Reptile Fight Club - The pro and cons of sketchy ethical practices.

Episode Date: January 30, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of The pros and cons of sketchy ethical practices.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the MGR Network. All right, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. I am Justin Juhlander, your host, and with me as always is your other host, Chuck Fulmer. What's up for the downstroke, folks? Oh, all right. There you go. There you go. Well, how are you doing, my friend? How is life?

I am well. Just, yeah, I'm swimming in the big ocean like everybody else. But, yeah, work's been super'm swimming in the big ocean like everybody else, but, uh, yeah, works, works been super tough. Got a lot of stuff going. So glad we finally had a chance to sit down and do a, uh, a fight club. Uh, feel like it's been, it seems like it's been a minute since we, uh, we recorded one. So good, good to be here.

Good to do that. Uh, got, uh, got on, got my butt on to NPR. So that should be coming out. Had an amazing time with those guys. So that was super fun. Excited to see how that gets received. We had great, great discussion. Fun with those guys. Bob Rock was on there. It was a crew. Oh, nice. Yeah. All three of them? So Eric Owen and Bob? Yep, and Bob. And Rob. I called him Bob in the interview, and I'm just like, it's natural. It's Bob Rock. It's so funny.

Yeah. I'm like, it's Rob. I'm sorry. I think he answers to a lot of things. Yeah. No, no, no. It's good. Dude, I love Rob. He's awesome. Yeah, he's awesome. He's a great guy. Yeah, for sure. He's very, very kind of laid back and easygoing. It's a lot of fun. Smart as a whip and he's got, I mean, he's locked on, dude. Just locked on. He is an intense herper too. It's awesome.

That's awesome. He's like right down my alley. And that's so funny because, you know, I do, I catch that so laid back side of him. But I totally could see that dynamite of a herper in him, like him come to life and, you know. Oh, yeah. Going crazy. When you find a snake, I mean, he gets pumped. It's great. Yeah. I love the enthusiasm.

Yeah. He's just a brilliant guy, too. So's great. Yeah. I love the enthusiasm. Yeah. He's just a brilliant guy too. So, okay. Enough praise for Bob rock for Rob stone, even though he deserves it, but we'll absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's been pretty crazy around here too. Just doing our thing, but yeah, it's hitting the slopes. Yeah. I was going was gonna say you've gotten some slope some slopes time in your yeah a little bit but it the snow is kind of getting

crappy it hasn't really snowed much lately so that's kind of a bummer but well i guess we're not here to talk about skiing and nobody wants to hear about that no No. Let's move on to reptile topics. Okay. Okay. So with, you know, Adeline's interview, I got excited about doing some art. So I got one of the, like the iPad pencils or whatever. And it's working out pretty well. I'm pretty happy with the way it's going. Are we ascended to the level of creating us a new logo and all that?

Or what's going on? Sticker shirts? We got to start marketing here, Justin. Yeah, I know, right? I'm mostly just working on a project for, I don't know what, like I'm trying to have something come out at the same time as the book, just for fun, kind of a carpet themed thing. So I don't know if you can see that, but yeah. So these are some of the, some of the ones I've done so far. So I've got, so just a good,

thanks. I'm not done with the bread lie there yet, but in the in process that is looking amazing so hopefully i'll have it done to be able to you know maybe do some kind of cool poster or something when the book is released so i don't know we've still got a little time with the with the book i think it's i i don't know how you know printing's gonna go i mean we're pretty much wrapped up we're we're doing the final checks we got warren section so that's been nice. And to see kind of that genetic analysis that he did and had his kind of spiel in there, that was really good. And he's got a couple sections in the book, which is nice. And then we've got – we're just going through the layouts now, looking for uh, working with Russ Gurley on that. So that's been a lot.

And Russ is a great guy. He's, he's really good to work with. And so that's been a good process, but man, it's sure is nice to see this thing coming together. See all the photos in there. It's exciting. Have you, you got, you, did you say you've gotten any chapters back yet? Oh yeah. Yeah. Most of the books we've got. Most of the books done. Yeah. I think just all we haven't? Oh, yeah, yeah. Most of the book we've gotten back. Most of the book's done. Yeah, I think just all we haven't seen is just kind of the second part of the morph section.

But, oh, my gosh, that morph section is huge. It's so crazy. It's going to be like a book. It looks like the book's going to be about 650 pages. So it's going to be quite a good- good sized book here so i'm really excited to hold this thing in my hands though it's gonna be gonna be fun but yeah we've got uh just going through the layouts and getting everything approved until we can send it off to the printers get kind of that uh blue line and then who knows with COVID, but I, I am anticipating it's probably going to be delayed,

you know? So hopefully we'll see, uh, late spring, early summer, but that's, that might be, might be a pipe dream. I don't know. We'll have to see. Really? You think, you think it'll be a fall winter or? I hope not. I mean, I, I don't want to wait that long, but, um, we'll, we'll see, you know, who can say what these days with how fast things are going to wait that long, but, um, we'll, we'll see, you know, who can say what these days with how fast things are going to come out of, out of China. But, um, you know, what do you do? Well, it's, it's hilarious that, uh, all of our, like, all of our, like, um, Metcal and stuff like calibrated items, torque wrenches, PME, precision measuring stuff that we have for work.

We are sending it all to Japan because we cannot get it done in house. So, and we're getting it back much, much faster. So I think if we, if our torque wrenches can do it, so can your book. Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll see what happens, but hopefully sooner than later we will have the second edition of the complete, or I guess we're calling it the more complete carpet Python, but that should be done hopefully very, uh, with, you know, within a few months, but we'll have our, we'll have everything done and off to the printers within the month, I think.

