Reptile Fight Club - What should we do with Invasive Species?

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Justin and Chuck tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of what should we do with invasive species.  Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsCold-blooded Cafehttps://www.coldbloodedcafe.com/Use the code MPR10 for 10% off your order. Texas Carpet Fest Swaghttps://texascarpetfest.printify.me/products?fbclid=IwAR3C0-K_pZGSGXbhbSJXibKi1Z0a9QEg_MrFKm1aZr7KALZaRvCM-6XlDUYCold Blooded CaffeineThey are a fantastic coffee company that has a love for reptiles. $1 Of Every Bag Sold Is Donated To Wildlife Conservation In Coffee Producing Countries.We now have a referral link https://coldbloodedcaffeine.com/?ref=9wLRgXGdAnd if you use the code MPR to get 10% off your order.Follow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Hello everybody, what is going on? My name is Justin Julander. If you didn't know, I'm here with me in Cyberland as Mr. Chuck Bowen. How's it going? How's it going on, Chuck? Oh my gosh. How are you? Oh man, I'm a little tired. Looks like you are too. I am. I am super tired. That's alright, that means we're working hard That's right No, working hard

Yeah I got final reports due All sorts of people breathing down my neck For reports and such I need my data I need my data Exactly Yep

The data you sent wasn't in the format I wanted it in. Read it, send it. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. Fun, fun. Well, what's going on in Snake Land? Not much. Snakes?

Yeah, so snakes outside for Hurricane Hillary. Did non-survive non-event yeah it was a very non-event down here so at least where you were right yeah definitely i mean i i know um i heard ocatillo and even um you know a lot of that high desert area yeah around there got hit pretty bad with flooding and stuff. So like flash flooding. So some stuff up around Palm Springs, like yeah. Palm Springs hit it. It's weird though.

It seems like it, it seems like it, it went in and got the desert real bad. So, well, hopefully it's not for the desert. You know what I mean? Like hopefully in the longterm it'll benefit the wildlife and we'll see an uptick. I'd like to get out there again soon, but dang, there's just so many places to herp. You know what I mean? I do. That place is one of my favorites, though.

I don't know. Yeah. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to replicate the season I had out there when we had herpeton out there. I went out herping just kind of on my own. I just ditched out the meetings early and head out into the desert to herp and saw a ton of stuff. Man, our trip out there was pretty dang good, too, with the NPR crew. Well, someday you could have a proper trip and go out with Jeff Lim and let the master show you how it's done. There you go.

Well, I don't know that he'll take me out. That's true. I mean, he did take me out herping once, but we didn't go out to the desert. It was just kind of... He also sold you up the river for a spot too. He did? Yeah. Wasn't that a spot?

So remember when I was picking up crickets and I saw you and Eric and you guys said you'd just come from a spot? That spot. So remember when I, when I was picking up crickets and I saw you and Eric and you guys had said like, you'd just come from a spot. Wasn't Lem the guy who gave you that? Oh yeah. And it was,

there was totally nothing there. Well, or at one time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I forgot about that,

but we were, yeah, we were joking that, that Lem, like, you know, gave you a bog Lem gave you a bogus spot. He lemmed you. Nah, just a good guy.

Nah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he does find a lot of good stuff, though. He sure does. He is good. I haven't had a Jeff day out there before. I think his son might even be better at it than he is. Yeah. But he went that fisherman route.

He kind of lost interest in the herp and went fishing. Did he? Yeah. I'm sure he's good for that, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. No fault with that. No. No.

Yeah. However you spend your days. I didn't get into fishing that much. Heidi really likes to fish. She got into it a bit. I said, how about I herp while you fish? How's that sound? My cousin and I, I did

some deep sea fishing and then my cousin and I made kind of a thing. Every time he comes out, we go deep sea fishing. That's kind of fun. I like that. The Utah. Every time he comes out, we go deep sea fishing. So that's, that's kind of fun. Um, yeah, I like that. So the Utah boys, uh, Chris and Aspen and, and I went out with, uh, Keith McPeak on his boat and do some deep sea fishing. Nice. Oh man. Uh, Lindsay went with them. Of course. Um, very course. Very cool gal. But she's like the real deal fisher woman.

So, yeah, she probably showed them all up, I'm sure. Just like she does in herping. Wow. Yeah? Yeah, she's a good herper. Sweetness. So, let's a good herper. Sweetness. So let's see. Yeah, non-event, hurricane, no problem there.

Yeah, man, everything else is good. Cool. Yeah, just I'm trying to get this coastal clutch that I had this year feeding. They're being stubborn. So I don't know. I may have to start. But, you know, I've been, like, trying to train and stuff, so I just really haven't been, like, trying to, like,

focus my energy on it too much. I've just been trying to drop, like, you know, live fuzzies in there and switch. I'm like, what? What? You're not eating what so they've all shed and so i'm like i'm kind of like you know last year's clutch was way easier to start i don't know man don't you hate it when it when it yeah like but but you know what dude like i started complaining when half the clutch last year fed and the other half didn't and then they all ended up feeding eventually and it was fine and i was like you know what i mean i just like it's it's old impatient me coming back like why

are these things just being right out of the egg you know so yeah no i know what you mean yeah i uh i have yet to start the inlands like i i'm waiting for them to shed so yeah but yeah hopefully they'll they'll be as easy as last year last year went pretty smooth with the fingers crossed right yeah for sure oh man you missed a good carpet fest it was yeah so i feel like i needed to ask you about that uh how so it was good oh yeah yeah it was and um did you not the the crazy stories that you hear from previous years It was a little more tame, which is probably good Because I was there, I'm kind of the wet blanket I think of the party

Are you saying it was Buzzkill 2 under a season? Maybe, yeah I probably just brought a little Buzzkill with me Gotcha There was no Mancini No Mancini? It was pretty tame, yeah that's good no voyeur shows but anyway yeah it was uh it was nice and tame for for the utah boy so that's good it was it was

fun it was really cool to catch up with some people and i had some really nice conversations with some people i hadn't i hadn't ever met person. Few that I had that it was good to see again. And yeah, it was really a fun show. So, I mean, and did somebody show up with an animal despite not being told not to show up with animals,

only the ones that were bringing them for Eric. So that was the exception. So it was, I got you. All right. So no, he's like, Hey,

what are you doing? What is this? Eric told us to, I don't care. those out of here get it out yeah for sure yeah so uh me and rob rolled in a couple days early so we got there on uh wednesday wednesday afternoon and so we did a little herping in the rain found a few uh amphibians you know not not too much but it was cool they were uh american uh toads and one was really dark and cool looking i like toads they're fun so that was cool to see and then both you know both those or i mean a lifer and i hadn't seen american toads before in the right and then um we saw bullfrogs, so I've obviously seen those.

