Reptile Fight Club - Stick with it or pivot? w/ Ron St. Pierre

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

In this episode we catch up with Ron St. Pierre and discuss if you should stick with a project or pivot when it's not going right. Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Hi, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. I'm Justin Julander, your host and here as well, Rob Stone. I'm great. Excited for it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. We were having withdrawals, so we had to reach out to the master, bringing back on. Absolutely. We've got Ron St. Pierre here with us. Thanks for being here, Ron. Appreciate it. Thanks for the invite.

Yeah. How's life? It's gone, man. It's like I was saying earlier, we're drowning in skinks. They're all born at once and it's a fun thing on top of that. We still produce a lot of bearded dragons and white tree frogs, two things that can overwhelm you pretty quickly. Those whites lay like thousands of eggs, don't they? Yeah. A little more man.

I had a single female that looks like it probably dropped 1000, 1500 today, yesterday. I tried to only breed one frog at a time. I have enough that I could, I mean, I probably have 40 or 50 adults, but yeah, I try to just very selectively target to produce a spawn of morphphs sure And so we've been kind of working on that but yeah, they're they're challenging their Frogs can they really can overwhelm you and baby frogs are expensive to feed you right? Yeah, that's the challenge is feeding all the babies when that once they start in crickets and stuff, right? Yeah, it's the little cream Little crickets are expensive. Yeah. So yeah, and I honestly, the system for them has kind of been on the back.

I really need to develop something outdoors that right now I've got them all these custom tanks. I have 40 of these tanks I had built by Jason, Jason the deer. And so I use them right now, but they're inside and, you know, we have no employees. So anything that causes a lot of extra labor, which it does to maintain the tanks with doglets in it, if I get them outside where they're in big enclosures and, you know, kind of self managing in a lot of ways. So that's something I'm gonna try to get to in August or September, if I survive the skinks. Yeah, man. Well, with all the cold morphs you're producing, I'm sure that's gonna be a big deal, you know?

Yeah, that's our number one priority. Heather really knocked it out of the park and produced more than I was prepared mentally to deal with. But fortunately, they discovered and then her and Eddie Soto were telling me about this big black tub they sell at Home Depot. It's 170 gallon. I guess it's specifically made, it's like those Tu tough totes, but this one is made for this big

Halloween decoration that they have. So they started manufacturing this tub. It's fucked. Initially dismissed it. I was like, ah, it's black and whatever. It's a pain in the ass to deal with outdoors. I don't like using black items outdoors, but you can do it. I don't like using black items outdoors, but you can't do it. But I generally stay away from it. But then, and the size that they told me just didn't register with me. And I finally saw one and I was like, oh shit, this is actually fucking perfect. I think I can actually build something. And they're only a hundred bucks. So, um, compared to the 150 gallon, uh, tubs that we were buying from

DuraCast, the blue ones, and those are almost 300 bucks a piece. So big price difference. Um, and they're a little tall, they're taller. So there's more vertically, uh, oriented stuff that we can do. Yeah. But, um, I like shelving and things like that for the animals because it creates different gradients. Right. I remember you saying, you know, in a past episode that having that more space and more

areas to go kind of lets you house a number of animals together rather than having to house them individually. Is that still the case? Oh yeah. No, no, no, for sure. Yeah. And I mean, the more, the more, the more, the more, the more, the more, the more, the a number of animals together rather than having to house them individually? Is that still the case? Oh yeah.

No, no, no, for sure. Yeah. And I mean, the more, the more, um, I think the problem, I think a lot of the things that we do, we tend to be a little minimalistic on like, you know, how you set up the box, there's a lot of ways to set up a box to get more use out of it. I mean, essentially most enclosures have a lot of dead space like air, you know,

there's the, that the animal can't utilize. But if you, I tend to do both, even for ground oriented animals, we tend to do a lot of vertical stuff. Like we do shelves and ramps and all the stuff and that, you know, everything you do adds usable, uh, square footage to the enclosure. Right.

So these tubs in particular, I mean, the way they're set up, I think we can, I can do a lot of cool shit with them and they, And they have wheels on them and they have a handle. And when Heather was like, well, we could use these. And then if a hurricane comes, we can just fucking roll the animals inside in their enclosure. Yeah. Lock them all down rather than having to go out there and pull everything and then it's totally safe.

Then you're not only, you know, the enclosure itself is safe. You don't have to worry about that. I mean, I guess if it takes the house down, then yeah, no matter what. Right. But so there's a lot of, a lot of pluses to this. So I'm, we got the first four tonight

and I'm just kind of looking them over right now. They're right outside the back window and I'm like, I'm going to take two or three days and just think about this. Cause I want to do this right the first time. So yeah, I'm actually kind of excited about it. Eventually it'll probably be a hundred units. Yeah. Wow.

To start. That's awesome. Oh man. I just can't do a little of, if we're going to do something, I just can't. And she's like that too. So that's why you have to export. Now that's cool. That's really cool.

Have they loosened up the stringency of exporting things? Because I don't know if it was more of a, you know, with crested geckos, it seems like the Koreans were buying a lot of the crested, or the what the, you know, the New Caledonian geckos. And then once they had kind of the nicest and they were breeding their own, they were done. Yeah. And so then the market kind of had a rough go or, you know, not enough buyers here. So, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, they've been reaching out to us for over a year, constantly asking about the blue tongues. We will not attempt to export them because I've heard mixed things. Some people say that, oh, well, if you use the right port that, you know, fish and

wildlife will approve, they approve them out of certain port of entries or port of exit, whatever. But some don't. Well, okay, well, I'm not going to fuck around with that because that seems... You don't want to chance it. because that seems, I want to know for sure that it's a hundred percent, but they're all legal animals, they're all legally acquired animals and there's a chain for all of these things that goes back 10, 12 years. They came in legally with paybork. So it's not like, but now you have certain, I guess, ports have decided that all Australian animals are illegal and some of them are recognizing that, oh no, some of them are. So until we get some sort of a guarantee, you know.

I just wondered with all the turmoil, with everybody on the federal side getting let go, it's like, is there anybody even to man the ports? I have to wonder. Yeah, right. I don't wanna die. I imported some Australian species from Great Britain, and they came in without any problems.

Even though they were mislabeled, they were given the wrong species name. And I mean, the hardest one to import, probably. And no questions asked. They came along. Go with this. This was in May. So no shit. Yeah, not long ago. They came in through California, though, didn't they? I'm not sure. I'll have to look at the chain where they were stamped, but I'll have to

look into that, but I don't know if it was California or not. I know one of the main ports is they accept the paperwork as long as it's legal and they're cool with it, but at least one of the other ones is not. And so people have had animals seized and shit like that, that were legal animals from Europe. So, right. Yeah. I just, I, I just don't want to run a foul of feds. Yeah.

Last thing I want is my door fucking kicked in over bullshit fucking thing. You know, yeah, I hear you. It's not worth the risk, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had an incident where I was trying to, um, somebody had gotten permits to ship, uh, Karen, not a rough scale pythons to Europe and, uh, you know, captive bred and everything.

And then I applied for permits the next year and they told me who to send it to. You know, it's like a specific person will kind of rubber stamp it basically. So I sent it to his desk, but apparently he retired in the meantime and the desk it landed on there like, no way, we've never exported these. That's that's, you know, we've never had a record of these leaving. I'm like, here are the permits. You did it last year. No, no, we have no record of that. I'm like, this is a copy of the record. What are you talking?

Yeah, just pull your hair out. It's like why is there not a standard among all the ports? I'm like all the wildlife officials Why is one port doing this one port? It's just mind. It's maddening It's crazy because of that I have intentionally avoided any sort of export my entire time here I have not done a single one. If somebody wants to buy shit and set it up for export and they, they need us to supply, you know, proof that it's legal captive red stuff. Totally fine with that, but I'm not fucking doing it. You're not.

I just don't want to. Too much risk, right? I just, I just, yeah, I just don't have, I mean, we sell out every year anyway of everything that we produce in the U S so I don't really feel the need. I mean, I, I get it. You can make a lot more money exporting this stuff. They'll pay unreal. Like when we were doing those crest, a Xanthic, Crescent geckos, I had never

made money like that in my fucking life doing this. They were 20 grand. They were paying us for right out of the egg. He's an thick Lily whites. And I'm like, how the fuck is this a thing? Like we weren't asking that they were telling us that's what they would pay. Wow. You know, and there it was, it was crazy. And when I bought those things, I bought those three initial exactly Crescent ge Echos, because a good friend of ours,

Catherine Stranahan, around the same time that Altitude popped out their first ones, Catherine shows up at a Repticon and says, hey, what do you think? I got these gray Crescig Echos that keep coming, they're ugly, they keep coming out of my red, my nicest Crescig Echos. And I was looking at that and I was like, you know, I think that those are asanthic. And she was like, well, you know, she

wasn't really, atherin's really into species, but doesn't, at the time didn't know much about morphs. So she's like, you know, and will you guys help us help me out with this. So we did over a year and told her what to do. And she went and she proved it out. She actually had, you know, they were a Xanthic. And, and so kind of the, I think at the time, the price that was, was being floated around the U S was like five grand and she was like, well, give me 2,500 a piece and you can have three of them. Yeah. I bought three of them because I was like, okay, I'll produce these in two or three years. We'll sell them for a thousand dollars or or whatever, you know, it'll be a little nice little extra dude. And I

didn't really put any sort of effort beyond just it was kind of one of those things that was here and it was like, oh, this'll this'll make you know, little bit of money on the side, you know, and then said I produce them, the market explodes and Heather's like, Asian guys just offered us $7,500 for this straight asanthic Cresig and I was like, well, fucking sell him. He can have all he wants, whatever we got. Yeah. Then we have some lily ways antics and she's like, they offer us 20,000. And I was like, goodbye.

Yep. Because I Yeah, again, I'm not really into crested geckos. And that's part of what this show is going to talk about is, you know, I look for holes or opportunities, because I like all of herpetoculture, you know, and I at this point, I've dabbled in all of it, like, I've read everything from turtles and tortoises and frogs and, you know, lots of lizards, and obviously lots of snakes. And so I learned how to do it all over 40 years. And it allows me

to pretty much shift in and out based on market trends or based on demand or if something is kind of tanking. That's been my survivability. I think that's my resilience is there. That's what's allowed me to keep going even with all the ups and downs that this And, you know, with all the ups and downs that this hobby or industry has been through. So kind of the con-art you can't kill. You feel bad for those, yeah, the monoculture folks that just have one species and that's, you know, they know that's what they do.

And then when it tanks, they're just like, well, some getting out or, you know, they might try something else, but yeah. Yeah, there's just too, well, yeah, I'm getting out or, you know, they might try something else. But yeah, yeah, there's just too many cool species to have a hard time focusing on one or, you know, yeah, I totally agree, dude. I like I said, I don't even know how many species I've worked with at this point on some sort of a commercial level. Yeah, but I've enjoyed it all.

Like the only one that one that I would say right now still stings a bit was the Emerald Tree Boa thing. Because that was a huge risk that I took. And I felt like I had figured it out, but it didn't work out. And then I ran out of money. So I was like, okay, because I could have kept going, but I got to the point where it was costing more than it was costing too much. It was, and then at the same time, this blue tongue thing, Heather really had it dialed in now and it was growing rapidly. So I really needed to put all of my focus on that to get her systems down to where, you know, it's a well-oiled machine.

Right. down to where, you know, it's a well-oiled machine. Right. So that's, so I kind of had to shift out of that. And, you know, and in the interim I'm doing this frog thing and then this fucking big group of this entire colony of fat tail geckos came up and somehow they wound up here and so now I have that. It's just, I have somewhat regrets that I agreed to sign on to that. But

I mean, I was like, okay, well, these guys breed in the winter. So when we're running out of shit from the summer and fall in the spring, you know, now we have something that produces in the wintertime for us. Again, goes back to the conversation we're having. It's kind of like, you know, um, fight it all. Anyway, I had the ability to do that because I've never been a monoculture guy. I've always had that.

My interests are broad and that's my, I haven't gotten rich. Like I had one time where accidentally lucked into some geckos that made a substantial amount of money in one year, but then I blew it all on infrastructure. We didn't keep any of it. We didn't upgrade our lives. We put it back into this place. So I guess that's good. Yeah.

