Reptile Fight Club - Silly Justin, Trips are for Herps! w/ Brandon Valentine

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob are joined by Brandon Valentine. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIG https://www.instagram.com/jgjulander/Follow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQWebsite: https://mprnetwork.transistor.fm/

Welcome to Rupptaw Fight Club. Thanks for being here, spending some time with us. We're going to be talking with our good buddy, Brandon, Valentine, tonight. So it should be a good time. How you doing, Brandon? Bringing you on right away. Good. Yeah, I'm good.

I'm good. How are you guys? Doing well. Rob, you hanging in there? Absolutely. Awesome. Yep. Well, is it blistering hot where you're at?

Or you guys, we were supposed to get some rain, but we got very, very little rain, at least where I'm at. I think the state got a little bit. What do you do? Yeah, humidity's high right now. It's with all the rains and everything. It's still like 110 with pretty good humidity. Let's see. Sounds perfect.

Can't wait to go down. Oh, yeah. It'll be the best. Yeah. I've heard the Pelancio's have been getting a lot of rain as well. So that's kind of cool. I hope. Yeah.

They've been getting some good stuff. Well. Any at all is something. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we've been mid to upper 90s and that, but fortunately the last day and a half we've gotten some rain to break the, break the heat dome of things. So today it just made it kind of humid.

So. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's been humid. We did have an overcast day yesterday. And so it was a little cooler, but still, yeah, not much rain. Just a little spring.

sprinkling. Yeah, well, I'm excited to head southwest. That should be, or southeast, I guess. There you go. I'll end up in California if I'm not careful. Yeah. If I make the drive, we'll see. It's going to be a long drive Sunday morning, so see about that. So when do you want me to send you the reminder to please pack me some vetting material? Oh, yeah, I've got it on the list, so yeah, I won't need a second reminder. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, no problem.

I'll bring a few things to to choose from, I guess, see what you prefer. Yeah. Hide them under the seats, but at least we'll know to investigate there. Right. Yeah. I'm not sure. I guess I'm going to bring a 10. I'm not sure if I'm going to be, if we're camping or car camping or hitting a.

Jordan mentioned something about having a friend, but I don't know. I don't know. We'll see where we end up. Yeah. I was surprised. I was not need it, right? Then the opposite. Yeah. I was talking to Jordan the other night. I was surprised he was like, oh, I don't know if that's a long drive. And I'm like, wait, you're saying it's a long drive? That's a bad sign. You're the guy who drove from West Texas over to California to see if you can find a rosy boa and catch a, you know, pyro in Arizona and then back to. Back to Texas for a great band. Right. If the Warrior thinks it's a long way, that... Yeah, it's kind of scary.

But hopefully it'll work out and we'll get some good stuff out there. But yeah, I'm excited that seems to be normal monsoons down in southern Arizona. So hopefully that will be able to find some good herps. I need a few down there. Especially Calubrids. I don't have great. luck with Calubrids in West Texas or in Arizona. I mean, I guess we've seen a couple desert kings and some snoring gophers, but like,

haven't seen a mountainous. Oh, yeah, I guess I got a green rat. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to be nice, but Dustin just, Brandon just rubbed it right in, you know. Oh, you know. Well, what's new for you these days, Brandon?

Not much, really, honestly. Just moved into a new place, getting everything all set up over here. And the breeding year was asked for me. I got only one clutch of inlands, which I'm not complaining about at all. But besides that, yeah, everything's getting used to the room for the most part. I'm trying to figure it out, too. I had some scrubs. I started caliphing some Walmina scrubs, and they locked up like the same night.

put them together. It's out of season for them or out of season. Nothing's probably going to come of it, but at least it's a pair for sure. Right. That's always encouraging when they're supposed to be what they are, you know, what they are what they are what they're supposed to be. I said that backwards. Yeah. My, uh, I'm a little dim tonight. I don't know what it is. I think I worked out in the heat today, so I'm like dragging a little bit. I almost forgot the podcast if you, you know, I was a little bit late here. So sorry, guys. No worries. Thanks for your reminder. But yeah, good times, good times.

We'll see how much of a fighter I am tonight. I might just roll over and let you pound me or wail on me a bit, but we'll see. Yeah. You're going to pack that pads here or what? Yeah. Oh, man. All right. Well, so breeding season didn't go too well for you this year.

What are you looking forward to next year, I guess? So what's your main focus these days? Probably Walmas, any of the scrubs. I still got a couple years on a couple of them. But hopefully within the next year or two, can do the Tanibars, Halmaheras, Walminas. What else? Maybe rubber bow is here soon. Oh, cool.

Yeah, I'm trying to think. You have to keep those guys pretty cool. You know, how do you keep them more temperate, I guess, in Phoenix? There's sitting on my kitchen counter in the tub off the, on a, so I got a tile countertop, and that stays pretty cold for the most part. So they're just all sitting on the bottom of there for ambient. Yeah. And then I can just throw them in the garage for winter for the most part.

Yeah. Hopefully here soon, I need to get the girls a little bit bigger. And then, let's see. Oh, Dunnye should be. going next year. I can do, I got some Brody Island MacLots and that's all I can really think of at the moment. Yeah.

Some good projects for sure. Some diverse projects, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Well, I'll go ahead, Rob. Well, I was just going to say, Brandon can add to the color of our Louisiana, Mississippi trip, right? So we can talk about it a little bit and then I talked about it a little bit here.

here. One thing that had jumped out, it was noted by Phil, and so it's probably worth talking about, and Brandon can speak to it with the sort of unique perspective, right? Perspective other than most at least was when we went up on the second day to meet up with Zachary over in Mississippi, he wanted us to meet him over on this private parcel. And so I knew that that was the case, and we could wind up going down this road, and you kind of follow it along for a while, and there are signs that then start to indicate that it's private property. And I knew this, but I didn't mention it to the rest of the group. And we were probably 30 or 45 seconds down it, and particularly Eric and Owens start getting a little

squirrely about this. It hadn't even occurred to me, but then I saw him getting squirly, and then I decided to lean into it. And I just was basically acting like it wasn't happening and that I didn't notice it and that this was fine. What were they possibly concerned about? Just trying to heighten their concern. is that pretty fair that all of a sudden you know the atmosphere took a little bit of a turn and it was quite yeah once you start passing a couple trailers and the road gets a little tighter they get a little bit more scared we pull up next to these you're you know sort of cabin your trailer all this sort of stuff and i'm like oh just park right over here right right across from this trailer yeah and eric was was concerned and at some point there has

He relieved him of his misery and was like, yeah, we're supposed to be here. It's fine. Don't worry. You're like, if anybody comes out here, we're out here to see Zach. Yeah, that had me concerned for a particular minute. It had me concern for a hot minute, but I was like, Rob knows where he's going. Yeah, if you're going to trust somebody is probably good to trust the guy who made the plan that he's not. Yeah.

