Reptile Fight Club - Trip Planning and Catching up with RFC

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Justin and Rob tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network 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

all right thanks for tuning in. I guess you don't really tune in. Thanks for hitting play on your podcast app. I'm Justin Julander. If you've forgotten me since we haven't been recording too frequently lately, and with me, as always, is Rob Stone. How are you doing?

I'm great. Excited to be here. Hopefully the audio. How is it? Yeah, no delay. Hey. No delay. Yeah, we've been playing.

Yeah, with our last couple podcasts that we recorded, Rob was delayed. And I guess maybe you've heard those shows. So you know the pain and the struggle of not being able to hear Rob's wonderful comments. So I'm glad that there's no delay. So let's hope that continues and that we have a nice, smooth show today. So, yeah, we've both been kind of busy with different trips, and I don't know that that's going to slow down much. I think we've got a pretty packed summer of herping and travel and such. So we'll talk a little bit about that today. So I guess that's kind of the main thing we're going to chat about is planning trips and how

things have gone on some of the previous trips that we've had, and maybe some ideas for our future trips, and kind of how we're going to improve some of the things that went wrong, I guess. So that's today's show. But I don't know, how are the reptiles doing? Your new setup's working out with your rhinos? Yeah, so they are. They look really good. The plant has been a learning experience.

And to some extent, I just knew that it would happen because when I put them, got them set up, that aligned with the time period where I wanted to then pair up a handful of females. And so I just set up the terrariums and had put in these beautiful Vietnamese violets. And A, I guess the first learning experience is saying I hadn't kept those plants before in any other context. So it's that kind of learning what they're, you can read online, but it's like, okay, in my setup, what does that look like in terms of the light that they need? Where should they be situated? How much water? I have a drainage layer set up in there, but is that the appropriate level of moisture? This plant evidently doesn't like getting directly, getting wet directly. So

it's kind of, okay, this percolation method should be ideal. But then a day later, I'm sitting there going, well, I'm about to toss in males with half of these new enclosures. And that went about as well as I thought it would. It was a very painful initial 24 hours of just watching them absolutely go ham on the enclosures, up to and including just totally obliterating the plants that were in there. Is that just in pursuit of the females? Yeah, just checking out the – yeah, exactly. Yeah, just sort of saying, whoa, what is going on? And in that species, the 2013 or 14, something like that. So he's a decent sized animal and, uh, yeah, he just, his body, he's just totally snapping off little flowers and all this stuff and his

pursuit of, Oh, where's that female at all this stuff. Yeah, it was, um, I knew it would happen when I set him in there and it indeed did. Um, so that was sort of a bummer. I think I've come to learn that, um, I do still have some that are doing fine, particularly in the, um, terrariums that where I didn't pair them up, you know, so it was only the singular animal and a female adjusting to her own enclosure, not then kind of a roving male as well. Um, but I think they're going to be more sort of decorative pieces. It seems like the aluminized bulbs is probably the ones where they're getting

greater exposure to that light. That's probably too intense for that species of plant. So I think tucked against the background, kind of in a corner to minimize interactivity. It still has the visual and aesthetic impact that I'm looking for, but that's probably the way to go as opposed to having – I had initially set them up with three in each tank and one in the – part of it was to learn relative to the conditions what this would look like. So I had one in the middle, kind of one on either side, one getting more light exposure, one getting less. And definitely the winner of that is the less light exposure.

And any of those that weren't protected in some way, either by sort of a vertical structure or being tucked in a corner where they weren't inherently going definitely look worse for wear uh i would say so 18 across the the six tanks i'm probably at like four or five that are still doing okay what is this six weeks well probably two months in um so you know about a third a quarter to a third survival rate uh and they all show some show some wear fortunately they're not expensive plants and it definitely has been a learning experience. I can replace them easily enough. And I think, I think I've figured out, you know, those are just natural learning curve things, not a big deal.

And then in terms of having them paired up, that's probably just, might as well take them out. But in the long run, I'll just take those out before I'm going to do that. So, yeah, no, it's been super enjoyable. They're doing great. It's been great to see activity patterns out of them that are both consistent with what I would expect in terms of they're making great utilization of the subterranean hide situation. Gosh, I'm being Chuck over here. I got, you know, it's not chewy, it's Arnhem. But the, yeah, you know, they have vertical features that they're using to bask during the day. At night, they're hiding in the cork that's hidden underneath the dirt layer

there. They poke their heads out and watch me when I come in the room. All sorts of great interactive behavior that, yeah, has been super, super enjoyable. So it's been a learning process, but I'm still as excited about probably even more excited than I was because it particularly in terms of the animals themselves, it couldn't have gone better to this point. It's doing all the things that I want it to do and giving me the kind of ability to watch and interact and enjoy them. And all of them have transitioned to being in a glass box from being in tubs and stuff so that they're, I'm not seeing any problematic face rubbing or negative behavior on that. So yeah, it's been great. Very cool. Yeah. I, I had a similar thing. Well, I mean, just one large enclosure. I had bought it a while ago and it was just taking up space in my house over by the dog run or whatever. And so I finally got around to assembling the cage, taking it outside. It's one of those Dubia.com cages.

I don't know if you've seen those. They're pretty slick, but I mean, they have a screen top, so that's not my favorite. But other than that, they're pretty lightweight, easy to assemble. You know, they had sliding glass doors, which was nice. I had bought a bunch for the blue-tongued skinks, and they were not very tall, so kind of more of a skinky cage. And they've worked really well for those. So I thought, oh, I'll try one of these larger ones. So I bought a four foot by two foot by two foot or three foot or something.

It's a good size cage. And I put in some fake rock on the background wall. wall and uh robert uh over in the poconos uh he he gave me the idea to use the uh um oh the type of cement the hydraulic cement and um so i i got some of the the rigid you know foam the blue green stuff and then right my fake rocks and and coated it with the hydraulic cement and then painted it and it it worked like a charm i mean that stuff sets quick i i kept adding more because i thought it was too sloshy or you know too runny and then all of a sudden it's like hardening up and thickening up like really fast so i'm having to work as fast. I had to, you know, waste a bit of it. Cause I didn't know what I was doing at first. It's like, Oh, I added the amount of water it said to add,

and this is not great, but it was really a, so a little bit of a learning curve, but the rocks turned out really nice and pretty, um, robust even for a reasonably thin layer of the cement on them. I think I did two layers before painting and then yeah, threw the snakes in there and I, I, I, I built it for a pair of diamond bythons. So the diamonds are, have a lot of room to stretch out now and they're in very nice large enclosure and they're, you know, they're up on the rock walls basking in the morning and things like that.

So I've got a, the basking light coming on kind of biphasic right first thing in the morning. And then before the light shut, you know, turn off in the night, it comes on for maybe an hour or so. So, and they're still young, you know, so it's a, it's a large space for them, but I'm kind of the same point. Like, do I want to add some plants and different features like that? I've got some branches and stuff in there and they kept knocking them over so I had to screw them together and

get them a little more rigid to hold up to their activity. But yeah, they're very active and moving around so it's a lot of fun to see them in that environment. So, and then eventually I'll,

I'll probably vacate for just one of them for probably the female or, or the male, depending on what other cage I get for them. And then have, you know, similar or larger size for when they're adults. But yeah, it's kind of nice moving more towards this idea of, um, fewer animals, larger caging,

you know, that kind of thing. I'm really excited about that. And then I went to order more cages, but of course, none of the, none of those are available now. And so they're all like, Oh, are they, is that how that works? Okay. I don't know. You know, I, I don't know how long that's been because I, you know, like I said, this has been sitting around the house for a long time before I actually got around to using it. But, um, so yeah, we'll see how it works. I, I, I probably should like seal it, you know, run a bead of silicone or something in the corners, but I really haven't done that. I'm not, I'm not expecting it to be too wet, you know, or anything like that. Right. But I do, I'll spray them down every once in a while, just kind of give them a little rain. Just a shower or something. Diamonds tend to come from a place that gets some rain and is fairly humid. So I've got a nice size water bowl and things like that. But, yeah, it's pretty cool to see them in that larger cage now having them in a, a drawer, you know, a tub.

Right. So, um, yeah, that's, that's the, the fun of this whole thing, I guess, is being able to see them and watch them, you know, doing their thing. So been, been a good time. Um, and the fun of keeping stuff that doesn't, uh, just hide away all the time. Right. You know, I don't know how fun a naturalistic cage is for an Arabian Samboa. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, if they're doing what they're supposed to do in nature, you're never going to see them. Right.

But I guess the times that you do see them are maybe more exciting. Dunes, you know, or whatever. Yeah. Oh, that's true. Yeah, the Samboas. Did you see the second one? The second dune? Oh, that's true. Yeah. The sand boas. Yeah. Did you see the second one? The second dune? I did not.