Right. And then, I mean, it seems like the blue tongue morphs are taking off and you'll probably be riding high on that wave here soon with with all the babies and. Yeah, I mean, I hope so. We're yeah, we're gambling our our futures on that. I think there are I mean, dude, the amount of mutations that we are like right on the verge of being able to put into the public sphere is this is going to go from basically just like line bread stuff that people have worked on for a long time, you know, all the rare ones and all that. Yeah. Now you're also going to have all these mutations and it's not one or two. It's like, I think we're prosecuting nine mutations simultaneously. And she made a bunch of double heads of different stuff.

So we're already next year we'll roll out combos and so yeah, it, that's awesome. That thing snowballed. Yeah. I mean, I knew it was going on. Yeah. And I was trying to, I was like, this is going to go from zero to a hundred fucking like overnight and it did.

And yeah. Yeah. Those skinks, they produce pretty well. Like, you know, there's, yeah, it's pretty good sized litters and yeah. I mean, they're akin to boa constrictors. I feel like a lot of people compare them to ball pythons, but I don't think that's accurate. I mean, you know, production of them, they are harder than, you know, ball pythons are basically a leopard gecko and a snake, you know, it's reliable, it's simple, the system. Blue tongues are, there are, there are nuances to them that are, you know, you can't just

throw them in a rack, feed them cat food and expect a good outcome. It just, right. Right. Right. But they are relatively, the nice thing about them, they're incredibly simple to keep. They're probably one of the best reptiles, period, because they can live on very well on groceries from the grocery store. They don't need insects.

There's just a lot of big pluses to them. They're friendly. They're the right size. If it's too small, little Timmy can kill it easy. If it's too big, it's too much to handle. They're, they're like in the Goldilocks zone. So there's that's for whatever reason, they've always been popular in the U S but they were never, you know, like boa constrictor level.

I don't ever think. And that's kind of where we're hoping these are going to eventually wind up. Now there's all these morphs, they'll kind of be the boa of lizards, you know, fall into that area. Yeah, well, and I mean, to be fair, like the ball pythons didn't take off until there were morphs, you know, and it really cared about all these import, you know, brown ball pythons and tides and all that kind of stuff. You know, dude, even when they got morphs, I was like, there's no way this is going to become a thing. I'm like, this is a boring ass fucking snake. Holy shit, was I wrong? And it sucks because I have a box of photos of a lot of the original morphs that I was pulling out of

Shemitz. And I was getting them for five bucks, eight bucks, and I was selling them for two grand. And I was like, oh man, I'm making bank on this. Because I was a poor kid in Miami. I was from a very working class family and I made like 75 bucks a week, deliverance subs at the time, like 1987 or 86. And then I found that these guys would pay me $2,000 to go to strictly and pull out fucking, you know, ball pythons that are a little bit different. And I was like, oh, fuck. So you're right. Yeah. I mean, I did use that money. Like I bought the original blue tegus that way. That money gave me the to build this.

This actually, when I think about it, my entire life, it's kind of built on that fucking stupid snake tail. Because even though I don't do them, it allowed me to buy all the shit that I wanted to do. Right. I hadn't really thought about that, but that is absolutely the case. Well, and arguably a lot of the things that we have in Herb to Culture kinda to, you know. Are because of that.

Because of the industry and yeah, it's just grown tremendously because of, yeah, the Ball Python. Oh no, they are our greatest success story by far. They've added an immense amount of positivity to the industry. They've brought in a lot of people. So they are our ambassador animal really.

I mean, they are the entry point for almost, don't know what the number is, but it's gotta be really fucking high the amount of them that are sold, you know. And yeah, so I mean, they're very important to the hobby for sure. But I just, I was too stupid to see it at the time. I mean, I had a, I had a, I look back and laugh because I had a living room full. I had a little tiny house. Like it was like 700 square feet sat right on I-95 in a bad neighborhood in Miami. Yeah. And my whole house, except for one little bedroom was full all fucking

Burmese and reticulated pythons. And that was, you know, and that's what I was breeding. That was the first, and I bought those on on what was Craigslist is at the time it was called Bargain Trader used to get them in 7-eleven. It was this shitty little, you know, like paper. I don't know, it was a pamphlet. But yeah, it was full of people selling animals to you know, and cars and all kinds of shit. Yeah. So I would get it every, every week that it came out.

And then I would look and see, Oh, this guy has an eight foot Burmese and this guy has a six foot bow. And I would call them up and drive out there and buy them. Yeah. Funny thing though. I went on this one guy had an ad for a, he said it was a 10 foot Burmese python. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll get that. But he didn't know what he wanted for it.

But he wanted me to come see it and then make an offer. So I get to this guy's house and this dude comes out and he looked like he walked right out of a Cheech and Chong movie, man. It's fucking, he was like a total stoner, a Hawaiian shirt open with his, his beer belly hanging out and shit. And he was like really crazy. Kind of actually looked like fucking, um, um, that movie that dude, uh,

Oh yeah. Big Lebowski, big Lebowski. Yes. That movie that dude, uh, oh yeah big Lebowski big Lebowski. Yes Anyway, he comes out to the draw where it's like fucking 10 o'clock at night He's like, oh, it's in the garage. Come here And he opens up the garage and the whole fucking garage two-car garage is an enclosure And I was like, wow, this guy's input snake. This is Pretty impressive and then I saw the snake and it was as big around as a fucking telephone. I was like, dude, that's not 10 feet. It's like, well, you know, I haven't measured it in a while. It was like 200. It was massive. I never seen a Burmese bigger than this. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, man, I, I would love to have this thing, but I have no way to keep this.

This is, this is unreal. And it was pretty funny though, the shit you would find on, on, on crazy. I wonder whatever happened to that. Yeah. But yeah, he was just a guy too. He was not like a reptile guy. He just, he was a dude with a Burese. And it was the only time I've ever seen a python bigger than that was at Crutchfield's giant retic, which was a terrifying animal. And I stood next to that thing and he opened the cage and I looked at the head on that and the way that thing was looking at me, I was like, no, man, it's cool as fuck, but no, I'm not going near that. I was just reading Rick Schein's book. I can't remember what the name of it was. It's the green one. And it has his kind of research on retics in there. And he was going to the skin trade folks

into the skin trade folks to get, you know, to get specimens for research so they could look at, you know, gut contents and all that kind of stuff. And he said, this one kid got this giant python, you know, somebody brought it in. It was a really good size snake and he was so proud to show it off. He let it out of the bag and like all of a sudden it just starts taking the everybody runs and it's chasing this little guy like through the skin place. And like it went and chased him into this back room and they closed the door and just kind of waited and hearing all the crashes and stuff. He finally got out.

Kind of funny. Yeah, there's just there's a way that we're taking the reticent big look at you that left particular snake the way it looked you you know, you're like, yeah, that thing knows it could fuck me up if it wanted to like, yeah, yeah. And people have been killed by big retics. I mean, it's not it's not a yeah, and eaten in their natural range. There's kind of a knocking forth with the native peoples and some getting eaten and some eating the snakes, you know, like it kind of went back and forth. Right? Yeah. That's Jurassic Park shit, man. Did you find the title of the book, Rob? Yeah, it's Snakes Without Borders. That's right. Oh, yeah, I've heard about that. Yeah, it's

pretty, it's pretty entertaining book and really interesting. You know, he's kind of making the science, you know, fun and, and it reads well. So it's more like that's a good one. Yeah. Coffee table book rather than point. Yeah. I had a similar thing where, you know, you think about like, oh, you know, I had access to some of these early projects, but Louie porous moved out to Utah and open zoo her back in the day. And I discovered that place and was, you know, over the moon going there. And you know, I was my, my parents, you know, got me a monitor lizard for Christmas, basically like a voucher that I could go into Zoo Herb and buy a monitor lizard. And he was trying to talk me out of this Indicus, you know, Indicus type monitor for these new lizards that were new in the country and not very many people had them. Malinas? No, bearded dragons.

Really? But they were like 150 each. So I thought that was a little sharp, steep in price for me back then. So I passed on it. I'm thinking, and if I could go back in time and buy four or five of those things, save up my allowance and buy a few of those

and breed them back then. I also, Louis Ports used to be in Miami. Yeah, he he owned, he co owned a place called the shed. That was a fucking legendary place. Joe Beraducci, like a lot of the old herpers, you know, from before from the generation beyond beyond mine, first before mine, they all kind of were centered around that. When I was eight years old, my parents finally decided that, you know, they would take me to get a real lizard instead of all the little brown lizards that I had kept catching in the backyard and all this shit. Yeah.

So they looked in the phone book and there was a Reptile, there was only Reptile store. So they took me there and dude, that place was fucking magic and I have never forgot it. It was just full, man. There was, I still remember tanks full of giant sun gazers that I could, I reached in and grabbed one and I was like, oh my God, this is, there were shingle backs, just tubs full of shingle backs.

But the thing that really hooked me was there was a giant fucking monitor and it had baby chicks in the cage. They were clearly trying to feed it. And my mom screamed and she was like, No, no. And she was out. She couldn't. She didn't want to see the little chicks get eaten by the. But I was like, that's what I want. I want that seven foot, whatever. I mean, it seemed huge to me at the time as eight years old, but it was, it was a big animal. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Louie's entryway had a black tree monitor next to a croc monitor. Like when you walked in and you know, these giant cages and I'm like, oh my gosh, I sat and watched that black tree monitor just cruise up and down just all over the place. I'm like, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen. And then you look over in this croc monitor is like looking at you sideways. You're like, oh, yeah, I think I could probably mess me up. But yeah, just a dream place. I love that place.

And then he's like, you know, I'm not supposed to let people come into the venomous side But you know, you will let you in you know, he takes me out there. Let me make sure there's no Cobras out You know, like all the all the cages are secure That's that's funny Because the same time period more or less I was about 15 at the time I met Ed Chapman from Florida Reptile in Borders. And I used to take the bus, two buses in the metro rail from my house in North Miami to get there. I'd go there. As soon as I got home from school on the bus, I ride out to

West West Miami where he was. And I got to know them really well. I mean, they couldn't get rid of me. I was, I must have been a super past dude. And I would bring the neighborhood kids with me, you know, so there'd be like four fucking kids. Eventually, they started, you know, figuring out the hey, they can make these little fuckers do some work for free. And we were happy to do it. But one morning I went in there, and we had a venomous room. And I, he asked me to go

get a snake hook I think something and I went in the venomous room and the lights were off I go in I'm looking for the hook I don't see it I turn the light on then in the mirror there was a mirror and in the mirror behind me all these little fucking cobras that are on top of the cages and there they were albino monocled. I think And they were they were all hooded and rocking back and forth. They were like and I was like, oh shit I'm looking down. I'm like am I standing on any? Yeah, that's funny though. That's that was one of my

Another one of those things that I never forgot every easier. Yeah And those things got out all the fucking time. Like it didn't super smart. Huh? You know, that's an intelligence snake. It's fast and it's smart. Nope. Don't like it. Not when it has venom.

Yeah. Love looking at him, but not keeping that. Right. And then I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a intelligent snake. It's fast and it's smart. Nope. Don't like it. Not, not, not when it has venom. Yeah. Love looking at them, but not keeping that. Right. But I do. I love vipers, man.

I always, if I didn't, if we didn't have the laws here, I'd have a fucking room full of them. You know, the tree vipers, the Gaboons, rhinos, all that shit. I like rattlesnakes. I love all that stuff. Yeah. But, uh, it's good, good stuff. Yeah. I was in contact with Louis not too long ago and he was saying, Oh, I'm looking at selling my book collection.

I'm like, Oh, but he, I said, now have you ever thought of writing, you know, your like memoirs and writing a book? And he's like, Oh, maybe I shouldn't sell my book. I'm like, Oh, good. Now, have you ever thought of writing memoirs and writing a book? He's like, oh, maybe I shouldn't sell my books. He's just quite, I'm like, oh, good. I would read the heck out of that. Hopefully, he puts out a cool book. That'd be sweet.

I know where there's a Hurt Library collection that's probably on par with some of the best around from a guy that has been in the industry forever and was a book he bought every fucking book that came out a lot of them were he got signed by people and he's very he's very elderly now and I and it's just sitting rotting in a warehouse he's offered it to me a couple times, but I could never, first of all, I couldn't come up with a price. It seems like it's one of those priceless things. And I don't wanna, you know, I mean, I want him to get what it's worth, but it's fucking huge.