Sick. Yeah. That's a load off of you at least. Oh, that's a, it's a, I mean, okay. So the first edition was about half. I mean, not that you're not ready to start writing another book already. Oh yeah. I mean, we're, we're a little into the next one, but I mean, it's, it's basically a new book. We pretty much rewrote probably 75, 80% of the stuff that was in the first edition, um, added, you know,

a ton of information and pages. I mean, the, the it's, it's double the size of the first edition. And I mean, all I I'm really excited cause there's all wild, um, individuals in the species chapter for the most part. I mean, there's like maybe two or three that are captive specimens. You like, for example, like the rough scale Python, we didn't have any photos of wild rough scale Pythons displaying, you know, their big teeth and stuff. So we used the pictures that I got at reptile gardens from Terry. He had his display for me and I got some, you know, okay. Shots of those and put those so you can see the teeth and you can see the display um in the chapter but yeah we've added a an owen pelly chapter so that'll be cool uh such cool snakes and then the uh we added a chapter on herping so you know cool finding car australian

herping or yeah i mean just some of it's general like you know but most you know it's it's there's some specific stuff for finding carpet pythons but it's kind of more of a general kind of intro to herping type thing you know so you have a whole section on diming out aussie spots for finding yeah finding carpet pythons put a bunch of locality yeah gps coordinates now you come back and there would be your face with a wanted poster would be plastered up all over australia dude well the the first edition when it came out they were they were kind of touting that as like a smuggler's list of all the stuff that you know it was kind of there was a little bit of a weird backhanded comment in one of the reviews of the book like

it's a list of all the stuff that you know is going to be smuggled in the next 10 years or something but and i mean obviously some were and you know the both ways you know some of the australian stuff made it over across the pond and some of the european or but clearly clearly clearly nick mutton and justin julander have have all the control of what is being, moving across ponds. And they wouldn't know about it without our book on Syria. It's not all over the internet and they don't already know about it. Clearly why the authorities searched you leaving Australia that one time. Yeah.

I mean, we shouldn't write any books or have any knowledge because that would just lead to bad things, right? Yeah. Yeah. It. Yeah. Yeah. It's frustrating. And, you know, I, I don't know, going through Australian customs, I've gotten pulled aside several times. Like that's right. Yeah. The last time I'm like, Hey, you're, you're profiling me.

He didn't like that much, but yeah, it was a little, little weird, but I'm like, yeah, check, check my bags, check my stuff, check whatever. I'm just here to look at your wildlife i don't know why you're hassling me and wasting my time i don't have it just just just be like i don't have it in my bag wink wink you know yeah that you'd never make your flight i didn't store it in my friend's rectum oh my god you better check oh man your friend would never forgive you for that. Were you there with Steve? Yeah, I went with Steve Sharp.

Yeah, and his butthole would be over you forever, dude. He went through a different airport, and he got pulled, singled out, too. Yeah, see? Dude, and if they were looking for you like that, all you'd have to do is mention his butthole and it would be, that would be the end of it. Oh man. Yeah. I don't think he'd forgive me for that one. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Yeah. Well, yeah. Good times. But yeah, I'm, I'm, it's,

it's going to be nice to have this wrapped up and hopefully out to, out to everybody soon. I'm excited to see it done yeah i said that enough have i expressed my excitement for this stuff but yeah it's a brand new book pretty much so hopefully you know everybody enjoys it it's not like the traditional second edition where they add a new couple photos and you know add a sentence or two. This is like major overhaul, lots of new information. Yeah. I'm excited for the plus size carpet book. Yeah. It'll hopefully, hopefully it'll be well received and, and the, the effort and work will be appreciated. I'm sure there'll be some detractors. I'm sure I got a call from a, he who shall not be named. Yeah. I, I i i hesitate to even mention on here i don't want to

give any air time but yeah that was a an interesting conversation but yeah as they usually are i'm sure yeah apparently our podcast really sucks so that's fun i appreciate the news yeah i'm sorry listen to it enough to form an opinion. Yeah, we're terrible. All this banter is just obnoxious. Our bad press is still press. I guess. Hey, which leads us into our topic today. All right.

Way to go, Chuck. I mean, you're just seamless. Segway Chuck, man. Yeah, there we go. All right. Well, today we're talking about shady business or sketchy business practices. So can they be useful? Can they be helpful? Can they annoy the crap out of you?

We're going to talk about the pros and cons of shady business practices. Hi, my name is. Hi, my name is. Chica, ch name is business shady. Okay, good. We might have, I guess we don't have to pay for it. We didn't sing that much of it. Yeah.

Don't you get like 16 seconds of a song before you have to pay? I don't know. You better find the real one. Play a little. It was so, it was so broken up and so bad. I can't possibly owe anybody money for that they're gonna have a hard time knowing what song that was right yeah and i have a case against this yeah and we broke it up so we're we're we were the band formerly known as

and we're no longer together so there you go i don't know uh well we're um we've got some good guests lined up for the next couple rounds too so you know look forward to a couple uh fun shows coming up so just won't be us yeah you won't have to listen to us uh for a couple weeks but i don't know we haven't really done a just us show for a bit either so no i guess not yeah a couple episodes i mean do we really go that far from just me and you buddy that's true yeah getting getting back to the classic right that yep yep all right well are you feeling lucky today or whoo i don't know we talked about coin oh yeah i don't know we'll see let's see i got i got i got uh you won last time, I know. Yeah. We'll see if it carries over. Okay. Call it

in the air. Here you go. Tails. Oh, tails. It is lightning strikes twice. That's what I'm talking about. I guess I'm just the unlucky one for the next year. Right? do you want do you want shady business practices are good or shady business practices are not so good i'm so on the con side of this you know i i hate the shady um yep i yeah well that'll be fun to promote or give the pros or shady business practices make all right work for this one i suppose I'm up to the challenge, my friend. I know you are. I'm going to wipe your... Okay.