It's pretty, it's pretty enjoyable. Heidi missed it too. So we're trying to, we were going to watch it last night, but my daughter had her friends over, so they occupied the TV room and we wanted to watch it on the big TV. So we'll have to wait for another day. Yeah. Um, I,

so I, I, uh, I've had some issues with some of the egg clutches. So all of the Aspidites eggs have gone bad. I got clutch. I got a clutch right before I left from the blackhead. And I basically collected the eggs as soon as she laid them.

Like, you know, cause I was hoping she would lay before I left, but it didn't seem quite right coming out. They're a little soft and I just, I'm like, so I'm wondering if I didn't get her hot enough before it was time to lay, you know, I, cause I, I had her light come on in the morning and off in the evening. And I set that up during the summer last year, but I don't think I had that in the spring. I think I gave her full, you know, day of basking, um, light, you know, heat in the cage. So that might've been the difference between last year and this year.

So I'll probably go back to, you know, turning the lights on for longer. And, and it was a kind of a mild spring, so it hasn't been too hot out there. So that might be the other, you know, it was just a little great. And she laid a lot later than she usually does. So, but yeah, I came home and the eggs are all bad. Um, all the warm eggs that I got earlier, uh, one, one clutch went bad pretty quick, but the second one looked okay, but they just kind of kicked off one after another. And I'm thinking maybe the same thing. They just didn't get warm enough before they were laid. And they kind of came pretty early.

So I got to fix that for next year too. I think the thing is getting them into larger enclosures with better thermal regulation opportunities. That's the key, I think, for those guys. So that's in the plans. The Antaresia eggs are doing well. I've got, you know, clutches from all, but my children's python clutch, I came home to a female who had laid and just scattered her eggs. And they didn't look like they were great eggs to begin with. So I've got the other three species, the two Sim the two Simpson Stimpsons. Well, I guess I

do have children. I, because they're children, but I do have a Western and Eastern Sims and some pygmies and some spotted zincubating now. So, um, the spotted didn't really wrap her eggs very well. And, uh, so hopefully they're okay. And then I didn't realize an Eastern stem had laid. And so I found those after they'd been in the enclosure and she didn't wrap them very well either. So, you know, a couple semi-desiccated clutches. And then I came back from Australia and the inland was sitting next to a clutch of desiccated eggs. And I was really bummed out about that because I really wanted to hatch out more inlands, but I threw them in the incubator, but I don't think it's going to be very productive to do so, but we'll see if they

maybe bounce back. But again, she wasn't wrapped around them, which is really surprising because she usually does a pretty good job at that. So I was bummed out to see that. So it might just be an entourage year. Right? Has it been a of years since you got some of the spotted or you, did you get some last year and it had been a gap before that? No, last year was a gap. And then I had some of the year before and the year before that. So I got them two years around and then they took the year off last year or I missed the eggs or something, but yeah. And so hopefully these ones, since they were desiccated for a bit and desiccation is kind of the killer in, in, in general, at least for the

pythons, but so hopefully I won't have a bunch of, you know, late stage death, uh, dead eggs. So we'll see, I guess that's the downside of going out of town. Exactly. Going out of town or the ambient, living where the ambient humidity is so much lower. Right. And I did Florida probably,

you know? Yeah. I didn't think the inland was going to lay quite so early. I thought I had more time. Like she would lay after I got back and I didn't even think to tell Heidi to check for eggs. And so I should have just said, Hey, keep an eye on this girl she could lay and I think I have another pygmy python clutch coming but that's about it for for this year maybe some of the spiny-tailed um right skinks and the western blue tongues might have some offspring. I really hope the Westerns.

Yeah. Some promising or some really cool things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which would be fantastic if I could get some more Westerns. I, that male, he's, he, he had a rough first year when I had him. I, for some reason there was a malfunction with the timer and the lights were staying

on in his enclosure all 24 hours. And I didn't realize it for a couple of weeks. And so messed him up a little bit that way. He got some, um, gout or something as a result of that. I'm not sure how that happened, but you know, so he was kind of a little, he, he hasn't been as aggressive in pursuing the females since that time. So I don't know know but he did produce the first year i had him so hopefully we can have to go again that would be fantastic but

so you can't keep them like veranus like frank kept veranus huh apparently what have we learned yeah i mean i guess that's a possibility although you, you know, I was in their habitat in South Australia and it was pretty dang cold. And we found, you know, we found a carcass of one in one of the tin sites we hit. And that's about all I've seen over there. Dead blue, Western blue tongues. I haven't seen a live one yet. I'm kind of disappointed about that. But hopefully I can

turn the tide with this later this year. We'll see if we can get lucky and see one up North, but they're a little less frequently observed up there, but maybe we'll get lucky. That'd be cool. Yeah. So yeah, that's, uh, that's what's going on here I guess in the reptile world I did get everything cleaned really well before I left so the reptile room's nice and tidy although of course when you come

back after two weeks there's messes to be cleaned but for the most part everything's still pretty pretty good and the mice did well nobody chewed out and infested the room. So that's always a bonus when your rodents are in good shape and come back. Yeah. And I, I mean, I, I thinned out the rodents quite a bit, so I reduced their numbers while I was gone just so it'd make it easier for Heidi

cause Heidi was watching everything. Yeah. I think that's always a good call. Um, just in terms of the food and water and stuff and the need to change them out and all that stuff, the not having him be super dense definitely makes a difference. For sure. Yep. So I was all in all, you know,

it was pretty, wasn't the worst, uh, I've come back to for sure. So no, no animals died. Although at work I had four animals die in my office even though I had a reptile guy keeping an eye on them while I was gone. It included two breeder

crested geckos that I just have as office pets. They've been alive for 8-10 years now and all of a sudden they die. I'm not quite sure what happened there. I'm like, so, and then I lost a, this baby morning gecko and a baby binos gecko. So the binos was kind of not, not, yeah, it lost its tail. It had duck shed, you know, know early on so it was kind of stunted anyway yeah but yeah that was kind of a bummer to come back i'm like heidi you've got i'm gonna just have you watch him in my office next time i'm gonna leave my key with heidi and she can swing by my office on her way home from work right check on them yeah i mean the question is i think

you could have probably just left them alone and they would have been more like that In retrospect I should have done that And just had Heidi check on their water Or something Yeah so What do you do Um I guess I paid Heidi a lot better than I I just asked my co-worker to do us a favor

But Um But yeah I mean, it's, uh, it's nice to get out of town and go see the world and especially Australia. That's, uh, where this took me. I want to hear all about it. Yeah. Well, should we get into that? Um, I guess we could flip a coin to see who goes first. Keep with the coin toss going. Sure. Okay, go ahead and call it.

It is tails. Yeah. I will choose to go first. Excellent. All right. I'm curious to hear it, though. That sounds great. Yeah.

Now, okay, so this, you know, Australia in May, which is coming into their winter, and we were in, I is coming into their winter. So it's, and we were in, uh, the, I had a conference for work and usually the conference is in March or April. So I was really disappointed that they didn't keep that timeframe this year, but they, they had it in, um, in May and, uh, it was a, you know, trip to Australia that was paid for by work. So I can't complain too much. So I figured, well, um, and my, my daughters, uh, so I'd taken my three oldest kids to Australia in 2016. So this was the two youngest, their turn to go.

And so I figured what better time to take them than the last two weeks of school. So I pulled them out of school and I'm a terrible dad. And we went to Australia and they had a blast. They got to see a lot of fun stuff. So, but my daughter, she actually graduated today, which is Thursday the 30th, which is also my oldest daughter's birthday. So happy birthday, Kate. Um, but, uh, so she, uh, she missed basically the last two weeks of school and she was kind of conflated whether or not she wanted to miss out on the last couple of weeks of school and all the activities that occurred during that time.

But so she chose, she made the right choice and chose Australia. So I thought, well, let's go somewhere tropical for the front end. So we, we went for two weeks and we did a week up in cans before the week of the conference. So this was just the vacation to cans. Um, so we actually flew into Brisbane and then caught a flight up to cans with Virgin airlines. Now I learned two important lessons with international travel is check the baggage limits because a cheap airline ticket, I mean, I got the tickets for us to go over for around 800, $880, right. Per ticket, which is, which is not bad at all. Right. Um, but we all had, we all thought, okay, let's just bring carry ons. We'll kind of pack light

and we'll wash clothes while we're over there or whatever. And, you know, I had to take a few more clothes cause I've got to look presentable for my conference and things like that. And I can't run around in shorts and a t-shirt for the week of the conference. And so, um, so I had to pack a little more. So we get to the, we're flying on Fiji air and then within Australia on Virgin airlines and we get there and you know, the, the ticket, you know, Australia's eight 80 and the ticket up to cans was one 50 round trip or one 60. So not bad. Yeah. Um, we get to the counter to check in for our flight, um, with, uh, Fiji and they said,

um, what we're going to have to weigh your bags. And so I, okay. And we put them up and their, their carry on allowance is 15 pounds, which is, which is nothing. I mean, Delta's Delta's carry on was double that, right? You can pack a normal carry on size bag, pretty full and Delta's not going to bat an eye, but Fiji airlines had us weigh everything. And then they said, you're going to have to check a bag. I'm like, okay, I guess we'll check a bag. And so we packed, you know, one bag full of as much heavy stuff as we could. And I said, okay, we'll check this one. And she's like, okay, that will be $287. No, no, sorry. $187. So $187 to check it one way. I'm like, awesome. Okay. So then, you know, coming back, I had to check. So that's almost $400 for one check bag to and from Australia. So our cheap $880 tickets turned out to be not so slightly going down. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, if you've got a heavy camera or a heavy, you know, guidebook or things like that, you know, keep that in mind, you know, when you pick your airline, check the baggage limit, you know, what, what,

how much you can carry on and let that be part of your decision. Cause you might want to choose a different ticket that includes a check bag or, or a greater weight allowance. Now I looked at our tickets to Australia in the fall and with American airlines, they have double that. So it's about 30 pounds or 35 pounds of carry on. Yeah. I've never even had the weight on a carry on come up as a question. Yeah.