Just ignoring the sign. And knowing Rob, I would know for in an instant that he was just messing. with me because he doesn't go where he's not supposed to go. Me, on the other hand, I might push the boundaries a little bit. We won't get into that, but, you know. Not on here anyway. Yeah. Well, very good.

You want to talk a little bit about the topic for this, Justin? I know it was inspired by Brandon and Dustin got out in the field a little bit. Yeah. Well, I want to hear a little bit about the trip. What was your highlight from the Louisiana trip, Brandon? Oh, me. Let's see. Highlight.

Probably seeing that spot that Rob was actually talking about, that sandy pine area, I was expecting to be a lot flatter than it was. It was definitely way more hilly than I was expecting. I was expecting like a beach almost to an extent. And it was a lot of hills, and it was way hotter than I was expecting it to be for sure. And then from where the sun was to where the shade was, that heat, like the drop in heat between there felt like 30 degrees or so. And it was, it was insane essentially to see all that. Wait, so you're saying your favorite part was walking uphill and sand in the heat?

Yeah, pretty much. Just seeing new habitat. Yeah, I'm just messing. That's cool. And other than a gopher tortoise, I don't think anything turned out. Oh, I forgot about the gopher tortoise. Yeah, that's one I need to see. Yeah.

Love me some Chalonians. Niffer. Niffer emailed a bunch of pictures of the tortoises he found on his Georgia trip and pretty sweet. Yeah. I need to get over there and see some of those European tortoises one of these days. Oh, yeah. They're pretty cool. Yeah, I forget about that little tortoise.

That thing was tiny, too. And how Eric saw that out of the corner of his eye, just a couple of his little scoots were sticking out of the end of the hole. And Eric just randomly saw it. I'm like, dude. Yeah. He got a little smaller desert tortoise, didn't he coming out of rock overheating? Yeah, he's got an eye for those little golf balls, man.

Yeah. He's the tortoise man. The tortoise spotter. Yeah. Who needs a trained dog when you got Eric? Yeah, for real. Go find the tortoise, Eric. Smell them.

Running around. I'll get the tortoise. Oh, tortoise boy. Tortoise boy. Absolutely. Too apt to be the Christian of tortoises. Sorry for the inside jokes. Yeah.

All right. Well, got any other cool trips planned? this year? Not off the top of my head. Nothing too crazy. Probably just San Diego a couple times and then going out here. I haven't gone out too much here this year. Works been crazy and then with the house and everything.

So just getting out more. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't gotten out much. I keep thinking, oh, you know, it's humid or it's overcast or there's rain. I should go up in the hills and then I just don't. I'm like, I don't know. It's probably the gas prices. I'm with the job.

You know, with research in the toilet right now, it's really hard to make too many rash decisions with money. So, yeah, what do you do? That's the guy driving to West Texas. Yeah. Well, you know, I'll make an exception for a big trip here, there. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Just trying to save on the little ones, you know.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, let's talk about the topic here. So Brandon and Dustin went fishing and herping. So I thought about, you know, those mixed trips, kind of the pros and cons of doing a mixed trip. And I thought that would be a good topic for us to fight a bit over. So that sounds all right. Sound good.

All right. Well, we'll do a coin toss. I think even though Rob's not sure he wants to go ahead and call it, Rob. I'll call tails. Tales. It is tails. Wow. Yeah.

Well, I was, no, I had just alluded before we started recording to the fact that, you know, you love a fight. I do. I do. I do. It's thriving you a fight. So I'd love to give you the opportunity to fight. All right. I'm feeling a little feisty tonight, like putting the ducs up.

All right, Brandon, go ahead and call it. Uh, heads. Heads. It is head. I am a double loser today. All right. Or you guys rather are the winners. So what side do you want to take?

You want to take it's a good thing to do mixed trips or it's better to do a focus, a single focus trip? I think double trip is probably better. Okay. Yeah. Sounds good to me. Well, see, now Robb should be fighting the herping only trip. He's, he's again, he hates all birders. Like, if you're a bird or something, go around Rob.

Yes, exactly. All right. And as the winner of the coin toss, do you want to start or let me go first? I'll let you go first. You'll chuck me. All right. So I guess, you know, when you have a focus of a single area, right, it's not saying you can't enjoy other things, but like if you're planning the trip, you're pretty much planning around, you know, reptiles or, you know, one thing, I guess.

Well, we'll say reptiles because that's what we're here for, right? That's our main focus, I suppose. So, you know, I think other things, you know, I know, I know Rob loves this term bycatch, but, you know, other things can be cool bycatch. But, you know, when you're planning a trip, it does help when you just have kind of that singular focus. Because, you know, the timing of the, you know, when you want to be in a certain spot, the, the targets you have, you know, dictate kind of, I need to be here at this time of day for the best chance of seeing this or, and then, you know, you might spend longer or less time in an area depending on what you're finding and what your targets are. So I think having that focus helps with that area. You know, otherwise, you might be too scattered all over the place. Like, oh, well, the fish are biting right now, but also, you know, the snakes are out.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The species I want to see is out. So do I fish when it's not worth fishing or do I hurt when it's not worth herping? You know, you kind of have to make a choice that way. So I think that single focus helps lock in on. And then if you see other stuff, that's great. If not, you know, you're herping. So that's kind of, I guess, the maybe big pro to having a focus trip.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I've seen a lot of snakes while fishing, not on purpose, not looking for them. It seems like a lot of burgers kind of do that too, like burgers seen all in Pelley pythons, all the rare stuff kind of wandering into it to an extent. It might just be lucky that way. When you're not looking for it, it shows up. But when you go looking for it, you'll never find it to an extent one way or another. I think if you do a longer trip like that, it can break up the monot, I can't say that word. It can break up the chaos of just spinning all your focus on looking for one thing the whole time.