Anyway, here we go. And of course, this is a formality, so I already know the answer, but would you like to go first or would you like to have me go first? You know me so well, I shall let you strut us out of the gate. All right. Age before beauty. Here we go. That's correct.

So how can shady or sketchy business practices be a pro? I guess, I think the reptile industry has had a lot of shade in their past. A lot of sketchy things going on in the past. In their present. In the present. You know the past so much more. And it's easy to talk about the past because some players are not in the game anymore. So they're easy to talk about.

But I guess, of course um the old hank molt comes to mind man that guy was sketchy and shady as they come um going to extremes of like making uh documents fake documents to show that he was some representative of the united states coming to new guinea to give the president an award or something and working it so he could bring back Bolin's pythons and all sorts of crazy rare things, right? Just nuts. I mean, he was smuggling in stuff from Australia and maybe some of the things we have in captivity today are a direct result of that. So I guess in some way we might benefit from some of those sketchy practices from the past where those animals maybe went to a good place and were

reproduced. And I mean, a ton of zoos were clambering over, you know, getting animals from Hank Malt and they got kind of a black eye and, and to the, well, this is kind of a point for you, but to this day there, they don't like to work with the public sector because of that, you know, because of things like that, um, ruined it for them. And they, and some of the zoos got in a lot of trouble and some zoos are very, very, you know, picky about even dealing at all with anybody from the public and others are a little, you know, less, less stringent, I suppose. But so, you know, I think, you know, I'm never going to smuggle anything. I'm never going to be involved in that kind of illegal activity.

But, you know, it's, it's hard to fault when there's no. At least not at the ground level, right? I mean. Yeah. Yeah. If something's over and it's here and it's been reproduced and. Exactly. Yeah. I mean. Then it's kind of like hard to say, well, this is bad because it's good to say we all might have. Yeah. I mean, we all might have a hand. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure everybody has as a pro, but liking Australian reptiles, I mean, it gives me the opportunity to work with some species that I'd really want to work with.

It's no, I mean, they've already come out of the wild. They're already being reproduced in Europe or over in the United States or whatever. And, you know, they're here. I guess I, you know, it's hard to find too much fault with that. But, um, I, I know, uh, a friend of mine was, was involved with some smuggling back in the day. And, uh, I mean, the reason he did that was because he saw like a farmer chop up, you know, a Python because it was in his field. And he's like, they don't appreciate their, and this was, you know, 40 years ago, 30 years ago or whatever. So, um, a long time ago, but, um, you know, he's like, they didn't appreciate them. You know, why should I worry about keeping their laws? He sent some stuff back to the United States. They're rules and their laws, but they're dumb ones. So screw it. Right.

And when there's no legitimate way, you know, for a hobbyist to do things, you got to expect that, you know, that stuff's going to go down because, you know, the demand is there and people are going to pay the price and pay money for it. So I don't know. And it's hard, you know, to, I don't think our government should be spending effort and tax dollars enforcing Australian law, but what do you do? I bought a pair of Phyloris amnicola, the riverine leaf-tailed geckos, tinley, from my friend Nathan Hall. And I mean, when I went to tinley-

Wait, did you? Oh, this is when you went to tinley. Yeah, when I gave the gecko talk. Okay, okay, okay. when you went to Tinley. Yeah. When I gave the gecko talk. Okay. Okay. Okay. Wow. Yeah. I, I had some, I shipped some animals to myself because Nathan gave me some spaces table. He's, he's such a cool guy. Nathan, I can't speak highly, you know, high enough of, of Nathan Hall, but anyway, he, uh, gave me some spaces table, had me speak at the symposium. I mean, it was a great time. Um, put me up in a room there for the, for the, uh, Tim Lee show. So it was a lot of fun, but anyway, um, one of the,

one of the most common species of Australian geckos at the show was the riverine leaf tail gecko, Phyloros amnicola. And so I'm like, Oh, there's a ton of them here and they're not, you know, unreasonably priced. And so I got a pair of them and came home with those. And, uh, I posted some pictures and some of my Australian friends were like, Oh, well, I'm glad you get to have those, you know, way, way to go, way to benefit from smuggling. And I'm like, I didn't smuggle them. And they're the most captive bred leaf tail gecko at the show. Like, I don't think the wild populations are hurting as a result of this. I mean, at least now that they're captive bred and nobody is ever going to smuggle

those again because there's no incentive to, because they're already captive bred over here. And that's the same thing I told the, the inspectors at the border, like anything that, you know, pretty much I want to work with, I can probably find

already captive bred in the U S so I don't need to smuggle your animals. And why would I want to bring in a bunch of parasitized wild caught snakes when I can buy captive bred for, you know, no risk and for a lot less price. So anyway, that was a very long winded initial statement. Yes, you digressed. Of sketchy practices you digressed so let me please can you follow that yeah yeah um i mean yeah i think i mean i think you did a a a good a good segue in of just like the the con of you know that and and um you know i i recently just talked about uh uh bolanai and you know kind of uh i i look at that you know just absorbent price that importers are getting now for