I mean, dude, apparently it's, I haven't seen it in a long time, but I remember in his house 30 years ago when I used to go over there quite a bit, it was already an entire fucking room, Florida ceiling, and not a small room, either a big room. He never stopped collecting books. I mean, he's still, and apparently he says that he has an entire storage

unit that's completely full. Oh my goodness. So at some point I probably need to, maybe if the skink thing is good, right. No, I have the money. I can say, okay, well I'll give you a stupid amount. Yeah. And get it because I just don't buy a bunch of bookshelves and you know, yeah, that's the hard thing about a collection.

So big is, yeah. Where do you put it? Yeah. I, but I don't like having to come up with a price either. He doesn't know what it's worth. I feel bad. You know, I don't wanna rob the guy, but I also don't know what it's worth.

And you know, it takes a long time to go through and do the research on it and all that shit. Come up with that. Yeah, I just haven't had the fucking time to even consider it for the last year or two. That's a show that Jordan parrot, uh, suggested is what to do with your book collection when you, you know, you're getting old or something like you do with that.

Yeah. Yeah. That's probably best to donate it to someplace worthy, but right. You know? Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like that could be its own library. You know,

somebody funded something like that. You know, I know Alan was talking about doing like an Airbnb on his property down Southern California and having like a her library there so you could go and you know, read her books during the day and go out and herp at night or whatever. You know, I didn't think about that, but he maybe I'll talk to him about that yeah yeah I could be an outlet for it for sure yeah I mean he's it's I he wanted us to come out for that thing a couple months ago or whatever but with all the shit going on and you know I was just like yeah I'm not dude I'm not leaving Florida right now. I don't want to go anywhere. I want to sit Sit and watch the skinks. It's very unstable. I mean Stable right now, but things were super unstable at that time that thing was on Right stuff. Yeah, it's hard for us to leave anyway, but we didn't even make it to IHS and it was driving distance this year

So shoot. Yeah, I was supposed to go to Alan's thing and I planned on it and told him, yeah, I went to the wrong thing. I went to the reptile talks instead, which was a week earlier. And he's all trying to get a head count. He's like, so you're going to be there this weekend? Because I kept looking for Alan, like where's Alan? I thought this was his thing, you know? And it was pretty stupid, but it was good. It was good talks and everything, but yeah, just the wrong meeting. Yeah. I heard that reptile talks was good.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a lot of fun. So some good talks. I definitely we're trying to eventually get this place to the point where we can actually do stuff like that. We're not like we do tip two tinlies a year. And as it is, it's total fucking chaos leading up to that during it. And then then there's the anxiety of what the hell is going on at home. Yeah.

You know, it's just, I don't know. So the blue tongues that kind of lend themselves well to travel, which is kind of nice because they're kind of, you know, they don't really cause a lot of problems. You know, like fucking bearded dragons and shit like that. When you have that stuff, they they're fucking stupid and they'll do stupid things. And if you're not around to catch it, it can be problematic. And then, you know, in the weather here, a lot of these events are time during times for us where it's we actually have to plan out a week in advance and look,

oh, is there a fucking hurricanes floating around out there? They come in this way. Could they be here right around the time we're supposed to, because we've actually had to cancel out of two different 10 leagues because of the fucking hurricanes we got hit directly during 10 Lee weeks that we had, we were like, fuck, we can't go, we got to stay. Yeah. So, um, you know, but I would like to hit California and see the Super Show and do the Reptile Talks and all that stuff.

Right. Yeah. I'm glad people are still doing that kind of thing. It seemed fairly well attended. There was a pretty good crowd there. Yeah. It seems like it's coming back. I think the success of these various species f like carpet fast monitor fast.

And I think that's kind of kind of rebuilding the old school. Serious herpers got together, which is what used to happen at shows most of the time. And now you're so fucking busy at these. Like I tap the fuck out of those shows by the time the first night, Friday night, I'm like, I'm not going to anything. I'm going to grab a couple of close buddies, you know, good friends of ours. And we're going to go fucking someplace quiet and eat because, yeah.

And I never do the auctions anymore because I'm just like, no, I'm going to go, you know, we're going to go to bed or whatever. You know, I just, we just tap out. But yeah, yeah. So it's a lot of work. And, you know, I think that's kind of the downside. Sometimes when they try to do the symposia is hooked to a big reptile show. Yeah, because it's just, yeah, it's not, it's not that a lot of people don't have the energy for both or they have, they want to go hang out with their friends.

Like that's half the point of going to the reptile show to catch up with like-minded folks and friends. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I understand that. Yeah, it was good, even though it was the wrong event. Alan was kind of pissed. That's a good story, though. Yeah. That's a good one. It's like people would say, oh, you came to this. I'm like, yeah, I'm just down here supporting Alan. Like, who's Alan? What are you talking about? Like, oh, I kept looking for him.

Like, why isn't he at his own event? Oh, God. You know, I don't know. Sometimes I wonder. That's good shit, man. That's it. I haven't done that yet. I mean, a little bit. He said he sent me an invitation to the group and I never saw it. So I never got like all the details online. And so I just kind of looked it up and I said, oh, that must be it.

You know, it was a dumb assumption around the same time that he was saying it. I'm like, oh, I guess I should have asked him for the invite again. But what do you do? That's driving distance for you though, right? Yeah. I mean, it's a good 10, 11 hours, but it's still, yeah. I drove down, I think I slept in Vegas somewhere, like in a parking lot in the car or something. And then I went out herping, you know, and it's like 2 AM when I was done. So I'm like, I'm not going to spend money on a hotel room. I'll just sleep in the truck and then that is the most her per story. Right. That is the way we can say you aren't legit, man.

Yeah. And Vegas went herping. Exactly. So yeah, it was, it was fun. And then I, my cousins live down there. So I just stayed with my cousins during the weekend weekend and then yeah, they're always nice to put me up Yeah, it's nice when you have I have that in Chicago where we have friends that we stay with that's so we don't even bother with The hotels and shit. It's another reason why we don't stay for like the after things cuz

We were not in the hotel. We're 30 minutes away with our base of operation. Exactly. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, I don't think I've ever heard a lot of the stories you just told. I keep thinking I've heard so much, heard you on several podcasts and stuff and talk to you in person and man, you always just have cool new stories that I've never heard. I guess it's a life in the reptile life, life in the reptile, the whole thing. You're bound to have something we haven't heard. Yeah. Yeah. It's just great to have you on. Thanks again. So yeah, today, I guess we kind of alluded to it earlier, but we're going to talk about

you know, sticking with kind of niche projects or when do you sell out of a project and move on to something that's maybe more financially viable and you know, when to pivot that kind of idea. So I guess maybe we want to take you know, the commercial side versus the more self-interest or niche side. Does that sound good? And we'll kind of go with those two sides. Of course, there'll be a little bleed over, right?

Can't ever. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of. We're all both. There'll be a lot of bleed over, I think. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll go ahead and flip the coin

between me and Rob. So Rob, you want to call it? Tails. It is Tails. Wow. Would you like to fight with Ron? Despite the gap, it continues. I like it. This is good. No, I'd rather, I'm going to chuck you. I want to hear you go at it. I'm all in the lead on this one, so I don't know if I can hard pitch it one way or the other. All right. Well, you'll moderate so you'll I'm sure you'll throw in your two-star. This is going to be a brutal, slow, knockdown drag out. The three of us that are fucking. Yeah, that's never going to happen here. There's never going to be fighting when I'm on. You guys are awesome. And I think we're all on the same goddamn page on pretty much everything. So, right.

Yeah. I mean, all right, Ron, go ahead and call the next one. Heads. Heads. It is tails. Whoa. Got one out of two this week. Heads. Heads. It is tails. Whoa. Got one out of two this week.

Let's see. I'll go with the pivot. Sorry, the commercial side. I mean, well, that's probably a dumb thing to do, but since I've never really done that, but maybe I see the greener, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, maybe. So maybe if I could do that, maybe I'd do that. So I'll go with that side and we'll see what I can come up with. All right.

Give you the niche side if that works. All right, let's do it. Okay. Well, yeah, maybe I'll start out. I think obviously if you're doing this to put food on the table, doing it full time, I imagine that there's some component of what you're doing. You have to have something that's that's marketable you know you can't just be producing a lot of stuff that nobody wants and or that people aren't you know that's not flying off the shelves that you have to

stay with for season after season so I think you know that's a big push especially for you know professional breeders people are doing this full-time what's popular. That's not to say you can't kind of make your own market, but I think a lot of people can be kind of successful just by riding the coattails of people who've made things popular, or just species that are naturally popular,

like the ball pythons or the boa constrictors, or kind of the big five or whatever. you know, it seems like even when the market's down you can still be producing those and doing okay, you know, moving them to some extent. I do think there has to be some kind of responsible aspect of kind of keeping an eye on the market, making sure you're not over producing stuff when things are not selling well. But I do think there's also a lot of how what's the word like just people, everything's dead, nothing's selling, you know, you might as well just sell all your ball pythons, you

know, because they're never going to be popular again. And then you notice like, oh, a new morph comes out. And then all of a sudden, there's this resurgence and everybody wants the different ball pythons. So as long as you're keeping them kind of in the loop, I think too, it helps to be well connected and know kind of the players and know where the ball python morphs are coming from, maybe be one of those guys that's willing to to invest or to put in put in that, you know that big Page the big check to get the the new hot new thing or something, you know You know to prove that out

You know the truth more than the story, right? Right, right Exactly. Yeah and understand how it works because a lot of times, you know, you're not necessarily selling things for cash Nobody's handing you big checks. Maybe they're offering trades for for other things or that is absolutely true, right? So that's kind of how I'd start like that's kind of the the push to look at more what's popular and what's commercially viable I mean everything you said is shit that we do popular and what's commercially viable. I mean, everything you said is shit that we do. And like I said, I've been, I'm on both sides of that coin more or less.

Cause the thing is, is I think a lot of, I think most professional breeders are hobbyists first. Right. And then we're just trying to figure out how can we monetize this to be able to do what we already want to do, you know, and get paid. I mean, that that is the goal, right? Not to have to walk in some nine to five job that you fucking hate. And actually, I mean, I feel like I never worked. I've never worked since, you know, I was a little kid when I had brief, you know, times,

you know, like delivering sandwiches and shit, you know, before it was 18. I've been doing this full time since I was 19. I guess. Yeah, I've been doing it for a living since I was 16. That's when I started getting paid, you know, getting money for this. That's where I figured out, oh, shit, I can actually assume this can work. I don't have to go and, you know, work and then, you know, whatever, I can just do what I want to do, get paid what I'm already going to be doing. And I've done that actually with pretty much everything I get involved in. I was a while there, I was making money playing video games, I've, you know, done stuff like that.

If I'm into something, I always try to find a way that I can make it at least pay for itself. Generally, preferably make it so that I can make money so that I can buy more of the shit that I, that I want. Yeah. That's, that's my motivation. But yeah, I mean, um, obviously we follow market trends. I mean, obviously we follow market trends and everything that we do out here is we view it in the prism of it's a machine that has dials and you turn it up and you when it's good and you turn it down when it's soft and it constantly the market constantly waxes and wanes back and forth.

The worst thing you can fucking do is, especially if you're committed to something, a species or a certain, the worst thing you can fucking do, which I've done quite a few times, is to bail on it when the market is down. You think, oh, this is never coming back. That is absolutely not true.

It always fucking comes back. Now, maybe it won't be there's some other problems at play here. There are definitely groups of individuals in this industry that are bubble creators and they create artificial bubbles and then they only last a year or two and then the bubble pops and then everybody gets fucking burned so no and That's something actually that we've very cognizant of and have gone with the blue tongues Especially because we don't want to create a bubble. We're trying to fit we've been

Consulting with all kinds of people What is what what what is the real value of these things when they're rare and then as they go on? Because there should be. So the question is, I could tell you right now that there is one new snake, which I'm not going to name what it is, that was produced that they're asking $200,000 for. Wow. That? Man. It's fucking nuts. work that was produced that they're asking $200,000 for. Wow. That?

