Reptile Fight Club - Venomous mentorship with Phil Wolf

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of venomous mentorship with Phil WolfWho 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 edition of Reptile Fight Club. I'm your host, Justin Juhlander. We've got Mr. Chuck Poland here as well. Hello. Say hello to the people Chuck Poland here as well. Hello. Say hello to the people. All right. Well, we're ready to fight. It's going to be a good one today. Yes. We got our old friend Phil Wolf on today.

The Wolf. The Wolf of Wheeler Eye. I love that. That's one of of my favorite, like nicknames. If everybody could see how big Justin is smiling when he says it, you would. Yeah. Well, I'm flattered, but unfortunately when I got that, that nickname, I had Wheeler Eye Synctus. I've never actually owned Wheeler Eye. So now I'm like, damn, now I got it. Now I have to buy Wheeler Eyes. Yeah. We'll have to change that. I've got a pretty nice group of them. I'll have to send you a couple or something.

Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, they're really cool. I'm liking them. And they seem to be very similar in care to Cinctus. Sure. It's the worst shot to get go.

Yep. Yeah. I love their face patterns too, the reticulations that Cinctus don't really have very strongly. But did you see the albino one over in australia yes that's crazy looking oh man i mean i i still think i prefer the wild type but that that's pretty pretty uh vibrant yeah exactly yeah pretty cool yeah so um what's going on fellas nothing yeah just yeah got yeah good good feedback on my npr interview so yeah that was fantastic man reached out so that was cool like it was good you know good to uh good

to hear good feedback and i had just a lot of fun with those guys and uh so yeah it was cool man it was good yeah i learned i learned some new stuff about you man i thought i i thought i knew you well but yeah really i didn't realize you'd be a monitor man in another life that's cool oh yeah no no no well i mean come on man yeah no i agree they're awesome they're a lot of work but they're awesome and you know me like i mean like we've we were friends when i had monitors and i still have some monitors. I just think like, you know, when you like, you know, it's hard and as somebody who's done monitors with snakes and all kinds of other stuff, it's a, it's a tricky balance just because, um, you know,

they can be so much more work. And I feel like now that I have, you know, geckos and, and, and a pair of monitors and and i have less snakes it's probably less of a thing but it's still you know it's still like it you still gotta up your uh up your workload game a little bit so for sure yeah they require pretty constant attention almost yeah they're cool though i I man watching seeing all these guys getting the glowered eye like I want to get to know the rocks. They're so cool. Yeah. Steve had some a while back. But yeah, I got to go photograph his for the website and stuff back in the day. But yeah, speaking of Steve, I just talked to him. He said he just talked to you.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I did. I thought that was, you know, I was, I was reaching out cause I thought that was my responsibility. Yeah. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. So. I just talked to him today. I just, I was looking at pictures of New Zealand geckos and I'm like, I got to call Steve. It's been too long. Well, apparently when I get tasked with something, I'm, I'm Mr. Right. Not Mr. Right now. So.

Yeah. No, it Mr. Right now. Yeah. No, it's all good, man. It's all good. I told him, I'm like, Chuck says we got to have you on again, man. Yeah. So when are you coming on? Well, I already hit him up. I'm like, did you set it up with Justin? Or, I mean, are we TBD?

Like, let's make this happen. So, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, he's a good guy. Yeah. Of course. I guess he's been pretty busy with the zoo, so we might have to wait until things start going a little bit. Well, I mean, if we were going to make it a surprise, sorry, I spoiled it.

No, no, it's all good. Steve will be coming on, folks. Yeah. Well, and this isn't your first rodeo either, huh? We did one live in Texas, didn't we? Yeah. We did. We did.

That was a really fun time man yeah that was it's it's always interesting because we all have our own you know podcasting set up and everything with microphones and headphones on and here you are five guys sitting around a coffee table just sliding the cell phone from person to person it's so much more intimate man i love that stuff yeah it is kind of cool having being in person there and yeah it's been it was a lot of fun but well i i really like i don't know like doing that herp trip with you and justin like you guys you guys are you guys are the real deal you know you got really broad knowledge and and just really excited about everything and we're trying to really have some good you know thoughts and think things through. So I, I'm like,

we got to have you back again. We, we had Justin back again. So yeah, we, we'll have to keep it going. I think we're just going to have Phil whoop our ass with some of his broad knowledge right here today. There's a caveat to that because we got the knowledge reading your books. Oh God. Yeah. It's a, it's a, I don't know what to say about that. I'm, I'm blushing. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Well, yeah. Speaking of books, we were getting the next sections from Russ and getting that closer to, we're pretty much finished with the layout. He said he said he's got pretty much everything now. So I'm I'm excited to see that. I thought he was going to send a day, but I haven't seen it.

So we'll see. I also asked him if he wanted to be on the on the podcast. Oh, yeah. That'd be cool. That'd be really cool. Hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm down to that. He's a he's a pioneer, man. Yeah. He's done a lot of cool stuff. He's fun. He's fun. He's a fun guy to talk to. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, he's really cool. He's a cool guy a pioneer man yeah he's done a lot of cool stuff he's fun he's fun he's a fun guy to talk to oh yeah yeah he's really cool he's a cool guy yeah yeah for sure so that'd be fun well i i haven't heard back from him he's busy so yeah for sure you may not get him on i don't know hey

but carpet book first right yeah exactly let's let's not uh divert his uh attention to something else right now but for sure yeah it It's going to be fun to get that finished up. I don't know. I have a hard time too, because I like, I cracked open the knob tail book a couple of days ago just, and I'd forgotten what I had in there. Like almost when you finish a project, you're like, I don't want to look at this. I don't want to think about this for, you know, a little while and then you can kind of go back and enjoy it but yeah for me it's like i go back and realize what i you know did wrong or missed or didn't include you know it's like oh man what's that musician's song is never finished yeah yeah exactly yeah i i do a lot of home improvements and i know every mistake and i walk past it and it just

bothers me to death so yeah i can i can imagine that the book is probably the same issues. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what do we got going on? Breeding seasons in full swing or you getting much breeding activity? Me?

Yeah. I mean, so, you know, like I said, I never see anything. So, you know, yeah. I mean, I've seen the male and the female disappear into the into the nesting box. So that's always a good sign. But, you know, who knows? Like, you know, those years that I had with what I was pretty sure was, you know, ovulation ended up with butt kiss. So, you know, it looks like it's all going great and just nothing happened. So, you know, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it, and it, Hey man, an exercise in just, you know, letting go and letting things happen. if they happen amazing if yeah if they didn't hey man whatever you know you still got the animals yeah yeah exactly exactly so breed or not yeah and and you know like we talked about uh it if it if it doesn't work out then good data either way right you can pretty much say okay well keeping them in the same room but changing cages matters.

Like, you know, so we'll figure it out. Yeah, for sure. How about you, Phil? You got some good stuff going on? I don't. It's funny you just mentioned like geckos. I haven't produced a gecko in like three years, man. And I'm about ready to just change up how I'm doing everything because I don't know if it's my tub size or the amount of sand that I have. Cause I try to make it as naturalistic as I can.

And my girls just hate my boys and that's just, this is it. So I have another friend who told me to basically go to neutral territory and just get a CB 70 rack with just that much sand in it, just to let out an inch or so and throw them in that as like neutral, you know, no man's land, so to speak, and just let them be for a day or two and then pull them out and do it again and pull them out. So I might try that this year, but all my, uh, all my snakes are too small still, man. I, I, I got a bunch of babies in 2019 and 2020 and just raising stuff up. So I've got a, between my friend Marcus and I we last year we got 29 serastis serastis oh wow and uh some of them will be breeder size this season like this coming April in a couple months but we really haven't decided what we want to pair and how we want to pair it so I'm probably

going to start giving them like a light cool it's it's really late in the season to cool them but I'm going to give them a light cool like this month and just kind of see if I get some, some tail wagging or something like that and cross our fingers. So yeah, that's cool. Yeah, man. Yeah. I, I can't even imagine how, like, you know, you think about feeding a, you know, baby anteresia, you can pick them up and, you know, help assist feed them if you need to, but with a little serastis or something, that's probably's probably not uh you know the best way to do it i've gotten lucky in the past with some of the smaller like we've uh cerastes cerastes cerastes vipera yeah babies uh i'll take

a frozen thought pinky head and i'll take a piece of lizard shed from like a girdle tail lizard or even like a bearded dragon and i'll make like a little burrito out of that head and i'll make it walk across the sand with a set of hemostats and the smell of the lizard and the movement they'll just whack it i've gotten pretty lucky with that so fingers crossed but i don't want to count my my eggs before i have chickens you know yeah now when they when they bite are they like envenomating and then waiting or i mean they latch on no they don't want itating and then waiting? They latch on. They don't want it to run away.