But they're invasive everywhere, which is kind of a little teaser for our topic. And then the – but yeah, other than that, I got a few new bird species out there. So I know most people don't care about that, but it was fun to add a, I think I added, I'm now. I think they would care if they could see the smile on your face right now. There you go. They can hear it in my voice. They should. I think, I think I added more herb species than bird species though for new, you know,

lifers for me. So that was cool. Way to keep it classy. Thank you, Julian. Right as we got to Eric's house, house um we he we flipped a log in his backyard and there was a garter snake so eastern garter snake tick i mean i've seen sirtalis but hadn't seen that subspecies the eastern so did eric run right to the rock and go oh my what's under this and flip it over it was the first one we flipped or maybe it wasn't the

first one but it was pretty quick after yeah just like in his little flipping pile in the back of his right to it exactly yeah look what i found and his his house um his yard borders like a creek or a river you know probably um small river for them but it was a very big river for utah but it was uh um so he's got that in his backyard and i think uh rob christian went out there and found like a slider that was on the nice bank or something and it was one that eric had seen before that was kind of cruising around in his backyard at one point it had like a chunk out of his shell or something um but yeah so we we did a little herping that day, got up the next day, went out to the pine barrens, um, got absolutely skunked on reptiles until Eric spotted a, uh, Eastern

fence lizard. And that was another lifer for me. And we got plenty, plenty of ticks though. So that was, that was fun. I think Rob picked off 150 off of his legs when we drove from from the pine barrens over to delaware to a copperhead spot and then we got skunked well we didn't see any reptiles at the copperhead spot but we got a toad there so that was cool um and then uh we were we headed back home kind of in defeat. It was a pretty rough day with the, uh, um, herping in the Barrens. It's, you know, pretty barren, I guess, in some ways it was pretty barren and herp life that day, but it was fun to, to get out at least see new habitat, get a lot of ticks.

I, apparently I got a bunch of chiggers, too, because now my feet are covered in bumps and itchy, and that's been fun. So East Coast herping, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, you don't get that out west. No chiggers. I was just going to say. Very few ticks.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, today we were supposed to have our special guests, but there's been some a few things came up. I guess things happened. Yeah, we were supposed to record last week, I think. But that was the week before Daytona. And our special guest realized that he was going to Daytona and he double booked. Now he's like, yeah, it's a little crazy, you know,

the week before and the week after Daytona. But we'll have him come on soon and then we'll have the two, two special guests come on in a month or two. There's been some more things that have occurred that have delayed that a little bit. So sorry for the teaser before, but we will have them eventually not that you care cause you don't know who they are, but needless to say, it will be a good one. So yeah, after we herped the pine barrens and that spot in Delaware, we went back to Eric's and got all our tick bites soothed with a shower or whatnot. Maybe a dip in Eric's pool pool it was he has a great

yard and then the the next day was the the um carpet fest and yeah it was it was pretty well attended probably 100 or so people maybe you know 75 oh the night before Carpet Fest, we were hanging out and I guess Eric's wife, Dory, went out back and found a little baby ringneck snake. And she thought it was like a worm. It was very tiny, like really small. And Eric's like, no, that's a snake. And she's like, oh, I see him out here all the time. He's like, what? This is the first one that he's seen.

So he was like, what the heck? I guess I need to go outside more and so yeah he brought that in the thing was just absolutely tiny but that was another new one at least pretty cool that subspecies yeah i'd seen the ring next down in san bernardino or whatever um orange county and then uh yeah uh eric's reptile room was off limits so we didn't get it right yeah he didn't make any exceptions there either so that was nice so he was out during the whole carpet fest hanging out with people uh he did some grilling getting some burgers going and stuff so that was a lot of fun nice and then um yeah we the next, oh, I forgot to mention on the way out to the Pine Barrens, there was a turtle in the middle of the road. Turtle. We're all turtles.

So Eric pulled over. I ran out, grabbed it off the road just before a huge truck came around the corner. Would have smashed it pretty good. Steve's proud of you. Yep. Steve loves those turtles, man. You can't keep him from talking about them, but it was a pretty little thing,

you know, um, just crossing over. There was a little swampy area where he was headed for. So we helped him over and he took off there, but yeah, it was another, another new species for me.

So it's cool to see, you don't usually get to see turtles unless you're out there in the water, Trump looking for them. So, and I think this was kind of late in the year to see a lot of turtle life or something, but, um, so yeah, but Carpet Fest was a blast. We had good food. Did you get your shirt? Zach Baez came and he brought his mojito chicken, which was fantastic. Oh, we did find a wood frog at that Delaware spot, so another new species.

But it was cool. Mike Curtin brought a bunch of oysters, and he was cracking oysters. We were having oysters on the half shell. He brought some, like, stuffed oysters. No lobster or crab or anything, so Nick Scali was slacking a bit. I think he fed the Utah boys and Keith and everybody lobster the night before Carpet Fest. I'll have to rat him out here, but he's a good guy. Don't let him fool you.

No matter what you see or hear with your own eyes and ears. No, he's a great guy. I really, it was fun catching up with Nick. Um, yeah, Nick,

uh, mutton and Ryan young came out from the West coast. Uh, so it was, uh, a good crowd there. Um, caught up with Eric Kohler a bit.

That was fun to chat with him. He's a, he's a cool guy. He's, yeah, he's kind of, he's bred a lot of cool species i think he just got gila monsters like yeah he's he's one of those those uh impressive breeders you know yeah i wish we could have gone out herping with him too he has a some uh good spots out in central pa but next time i, I guess. Um, so yeah, it was really, really just a great

time chatting with everybody. I got to see, uh, Zach Baez's photos of his trip to Namibia and Galapagos and holy crap, man, that guy can take some good pictures and he saw some amazing stuff out there. So I think they, he said they saw like nine species of viper the um bit us wow just out there yeah pretty crazy but yeah it's always good to catch up with people and see you know see meet people in person that you've only uh met online i guess yeah put a put a face to a name. Put a power lifting glove to a face. There you go. That's right. Yeah.

The night before, Nick and Ryan had got in, and then Han came in from Canada. So he was in from up above BC, I guess. So he was out probably the farthest, uh, one to traveling. So, and then the night before we just kind of hung out and chatted. It was, it was good time. Um, yeah. What else to say? That was, it was great. And the next day we went out with Mike Curtin, uh, out to the Pine Barrens again, but this time we had much better luck so a few uh so we got we got there a little late um we forgot to bring mike curtain's hat and so uh that was kind of a funny story too because um he had left it at you know the night before during carpet fest left it on the table

and so we uh left and then we're like oh crap mike's hat so he went back and he said if anybody sees my burgundy cap and Eric and Owen were looking around for they weren't sure what that meant and I'm like maybe he means his hat so I went and found a burgundy baseball cap and I'm like

I saw him wearing this this must be what he's talking about they're like oh yeah of course a burgundy hat why did we think it would be something else? But, um, so we had to go back for that. So we were a little bit later and, uh, Chris and Aspen, we met up with Chris Aspen and Lindsay. Um, and so we got there a little late and they were given, um, Nick Scali a bad time because he wasn't there and i guess he hasn't seen a timber in the pine barrens and so that was kind of one of the main targets there and of course you know we on the way we're almost there and they're like oh we just found two

timbers we're like drive faster and so uh yeah we missed missing those they'd kind of gone down a hole before we could get there and check them out and you're not allowed to manipulate them or anything. So, you know, we, um, kept, kept to the rules and tried to be really respectful of the animals, that kind of thing. Um, I mean, they were, so, so we got there a little late and so they were bragging to Nick Scali about finding timbers, you know, without him. Like, oh, you should have been here. We found the timbers.

And meanwhile, we found out Nick was, he drank a little bit. And so he was going to crash in his car. I'm like, I'll talk to Eric. He'll put you up in his house. You know, you can sleep in, at least indoors. And so, yeah, I don't know where he ended up sleeping. But then the next morning he was out there cleaning up the yard and like just being an all around good guy. So, yeah, he's and then so then he gets these texts from Mike Curtin bragging about how, you know, we found this is where you would have been if you would have been here.