Man. It's fucking nuts. Yeah. And my thought when I saw this thing is I thought, okay, well, I could maybe see 20 grand for this because of what it is. Right. And it's only a couple of them in existence. And that would not be out of my realm of risk because I would look at it as, well, I'll

buy that for 20 grand by producing them in three years. I get five to 10,000 a piece. Money, especially, I mean, it only takes a couple to break even and then you're, you know, that's, that's kind of the way we look at it. Yeah. I would not go into something spending 20 grand expecting to sell mine for 20 grand. That's not how shit works. Right.

And the laws of supply and demand neutered that. So we take all that kind of stuff into account. And then, you know, um, bearded dragons are all over the place. Some years, dude, you, you, you can sell thousands at the highest wholesale price. And then some years they're only worth a couple dollars more than they cost to produce. So you gotta ride that out. The problem is when they're down that low,

they kind of nullify the good years. So it ends up, you end up with a living and it's a decent living. It's not, it's okay, but nobody's getting fucking rich. I really don't, I mean, there are a few people It's okay, but nobody's getting fucking rich. There are a few people in this industry that have gotten very wealthy. They had very specific projects at very specific times. Then most of them took that money and then went and put it in real estate and other things

that are more stable. Those are the guys that I think, but I think the majority of this stuff is not like that. And you just have to be willing to one, like you said earlier, to pivot. And the other thing is you don't want monoculture. Monoculture, I think, comes back to bite you in the ass. If you're trying to do this for a living as your sole source of income, if it's backed up by something else, then yeah, you can do monoculture all day long and there's something else backing it up. So we always try to run three to five things, species or projects that we do on some sort of a large-ish level, not like giant but

big enough. Yeah. And those, the considerations for those are, can we sell them? You know, are they commercially viable? Is there, is the demand, you know, sufficient to where you're not begging? You know, I don't want to have to fucking advertise. Yeah. So, so that's one of the things if I

look at something go, I'm gonna be swimming in a pool with 30,000 sharks here and I got to put up the biggest, you know, the biggest sign to say, hey, buy my shit. No, I'm not not doing that. So that's something that'll that's why I don't ever touch ball pythons. There's plenty of there's plenty of ball python projects out there that I think are are good and whatever I'll never touch that because that that pool is just I mean, that's an ocean full of sharks, right? And to be kind of the the big too, to get those offers, you know, like if you're one of 20, you know, that are kind of the big names and big players in a giant pond,

that's still, you know, people you got to compete with to get kind of the cutting edge stuff and, you know, that's a tricky thing. Now, that is absolutely true. And a lot of the reasons that we can sell stuff is because both that we work on is that both Heather and I both have pretty well known name in this industry. You know, there's decades behind it, both of us. And then, but we're virtually unknown. We were virtually unknown in like the Crested Gecko thing.

And we still are. Because those Crested Gecko thing. And we still are. Those Crested Gecko, that whole, that end of the industry, they don't even know we exist. And yet, one of our best financial years was doing those Crested Geckos. Now we weren't selling to them. We were selling to like people that buy and sell to them. So you can get into projects like that

in those like involved pythons or crested geckos. If you get into the right thing at the right time, you can one do cool shit with it and two, you know, you can, it can be very financially satisfying. But like I said, 40 years I've been doing this, I had no expectations of those these antichristic echoes when I bought the original ones. And then all of a sudden, they're making more money than I've ever made my fucking life. And I'm like, how is this a thing? It's a great list. I seriously, I remember mutter, I was walking around for weeks, like muttering, it's a great

lizard. How is this a thing? You know, and I'm working at the same time, I was doing the giant blue beauty and all. And I'm like, this is fucking'm really out of this. My instincts are terrible because I'm like, I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener.

I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener.

I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm going to, they should fly. Yeah. I mean, I love those. I like going outside looking at the Crested Gecko's. I just kind of walk by and go, oh, yeah, it's a fucking Crested Gecko. I just kind of walk by and go, oh yeah, it's a fucking crusty gecko. Yeah I think that does go back to our personal interests. You can look at it from a business perspective and say, oh that's a good way to make some money but at the same time you want to be happy about what you're keeping and be interested in it enough to keep it going and stuff. I guess to lose that, that's kind of a slippery slope too.

Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I set up those Crested Geckos because I do like them. I mean, I even like, I like all pythons. I like Crested Geckos. I like all the staples, right? I mean, but at the same time, I have a hard time seeing that value that was ascribed to those things. It was very strange to me. I'm like, okay, yes, I get it's one of the first compressive geckomorphs, but an asanthic or anery in most things is not that big of a deal. They're more ingredient morphs, you know, like very

few things are like, Oh, this is the pinnacle of this thing is this anathoristic ball python or whatever. And I mean, I've seen some amazing, they've done some amazing things with those. Sure. Yeah. It was not like, Oh, it's a fucking albino or pie or, yeah. And this Crested gecko was treated like that. It was like this, this big deal. And I, I never do, I'm telling you, I still sit there and go wonder, wow, this was just a perfect alignment. But that was a pivot for us actually, because I had no intentions of doing any of those geckos.

I tend to stay away from new Caledonia stuff here because it doesn't really like the heat. I don't like things that I just can't that, that I tend to stay away from New Caledonia stuff here because it doesn't really like the heat. I don't like things that I just can't, that I have to modify either the indoor too heavily by cooling it or I can't put outside. So if I have to do a lot of cooling with the, I mean, we can lose power here after a hurricane for a month and it's in the hottest part of the fucking year. So I don't want cool shit that's going to fucking die. So I avoid that. But in this instance, we were, her and I were coming off of first getting together and then we were working out of a warehouse for a while. And I was like, well,

what can I do in this warehouse that will generate some funds that'll be kind of fun and it's new. And then our friend of ours hatched those, uh, the first, uh, he's antichrist, the geckos outside of altitude, which was a Catherine Stranding had it. And, and, um, so, um, yeah, she has them and I was like, okay, well, there's an opportunity we can get in on this. She's a friend of ours. So focus up and, you know, and I figured, Hey, it'd be a nice $5001,000 gecko to sell a show for a while.

In the beginning, I never thought it was going to end up being what it became. Yeah. Um, but it also didn't last for a year or two. That fucking bubble lost it. Yeah. And it really busted. And then I was like, okay, I'm out. Yeah. By then we were like, okay, I'm

out. Yeah. By then we were in this new house with all this property. And I was like, okay, well, now I can do all the shit. You know, we're not in this crappy warehouse anymore. And we can. So now we don't need this. So we sold everything off to rock and roll geckos who has been running with it ever since. And then we started doing other things that we either wanted to do or we've seen an opportunity. Like the Knolls were an opportunity.

I had no intentions of doing a Knolls at all. And in 2013, somebody sends me a picture of an albino that caught on a fucking tree down in Hommsted. And I turned it down initially, because the guy wanted $1,000 for us. Fuck out of here. Nobody. But I thought it was cool. So I put it up on Facebook, and then went on about my business. And they didn't bring my phone with me that day because I was doing like, like really dirty, you know, moving like mounds of dirt shit outside into

an enclosure so I didn't want to fuck my phone up. So I come back in the house about an hour or two later and my phone is on fire. Like from all over the US. Hey, where is that buddy? Is it for sale? And it was like a lot of big names that were, I was like, oh shit, this thing actually has some legs and I just alerted the world that it exists. So I went and grabbed the thousand dollars out of the bank and did a four

hour drive in like two hours to get it. It was almost dead. I had to drive in a crack neighborhood. It's a whole fucking thing. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, and that did turn into something. And then I ended up, I said, okay, well I have this now I got to fucking build this. So I went to all the collectors down there that ended up, I said, Okay, why have this now I gotta fucking build this. So I went to all the collectors down there that I knew and I said, Hey,

catch any weird night and all. So let me know I'll pay $100 for something weird. And if it's really fucking weird, I'll give you $1,000. That's over the next two years, I got four albinos that were wild caught, I got some blue ones, some spotted one. There was just a bunch of stuff. And so it started a whole thing. And I did it for 10 years. And then I was like, I'm not enjoying this anymore.

I was managing a 2000 square foot fucking setup of screen cages that had all these heads and all this shit in it. And I'm like, this is just not fun. Yeah. So I wasn't digging it and I was ready to move on. So I sold it all to, uh, eclectic and now he, well, he got most of it, but some, some of it went to like other people, bulldog reptiles bought the albino project and stuff, but, um, and then he actually went on to prove out, I, dude, I had sold him albinos, I mean, not

albinos, but hats of things that had never been produced that were gravid. And I was just like, dude, come with a U-Haul, get it. I even gave him the eggs. He took the eggs home and some of those eggs hatched and they were the new thing. That was cool. I mean, now they're out and he'll carry them on. But yeah, I was just done over it. It wasn't fun.

And as soon as it's not fun, that's another reason to pivot. And I think too, that's a nice way to pivot where you've placed the project in capable hands as a group rather than piecemealing them out and trying to get as much as you can off individual lizards. And that tends to destroy projects a lot quicker than the other. So yeah, that's an, I guess if you're going to pivot and move away from a project, see if you can keep it going in somebody else's hands rather than just kind of splitting it up and ruining it up and, and ruining. Yeah. Yeah.

And I've done that a few times and that's why I never went for sale to the public. I never read. Nobody even knew until I was already done. Yeah. Like I just reached out to people that I knew I, that I thought would be interested. I'm like, Hey, look, I'm, I'm, I'm ready to tap out of this. Do you want to take it over and be the guy doing this? Cause you're going to inherit all. He already had his own, you know, pretty substantial collection.

Now he's getting all this shit that nobody else had. So yeah, he, he, uh, he showed up and did it. And I was like, I felt good about that because, you know, it went to a good place and it'll keep going and he'll keep it going. Yeah. So, and, and, and he'll keep it going. Yeah. So, and there's a lot of them now. I mean, I don't think those are ever going to disappear. Right. I mean, he got, I don't know how many animals he got.

It took me two days to pack the fucking, uh, to pack them all. Yeah. There must've been a hundred at least 125. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it was, it was good, but, but, but I was done. I was tired of the screen cages and tired of the, of managing all those heads. I just personally, I don't like the prosecution of morphs. Heather loves it. That's why the blue tie, that's why as a team,

her, her and I do better shit than I could have ever done on my own. Because she is, you know, the person that will dedicate herself to a species will do all of the things necessary to dedicate it to the more dedicated, you know, she's like fucking there where I'm, I'd rather look at my lace monitors and right now and, uh, and, and, and like, just normal shit. Like I liked setting up projects where I don't have to think, Oh, I got to fucking have this pair of heads over here and I got to track this. And I just like, man, no, I would rather just, you know. So I have some things once, once her blue tongues get to the point where I feel like it's,

doesn't require so much constant engineering, which is what the project that the current stage of it. Then, that I'm going to do something. And I'm floating around a couple. One of them is actually fucking morph. But it's something that I've always wanted. I really, really like blood pythons. I like the, I've always intended to do that. When the first pides came out, I was like, oh, man, I should buy those. And it just never happened. So that's one thing. Plus it's simple. I can buy the fucking racks. They do run the big boa rack, you know, I don't have to have them outside.

I, yeah. Cause I still have to do a lot of, of shit with, with like her systems have to be constantly maintained and managed. So it's not like, yeah, so don't forget it. Yeah. The things're really a two minute job at this point. Right. And we don't have employees. So, so there's that.

So I'm looking for something that's a little low impact that I actually like. Yeah. That I could see even if, so that's one of the things. The other thing I'd say to Randall, the Condorers did really well out here. Yeah. So I was like, well, maybe I'll, maybe I'll pick that up again, too. Again, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. So that's one of the things. The other thing I'd case around, the Honduras did really well out here.

So I was like, well, maybe I'll pick that up again too. Again, other than locales and shit like that, there's no morphs to track and they're all beautiful right away and they're variable. And there's, so when Rob was out here a couple of weeks ago, I guess it's been like a couple of months now. I was telling him about that. I'm like, yeah, I did this thing for the emeralds.

