that realization. I was far more excited walking along those trails and seeing like this armadillo digging and coming out of a burrow or something. And like that was kind of more exciting to see that because it wasn't staged or it wasn't cordoned off or whatever. It was an animal doing its natural things.

And I just happened to be there when it was making its movements or rounds or whatever so i guess there's always that to consider absolutely yeah no i mean i i think there's uh pros and cons and in uh undoubtedly right it's sort of my own the answer is really there's probably joy in both. And there's probably particularly joy that maybe I'm withholding from myself by saying, OK, I want my experience to be hiking into the Grand Canyon and, you know, hoping that using utilizing us in power, we can we can kick one up out of the dirt and have that be, you know, and everyone survives the venture and it's all good. And, you know, that that as opposed to police tape, those are obviously two dramatically different experiences. That's not to say that maybe it's even, you know, a default on my, you know, on my end. Right. That I'm saying that one is a superior experience to the other. They're just entirely different things.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's definitely a good, good sides to both of them. And, you know, it depends on your personality or, you know, your way of thinking. I think some people are content to just kind of be along for the ride, see the animal in its natural environment and move on to the next one. Whereas I think you and I kind of have a common mindset of, we want to be the ones to kind of research out where you're going to find this thing, go to the habitat, use their natural history to help you locate them, find them in the wild, either preferably by hiking them out rather than road cruising them, you know, seeing them in their natural environment, doing natural things.

That's kind of the excitement. I think that the ultimate or pinnacle of excitement and finding these animals, um, versus the, the alternatives, but not to say that we're going to pass up a snake on the road, ignore it, but seeing it in the habitat is much, much more exciting for us. Yeah. Just the, it's, much more exciting for us. Yeah. Just that it's in our blood, I guess. Yeah.

Any other points on the topic to kind of bring up? I know we're kind of going on this one, but yeah. Right. I guess the only other thing that jumps to mind relative to the trip we just took, right be to say uh heck you know usually if you're on one of those things where it's a professional outfit with this huge group and all that then you know maybe you get some more creature comforts i know i'm i'm pigeoned as the one who insists on uh you know access to communications and uh a bed and a shower and a toilet, you know, those are all things that are between, you know, I guess in the Grand Canyon, we didn't mostly have any of those things. So if the situation calls for it, I'm willing to make do.

I'd rather see the snake than abide by those limitations. But, you know, if it's available, I won't deliberately choose to withhold those things when they're available. Whereas on those large groups, right, because of as soon as that group gets wider, you have a greater need to accommodate all those things. Right. So you have even less flexibility. They're probably going to eat three meals a day. And I mean, who even who even wants to be a part of that? You know, I uh, you know, if you're not losing, you know, I was a little disappointed Nipper only lost, you know, coming up on four pounds, you know, over that I had a week with them and he only lost four pounds, you know? Um, yeah, but I need to remember to weigh myself before a Rob Stone trip because yeah, it's a good weight loss program, at least. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, I think that's another downside relative to that experience of saying, hey, let's. Yeah. What did you call it? Type B fun? Yeah. Type B fun. Yeah.

Type B fun where you got to. You look back on it. Yeah. Yeah. Look back on it and say, no, that really was fun, even though in the moment it seemed, you know, difficult or challenging or somewhat miserable. But, yeah, I don't know. I definitely am at the point of looking back and saying what a magnificent and enjoyable trip that was. And, you know, even in the moment hiking out of the Grand Canyon, I, you know, like you said, I felt pretty good hitting the top and

feeling good. You know, my, my hip hurt a little bit or my, my legs were sore, but, you know, it's things like that, let's let you know you're alive and, you know, that you just saw a really cool snake and put in the effort to go find it. So, um, what a, what a great experience. And, you know, I, I want to publicly thank you again for, for planning such a great trip and giving us those experiences and, you know, putting us in the right spots. That was a lot of fun. Well, yeah, that, that's half the fun to me. Thank you for driving.

Thank you. Thank you to Nipper, Dustin and Eric, you know, all as we highlighted on the trip, you know, everyone, everyone brings something you know and it's that's i guess my last thing message would just be that like be cognizant it's either going to be positive or negative um everyone's bringing something and uh so just be conscious of that be conscious of the impact you can have and and try and make it a good one and you know when the when we all start singing along to glycerine, you know, in the middle of the night when we're all delirious,

then sing along, hey? Yeah. Sing along. Well said. All right. Well, is there anything cool that you've seen in herpetoculture in the last little bit that you wanted to share? Or are we good to close this one out?

I think we're good. I mean, there definitely have been. And so much so that I don't have anything that distinctly comes to mind. It seems like, man, at this point, I'm getting so much cool content from, you know, looking on Instagram, all these wild snakes that people are finding. I saw, I think somebody operates one of those tours out of Southeast Asia that, you know, gone and found a Molendorfii in a cave, you know, a big old molasses. So, so much cool stuff. Rupert's reptiles, I think, is the handle, you know, but yeah, so much, so much cool stuff.

But I think generally speaking that probably at a closing point on my end for this and we'll hit it hard next week you you said maybe there's a guest that's good to go i know there a couple more that we have in the hopper and yeah yeah we'll be back to back to our regular scheduled programming for a couple weeks anyway and we'll keep uh keep on keeping on yeah yeah i hope i hope you enjoyed the the recap of the trip it was definitely the trip of lifetime and and a lot of a lot of good memories and a lot of good fun so um hopefully you we kind of brought you along and you you could envision these things and um but yeah get out and herp it's's a great experience, you know, great fun. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you again next week for another episode of Reptile Fight Club.