bolanai that you know it's it's completely fabricated at that level. And there's, you know, sketchy, sketchy examples at best of stuff that, that might, might be captive hatch, but probably is wild collected and funneled through as, as at least at minimum captive hatch, if they're not straight out lying about captive bread. And, you know, it kind of just goes to, I mean, you know, you can listen to the interview, but I feel like, you know, that high price is getting Yeah, people will pay that some people will pay that, but maybe not the right people, maybe we won't ever be able to establish them properly. And, and eventually, after, you know, paying all this money and not having success and animals dying off people like screw this, like, we're not going to do it. And, you know, and it's just a waste. It's a waste of

time, a waste of opportunity, just because people want to make some, they see the opportunity for money and rather than, you know, and, and they just gouge and gouge and gouge and it's like you know it's it it's just it's it's so far past you know i i believe obscene was the word that uh rob stone used so i mean i i just think that you know the the the the opportunity around getting bull and i here uh and getting them established and being able to breed them. And they're never probably going to be bred in these record ball python numbers or something like that. They're too tough to breed. So they'll always command a higher price, but get them in here, get them established where there's so crazy money right now that only some people can afford them. And maybe maybe those aren't the best people to and and the greater you know captive keeping

reptile community would suffer from that and it's just you know we we're just so you know people are like well yeah things cost money and these are animals that people want and so we charge money but it's just it's just shitty and it's just an ugly face on reptile keeping in an easy way, an easy target for people to say, see, look at that gross, disgusting. Look at that, you know? And I just, I think that's a, you know, kind of the, the easy, the easy, you know, you were talking about Hank Moulton reaching back, but I mean, right here today, right as we speak, that's an example of kind of the ugliness that's happening around today. So, you know, same shit, I guess, um, I I'll give you that, you know, putting a high price tag on a, on a snake probably increases the demand in some ways, at least maybe for the, the people, uh, catching the snakes, you know, because they, they, Oh, these are worth a lot of money, you know, and it de-incentivizes people to work together, right? Yeah. Like you're, you're, you're profits, profit, profit citizing. I don't know if that's really even a word, but, but you're, you're, Yeah. The more you do that, the more you push towards the profit side of it, the further away you get from the captive population side of it and the setting up of a group that can successfully establish, share, breed, and propagate the species here in the United States.

Potentially. I mean, we've, we've talked about, you know, high priced animals and kind of the pros and cons of that. And, and maybe this is, this has been brought up, but I mean, maybe the people that can afford them can also afford a very nice, you know, setup and good space for them. I see, you know, quite a few, maybe people that are going to give them the space they need. And maybe that's the key. Maybe they need a giant space. Big, wide open space. I don't know. Maybe that's part of it. So maybe these people that can shell out 20 grand for a pair of snakes can also shell out 20 grand for a giant enclosure that has you

know the the same humidity and temperature and rainfall of new guinea you know and give them the what they need um whereas if you know somebody can barely afford the snakes you know we have kind of a bad track record in the reptile industry of spending a lot of money on the animal and maybe not so much on the enclosures. Stick them in a rack drawer or something and try to get it to work because it works with ball pythons or something. Anyway, I could see that being a pro, if they've got the money to afford a snake, that they could also maybe set it up properly. I have seen a few examples of that with bull and I specifically, um, we talked to, um, um, now, yeah, I'm, I'm so terrible with names. I don't know why I even try to bring up a name, but, um, ball Python breeder that just got a pair of ball and i it's setting them up in a big nice

justin kabilka yeah thank you i i he has i can't say his last name i can't say his last name i can't say his last name correctly still but i i at least know who the hell you're talking about yeah i i think it's a factor of having five children i try to yell at my kids and i can't get the name right you know know, the mental deterioration is slow. Yeah. I have to go through each of their, yeah. Yeah. Something's wrong. My mom, my mom does that to this day. The dogs, all the pets, like she will roll through, like we're not even, uh, yeah, we, we change, we change species. Like it's crazy. Exactly. Yeah. So forgive me, uh, Justin for getting, getting such a great named person, you know, for getting in their name.

But anyway, I mean, he has been very successful in his breeding and marketing and doing all that stuff. And he's putting together a very nice cage, letting, you know, having somebody that like Casey Cannon that probably has really good knowledge about that kind of thing and has, you know, thought about it a lot and, uh, setting up something that hopefully will be very successful for those snakes and potentially allowing them to breed and, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, I think there, there could be a con or a pro to having these things being, uh, exorbitant price, but I do see the con in, in, collection from the wild when they probably shouldn't be collected or exceeding quotas to try to get more money. And you can't fault the locals for that. If these crazy white people are going to pay that much for a snake, then maybe they should capitalize on that.

But you hate to see it do uh, uh, do damage to the wild populations, but I don't know. They're in a pretty remote area. It's very difficult to go out and poach those I would imagine. So it's probably not going to be an issue unless the locals just go hog wild and start collecting all of them from, and I, hopefully that doesn't happen as long as the, you know, the native people of pop, uh, will maintain their reverence for those snakes and that kind of thing. But anyway, so, you know, that sketchy type of business, you know, I guess that would potentially fall into that, but I could also see that benefiting the animals in some way that the people get them in their hands and could do a little better with them as far as. So you don't think, but you don't think, you don't think the justification. So like, like, okay, let's, let's run this out.