Yeah. They did the same thing on Virgin once we, we got there and so i go to check the you know the bag for virgin airlines so and and they said 120 for the the bag if i'm like 120 i'm flying two hours to cans like that's basically a fourth ticket now yeah the tickets we bought were 150 bucks and so um she's like sorry that, that's, you know, she said, book it online on the way back and you'll save a lot of money. So I booked it on the online on the way back and it was only $60, but still there's another hundred and almost $200.

So we're up $600 on just checking bags. So that was kind of a bummer. So I don't know, keep that in mind. If you're traveling overseas, that can be kind of a bummer. So I don't know, keep that in mind. If you're traveling overseas, uh, that can be kind of expensive. It's, I guess it's like frontier air in the U S or some of those airlines that kind of nickel and dime you, you know, they, they say, Oh, our tickets are so cheap, but then once you, do you want to check a bag? Yeah. If you want it to be the experience you want to have, then yeah, it's not quite so cheap. Yeah. And so the kids weren't thrilled with Fiji Air and we had a layover in Fiji, which would be fantastic if you could go out and see the island and stuff. But their airport is pretty rinky dink.

I mean, it's okay. It's not the worst place. We've had to spend a couple hours. But, you know, it's smaller and not a lot of options for food or, you know, whatever. But we just kind of charged our phones and yeah, nothing. Well, we, we didn't really eat there because they're, they fed us on the plane. And so, you know, we'd already eaten a meal on the way to Fiji. And then it's like four hours from Australia to Fiji.

And then the rest of the other 10 or 12 hours. I don't know if they had coconut crabs or something that would have been pretty cool. Right. Coconut crab sandwiches. A little crunchy, but you know, uh, so, um, so we got up to cans and the first day was, uh, going out to the great barrier reef. And so I, I really had, um, had some great help from Matt Somerville. I asked him kind of his opinion because there were two islands that you could take a boat out to and do some snorkeling and see, you know, part of the Great Berry Reef. And so one of the islands was larger and it had like records for veranids and carpet pythons and stuff like that. So I was thinking, oh,

maybe we'll do that one. Because the last time we went with my, my other kids, we went to green Island. And so I was thinking, ah, you know, I've done green Island. Maybe I'll do this other Island and see some, um, cool reptile life. And I asked Matt, Hey, what's your opinion on this? He said, go green Island. It's got better reef. It's got, you know, much better sea life and the reptile life is slowing down. So you're probably not going to see much reptile life. So go with the, you know, the, the Great Barrier Reef stuff. And, and so we did. And then on the way over to Green Island, this time there was a, a, uh, marine biologist on board that was kind of talking to people and trying to sign them up for a little side trip or whatever. Um, and

she said, um, here's the spot to go to for snorkeling. And that was the, not the spot that I went to the previous time with the kids. And this, the boat over that time seemed more like just a, just a cattle boat. You know, they're like, it was packed to the gills. It was a much larger boat. There were people everywhere. And most of them were, were tourists. And then the beach that everybody was on was just packed. There were people everywhere and most of them were tourists. And then the beach that everybody was on was just packed. There were people everywhere. So it was not, you know, the best snorkeling experience I've ever had. But, you know, we still saw some cool fish and things like that.

This time around, we went to the other side. We were the first ones off the boat. We got, you know, prime beach location and to put our stuff and went in and it was fantastic. There was so much cool sea life. We saw a couple hurdle, uh, turtles. So we got some sea herping in there, you know, we saw, uh, three or four, uh, green sea turtles. And then, uh, I, uh, we saw just some, you know, like a clown fish swimming in a bright blue anemone and a couple attending. That's cool. They're like blackfish with white spots.

I can't remember the name of them, but kind of cool. And they were hanging out with the clownfish kind of near the anemone. It was kind of a fun little thing. That's very cool. Under the dock, we swam along under the dock and there were schools of fish and you're just swimming. And, you know, it was fantastic. Now, my friend from Arizona that I do the canyoneering with, he had a 360 camera that he would take on our canyoneering trips. And he also took one on a trip we did to Mexico for snorkeling.

And he got some fantastic footage of like sea lions and other fish and stuff. And so I, I bought the same camera that he has, so I could try to get some cool footage and, you know, in the Great Barrier Reef. So I'm, you know, I, I practiced with it on land and I took a bunch of videos and edited them and stuff like that. So I kind of knew how to use the camera, but I bought this kind of inexpensive underwater housing and I would push the same button and I'd start, you know, swimming around with this thing underwater. And then I realized like halfway through after we'd seen the turtles and all that kind of stuff that it wasn't recording. It wasn't turning on like it would on land. And I have no clue why it did that to me.

And so then I had to like figure out how to get it to start. So I made sure it was recording and then I would film. But luckily I got it figured out before I saw a woebegong shark, which are those really cryptically patterned and colored sharks. They have like tentacle frill type thing on the side of their mouth. So they look really cool and bizarre. I don't really think they have much of a dorsal fin, but really cool sharks. And so I followed that thing around and got some footage on the camera. The other thing this housing did, the underwater housing did was it's prevented the 360 filming. And so it was just filming straight out one side and straight out the other side. So I didn't get, again, I didn't get the footage I thought I was getting and wasn't, and wasn't able to get some cool, um, footage of the, of the shark, but I still got something of it.

You know, at least I could get a screenshot and have a picture of it if I, you know, just to prove that I'd seen it. But because of the, uh, marine biologist said she's only seen one of those in the, you know, coastal waters off of Australia. So that was kind of exciting. That was kind of a rare find. And then we saw, it looks really cool. Yeah. They're, they're neat looking. Um, and then we saw what, uh, the lionfish, those kinds of, you know, the frilly, uh, fish, it was a dark, like black, black and white one. It was pretty cool looking. I saw a white tip reef shark, you know, some,

just a bunch of cool tropical fish, um, on the Great Barrier Reef. So it was a fantastic experience. The girls had a great time, um, saw a lot of cool fish. They saw the turtles and they didn't see the woebegong or the white tip shark, but they saw the other stuff. So, and I think one of them saw something cool. I think they saw a bunch of clownfish, you know, that were in a little group and some anemones. So kind of a fun, fun trip for sure. And I would definitely recommend Green Island. And I'm very thankful to Matt for his advice in that regard.

The next day was another Matt advised trip because he works at Hartley's Crocodile Farm. So I asked him, hey, should we come out to Hartley's? And he said, well, it's, it's more like a zoo. It's more like seeing them in a, because they're, it's like a lagoon that they built and they're captive crocs. Basically they're not wild crocs. And he said he would, he would recommended the solar whisper tour up on the Dane tree and said, they're really good company and they, you know, do good things. So he's, he recommended them. So we went with his advice again. It was a really great trip there. We saw four, four or five crocodiles out, uh, one large female and a few juveniles. So, um, again, really cool. Uh, he spotted a green tree snake that was clear up in

this tree. I don't know how he spotted it, but I was pretty impressed with that. And I saw a few cool birds and other things around there. And then there were some white-lipped tree frogs that were on the boat. I stood up to look at the croc, and there's a tree frog right at head height. So it was kind of cool. So I got to see some herps there just right on the boat. And then, uh, we drove up and went out to like Mount Carbine and, and gelatin and some of those areas and herped for several hours, probably from dark about six,

eight, 6 PM to around midnight when we got back to the hotel and saw two brown tree snakes and a couple frogs and that was about it. So herping was pretty slow even up there in the tropics. There was a record of a pygmy banded python up in that area from like a few nights before we got there. So I was thinking there's a good chance that we could see him, but didn't get lucky. So no, no pythons on this trip, unfortunately, but so, uh, the next day we went and did like, uh, some hikes. Uh, we went to Mossman Gorge and then we, uh, headed down to, um, after the crocodile tour, we did Mossman Gorge and we went down to, uh, the table lands and did a little bit more herping, but it was raining really hard. Um, but we stayed at this cool eco lodge and, you know,