Yeah. They don't want to have to chase after it. It's purely ambush. Yeah. I didn't know if they, you know, because some will bite and then retreat and wait for the animal to die and scent trail it and everything. But I didn't know if that was common with all venomous. Yeah. And I've had some Sarastis, both cerastes and and vipera uh

bite and release because they got like a mouthful of sand on accident and they'll track the prey down but this is in a an enclosure you know i mean i don't know if they would be able to track it down the desert per se but you know who knows yeah that's cool yeah i i don't know i've always had kind of a soft spot and yeah i did was that that the first blacktail rattlesnake you'd seen in the wild? So we saw our first, our first blacktail rattlesnakes. That was pretty cool. That was a sweet snake. I saw pictures. brought all those extra hooks because we all use them. Yeah. For sure. So it was, it was worth the extra, you know, check luggage. I put them in an old rifle case and everyone's like, is that a gun? No, no, no. They're golf clubs. Why do you have golf clubs in a rifle case? Well, they're golf clubs.

Don't worry about it. Yeah, exactly. But I'm glad you had a nice assortment and that yeah. Came in very handy. Yeah. That one that they that old that black tail that got over onto the private land and i had to kind of reach over with the hook and pull it that's pretty funny that the gun guys put put put them in guitar cases and reptile guys put them in gun put their hooks in gun cases yeah right what's going on well it was this is one of my first herp trips that i ever had

to check my hooks see normally i'll put them in that same gun case in a nondescript cardboard box and i'll just overnight them to where i'm going yeah yeah you know and that way i can put uh the blacklight flashlights for scorpions and you know thermosel for mosquitoes and all that stuff i don't want to bring in my luggage and i'll just ship it to the hotel or the ranch or wherever we're going. But this time, because we were all meeting up and it was a Sunday and all the FedEx hubs were closed because it's Sunday. And yeah, that's the, the, I'm, I'm facing a dilemma now. Cause I'm, I'm going on one of the trips with Rob, but I, I get home from a work trip like the day before I have to leave for the herp trip so i'm trying to figure out and the the work trip's a week long so i'm trying to figure out how i'm going to survive

this but yeah uh you sleep in the plane man you'll be setting exactly yeah and you what you do is you just pack all your herp stuff before your work trip and then when you get home just swap bags you know yeah yeah just see you honey i'm going on another week trip i have a i have a giant bug out the best yeah yeah your wife's a saint yeah she is a saint yeah yeah she for sure she lets me do a lot of fun stuff i i appreciate that but i'd probably go a little crazy i'm i'm going crazy right now it's it's ridiculously cold here and i'm looking at like the photos from Australia, you know, the people going out and hurting herpany in Australia and seeing the pictures and just

going, I need to get out there. This is, it's not good. Yeah. They need to open their doors. Again, we need to get this COVID stuff out of the way. Well, um, we have brought Phil on to fight about venomous. Uh, we're going to talk about, uh, venomous mentorship and kind of the pros and cons and some of the failings and successes and things from, from that program. So we're, we're probably going to have to have him limp us along a little bit because we're, we're not so, uh, versed in venomous, but, um, I hopefully we'll have a good discussion and we'll get some, some good information out. I'm sure the listener will be screaming at one of us either way yeah they're still listening yeah yeah all right well um without further ado we'll go ahead with

the coin toss so this first one will be to see who who gets to debate you know this is chuck's year so he you know he's been winning he's won all the coin tosses this year. So we'll see how it goes, but all right. You're ready to call it. Heads. Oh, tails. I got you this time. I guess it's not complete, uh, complete wash. So I will say this. I've listened to every single reptile fight club. Oh, that's nice. And it's amazing

to see you actually flip the coin yeah right i love it it happens people it's real it actually happens i just watched it yeah yeah i i when you lose as much as i have it definitely calls into question like are they really flipping a coin toss? Because Chuck is just really that bad? Like, really? So yeah, it's true. Well, and I heard you guys bad-mouthing me on NPR about how I'm rigging the coin toss. What's up with that, man? It's a double-sided coin.

That was a sentencing of your peers, my friend. I guess so. I must just give off the wrong vibes here. But yeah, Rob had my number on that one. Yeah. All right. Not everyone's looking out for you. Some people are looking out for me, buddy.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to go ahead and let you moderate. I want to dive into this with Phil. Do it. I mean, I don't have much venomous keeping experience. I did keep a couple rattlesnakes when I was younger and, um, it was kinda, I didn't realize there were laws, you know, as ignorant little kid. So I just had a couple of rattlesnakes in my bedroom, you know, as a teenager, whatever. I've watched you. I've watched you. Do you work with a man? You're,

you're a pro. You did great. Yeah. Well, I mean, with rattlesnakes, I can't, yeah, I know, I know rattlesnakes a little bit. I'm, I'm a little less, uh, sure with, uh, you know, lapids in Australia and stuff. I, I, I would defer to others to try to tail those or something, but I did, I did hold a red belly black. I tailed a red belly black snake. And, uh, I think that's the only kind I did hold a death at her. My friend handed me a death at her said here, hold this. And I'm like, okay, take it back. Like, you know, and I, like, he just, he, he had no, no qualms about just picking it up out of the cage and handling it.

I'm like, that's not for me, but yeah, I did hold it for a brief moment there, which is probably a stupid thing i rico walder was kind of making fun of me he's like what are you doing you idiot and he had a couple red belly blacks that were captives that he just kind of handed to people and here are these and i think i was the only one stupid enough to take them but i'm like well if he's handling them you know that all so either i got lucky or they were really pretty easygoing animals but and you know i mean i i don't know the the two rattlesnakes i had one was caught on a heavily traveled trail and it never rattled it never struck or was defensive at all it was just really chill and when i found out

you know they were illegal i i gave them away to to somebody else and let them deal with that but um i found out later um it was a great basin yeah oh is it is it oregonis or is it uh i go off letosis yeah that's what i've always gone with i'm not a big rattlesnake guy but one of my dream species is a legit utah letosis oh they have some nice looking ones yeah you guys in utah have the best reptile coloration diversity whatever you want to call a phenotype if you will the lutosis the pyromelina the the the the synctus gila monsters yeah the pinks man oh man oh yeah the best yeah uh i wish we could keep them here. But, yeah, we can't keep any of the rattlesnakes or the helos. And I think they just recently made it.

California knows how you feel. Yeah. They just recently made it so you could collect milks and mountain kings, you know, limited number. That's awesome. But it's kind of cool. Yeah, at least there's some fresh blood out there, you know. Yeah, at least there's some fresh blood out there, you know? Yeah, exactly. And they're kind of making common sense changes to the laws, which is really refreshing from government. You're almost kind of sketched out, right?

You're like, wait a second. Yeah, wait a second. Is this a joke? Yeah. But yeah, the leutosis, especially from down in the southwest corner of the state, they have those black heads and really white bodies with black spots. They're just gorgeous. Gorgeous, yeah. Gorgeous. black heads and really like white bodies with black spots. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Yeah. Gorgeous. All right. Well, let's go ahead and do the coin flip for, for which side we're going to take. So we're going to talk, yeah, the pros and cons or the, the failings and successes of Venture, Venom. Venture Mentorship. Venture Mentorship. Oh my.

You got it? Yeah. I turned into the Swedish chef. Venom mentorship. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture.

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Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture.

Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture.

Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture.

Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture.

Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture.

Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Venture. Yeah. I'm not even glad I lost. I'm going to go with the pros because you probably know the system much better and the flaws. No problem. And I guess I could go first.

Sure. Yeah, I went in the two coin tosses. I'm feeling pretty cocky right now. You deserve it, man. You do. Yeah. Well. You look kind of cocky right now.

Yeah. It's going to go. It's going to fall apart real quick. But I'm going to get put in my place here pretty soon. But so, you know, when I, when I think about, you know, keeping venomous reptiles, obviously it makes a lot of sense to, to learn from people who have kind of been there and done that and, and do a good job of it. So, you know, I could see, and I, I guess maybe I, I think about falconry where, you know, they're, they're really good at policing their own groups and, and kind of keep having a check on other members of the falconry kind of, you know, grouping. And so, you know, I, I would hope that a venom that a venom mentorship would be similar to, you know, the falconry mentorship. You would think.

Yeah, you would hope, I guess. You would hope. regulations who, you know, um, has anti-venom on hand in case of a bite. And they're the ones that are teaching the next generation how to keep venomous responsibly. Now, I guess that has a lot of caveats and a lot of, uh, you know, you, you gotta, you're assuming that, uh, everybody that gets, gets into that as is going to be, do it responsibly or do it, you know, and I, I guess myself as an example, I didn't really do it responsibly because I didn't look into the laws. I just saw a rattlesnake out on a hike and I went, oh, I want to keep one of those. And so I brought it home. I was a minor and maybe it's on my parents.

And you can't prosecute me for things that may or may not have happened when I was younger. Thank you, Lawyer Chuck. Yeah, that's totally what that sounded like. Yeah. Well, it's probably past any kind of, you know. Could you imagine the judge? If you had Lawyer Chuck? Oh.

Well, I was going to say, just 16-year-old Justin walking into the courthouse and the judge reading like, possession of rattlesnakes. Why are you here? Yeah. I would hope that's how it would go down. They'd probably go thousand dollar fine. I'm like, Oh no, I don't have a thousand dollars. Yeah. 16 or Justin would not do well with that.