You would have been able to see these timbers. And then Nick said, I thought you might say that. And he sent a picture of him holding mike's hat over his nude body in a strategic location man we're like oh there's the next kelly we know so that was pretty good uh good uh he he uh thought that out well yeah with a bit of a hangover the next morning so oh yeah i'm like that was uh that was a good move there nick now and everybody's like oh man what did i do with my hat last night he's got a huge photo roll of everybody's hats yeah just let him say anything to me yeah he'll hear this and he'll

he'll pop up with a picture of my hat or something that was funny so hide your hats folks hide so we we were so after we got there late didn't get to see the timber so we're hiking around saw a bunch bunch of cool stuff uh ribbon snake um a couple different frogs and toads saw some uh the uh what the what kind of toad did we see started with a nap anyway um that was uh that was cool to see the ribbon snake another garter snake species um fowler's toad that's what I'm trying to go for there. So fowler's toad, ribbon snakes. And then we were going along a spot and Mike's like, you know, this spot, I've seen him here before. And so we're kind of scanning along. And then I like saw this, you know, just look different. I'm like, what is that? Is it like garbage? You know? And I'm like, no, those are scales. That's a timber rattlesnake. And so there was one just curled up on the edge of a burrow,

just right under this pine bow. And so, uh, did you almost step on it? No, but I was looking pretty close. Like I, I, uh, it was kind of a hard thing to spot. So like, Oh, there's one right here. Timber. And, uh, it was a large find it that way that's how you find stuff yeah what step on it or yeah almost almost yeah yeah that's true so maybe maybe it was an almost step but i was kind of walking parallel to it so i wouldn't call it an almost step not like the diamond not true that was a non-traditional jewander encounter right there yeah yeah that's You still used eagle eyes. So we'll say that's not your, that's your, your secondary method, not your primary for

finding rattlesnakes. There you go. Usually, oh, I told Mike that I'm like, you know, cause there was a lot of chit chat and talking and stuff. And I'm like, Hey, you know, I need to walk away from everybody. Cause I find stuff by hearing it rather than seeing it mostly. And then I spotted that. Mike's like, oh, mister, I got to hear it.

It's pretty. Oh, no. I find a snake and everybody gets all. Yeah, but it dipped down a burrow pretty quick. So I got like one crappy photo of, you know, this, it under this pine bough, which we, you know, it was kind of cool to see it that way. And then you could hear it rattling underneath the ground. Um, so we're like, well, let's, let's come back and see if that one's come out. And there was a, like a big shed skin and stuff like that. It was pretty,

pretty cool. Um, so yeah, we, we kind of made our way around and then came back to the spot and she was out you know further out and so we were able to get some pictures of her and stuff a big female looked like she was gravid um so yeah it was really cool to see see that animal and uh so we you know we we did we went to another spot and didn't, didn't really see too much after that. We, we saw, um, a couple of, uh, no, actually we did see some good stuff. We found a really nice fowler's toad. We went to another spot and, uh, saw a, I think it was a worm snake.

Um, just a little fossorial snake that Rob flipped under this big piece of, um, chunk of concrete. And then I flipped an eastern milk snake. Nice! Yeah, I was pretty stoked about that. It was in shed, so it didn't have the bright popping colors, but it was a milk snake nevertheless. And it looked like it might have had that fungal disease.

So we went to great lengths i was the only one that handled it just to make sure we weren't transferring it to other places and then after i handled it i you know used an alcohol wipe to kind of disinfect my hands and stuff so hopefully that you know didn't go around spreading fungal disease disease unfortunately that's a problem out in east coast so. So, but that was fun to see. And then, yeah, we spent quite a bit of time photographing that. Then we went to this really cool place in the Barrens that was like, there was this really mossy spot. I think that it was, yeah, just perfect salamander habitat.

We only found one little tiny, tiny redback salamander was this one of the smallest amphibians I've seen. Um, found a couple of their frogs, leopard frogs, and a couple of scallops, the little Eastern fence lizards. And then, uh, we hit and hit that kind of walked along that trail and, and came back and there was like a bunch of police around. We're like, Oh, what's going on here and came back and there was like a bunch of police around we're like oh what's going on here and and they're like did you see a woman out there on the trails you were on and we're like no and they said yeah there's a 70 year old woman who's lost and they were like all these cops here and a couple of them set off into the you know on the

trail we just came in from an ambulance came up and that kind of thing. So we were just kind of saying goodbye to Mike. And then all of a sudden the ambulance came zipping out. So we assume they either found her and were taking her or they found her and the ambulance was going around to a different spot or something to pick her up. So hopefully that woman made it out safe and, and okay. But, um, so then we decided to go road cruise just a little bit before we headed back and it was me and Rob and Nick and Ryan. And, uh, we, uh, we're driving along, we hit the dirt road, you know, saw like a turtle on a basking out on a log or something. And then, um, we're going going along and and rob's like getting ready to turn around like oh let's just go a little further there was another little turnaround spot and we

can turn around there so we start coming back and then like everything all hell broke loose and everything kind of went nuts and so we're driving along and rob looks over to the left and there's like this car in the in the ditch or in the water. Right. Like just had crashed. I mean, recently, cause we didn't see it on her way through and, but on our way back, it was there. So it had to have happened within the last five minutes. And then, so he's looking over there and we're like, and then I see a snake in the road and on the passenger side and we're like, and so Rob swerved around, it was this beautiful timber rattlesnake. So there was a place and Rob pulled off.

And so we all get out of the car, run over, take a look at the snake. And then we can hear this kid yelling, help, help, my mommy, help my mommy. And so we're like, oh, crap. So me and Rob, I'm like, okay, me and Rob will go see if we can help you guys kind of stay with the snake. Make sure it gets off the road safely or whatever. Excuse me. And so, um, we go running up there and this kid's like, my mom, don't let my mom die. She's underwater. She's going to die. Don't let her die. And we're like, Holy crap. So we're going to like help save. And there's this, uh, man, you know, on his cell phone, like calling the cops or he's like, I don't know what's going on.

Like he's he's all freaking out. And apparently the guy knew the woman who had crashed. And so I go to look in the crashed car to see if I can, you know, see the woman or assess the situation or something. And there's this lady's butt. Right. I'm like, did she fall through the backseat? You know, she like leaning over the seat and then like I realized it was somebody helping the woman in the front seat so and so I get I'm like well I don't know what this kid's screaming about so we go around like okay your

mom's fine you know she's not underwater there's somebody helping her the cops are on their way you know you'll be okay and it's gonna be okay you know and then so i start like there's nothing we can really do here there's already somebody helping her there's somebody calling the cops and like i i don't know what we're we're gonna do here and so um he kind of settled down a little bit and then i look over and i see nick and ryan running up to us and i'm like what what are you where's the snake and they're like well he kept screaming so we thought maybe you know you guys needed more like okay and so and so uh and then I hear cars coming I'm like oh crap so I go running and I'm like waving my arm to to have the cars go around me so they don't hit the snake because it's still out in the road. I'm like, why did you leave it in the road? And so we get the got the cars to go around us and the snake was safe. And then apparently while I was doing that, this the woman got out of the car that was in the back seat and

she just lays into Rob and is just screaming at him. Get out of here. Why? Just leave us alone. What are you doing? You know, like Rob's like, okay. And I was just trying to help. I'm like, and then, so Rob's like, that's my cue to exit, you know, stage, right. So he, you know, so they all came back over and we were taking, so then you've got this horrible car crash. Apparently the woman was going like a hundred miles an hour on this 30 mile an hour dirt road and somehow lost control of the car and went into a ditch and she had kids she had that kid in the back of her car at least the one that was you know that was um her the

kid's mommy and so the people that came they were like oh we told her not to drive she was you know either drunk or high or something and so so they took the kid out of the car, took the car seat out of the back of the car and we're like setting her up in a different car. And, uh, man, it was a, it was a mess, but the, the guy kind of told the woman to settle down, like, Hey, they're just trying to help us, you know, don't, don't yell at them or whatever. And so, um, and then other cars were there coming up and sort of like, yeah, let's just go photo. So so then you're driving down the road and you see this huge wreck and then you see four guys laying on the ground taking pictures of a rattlesnake. It was quite the quite the sight, I'm sure.