it was a fun little spot and the girls had a good time. And then we, um, the next day we went out to the waterfalls, like Mila Mila and that kind of thing, more of a touristy type stuff. And, and there was a turtle, I think it was a saw-shelled turtle, uh, by Mila Mila falls. There were like three basking on a branch and unfortunately too, too bailed before I could get my camera out. So I only got pictures of, uh, the smaller one. And then we drove out to Eddie Bay and checked out the cassowaries and played on the beach and stuff. So we saw three cassowaries, one, which was in somebody's backyard. And the, this guy and his grandkid were in the backyard, just hanging out with the cassowary. And it was there for quite a while i mean we we drove uh i drove past there we saw him you know hanging out with the cassowary

and then we drove down to the beach and then back again and on our way out it was still out there hanging out with the family it was kind of crazy so this wild cassowary just hanging out in somebody's yard with them so they're not the uhome, dangerous beasts they're made out to be. Um, and then we went back to cans, uh, next day, we just kinda, what did we do? I think we did some shopping in town or my daughter got a dress for graduation. And then we blew back down to Brisbane and drove out to, uh, gold or surfers paradise, gold coast, that area. And that's where the conference was. So the next week we were in a hotel, um, just right off the beach, a couple blocks. And so the girls spent most of their time down at the beach. Um, the

first night we got there, I thought, well, I've got a rental car. I've got, uh, got things ready to go. So I'm going to go look for some, uh, leaf tail geckos. Cause there were plenty of records of leaf tail geckos in may. Like they're not shy of the cold weather, I guess. So I, I got in the car and I headed out. And as I was leaving, um, my coworkers were coming back from dinner. So I kind of honked at honk the horn at them. They're like, who's this a-hole? You know, I'm like, and then, oh, it's Justin. That's the a-hole. And so, um, I'm like, you guys, you guys want to go look for some geckos with me? And they're like, sure. So three of them grabbed their, uh, jackets and jumped in the car. Now I was in shorts and a t-shirt and feeling, you know, pretty confident that that would be enough. And I get out of the car up on Mount Tambourine and it is like 50 degrees Fahrenheit, very

cold. And I could see my breath and like, I immediately start shivering and chattering my teeth and stuff. So I'm like, this is not what I was expecting. And, and, you know, and I'm like hoping they're going to be out. Sure enough, the first large tree we looked at, there were, there was a pair of them hanging out on the tree. So very easy, uh, quick find and took some photos and I had, you know, I had a good flashlight. So now here's, here's where things kind of went funny. Um, I had packed all

my headlamps and charging cables for the headlamps in this little mesh bag type thing that I that's what I keep my headlamps in. And it was a little heavier and I knew my my backpack was a little heavy. So I gave them to my daughter because her bag was lighter. So I said, here, put these in your bag. And then we get to Australia and I'm like, okay, let's get ready to go out and look for stuff. Where's the headlamps. I'm like, I gave it to one of you guys. I couldn't remember which daughter I gave it to. I'm like, who has the headlamps? And they're like, oh, they're not in my bag. And I checked my bags back and forth. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I gave

it to you guys. And they're like, well, we probably put it back in your bag to check it, you know, cause they were heavy. I'm like, oh, good point. So I'm looking through my check bag. They're not there. They're not any of them. So I checked my youngest daughter's bag. They're not in her bag. My other daughter's like, I, dad, I checked my bags thoroughly.

They are not there. Don't, don't worry about it. You know, like you, you lost them somewhere. So I'm like, great. You know, there's a three, $400 worth of, you know, lights gone somewhere along the way, probably when we were reshuffling stuff. And so I was kind of bugged about that the whole trip. I'm like, if only I had my headlamps. And then we get home and we're unpacking and, and all of a sudden there's the headlamps on my bed in the little bag.

And I'm like, where did these come from? And Grace is like, oh yeah, I put them on. I put it, I put your chargers on the bed. I'm like, this is the headlamps.

And she's like, oh, I thought it was a bag of chargers. I'm like, why would I have a whole bag full of chargers that weighed that much? Like, did you not think to look in there? I was like,

why didn't you ask me about them while we were in Australia? Didn't you? I just figured you didn't need them. I'm like, Oh, that was quite humorous, quite hilarious. What do you do?

Better than being gone for sure. You know, that's the alternative. Exactly. Cause I definitely need them this week. So, um, that's another thing is remember who you give your equipment to and who's mulling your equipment um see a similar thing happened on our trip to uh arizona one year i had packed a sleeping bag and a tent and a pad and i

was gonna sleep you know in the tent on the side of the road and I get ready to go to bed and I can't find my tent or my sleeping bag I can only find the pad and I'm like what the heck I swear this was here you know and so I spent a cold night in the car with like my jacket on and laying on the pad in the back seat of the car and then I get home and I'm cleaning out the car. I fold up the seat. Everything was under where I'd folded the seat down. I'm like, oh, I'm such an idiot.

I just thought I was going crazy, you know? So yeah, those kinds of things can plague a trip. If you forget where you put something or give it to somebody who doesn't know what it is. Yeah, good times. So yeah, we went up to the mountain a couple of times. I took some friends that were from the conference, a couple of scientists that were, one of them's into reptiles. He keeps like, uh, green tree pythons and some other cool stuff. He's from Czech Republic.

So he lives in Prague area. And incidentally, I found out the conferences in Prague in two years. So in 2026, we'll be going back to Prague. So last time I was there was 2002. So that'll be pretty fun to go back there. And then the other guy is a macro photographer. So he's got like, he's taken all these cool pictures of bugs and spiders and stuff like that. So I said, hey, you want to go along? I'm sure we'll see some spiders and things like that out there. And he's like, definitely, I'm there. So the three of us went up, and I was a little better prepared in terms of clothing

and had a hoodie and long pants this time, but I forgot my big flashlight. So this time we're walking around with our cell phone lights through the jungle. And we still managed to find six leaf tails, two each. That was kind of cool. And, man, my buddy got some really crazy cool macro shots. One, he was taking a picture of a huntsman and didn't realize that it was eating a smaller spider until he, you know, looked at the photos and was editing them. So he's got this crazy closeup, you know, macro shot of a spider's face as it's holding onto this other spider chewing on it. And it's pretty cool.

And man, their eyes, like they've got those eight eyes just right kind of on the front of their head and pretty cool predators. Pretty neat to see him that close up. And I mean, it's got all the little hairs and spots on their, their pattern on their legs and stuff. It's pretty amazing. So I'm looking forward to seeing that. He got a really cool shot of a gecko eye as well. So I'm looking forward to seeing those.

Because those swain eye, um southern leaf tails are really cool looking lizards really beautiful i think in total we saw uh we saw them saw the animals 12 times but a couple were repeat so i think we got nine uh individuals different individuals so pretty uh common species and one was at a different mountain range so we saw one further south and it was really beautiful it was on this green rock uh outcrop and there was just a little crack and it was just exiting the crack to start its evening or whatever so it was cool just to see that in situ i wish wish I would have got a video of it. I got a couple of photos of it at least, um, as found. Um, and then I, I should have taken a quick video, but that was fun to see, see that.

And I had my girls on that hike, so we got to see that together. But, uh, other than that, the reptile life was very slow, especially down South. We didn't, I didn't even really bother going out road cruising much, but we did do a couple of trips. I went and visited Troy Kuligowski and his mom, Joy and Deb and Wayne Larks and Chris Smith came out to dinner. So it was really cool to see my Queensland friends and catch up with them and, um, see Troy's kids, man. They've grown up a ton and Deb and Deb's daughter, Tay. So it was really fun to see all the kids that last we saw, you know, eight years ago.

So they'd grown up quite a bit. Yeah. It's pretty neat. And to catch up with Troy. So we drove out there a couple of times. So we were driving, you know, I was hoping to see maybe a coastal bearded dragon or, you know, some cold tolerant carpet Python making his way or something, but, uh, it's not nothing. Um, but I, um, you know, again, the benefit of being a birder and a herper, I got

60 species of bird. So when, when the reptiles are not abundant then you can go looking for birds it's hard to beat a cassowary that was probably my favorite bird that we found but oh i i failed to mention too in mossman gorge we did see a uh voids forest dragon which around the same spot that i'd seen them the two previous times i'd made that hike so it's a great great spot uh i i love those lizards. They're one of my favorites. And this one was just right on the side of the trail. Like several people walked past us, didn't notice it at all. Even though that I I'm kind of standing there looking at it, you know, I, I, I did put down the camera just to make sure I wasn't, you

know, uh, inhibiting or I don't know, but you'd think they'd see this lizard sticking out of the side of a tree right next to the trail, but I guess not. It stood way out to me. I was like, Whoa, there's one right there. Nice. And just like you, you picture it. It's always fun to finally see one, you know. Yeah, very cool. And then we did do a little herping at night around the curtain fig and there was like a small skink that was sleeping on a leaf, you know,

that was just all sundown. No chameleon geckos? No chameleon geckos. And the spot that I had found on INAT to look for chameleon geckos, it said like some state forest and And so I thought, Oh, this is a hiking trail through the state forest. There was no in like entrance to get into the state forest.