But so I guess, you know, in my mind, that's kind of how I picture it. And, you know, I, I, I understand completely that that probably doesn't match reality, but, um, and, and, uh, you know, honestly, I don't, I probably should have looked this up, looked into it a little better, but, um, you know, I'm sure there's requirements for, for mentorship, you know, how many hours, you know, who is mentoring you? I would hope that's, that's kind of is there is there is that the case is there a governing body for venomous mentorship like yeah i i mean imagine it depends on the state too right it also depends on your click that you're in yeah like i mean who's signing you off right like who's if you even need to be signed off right right right right right right yeah yeah so in utah i know you know you have to, you have to get a permit to keep anything venomous.

And they usually don't give out permits except to maybe zoos or research institutions. So there was a, there was a bite. I remember back in like the eighties, there was a venomous bite. It was from a rough, sorry, the saw scale, saw scaled viper. Somebody got bit at the uh sorry the saw scale saw scaled viper somebody got bit at the university of utah from a saw scale viper and i remember there was a huge panic because there was no anti-venom anywhere and yeah so you know it's a nasty bite man yeah and those kind of things make the news you know yeah so kind of uh, I still remember it, you know, 30 years later or whatever. So pretty crazy. But so I guess that's kind of how I'd lead out is, you know, I, I would see that would be a very beneficial thing to have is, you know, a good venom mentorship program established and, and, uh, with some kind of checkpoints and, and, uh, you know, ways to ensure that the next generation of venomous keepers is being responsibly educated. So, okay. Yeah.

What you got? I was going to say, do you want me to, to augment yours and then rebuttal or? It's up to you. I mean, you can educate us. I want to see you basically make his argument look better and then shred it apart. That'd be the best. Okay. Thanks, Jack. Thanks.

Yeah. No worries, dude. No worries. He got my back. Hell of a moderator. Listen, this is Phil's – Phil's the guest here, man. Let him shine. That's good.

That's all good. So, yeah, the way that you're thinking is fantastic. And that's the way that it honestly should be. Certain states like Florida, for example, there's a number of required hours through a mentor program. But other states like Pennsylvania or Texas, you just got to buy a fishing license. That's it. Yeah. So one might say that government encroaching on the way you do things is bad

others might say that government encroaching on the way you do things is good because it reminds people or teaches people how they honestly should be doing it um i think the structure that florida has is a fantastic structure in terms of having a mentor maintaining hours the problem is in 2014 they augmented it from 1 000 hours for all venomous to a thousand per group and there's four groups so if you want all four that's 4 000 hours and the running joke is that somebody in tallahassee when they were typing out the laws they fat fingered a pinky and gave it an extra zero and when the commission saw that they go ah leave it so uh basically there are laws in place to keep things straight but at the same time

why should i have to you know i mean why do i need a thousand hours with gila monsters or beady lizards who has a thousand hours of of hands-on experience with a beelitzer before they actually get one no yeah yeah no one that's ridiculous now one might say again playing devil's advocate with myself on this one there is a right and wrong way to handle and or manipulate heloderms yeah no one learns it and no one does it you know people either pick them up like they're puppy dogs and they have an accident or they have an incident or they manhandle it like it's a you you know, lethal Komodo dragon that's going to go for their jugular and they want to be there injuring the animal or just freaking them out and ruining the training that they did. Yeah. So that again goes back to the whole, should we have mentors?

Should we not? So in my personal opinion, I like the way that Florida's structured their licensing system. However, there is stupidity built into it like why do i need a thousand hours why why should i sacrifice almost two years of my life doing this in my free time to buy a permit for a lizard that's not even lethal yeah it makes no sense you know there's there's only one uh i'll say unconfirmed report of a Gila monster killing someone. And it turned out that it was actually all crap and it was actually a rattlesnake. So, yeah.

Now with the thousand hours, is that so you're having to go and work with somebody else's venomous snakes, right? Correct. Yeah, obviously you can't own them. So you have to find somebody who has venomous snakes. That is a lot of cage cleaning just to get – And it used to be fairly simple. So let's say I'm new in Florida back pre-2014 and I want to get into venomous handling. And I start an apprenticeship or an internship somewhere.

And Chuck's Reptiles has some rattlesnakes and i go there after work you know i work nine to five monday through friday as a normal guy and i go there at 5 30 and i work till eight o'clock at night i log a couple hours and it says you know i was at chuck's i handled x y and z general maintenance whatever and that was your log book it was one of those old black and white composition books. You know what I'm talking about? The marble books. And you would submit that whole book or photocopy the book. You'd submit the whole book to the state with all your other letters, recommendation, all of the crap and your check for a hundred dollars.

And they'd issue you the permit. Well, now, now they want to know specifics. And this goes back down to why should I have to explain everything in vivid detail? Well, that's because they want to, they want to stop us. They want to call us, right? So now what they want you to do is they want you to make a ledger or a key, like a map where it says, letter A is unlocked cage, letter B, remove animal, letter C, change water bowl, letter D, remove feces. And then they want to say okay on january 1st 2022 at chuck's house i did a c f and q on one gila monster from 5 15 to 5 25 and now you have to add that up to a thousand hours oh god that makes no sense to me yeah yeah

so now now you're going to get people forging now you're going to get people forging hours. You're going to get people forging a lot of stuff because it's asinine. It makes no sense. Now, do I think that a person should be able to do 10 days of handling and all of a sudden go to Mamba? No. No, not at all. We're talking about totally different things. But in the case of like the heloderms, for example, yeah, you want to put in a few months work and learn some techniques and learn some tips and tricks and whatever, maybe get your enclosure stuff at home.

That's fine. That's great. Even if you want to extend that to, let's say, a year and a day, I can be totally fine with that. But a thousand hands-on hours with an animal that's not even lethal makes no sense to me. So, I mean, now, you know, is this a matter of, they, they know that nobody's really going to do a thousand hours, but they just want to make it so you can't get around working with something for, you know, quite a while. So they're saying a thousand hours, they know people are going to fudge the numbers, but they're like, but then why put the, but why

put the numbers in there then? If you know, I mean, you know what I mean? Like, why would you, yeah, it's, it's, it's the opposite. In fact, what happens is, you know, over the past, I'll say 15 years, I've mentored probably between 20 and 30 people, but of those 20, 30 people, maybe less than 10 actually got their permit. And that's not because they didn't want to per se. It's that because things happen, people move, they get married, they have children, they get a different job. You know,

they realize reptiles really aren't for them or they realize, man, I've been doing this for two years in the small amount of time that I can, and I'm nowhere close to being done. It's not worth it. And one might say that that's the state's goal, you know, but other people may say, well, no, you're, you're actively participating in a mentorship program or an internship program. You're going to learn all you can. So, uh, it is difficult for me to take the con side because I am so pro, but I totally see a lot of flaws and a lot of cons in that regard. Yeah. So I guess maybe I could, you know, look at it from this angle. Like, um, you know, if my kid comes to me and says, Hey dad, I want to, I want a bike. I want this,

you know, racing bike or whatever. And you're like, well, you know, that's an expensive bike, you know, save up your allowance and we'll, we'll talk about it, you know, once you've got it saved up and then, you know, that kind of fizzles and they're like, okay, yeah, maybe I don't want a racing bike if I have to work hard and save up for it. Maybe I'm not into that racing that much. And so I could see that could weed out people who were just kind of a passing fancy. Ooh, I want to have a venomous snake because that's cool. And then they're like, oh, wait, a thousand hours?

Yeah, no thanks. You can break it down just going off your whole bike thing, which is a great analogy i can make it even more more in depth using the same analogy so when you're 16 or 17 years old you get a learner's permit for a car right yeah you do that for a minimum of a year then you turn 18 and you go for your driver's ed so now you have a driver's license but you still have stipulations you have a curfew of say 11 p 11 p.m., right? Got to be home at 11. And then when you turn 19, it's extended to 1 a.m. Excuse me. And eventually, by the time you turn 21,

you can stay out as late as you want, and you've got that four or five years of driving under your belt at the time when you can stay out until 2 in the morning. Now, if a 16- or 17- 17 year old gets their learner's permit, should they be able to buy a Ferrari? Yeah, that's a good question. Now we're talking about ethics. We're talking about ethics, talking about morals, and we're talking about pocketbook too.

So in my opinion, there's no reason why an 18 year old kid can't drive a Ferrari, but they should want to go to Ferrari school and learn how that stuff works no different than a guy that says oh i've had porsches for 20 years i'm going to buy a formula one race car whoa dude totally different yeah right for sure and at the same time it's like oh i owned a gixxer 600 motorcycle you know what i'm going to soup up a subaru make a rally car you're going to end up in a ditch yeah you know it's not the same so and then also like driving a ferrari is not the same as racing a ferrari you know you can exactly yeah so yeah i get the i like that analogy as well yeah i think

the the permit system like florida has is a great system but it's structured incorrectly in my personal opinion but then again I think about where I learned from and I had mentors but a lot of my mentor I had multiple mentors because I'm very much on the page of learn as much as you can from as many people as you can forever right yeah never stop learning yeah but I had a lot of mentors that should not have been teaching at all and I had to learn a lot of mentors that should not have been teaching at all. And I had to learn a lot of things the hard way with a lot of close calls and a lot of dangerous situations that were more than avoidable had I learned correctly from a correct mentor. So I don't

know if this is an example of that. I am curious to hear like, so I've had a guy hand me the keys to the shop and say, hey, man, don't die. Walk away. Yeah. Okay. That's a bad one. My first time ever going into a wholesaler's venomous room, the containers in which some of the venomous were held were these small acrylic shoeboxes, right? And I want you to picture a Sterilite tub, but it's very thick, very dense, very rigid plastic that cracks super easy. There's no flex in it. So if you squeeze it, it's going to crack and the lid has no latches. It just sits on top. And the only thing holding that lid down

is the box above it. And then the only thing holding that lid down is the bottom of the shelf of the next shelf. And we're talking about two or three hundred venomous snakes in these containers. Obviously, there's air holes and stuff drilled. So when you get there and you're like, how do I do this? Figure it out. Oh, just grab it by the sides. Watch those air holes.