It gives you a brain a little bit of a break and you can relax a little bit, don't fish in or looking for other animals, anything like that, birding, whatever. Like when we and Dustin went out on this trip, we were fishing and someone else yelled for a snake or you can just overhear people talking too. So there's not, you're still within a good area of people.

There's other people around, I guess, to an extent. So it can work out one way for another for you, depending on how you look at it. And then when we're also fishing, there's also some bald eagles that we're nesting or calling to each other across. So Dustin had this binoculars. on them and was able to see the nests and all these birds perched up along the way too. So you can get a little bit of breaking between the fishing and all that. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, and I want to go back to your comment on the O'N Pellies. And I would say if you looked at all the records, I imagine the Herper records are probably far outnumber the burger records of Owen Pellies. You know, it does happen and they might find them eating a bird or something cool. But for the most part, I think if you're focused. on finding them, you're probably on average, and as a group,

the herpers are going to see more on Pellipythons than the birders, especially since the birders are probably not going out at night and, you know, seeing them in the dark and things like that when they're... Well, those folks who like owls, you know, Tom's buddies. Oh, yeah.

They're weird. No. That was weird. Yeah. Yeah, the... I mean, I, again, I do enjoy seeing the other stuff like yeah the ringtails and the skunks and all that kind of stuff but you know i'm not i'm not spending too much time you know chasing them down or trying to get a good

photo or something you know it's kind of like voucher shot and move on but yeah yeah i guess it's how much you like my catch essentially right right and yeah i i think that definitely ups the enjoyment of any trip is if you can appreciate things especially when you're not finding your target like an Owen Pelly for me. I've looked a couple times and have not found one yet. And hopefully that'll happen in the near future. But we shall see, you know, there's no guarantee. Well, and Gavin reached out about this today.

It's interesting. We'll have to see. We'll definitely have them on NPR to talk about this a little bit more fully. But I guess he's sort of signed off and gotten the approval and things to lead tours to look for an hour in. in Arnhem Land. I don't know if that is broadly known or whatever, but he had sent across today to the small group and stuff. He did post it on Facebook that he was doing this one.

And of August, beginning of September. I was like, well, that's clearly not a workable timeframe for coming from here, but certainly a unique experience. Pretty cool. I was going to say, we're kind of facing our own dual-purpose trip here in the next week. just in terms of everyone's going down for IHS, right? Right. Right. Right. And simultaneously, there are some things of interest where there's going to be a clear conflict in the schedule between, am I sitting here listening to an epic talk?

Right. Yeah. Out in the field trying to get something done. So that's true. Okay, okay, we're going to go out after dark, you know, where so both things kind of fit simultaneously. There are other things where there's going to be a clear conflict. And it's going to be like, okay, well, what is? What does Thursday look like? What are we going to do? It's picking one or the other. It's not both. That's true.

Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, I mean, definitely you're going to have to have to choose what you want to listen to and what you might be okay to skip out on. And then, too, it depends on where you're going to find what you're looking for because, you know, if you're driving an hour or two each way, then you're going to miss a lot of talks doing that, you know. But, you know, at the same time, you're going to put yourself in habitat. during the time when you need to be there. So, yeah, I think there might be a couple that, but man, it's a pretty dense program. There's a lot of good talk.

So it's going to be a hard choice, Sophie's choice, you know, trying to figure out which baby to. Absolutely. Well, and the other thing that jumps to mind, right, was on our second Utah trip on the Grand Adventure. We went to a spot down in southwest Colorado that I know was particularly, both to Nipper and Dustin in terms of, it's a ancestral Pobloan site that is undeveloped, in or sort of didn't go through a 1920s, 1930s renovation. So it has a very different feel to it. And that is sort of mixed use, right?

We can run into what I would call a Hopi rattlesnake, given the context, but others would just say is a prairie, you know, southwest Colorado prairie. You can run into them there, but it's very hot, right? in the middle of the day. And the idea was kind of, hey, this will interject something different into the middle of our day. And it wound up being so meaningful. But, you know, that certainly is an issue, right, alludes to the same issue of saying, okay, are we seeking out those specific experiences? And there can be a ton of utility to that.

Or are we just saying, well, this is really our respite from her paying. So we're just hiking in the midday sun anyway, but for a sort of purpose. Right. And I guess, you know, you can kind of burn your candle at both ends and that can be a little dangerous too. You know, I've thought about that with West Texas because I did enjoy the hikes more than some of the folks on the trip. But I really like seeing the different the countryside, the different half the area. Yeah. Yeah. So and those spiny lizards up there as well.

Really cool. So, but at the same time, I'm almost like if I was going to go. just do, you know, focus, HIRP trip. I almost just be nocturnal because, like, you know, there's, that's, it was, it was, it was hot during the day and that was, we weren't finding anything moving during the day for the most part. I mean, unless you get serious elevation, which was right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was, uh, kind of the thing is sometimes if you're choosing one thing, you're automatically choosing another because you're not going to have the energy to stay up until 4 a.m., you know, looking for snakes. you're going to run out of juice and need to go sleep. Speak for yourself. Right.

That's a good point too. If you split it up with like fishing or herping per se, old season in that context, you can fish during the day for the most part in the heat of the day when most snakes or whatever you're looking for isn't moving. And then just to kill time for the most part. And then at night you can stay up however late you want to, however long your low heart desires and go herp till five in the morning and then sleep for two hours and then on most of these hurt trips we don't get much sleep at all so yeah that's true yeah yeah i guess i just wonder you know

are you are you on your game fully if you're only getting a couple hours of sleep and if it would be more productive to to get more sleep and to you know hurt all night and sleep all by and i don't know if you're road cruising you're definitely stopping for a lot more trash thinking it's a snake. Right, right. Yeah. Being all delirious from the lack of sleep.

Yeah, you're going a lot slower. Yeah, I still remember. We were driving through Western Australia and my two herping buddies had fallen asleep. And so I was trying to drive on my own. I was expecting, okay, there's going to be three of us. We're going to be way into herping. So nobody's going to, you know, we'll just take turns driving. One person can sleep.