And one car actually kind of stopped and said, hey, is that a rattlesnake? And we're like, yeah. Yeah. Can we check it out? And I'm like, sure. So they come over and they're watching the rattlesnake and and it was they were really cool they're like oh that's beautiful wow that's cool that you guys saw this and thanks for sharing it with us oh is that him rattling you come check it out he's

rattling so they were really cool about it and weren't like the typical you know people you expect like gallant cat why didn't you run it over but so yeah we watched it crawl off into the forest and then we're like oh you know we'll take off and go back to eric's house and then as we're driving these cops just come whipping by we had to like pull off the side of the road or they were just hauling um to the to the scene or whatever oh and while we were taking pictures of the car we hear him getting chains out and like hooking up chains to the car and trying to pull it out we're like you idiots don't do that and of course like his bumper fell off and there's this horrible noise

when he drove and stuff you messed up your car no way a horrible noise would you lose control at high speed and dirt road well no he was he was trying to pull the car out and his car got jacked up trying to pull his car got jacked yeah and his was making the horrible noise oh my god but like her car like so apparently she hit a tree went up the tree and then broke the tree off and then fell into the tree so the tree is sticking through the car like just what the hell yeah it was it was messed up so yeah it was it was a very eventful road cruising that's way extra than having to help that truck driver right way extra holy shit we're not gonna forget that timber rattlesnake i don't even know if i'm like mad that i was there or wasn't there at that like wow that's crazy yeah it was pretty pretty

funny but well not not funny i guess and not funny but yeah funny I get it. That was a good end to the day. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, four timbers from our group, we, you know, kind of spotted four timbers. I didn't see the first two. I think Rob, maybe Rob saw him, maybe he wasn't with them, but they went back. So Chris and Aspen and, um, and Lindsay went back to that first, um, two and they were back out again. So Nick and Ryan got to see those and nick got some pretty okay photos of the you know kind of the ones crawling around and but they dipped down the burrow again too and then we waited for them and then we saw that that third one the gravid female that i spotted under the tree and um, then this fourth one on the road. So it was a

good day of herping out there in the Barrens. That's pretty lucky to see a timber in the Barrens. So, I mean, absolutely attributed to Mike. I mean, Mike knew, you know, he'd seen him out there and knew where to look. And so he kind of showed us how to find him and stuff. So it's always, I mean, you know, the, that discussion on sharing spots, you know, Chris, Chris should have been, he shouldn't have gone cause he, you know, somebody showing him a spot. He should have refused out of, out of integrity. Out of sheer principle. That Chris just has no integrity.

He compromises his principalities when the sites are involved. But yeah, so it was really nice of Mike to show us those and take us out. He's just an all-around just fantastic guy. It was really fun to herp with him. I really enjoyed that, putting a face to the name with him especially. So that was great. A real Pine Barrens treat out there. So, yeah. And then we went to the next day.

We went out to the Poconos with Robert, Robert Seacaz and his two boys. And we got there again a little late. We went out and picked up Owen. So it was me and Rob and Eric and Owen. And then we're dry. We drove. So added a little bit of time. So Nick and Ryan beat Eric and Owen. And, uh, then we're dry. We drove. So it added a little bit of time. So Nick and Ryan beat us out there. So they were hanging out with the, the CCAS family. And then they went to the first spot. And so we met them at the spot and they were catching water snakes.

And so Robert's boys would jump in, you know, grab these huge water snakes out of the, out of the pond. And they were like just expert level catchers, you know. Nice. It was pretty fun. And then Robert and I were walking on kind of the end of the pond, and I saw one. I'm like, all right, let's see if I can do this. So I grabbed it and lifted it up. I think I got it too far down on the tail because I thought I heard a pop or something like it.

It was squirming and stuff, and I had it by the tail so that wasn't the best so I hurried and kind of brought it up the body a little bit got a nice squeeze on me you know those those things stink but they're impressive snakes they're really big bodied these huge northern water snakes so that was really fun to to go catch those and so i think his boys grabbed a couple and and then the one i got um so we had three out on the bank you know that we're photographing one had like a missing eye one was in shed so its eyes were all blue and cool looking and then the one i grabbed was uh it was smaller. I think it might have been a male, and the other two were females. Nice.

Who knows? But that was really cool, just this little side-of-the-road pond. And we got several of these things and had fun catching them and photographing them. They were striking and stuff. I had that water snake attitude, so it was a lot of fun to to mess with those and then they took us to another spot you know along a lake and we found owen spotted an eastern garter coming out of a hole so i got to grab that thing we saw some more frogs leopard frogs and then nick spotted this tiniest snake it was probably about the

same size as that ring neck maybe even smaller it was wow just and he spotted it was just crawling between his feet you know like i think he was you know a couple people back we were walking along this little um grassed over pathway and he spotted just crawling through the grass and he picked it up it was just this tiniest little thing so i believe it was a red-bellied snake nice yeah it was kind of hard to identify it was so small but eric had his you know pennsylvania guide um so then we went to another spot that was by this waterfall and there's this huge crack in a rock face and you look in the crack and there's like six or seven snakes in there just different levels depths of the crack there were a couple water snakes closer to the entrance because they knew they could kind of puff up and you couldn't really pull them out we saw a couple more eastern milks in there there There was a ring neck, a large adult ring neck snake, and then those water snakes. And then there was a, uh, Eastern garter as well, that was kind of

hanging out from a different crack that I saw, you know, on the other rock. And so we had fun just kind of, you know, trying to take pictures inside the crack and stuff like that. And I went up on top of the rocks and there was this big water snake like hiding under a branch you know just kind of hanging out there so I slowly lifted the branch and got some pictures of that just hanging out on the rock and then Rob grabbed it and we brought it down and took some pictures so like the waterfalls in the background with the snake on the rock so got some cool like scenery pictures with him and then then uh robert took us back to his house and fed us lunch and we got to see his uh collection he had some cool lizards uh some of

the cory tophanes helmeted iguanas and stuff so and uh kimberly rock monitors but yeah yeah had some nice animals there but just super cool guy super gracious family like really just a great family so it was fun to hang out with them and they fed us and just were super nice so what a cool cool place and cool people that's kind of what this whole trip was all about you know yeah meeting meeting good people and and uh having that camaraderie and then Owen took us to a a spot where there's like this road that is sunk off into the river it's like it's closed down so the road's closed down so you're walking down this road and it's just covered with all this crazy graffiti and stuff and so we went looking for copperheads it started to rain we got kind of lost off track we're going

up these bike trails that are like seriously steep and then have to come down these sketchy steep hills that are like mountain bike trails. We're like, where are you taking us? He missed the turnoff to go to the climbing walls and stuff. We eventually found it, but it was kind of

cold and dark and rainy, so we didn't see. I thought those forest gorillas were supposed to be good navigators, dude. Other than frogs, but. Yeah, I don't know. He needs to get back to his roots, his Mackinwookie roots. He's too much of a city slicker. Get more forest educated, I guess.