Like, all right. I and I'm making all this money hand over fist and I can get these animals to a guy like Justin Kobilka who can offer them these huge cages and all of this exorbitant things that you know enhance the animal's life blah blah blah blah blah uh don't don't you think that that that some of that could potentially it it almost reinforces a shady business practice because who says that Bola and I need these giant absorbent cages and that, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that you can't give it to them. I'm not saying that, you know, the San Diego zoo didn't have one of those corner, you know, penthouse suites for their Bola and I, and that they, you know, that they have multiple animals moving around. Cool. I'm not saying that, but, but there, there are people who as part of their business

practice will shame you by saying, Oh, if you don't keep that animal in a gigantic enclosure, you're performing animal cruelty. And that's, that's, you know, that's wrong or you better keep it naturalistic or you better test all your animals or else you're a shit person and a bad human being. That's another form of sketchy business practice where you take kind of a higher than thou approach to something that honestly you don't fucking understand. You don't understand. I mean, look, you can't tell me that nervous snakes need these big, wide open spaces. Yes, if you want to do it that way, you stick them out in the wild, right? You just never bring them in. But if you want to bring them in and you want to reproduce them and you want to do that, sometimes maybe these giant, big, wide open cages and all the money in the world that you throw at it isn't going to be what reproduces that animal.

And if that's really the goal, if what we're doing is just trying to make more snakes so we can get wealthy off of it, cool, then whatever. None of it matters. But if, if, if it's that reinforced skate, you know, sketchiness of like, well, I have to do all this big grandioso thing so I can reproduce these and make tons of money. Then, you know, that idea of like, Oh, having them in big cages and spending tons of money and all of these things are almost shaming to people who do understand that maybe that's not the trick to the animal, or maybe that that's not the most important thing, but that you're almost anthropomorphizing

what you feel is humane or what you feel is correct. Because what's the first thing that animal might do when you stick it in a giant enclosure might find the tiniest, smallest, safest place in that enclosure and go stuff itself in there and hide because it's like, whoa, this is flipping me out. Right. So, you know, I think there's an other side. There's another argument to that. But more deeper to my point is you have all these people who, who through their kind of higher than thou opinion about stuff, do what I would almost consider a shady business practice. So like an example, I heard, um, uh, what's that cat's name? I don't know. It was Elijah or some some shit like that but he was on a podcast and he was he was shitting on travis wyman for the um for the interview he did with with justin and

those guys uh regarding nido testing and he would kind of just snipe at travis like he basically he basically um made him out to sound like a joke PhD, like that his doctorate, like that, you know, his doctorate was invalid and that he didn't, you know, he was against testing and it, and it was absolutely, you know, just, it was, it was first off, it was almost just character assassination, but he was completely mischaracterizing the things that Travis said. And look, I, I understand that, that, that testing is a good thing. It is a good thing, but, but through the discussion that we had on reptile fight club and through the discussion that they had, you know, that there was some clear, um, issues or, or things to kind of overcome. And to listen to this guy crap on Travis Wyman and, you know,

kind of try to make Travis seem like he didn't know what he was talking about and that, you know, he was kind of a fake PhD almost because he was dropping the complications around. Everyone should just test and everything should be tested and it should be fine. It doesn't know it's there should be no excuse. And if you give an excuse, then you don't care about the health and welfare of animals. And, you know, it's completely ridiculous to marginalize anybody who who brings scientific fact uh and and you know the worst part about it was when you listen to this dude he was a smart dude now if you're a stupid fuck and you don't know any better i get it i understand i understand people who just don't know any better

and they go with the tagline because they don't understand the science behind it or, you know, the nuance of it or whatever. But when you know better and you do that, that's the same sketchy business practice as selling an animal for high price or smuggling or whatever, because you're trying to push your agenda in a, in a, in a disingenuous way. And you're trying to marginalize people who are are credible who have worked very hard and are very intelligent and know what they're talking about and and it's not

that's that's horrible that's horrible for the community that's horrible for for the reptile keeper at large to to hear that and and you know I think if you have half a head in your skull, you hear that guy and you're like, all right, that that's obviously a personal issue. And if you listen to the way he talks, you're kind of like, all right, he is not, you know, I mean, if you were, if you were to listen to all of those podcasts, you would clearly see that he's, he's, you know, sniping on the things that Travis said, and he's not representing what Travis's point was at all. risky to test or even a positive test might be more complicated than that or why it's impractical for some people at such scale to test and that there's other ways that maybe the customer you know can test and if it's you know the animal's positive then then there's recourse potential recourse for the customer and and maybe it's not the, you know, and you let the breeder know.

But, and, you know, I mean, I just, I don't think anything precludes people from testing, but it's just, it really made me frustrated because here's somebody who clearly, you know, and nobody's saying that, nobody in that whole argument or discussion around testing was saying that we shouldn't test. Nobody said that. The whole policy was to test or allow people to test. If you were listening to the podcast and I'm talking about and I'm not even going to mention who it was because I'm not going to give them the credit that they were trying to get out of it because it was so ridiculous what they were doing. And I look at that as a sketchy business practice of itself. Yeah. Now, I tried to listen to that. I didn't make it too far through, but

I will say that, I mean, he had some people who agreed with him. Obviously they had them on their podcast and, and they, they were all in and I didn't really agree with the things they were saying. A lot of things are like, what are you talking about? But you know, it was just paint with a very broad brush. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Finger painting with a very broad brush. I'm going to give Chuck a minute to calm down, take some deep breaths. He's coming in hot here, but that's good. I mean, I, you know, I, I, I agree.

Like taking personal snipes is kind of a risky and sketchy business practice, but I mean, it gets you attention. People, people know your name. If you're having beef with somebody and beefs in the reptile industry are as old as sketchy business practices in the reptile industry. It seems like some people have built their business model on that concept. Ralph Davis comes to mind. And I don't even know if he's breeding snakes anymore or if he's doing much anymore in the reptile industry. I, I looked at his website today and it was like the most recent thing was from like 2017 or 2014 or something. So I don't think he's breeding snakes actively. If he's not, he's not updating his website.