The other two can herp. And then we'll, you know, rotate drivers. Yeah, that did. didn't happen. And so, and I, I'm driving along, like, almost at a dangerous thing, like, where it's like, I'm, I'm hallucinating, like, gardens on the side of the road, like, oh, they planted corn here. That's, that's smart. Wait a second. There's no corn here. I better pull over and sleep, you know, I'm out of it. So, yeah. Yeah. But that's the other thing in Australia gets dark at, like, 6 p.m.

And so you're, yeah, light from 6 to 6, basically. And then you're, you're. dark from six to six. So pretty much split evenly. And then so yeah, you've got kind of a long night. And, you know, you feel like you've been road cruising forever and it's 10 p.m. You know, you're like, oh man, this is a, this is early night, you know. So yeah. It's ever going to end. Right. But then again, I mean, there's a lot of stuff to see during the day in Australia. You know, I think to miss out on the lizards and, you know, the monitors and things like that. So. Yeah. I guess it also depends where you're at, too, where you're looking more because say you're in the middle of west Texas there's not all the places you can fish so i guess you'd be birding to that extent and then how many of the birds are

depending i don't know much about too much about birds but it's like how many of the birds can be out during the day compared to like owls and i guess raptors and shit like that right i mean the bird life is incredible in australia i mean parrots everywhere you know it's it's pretty pretty sweet birdie yeah honey eaters i mean they're out you know mostly in the morning you know in the mornings in the evenings, but you'll see them all through the day. And I mean, yeah, even, even at like the accommodations, there's like ringneck parrots grazing on the lawn at the park that we were at. And, you know, it's just cool to see all the different birds galas everywhere. You know, it's pretty cool. So I don't know, that's, it's hard. And I guess, yeah, when,

I think it helps when you're in a group because, man, when I go solo and I'm like struggling, you know, to stay away. Talk yourself out of it. Right. And like when I was in East Kimberly, I was all by myself in this area. No other people in the campground. I had the whole place to myself. I could have done just about anything. But then I'm trying to sleep, but I can't sleep. I don't know why I didn't just get up and go hiking, you know. But maybe, you know, who knows? Walleroo would have killed me or something. So it's hard to, you know, you don't, you have to be a little careful when you're on your. your own out in the middle of nowhere where there's no other people. So I don't know. And it was like, yeah, I can't do that another night. So I just took off and went and got a hotel room. That was a good decision. No one to call us. Yeah. So yeah, I guess you got to know when to make that decision. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And you know, you sort of meter your activity based on the length of the trip as well. Right. So arguably one,

But other than that, I have yet to have a trip where my sort of energy level wasn't sort of perfectly moderated to the length of the time that we went. So when we're talking about, yeah, doing both days and nights in West Texas, on that first trip, we were only down there, what, four days, something like that. So you can go pretty full board for four days. If it's a week or two weeks, you know, when you're talking about the East Kimberler stuff, that was an additional week on us having already done eight days or whatever. Yeah, and pretty hard, hardcore. Yeah, a pretty hard week, and then you're doing the extra week. Right. And I guess that's kind of the part of the planning process is knowing, you know, your limits and knowing, okay, nothing's going to be out when it's 115 degrees in the sun, you know, like, you might as well go, like, find a shady spot to take a siesta or swim in a creek or whatever.

And we did that in Central Australia. Yeah, we went in Miami and we went to the Reptile Park, you know, the Allis Springs Reptile Park and, you know, spend some of the hot, the heat of the day and the cool of the, I still have a picture of Rico Walder taking a nap on a bench in wildlife zoo in Darwin area. Yeah, when we went out there. That's super sick. Yeah. But yeah, you kind of get some sleep where you can and get AC where you can as well because it was hot. That almost makes me think if we need to start, like, training like these racers do for, like, any big race they got coming up if you got to start staying up later and getting your body condition for it. Because I definitely don't do that now, but I probably should start doing long, long trips.

Yeah. And I guess it's hard to say, like, should you get more sleep when you, when you're at home and you have the opportunity? You know, can you train your body to, I guess you probably could. but yeah, it's a tricky thing. Or you just getting yourself sleep deprived so it makes it worse when you're actually in the field, you know? That's hard to say. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I don't often get to bed very early, so I'm usually up to midnight. You know. Oh, yeah. I guess I'm getting myself used to it that way. There you go. Yeah. But. Well, and I think that'll be another challenge too, right, with the forthcoming.

coming IHS trip is a big aspect being the 50th anniversary is sort of the social component. We've talked to future guests. I was just talking to today. I said, oh, well, I can't do it between X and Y because I'm going to IHS and then I'm staying in New Mexico for another week. And I said, well, I'll see you down there, man. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, that'll kind of figuring out how we're going to meter in Perpant versus the talks versus sort of that social aspect. I do think that'll be even see that on our trips, right? In terms of, you know, I know Justin being a dirty soda at worst, you know, often other people in the group will wind up staying up and chatting and missing out on the ease just based on the social aspect within our group, not helping us sleep. And that's not seeing each other, seeing each other for a long time and just talk until full. in the morning. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a little more selfish, I guess. And I think, too, when you're, when you're most, you know, when I drive a lot to if I'm the designated driver, you know, I need that sleep because I'm dragging by the time we get back or whatever. Well, and you were talking about Western Australia. The instance that springs to mind for me is that same second Utah trip where we did the Grand Canyon bit of Lake overnight, you know, in the Grand Canyon. And the only person awake left in the vehicle when we were driving back was me.

And, you know, fortuitously or, you know, whatever, the wise direction was, well, we'll put him in the furthest back seat. So rather than being your co-pilot, I'm way in the back staring at you and you're looking in the rearview mirror saying, well, at least Rob's still awake staring at me for back. He can't have a very good conversation and keep me away. First, can't do anything should things go sideways, but at least I know he's staring at me. Making sure my life was a little can open as well, yeah. Cannon and stuff, doing what I could from back there, way in the back. Yeah. And I don't think I hallucinated on that trip, so that's probably good.