Then the next day was the last day we're there so we uh we decided to hit the copperhead spot one more time and so we went went down there and it's like there's these signs saying beware of copperheads they're everywhere around here and so you know go looking again and hit the spots where they've seen them before there's one picture that eric has of this like artificial cover and it's lifted up and there's like five copperheads stacked end to end, you know. And so we go to that spot and I'm all anticipating and I lift up the thing and there's nothing there. So and then but we we came back and there was one in a crack in the rocks. And so I'm like, all right, we, we got one, at least Eric spotted it. And so I thought, you know, the sun's going to hit that spot in about

30 minutes. Let's, let's hang out and see if it moves it, you know, moves once the sun kind of hits the rocks. And, uh, they're like, all right, you know, it's worth a try. And so we kind of look around, you know, finding some other stuff, but, um But then a cop rolls up and she's like, yeah, we got a call saying you guys are out, you know, with looking in the rock cracks. I just need to make sure you're not collecting. You know, do you do you have any any hooks or bags? I'm like, no, we're just taking pictures. Do you mind if I see your pictures? I'm like, no no knock yourself out so i'm showing this cop lady some pictures on you know my phone or my camera of the birds and snakes and stuff and

she's like all right we just want to make sure you're not doing anything illegal i'm like no ma'am we're just here enjoying your work like like she just wanted to look to make sure you didn't photograph yourself having to do something illegal that would incriminate you. I don't understand what was happening there. But, okay, whatever. I didn't hear anything. She couldn't do anything else. She's like, just let me look at your camera real quick. We'll call it deuces after that.

Yeah. And then she's like, can I talk to you? Oh, hey, that's me. Oh. I didn't even say Pete call. What's going on here? All right. Well, it wouldn't be a show without a chime in from our old friend, Ruby.

So, yeah, she's like, can I talk to you? I heard there were two people with you. And I'm like, yeah. She's like, where are they? And I'm like over there. So they, they were walking towards us. And then I think they saw me talking to a cop. So they went and sat on a bench and I'm like, I wish they would've just walked over here so you could get it over with. But so we had to walk over to them and like,

she's like all asking them the same questions and they gave the same answers. So she was appeased and then she got cool. And she's like, Oh, well you ought to check this spot and this spot. I've heard they're over here. But snakes are gross. I don't know why you weirdos are so gross. Okay, thanks. Keep doing your job, lady.

But, yeah, it was one of those fun little things of being profiled. You didn't just be like, yeah, but cops suck. So here we are. Like, what are you going to do? No, I'm kidding. Don't't do that don't ever do that that is the wrong thing that is 100 the wrong thing to do that it's close to attitude yeah you can't it was it was uh it was good so yeah we waited and then um so i go back in the crack and i'm like oh i don't see it and they're like it's right there i'm like like, guys, those are leaves.

It's not there. And so we start looking around and I look under this kind of it's like a rock and there's a big opening underneath the rock, kind of like a bench type thing. And I look in there. I'm like, oh, I see I see one. It's out. It's crawling around. And, you know, its body was all good and it took me quite a while like much longer than it should have to notice its head was like closer to me than you

know the body I was staring at and it was just had its head up just like straight up and it just looked like a leaf man it was like such good crypts is like such amazing camouflage and I was just like wow that is a cool snake so we got to take you know better much better pictures than when it was in the crack and got to see its body and you know the pattern and everything so that was really cool so we spent you know a good hour or two with the snake just taking pictures and kind of watching it and then it eventually crawled down another hole and disappeared but and there was another eastern garter snake coming out of a different uh crack in the rocks there so

the limb cracks paid off pretty nicely so yeah it was a lot of fun but and then we headed back to eric's for a little swim and clean up and got an early uh, got to bed early. Cause it was, uh, we went out to a nice dinner. Rob took, uh, took everybody out to dinner. So that was, that was nice of him. Got some seafood and stuff. And then, uh, to bed early. Cause we had like a 6.00 AM flight. So we had to get up at like, uh, crack it on. Yeah. Very early to, to make the drive in and uh it was like i think i woke up at 2 30 so that would have been 12 30 my time at home and then we got home and there was a delay did you take the schuylkill the schuylkill you have to take the schuylkill the schuylkill expressway no i don't know we might have i'd have to ask eric i was like you'd know it if you pay attention yeah

so but it was it was a good time it was really fun hanging out with eric I'd have to ask Eric. I was not paying attention. But it was a good time. It was really fun hanging out with Eric. He had some funny stories. You'll have to ask him about his haircut. Really? Okay. Bizarre.

But yeah, it was great hanging out with Eric and Owen and Rob and the rest of the crew. It was a lot of fun. Really good trip. Good first Carpet Fest. Sorry about taking so long. I was going to say we are now at the 45-minute mark of Justin's commentary. So I was going to say, are we really doing the invasive species or is this just the Carpet Fest recap show now? No, we better fight a little

bit all right let's go then get out that coin just be an introduction yeah and we can uh we can maybe delve into this another time as well but this is an interesting topic so um invasive species you know can anything be done or is you know it's just that's the nature of things and you know and species get to places they shouldn't be and are invasive for a while, but then become part of the part of the normal flora. So let's let's chat about that. Do you want to go ahead? So what is the what are the sides here? Yes, you can do something about invasive species or no, there's really why even bother?

It's I got it. All right, let's go let's go uh so uh heads it is tails shit you have lost the toss i thought with getting a new lost the toss i might lose my luck here but okay so um i'm gonna why would you lose your luck when you just make it up? I'm not accusing. Well, that was just sore loserism. That was sore loserism talking, my bad. I'll retreat back to my corner. We need to start doing a digital coin flip or something so I can show you. So you can see it live a little easier than a coin on a little tiny screen.

I'm going to take the nay side. You can't do much about it. you can see it live you know a little easier than a coin on a little tiny screen um i'm gonna take the nay side it's you can't do much about it so you suck i do did you want that side i did we can swap if you want no i'm not gonna do that is not how i'm sort of loserism i just i just was saying that was the side I would have picked. Negative Chuck coming out to poo-poo. That's not what I said. That's not what I said. All I said was that's the side I would pick if I had won the coin toss, but I fucking didn't.

Okay, I lost. So I'm over here in Loserville just saying what I would have done had I been a winner can we just let me stew in that for a minute? I guess we can so I guess now I have to go first the side you didn't want yeah

oh man this is a rough deal for you I really feel for you man well I mean Oh, man, this is a rough deal for you. I really feel for you, man. Well, I mean, I think that. So invasive species are kind of a. Kind of a tricky problem, right, because we certainly can do things about invasive species. And there have been examples of, you know, invasive species that have maybe not necessarily been managed, you know, to the point where you don't have an invasive species, but they're certainly being managed so that they, you know, so their impacts are at least controlled, if not limited and reduced. But, you know, I think I would just say that, and, you know, it's a human this is a such a human problem because we have a global economy

global trade and you know the ships the you know the planes the any transport that we're doing is taking you know you know on purpose and accidental hitchhikers that were never meant to leave their ecosystem. And we're giving them an Uber to a new ecosystem. So I don't know, as long as we're around, how we're going to fix that problem. Yeah, I mean, it is a very difficult problem. And, you know, I think a lot of times there's an unbalanced focus on like the pet trade and their hand in this. But I mean, in that there is there is a point to that. Right. So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's I mean, Florida is just kind of ruined with all the fish plants.

I mean, it's not just reptiles. There's all sorts of invasives. Humans are probably the worst invasive species in Florida where they've just changed the whole landscape. So it's like, what are you protecting? Why do you care if there's a Vermice python there when it's not natural in the first place? What is it going to eat?