That was it. That's all i was told so now i have to figure out of my mind how i'm going to use my hands appropriately because there was no venom defender gloves back then how am i going to use my hand to extract this container while maintaining pressure on the lid enough to not allow the snake to get out or push it open or strike it open but at the same time i can't squeeze it too hard because i'll crack it in my own hand. And now what am I going to use to put this on? I can't just put it on the floor because it's, it's this big, you know, it's the size of a literal shoe box or smaller even. So now I have to have some kind of table.

I have to have some kind of, you know, utility bench or something. And then learning height ratio in terms of my eye level, because I'm short and stocky, how tall should I be in terms of how tall should the work area be how low should the work area be am i am i inconveniencing or putting myself in harm's way because i'm bending in the wrong way that's uncomfortable things like this that no one ever taught me that i had to learn on my own yeah you wouldn't even think about it going into it until you're doing it you know and then you're like wait a second this is yeah you don't know what you don't know that's for sure right exactly and now so speaking of these shoe boxes specifically i've now safely removed the top shoe

box right what do i do with the other one right what's holding the what's holding the the snake in in the one below exactly so i what i did was I took four or five of the same shoe boxes, and I taped – they're empty, completely empty. And I taped them with red electrical tape so that I knew that those red ones were completely empty. There was no animal in them, and I would use them as a placeholder. And that would prevent the lid from opening. But now I've now removed the shoe box. I put it on my little work table. It's easy to take the lid off because you take a snake hook and flip the lid off right common sense how do you get the lid back on better yet

how do you get the animal back in and yeah right yeah because there's nothing it's literally just gravity is the only thing holding it in place gosh well i was i was thinking too like my you know my pythons when i go to open cage, they're ready to grab whatever's coming near the cage because they think it's time to eat. So just the act of your hand going towards the cage says, oh, it's food time, get ready. And so I can imagine that several venomous snakes would be the same way. And I get like flipping the lid off and getting the snake out and you have time to like think through that. Right. But once the snakes out and you're trying to get it back in and get it back on, you're like, it's, it's happening. And you can't, it's like, it's not like, you know, the, the whole

like in the moment reaction thing starts to happen. And I would imagine that's where it gets kind of really dicey, you know, other than just it it not being a safe situation but like that's when things actually go into motion you know oh yeah and then let's not even talk about being surprised because the information you were provided if you didn't ask for it you didn't get it and at the same time the information you were provided that you did ask for is completely wrong. So for example, I walk in the room one day at this same facility and the trash can lid is on. And something that, that I learned was if the trash can lids closed, there's two things in that trash can garbage or a snake, right? Right. And it took some time for me to learn from other professionals from bona fide

mentors that a snake hook laid across the can cutting the diameter of the circle in half is the universal sign for a snake in the can and i've done that with multiple different facilities and that's that's kind of the gist of it and you walk in and you go man i don't want to just open this trash can because i can't see what's inside it's like gray rubber made you know hefty whatever so i'd go ask somebody else, Hey man, is there a snake in the trash can? Oh, I don't know. I didn't see anybody go in there today. Oh, Hey, Hey man, do you know, is there a snake in the can? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a forest Cobra that came in on that last shipment. It's, it's in the bag taped up at the bottom. All right, cool. Now, no one told me how to open

a trash can properly. And there is, and I know it sounds asinine but there is a technique to that in terms of using the eclipsing of light to your advantage because if i just whip that lid off real quick i've now just blasted that animal with a ton of light and their first instinct is going to be defensive against that light lunge at it yeah excuse me So when we talk about removing lids with particular species, there's a sliding motion, right? So I'm going to slide the lid across essentially making the crescent moon eclipse, right? So that they see the light slowly fade away. And then when I open with with certain species, I do the

same thing. So that way, they're not going to instantly attack that that white light. But I also with certain animals, I'm going to use that that lid is a shield so if the lid has handles right there's two handles on either side of the diameter of the circle there's also handles on the trash can itself i don't want the handle lids to become parallel with the the tub lid or tub handles excuse me because now it's cumbersome i can't use a snake hook i can't use a pry bar i can't use my hands appropriately i need to offset them so i need those the two lid handles to be perpendicular with the actual handles on the trash can and this is stuff that

no one told me i had to figure this out so now that i have it offset i can lift that lid and put it against me like a shield so if it is something that's going to fly out it's going to hopefully go for the shield first and if it is something that spits it's going to go for it's going to spit that shield first and that when i opened that thing there was a nine foot black forest cobra that flew out came out of the trash can onto the ground stood almost eye level with me i'm like five short guys stood almost eye level with me and my friend chris was in. I'm a short guy. Stood almost eye level with me. And my friend Chris was in the room with me. And I had a set of gentle giants, those grabbers.

And I put the gentle giants against the base of his sternum, like the front of his chest. And I pushed him back as I climbed up the wall. And the reason why I climbed up the wall like Spider-Man was because the door opened the opposite direction. it opened in and

not out yeah yeah so i go to grab the doorknob behind me and i can't push it have to go forward towards the school and again this is something no one taught me and at the same time as i'm pushing this forest cobra away my friend chris takes a bigger hook hooks it it turns to look at him and it with that point i could manage to get the animal tailed and put it back in the trash can but these are all things that no one taught me i had to learn the hard way so in one way i thought i was being mentored and i was not yeah you know i mean so i'm i am obviously pro mentor this that's why this podcast is gonna be so unique but no no that's but you can learn a lot of bad stuff from people that don't care or people that didn't know themselves to teach

you know what i mean so i'm thinking too like you know in a perfect world we would have maybe a tiered system where you have to have experience with kind of less dangerous animals before you get into the more dangerous ones is there any kind of thing like that in in place and i don't do this in australia right like they have yeah you have different things you have to work with and build up and not just with venomous but all of them but yeah and from what i gather the australian system is very very smart except for a few species like there are certain species that like for example most australians believe that you know the death adder complex and kenthofus, should be one of the first venomous snakes you work with because it's not going to fly across the room and bite you in the face. You know, it is a very terrestrial ambush snake.

But for whatever reason, it's in the top tier. So that really doesn't make sense to most keepers, most handlers. Now, there are tier systems in place for other states. There are tier systems in place for other states there are tier systems in place for facilities and universities but our good friends Brent and Chris from venom life gear they're putting together a I don't know how I don't butcher this forgive me guys if you're listening they're putting together a handling program that they've already been doing with government so basically basically they go to the military base and they say, okay, you have, you know, ECAS or you have, you know, rattlesnakes or, you know, you've got whatever on said military

installation. We will teach your soldiers. We will teach your police. We will teach your firefighters how to handle these things. And it's usually a week long course and they work, they work them through and walk them through it. And the plan is to basically standardize that the same way that we have like safe surf in restaurants is safe surf law. No. Does it look good? Absolutely. Do they teach the correct stuff? Absolutely. So I don't want to say that venom life gear is going in that direction. And, and whatever, you know educational organizations that are affiliated with that concept. But that's kind of the idea is to have a uniform, you know, where everyone's learning the same. Right.

Yeah. And that makes complete. That was kind of my next point is, you know, that would be a huge benefit to have have a standardized training that's recognized, you know, as legitimate by whatever state you're in keeping venomous. And then I think it would be wise for those, you know, the folks that are putting that together to get buy-in from states that allow venomous keeping and have that, you know, be, you know, in the regulations or something, you've got to complete these courses or whatnot, you know, to, to be able to get a license to keep, to keep these animals. But now here's the con. So we go back to that slippery slope of, we like government, government's good. Government watches us. Government takes care of us. And I mean this in the good way, but government also is infamous for giving an inch and taking a mile. So now all of a sudden you've said, okay, I've presented you safe serve thing right and we'll call it that and you know florida

says oh that's fantastic if you do that wham you get an instant you know vipera day permit okay covers all the florida native stuff you're good to go right yeah but let's just say georgia says no you can't do anything unless you get that. Well, now what? Now I have to pay. Now I have to travel. Now I have to put myself out when I could have done it in my home area or whatever. And, and again, I'm not talking bad about that. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate on the topic. And at the same time, let's assume it's not, you know, our good friends at Venom Life Gear that are extremely knowledgeable and worldly with experience. Let's assume it's not you know our good friends at venom life gear that are extremely knowledgeable and worldly with experience let's assume somebody is is government related or whatever that is not

bona fide to do this usgs survey folks exactly thank you thank you yeah why can someone please tell me why us geological survey is doing the Tegu research in Homestead. Yeah. People that study rocks are now, you know, cutting open frozen Tegus. Anyway, I digress. So yeah, all of a sudden now you've got,

you know, Bob who's teaching this class and Bob's only handled snakes for four months. Bob's going to now tell me how I need to handle my lapids. Not going to happen, Bob. Yeah. So, I mean, unless it's bob rock

i'll pay every time um so yeah so so it's how do you vet those people how do you how do you find out if they're if they merit or they're worthy enough whatever you want to call it not to sound you know elitist or egotistical sure right how do you find out if they're worthy enough, whatever you want to call it, not to sound elitist or egotistical. How do you find out if they're righteous and they're not just, oh yeah, do this. And I can't tell you how many times I've regrettably taught individuals that went around to another state when they did not complete their training with me. They pulled an Anakin Skywalker. They left me, went off, did their own thing. And now they're God's gift to snakes. And they're teaching a lot of bad stuff because they never got to learn it from somebody. And unfortunately, maybe they didn't think the way that I thought.