When we were driving into Vegas, that was a little bit sketchy. Yeah, yeah, it was. And I, I mean, that's why we stopped in St. George. I'm like, I need to get out and get the blood flowing again. because I'm, I'm dragging, you know. I need a treadmill to,

yeah, yeah. I thought I could get some sleep, you know, while you guys were coming out. I mean, I just, I tailed it out of there.

You know, you guys are on your own. I'm going to go try to sleep. So long. Secrease. Yeah. But then I got the car and it was like, I was really sweaty and it was really cold

on the rim of the Grand Canyon. And I, just shivering, I had to turn on the heater. Like, yeah, so it wasn't in a, immediate like go to sleep it was try to get my core temperature up and then try to sleep and

I don't sleep well in cars anyway so I guess that's good when I'm driving too. Yeah. Well, I I guess that is a good thing to think about as metering yourself and like if you're planning a trip to the desert and you know there's a place where you can go swim or or go find some nice shade or there's a big cave or something, you know, maybe plan that for the middle of the day. So you're getting that, you know, a nice swim in. That's what we did in, in Central Australia, where we were in the McDonald Ranges. And there's some places that have really deep pools that stay filled year-round.

Same with Western Australia. There's some really nice places where you can just kind of swim and rest on the- Hang out and chill out a little bit. Yeah, relax and kind of recuperate a little bit. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. when me and Dustin went to West Texas for during the days because it was it was hot as hell during the middle of the days. So we were just sitting in my car with the AC blast and we were going through gas. But I mean, we were camping when we were out there and even being under the shade was still hot.

So we just sit in the car for most of the day until it got a decent amount of time to where something might be out near the end of the day. So we're just making the most of the day for the most part or going to go see some sight. or go check out an area before we went there at night to see what the landscape looked like. Because we've actually found snakes like that before out in Congress. We went out to go check an area. We got there like an hour or two before sundown. And we got a speck that was out on the road when it was 95 degrees out. The only snake we saw that night that the target that we went to go look for out crawling on the road.

It was probably 120 on the road. So if we didn't go, if we didn't go right then, we probably wouldn't have seen anything, the whole rest of the night. Right. Yeah, that's the other thing is you can never assume that you're not going to see something at any given time. You know, yeah, if you're seeing a spec crawl across 120 degree road, then yeah, they could be out in it just about any time. Yeah. So it's temps had it levitating now, hey? Dude, that thing was the scariest snake I've ever dealt with.

I think I was behind that thing and that thing levitated right. Like, I thought I got bit. I was shaking for a good 20 minutes after that. That one was scary. That was the closest ever been getting bit. That was terrifying. Right. And I guess that's something to consider too.

Like if you're sleep deprived and then you're messing with venomous snakes, you know. Yeah. That can be sketchy, especially if you're in the middle of nowhere. You've got to be careful with that kind of stuff. But yeah. But I guess, yeah, it's hard because you want to make the most of every minute, especially if you're, you know, spending a lot for gas and going halfway across the country, you don't want to shortchange it either.

You don't want to leave anything there. You want to be able to sleep on the plane ride home or whatever. And yeah, so it's hard, especially when you go, you know, across the ocean. And then you're like, I don't want to waste a second. But, yeah, after two months, it's hard now. Yeah. Yeah, I would say, and I figured you'd be a good side to fight. for this one, Justin, because

based on my experience with you, you're pretty singularly minded. You appreciate the other things we come to. But as much as you're given a lot of big talk about becoming nocturnal, I'll believe it when I see it. Right, right.

I mean, I do love lizards, too, and they're mostly given the day. It's hard to find a lizard after dark. Although we have found a few here and there, you know. But, yeah, it's hard. You know, there's a lot of cool things out there. For a couple of years there, I was almost that way with the birds, too. Like, you guys are all mapping, and I'm out trying to find some, you know,

life or bird species in the Texas trips and stuff. I even remember a famous instance in Arizona. A little conflict over whether or not the group needed a rest. Yeah. That's true. I will push it as much as I can. And if I'm feeling good, you know, hey, I'll keep going. If you're not, you'll still do it.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's, fortunately, I haven't had any too bad of incidences, although I did clip that Desert King, so that was a little rough. But that was, yeah, I blamed my co-pilot on that one. Yeah, sleep deprivation can lead to, yeah, not the best. road cruising maneuvers, I guess. You're kind of dragging a little bit. And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't thinking about watching the road on a pretty high-traveled thoroughfare, you know, I was thinking.

Yeah, absolutely. And who knows, maybe it was hit before we got to it, too. So it's hard to say. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's, you know, it's tough to say. It's just that, you know, there's no doubt that our reflexes. get dulled a little bit. Yours are always impressive.

Your eyes are super impressive. But in those contexts, you just go, you know, I think it does dull our edges a little bit and just right. And sometimes that can be determinative. Right. Right. Yeah, I'm kind of curious, too, to see how some of this tech will up the game a little bit, you know?

Yeah. I'm just thinking about this thermal camera. and getting a chance to try it out and seeing how it works. I think we're going up to my parents' cabin tomorrow, so we'll be able to take it up there and maybe play around with it a little bit, see if we can spot a moose or a badger or something at night. That's cool. Yeah.

So I'm curious to see how it'll change things. Because if you can spot snakes, I mean, a lot of times snakes can hold a temperature higher than their background, so they might stand out a little bit. So that'd be kind of cool. about the alternative too, right? Are things that have been estimating during the day. And if you actually see, if they show up as cool spots. Cooler.

Right. Right. Especially where, yeah, it's not getting cooler than 100 degrees or something in the West Texas. And, yeah, it might stand out as a cooler spot on the background. Yes. Speaking of the tech thing, too, even with like drones and stuff like that, just to check out habitat. Like prior to you getting there, say, some steep crazy talus or something like that just to check out and see how. treacherous it might actually be to get up there.

If you're doing it or if you can even see something. These drone cameras now are crazy. So you might be able to see a snake from that. Right. And I know where exactly where to hike up to. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many times it's happened where I've looked on Google Earth or, you know, Google Maps or whatever and spotted out of location.