But anyway, um, he was one of those guys that was just so bold. And so like he'd call people out or, or, or say stuff about people and, and people would, you know, like be upset and he'd get his, you know, but he had this loyal following. Now, it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. I wasn't really excited about his, you know, type of business modeling. I mean, he'd get kind of, you know, like selling Ralph Davis brand underwear, you know, like his logo on like, you know. Was there a skid mark in it no no it was like it was like women's underwear like oh you know like yeah uh kind of like lacy thong underwear or something whatever he's into yeah it's like okay i would never put my logo on

thong underwear and try to sell it you know so we kind of had that rough, tough guy. Like I'm, you know, I'm, you know, getting chicks and clearly a lady's man. Exactly. So, you know, that, that kind of, you know, that, that, and, and it was not my cup of tea, but there were a lot of people that loved Ralph Davis and swore by him and were loyal customers because of his bad boy, you know, persona. And I think, you know, some people, you know, the, the any press is good press crowd. Like they can make a business out of that. And I, you know, I'm not saying that it's a, it's the best way to go or that, you know, they're not going to have repercussions down the row. And, you know, some people might get the crap kicked out of them, you know, like if they, if they kind of keep up that attitude or call out the wrong person, they might get pummeled at the next reptile show.

And there have been, I don't know, there was, there's some, there's some, uh, and I think, you know, as American, a lot of Americans like that kind of stuff, you know, they like the, the entertain me and, you know, the Spartacus attitude or whatever, you know, they want to just watch people pummel each other, um, which is, you know, MMA is really big around here in, in, in the U S so, um, but you know, it works. He sold a lot of snakes and had a lot of customers and they were loyal. And so, you know, you, you can say, Oh, this is sketchy and he's, you know, he's a bad person or whatever, but it worked for his business practice. So sketchy or not, it had results.

So this guy lambasting Travis, I mean, yeah, that's kind of a douche move. And trying to call into question, I mean, I've got a PhD and I'm sure Travis would agree with me. Having a PhD doesn't necessarily mean you know everything and you can do it, but it, but it does prove that you've put in the work and you know how to think and you know how to reason and do, do research and things like that. And so, you know, some of that might not be necessarily, um, you know, well, and, and, but, but, but, but to marginalize him by completely misrepresenting what he said is – and look, we're in the age of if you don't like what somebody is saying, you just make up your own truth and you pull a pull of what this dude did and you just march on. And when somebody is basically giving you reasons that are – nobody is saying you, nobody's saying you can't test. There's nobody's taking away. Anyone's personal right to test. There's, there's tests out there. If you want to test tests, but the, the, the idea that there is no, there,

there is no reasonable barriers to testing. There are there, there there's. And, and if you get, you know, know you can if you get the right test you can test for all kinds of things i'm sure we can figure out that all these animals have all kinds of stuff going on we just don't have the right test for it right and if we did have the right test if we did have the right test and and the animal was completely healthy what would you do yeah what would you do like these animals can you know i mean it's it's it's so like to just ignore that and be like well a positive test is a positive test like yeah i get that i get that but you know you can still test positive for covid and not be contagious at all you can still like there's

there's there's a myriad of things that can happen that a positive test, you know, doesn't necessarily mean that you're spreading sickness all the time or that, or that that positive test results in sickness. Exactly. I mean, there's so many different, uh, things that can be harbored within an animal that don't cause any issues for the animal, unless maybe they get in a stressful situation or something like that. And, you know, I don't know. And to have that knowledge, cool, good. But to say like, ah, this person is a horrible person if they don't advocate for all testing all the time and a positive result is the, you know, should be equated with, you know, this animal being on that blacklist almost of, of, you know, got the Nido done out, forget it. No, no, there's nothing past that because there is, I mean, and look, if it's,

if it's symptomatic with disease, that that's a totally different story, but that's not what was represented and that's not what was talked about. So it's like, again, I'm getting wound up and I'm sorry, but it's sketchy. It's sketchy. It's shitty that people who will um you know say oh that animal's not pure it's an integrator it's this or that that's shitty too that's shitty too because now those animals are throw away just because you devalued it based on the way you have this mental construction of how value is within an artificial construct called taxonomy. Right. It's fucking dumb. It's fucked up. It is. It is a,

it is a little sketchy there, but I mean, it works. Right. And, and I guess, I guess my biggest probably point of this is, is,

is any business can, can an unsketchy business succeed? You know, it's really hard in, in, in a lot of ways for us,, you know, forthright business to succeed, especially when people are coming at them with sketchy things.

And a lot of times it kind of scares away or pushes out the unsketchy folks in the industry. They're like, I don't want any part of this. This is ridiculous. You know, this guy's trashing me because I have a PhD or, you know, calling into question my credentials because he doesn't agree with what I'm saying or, or he's twisting my words to make it be something I'm not saying. And, you know, why do we want to act like that? I, I agree, you know, but business is a lot of, in a lot of ways sketchy from the get-go.

I mean, Nike's based on little kids sewing shoes in third world countries. But that's bullshit. But that's bullshit because Nike did that. It's not just – so business practice isn't inherently sketchy. It's made sketchy by the way we can, by the way we construct our society, by the, by the, by the choices we make and by the things that we allow as okay to happen. It's okay for you to call everything fake news when you don't like what it's saying, or it's, or, or say like, oh, nobody knows what they're talking about because we get new information and things change and see they don't know from here to now what it is so it's all fake and i don't have to listen to it and i can just make up my own thing about what i want it to be so there take that world and i mean

it's just it's i yes you're right you're you're 100 right justin but it's still wrong to do, to behave that way because of all the bullshit that comes out of it. And we never go to a positive place and we're stuck in this intractable mess. Yeah. I mean, obviously you can, you can have a successful business and not be sketchy. And I think 100% Justin Kobilka is probably a great example of that. He's built a very nice- I mean, the list goes on and on and on. There's plenty. There's tons of people who do. But at the same time, there's also those people who will say like, well, you know what?