It didn't work out, but the condros did really well and I probably shouldn't have canceled that. But the emeralds burned my ass so bad. I was like, fuck this. I just need to regroup and start. Yeah. I guess that's the, maybe the downside of, you know, that that large scale, you know, when it doesn't work and it just drives you nuts and you know, it's almost

like painful to look at them in some cases. Yeah, you just got to, I need time to lick my wounds before I go back to that. I may eventually, but usually when I, I mean, I did, I mean, I'm the one who put the blue tegus and the albino blue tegus and all that in the trade. Right. I did really well with that. Yeah. But I mean, specifically in the tegus, I mean, I did really well with them for 20 years. And then in 2005, it just all went fucking south. But that was because I tried to make them essentially the Petco was going to give me a skew for them for another vendor. And so they, they wanted a guarantee of a certain amount.

I tried to produce that amount and it was not possible for me, but I'm stubborn. And, uh, I refuse, even though I knew it was going south on my note, I'd just stick that in another year or two is all, nah, it didn't work. It took me 10 years of wound licking before I would even look at them fucking things again. And then they banned them, so they did me a favor. So I just started to set them back up. They banned them and I was like, okay, well, this is a fucking sign to just, just to leave those things in the past. But yeah. Yeah. And I guess as a hobbyist, I've learned, you know, that, uh, monitors are a little

too much for me to be successful with as far as breeding. They just take way too much work for somebody who's working a 40 hour job, you know, the 40 hour a week job. So job. So it's just really hard to keep up with them. I enjoy keeping them and I wouldn't mind having a pet here and there, but yeah, breeding projects probably not the way I'm going to go at any time soon. You know, my, I think my only kind of, I guess, mark that I could say that I've maybe left on for a project in general have been those Western Stimson's pythons where I got some of the early, I know there were some in the country back in the day, but they weren't really recognized as something unique or new, but getting those wheat belts and establishing those and now seeing them on morph market

for 350 bucks, and a lot of different people producing them and selling them. That makes me feel really good. That's cool, right? Yeah, they're established. I don't need to worry about being the only guy with numbers of them or anything. I can maybe scale back a little and just kind of enjoy them rather than feeling that pressure to make sure they are established in the hobby. Yeah, no. It's almost an impediment to pivoting, right?

Yeah. Right. The other part of this that I was thinking, you know, sort of when is pivoting hard is sort of our own pride, right? When people say, oh, Justin, you're the guy for these things. And then you want to go in a different direction. Ron, you're the guy for all these and then you want to go in a different direction Ron You're the guy for all these many different things, you know, even the anoles right it takes you have to be set aside your pride To say hey I'm pivoting and doing something else in a way that a lot of people aren't willing to do right

They don't want to take that many messages about what you get rid of all those fight So why did you do whatever it is, you know what you're giving up your quitter, you know This sort of thing and there's some of that sort of stigma, I think, works against people genuinely appreciating, like appreciating or recognizing their own enjoyment. Right. I think you hit it on the head when you're saying, well, you didn't enjoy doing the work that was entailed with the annals anymore. So you pivoted, you did something else. Oh, I had the pride beaten out of me a long time ago.

Not not some. At some point. I just don't give a fuck about the opinions of people that would that would kind of put a negative spin on you on that. Because, look, you know, actually, what I should really say is probably the thing that I just don't marry myself to anything. It was one of the things that fucked me up with the tegus. And it took me a long time to realize that that's what I was married to an outcome that was not going to happen. And so that tank that that that really took me down. I mean, it was That almost killed me. And then after I was done with that, then I spent years thinking about how the fuck

I got there because I never wanted to go back to that. Some things that I discovered was one, a lot of that was pride. Other than Burt, I was the tegu guy for all the other ones. Yeah. Bert was the black and white tegu guy, but I had all that other shit locked down. And I had spent decades, you know, working on it. And I used to think to myself, I'm like, oh, you know, if anybody's going to do it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.

I'll figure it out. You know, and then, you know, the world says, fuck you, you little shit. You don't know shit. I'm going to beat your ass. It took me a long time to come to that. But it was very freeing, though, once I realized that, oh, I'm my own worst enemy. I allowed pride to get in the fucking way. And I should have immediately met and I knew I knew that everything was going

backwards, like my fucking I was losing my house, everything was going to shit. And I had all the ways to get out of that quick. All I had to do was go back to doing red eye tree frogs, I could have done them. And I was dabbling in it, but I should have just said, fuck the tegus, jettison the whole thing, and then just focused on red eyes and chameleons at the time. Because the place that I lived was not conducive for anything that could not take an assload of rain. I moved to one of the I moved from Miami, where the tegus did great because it's relatively

dry to this place called Loxahatchee, which is a fucking swamp. I should have known when I bought the house there because all the houses were on hills, like the man-made berms. I looked at that and I was too stupid to know that's because this bitch floods like a motherfucker. And so I so I set up all these hundreds of tegus on this property. And mind you, I'm on the court have a pond in my yard, and I'm on the corner of two canals. So there's a lot of water. And there were green iguanas all over the property, like they made sure they were just there, you know? So I knew this, but too stupid to tie it together.

And it turns out that breeding, you know, Savannah grassland, trying to breed Savannah grassland lizards like tegus in a fucking swamp doesn't work. Surprise. So yeah, and I and but I but I did definitely recognize it because that's why I was had some chameleons and I had the red eyes. Right. I just I was not gonna let go of them fucking tegus and my grip on that and took me all the way down. So now I feel like something's not

funny. That's why I jettisoned the emeralds after a year of trying, wasn't working. And I was running out of money to throw at it. And then all the skinks were really taking off. So I'm like, she really needs me to focus on the skink systems. I really can't waste time trying to work out something that I'm probably not gonna work out.

Is this for somebody else to do? So I was like, all right, I'm out. Yeah. And I took my loss, which was substantial, but it wasn't unrecoverable. Right. And now I'm just kind of looking at things like, okay, well, I want low impact.

I want a snake to hedge against the, the reason I want that is actually part of the pivot thing. I want to hedge against the blue tongues. Like we're banking on the blue tongues being our primary source, but you know, you don't want to go all in on anything. So I want something else that's low impact that doesn't interfere. That's not, you know, I'm doing fucking white street frogs now. Those are not low impact.

When you have 1500 fucking babies come out in 2000, there's nothing low impact about that. They're long hours of cleaning all the goddamn time. I'm not going to do these forever. They were a temporary stop gap to shore up some, because I have used frogs for 40 years to shore up some, uh, cause I, I have used frogs for 40 years to shore up our income. If we're, if we're going to be low on something, we're not going to make enough. I can go get some frogs quickly, make thousands of f*****g babies, wholesale them,

no problem. Um, and, and make enough to where, you know, but I would never, I'm never going to be a frog guy. I don't know how those guys do it. They're like super dedicated. I'm not. Right. I enjoy them. It's fun. You know, in limited, limited, limited amounts, like when there's only adults here, they're fucking awesome. Yeah, right. Yeah. You know, once you get all the babies out the door, they're they're fantastic. Like I said, before I came on here tonight, I went and saw that one of the bins has like

1500 fucking tadpoles in it. I was like, oh shit, so I got to get now I got to get a thing set up for them and all that. Right. But, but yeah, no, eventually I would like this to be, you know, some, some snake brought snakes are the reason snakes are so fucking popular is because as much work as lizards and yeah, no, especially involved Python or blood Python. That's not as yeah, with some of the other species, you know, yeah, I like blood pythons because they they're just a fucking sit and wait predator. They're not super active. So they work well in those box.

I mean, I'm going to use the if I do them. I'm gonna use, you know the large boa trays, but You know That's kind of there's some species that just sit. I mean in Costa Rica. There was a Hognose viper something that was on the trail and they had police tape around it. And I said, Oh, have you seen any snakes? They go, yeah, walk this trail until you see the police tape. Don't go inside the police tape. Cause that's where the, you know, it took me a second to kind of figure out where it was, but yeah, I'm just sitting there and it'd been sitting there for days. You know, ambush predators. You know, I love that. They're,

they're awesome. They're very well suited for captivity for the most part. I guess why Pac-Man frogs are so popular. It's a head with legs that just gobbles whatever walks by. So, uh, yeah. And I like stuff like that. So I'm just kind of, right now I'm just that, that's the smart, that's the smart move. You know, when, when you're doing this commercially, you have to kind of hedge that, that bet and, you know, when you're doing this commercially, you have to kind of hedge that bet and have something that you know is going to have a payoff that's predictable and that's not going to fluctuate with interest or the market or whatever. It's like pet stores are always going to have dumpy frogs or white tree frogs. So there's always going to be an outlet for those. And like you said, you can just wholesale a bunch of them all at once and they're out of your hair and on

the market. So that's kind of the having that perspective and that foresight to know what's going to hedge your bets is I think that comes with experience and wisdom. A lot of times we just think, oh, I get this big project and my life is made and I'm good to go. I just buy that $20,000 ball python and I'm set. I just have to breed it and I'm good to go. They don't think about all the other stuff that goes into that. Once you do produce them, what do you do?

It's a challenge, I think. I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say five years before my whole tegu farm imploded, I had the first albino tegus born and I think that's exactly what I thought. I'm like, oh, I'm fucking set now. I don't have to worry about anything.

And I got rid of everything else except for the fucking tegus. That's what that's when I sold off all the boa projects, the blood boas and all that shit. Yeah. Um, my entire, I had a two car garage that was floor to ceiling and boa constrictors and, you know, I had a lot of them. Yeah. I also was doing a lot of colubrids. I was doing a lot of dwarf monitors.

Um, I had like five species of dwarf Australian monitors. All that stuff was producing and I was doing a lot of dwarf monitors. I had like five species of dwarf Australian monitors. All that stuff was producing and I was doing well with it. And I find an albino tegu in there and I'm like, all right, it's all gone. I'm just going to produce albino tegus and I'm going to fucking make an enormous amount of money and I'm going to, you know, and it was the dumbest fucking shit I've ever done. I honestly, I enjoy seeing them now everywhere. But I also look at them and go, God damn, those things almost fucking killed me. But it was lottery syndrome.

All these motherfuckers that win the lottery end up in worse shape, a lot of them anyway, before they won the lottery. Right, yeah. So I will leave it for, yeah, my dad buys lottery tickets of them anyway before the them before they won the lottery. Right. Yeah. So they get a lot of the paper. Yeah. My dad buys lottery tickets all the time. He's like, let me get you one kid. I'm like, no, fuck. No, I don't. Yeah, I don't want that. I'd rather just work for what I get. I don't really care.

I don't give a shit about being rich or you know, I mean, what I'm doing, I wouldn't change anything anyway. Do you want to start handing out Rolexes? Yeah. I mean, I'm still going to fucking be sitting here in this fucking room playing wow, and fucking putzing around with animals outside and driving at the cheapest piece of shit car that I can fucking buy because that's just how

I roll. If I had that money, I would just help out people that I care about. Isn't that a nice, it's kind of a nice position to be in, where you're content with life and working with animals and playing World of Warcraft. Like, they're simple things and that's all you need. And more stuff just complicates it. Right. You know, yeah. I can go chase a snake in the wild or something. I'm happy. Yeah. Yeah. I used to care about

all that shit, but that was a, I realized, ah, it's fucking for nothing. Like I chased it for 20 years. And then once I, and then I, you know, I've had tastes of very small tastes of it on the way. And each time I'm like, okay, well, okay, this just means I can buy more. I mean, like I said, we, we had a really good year with the Crescent Geckos and we used it to upgrade everything here. We didn't upgrade our lives. We didn't buy new cars. We didn't, you know, buy shit. It all went to the business. And so, I mean, that's cool. And I mean, it's safe too. Yeah.

So neither both of her and I are pretty simple in that regard and we don't really give a shit about it'd be nice to travel, you know, do shit like that. But yeah, so that that's definitely a strength. I feel like if if you're doing this and you're, I guess it kind of goes back to being married to outcomes. And if you're married to an outcome, then you're also much less likely to pivot when you need to. Right. So right. Or your prides wrapped up in it. Dangerous ground, I think. Yes. Yes, it is. Another function too is the reliability to produce something. The people that are investing

in Bolans, Pythons, or if that's the make-up a project for run, the Leukistic Cropanide, you know, and that's your big investment. It's like, well, what's the reliability of producing that? And your pride is then tied up, right? There's only one or whatever it is and all that stuff. I mean, those are the impediments to making good decisions. Right. Yeah, for sure.