The tegus or the green iguanas, you know, that kind of thing. It's like all these other invasive species. But, you know, it's an easy target for the politicians and the animal rights groups and stuff to tackle these big, scary pythons, you know. Sure. So, you know, I guess a lot of invasive species are not an issue, you know, like maybe the morning geckos or the house geckos that seem to just find their way into every, you know, tropical area around the world. Yeah, they're just great generalists. Yeah, just hanging out on the wall eating bugs. It's not a big deal. They're not really impacting the environment.

So, of course, nobody's going to – At least not in a way that we are. Yeah. That we're aware of. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of the, you would have, I mean, you know, if you, if you believe what you're taught in school, um, you know, anything that isn't, isn't, uh, have a check

in its environment. Um, and, and, you know, maybe they do, maybe there's stuff that'll take them out and, you know, they're just kind of now, uh, competing species, uh, you know, with some, with something else. Um, yeah, I think, I think one of the biggest, uh, I guess, arguments towards not really doing much about invasive species is the fact that the environment usually adapts to them in some way either negatively like just species go extinct and then you don't have to worry about the invasive species because the species of concern is already gone which is probably the worst case scenario of course and then others like maybe the cane toad where you know animals learn like i don't eat this thing because it's

very poisonous and if i try to eat it i die or get really sick and so they you know you see a huge decline initially but then kind of a slow build-up of of the species that were impacted and it actually you know they've shown shine's studies have shown in a lot of uh examples of cane toads actually helping different species like killing off the large predators so things like uh you know the um the pig nose turtles and things like that have actually an increase in their population numbers yeah because because it can't all be negative yeah for everybody right because you know it certainly had certainly something non you know introduced uh is going to be negative for somebody but that means somebody's going to benefit from it right so so i and i think oh come now i think i think you know in in in the in the

game there's always winners and losers right and? And I think an invasive just represents kind of an imbalance to the system. And so, you know, can – will the system adapt and change or work its way out? Yeah, absolutely it will um but you know you're you're talking about disturbed ecosystems and ecosystems that you know like in san diego um you know if we got invasive species are highly impactful just because we're very specialized here right like a lot of the the the the flora and fauna are highly dependent on each other and are highly specialized for this environment so when something comes in there and disrupts that you know it can have huge impacts um other examples of that are like islands, like New Zealand and all the other places there.

Yep. And so I think to your point, yeah, I mean it can – well, is an invasive species the end of an ecosystem? Absolutely not. Nope, not one bit. It's going to march on. Things will be okay, but it will be forever changed. It won't be the same ecosystem. And, you know, once you disturb an ecosystem, it never goes back. You can't get it back. It never goes back.

So maybe that goes to your point too. Like, you know, why are you so worried about preserving something that's always going to change but never go back? Well, I mean, the world. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. The world's gone through countless cycles of change. And so, I mean, to say that we don't have the same Earth that was here you know 10 million years ago or 100 million you know those those changes i mean they're sometimes catastrophic you know huge extinction events now the only difference between the one now is is a lot of it is man-made but

you know what's the difference really of you know some tree getting blown over and floating out to an island and a new colonist is taking advantage of the new island. The only difference I would say is probably the time scale that it's happening. Sure. We're compressed. Anytime technology and humans get involved, we compress the time scale way down. And the speed of travel and things like that. And so that can be – that's kind of – and things like that. environment um and kind of the same thing like how quickly we can inundate a pristine area with

invasive issues and and in that compressed time scale what does that do to the animal's ability in that ecosystem to adapt to it same same idea right idea, right? Same kind of concept. Exactly. And I think, you know, regardless, I mean, um, I think I look at the cost of saving species and, you know, this is maybe another topic, but the fact that extinctions occur, you know, even if they're man-driven, it's, it's kind of a bummer. There was, there was something, Oh, it's the, there's some locusts that used to be in the West that there was one, one time somebody observed a cloud of locusts flying by like a cloud of millions upon millions of these things floating by for, you know, probably 45 minutes, you know, endless supply. And, and now that species is extinct, you know, and I believe it was, you know, anthropogenic, uh, destruction of the species because it was a pest species or whatever. And so, you know, you'll, you'll, those, those kinds of things are a bad example of human

footprint on the earth. You know, sometimes we, the passenger pigeon, you know, they never thought they there was a, it would be even possible to bring those to extinction just because they were so plentiful, so adaptable, but then, you know, they hunted them to extinction and then all of a sudden they're gone and you have no more passenger pigeon pigeons. So it's kind of a double-edged sword, I guess. But now we're much more conscientious of those kinds of things, even to the point of telling other countries what they can and can't do, you know, because we need to preserve your, you know, your wild heritage.

And they're like, we just want to make a buck and survive and eat food like, you know, like you did to your country kind of thing. But we saw what we did to our country and like, we don't want that to happen around the world. So it's kind of a hard, hard sell sometimes, you know, to tell people, Hey, value your, your, uh, ecosystems and your, your nature. And, and, and I think some countries have done that nicely, like Costa Rica. I mean, and it turns it into kind of a tourist you know country where you know people come to see the wildlife because they've done such a good job at preserving it whereas some some of their neighboring countries have not really done that

and they've destroyed a lot of their natural forests and don't have those, uh, those, uh, revenue sources because people don't come there as much to, to see the wildlife because it's all gone, you know? So you kind of lose out on that. And, uh, it's hard to see that while you're developing because to develop a lot of times you got to cut down trees and, you know, those kinds of things. And I mean, we definitely impacted america here and changed the landscape forever in a lot of ways i mean the huge buffalo herds are no more and you know the passenger pigeons are no more and those kind of things so it's kind of sad to see that happen and man what i wouldn't give to go herp australia before the cane toad got there, you know, to see untouched, uh, pristine areas with, without cane toads, but that's not going to happen, you know? And so, and the, the enormous

cost, I think I heard, uh, there was an Australian researcher that was working on saving, uh, I think it was McFadden, um, really cool guy. I met him at a symposium one time, but he was working on saving like the Christmas Island island there was like a skink and an endemic gecko that were out there that they were trying to save and it costs like an enormous amount of money to keep the genetic diversity and a population large enough you know indoors in climate control you know environment um just cost a tremendous amount of money and it's like at what point do we just say, well, they had a good run. This is part of nature's cycle.

Even if we're accelerating it, some things go extinct. I know that's kind of a terrible pessimistic look at it. I think that's the easy thing for the dominant species on the planet to say. Sure, sure. I mean, we've had our close our uh close calls i think with with extinction like the black plague and you know taking out a a big chunk of the population and even something small like the you know the covid pandemic that was a little scary there for a bit and yeah got a good chunk well not not too huge a chunk, but a pretty good-sized chunk of our population.

It killed a lot of people. Maybe a 300th of the population. So not quite a third. That would be pretty catastrophic. So those kind of things do occur, and they're part of the, I guess, natural cycle, if you want to call it that. So the flu of 1912 or those, those kinds of things, 1918, yeah, 1918 pandemic. So, um, yeah, crazy, crazy stuff has, has occurred to the dominant species as well. Yeah. Well, I mean, but I, I do think, you know, there, there's definitely a place for

management and, uh, you know, I'm not totally against stepping in and trying to help things remain natural it's just really hard to find examples of that happening and working you know what i mean like it just seems like much you do about nothing you spend all this money put in a huge fence or something and it doesn't stop it you know just kind of like waste money and makes you feel good at the time. Well, I mean, but... Hey, Chuck, I got a question. Can we save the rhinos? Can we save the rhinos?

Ask Jeff. Ask Jeff. Jeff told me he said we could. What do you think? I say rhino. I mean, you see some of this, and it's almost functionally extinct already. It is. We're down a few numbers.