Again, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but there's a lot of things that is common sense that you or I or Chuck or whomever would, would figure out. And this guy just throws out the window and now he's teaching people how to do this it's like no you do not pick that up with your hands no you do not use a hook that short no you don't you don't use your hands to open that latch like come on man yeah yeah so and i and i would imagine when you're teaching there are certain things like like you know if you're gonna you teach people you don't tail a snake or you don't do this, and then when you get better, maybe that's a skill you acquire. But to initially teach them, you teach them, hey, man, you teach them the safest, best possible way.

And then when they become more experienced, just like any professional – and in aviation, we do that. We teach strictly by the book. And if you have a better way, after you've learned what the requirement is and the safest way to do it, and you're knowledgeable about it, there are other ways that you can do it, but you need to know what you're doing, right? Like that's kind of, I mean, right? Of course. It's the famous saying of shortcuts are great as long as you memorized how to take the long way. Yeah, right. Perfect.

Yep. You know? Yep. And I, like, for example, when right now I'm not doing any apprentices at all right now just because COVID put a stop to a lot of stuff and facilities got moved and it's just everyone's lives are so hectic so I will do it in the future just not right now um but when I was doing it you would tell real quick who was a diehard wanted to work with snakes and who just wanted pictures for Instagram because you know the first ten weeks they don't touch an animal yeah with a way even with a hook you know for the first 10 weeks, they don't touch an animal. Yeah. Even with a hook, you know, for the first 10 weeks they're watching and they're learning

and we're burning the repetition in their minds. And eventually after five, six weeks, okay, now you're actually gonna start cleaning cages for the handler. Handler removes the animal apprentice goes in, cleans the cage and then back and forth. Right. And after 10 weeks, we start with small stuff. We start with copperheads, pitting rattlesnakesakes stuff that is less likely to cause a fatality i'm not saying that they're weaker or more mild but less likely to cause a human fatality and we and we work from there you know

yeah and i think that that's a an appropriate way to do it i think that's a a good way to do it providing the person doing it knows what they're talking about. It isn't just a bullshit artist. Pardon my French. Yeah. No, I mean, there, there definitely needs to be some kind of vetting of people who are the, the trainers, you know, like, and, and I guess the world we live in, you know, of course that doesn't always work out and you get people who, you know, claim to be this or that, or that, that have a certain number of hours. So they meet, you know, the requirements, but they're not really that great. So, but you're right. You know, anytime you give the government say in who does what, then, you know, that, that adds a layer of, of regulation and just sometimes just flat out ignorance or foolishness to the problem and

sometimes makes it worse than better. So that's a difficult thing to say. This is exactly how are we going to do this and how are we going to implement this? Phil, if I could jump in real quick. So does Florida, I mean, or any requiring state that is requiring mentorship? Do they offer or create a set of requirements? Other than you have to have this many hours, do they say you need to have this many hours. Like, do they, do they say like, you need to, you know, check certain boxes or do certain things or is it just more of like, I mean, obviously you gave the, the,

like how they break it up into hours per group and things like that, but more detailed, like, are they going into the minutia? No, no, definitely not. And, and there are guidelines in play like for again i'll speak for florida because it is my state sure there's there's sections that get submitted for disaster protocol right whether it be tornado or hurricane or you know flooding for the you're going to live in a flood zone whatever it is and you have to submit part a to the state and part b stays with you at the facility you also have your bite protocol right everyone should have a bite protocol now there's a lot of people out there that think oh if you don't have antivenin you're an asshole well again pardon my french but it some people

can't get it it is not now it is an easy process to get antivenin if you physically can does that make sense yeah so if you have all of your paperwork in order, you have a physician who knows you and trusts you, and you're going to get this stuff and buy it from the pharmaceutical distribution companies overseas, rock and roll, do it. But nobody should be, you know, chastised or slandered because they can't get it. You know what I mean? And I understand that there's a lot of risk entailed from using up supplies from zoos and anti-venom banks and milking facilities and stuff like that. But there is nothing that I can think of in any legislation or anything that says, we're going to give you a driver's ed test, or we need you to write out, you know,

how many, how many feet this is, or how many inches is this, or how much time is this? No, no, no. They say, give us a list of the tools you're going to use. You put snake hook. That's it, right? Now I try to put other ones just to see what happened, but what's the point? You know what I mean? And the inspectors, they do a good job for the most part, but it also comes down to the individual inspector. If you even have inspectors. There are some inspectors that are snake guys, and they're like, oh, man, this is cool. Or, oh, man, this is not cool. You might want to do X, Y, and Z.

And there's other inspectors that they're just a cop, and they don't even know about snakes at all. I can't tell you. In the past, I've had inspectors say, is that venomous? Because you don't have a label on that one. Well, no, it's not venomous. That's why I don't even know about snakes at all. I can't tell you in the past I've had inspectors say, is that venomous? Because you don't have a label on that one. Well, no, it's not venomous. That's why I don't have a label. So things like that can be a detriment.

And just going back to the cons of mentorship, if you have a bad mentor, they're not going to teach you these things or they're going to teach you these things wrong or incorrectly. And that's even worse. Yeah. And then and then I'm sorry.

No, go ahead. Go ahead. So and, you know, like like with having like having an inspector or I mean, if you even have an inspector, you know, and to and to your point about how, how agencies like to just make things difficult to discourage people, a lot of times they don't want to pay for the infrastructure to monitor it or whatever. It's just like, Hey, you pay this fee and somebody looks at your paperwork and that person may not have any clue what they're looking at. Right. So it's kind of like, you know, you, you jump through all these hoops, but I mean, are they really like beneficial hoops or are they just like, you know, go through the motions hoops, you know? Yeah. Well, for example, uh, when I first

got my actual license, I didn't get, I got inspected for the first initial inspection to make sure my room was, you know, kosher. And I didn't get inspected for like six years after that. Cause the guy just didn't care. He's like, ah, that guy feel he's a good guy. I don't care. And then he retired and his, you know, his next guy in line, he wrote me seven misdemeanors in one visit and every single misdemeanor was label related. So out of force of habit, we put danger venomous on every enclosure. Well, the state law changed that year. It had to say danger venomous reptile or reptiles plural if there was more than one. So because I didn't have the word reptile after the word venomous, I got a misdemeanor. So it would have been better

if it was a venomous horse and you i mean like you know what i mean like what is it what is it what is exactly well that's and and again dude it's like it's like the fire inspector you know they have to find something that's their job yeah yeah and he gave me you know i had seven of those crap missed one of which was for possession of an unlocked enclosure for hydra dinastis gigas the false water which was not and still is not listed as a venomous reptile in florida yeah so he gave me 30 days to make my corrections i made the corrections within like 12 hours i emailed him pictures and all the chart all the charges got dropped no big deal but things like that is is a detriment because i never had anybody tell me i had to

have venomous on there you know i mean i never had anybody instruct me that and maybe that's you know ignorance is not bliss you have to do your own due diligence to do your own homework but a good mentor will dig those things up. A bad mentor just won't care. I, so I wanted to maybe hit on the anti-venom thing because that seems to be kind of a sore spot for, for zoos and for responsible keepers who have it. And, and, you know, they, they expect everybody else to, to, uh, have it as well. You know, if you're going to be keeping venomous, you might, but you know, maybe there's a better way to do it as well. You know, if you're going to be keeping venomous, you might, but you know, maybe there's a better way to do it. Some kind of system where you pay dues or whatever,

and that goes towards something like, you know, an anti-venom, you know, again, I'm talking in a perfect world. You're talking great ideas. The thought process you have is fantastic. I cannot agree with you more. I think that everything that you just said is fantastic, but it'll never happen because the FDA doesn't get their slice. But now, how does the FDA get their slice otherwise? They don't. That's why it's so hard. So basically, in the United States, we have one antivenin that does everything except for coral snakes, and that's CROFAB. CROFAB is FDA certified. And it wasn't until I think 16 or 17 months ago that the Mexican

equivalent was approved. And I don't know how it got approved. I don't know how much lobbying went to do that. And again, this is way above my pay grade, but now that other antivenin is now FDA approved. Every other antivenin in the world is not FDA approved and therefore is referred to as an investigatory new drug. So if you can get those licenses and those paperwork to import said investigatory new drug, you're golden. If you can't, because you don't have the ability to do that, then you're up the Creek. Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine with that A and D, they probably want, want to have some kind of, uh, reasonable justification, but not something that's going to get their product, uh, black mark. You know what I mean? Correct. And at the same time, it comes down to money because if I purchase, let's say I go to South Africa and I buy a vial of Samar from over the counter in the drugstore, all I got to do is give them money, right?