I got this and it was sick. So you're a horrible person and that's it. You're done. And to no fault of your own. Like, right? Oh like i've had that happen where somebody called into question the animals that i sent him and i'm like send them back yeah i'm not worried about them you know and they they were just fine they went on to you know new homes and they the people that have them now are very happy with them they're they're great animals like

there was nothing wrong but there's somebody out there running around talking about that justin piece of shit guy from aar you know and it's it's it's it's total crap because why because because i don't know they didn't like it or they were an idiot and and didn't understand what they were looking at or i don't know you know i don't know what motivates these people but to me that it's it's it's's, it's the same, it's the same shit. You know what I mean? When you only want to hear what you want to hear and only push your side of the agenda, and you're not willing to listen to reason about topics that are more complex than, than you're willing to accept. It's bullshit. Yeah. And you know, I i guess i guess you could um one one thing that maybe i i don't enjoy or that i don't like maybe somebody else really likes you know and and and so maybe it's

sketchy from my point of view and from somebody else is like no that's cool i like that you know i want to give me an example like ralph davis you know like I saw it as sketchy. Like, oh, he's, you know, slinging women's underwear and, you know, calling people out to fight. And maybe those people deserve to be called out. I don't know. Maybe they should get a, you know, a beating or something. I don't know. But to me, it was kind of a sketchy thing. But to all of his customers and followers that really liked him, they're probably like, no, it's cool.

I like that. I want to see that. Oh, he keeps it real. He doesn't take any crap. Yeah, exactly. But when, you know, Fish and Wildlife is looking at us and they're like, well, maybe we need to do something about these reptile folks. Then people who are acting a fool don't help us one bit. Sure.

One goddamn bit. I mean, if you saw US arc running around acting like that, we would not be doing so hot. Well, yeah. And I mean, Hank, most the reason we don't have a good, you know, relationship with zoos or, you know, certain, certain, you know, point made. Right. I mean, that's my point. I mean, obviously just because one person in an industry is sketchy, doesn't make the whole thing sketchy but for sure to be fair we have probably more than our fair share of sketchy characters you know there's still there's still people out there that are selling you know half-dead animals and like you know

animals dying en masse in their facilities and they continue you know and it sucks that exotic animals are rife with this problem but they're making they're still making money they're still having a business you know yeah and so i mean like i said you know yeah you can call it sketchy all day and you can hate it and and it can be a black eye to us but it's working for them they're still making money and they're still clinging animals or whatever. But the problem is all it takes is, you know, the winds of change to blow the other direction. And then all of a sudden it all comes to a crashing halt very expeditiously when the opportunity arises. And so, you know, it's one of those things where you can just ignore it and ignore it and ignore it and act like it's not a, well, it works and it's a business model. And what are you going to do? It's America. You can't, you know, you can't, and, and, and that's

fine. You're right. And it is, and it could go on for a really long time, but at some point it, that something may happen and it may, and it may involve somebody who did some shady shit and that is the catalyst for a whole state losing its ability to keep reptiles not so no but i mean you know it's it's happened certain places but for the most part it's happened all over the place they loosen those up again i our, our regulations in this state have kind of settled down a bit compared to what they used to be. And, you know, and just because somebody was engaged in sketchy behavior in the past doesn't mean they can't change and become, you know, uh, have a better business plan. I mean, you know, there's, there's several examples of that where people were you know filmed being cruel to animals or kind of having a pretty crappy attitude about things who are now you know building zoos fine outstanding individuals exactly i get it i get it and look i'm not hopefully they learn what i'm saying and i'm definitely not saying that nobody deserves the second chance or that nobody makes mistakes. I'm just saying that, you know, that shady business practice or that shitty way of behaving around reptiles, you know, denying science and facts and being dogmatic and bullheaded about things does not serve us well it does i

mean and people vote with their dollar so if they like it if it's working then they'll support him i mean i you know reading stolen world um reading about hank moltz exploits and how he screwed over some close associates like that people that are funding his journeys. And he just left them with the bill and just screwed them over. They were, they, and then they did business with him down the road. It's like,

I mean, are we that desperate for these animals? I mean, really? So yeah, something's rare, but there's so many cool reptiles that are not, that are not rare and

that are not expensive and that we can get from good upstanding people. Do we really need to be supporting the Hank Maltz? You know, probably not. And it's probably, you know, we need to kind of vote with our dollar and think about where the animals are coming from and what's going on. Unfortunately, the majority of, you know, educated reptile keepers, if you want to call them that. I mean, there's so many more people that don't have any concept of how reptiles come in the country. All they know reptiles from is like PetSmart. You know, they go in and they see the chameleon or the corn snake. And granted, most of the stuff in PetSmart is probably sourced okay, or maybe even

captive bred within the United States, you know, as far as like ball pythons and maybe they're catching chameleons out of Florida and getting rid of an invasive species there or something. I, you know, so, you know, to some extent it's like, well, what do you, you know, what do you do other things? Like, obviously, you know, a lot of the imports and stuff that's that's you know we've we've talked about that too there's pros and cons to importing and exporting things and um you know so but there's also a right way and a sketchy way to do it like sure i mean you know i i i think i think it's important to separate out the act from the intention or the act from the methodology or the behavior within that act, right? I don't have any problem with smuggling if it gets an animal that we would not be able to establish because the government is being stupid about the way that they're handling their

laws. I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is somebody who just stuffs their entire suitcase in their body and they're bringing in all these animals and they're not caring about the welfare of the animal and they're pilfering rather than bringing in just what they need to establish and never disturbing that animal's habitat ever again right yeah like there's there's a there's a there's a difference and it's that intention that's the sketchiness not importation not having an opinion about things like it's the way you use that intention that opinion and the way you intention it is the problem for me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, obviously I don't like shady practices and I try not to employ them in my business.