So I'm like, yeah. Yeah. So I guess that's another aspect of doing your research is like, fine. I don't know, making sure that it is an accessible place. Because it was all like private land. All the things were marked, no trespassing and things like that. So we did go see platypus. So that was my first time seeing a wild platypus. We saw three or four of those uh swimming around and there were two that were

interacting with each other like swimming around like doing little battles or you know mating or something going on interacting at least yeah exactly uh maybe courtship but they were collecting like grass and weeds from the side and then taking it up into a burrow and stuff it was really cool to sit and watch them and this was like first thing in the morning as the sun was rising, we had the whole place to ourself. The evening before, just as it was getting dark, there were like 10 people there, you know, kind of making a crowd. So we're like, and we, and it was getting too dark to photograph them.

So like, let's just come back in the morning. Cause they're active, you know, kind of nocturnally and got some really great views of them and sat and watched them for a while. So that was cool. But yeah, all in all, a really nice trip. It was nice to get back up into Cairns area and see some of the old sites and, and, and especially to get the girls to some of the same places that their siblings went and to meet some of the same friends over in Australia.

And it was just a fantastic trip all around. A little light on the herps, but good for sightseeing and friendship and all that good stuff. And I gave two talks at the conference. So that went well. Yeah. Did you? And that went good? Yeah.

Yeah, that went pretty well too. Awesome. I even put up some pictures of the brown tree snake and the cassowary and the dragon, the forest dragon. Integrated them into the presentation to give the local color. They have a drink called Big Sars, like the sarsaparilla. They call it Big SARS. And so I put up a picture of that. And then there's the sign for Hendra, which is the name of a virus that's very lethal and dangerous that was first identified in Australia, probably in the Hendra area. And so I took a picture of my daughters underneath the Hendra sign, you know, kind of the welcome to Hendra sign or whatever.

And then so I said, you know, I drank a big sars. I've seen dragons and dinosaurs and serpents. And we walked through Hendra and saw the fruit bats and we're still standing. Australia's been good to us. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah. Cool. Always good to us. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah. Cool.

Always good to get back there, but I would say, don't go on a herb trip in May. You're probably not going to see too much. Right. If you have your, well, and maybe that gets,

gets a part of the discussion topic, right. That we're going to have here is in terms of planning. So if you're not constrained by the conference, right, like, I suppose that's, that's a certainly a valuable step in terms of, hey, looking at time of year, right? So how, as you're ideating a trip, what does that look like on your end in terms of saying, okay, are you looking at records for things? Is it your own sort of impressions of the weather? Do you want to be solidly into a season?

You know me, I love a shoulder season and that can either turn out great or not, right? Relative to, well, maybe it's not when you're going to run into as much traffic from other folks, but you're that much closer to the weather being, oh, if it gets unseasonably cold a week early, then that, you know, can be a challenge. Yeah. And I mean, I have I have, have had a couple trips like that. I, you know, the South Australia trip was a little bit of a shoulder season trip. We did see some really great stuff and had a good trip, but I think it might've been better

served rather than going to South Australia, maybe going to Northern territory, you know, same kind of thing with this. The idea to go up to cans was to get, get someplace a little warmer. And it was about 10 degrees warmer during the day and night. And so, you know, we still had a chance of seeing stuff. And again, when I'm with my kids, it's not full on her, you know, time. So we're doing a little more touristy stuff. So, um, I probably could have seen more stuff if I would have had the time. If that was the focus of the trip.

Yeah, sure. Exactly. But I mean, I did go on iNaturalist and look at the records. And it's nice you can filter for the month. And so I filtered for the month of May, saw what has been seen and kind of which ones have been seen more frequently. Obviously, the leaf- leaf tail geckos were active throughout, you know, all the winter there's records in May, June, July, August, you know, so, you know, they're active. So that was kind of like one of the main targets for further

South and Brisbane area, um, to see a leaf tail gecko because they're, you know, easy to find abundant and active during the colder area. And that was very successful. We saw plenty of those, you know, and they were really cool geckos. I really enjoyed seeing the swain. And now I kind of think maybe it would be cool to do like a trip where you mountain range hop and see, you know, 10 different species of leaf tail gecko, make your way all up to, all the way up to like the cape cape york peninsula and see um that weird exumus or whatever with the long neck that'd be kind of right fun trip to do yeah

but yeah absolutely i mean some of those are it's it's an access thing right so that i know because i was looking on pretty closely for when we had gone with uh ke Teresa, Matt Minitola, and Eric, that I had looked at it saying, hey, this one actually seems pretty doable, that sort of stuff. And the answer is some of them are pretty doable and others, it's kind of access issues, whether it's like what you're describing or just the practicalities of doing it relative to the vehicle that you might have. You know, what kind of vehicle does it take to get up there? And then what does it look like? And, yeah, what does it look like? And, yeah, what does the task entail?

It's definitely doable, absolutely. But I can say from having looked at a real in-depth level at the ones that happened to be close by, kind of where we had planned to be and all that, that we saw the swaying eye as well. We went out with Scott and Ty to Mount Tamarine, and that was the facility's incident that unsettled Scott. But that's all right. So, yeah, we did see that one. But in terms of the other ones that were kind of, hey, maybe we can run over here. One of them seemed relatively doable, but it was, I mean, we were talking like three hours a single way, you know, and that sort of thing, which always then becomes, well, how do we want to maximize our available time and all that? Yeah. Cool idea, though.

Could be cool. And it looks like the guys from, is it Extreme Herping, the YouTube channel? Oh, what's his name? Yeah, I don't know why I'm trying to think of names, but, uh, pain last name pain, um, and his herping companions. What's his name? Anyway, they just released part one of a trip to find three, um, different leaf-tailed species in three days. So the first part, they found the first one. So I believe that was, was it Maritzi, Maritzi, that species. So I can't remember what they called the common name on that one, but the common names for those aren't really helpful in a lot of cases anyway.

But yeah, Maritzi, it was a cool looking gecko and they, they, I think they searched for quite a while and ended up finding a couple like after 12 or one in the morning and then all of a sudden seeing them and even trees they checked on the way in, they were finding them on. Right. So, and, um, but yeah, that was, it's, it's fun to kind of see what they prefer because, you know, the first trip up there to, um, Tamb yeah, that was, it's, it's fun to kind of see what they prefer because, you know, the first trip up there to, um, tambourine, I was searching every tree pretty, you know, closely. And then by the second trip, you know, what trees they're on there because all the ones

you found were on the same kind of tree. And so you focus your, your, uh, attempts a little easier. Now those wait a while bushes are fun, aren't they? The wait a while plan. Yeah. So I haven't run into, I haven't, uh, literally run into any of those. The one thing I had to highlight there is, you know, if you had your headlamps and you can, I shine them as well. I know that was the technique that we were using when we were going around, but I mean your headlamps, you know, so there you go. Yeah, exactly. I don't have much luck getting

an eye shine off of them. I even, after we'd found a couple, I was trying to practice it. Right. You know where to look. Yeah, exactly. I know where it is and I'm trying to like see it. And I think it's my bad eyes. I just have my, my distance vision is getting poor. So maybe if I had glasses on, maybe I'm seeing eye shines, but right now if I, I, I get a little like discombobulated when I wear my glasses on a hike, I just, my depth perception is off. And so I tend to not wear them on the hike. And usually I can see stuff within the beam of the light, you know? So, but except for eye shines, I guess at a distance,

but maybe I can learn to do that. I don't know. Everybody's like, Oh yeah, they stand out like a sore thumb with their eye shines. I'm like, I can't do that. I don't know. Everybody's like, oh yeah, they stand out like a sore thumb with their eyes shining. So I'm like, I can't see that. But yeah, I think, um, in planning, you know, I'll, I'll pick a few targets and then look at when they're most active, you know, when the most records are occurring now that could also be, be, uh, um, when people are looking exactly. Yeah. Yeah. If they know this is the month to go look for them, then obviously they're going to plan a trip during that month. And so

then the record number count will go up during that month. And then they'll say, Oh, that's the only month they're active. Well, no, it's just because everybody thinks that's when they're active. So they're all looking and the ones that find them, find them cause they're out looking. And, you know, so that kind of goes along with your shoulder season idea that you're still going to find stuff, even if it's not the peak. But you might have a better chance when it's peak. And like you said, there's other confounding factors like traffic. You know, more people looking means you might not spot it first and you might have a friend that's sitting photographing it when you roll up on them. But so but that's kind of the way I go about it is try to see if I can find some papers or or records or something to kind of give an indication of when they're most active. So I try to plan a trip where the majority of my targets are likely to be found active. That's kind of the way I pick a spot and pick a

target species and pick a time to go. Now, of course, when you're planning a trip, especially overseas, you're not doing it the week before or the month before, maybe three or four. In our case, we bought tickets to Darwin in January for an October trip. So we've already picked the dates, whether or not those dates are going to have a cyclone occur or some crazy weather pattern. And we've had it both ways, where it winds up perfectly and where it doesn't. Yeah, for sure. And even when it doesn't line up perfectly, we still seem to find stuff and have a good trip. In this last trip to Australia was no exception.