The white rhino has been functionally extinct for a long time. I mean, you get down to a certain point, and genetic bottlenecking will absolutely take care of the rest of it. And that happened a long, long, long, long, long-ass time ago with the white rhino. And, you know, we do the best we can to try to keep the species on the planet as long as we can. But let's be honest. It's because we fucked it up. We feel guilty. And we're doing the best we can to keep it

around and oh it's expensive that's a made-up thing too so money is not a real thing um it's a made-up concept that we brought into reality and um yeah sometimes i think they do kind of protect things to death like especially you know there's a lot of examples of that in Australia their native wildlife is going extinct and there are plenty of hobbyists and keepers that would love to to keep these endangered animals but they are not allowed to so basically the government is saying you know we're we're cool with them going extinct as long as is nobody can have them as a pet. You know, it's like and if they just let people, you know, work with them in captivity, they could produce.

And I'm talking mammals like there's a lot of mammals that are going extinct over there that could be bred in captivity by people who are passionate about it, who put their own funds into it. They don't need a grant to do this. You know, they're going to do it because they like the animals but then you know are you really saying a lot of governments do you think a lot of governments look at the the potential problems that they may have to endure sure if they go to a system that allows everybody to, you know, much easier to say no, you know, just let them, let them go extinct. As a federal government employee, the default answer is no. Yeah.

Cause we know better and you're going to mess it up anyway. So, yeah, but yeah, it's kind of hard to, to, uh, feel bad, you know bad for, I don't know, some of these government entities when people are poaching and smuggling and stuff. You're like, well, if you had a legal channel, that probably wouldn't be a problem. It would probably go away. Yeah, and I mean – Other than things like rhino horn or elephant tusk or something. But I think there's species that have been, you know, bred and reintroduced and their populations rebounded. They were branded a success story. But the issue is a lot of the drivers that are causing, you know, species to go extinct or whatever are still happening. Right. So it kind

of convoluted. Hey man, we talked about this. I'll be right back. Yeah. I mean, unless you can kind of take out the root cause or the, you know, the issue. And, and I mean, if you can kind of take out the root cause or the issue. And I mean, if an animal is worth more dead than alive, then it's going to be very hard to stop it, especially if you have a desperate community that is going to take out those. I mean, to try to stop poachers from killing rhinos when their horns are worth so much money. You know, I've heard some interesting thoughts on like, let's introduce them to Texas. You know, let's release a bunch of rhinos into Texas and let them reproduce and do their thing there and let the poachers try to come and get them in Texas. You know, we'll shoot. See, but this is funny because I was just going to say like, oh, we're talking about,

you know, now we're talking about poaching and animals and we're not talking about the you know invasive species but then boom right when we thought we weren't talking about it you bring it back to let's bring a bunch of those animals to texas and let them loose and and we have no issue with that i I mean, if you, you know, listen to the tiger statistic about, you know, how many tigers there are in Texas or whatever, you know, I just I think that we and governments still introduce species. I think, and I shouldn't say this because every time I think stuff like this, I'm usually wrong. I think we might have learned the lesson to not use invasive species to treat a problem somewhere. I feel like we've learned that lesson, but I don't think we've – I don't know that we've truly learned. I witnessed a recent one. I think we've yeah i don't know that we truly i went as a recent one i think we we learned to do more trials maybe yeah we're just more careful about fucking it up i saw a pretty

good example of of a of a good species um use of uh of an invasive species to control another invasive species and that was um this is kind of going to your point, but, uh, we were down on the Colorado river. We were going to run the river, right. And we were waiting for the boat to get there with, with our friends. They were coming a different way. And so, um, we're sitting on the banks of the river and we hear just this munching, right. And there's all this invasive tamarisk, uh, that is, you know, from the middle East,

it was planted to kind of help keep riverbanks from eroding, but it's just taken over the Southwest. It grows all around, you know, along any river system and stuff and actually sucks up a lot of the water. And so you poor Californians don't get any of the Colorado River because it all, you know, gets sucked up by tamarisk along the way or something. Well, that's another thing. So a lot of the

stuff that they're ripping out in um in anza borrego in the anza borrego desert it's all tamarisk yeah yeah it's it's an invasive that's just made its way across it's not good yeah it's not good and it yeah it takes up a lot more than the native willows do and the willows have been out competed by the tamarisk and man you get some huge tamarisk forests. I always thought they were stringy little willow-like things, but they can get big tree trunks along the big rivers. So they found this beetle that only feeds on tamarisk. It's its only source of food, and it won't eat anything else. It just dies.

And so, of course, they did a lot of trials and trying to figure it out if that was the case. And they tried to feed it all these native plants and it would just die rather than eat those plants. And so they did a release and it was like a fire had gone through. They just, you know, ate all the tamarisk and then, and then they just kind of died off. And I, you know, the tamarisk in the section where they release these beetles is all dead and had a hard. And I need to go down to that area again and see if I can see if it had a lasting effect, if the willows are coming back in or if the tamarisk are actually gone. And if they have to keep doing that year after year, releasing more beetles to chew on the tamarisk they said something like if you did that three years in a row then they would be gone and if the funding for that project goes away then yeah then the whole thing right then the whole

thing falls apart exactly or if it starts or if it did you know one little beetle adapts and starts eating the willows instead like okay now we just caused another see and that's and that's the thing is we're we're screwing around with dynamic systems like things that don't stay static and they yeah they exactly when you change they change you know it's like that's that's how it kind of works so yeah but you also think maybe if there's enough tamarisk they could just kind of be a beneficial invasive species sure that's sure that it's uh around and chewing on tamaris so at least it keeps it in in a in a somewhat of a controlled you know who knows you know it's it's probably impossible to

completely root it out and dig it out my my least favorite invasive species has got to be cheatgrass man that stuff that gets in your socks. I hate it so badly. And it's just all over the Southwest as well. Brought in by cattle, you know. Yep. Another invasive species that we've spread across the earth to make our hamburgers and things. This dog.

And they taste wonderful, but, oh, yeah. Ruby is having her fun. But is she telling us it's time to be done or do you have any other great points? I guess. I don't know. I've heard hamburger and probably. Time to eat? Yeah.

But I don't know. It's hard to be positive when you have so few good examples of this working out. Yeah. And I think that's the problem is there's a lot of examples of it going badly, but there's not a lot of examples of, you know, good outcomes with invasives. I think almost the, the best hope would to, to be, to fence off like areas of good habitat and kind of have little preserves now that doesn't do much for megafauna um you know it might be okay in like new zealand where you have geckos and you know small marsupials or not marsupials but whatever bird species that you can kind of fence off and

protect or put on an island and i just don't think the world works like that you just can't it's really difficult nothing gets nothing is really ever fenced off you know i mean they're like i said there are some good examples of that in new zealand where they've you know have like a tuatara preserve where they fenced off and kept the rats out so the tuataras are doing okay or or islands where they've eradicated the rats on the island because it's a small enough area you could you know get every rat on the island which is very difficult you're just saying that they've done well at managing some of those yeah things but i mean every every hike we did there were there were stoat traps and rat traps you know like they're still trying to control them but you'd see for sure you know you'd be driving along see a ferret bound across the road in new zealand you're like dad come uh yeah it was

not not cool to see the invasives over there yeah and and i mean it's nothing like it was back in the day i mean that was like ground bird paradise you know there's so many different ground bird species and they've all kind of gone the way of the dodo a lot of them anyway so it's really tragic to see but you know i guess who's to say that wouldn't have been the case even if without human intervention maybe something floats over you know makes it its way over well i mean i you know i think i think there's, you're always going to have the, the more you disturb a system, the faster things like this happen. And, and we are disturbing a system because there's just so much of us at such an alarming rate that it's just like, you know,

it's like that little wheel on your power thing. When your Chevy chase Christmas lights are are on it's just like spinning you know just fly helicopter off of there exactly what you can do it's creating lift that's correct yeah i i have a hard time because like you know you you hate the cane toads for what they've done but the cane toads are fine where they're from, you know? And I could never bring myself to, to kill them. Like everybody's like, run it over, you know? And I, I, I'd like, Oh, I missed it. Sorry. You know, I wouldn't feel bad if I missed it. You know, it's hard because you know, the damage they're doing and, and I don't, you know, think that's

necessarily the wrong thing to do, you know, to help kind of do your part to control an invasive species um i pull this the freaking uh cheatgrass out of my my socks and i break up the seed i'm like you will never make a plan exactly yeah i ground that thing to powder so i don't feel bad about that i don't feel bad about you know I don't feel bad about, you know, stepping on a lantern. Yeah. So why? Yeah, exactly. So why should I feel bad about?