I remember hearing something really interesting. There was a vet that worked at San Diego Zoo that came and gave a talk at our university. He was talking about rhinos and breeding rhinos. And for the longest time, they couldn't figure out why they couldn't get their rhinos to breed, right? And they were, they, somebody made the discovery that the grasses they were feeding them contained phytoestrogens, which are plant-based estrogen mimics. So it would make the rhinos not cycle properly, make them basically think they were pregnant.

And so they would not reproduce. And so once they got that grass out of the diet and started feeding them a different vegetable-based diet or whatever that didn't have those phytoestrogens, then they would breed, you know. And sometimes we just don't know what that, you know, key to unlocking the success at a reliable rate is. And, you know, I guess there are some people, I was listening to a podcast with, what's his name, Flood. Yeah yeah, on the bollens.

Yeah, on breeding bollens. And he's produced them like six clutches of bollens now. And, you know, it seems like he's kind of figured stuff out. Yeah, yeah, Kush's Corner, whatever. Yeah, Kush's Critter Corner, the KKK podcast. No, that's not it. But I always laugh about that anyway. Kush's Corner. Yeah, really cool interview.

But yeah, hearing kind of like, yeah, that's even six clutches over what, 10 years or so that, you know, that's, I wouldn't say that's overwhelming success. I mean, that's about the best. Yeah, exactly. And when you can get 10 grand a baby for, or more for captive bred, more who knows. That means whatever he's doing, he's closer to it than anybody's ever gotten before. Exactly. And so I think, and again, he may have that pressure of like,

well, I figured it out or I know what, I'm being successful with this so I can't ditch this or I can't do other things. And I'm sure he's got other projects thrown at him. And I know he has a few other species that he's working with. But, you know, that kind of pressure, I guess, when you kind of crack the code to some extent, you see that would be a, that would be a hard one to pivot from, right? Like, like I'm sitting here thinking about that.

I'm like, I don't know if I could do it. Once I had that, if I had any kind of success with them. I mean, the take you- And that's tough, right? I even think of Chuck, right? In terms of the Hall of My Heirs being the first guy, the first private person to produce them and whatever. And it was like, I obviously super impressed if I saw the stuff that is out, you know, and and all that but I could I got the Impression that that also carried a weight that it was like a golden handcuff that he's wearing You know, you're the dude you did this thing but it's also now there's this expectation that he's got to keep those things forever and see it forward and all those things and

I Could feel that you know, he didn't say that, but I could feel it. Right, right. Yeah, that's the, I guess the other side to it. Once you get that, I guess you have to at least have that sense that, okay, I'm not, you know, take the pressure off yourself.

I'm not the only one that maybe could do this. Maybe I could help other people figure it out. And I think that's where, you know, we talk about, people talk about trade secrets or like, you know, I'm going to crack the code and then I'm not going to tell anybody how to do it. Well, if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you know, we're back to square one kind of thing, you know, and there's enough demand, I would think, especially for something like a Bowen's Python that, you know, 20 people could be producing six clutches

a year and you'd still have plenty of market for it. And the market not at 20 grand is definitely higher. Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah, even if there are five grand apiece, you'd still have people, you know, yeah. Right. You'd have a lot of people that would... I have never kept a trade secret. I will not do that.

I put it all out there in the... And a lot of sometimes, some of the things that I put out, I'm not do that. I put it all out there in the, you know, in law sometimes, you know, some of the things that I put it, I like, hey, I'm doing this right now. This is what I think. Sometimes it's wrong. And sometimes that comes back to bite you in the ass because then people are like, well, you said this. Like, okay, but that was with the information

that I had at that time. And I thought that I was, you know, not everything that comes out of everyone's mouth is a fucking nugget of wisdom. It's a whole lot of shit that comes out of everyone's mouth Along with a few nuggets. You just gotta be fine. That's why we're posting on social media and not carving it in stone It's not you know, yeah It's an idea. Yeah, unless you're saying

Do this and you will be fool. You know, it's foolproof or something. Even then you're probably better not really following that. Yeah, no, no, no. And what works perfectly for one person, you can copy it perfectly and it may not work for you because there are still small differences. Maybe that you're not even cognizant. Maybe that other person that gave you the formula does things that they're not even

cognizant that they do. Right. Right. Right. Or you live in the dry spot and they're moving to Loxahatchee. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck that place, dude. Sorry. That was definitely, that was definitely the hard, that was six years that I try to forget. Yeah. But yeah, no, that's definitely the whole thing with trade secrets. It's just people are insecure about their play, you know, or whatever. That's just businessman crap and I could give two fucks about all that. So I feel like that especially at least in my case, and I know Heather feels this way too,

is that I have a responsibility to, I mean, I am an amalgam of all the information that I've ever scooped up and absorbed that I got from other people that just fucking put it out there and gave it away for free so that comes with a responsibility that I too have to do the same thing when I can and if it's You know if it's useful to someone then good. That's That's you know, whatever

So I just I just never and I've actually gotten shit from people on certain things that I've put out there. They're like, Oh, you shouldn't be telling people, you know, everybody that, that you tell this to is going to be a competitor. I'm like, okay, well, I don't give a fuck. I'm like, you can't jump in the pit and slug it out, man. Then maybe you don't belong, you know, right. Right.

That's kind of the way I feel about it. I'm like, that's, I just, you know, I'm quite capable. Yeah. And if you're as good as you think you are, then you're quite capable too. Yeah. And, you know, if you're looking at everybody as competitors, you're not gonna be a very happy,

you're not gonna enjoy this stuff. If you're looking at them as collaborators and somebody to bounce ideas off and improve your own thing, you know, like through their insight and do the same for them, the world's just a better place. You're happier. You're, you know, you're not trying to hide everything from everybody. You know, you're not giving them misinformation to direct them and fail their projects.

Like you're not that jerk that everybody avoids, you know Yeah, that's yeah, not that actually that's actually a good point. I actually Yeah, cuz I'm a naturally competitive person, you know as far as trying to trying to push forward You know and to reach whatever the upper level is of limit that I can reach. And yeah, that was a struggle for me too for a while when I was younger. I would see everybody as a competitor and I realized, man, this is fucking stupid.

Everybody's just doing their, trying to do their own thing. You can't fucking worry about what they're gonna do or how they're gonna do it or how it's gonna affect you. You just gotta do your shit shit and as long as I have found that I really believe this I think as long as you're doing the best fucking thing you can possibly do that you're gonna be okay no matter what. Right. Right. Like nobody can really, the only person that can really fuck you up

competitor-wise is yourself. Yeah. At least that's been my case. And it seems like, I don't know, people who are competitive like that can kind of persist As long as they're successful, but as soon as they're not successful, they're right like a rock Nobody cares about them. Nobody wants to be around them. Yeah, the only reason they're there have any you know Relevance is because they're producing cool stuff and nice. They stopped that. They lose that relevance. So if you can be a good person too, and collaborative, then you're all the, all the better off in the long run. I think. Yeah. I mean, it will speak fondly of you even if you're not breeding reptiles, you know,

like he was a good guy regardless. Right. And he produced cool stuff. You know, right. Yeah. I mean, I think I just, I, I think I just I'm not gonna treat anybody the way I wouldn't want to be treated That's not at least I try to to do that So yeah, it's just fucking bullshit Yeah, well and I think too is the longer you've you've been around to you see the cyclical nature of this stuff I remember when I was first getting into jungle carpets, like everybody's like, Oh, that's a dead project. Nobody cares about jungle carpets anymore. But I love them. I want it. That was like my first big, you

know, Australian Python project. I was so excited to get those and got to go hand pick them at Python Pete's house, you know, and check them out, you know. I still talk to him every once in a while. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, you know, I got those home and by the time I got them raised up and produced babies, the cycle had come back. They were on a, you know, a peak again,

and they weren't, you know, they were going for good money. So I was able to sell the babies pretty easily and for reason, you know, more than I paid for my babies So it was like I caught it just at the perfect time now that hasn't happened with other projects You know, I bought it the wrong time when they're you know At their peak and then I go to sell them and they're in their trough or whatever But as long as you keep with it, you're gonna see those peaks and troughs and you're going to know, okay, well, I'll hold back and I'm not going to produce them this year because they didn't sell out last year.

So you just make common sense decisions. And I think a lot of people are just so excited about it. They just prepare everything and produce and then they kind of overrun themselves and wear themselves out or get in that position. That can be. Yeah. I mean, that's an easy mistake to make. Like I've done that myself. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you're good at doing that. If you're good at producing animals and you could run into that problem pretty easily, I think that can be a challenge for sure. Yeah. That's why the frog, that's why the frog thing I'm very, very

cautious about what I mean, I could just, I mean, I, like I said, they have the ability, if I let 10 pairs of those go at one time, that's 15 to 20,000. And I'm actually, I'm told I've never seen a clutch this big, but I but I I've been told by a few people that those things, that some of those can play up to 5,000 eggs. So it's just like, but yeah. And I mean, so, so they're actually kind of a good thing too. Um, yeah. Even if I don't breed them, I'm going to make, because we have the morphs, like we have all the newest more, most of the newest morphs of

those. I'll just maintain them and not breed them at all. And they I can maintain them for 10 years and they'll be, they'll be, they'll live good, they'll be fine. And then if the market, there's a market demand, I can just bring them out, breed them, you know, right. The frogs are good for that. And actually a lot of herps are good for that. I mean, if they're cheap enough to maintain as adults, then you can just maintain the adults and wait,

just wait for the market. Because the market's constantly going up, going down, going up, going down. Hell, that can just be a fucking ad with a gecko on it. And all of a sudden, gecko, I mean, I've seen this happen plenty of times. Like a movie will come out. There was a movie, Rango, that came out with a chameleon. Holy shit, dude. Everybody wanted chameleons. Yeah. And it's funny because tonight I had a phone call from a buddy of mine,

John Carlson, who's working on this new BOA project and him and I have been friends since we were kids, right? So like 40 years. Yeah. But when Jurassic Park first came out, he, we were talking tonight and he asked me something. I'm like, Oh yeah, we went and saw the Jurassic Park movie last night. It sucked, but whatever. It was kind of fun. But he's like, Hey, remember when the first one came out and you were like, dude, the reptile business is going to blow up. We're going to sell lots of lizards because of this movie. And he's like, I thought you were full of shit. And then all of a sudden, like the movie came out and then iguanas were selling like crazy. I'm like, yeah, because the pop culture is I mean, I guess you can look at that. It's it's

kind of bad in some ways, because it's promoted. There's a lot of impulse buying and stuff like that. Yeah. But yeah, but the positive side is it does. It did absolutely bring a lot of people into the hobby at that. Right. A lot of them that became, you know, real herpers. You hear a lot of people into the hobby at that point. A lot of them that became real herpers. You hear a lot of these kids that grew up at that time, they're like, yeah, I saw Jurassic Park. Most kids, they got into it because of dinosaurs. Yeah, I did.

I still geek out, regardless of how good or bad the movie is. I know. Just seeing that stuff on the big screen. I went to the Steve Irwin movie just to see a parenti run across a movie screen, you know, it's like it's the other Jurassic Park. They could act, they could have the worst actors, but as long as they have those cool CGI dinosaurs, I'm watching it. Well, there is a dinosaur movie coming out pretty soon that I'm actually have hope for that might be good.

It's called Primitive War. It's based on a comic that I had crowd, I was part of a crowdfunding thing for this. So I have the original, they sent me all the, before they released the comic, they sent me all this stuff and it's pretty cool. I wouldn't say it's like, you know, amazing, but it's, but it's good and it could could be a more, I mean, it's kind of a brutal comic. So if they did the movie, right, this could be more of a, like what you would expect, a giant predatory reptiles that are hunting humans.