And then I get there and it's much different animal. Like it's, you know, straight up instead of a gradual slope. like I thought it might be. So, yeah, it can be, that can be helpful and save yourself a lot of time and energy than having to come back, you know, oh, that didn't work out. Get all the way to the top and you're like, why did I even do this? Yeah. Or my Western Australia adventure where we got to that point of no return and I didn't have

proper, you know, climbing ropes and all of a sudden there's a drop off that I didn't anticipate. Because I watched the YouTube video and the, you know, the perspective was off a little bit because it was a wide angle camera. So it looked doable, it looked downclimable, but it was not downclimable. It was, you had to repel. And so, yeah, it was, I mean, we made it out of there,

but yeah, not, not completely undamaged in the case of one of our guys, but poor Steve. Talking about, talking about steep, Rob took us to this crazy waterfall that had the, the craziest ups and downs I've ever been to in a hot minute. And just from the map, looking in, thinking Louisiana or Mississippi, I think we're in Mississippi on that one. It looks flat, completely flat. You drive up to it. You hear the waterfall.

It sounds low. I'm like, you sure about this? And then we start going down. I'm like, okay, this is getting really fucking narrowed, really steep on the sides. I'm like, okay, I'm down. I'm not scared of any of it. I'll do it. I might not like it, but I'll do it.

I'm not going to back out of it. And we end up seeing my life for Speckle King in that log. So it wasn't a wasted trip at all. The hike was a little treacherous, but. Yeah. Yeah, that spot wound up being a little bit more exciting than I had anticipated for sure. Yeah, I guess with this topic, I hadn't considered the idea that hikes and seeing, you know, like a waterfall or a site would be kind of a mixed, you know, a mixed trip. Because I guess, you know, if you're only focused on herping, you know, you might skip those kind of.

things and so I guess that would be a little bit of a waste so that's probably a point for Brandon there but you know I do think that's a I do think you should enjoy the the area not just the reptiles you know and yeah doing the hikes

but within reason I mean what was that hike we were going to do in West Texas and it was like just across like no shade barren wasteland yeah barren wasteland of sun the sunsstroke yeah yeah I'm like This is probably not a good idea.

Let's turn back. That was the one with the State Park Ranger who was convinced she was about to have to go remove some corpse, put on her corpse handling gloves. Yeah. Nice. And I think if we would have done that hike, that might have been a possibility for at least one or two of us. Yeah, that was a- It was rough. It was hot.

It was not going to be a comfortable hike through sand and 110 degrees. So, yeah. Your feet would have been cooking. Right, right. Yeah, I'm starting to, I'm slowly starting to learn a more of a naturalist than I am just a straight, um, herb guy. Right. Just appreciating everything around. Right.

I think that's from days of being skunked and not finding animals or finding reptiles. So I'm starting to look around and see what else is there. The rodents, the birds, the plants, the cactus, all that, just the bugs even. And I'm not even a big bug guy, but. you see something you've never seen before it piques your interest a little bit. Right. I was walking on campus and they planted all these milkweeds in like under these trees on campus. And so I was walking along and I spotted this beetle that's like bright red with some,

you know, black spots. You know, it had these really long antennae that are like black and white banded. Just a cool looking beetle. That's super cool. What is that? You know, I've been around milkweeds my whole life. Like they grew along the ditches in the. my hometown and you know i was always out you know by the ditches and looking for snakes and stuff

like that and so like how have i never seen one of these it's it's called a red femured milkweed boor but it really cool looking that's cool beetle you know and so i'm like yeah you know i guess i need to pay a little more attention to things yeah things start picking your interests yeah yeah and just discovering things that you didn't know were there and and i i you know it's not like i'm i'm some beetle guy or anything, but I can appreciate a cool looking beetle for sure. You know, there's a lot of neat. And I guess if I was a beetle guy, that would be a lot more to find because I think they say like one out of every four animals is a beetle. So there's there's a lot of beetles. Yeah. I wouldn't doubt it. Right. And just like thinking about Dave Barker's moth book where he was going to write a book about all the moths of his land. Like he was,

you know, several acres and, and right, and then he started finding all the moths. And, I mean, he got up to 700 species and there was like no sign of slowing. And he's like, okay, maybe that's impossible, you know. Yeah. And so maybe I'm just going to write a guide to, you know, mothing instead of a field guide, you know, of all the moths in my area. So, yeah, I think that's kind of a cool thing. And, you know, fun, fun to think about all the diversity.

that you could be finding. I know Jordan's really into spiders right now and finding some really cool spiders. He had some, like an ant mimic spider that was crazy looking, you know? Even like when we were out in the, the palenciles before, finding spiders at Jordan, like,

I don't like spiders at all. And then we found that one little, like, I don't even know, what I was called, that weird little spider we found. And just how we was talking about, it kind of got me excited about it. I'm like, really fucking cool. It's kind of contagious.

You know. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I'm not going to do much research or try to write anything about it, but that's something really cool to see. Right. Yeah. The knowledge is not going to stick in my head, like what, you know, genus or species this is.

But it's cool looking and I, you know, especially when you have a nice camera and can take those super macro photos and get, you know, like see the hairs and like the crazy stuff. And even with that, too, if you just take pictures of things that you're not even looking for, say you find a bird. or something what you think is weird that you don't know and then even a scientist doesn't even know what it is and you could possibly even like found something new. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you can get like range extensions or new species or all sorts of things. Yeah, they haven't scratched the surface on a lot of this stuff. So, yeah, the neglected. I mean, we think reptiles are neglected. I mean, think about bugs like insects and invertebrates are pretty neglected in a lot of ways. But lots of low-hanging fruit there

to discover, I think. Oh, yeah. So that's what you need and not a Hurt-focused trip. Right, right. But then, I mean, do you want to stand next to a sheet, you know, and count moths, or do you want to be out looking for a snake? You know, that's the choice, I guess. Pick and choose your battles on that way. Yeah, right. Yeah, I guess you could, when you're getting ready for bed, maybe while you're brushing your team, check out the moths. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it is hard. And I'm kind of a selfish herper anyway. Like I if I have a target in mind or whatever, I want to spend as much time looking for the target.

Yeah, once you find the target, it kind of takes that pressure off. You can enjoy maybe other things a little more. But, you know, until you find that target, it's pretty like monofocus when, you know, looking for that red light, we're just like focused, you know, staring at trees for a week. You know, and then once we found it, it is like, okay, cool. We do whatever we want now. Yeah, exactly. We're free. We don't have to stare at trees.