Exactly. I guess I like reptiles and amphibians. So it's hard even if because it's not really their fault. You know, the toad didn't ask to be put there. It was our stupid fault. So, you know, I don't know. It's a tricky one. I do see both sides of that.

And I understand why, you know, there does need to be some control because yeah, there's literally some places that are just crawling with toads in East coast of Australia and they're making their way over to the Kimberley. And I mean, they have found some ways to kind of control or slow down the spread of the cane toad or reduce their numbers, which is good. And they actually, some, some, uh, pretty unique and, and, uh, ingenious ways of, of slowing down the toads. And hopefully those things are, are effective in practice and, you know, they don't cost too terribly much. Um, you know, we've seen putting bounties on things doesn't always help that much. I mean, you could over there buy these coin purses that were made out of toad leather.

A lot of times they'd have the head on there or something. I thought that was a little gruesome. But it's like, hey, if there's a resource and you can make some money off of it. Damn, baby, nice purse. Is that pure cane toad? Well, it was pretty nice leather i don't know how much they had to process it or if they got all the poison out of it but you know it's pretty nice leather um one of the one of the craziest like backwards things i've heard there

was this invasive water plant in in a national park in the united states and people i i believe some from a like cambodia or a country in southeast asia that that was a plant they were used to eating in their home you know in their native lands or whatever and so they were going into the national parks harvesting this invasive weed you know with their own time and effort bringing it home eating it you know and then the the national park found out they were collecting a plant from the national park so they put the kibosh on it said no more harvest and then all the waterways got choked with this invasive weed it's like you have a free source of weed control and removal but you you stopped it because it was technically against the rules of the park. It seems kind of, kind of backwards, you know?

Yeah. But. Eat your weeds, folks. Eat your weeds. Well, and, and again on, on that, you know, like you, you have people going in the Everglades to hunt pythons, but they, a snake is a snake to a lot of people. So they see a big, you know, pine snake or bull snake or something. They're going to shoot it and say, I got a python. You know, they're not, not, uh, necessarily discriminating against, you know, other species

that are native and, and natural there. So I don't know. It's a, it's a tricky question. It's a shit show. Yeah. Well, here we are. Figure it out. I don't think so.

Okay. Well, we may have to revisit this. We might. I'm sure we missed a lot of points, and I'm sure a few of you out there are yelling at your computers or your phones or whatever you're listening to. Or have turned this off a long time ago. Yeah. After my 45- Maybe they were like, like yeah we're cool with

the carpet fest episode we're out yeah hey that's all right you know we appreciate your listening so treat it like a part one part two episode if that's what you did maybe so yeah we can have some more insight in this down the road yeah chime in if you if you feel we missed some things, let us know and we'll have you on. All right. Well, you got anything else for us? Any other final thoughts on this topic or have we kind of exhausted our efforts? No, I mean, you know, it's tough, man. It's, you know, kind of a soup sandwich out there. I don't think you should be too dogmatic on this topic one way or the other. It's really hard to show the efforts really go to much success.

Does that mean you don't try? Yeah, I mean, That's true, too. Yeah. Okay, well, any interesting reptile news you've heard or things? No. I have not had much time for reptile news. I've kind of been out a little bit trying to catch up with work after the trip, so I haven't really looked too much. But I'm trying to think if I've seen out of it a little bit trying to catch up with work after the trip. So I haven't really looked too much,

but trying to think if I see anything cool lately. I haven't been listening to a lot of reptile podcasts. I did listen to Eric and Owen talk about Carpet Fest on, on NPR as well as Carpets and Coffee. So check that out for more stories of Carpet Fest. If you didn't get enough, didn't get a full recap from our earlier episode. Exactly. I kind of wanted

them to kind of do it first so I'm glad they got that information out there already. But not to be outdone, Justin followed up with a thorough You didn't get it from my perspective, right? That's true. Isn't it funny too when you're listening

to stories and you're like, wait wait i don't remember happening happening that way you know i see it's it's it is interesting like how you know whether that's how you remember how they remember how you know what do we all remember that way or is that just you know like yeah but you're right you're sure one one i gotta clear up for sure is I was listening to Venom Exchange Radio and Nish talked about our trip to Utah and he recorded it incorrectly. I just want to clear the the river, not Dustin. All right, let's clear that up. He kept my feet dry. And I had a good laugh because Dustin beat me earlier in the trip in a canyon.

We were trying to stay on the walls of the canyon and not get our feet wet. And, uh, I, I slipped and fell in and got a foot wet in the, in little wild horse canyon. Whereas Dustin stayed dry, but in the, in that canyon crossing the river, I was the one that stayed dry. Dustin fell in with the rest of you. So didn't want to be, I wanted to set the record straight. Dustin fell in with the rest of you. So I didn't want to be. I wanted to set the record straight. Sorry for Venom Exchange. He had a misremembering of that event.

So, yeah, that's the. And also the fact that I'd seen plenty of specs in Utah, as have Chris and Aspen. So it wasn't a lifer for everybody there. So I'd already seen, it was my first one that I'd found on my, by myself, you know, myself. So that was, I guess, a first time type thing, but clear in the air. You're done, Julinder? Yeah. You get it off your chest. Getting my pettiness over with. That's a record straight. No, no, no. Nipper doesn't even listen to us, does he? Sir, you deserve to be represented factually,

functionally. You're hired. You're my employer. You'll get me the compensation I deserve. That's correct. I will chase them to the ends of the earth to get your money. We'll see you in court, Nipper. You think you can run your mouth off and say that I fell in the river?

Wait, what's that called? Are you a bad mouth somebody to the detriment of their image? That is slander, my friend. If you write it, it's libel. Okay. You're welcome. That'll be $100, Justin. You're a good lawyer.

Yeah, you can bill. Actually, just bill Nipper. We're going to get the settlement. Just start billing Nipper. He starts getting bills. Like, what the hell? Who's this Chuck attorney at law? What's going on here?

I don't know any attorney named Chuck. He's like, this is Bullocks. This is bullshit. This is not a lawyer. I know him. He can't bill me. All right. Well, Nipper, watch for the bill is in the mail. Yeah, check's in the mail, Nipper.

All right. Well, I think this has been a fun discussion. So thanks for tuning in. And thanks to Eric and Owen and the NPR umbrella for housing us and keeping us dry in this wet, wet area. The podcast arena. That may have fallen apart. I think that fell apart. But we sure do appreciate you, Podfather. And we pay homage to you here.

So thanks for listening. And we'll have another one for you soon. Oy vey. Thank you. Outro Music you