You know, I saw some really cool animals. The swain eye were lifers and I think that little skink was a lifer. So, you know, you see stuff and you're going to have a good time regardless of whether or not you see all your targets and sometimes it's nice to still have a target to go find which is pretty easy to do in australia because there's so many cool species and some are fairly difficult to find unless you're you guys and you just go out and find an owen pelly no problem for some people that takes multiple you know trips and planning and things like now we just need to find another one to get a better picture. That's all right. Exactly. Exactly. That's, is that asking so much?

So when I would say to you in terms of seasonality, yeah, no, I, well, I was just going to say in terms of on, I, not, I think people, as you implied there, people can get led astray by being too reliant upon, oh, I'm going in May, so I'll filter it down to only be May. My perspective is to say I'll kind of – if I do – if it's something where there are a lot of records and I want to get really fine detailed with it, because I do find that if it's something where there aren't a ton of records, then I'll just take them all in and try and make an evaluation. If it's something where there's a ton or I'm really trying to be hyper-specific to a particular place or type of habitat, then I would probably do May and July. Because it obviously depends what the seasonal weather factor is, right? If it's rain, then maybe it won't be just sort of the binary within the, you know, calendar month within the year. If it's a rain season, then maybe it's

going to be these three months that are heading into the wet, you know, or heading into coming out of or however that would situate. But in general, right, I wouldn't want to be so specific as to say just May. I would say, oh, it's May and July or depending on what the conditions are, like if we're if it's North America, right, if we're looking for something here, then I might look at it and say, OK, spring and'm going in April, then I'll say everything between, say, September and April I'll include because all of that theoretically is then within the same or worse theoretical conditions, right? In terms of something in January, yeah, that's unlikely, you know, those conditions are probably worse, but I'm willing to include that in my sort of search area. It's June, July, and August that are probably not the conditions that I would see, whereas everything else is inclusive. It might be worse, but it's inclusive.

So just some little thoughts and tips on that. Sure. And there's the other aspect of INAP that it does show kind of that graph of the records for the species. Absolutely, by species, right? You know, yeah. You can see kind of when they're peaked. And that graph of the records for this. Absolutely. By species, right. You know, yeah. You can see kind of when that can definitely give you an idea. Yeah. Yeah.

I can help guide you in the right direction. So, and, and I would suggest too, you know, if I, I appreciate like the shoulder concept and, you know, going, going kind of in shoulder season, but if you're planning a trip to like Australia or, or Southeast Asia or something, try to hit the peak, you know, even if you're, if there's other people out there looking, but try to hit the kind of the peak activity time when you're more likely to see them and that kind of thing. And, and I think that'll differ for different species, you know, some species, the heat of the summer and they're found more active and others like the spring and others like swain, I don't really care, might be easier to find in the winter because they're slower.

Less foliage. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of different considerations to take in. But, you know, that's the fun of planning, right? That makes it exciting. And I mean, you can even just kind of say, I'm just going to go over there and see what I find and not really plan much. But that can. That can backfire for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Or being too reliant upon, you know, when we had it with, you know, our first Australia trip and it sort of changed my mindset around the whole thing of saying, you know, we had at that point had seven years of NPR shows with people saying, oh, when you come here, we'll take you to play. We'll tell you, we'll give you all the info, give you all the spots and whatever. And then like the rubber met the road. And, you know, yeah. Where do we go? And that was the fundamental thing that I was like, never again was being in a spot of saying, uh, it's one thing to say, Hey, do we want to go do want to do a, B or C? Uh, you know, we're having conversations about that right now, you know, for this coming

week, what do we want to do? That's totally fine. But sitting there going, um, I don't know what to do, or I don't feel prepped to make a choice or, you know, in our own conversation, we're saying, hey, we should ask the guys. And it's like I don't even want to put them in that spot because there's no way that they're prepped to answer that question with given educated, you know, responses they'll feel confident in though. The answer will be, am I going to be team Justin or team Rob on this one? You know? And it's like, well, yeah, we won't even ask. We got to work it out between the two of us, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's definitely, you know, the person, uh, Rob and I are both kind of heavy planners, like, like to have a good solid plan, a, B and C, you know, to, to rely on. So so we we don't find ourself because i think both of us have been in that situation where we're kind of like going oh we're we're way too reliant on something else or or bad intel or just like online stuff that doesn't show you that there's a fence

that says no trespassing so you definitely need a b plan and a c plan so when you get to the plan a and it's like no trespassing, you can go, oh, that's okay. I've got a plan B or I'll head over here. I'll have this direction because it looks similar. Yeah. So, or the weather, you know, especially, yeah. If it's something where there is a big difference in the local conditions between a place, you know, an hour this way and an hour that way or whatever, then, uh, yeah. Having the flexibility to have investigated all these different options and it might not be the same species, but hey, I know that there's something we can do over here. That flexibility is super important. While I'm the person who loves the

comfort of a bathroom and a bed and a shower more so than other people do, at the same time, within that plan, there's the flexibility to say, everything else. Right. OK, this is where we're going to wind up. And that could be easier or harder or better or worse. Right. But there still has to be that degree of flexibility to say it's not the itinerary is a suggestion. And it's, you know, then in the mind, there are alternatives as opposed to saying, nope, we're going here, even though, uh, it doesn't look promising. Hey, it still might pay off. You know, we have found plenty of stuff when it didn't seem promising or whatever, but in general, you want to try and juice your odds as much as you can. Yeah. And I guess too, I mean, even if you don't spend the night at the Airbnb and you say instead, Hey, the weather's great

here, let's drive four hours and we're going to sleep in the car or sleep on the side of the road or something. And then, yeah, we did that in, in Darwin, um, back in 2011, we spent a night sleeping on the top of the car and on the road and other guys are sleeping in the car, you know, it was, it wasn't the best sleep, but it got us, uh, got us through the night. That's all right. Yeah. I think we run back to the Airbnb. Having the ability to choose that is always easier. Exactly. In terms of saying we could – yeah, we can go back or we can stay here, but at least we have the choice.

And like having that set up so that that's the – we'll run into this on our upcoming trip. We'll see where that – we'll put this to the test because we won't have that contingency for one evening and we'll see how it goes. Yeah, that will be interesting. I guess worst case, we could pull out of there and find a cheap hotel somewhere on the way. I mean I think we're going to have to pull out and go a fair way. That's true. But it is possible that it could work out that way or we could be walking around in the dark all night and pull out in the morning,

which sounds pretty great either way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I kind of wouldn't mind if we were there in the daylight to see, you know, the grounding area, cause that's a pretty fantastic place to, to just see in the dark is not that exciting i guess is what i'm saying you know seeing that place in the light is going to be a highlight of some people's trip i would think you know um anyway uh yeah i think that's that's a good way to go about now now those that uh idea of flexibility can be taken to the extreme too. I know that, uh, Jordan Parrott was telling me a story when he was out herping and he

and a couple of friends and he said, it looks like the conditions over here are perfect. Um, and, and, you know, we could go see a Rosie boa here in California and then we could head over to Arizona and, you know, catch a green rat and then we can head over to Texas and see, you know, like he's rat and then we can head over to Texas and see, you know, like he's like the weather pattern is flowing this way. So if we follow it, we'll catch it. And he, he did that. He drove from California to Arizona to, to Texas in like a couple of days, you know, just pretty much all driving, but they found all the targets they were looking for and got some pretty spectacular snakes. And he's like, you know, if we would have just stayed in one place, we only would have

seen one of the targets, but instead we got three. But that's a lot of driving. I don't think I could handle that. And I mean, you know, you and I kind of have different ideas of trips sometimes and the length of distance that you go. And I think the older I get, the more I'm going to side with you. I want to stick to a smaller area with less driving, but I guess next week's trip is a little bit of a deviation from that for you. Well, it's not nothing. I mean, so even when

we had gone to Queensland two years ago now in the fall, right. The one I had referenced before, it's actually pretty similar to this, at least on my end. You're the one who's, you know, really suffering with it because you got a double dose on the end. From my vantage, it's probably about the same because we had landed in Brisbane and then drove up to Yipoon. And that, yeah, that's about the same drive. It's even distance-wise, I'm not sure what it is, but in terms of time on that first day, and we were coming off of the flight to Australia, landing in Brisbane,

I think it was eight or nine hours. You know, certainly, yeah, basically about the same same deal. And that was made all the more exciting by, as you said, you know, tropical storm type weather. And, you know, you know, on the opposite side of the road and, you know, they're all looking at me like, well, you know. So Eric drove when we were in the city before it started raining and we got some food and and then it was like all right you're up slugger and uh yeah i think it was unfortunately google maps didn't account for it's just a two-lane road undergoing serious construction at that point so um i had mentioned it to the guy who managed the place where we wound up staying up there. And he had a laugh when I said, oh, it says it's going to be eight hours. And he was like, yeah, well, try it in a couple of that and you'll be all right.