Yeah. It's about 80 bucks. If I have to get it through the hospital system here, it's about $1,300, $1,400 a vial. Oh, yeah. Same with crowfab right i mean if you get yeah better yet they've marked a bit on the trail right it's 1600 gram whatever it is do you know how much it is for for animals for livestock and dogs for like 10 bucks 300 bucks 300 bucks yeah like it's yeah the human market no physician ridiculous yeah no physician no er doctor will ever put a a antidote or antivenin in you that says intended for canine use right that'll never happen it's a probably a liability and and uh malpractice lawsuit they're not willing to when i heard that that markup for the human antevent, it was all just a,

a marketing thing. So, so they could go back and forth with the insurance companies. They marketed a thousand knowing they're going to have to, you know, pay, you know, they, they, they say, okay, yeah, a thousand, but they'll, they'll only pay like 800, but it really only costs a hundred or 200, you know? So it's, yeah, yeah. It's ridiculous. But or 200 you know so it's yeah yeah it's ridiculous but you know i guess again i'm kind of speaking in ideals but you know if there was a way that uh you know state government could have kind of a pool so and and whoever was you know venomous keeper paying

their dues or paying for license that kind of went into that pool and then they could replace fewer vials because it's centralized i guess then how do you get it to somebody who's bit at the you know well so like we have yeah that's true right so in florida we have venom one and venom two venom ones in miami venom twos in the hillsborough county area tampa area and they have good venom banks we also have several several individual facilities in central and northern Florida that make up their own bank. And they all have a collective group of antivenom because they're all milkers for pharmaceutical, right? So in the Southeast, Georgia, South Carolina,

Florida, Southern Alabama, we're in business because those individuals can essentially be anywhere within the day right helicopter airplane whatever it is um but if you live in salt lake and you need you know south african you know uh uh boom slang monovalent antivenin you might be up the creek yeah yeah and certain states which i think is very interesting certain states require you to have the antivenin in order to keep the species which i think is is a really cool thing but it sucks because you gotta pay for the stuff but at the same time if you can't do those ind forms if you can't get the stuff in you're you're done this piece you can't keep yes so is that is that phil is that something that they do out of ignorance like oh if you're gonna keep this you need to have the anti-venom because that's just you know good practice deterrent or okay that's that's what

i that's what it is okay all right so they so they're savvy enough to know like they can't get this so it's an exclusionary kind of right rule right gotcha gotcha gotcha and and it comes down to what's trending it comes down to what's hot in the news it comes down to who got scared with what what incident happened and what famous person posted an instagram post exactly next to a snake or something exactly and most of these government agencies they're legally obligated to investigate every single claim when I was living with my parents when I was younger in college I got a phone call from F from Florida Fish and Wildlife Mike my inspector and he's like hey man did you lose a king cobra and I

said no he goes are you sure he's like you're not gonna get in trouble I just I need to know if it's yours and we need to figure out what we're going to do i said no dude i don't keep kings i'm too short and uh he giggled but someone had put an ad on craigslist saying lost pet snake answers to the name of fluffy likes to be scratched behind the ears and it was clearly a picture of a 65 year old filipino man in the jungle holding this king cobra yeah yeah clearly of a joke but they legally had to investigate all the license holders in my county wow what a waste of time dang that's like that's like venomous swatting right there you know yeah right well he was cool about he just called me you know yeah yeah yeah but he was cool right like i mean right that they like that could be turned into

not cool pretty quick right it could escalate very quickly yeah yeah if you have somebody who doesn't understand what why they're doing what they're doing, you know, or you have somebody acting on, on, on bad intention, you know, uh, against the animal community. I could see something like that. Yeah. In the regulatory industry, we always separate into two groups. You've got facilitators and you've got blockers and blockers need so much more effort and justification and, you know, proof that you can do the things, then, you know, a facilitator, facilitator knows nobody's perfect. They're going to help you try to figure out the best and safest way to do it. Whereas a blocker just doesn't want the headache. So they're going

to say, no, they're just going to block it and move on. But now with, with anti-venom, I mean, obviously the goal is not to use it and to, you know, so, so it's going to go bad. It's going to, you know, you're going to have to replace it every, whenever it expires, which is probably not a realistic date either. I remember when I was a kid and this was in elementary school, there was a story about Grace Wiley. And, you know, of course it caught my attention because I'm a reptile guy and, and, you know,

was from young years on. But I remember reading and seeing the pictures of her holding co and, and, you know, was from young years on, but I remember reading and seeing the pictures of her holding cobras and holding, you know, venomous snakes and things. And she, she, what took off her glasses for a picture and one of her cobras bitter or something. And they went to get her anti-venom, but the, the, the anti-venom I think was good, but the syringe was rusted. So, you know, they couldn't inject her with the antivenom because the syringe was not. At least that's what my, you know, 10-year-old self remembers. I think that sounds about right.

I remember that story. Something to that capacity. So, you know, I think, you know, having that kind of centralized venom one, venom two scenario is, is probably very smart. And, you know, if there's a way to, to incorporate those kinds of things, you know, where it's a, it's kind of a pooled thing where, you know, lots of people may have interest in the state, especially if they're the, the venom venomous laws are a little lax in that state. You'd think they'd want to have that on hand you know it goes back to that system yeah it goes back to the same thing of we spend a thousand dollars on a on an animal but we have it in a 1995 cage you know from from container store you know and don't get me wrong i've got plenty of

animals in container store tubs right yeah but it's the same concept of man I got this animal that I paid $200 for this Cobra but now I got to pay five thousand six thousand dollars in antivenin for it when the odds of me having an issue and this is gonna sound really dumb I'm gonna get blasted for this the ignorance right the odds of me having an invenomation for me is incredibly low because in all the years that someone handles venomous, they don't have to ever touch the animal. Yeah. You know, we choose to touch the animal. I know guys that have been doing venomous for 50, 60 years. And they're like, man, I always wanted to touch that thing. I just never had the gumption to do

it. That's fine. And they've never had a close call. Yeah. We get close calls because we want to interact with the animals. We want to touch them and stuff. And there's a right and a wrong way to do that. You know, I talked to my friend Henry all the time. We talk about the difference between free handling and manual manipulation. Right. Right. Right. And, and, and it's, it's very, very simple in its, in his design. Your free handling is literally sitting there and playing with the animal as if it was a corn snake yeah manual manipulation is using your hands to move and transport said animal from one spot to another safely and methodically keeping the animal calm keeping the animal relaxed and and the old adage of oh i know my animals yeah you can know your animal until you don't you know you could do this for 10 years with the same

animal every day for 10 years and then one day that animal says you know what nope not today phil so it there is a very fine line between those two yeah but that being said, no one should be able to say how I handle my animals, but someone should always have taught the person correctly. Does that make sense? Yeah. And you have a lot of bad mentors who say, Oh man, they're, they're toxic. They're not that toxic. Just them excuse me yeah yeah who knows how you're going to react to something right that's exactly right i mean you could develop a sensitivity to certain venoms and you know i've heard a lot of my australian friends talk about

that you know peter birch has a sensitivity to like swampy you know the little swamp snake venom that they're not very dangerous unless you have sensitivity to their venom and then they're extremely dangerous potentially you know the other um so i'm going to set up the pins here and you can bowl them over i'm sure but um you know some of those uh what were they shift cages or whatever where you lock the animal using you know a sliding door or something. And then you never have to really handle the animal at all. So, you know, in, in, in, you know, a naive person like me thinking like that's the, the best case scenario, because you never risk a bite because you never interact with the animal directly. You're always, you know, locking it in a box, pulling the box out, putting it somewhere

safe while you maintain the cage and, and something like, you know, that seems to, to a non-venomous keeper, like that would be the best case scenario. And, and it works. It works like a charm. Yeah, it works. It works like a charm. Do I own shift boxes? Yes.