That comes out apparently this summer. So it'll probably suck like everything else, but it might be good. I'm kind of stoked on that one. They showed a preview for it at the new Jurassic Park. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, but yeah. And Ninja Turtles, when that movie came out, you know? It's funny because I used to collect the original Ninja Turtle comics. They were adult comics. Those were not like kid shit. And then these fuckers turned into a kiddie movie and it blew the fucking reptile industry up. And it also blew up the Ninja Turtles. I mean, the original one was like swearing and whoring and all this stuff. Like they were was like swearing and whoring and all this stuff. Like they were, they were original Ninja Turtles comics were awesome. But yeah, that so pop culture does affect this and it creates, you know, demand. And so if you're doing this, I do watch that stuff. If I see there's a new movie coming out,

there's something that I think, you know, I might jump into that temporarily and use it to fund the stuff that we really wanted to, you know what I mean? I mean, it's kind of, I just don't look at it anymore. Like, because again, I'm in a position and I have a unique perspective, I think more like you guys where we kind of like it all. So it doesn't really fucking matter what it is because it's all cool. Right. So it's like, so that that kind of like it all. So it doesn't really fucking matter what it is because it's all cool. Yeah. Right. So it's like, so that that kind of I'm not a ball python guy. I'm not a monitor guy. I'm not a tag you guy. I'm a pervert. Right. I was thinking about that with Rico Walder. He was always thought of as like a condo guy. But I went to I got to go on a of is like a condo guy, but I went to, I got to go on a couple trips to Australia with him and he, we went to this turtle place where we swam with fly river turtles. This guy had this big outdoor enclosure with like a, you know, almost like a big greenhouse over top

of it. And he had like beaches for the, the fly river turtles to nest on and stuff. And you could go in there and snorkel with them, like in this big pool. It was so cool. Rico spent his whole time in the other side of the, like the filter side of the pond where all the plants were and these little random turtles. He was a turtle guy.

Like his big thing in the early, his early hobby, or I guess his career in the zoo industry was turtles. And so like he knew a buttload of turtle stuff, you know, and you're just like, I thought you were the condor guy. He's the everything guy. You know, he likes it. Yeah, just the condors were what was popular, you know, and what he kept his attention, I guess, towards the end there. But like, yeah yeah he was a big turtle guy. I believe that most of the most serious herpers I know they're fucking turtle guys. The turtle guys are like legit man. Oh yeah yeah they're the hardcore.

They have their own yeah. Yeah now that's a that's a that's got to be a tricky position like a large tortoise or something you know that takes 20 years to mature or whatever, you know, and lives for 100 years. You know, how do you do that project? My next door neighbor is one of the, Russ Gurley told me that it's one of the best turtle collections in the world. Oh, really?

Yeah. His name is Dennis Erie. He lives next. He lives literally next door to me. And we met. I lived here for a year. And he had reptile people going over there that knew I lived here. And telling him, you know, your neighbor is this fucking lizard guy. And, but they weren't telling me about him. Because he keeps secrets. So they're going over there telling everybody because they know I don't give a fuck. And they're going over there telling people that I don't know that all, you know, whatever. So fucking the other neighbor, the fucking asshole and called animal, either looked at our houses through Google Earth, flew a drone over and saw that we have all these enclosures and that he has all these ponds and called Animal Control.

Animal Control comes out and I let him in and they gave us a very positive thing and they laughed and everything was cool. They went to Dennis. Dennis is not as amenable as I am. Basically told to get fucked. And then he went and pulled public records to find out who fucking ratted him out. And he saw that we were also one of the ones that they sent out. So he comes over, he pulls my driver, he's like, I'm going to introduce myself.

My name is Dennis Herg. He goes, we know a lot of the same people. And I was like, okay, who the fuck is this guy? So I live next door and I can't see because, well, Rob's been here. I let the whole property around us is completely fucking the jungle. So you cannot see us in here. We can't see anybody else. And he has the same thing.

Cause you can't even see that there's this big fucking turtle farm there. Anyway, he's like the cocksucker on the other side is the one who called animal control, fuck this guy. And so we became friends after that. And dude, I went over there one day and I was like, wow, this is amazing. And that dude, he has an entire fucking house back there just for his babies. Like, I'm like, wow. And it's just him. Legit fucking badass, big fucking outdoor turtle ponds with islands in the middle of some of them and walkways. It's like, yeah, I felt about three inches after I saw that. Okay, well, this guy's like serious. Yeah, it's amazing. And I just don't know a lot about turtles.

I mean, I have dipped my toes in a few things like get a lot of horses at once. And I was bringing albino red-eared sliders for a few years. But I never really got too much into that. I've kept snakebugs and stuff like that. But when I go over there, I don't know what I'm looking at, but I know that I've never seen a lot of that shit. This is cool. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love tortoises. I think I could do that someday and just, Oh yeah. Yeah, me too. Heather and I talk about that. I'm like, we get too old and crotchety

to fucking keep doing this shit. We'll just have a tortoise ranch somewhere. All those fucking old herbers, man, that are, that are career guys, they all have big fucking paddocks for tortoises. There's a reason for that. Farming fucking shelled cows. And you don't really have to do, there's no cleaning really. And you don't really have to do it. There's no cleaning really. Right. Yeah. Low maintenance.

Yeah. They just collect babies. They walk around the perimeters when the baby season, the hatch season, they collect the babies off the perimeters. Wow. Sounds pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. I wondered about that with the frogs. Like if you had a good sized greenhouse greenhouse and you know had like yeah an insect Population growing in there or attracted inside insects in could you just do it kind of like naturally where they're just eating wild Insects and I actually have experimented with that using Fast Home Depot tiki torches to attract bugs And they do and then they the frogs do collect around them at night and eat whatever problem is that I have to use the wire that I have to use to keep the

frogs in doesn't really let the big bugs in. There's a bunch of things like that. But I am considering building a giant walk in enclosure just for the babies where they're all in this planted walk in and and then you just dump boxes of crickets in there to feed them or get feeding stations. Yeah. Because that's a hell of a lot better than cleaning 40 fucking tanks. Yeah. Inside of them all the time. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah it's just I haven't I had planned to do that over the winter and then the the blue tongue thing just really started

popping off and I was like oh shit shit, I should have done that. I should have done something. I honestly didn't think. I mean, I knew we were going to produce a good amount this year, but I didn't think she was, I didn't think we were going to be as successful because the weather was so fucked up. I had to do things to the outdoor enclosures I have never done before. I didn't even know how to react to a lot of this. So you know, but you know, the climate's not a thing and dude in Antarctica is shooting laser beams and causing get the fuck out of here. Right.

But yeah, I mean, it's been progressively worse. As someone who lives in a place that gets routinely run over the last few years by major fucking hurricanes that we never saw. Now almost all of them are like, oh shit, this is regular. Yeah. Yeah, I'm getting fucking tired of that. Matter of fact, Utah is looking better and better. I've got some friends in Utah.

They run Gecko Daddy and they set up kind of a... Yeah, I've seen them at shows. Right, right. And they bred those Waxy Monkey Tree Frogs. I think they were one of the first people in the world to breed them. Oh, the giant one. The black and all the giant the bike color yeah yeah yeah I saw they posted a picture of like hundreds of them yes I yeah I reposted that I thought that was fucking amazing yeah yeah they're really great guys and and I mean I think that was their their thing is they just made a big greenhouse and had it you know well

planted and and made it more naturalistic and that's kind of what did the trick for them instead of trying to keep them in enclosures. And that's amazing because that's a bad ass fucking dog. It is. They are so cool. Really. I used to breed the Savagii, which is the smaller Paraglion form of those. They were tricky but they were still relatively easy. But I could never...

I mean the black color were never around like even 15 years ago you never see baby black color. And now it's like do you still see those? I don't see them anywhere. No, no they pretty much. I mean they were... Sandfire was... that's where I got my hands on once. I went out there with Alan in like the nineties sometime and Bob had a cageous full of them and I was like, oh my God, this frog is amazing. It sits on a branch and it doesn't really jump. It's a bass. Yeah. Yeah. And it bass. The whites bass too though. They're hard basking frog, surprisingly. That was the weird thing. And when I was in Western Australia and it was like 115

and it was like just hot. And then as soon as like the, it was getting to be dusk, I thought, okay, time to herp. I'm driving along, I'll see a snake or a lizard or something out. I saw frogs on the road. Like these white tree frogs are like the the splendida were out on the road. I'm like, what is happening?

Our right or frogs out on the road when the snakes are too, you know, wimpy to take the heat. It's crazy. That's why I like that frog man. That frog can take some serious heat. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like a hundred degrees. Oh, dear, bitch. Yeah, we saw some the Ghillie and I, the the central

centralian tree frogs this last all in the canyons in Central Australia. Yeah, I mean, it's same thing. You know, the rocks are like too hot to sit on. You know, they're just even after the sun's off of me, you know, and you're just like, how are these? How are these frogs sitting on the rocks like that? It's crazy. Well, then you went into the wasp nest, right? When you were that was in Western Australia with the Splendida. I found this gorgeous Splendida, had all the cool spots all over it and everything. Big old, you know, head, the paratoid glands or whatever,

just like one of those really impressive ones. And I'm all excited getting trying to get pictures. And I get mobbed by these wasps and I'm like, come on. Yeah, I didn't get a very good picture. And I got stunned a couple of times in it. My hand was the size of a balloon. I'm like, man, why is my watch band so tight? It was bad, but it took a few days before the swelling went down. It was pretty crazy. Yeah. I heard some about that trip from Jason Hood. He was telling me about you guys getting a real dragon in a fucking elementary

school. Yeah. I was like, okay, that sounds like an awesome trip. Shoot, man. Yeah. It was, that sounds like an awesome trip. Shoot one, man. Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. Good trip for sure. But yeah, I, yeah, he sounded like you guys, you guys had a lot. He's, he, he came back. He's like, dude, you catch tree monitors like you catch nightingales in Miami.

They're just in the fucking on the sidewalk on the trees and shit. I was like, I totally did not imagine that. I thought I thought to find Brannis, you would have to go, you know, right out away from things, but apparently they're just like the fucking an all czar. He's like, dude, they're just on the trees right there. All next to the sidewalk. Yeah. The Skelaris are like thick in that park that he's talking about.

It's so crazy. Yeah, that's so far in the think, but it shouldn't be. Yeah, right. Yeah. The Mitchell, I were a lot more skittish, like they were a lot harder to see and find. They were up high, I assume. They were on the rocks, actually, down low. And one was in the prototype dead. Yeah. Decade three.

That was the first one, the disappearing one. Yeah, yeah, you know, I got three seconds of looking at it. I was like, that wasn't a sclerosis was absolutely the thing. Everyone's like, Yeah, right, dude. Okay. Well, I was ready that time. I told you, I believed you. Let's just set the record straight.

I didn't believe the other one we saw. Yeah, me neither. That was purported Mitchell. I'm like, that's just a big sclerus. Like the dark one. Yeah. They have kind of opposite patterns. Did you guys see any of the various when you were out there or you were not in?

Not in their area there, but I've seen a couple. I did see a Bell's phase on one of the trips back in 2016. Yeah, that was pretty cool I thought I thought I could grab it, you know, I was all I had my kids I'm like watch this dad's gonna catch a lizard, you know And I I go to grab it and completely miss it and then it goes way up and then I'm like, well It's up in the tree. It'll be there when we get back from our little hike and it was gone So I didn't really get I got some you know Crappy pictures with my cell phone, but that was about gone. So I didn't really get, I got some, you know, crappy pictures with my cell phone,

but that was about it. So I'm kind of kicking myself. I didn't just go back to the car and get the real camera for that one. Yeah, that is, that is still my favorite of everything I've ever kept by far. That's my favorite. That's why I have it again. Right. That same trip, but we were in Right. That same trip, but we were in a Cairns area up in kind of the tropical and we went to Mossman Gorge and we were coming back and you know, almost to the end of the trail, right? Almost to the parking lot and, and I'm with, you know, the kids again and all of a sudden there's this lace monitor. It's just like almost just black. It's beautiful. Like had a few yellow bands on the nose or something, some blue on the neck. And I'm like, I'll be back.

And I just followed this thing through the undergrowth. I think I was gone for probably an hour. I come back, I'm like, where did you go? We've been sitting on this trail for an hour. What are you doing? I'm like, sorry, I had to go follow this lizard. That was such a cool experience. Yeah, perfect. As far as my my what I want out of something there. They're

perfect. They're big, but they're not fucking massive. You know, they're not water monitor massive, manageable. They're they're, you know, they're not. Oh, I mean, all veranus are expensive to feed, but they're not like super costly. And they're beautiful. And the normals are as awesome as the fucking bells. I mean, they're both like I have two, I have a pair of each here. And I, I, some days I look at them and I'm like, man, I don't know which one, if I even like any, either one better. I think they're both like, yeah, you know, and a lot of people have come over that have seen,

especially when I had the big group of them before the adults, they were, people would be like, oh my God, that's a Bells. And then they would see, I had a big blueish one, normal one, and they were like, what the is that? And I'm like, that's another lace monitor. And they were like, oh my God, that's better than that. And I'm like, yeah, it's kind of hard. Right, right, yeah. Personality of them and everything, Oh my God, that's better than that. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of hard. Right.