And and it's kind of a big reason I didn't do this as a full time job is because I wanted to enjoy it as a hobby. I didn't want pressure to sell snakes, you know, to make money, to feed my family, you know, that, that wasn't something I was interested in. And I'm very happy with the job I have and the collection I have and, you know, the time that I can spend with the reptiles and things like that. So, you know, sometimes I think, oh, it would have been cool to go full-time, but other times I'm like, man, sure is nice not to have to worry about selling snakes to make the rent or whatever. So, you know, there's, there's, but these things go on and we need to be aware of them and we need to understand how, how it can negatively impact the hobby. I mean, yeah, there, it might work for you in the short term. And I'm probably kind of summing up with siding with you a little bit, which angers all our listeners, right? Cause we're not fighting properly. I tried to be as feisty as I could with this. It's hard to have strong feelings about it. No. Oh yeah. I mean, and it's, and it's, you know, it's justified to, to a large extent. And, you know, I, I guess, I guess you need to, you know, make

sure that you're not judging somebody's business practices as shady when, you know, they're just shady to you and maybe, you know, they could be just fine to somebody else. But if you're, I mean, obviously if you're screwing people over and stealing their money and not giving them the animals you promised and, and that kind of thing, or, or running their name through the mud just because you don't, I mean, if you're going to challenge some, what somebody says, at least accurately represent what they're saying, right. And you can't, can't push them the chance to, to go toe to toe with you or something, that kind of thing. But, you know, there, there are, there are reasonable ways to, to, you know, do this and, and still, you know, maybe appear sketchy to somebody else, but you're doing it legitimately or it's okay.

Did that make any sense? No, it did. I understand. I think for me, it's important for anyone listening to understand that a shady business practice or a shitty business practice isn't just as simple as like that out front, easy to see like, oh, that guy's abusing animals. That's a shitty business practice. misrepresenting things and ignoring science, ignoring the, some of the best stuff that has happened to, to, to reptiles, especially around, you know, uh, virus testing and what we know, uh, around these viruses more than ever. And, and, and if you're going to just ignore the facts that are around that, the, you know, the, the virology of, of what we know about snake viruses, you're not doing a service. And that is shady, too. That is sketchy, too. And we need to look at it that way. And I don't, you know, I mean, certainly, you know, I'm not saying that it is a level playing field of sketchiness,

and there's certainly some minutiae in there. but I don't want people to just think that it's people who do bad things like smuggling or, or animal abuse or things like that, that are, that are the only type of sketchy shit that we have going on in the hobby. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

it's, it's good to identify sketchiness in, in all its forms. And, um, yeah, hopefully, uh, yeah, everybody listening has gotten some you know something to think about as far as uh business practices in the reptile industry and you know

there's probably a lot of stuff we didn't cover if you you know something comes to mind you want to chat about it more come fight us you know get your get your uh ideas out there and and uh come on i've really appreciated the feedback that we've been getting, you know, some of the, um, it's, it's been, you know, overall pretty positive. We've had a few kind of critiques that, you know, maybe say some of the things we're not, you know, we need to maybe improve on and we appreciate it. Who said what? Who said what? Yeah. I'm going to send Chuck to your house.

But anyway, I, you know, thanks for listening and, and hopefully you got something good out of this. That's what we're here for. I hope to, to give you both sides and let you see I, I, you know, shout out to Morelia Python's network. Had some good shows on recently. Uh, uh, Chuck, of course,

we'll be on here soon and, and we'll be on the, on the Morelia pythons radio. Um, coming up soon, probably this next week, right? I would say it's coming up pretty soon.

I don't know. I think they were, they were boning up on some shows, so I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure. I think they were recording right before this one, but, um,

a lot of great content. I really enjoyed the interview right before this one, but a lot of great content. And I really enjoyed the interview with Billy hunt. That was a lot of fun to listen to. Billy's a great guy. We got to have him on here. Did I already mention that this earlier or no? Can't remember if I just mentioned it to you, but anyway,

Billy's so cool. He gets two shout outs. If we did, there you go. Damn. Yeah, it was, that was interesting to listen to and fun to listen to i also uh was listening to

um i think it was snakes and stogies now you know this is of course not in the mpr network but we're pretty good friends with the folks at the herpetoculture network we cross deck with other oh yeah yeah they're good guys and we're getting we're actually going to have uh phil wolf on here uh next week wheeler eye yeah so he's a great guy very knowledgeable so that'll be fun to have him on um but uh you know the the there's just so so much great content on uh morelia python uh radio, um, check them out at Moralia python radio.com. Um, if you want to email them, get in contact info at Moralia python.com, sorry, info at Moralia python radio.com. That's a mouthful. It's tough to say. I'll give you, I'll give you better, better, better. Yeah. And follow, you know, follow the network and Morale Python Radio on Instagram, Facebook,

YouTube, et cetera. So, and it's all at NPR Network. So this is, this has been another edition of Reptile Fight Club. And I don't know, you got anything else to say to the people? We got any words of wisdom, good content out there? You, you heard anything good or, or we, we, we, uh, wrapping up here. Justin and I love you all. Don't be sketchy bastards and we'll see you next week.

I like it. All right. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you later. Bye. Poitron Thank you.