Do I own trap boxes? Yes. No one should own that box unless you can actually handle the animal correctly and safely. That's just it. And it's like saying, okay, I'm going to buy the, we're going back to the Ferrari, right? I want to buy the Ferrari, but I'm going to put a governor in it that only goes 20 miles an hour. Okay. And every time you drive that car, the bolts come loose on that governor

and they come loose and they come loose and they come loose. And one day you forget to tighten the knob on that trap box. Or one day you think the snakes in the trap box and it's not, it's underneath the water bowl where you thought it couldn't fit. Right. And then you reach in with that trap box. And now that snake is out or that snake is on you or what have you and i talked to scott about this all the time like him and i both have shift boxes we both have trap cody bartolini fantastic he has some of the nicest shifting cages i've ever seen in my life and he uses them but he doesn't have to he is so in tune scott is so in tune with his animals and learning how they work their body mechanics their locomotion their individual personalities that he can remove said animal

from the enclosure safely and continue about his process he doesn't have to they don't have to shove it in the box or wait until it goes in the box and then close the door real quick so yeah shift boxes are cool. Trap boxes are cool, but you should be able to handle that animal without it. Gotcha. Yeah. So, um, I guess the, maybe, uh, kind of a final point that, that I, um, potentially bring up here is, um, you know, there should be some responsibility of the person being trained. I mean, I, I, I assume, you know, like in, in your situations, some of these stories where they say, um, go ahead and

just go in there. Don't die. You know, you say you're the wrong person to be training me. I'm out of here. I'm going to find a right person or, or, or, you know, work through the venomous community, get, get rec, you know, recommendations from other venomous keepers. I, I don't know. I have a funny story, you know, speaking of venomous keepers that should know better, but I'm not going to name names here. But one of my friends went to this, this well-known venomous keeper and said, you know, and, and he had some, uh, some cobras for him and he said, let's, you know, sex these. And the guy, the guy that was receiving the cobras wanted to sex them. And my friend said, oh, you know, I can kind of visually sex

them. I can get a good idea about if they're males or females just by looking at them or the tail lengths or whatever. And the guy's like, no, no, let's, let's do this. Let's do this. Right. You know, let's probe them. And, you know, and, and so my friend said, okay, I'm going to restrain them. You probe them, you know? So he, he's kind of taken the dangerous end. The guy's like, yeah, yeah, let's do that. And so my friend restrains the first one, he gets the probe and he sticks the probe up the cloaca instead of into the hemipene or, you know, hemiclitoral pocket. Oh, geez. And says, oh, that's a male. And my friend said, okay, we're done here.

I'm just going to visually sex him. We'll be good. So, you know, even the people who may be looked at as experts, sometimes they're not such experts. So I thought it was pretty funny story. I, uh, I have a similar story. Um, an individual who I don't talk to anymore and I don't know why I don't think anything happened. I think we just kind of fell out in touch, but a young kid, uh, 19, 20 years old, uh, lives at a state and he saw my venomous etiquette videos. The ones I was putting putting out i'm due to put out

another one um on youtube and he's like hey man is there any way that we could speak on the phone and you could mentor me the to the best of your ability over the phone and i said sure i'll give you some pointers but it's very difficult to not show you you know what i mean and uh he told me that he he's in texas and he went to somebody's house to try and get mentorship. And he said, the guy was really weird. And he, he, he just picked stuff up and he had a hook in his hand, but he would, wouldn't use it. He would just grab them anyway. And it was this whole thing. And I told him, I was like, look, man, if it feels wrong, it probably is. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And go with your gut on those. Yeah. Don't put yourself in that situation.

And I think one of the biggest things that I always tell people is I don't teach venomous handling. I teach safety. I teach it's my, Henry always says this, my class is not a snake handling class. It is a snake safety class. Right. Yeah. And there is, it's never a break dance. It's always a waltz it's a ballet everything needs to be slow and smooth and methodical and relaxed until it's not and you got a break dancing you throw down the cardboard and let it happen right yeah um so if you go into a scenario or a situation where it's techno light strobing and like house music that's not that's not kosher that's not the

right thing it needs to be the opposite needs to be Baroque and you know Victorian and relaxed yeah so yeah and if you're if you're eggs and powder and yeah yeah but if you if you're gonna keep venomous make sure that you're getting a you know, the right training that you're, you're conscientious about that. Not just trying to pass off your hour so you can hurry and get that Cobra you wanted your whole life. Like be smart for yourself. Like get, get that education that, that will keep you safe, keep you happy. And now, you know, there's no guarantee that, you know, all the safety training in the world is not going to prevent every bite, you know. And I mean, working in a lab with deadly viruses, we, you know, we we try our best to have. And that should always be on the forefront of anybody that's working with anything dangerous is safety, you know, safety first, safety first. And it's your life on the line, quite literally, if you're dealing with something that's lethal. So the onus is on the person to make sure that they're trained properly and to walk away from a situation. It might delay your ability to keep that animal that you so want to keep. But, you know, if you're going to live longer and be able to enjoy that animal for a longer time, because you got trained properly, it's probably worth it.

Right. 100%. Well said, sir. Well said. Chuck, you, you, we're going to say something earlier and I feel like we, we, we stopped you. Oh man, that was so long ago. That left shortly after I yeah sorry sorry sorry about that well um you got any kind of final parting words uh yeah um if anyone's looking to get into venomous

and get a mentor learn as much as you can and even if you find the perfect mentor and you're like, man, this individual is worldly and experienced and safe and methodical, that's fantastic. Still get another person. Always get a second, a third, a fifth, a 10th opinion. Always learn as much as you can because what techniques work for me may not work for you at all or better yet. They may work a little bit and you still need to get stuff from other people. You know what I mean? And I feel like a lot of venomous keepers or soon to be or aspiring venomous keepers, they get stuck where they're like, man, I only got one guy in a hundred miles. I have to just get my time with them. And it's like, no, do some more homework. If that means you've got to travel far away, make friends on Facebook, whatever, learn from other people and learn from other people's mistakes. Yeah. I like, I like that story you shared about the guy in Texas, like looking for additional,

you know, supporting training, even if it's over the phone. I mean, you can provide some input or, you know, here, here's what I'm trying to do. And here's what I've been doing, or here's what I'm working with. Hey, have you thought about this? I've worked with that species for 20 years, and here's the close call I had. Avoid this, that kind of thing. Even small. Yeah. Even small stuff like racks.

Personally, the two most deadly things with venomous keeping is deli cups and racks because we're so ingrained to use our hands. You're sliding a drawer open with your fingers and it's the snakes just sitting there and it's going to see your heat signature or it's going to see the motion or it's going to know that every time that drawer gets open, it's provided a meal and that's an accident. It's focused that it's focused one way, right? It's all right there in front of I mean, it's all right there in front of you.

Yeah, it's like, hold on. So if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. And if it doesn't seem right, it's probably not, you know? And always get second and third and fifth and 20th opinions. And also, I mean, you might be really great at handling a certain class or group you know like i mean the australians are almost born handling elapids they have all sorts of experience there was a famous scares me to watch yeah man those snakes are fast and like just it i would never i would never but like they're you, you know, people, it's, it's impressive. It's

really impressive. And there was a famous Australian researcher that came over here for a conference and did some herping down in Arizona or New Mexico or something like that. And then he, and he got bit by a, either a copperhead or a rattlesnake or some, some kind of viperid. And, you know, know he had all the all the elapid experience in the world but that viperid acted differently than all the elapids that he'd handled and he got bit so it might have been an accident like flipping a log or something you know the wrong way sure yeah even those kind of things are but you know you know that that's part of it right yeah exactly that's part of it and and i guess the point of that is you're never too knowledgeable to, you know, make a mistake or too knowledgeable to learn from somebody, especially a local, you know.

Don't just assume I'm Mr. Venomous in Australia. That translates to Mr. Venomous over here. So, yeah. Yeah. Well said. Well said. There's a lot of things to, to, to consider when you're, you know, putting your life on the line potentially. Yeah. And you know, when I, when I

kept those, uh, rattlesnakes, I never handled them or, you know, I, I, I wouldn't really manipulate them. I'd kind of use, you know, a long handled grabber to pull feces out of the cage or whatever. So, you know, I wasn't really trying to interact with them or, or pull them out or handle them or whatever. But, uh, I, I left them in the care of my parents when I lived in Germany for a couple of years. And my mom went in and she heard the rattlesnake rattling. She was looking in the cage, trying to see it. And then she looked up and it was sitting on top of the cage. And this is a midget faded rattlesnake that kind of had a bad attitude, you know, and it's, you know, a few inches from her face. And that's, that was the main reason I gave him

up was I heard that story and I'm like, oh man, I feel horrible. You know, if my mom would have got bit on the nose or something, I would have been, uh, not a good situation. I thought maybe she beat you with an inch of your life and. Yeah. So, so, you know, even, even when you, things can happen, you know, they, they probably weren't kept in the proper caging or, you know, that kind of thing. She called my dad in a panic and he said, Oh yeah, I'll be, I'll take care of it after work and just put some towels under the door and make sure it can't get out of the room. And when he got back from work, it was just sunning itself in the windowsill, you know, so he scooped it back into its cage.

But yeah, that's, you know, it might not just be you that you're risking in a lot of these situations. And so you need to have concern for those around you and be aware of, you know, what you're doing, if it's proper to also protect the safety of, of others. Well, and I, and I mean, you know, maybe 20 years ago that didn't make it all over the place, but you know, there's an incident with something, social media and the internet. Now it's, it's everywhere instantly, you know, and you have capitalists who will pounce on any opportunity to spin something or make something. It's not that the minutia and the detail of it never comes out. It's you know, it's it's always, you know, I mean, I think and I don't remember if I know I talked about this, but there was a guy. I don't remember where it was, but he had passed away and he had snakes and some of them were venomous

and you read we talked about this justin and i think what you know you read the article and the article just like it goes out of its way to imply that somehow the venomous snake had something to do with it but but even in the article like it never says that you know what i mean it's like it's like it leads you to believe the snakes killed like reaching for it at every turn but did they ever say what it was no i don't think a heart attack yeah yeah and that's what i'm saying and and i think even you were saying like in the bottom of it it did it like explicitly said that you know that it's unclear of why he passed away you know so it was like come on man yeah all the snakes were in their cages you know there was nothing out and

you hear it from the people who were close by and then they tell you the real story like no yeah you know it wasn't he was he was like a great neighbor and everyone loved him and yeah and then they found out he had snakes and you know oh my god we never knew how like like like it's freaking jeffrey donald you know i got out of here man like yeah yeah and unfortunately that's kind of how the public sees reptile keepers sometimes i mean i think that's changing over time with you know educating the youth and stuff but you know we we need to be be aware that you know that we're we need to be, be aware that, you know, that we're heavily scrutinized. There's not a lot of room for error. So, you know, there's no room.