But yeah, personality of them and everything. They're just that that was always my fucking bucket list thing that I thought I would never get because they were not available until like 2010. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought we will never see this. I just used to drool over them in books. Yeah.

And then all of a sudden they, you know, some legal ones came in. I mean, they knew they were that George Van Horn and shit was working with Germany, but they never, I didn't think they were going to make it over here ever and then they happened. And then Brian Waterloo got him and then really took them to the next level. I mean, he got him out in and he's probably more than anyone else. The reason that we have them. Yeah. Yeah. He's managed to keep on. Yeah. Made that project work out. And he was dedicated to that. But, you know, but he's also doesn't do this shit

for a living. He's got a good job. So that gives him the ability to take, at the time anyway, to take a substantial risk. It was a big financial risk for him and it was also, obviously, to get him to breed and figure him out. And he did everything that was necessary. So yeah. Yeah. Kudos to him. Yeah. He's definitely, definitely one of the best things I've seen. Yeah, those big males can be pretty intimidating. I remember we were down in the Sydney area and with Peter Birch and we found this huge male and he's like, all right, I'll grab the tail and then you grab it behind the head. And so he kind of grabs the tail.

He's like, all right, get it. And I'm like, um, yeah, like, yeah, I don't think so. I think I'm going to let you get this one. Yeah. Then a few years later, we went back and he found a smaller one and I was a little more comfortable grabbing that one. Yeah. When we were in Sydney on the way back, so Eric and I had stopped off before heading

to the airport and it was like, okay, well, we'll go around this area. We got a couple of hours. And I didn't realize that essentially we'd gotten to a point where the only way out was through. And it was, you know, we were really pushing our time. And I'm like, we're gonna be late for our international flight. You know, it's just it I wander through this park. So we're literally running up this trail and over these boulders and things. And I just came out on top of a big female where we were taking it back. And I was no shit. Oh, OK.

I guess maybe I can, you know, pause for one second to check this thing out. And she just belly slid down the hill, 20 feet down the hill to get away. That's cool. Dude, it's hard to wrap your head around that, that they're just out there running around. I mean, it's logical, obviously, it's stupid to think otherwise, but it's still, it's a hard thing. Oh yeah, I'll never get over seeing a wild monitor lizard no matter what it is, you know, just so cool every time. Yeah, I mean, you used to be able to catch rhinoceros iguanas in Miami for a while. There were a few groups of them. And that was one of the big first things I, I mean, again,

that's another animal that sits up there is probably one of my, and I bred rhinoceros for about 20 years. They were always something I usually kept around. This is actually the first time in my life where I currently don't have any, and that'll probably change in the not too distant future. But yeah, there's just something amazing about seeing those in the wild. Like even though they were in Miami and not in Haiti, there was an island called Virginia

Key where the Miami Sea Aquarium was. They had rhino iguanas on this thing called the Lost Islands. I guess at some point in the 1970s, they used to put hay during the wintertime for the rhinos to burrow underneath on these islands. And then every year they would come and get a crane and lift it out, take it across the street and dump it in the field on this island. Apparently, there was either baby rhinos in them or eggs. He dumped them. And by the time I was, you know, old enough to find out about this in the early eighties, there were adult rhino iguanas running on this game.

They did wipe them out right around shortly after I got to see them. I got one myself. Yeah. And oh my God, dude, I thought it was a fucking Komodo dragon. I was just like, this is the shit. Giant fucking gray lizard just bursts out of the fucking weeds and starts running down the trail and I was right on its ass and I caught it. And I, I mean, that thing totally sticks out in memory, but when you see that

just in the wild, it's like, yeah, it was amazing. Yeah. That animal I had that animal stayed with me for two decades or so. And I produced a ton of animals from that. Yeah, it's awesome. And that's very cool. Like, or just amazing. If, if yeah, Ty Clark has a lockdown. I mean, he's got every species up there doing it out there, but Yeah, that was my big thing for a long time. I had a lot of site

I I got to see the the ones out at San Diego wild animal park or the Crest that Jeff Lem was working with. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's an amazing place, right? Yeah, right center really cool. Yeah. That's an amazing place, right? Yeah. Really cool. Oh, dude. Yeah. But the ping list, is that the species that has like the really soft like skin that just feels like almost like with like sweat or something? Yeah. So cool. I'm just like, that is a cool lizard. Just because he's like, okay, here, you know, hold this one, fill the skin. I'm like, Whoa, that's like, like anything I've ever felt. Yeah. It was pro crazy for a brief.

I can talk about this now because it's been 20 years, 30 years, but for a brief time in the nineties, I was harboring two of those that that were being hunted for. Yeah. That holy shit, dude. It was all I was like, I really wanted to keep them, but they were so fucking illegal. I was like, yeah, I'm not going to be able to do this. But for a couple of weeks they were at my house and I spent so much time just looking

at those. They are so fucking prehistoric. I had four or five species of cycler and this was one that I never thought I would see. And then all of a sudden I got two of them and, and three delicatissima too, which at the time were not available at all. I'm looking at that. I'm like, Oh my God, how do I, how do I explain how I acquired these and can I, you know, my stupid 20, 20 something year old self guy was like, Hey, can you take care of these for me? I'm like, sure.

I'm like, I'm not going to take care of these for you. I'm like, I'm not going to take care of these for you. I'm like, I'm not going you take care of these for me? I'm like, sure. Yes, please. Yeah. Penguin. It's kind of cool that ties breeding those now. And, and Ryker die. I mean, that's another one. So maybe fucking cycler. I almost bought it into them a couple of times in the last couple of years, and I

probably will pull a church. I'm like, I'm going to go get a new one. I'm going to go get a new one. I'm going to go get a new one. I'm going to go get a fucking cycler I almost bought it into them a couple times in the last couple years And I probably will pull a trigger on them at some point Yeah, you know cycler you can have a big open-air fucking pits, right? I like that. Yeah, predatory birds can't fuck with them. Yeah You know, so I mean I would love to do it with blue tongues here But I but I also have like several needles with blue tongues here, but I, but I also have like several needles that live on my property and I'm like, oh, no, no, that's

funny about that. I actually have a quick story. So two weeks ago, Heather, Heather was out somewhere and she left the garage door where we have blue tongues in a roll in roll outs. Right. And I'm sitting in this in the man cave, which is right next to the garage. And I was fucking probably playing wow or something. And I hear this fucking banging in the garage. And I'm like, nobody's home but me. What the fuck?

So I open up the door to thing and there's a goddamn bald eagle inside the garage. One of the skin closures, looking down at it. And I was like, you got to be fucking... I ran to grab my phone. I'm like, no one's going to believe this. I got to get a picture of this. The fucker flew out.

But we have quite a few birds of prey that hang out around here. That's crazy. Like giant owls and two fishing eagles that are always on the property. But that fucker, how the hell did he know that they were in that garage? Right. Like, I mean, maybe I'm being stalked and I don't know it. I still remember Alan's story about the Shinosaurs, where he got that big collection of Shinosaurs and set them up outside and the

raccoons got in and just decapitated all of them. I forgot about that. It's terrible. Yeah, that's the gut punch for sure. We have a ton of raccoons here and so everything that we build is built to keep them out. I don't want to end up having to kill them or remove them or anything. So yeah, I build up, I build around that stuff. I'm like, okay, we have this thing and that thing and you know, we just need to keep them out. Yeah, which is not a hard thing. Is a challenge. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's you can keep them out pretty well then. Oh, yeah. I mean, as long as you use gauge Okay wire and stuff. Yeah, they can't get it most of it. They're looking for easy targets. Yeah Yeah, they're smart critters though Oh, yeah, they tried to get my house a couple times

windows, raising the dude. We have a ring camera out in the front and it caught a, we had a troop of them. I don't even know how to explain this, but at like three o'clock in the morning, the ring camera caught a trail of several, maybe four or five raccoons with two fucking possums in tow, all walking around the game. At the same time, I'm like, how is this a thing? We live in these little, we live in a sort of semi-rural area that's surrounded by a major city. It's all city around us. All the animals in this whole area

are being pushed into here. And then when you couple that with the fact that, I only mow a small portion of the property and we leave a lot of it wild You know, that's where they're living now That's cool Yeah, well, I was gonna mention too. I saw that they they found some of the baby Galapagos pink iguanas out on one of the islands there. So that's kind of cool.

Yeah, they're really different looking. But it was the Galapagos Conservancy on Facebook. I saw they posted that. They're pretty cool looking. Like they have green on them and stuff, like a little bit of pattern. Really? Yeah, really different looking. I'll have to go look at that.

So you have to check that out I I love those those are right I didn't realize there I mean I knew they discovered the the pink ones but I didn't know there was a third species the power I didn't know the Santa Fe Island landing I guess genetic analysis showed there's three different yeah landuana species now. So that's kind of cool. Dan, we need to get some of them. How would we explain that? Right. Yeah.

I've heard that they haven't, didn't somebody breed them in Europe? The, like the Marine iguanas or something? That's an African. Is it? Okay. It's an Africa. Yeah. Thomas.

Yeah. Yeah. Tom Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah It's an African. Yeah. Yeah. And Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. Tom Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. I, I've seen his man that that's an amazing setup. Yeah, right. Yeah. You know, there's some places you can get away with that. Right. Not here.

Czech Republic I've heard is a pretty good spot to see just about everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're on our way to lawlessness. So who knows this might be right. As long as you're not an illegal, you can get away with just about anything. Well, on our way. Maybe we'll all be breeding Komodo dragons and across the Uji Aquanids before long. Yeah. I hear Peter Jackson's involved in trying to fund bringing back Moa, those giant New Zealand birds that are like 12 feet tall. No shit. Yeah, that's I don't know how they're gonna do it. He needs them for the next Lord of the Rings movie. Yeah, that's I don't know how they're gonna do it. The next Lord of the Rings movie. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there I guess they're coming out with a new movie about like the hunt for Gollum or something that takes place during the fellowship times

or something. So it's kind of cool. It'll be a two two movie series that comes out next year or something. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that trilogy is probably the best movies ever made in my opinion. I love those Lord of the Rings movies. I got hooked on that when I was a little kid. There was a cartoon on TV of The Hobbit. Yeah. You ever seen that? Where there's a whip, there's a way.

And I was like eight or nine when I saw that. I was fucking hooked. So cool. I mean, that's actually probably And I was like eight or nine when I saw that. Fucking hooked. So cool. I mean, that's actually probably why I play games. I mean, I've been playing World of Warcraft for 20 years. It's essentially fucking Lord of the Rings. Right. You know, it's all that high fantasy.

Everything kind of diverged or, you know, kind of split off from that where he was very, yeah, really unique. Super influential man. And those books have held up. A lot of that shit doesn't hold up for the best of time, but those do. There's always these new kids coming in, like my daughter's all into that. It's just a constant. It's an amazing, amazing thing. And Jackson's done pretty good with the movies. I mean, I like the Hobbit movies, the Lord of the Rings movies were great. Yeah.

Yeah. Good stuff. Well, we really appreciate you coming on. We've kept you very late. So you've got some long hours, long days, but yeah, appreciate you coming on. We've kept you very late. You've got some long hours, long days, but yeah, appreciate you taking the time to come chat with us. It's amazing as always. Thanks again. Yeah, anytime guys. I don't think we got much discussed though about what we're supposed to, but I thought

there was some good points. Yeah, I think we hit it. I don't know. We always end up rolling off in all these different fucking directions. Yeah. Yeah Your stories are too good. We can't yeah, we gotta let you roll Yeah Awesome. Well, thank you, man We'll we'll let you let you jump here. But yeah, we appreciate your time

Good night. It's good seeing you again. Yeah. Yeah. You too. All right. If you need anything else, give me a call. Thanks, man. Sounds good. Thanks, Ron. Yeah. Cool.

See you. All right. Well, yeah, another, another great show, uh, with the great Ron St. Pierre and yeah, fantastic. So, um, we'll, we'll give a shout out to Eric and Owen and the MPR umbrella and thanks for everything. We'll catch you guys later for another episode. See you.