You know, we kept looking for them, of course. It wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world to find two of them. But, you know, then we could like, okay, move to the next target or try to find something else that we really wanted to see. Yeah. I've kind of gone off that fishing brain where it's like if I'm not catching anything, then I kind of give up a little bit easier. So it's like, say, change your focus a little bit. So say, like you're saying, if you spend like four hours looking for a snake, five hours, however long you spend, you spend a bunch of time and you don't see anything on the road.

Maybe you just go pull off on the side for a little bit and put out that moth tank per se. Right. Yeah. And you can do it that way also just to kill a little over the time if you're not, if you're not into it anymore or like a little bit of burnout of driving for four or five hours and not finding anything. No, that's a good point. Having that extra area of interest or something else to. to focus on when you're not seeing what you are really wanting to see. But the back of my mind, I'm always thinking, well, if I stop and do this, you know,

if I would have gone a little further, would I have seen it? It's almost like, you know, until you find that target, you're just like, it could be under this rock. Okay, no, it wasn't under that rock. It could be under the next ride. There's something about herping that it's just like, I know if I keep going and keep flipping those rocks, eventually I'm going to see what I'm looking for. And it's the worst one you get skunk.

and see nothing, but, you know, or, uh, or when somebody better at it shows up and shows you how to do it right, you know, I, yeah, we were, we were flipping rocks for maybe an hour or something and, and, uh, waiting for my buddy Pat May and looking for, uh, milk snakes in central Utah. And, um, we'd been flipping rocks and looking and stuff. And then he gets there, walks up, flips like a third rock. Oh, here's a go for snake. Then he goes up further up the cane, flips, oh, here's a milk snake like it's like some people just you're lucky yeah it's like you've been doing this and i mean he was like oh you know you want to you want to kind of focus on this soil type or this kind of landscape okay that's the that's the more productive areas and like he just kind of busts through

an area and like you know kind of flips flips what looks good and then moves on he's not like flipping every rock and you know it's kind of yeah he knows what he's looking for yeah yeah exactly And he's got the experience. He's found lots of milk snakes. And I've seen, you know, two. So, you know, I'm definitely not experienced when it comes to finding milk snakes as some of these. Or might have just, yeah, or might have just picked up on something that you didn't pick up on when you first did it to an extent. Exactly.

And presumably it means he's flipped a lot of rocks. Yeah. Anywhere, right? Right. Right. Right. I mean, everybody gets skunked. And I'm sure, you know, there were times when he got, you know,

know, skunk on the day or two. But now he's probably a lot more effective in what he's doing and can. It's not his search image for the snake in that context. It's his search image for the right rock on the right soil. Yeah. Right mountain on the right day. Yeah. And this is all like goes back to understanding the animals and their natural history

and what they prefer and where they like to hang out. You know, that was kind of the thing. And I remember when we were looking for the bread lie, we were sticking to the, you know, canyons in the rocks and things like that. And then we talked to Gavin or somebody kind of recalled like, oh, Gavin said try this. And so we're like, oh, let's switch it up. Let's try that method. And that's what eventually, you know, yielded the snake.

So it's, you know, a lot of times we have these preconceived notions, you know, like this is what they're doing and this is where we're going to find them. But, you know, depending on the time of year, you might be wrong. Yeah. The context of it. Yeah. It takes us back to Pose pitcher. Right, right. People posing them on, yeah, different areas.

And you're like, oh, it's on the rocks. I got to look on the rocks. But, yeah, they didn't find it on the rocks. They brought it to the rocks because it looks cool on the rock, you know, that kind of thing. It's actually 100 yards on the flat ground and not 150 feet up on the talus. Right, right. And, you know, sometimes that works and sometimes they are there. But, you know, it might depend on the time of year or just getting lucky and finding them there or whatever.

But yeah, it's a tricky thing. And then, you know, like, yeah, like you said, Rob, if they're representing it honestly or, you know, as they found it or whatever, that's the other trick. Yeah. But it's, I guess it's fun to think about for sure. And I think, too, there's just in that aspect of you got to learn to learn it. You know, you got to get out there and do it. And it's hard to put hours in. Right, right. And, you know, sometimes when you're just trying to get the list, sometimes it's okay to just find the one and move on. You're not an expert. You got lucky or you found the one or whatever. But I do like those people who get that big focus, you know, like Pat and Rye and the milk snakes and Brian Eager, you know, those Utah guys that just know how to find milk snakes. And they found them and, you know, made some range extensions, found them.

counties nobody's found them in that kind of thing you know that's cool um yeah i just i guess i like too many too diverse a group or or don't have as much time as as they do but you know that's i guess the way it goes we each have our kind of targets or our interest areas of interest yeah i never thought you could find cool snakes in the mountains you know i was i was always always a desert that so i'm like i had to go to the desert i'm not wasting time in the mountains It's dirty in the mountains. It's cold up there. Yeah, exactly.

But I've come to appreciate the cool things in the mountains too. Thanks in part to Rob. He's put us on those spots and, you know, finding those mountain rattlesnakes was pretty, pretty cool. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What other? Working on that, right? Yeah. Right. I guess the, so again, circling back to our topic from, I think last week, maybe the week before, you've gone on reptile rejects. And I gave my further promise further research. Oh, yeah. Did not solve the problem.

Just circling back on that issue. So it was you and Dom, and then we get to hear Shan through your restatement of his questions, which was great. Okay. Yeah, I kid. It wasn't actually a really good episode. Dom is always super sweet on the show and things. So much appreciated on that. Yeah, we'll blame Michael for ditching out on us.

And he's the young tech, tech savvy guy, leaving us old weirdos to try to figure it out. Thanks a lot, Michael. Yeah. What do you do? Yeah, I have a hard time going back and listening to anything I record. So I appreciate you filling me in because I hadn't wanted to listen to myself. drone on or whatever. No, very good.

I guess I think you guys have done pretty well with this. I'm curious, other than Gavin's thing, anything that jumps out to you from herpetulture, herpetology this week, Justin. Oh, what did I see? I saw a really cool carpet python on INAT that I sent to Eric, but I didn't get any feedback on whether he thought that was cool or not. I'm like, come on, Eric, this is your jam. I was a lookout, but it was a really crazy-looking jungle carpet from the same area where I got my lifer, which was around Lake Tintoroo.