Yeah. Yeah. And if you, if you can't, you know, control your desire for instant gratification, I want a snake right now. And I don't care. Nobody can tell me what I can and can't, you know, that's, you probably don't want to get a venomous snake, you know, let's, let's, uh, think about, I do, I do think that that is probably a point for you, Justin, in the fact that mentorship done right. You know, can, can you, you know, that at least, at least at that point, you know, where, where it feels like, look, man, uh, I don't want to do this to you but you shouldn't be doing this i'm not gonna i'm not gonna mentor you i mean obviously that person could go out and and you know that there's plenty of people who sell venomous snakes to people who are unqualified and not not licensed and you know that's a that's an obvious black eye but you know at least you know somebody has told this person look i know what I'm doing and you shouldn't be doing this.

Like straight up. Like it's a two way street. Yeah. And and it's kind of that's a rough thing, too. Right. Because here's obviously somebody who wants to do it, but shouldn't be doing it. And if you don't help them, are they going to just go do it on their own and then potentially have a bad outcome, which, you know, only scrutinizes everybody else? Like, oh, man.

How about I know for a fact that there are several individuals that are very popular on social media, right? And I know for a fact that they learned correctly and that they are very, very good at knowing their animals in terms of natural history and husbandry and handling. And they are very methodical and very professional, but not on social media. Right. Right. Right. Put out that persona that they're, you know, flying by the seat of their pants. It's all exciting and scary.

And yeah, they could get you at any moment or something. I had a guy come to me and said, Hey, all right, so let's, let's rewind a little bit. I had a guy who wanted to get hours with me and he did six to eight months with me and he was fantastic. He had done stuff at other facilities and I tried to vet him, but I couldn't because the people that he'd worked with had actually moved out of country. And I eventually did. And everything he told me was a lie, but it didn't negate the fact that he was very good. He was very, very good. And when it got down to brass tacks, he was, he was rushed. He had to get his permit now. And when it came down to me signing off on him, I said, look, man, I'll sign off for 500 hours. I'm not signing off in

the thousand because you didn't do a thousand hours and you've only been with me for less. You've been with me less than a year. I don't want to get in trouble for you. Exactly. It's my butt signing off on it. So he says, whatever, fine. I'll take the hours that you give me. And he goes off and I don't hear anything of it. And then some time goes by six months, whatever. And then another student comes and he's like, Hey man, I've done some hours with this person. That person I'd like to get some hours with you. Sure. No problem. Come on by. We'll do it. And I say, Oh, so who'd you train with? I trained with so-and-so I go, really, really. So let's do this. How would you remove this animal? And the things that he was taught were deadly. The things that he was taught was going to get him killed. And I had to basically

unteach him. You know what I mean? Break all the habits that he had and start from scratch because the stuff that he was taught by this, you know, anxious Anakin, if you will, was detrimental to everyone. Detrimental to our community, detrimental to the animal, detrimental to the individual. Yeah. There's something interesting about human nature that, you know, kind of turns the brain off when you really want to do something or wants it. I had a friend that, uh, did, uh, skydiving and he didn't want to have, you know, be strapped to an instructor's back. So he learned, you know, went through the courses and learned how to skydive individually and all the, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so it came time to sky, and there was a guy in the class that he had, he had a lot of money. So he bought all the,

you know, the skydiving equipment and was all gung ho about it. And he had seen, you know, skydivers that, you know, the guys that would, you know, land and run out of it, you know, and he's like, I'm going to do that. I'm going to run out of it. And they're like, no, that's a, that's an expert move. You're a beginner. Don't try to run out of it your first go and he didn't listen and he tried to run out of his first jump and he broke both his femurs it's like you know play stupid games win stupid prizes now yeah that only impacted him it didn't say okay nobody can skydive anymore whereas you know right that's that's you know some somewhat of a reality in the venice venomous community and so very much a reality that's a

that's a hard balance to strike right and you know i i i do gotta say those you know sometimes it's just not fair though because i i think you know if somebody – there's all types of risk, right? And you assume so much risk as a human being just operating out in the world. And the way we assign risk sometimes – I mean, is working with venomous animals risky? Yes. But as long as you're assuming that risk in the safest and, and the only person who gets injured is you. Right. I mean, that's no different than so many other things.

Yeah. Other than the way it's looked at by people who would marginalize it because it's reptiles, because it's a venomous snake. Right. And I guess that, that kind of chaps my ass you know it's just and and you know it's just kind of unfair and i i mean i guess maybe i guess maybe some of that is understood you know you do hear about stuff happening and it and it you know the the the noise level goes up and then kind of the noise level goes down and i i think some of that is is not lost on people but it's an easy you know it's an easy target it's an easy feather ruffler so you know i just i don't know i mean you know

obviously anytime we're easy targets we got to do it better uh than than you know than the next than the next group. It's statistically proven that driving a car is more dangerous than keeping venomous snakes. It's statistically proven. Well, dude, more people die from horses. There's so many other animals that are domestically kept that people die for at much, not slightly, but much higher rates every year.

And it's just kind of like you know we because they're you know they're horses and we ride horses and we have a long history with horses and in settling this country and things like that it's like yeah we couldn't get rid of horses like what like yeah regulate horses like people would flip the fuck out you know well that's the steve ronell acute and cuddly theory right yeah yeah yeah exactly you can have cats all day long in australia but if you want to have some you know reptile from another country nope no no go you know even though those other reptiles from other countries aren't decimating the wildlife populations like like exactly yeah exactly sorry i always have to do

no i love it i've been on a rant roll recently so we love your rants keeps it spicy right well uh we sure appreciate you coming on phil this has been a really uh really good conversation i i mean i've learned a ton ton and, and, you know, it's, I, I'm, I've always been fascinated by venomous reptiles and I, I love rattlesnakes. I love to encounter them in the wild and see them and, you know, seeing the, the, the ridge nose and the, the cloud variety this, this last year. Oh my gosh, man. Yeah, that was, that was fantastic.

So, you know, it's, it's, it's really cool to think about keeping venomous and things. So where can people find you if they want to, you know, reach out? I'm actually, I'm all over the place. Um, so we have a live podcast called snakes and stogies every Monday night at 9 PM Eastern standard. Uh, it's part of the Herbert culture network, which is a network of podcasts. Uh, a few of my friends and i have and then i just started a new podcast with the one and only mr nipper reed uh called venom exchange radio and that's also anywhere you can find podcasts there's only one episode out right now the next episode episode two comes out on sunday um but yeah it's going to be a strictly venomous centric podcast. So, uh, field herping breeders, uh,

photography, husbandry, you know, the, the medical field, we're going to cover it all. And that's, that's on the NPR network, right? Like, well, we kind of collaborated between the two. So it's, it's our own, it's our own venom exchange radios, its own feed, but obviously nipper comes from the NPR side. I come from the herpetoculture network side. So we're kind of, we're the liaisons to both. I love it.

I love it. That's awesome. Give it a listen. Yeah. I'm excited. I haven't, I honestly, I spaced it off. So I need to go and listen to that. I'm really excited.

I remember hearing the announcement and so, yeah, I need to get in there and listen to it, but. I appreciate it. Yeah. Good stuff. And I mean, I, I don't know. I really enjoy listening to you guys on snakes and stogies. It's it's you guys do a quality job. You get a lot of good guests. Yeah. And I mean, you got to mention your, uh, nephorus. Uh,

yeah. So my, my Instagram is the nephorus initiative. Um, it's basically, uh, my animal account, if you will, but it's knob tail specific. So, uh, nephorus and underwater source. And I just, I made the page to promote photography and husbandry and breeding of knob tails, because at the time when I made it, there really wasn't anything there. Sure as hell wasn't a beautiful book written by the one and only Dr. Drew Lander. So, so I tried to share as much as I could about knob tails and, and barking geckos and it kind of snowballed into some venomous stuff here and there. But, but yeah, if you're interested in knob tails,

it's the nepharous initiative is actually knob tails.ig. So yeah. Very cool stuff. Yeah. All right, man. Thanks again for coming on. And thank you guys. We'll give a shout out to the Morelia Python radio network. The website, Morelia Python radio.com. Everything you need to know is there. You can follow them on Instagram,

Facebook, YouTube, everything's at NPR network. How did I do this week, Chuck? You did well. You did well. Getting polished here.

Hope the pod father is happy. Yeah. I, I, I'm impressed. Well done, Justin. Well done.

Well, thanks for listening to another edition of reptile fight club. And we'll be back at you next week. Stay hungry. Like the wolf folks. And we're out. Thank you.