So, yeah, pretty similar in that respect. But I guess my thought process on that and sort of what we're doing on this trip again, except save for you, is to go to your furthest extent and then work your way back so even if on the front end day it means you gotta there is something like that to to get you where you're going then we spent the rest of the trip working our way back down yeah towards where we're going to fly out of yeah um i i forgot, to mention on the trip up to Cairns, we got into Cairns and there's a road that I herped before a couple of times and I was really excited to get back to it. And we get out there and drive up there and there's a big gate across it and it says road closed to, to vehicles. And I'm like, what, what?

No, this is, this is the best, best you know herping spot or herping road in in the area you know especially in the town of Cairns and I asked uh Matt and he said oh yeah that that road had some pretty heavy damage from the cyclone and they haven't fixed it up and so it's just closed and he said all the all the great herping spots in Cairns are pretty much closed now. So kind of a bummer to hear that. I guess next time I go up there, I'll get one of those lime scooters with a light on the front and just scoot up there. I think you could go through on a pedal bike or something and go cruise that road on a, on a scooter or a line bike or something. Yeah. When we had gone, um, on the first trip,

the first snake I saw in Australia was a small eyed snake on that road. Um, and, uh, I was by myself because Chris and, uh, Eric's flight, there is a, some sort of issue on the front end. So I knew that they were going to have to take a later connection. And there was an NPR, what, Brettles roundtable that featured Eric talking to Qantas or whomever it was about the whole thing. He was pretty absent. It was one of the first times in a while at least that he'd been absent or mostly absent. The train wouldn't – Nick, what do you think about this?

Then followed up by the train whistle, which was all too perfect. So, yeah, a ton of fun stuff out of that one. But anyway, I was by myself. First time driving the vehicle intended to be driven on the left side of the road, all this stuff. It's dark, and it's very windy, that particular road. And so, yeah, I'm stopped in the middle of the road, and I'm like, okay, is that a slaty gray or is that a small-eyed snake? And I was like, well, it looks like a Mexican black kingsnake with a pink belly. And I was, you know, convinced. I couldn't get a proper photo, and I have nothing, so I'm just sort of stepping around it with my feet, trying to contain it in the middle of the

road and all this stuff. It was, it was, uh, it was pretty good. And, uh, having seen now when, uh, the most recent trip, having seen a small snake, I was like, absolutely. This is what it was. You know, I didn't have a great photo from which to determine it. I thought that's what it was. Scott was like, no, it wouldn't have been that. It was Lady Gray. No, but having seen one now, absolutely, that's what it was. And, yeah, so that's a pretty cool memory. But then to your point about the road being closed, the next day,

yeah, the next morning, I was then like, oh, I'll take, you know, Chris and Eric were in tow then. I was like, let's go up there. And it was closed at that point for a bicycle race. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And when we went up there in 2016, yeah, same kind of thing. I think they were just training though. There wasn't a race, but I think there was a sign that was saying this road will be closed. And this was a whole ton of people. It was like, wow. But to the point of, okay, what do we do now? That was the plan for this morning. You know, we were relying upon relying on the info

and all this stuff. So, yeah. Well, we just went back to the hotel and went to sleep. That was our B plan, unfortunately. And, and I mean, in retrospect, it was probably about the only thing we could do because, as Matt said, there's not much elsewhere to go. So unless you're cruising neighborhoods or something, you know. So yeah, it was kind of a bummer. But what do you do? Even the one to the falls? Is that one closed as well at this point? I'm not sure like in town okay yeah i look at it we didn't go anywhere else or didn't look i mean that was kind of the i i didn't have

a b plan or c plan because i we basically chose the place we were staying because of the proximity to that spot so sure you know to to go road. Um, and then with the kids, unfortunately. Yeah. And we were kind of tired anyway, you know, after we spent a day in Brisbane and we walked around the whole day and then he got kind of a late or, uh, early start the next day. And so, um, by the time our flight came around, we were already kind of tired and worn out a little bit. So like, oh, well, I guess we'll go back. And then we didn't have the headlamps. So I was just had one flashlight and the girls wouldn't be able to have a, you know, headlamp or whatever. So like, I guess we're going to bed. Yeah.

But I, you know, that, that goes to the whole thing of, you know, if you're, you've got something, maybe have a, have a good plan B or C or all the above. Um, but yeah, a couple, I guess a couple of lessons in that regard where both the, this, you know, road closure as well as the private land, you know, issue. I mean, I think there are tools and I, I thought I looked on, you know, like Google earth or Google maps and could get the street view and see like where I could go into the place. But I got there and there wasn't, it was just a driveway. And so I thought the driveway was the entrance to the state park,

but I got there and it was like the Jones residence, you know, no trespassing. I didn't see that on Google maps, you know, so those kind of things are kind of a pain. So instead I went and cruised around Lake Tenerife, you know, and, and, uh, but it was raining heavily and nothing on the road. So, you know, I gave it a shot and went back to the place, but, um, what do you, what do you do in regards to, I mean, I bet you have a pretty set, like, packing list. Is that very much? Do you ever, obviously, when you're flying somewhere, you're not going to be taking a snake hook in your carry-on or anything like that. But what do you like to bring? Yeah, that's kind of a big one. Yeah, I mean, in general, you know, it's mostly the camera stuff, the flashlights, the headlamps. Yeah.

And then – Wait, you go on a trip and you have lamps? I follow the Big Mountain method. That's always – I know, right? That's exactly right. I was going to say that earlier. But, yeah, no, it's – for the most part, you know, it's pretty consistent on that stuff and aligns with essentially all those things. It doesn't change too much.

And then clothes, I tend to do carry-on only, have a, you know, particularly where you can have carry-on plus personal item. And the personal item is the camera bag. And otherwise, it's basically just closed stuff i guess the the feature i guess we'll call it that uh i've adapted for now that'll be new to you on one of our trips is um southern california really brutal for um plants that love to stick you so bearing that in mind out of the lesson lesson of last time we're at a half inch spine get sucked up into my calf for two weeks um i uh i bought pants and wore pants what i was just gonna ask you i said this is one area or i was thinking this is one area where we really differ in our philosophies i usually like to wear pants like lightweight pants in the desert,

but you always wear shorts. And so, man, you're starting to see the light, huh? Yeah. Well, I then did point out and I still got a singular one, but I mean, knowing the damage that I had last time, I have to admit that, I mean, heck, we were, you know, messing around outside of the, you know, the Ocotillo that gets all those shed jumping cholla balls and all that. And no, none of those got me, which was the offender last time. And then the one where you get 70 impaled by 70 spikes in a single go, right? When you get that whole cluster on there, all pointing in different directions and all that. I avoided that. This was just a singular one that wasn't as bad as the last time, but, uh, yeah, I did go with pants and I will bring pants and be wearing pants this

time. Well, we'll see how it goes, but yeah. I guess it's better than chaps or something I suppose That's for nipper only, no worries Yeah, we've got to make his American experience complete Yeah Yeah, I tend to Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I tend to, you know, of course, yeah, if you have your headlamp, your hook, if you can bring it, or if it's legal. I mean, obviously, don't be carrying around a hook where you're not allowed to have a hook or else you're looking at a fine or a ticket, you know. And if you can do a check bag, then the hook can be more possible. As I said, I tend not to do that, and it can be a disadvantage. But, yeah, I mean, going to Australia, right, you're not going to be bringing a hook even in your check bag. Yeah, most likely. The other thing, well, I found kind of a little bit of a workaround is bringing a walking stick, One of those collapsible walking sticks that has kind of like a, a larger shoe or foot, you know, foot on the end of it that can kind of be used as a hook or at least a way to slow down a large venomous snake.