We were driving around there, and that was that time when it was cold and rainy, and I stated, we're not going to find anything. This is cold and rainy. We're not going to find anything out tonight and drove around the corner, and there was a jungle carpet python in the road. Not a great example, you know, kind of an uglier, you know, what we may be considered. an uglier one, kind of more brown and black rather than yellow. But it was still cool to see a jungle for sure, especially, you know, having to eat my words in front of Rico. Yeah. But what do you do?

Well, and as your life, there's an appreciation to it anyway, right? Yeah, right. Sure, we have this visualization in our mind, but I would say that it reminds me of my first day tracts out on Boy Scout Road. And, you know, we took pictures for a long time, and we posted them, and they almost or actually universal feedback was, oh, my gosh, you couldn't have picked an ugly Raytrak's, but I tell you what, it still stands out as beautiful to me. Right, right. And it's still, you know, still remarkable. I thought it was kind of a unique look, too. Like, you didn't see many that were that dark.

And so I thought it was kind of a cool look to it, you know. Yeah. I definitely agree. Yeah. Yeah, it was a cool experience. Especially with the posity of snakes that we brought on that trip. Yeah, it was like, finally a snake. We were all pretty excited to see something on the road, you know.

Well, no, it wasn't on the road, right? It was off the side of the road on a cut. Because road cruising is definitely illegal there. Yeah, I think it's just on the site anyway. Yeah. Because that's kind of in lowland, not on cut stuff, which, again, with my West Texas experience. We've had several shows on. So Austin, we just recorded with Austin and Chris and Jake had come out and had a great trip. So I'm excited to hear the flipping tin where they chat through it and all that. That'll be really good. And I think we'll also have follow-ups maybe with those crew separately and harang them. Right. That was, it was really fun listening to Lisa Farina's episode on NPR. She's always good. She's always.

good yeah she she has like these thoughts that are unique like she really unconventional thing yeah yeah and she really i get really excited when i listen here those ideas that she comes up with because it's pretty cool stuff so go listen to lisa and she's always very supportive on all the podcasts like she'll go on and ask questions and things like that yeah yeah she might like Ryan young a little too much, but he's getting some love, so we got to give him a little shade. Giving shade to Python Jesus over here? Yeah, right. What about you, Brandon?

What's exciting for you right now? I don't even know at the moment. I've been so out of it for a minute now. I'll say my buddy, TJ, did a really good job on NPR also. Yeah. Local boy to me. So he did a really good job making up for the week prior episode. Yeah, yeah.

He was fun to listen to too. That was a good show. Yeah, they've been getting some good guests. Him pulling, I went over to his house. I helped him pull his Apodora. Oh, really? That was really cool. That's, that's great.

I can almost completely forgot about that. Yeah, going over there and helping him and just every, anytime I hang out with that, dude, he's, he's got a lot of really good ideas. And he's really, he's really enthusiastic about everything. just makes me whenever I feel burnt out going to talk to him just makes me feel a whole lot better. And going to pull Apador eggs at his house with him was just something I'll remember the rest of my fucking life. Right.

It'll be cool to see him hatch too. Yeah. They're getting pretty close now. I think it was like two months ago or so. Right. When did that? So probably about halfway. Nice.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. Rob, did you ever watch that Kimberly program? on nature? No, I have them saved. I need to do that. Okay, okay. Yeah, are we through the sequence now?

Yeah, yeah, there were only three episodes. Oh, it's just three. Okay, then I can probably fit it in a little bit more easy. Yeah, the third one was the best. That's the one. It was, okay. Yeah, some rough scale footage and some gecko footage and stuff. First one was probably the second best, and then the middle one was kind of more the sea.

Had some cool footage of the, that endemic snake, What are they called? The, oh, go, my brain is not functional tonight. Mangrove snakes. There's an endemic mangrove snake that lives in that. Portonia or something. Broom area. Yeah, yeah.

And myrons. I think it's called myrons or something. But it's, yeah, it's an endemic species that only occurs in that bay around broom. Oh, wow. Yeah. They have some pretty good. That one hunting mud skippers. So it's pretty cool.

That is pretty cool. That's in the second one. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was fun to watch and just seeing the countryside. Like, my wife was like, quit, quit gasping, you know. I was just, oh, wow. So, yeah, it was a good times. Very good. The Tony D.

Calubrid and Calubroid episode was really good. Okay. Yeah, really interesting. I need to listen to your Boas podcast. You guys have released another episode there. I need to get to that one as well. Yeah, we had Jeff Rani on. And then so at this point, we've, we have episodes.

We're recording on a monthly basis, sort of with date. It's not necessarily a particular day. Right. So I think it's going to release them about every five or six weeks until we have more of a back catalog. And then maybe it'll be, he'll release them on every four weeks. week something like that. But yeah, had a great conversation with Jeff Rani, Boa Frile. So the cages and a long-time boa breeder. One of the first guys to be really, really out there in public with his information in terms of what breeding looks like, what timelines look like, all those different things. And he's just a funny guy. He's a funny Midwest guy. And then we recorded another one, which is just sort of a check-in to get back in the rhythm with us between Keith Warren and I.

So that one's already in the can and we'll release that here at some point in the next few weeks. So yeah, hopefully if people listen to that, we appreciate it and certainly open to suggestions about episodes and things. We have a handful of ideas, but always good to get feedback. Yeah, that's cool. Nice. Well, I don't know that I have anything else to add. I think I need to go to bed. This heat is getting to me

And I've got a long drive in a couple days Well, yeah You said go to bread Good stuff All right, well We'll thank Eric and Owen Thanks Brandon Oh Brandon you want to

Put your info out there My Instagram My Instagram is Col underscore Serpents And Brandon Valentine on Facebook That's about it Nice go check his stuff out he's got some good herping photos and good collection photos so good stuff

well we appreciate you coming on man yeah it's always fun to chat with you and herb with you yeah so see in about a week forward to getting out to you again here soon so good times all right well we'll thank eric and owen and the mpr umbrella and we'll catch you next time for ripped off white club