Now I didn't use it all that often, but I mean, if we're going on a lot of hikes and things like that, it's not a bad thing to have anyway, especially as you're right. Cause I'm entering my 50th year here. Um, not a bad thing to have, uh, give me, give this old guy a little bit of balance, but, um, I, I didn't use it on the last trip, uh, as much as I thought I might, but it worked out okay. And served its purpose, I guess. I think I lost one, so I'm not sure what happened, but I still have, I got a set of two, of course, cause they always come in twos. And so I have one left that I could bring and, and I have a makeshift hook that way and that I can just say it's a walking stick. Leave me alone. Um, the, the other thing I really who had modded his out, he hit,

was he the one with the walking stick that he modified out? Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of, I think, might have what gave me the idea. But I think he had a hook at the end of it, didn't he? Right. Like he had a little angle. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh. It would be nice to have one that was robust enough to maybe flip a rock or a log or something, too. Yeah. Get under a rock or a log or something to get, get under a rock or a log. The other, the other thing I really enjoy, especially on a trip with friends is a walkie talkies. That's always helpful to keep in contact,

especially if you're get separated and you find something you want to alert the other guys. Now keep in mind, like when you're in Arizona and you're, you've got Hills between you, you might not be able to receive the signal. And, and so, um, it's, you know, if you can get one with greater strength and quality. Yeah, exactly. I think Dustin got some really high quality ones. So, um, so I'm, I'm, yeah, Brandon brought him, uh, brought some like that to, uh, California and, um, yeah. So we just were using only those, you know, at that point where it was like,

okay. And I mean, some areas you have cell service and you can just call each other and that often works better than walkie talkies, but you know, you're not going to have that at every place you go. And so, especially, you know, in some of these remote areas in the West, uh, you just don't have cell signal in a lot of places. Um, and you know, it's kind of nice to not be on your cell phone and not have that distraction of a signal and having to worry about, uh, things back home

or work emails or whatever. Although he's are nice. I will say, I think, so Eric covered the California trip pretty well, I'll mostly defer. This is mostly an opportunity to get to hear about the Australia stuff. But the one thing I will point out, because I think he was exhausted of increased the pace, gone down, was further down, and then out on the trail, here's a mating pair of pyros. On the last trip with Brandon and Eric, we had gone to a spot in the Laguna Mountains to try and find a sonata, which is the most common range to find pulchra, at least, but probably any of them generally. I think it's where the historical association of how to find zanata kind of came about. That's kind of the most common range, most common area to find them.

It was pretty dry there, especially for the time of year, seemingly. Man, it is the YouTube herpers who talk about, you know, rocks being flipped and not being put back appropriately. Definitely a problem that I had seen, including in habitat, that was like, we'd gone to probably done a third to half a mile of probably 45 degree bush bashing on a slope to get to this spot through stuff. You know, definitely brutal to the point where I had walkie talkie to Brandon Eric and was like, don't even bother. Try following me that it wasn't quite what I thought it would be. And, you know, so there were only a handful of, of choice looking rocks and stuff. Um, and all of those had been flipped at some point and not put back. Right. And it's like, who put in the work to get here? It's like you do 98.5% of the work, and then you totally, unforgivably drop the ball in the last 1.5%. What are we even talking about? So that was pretty, made me pretty cynical about maybe even the whole thing relative to folks that are strictly only interested in that.

And it just fundamentally doesn't make sense. It's like, OK, if if it was productive, then like now this could be your new spot that most people aren't going to put in the work to go to. And you mess it up for yourself by failing to put the rocks back. Right. I mean, I don't I don't understand it from any perspective. It's really, really not acceptable. But anyway, neither here nor there. The fun bit, so that was a fail. But we went to the Lagunas, go to Blaine Mazzetti, who we had talked to on the podcast. Really fun, enjoyable episode. I said, hey, what are you thinking, man? And he was like, yeah, well, go down to Laguna and see what you can do.

And I'm not hesitant to say, like anyone who does any research on Pyrrhos Lagunas, and that honestly isn't that helpful, what that means relative to. And so anyway, we had gone down there, and we go to a spot. We're flipping rocks, putting them back nicely. But even then, the moisture seal, they were pretty dried out, and we didn't see anything. Spent maybe 90 minutes, two hours doing that in the heat of the afternoon. So we put in some work, and then my wife had texted me that the dog had gone to the vet and there was excitement around that and all. And, uh, so I was like, Hey, I have service to your point. Uh, I'm going to give a call.

So Eric and Brandon started heading down, heading down the hill and they're maybe 150 feet ahead, ahead of me. And, uh, just standing, you know, more or less standing on the trail. And a young from last year, Zanata, crawls out six inches in front of my feet and stops and says, hey, what you doing, man? So I got to have that experience. And I didn't even have to grab it. It literally just stopped right in front of me and was stationary and i called down to eric and brandon said you guys what you don't want to see a zanata out in the crawl um and uh they i guess you know eric said uh that brandon didn't believe me same way that i didn't believe

you know believe eric's like dustin when they had radioed me last year saying oh yeah well you don't want to see the mating pyros, you know, or whatever. Same deal. This is just me shouting out to them. But, yeah, it literally didn't move. I just stood there, and they were able to come back up and couldn't believe it and all that. So, yeah, that was definitely a highlight that it came out to say hello.

And, yeah, I didn't even have to grab it. It just was like, Hey, there's this, uh, interesting creature six inches from me and I'll just hang out. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.

That's, I don't know. There's just seems like so incongruous to see a bright red, black and white snake just out on the crawl or under, yeah. Or under a rock or anywhere, you know, just like, Whoa. Yeah. I got, I got that thrill a few weeks ago. I went down to, um, kind of central Utah, uh, just below the great salt Lake and, and, uh, went out looking for Utah milks and found a small juvenile and, you know, I'd probably flipped 200 rocks or more,

you know, and a lot of times the work is putting it back, right. You know, so, uh, absolutely effort to flip all those rocks and put them back. And so I was, I was getting tired and, you know, I flip a rock and there's that flash of red and white and black. I'm like, Whoa, yes. So, um, that was pretty, pretty awesome. It never gets old. I don't think, you know, I don't think so. I don't, I haven't found all that many, but the ones I have found have been really a thrill. So, um, I hope, hope to find more. And That's, uh, kind of nice when you, when you tick off, uh, a new species and then you kind of figure out, you know, oh, this is how you find them. Cause I found one this way and, you know, that's, uh, half the fun of this whole thing.

Opens the road to potentially finding more and, and informing your research going forward, right. Of saying, okay, I know what that looked like. And then you're on Google earth trying to figure it out and saying, okay, absolutely. Other, other similar areas, you know, other, and I mean, I, I saw a great post, uh, by Brian Eager on Facebook where he was talking about all the Utah milk snakes he's found. He's the, he's the herping master in Utah, man. That guy is next level. You know, he's, he's not just content to find one Utah milk snake. He's trying

to record them in every County in Utah, you know, and he's listing all the counties he's found them in and how many counties that he thinks they should be in, but he hasn't found them there. And how many hours he spent looking in those counties just to document them there. It's, it's incredible. He is just a machine, man. That guy is the real deal as far as field. Yeah. And I mean, he's going out with his son, so he's spending all this time with his son and his son's probably flipped more bright colors than I have for sure. So that's pretty cool.

But yeah, really, uh, it's, it's really kind of a motivation, you know, to do more, to get out there more, get, get to know the local stuff. Cause really, I mean, I spent more time looking for pythons than I had stuff in my own state, you know, pretty much in, in a lot of ways. And, and so it's been nice to kind of reconnect, especially with the pandemic to reconnect with the local stuff or, or, you know, Arizona, or I need to get over to Colorado for some milk snakes with you over there. But while I was looking for that and finding that one milk snake, uh,

my buddy Pat was heading East over through Colorado over to Kansas. And he said, as the further east they went, the more easy it was to find milk snakes. And I think that's true. I found like 15 of them or something, you know, in Kansas and, and five or so or six, five or six in Colorado and one or two on the way out of Utah. So kind of cool. Yeah. But yeah, I think finding that first one and finding, you know, the first couple is probably the key to, uh, giving you confidence.

Okay. My efforts are paying off. You know, this is how you do it. This is the work it takes and, you know, just going forward and trying again, even if you don't find anything. And it's kind of a fun, fun hobby for sure. Absolutely. Well, the only other note I wanted to bring up was we did talk to Ron St. Pierre, probably the best episode that you and I have done together. Unfortunately, there was some weirdness with the audio.

So that Justin, who is the person debating Ron, that audio just wasn't saved. That track didn't come through. So we're going to redo that. Justin, you've spoken with Ron, and he's been super game to do that, debate other things, et cetera, which is really appreciated. But it's really unfortunate. We had a great conversation. We're trying to re-listen through the audio that we do have to make sure we hit on all the things that we hit on there and extra stuff. But kind of as extra episodes going forward, that's one to look forward to.

We wish we would have released it six weeks ago or whatever, but such it is, I guess. But, yeah, so that's one. We have other guests that we have in mind, different people in the pipeline. As ever, if folks have suggestions or want to come on and chat about different things, we're game for that. But, yeah, this episode is not a fight, but rather we just wanted to proof of life or whatever and proof of continued interest. And, yeah, they're still excited to do it and hopefully many more yeah hopefully next week we can have one of our

famous episodes from the field because we'll be herping together yeah that'd be fun to record with the guys and have a hopefully a good fight next week so thanks for listening and hope, hope you got something out of this and helps you, uh, plan for your own herb trip. And, uh, I mean, we,

we always recommend getting out there, get looking around, exploring your own area and getting familiar with the herps and, and getting that renewed vigor and interest in reptiles, um, especially the ones in your backyard or close by and just, uh, have that thrill of herping. It's a lot of fun and a lot of good times. And especially if you're dealing with great people that you, you know, you're friends with and, um, I'm really looking forward to next week. So yeah, we should have a nice report for you in another week or two and, and maybe one from the field.

So, but we'll catch you next time for another episode of ripped off. I club. It's really.