Morelia Python Radio

Today's Zoos and What They're Really All About with Riley Jimison

Episode #247 Today's Zoos and what they're really all about. This episode is a bit different then anything that we have done before but I think it will prove to be a very interesting look into a day in the life of a zoo keeper. We have all dreamed of working with reptiles as our job, we will discuss the in's and out' s of working with reptiles in a zoo. Riley works with everything from crocodilians to amphibians to tarantulas to piranha to venomous snakes to millipedes. We talk with Riley Jimison about the perception that people have a very narrow and misguided interpretation of what zoos really do these days. www.moreliapythonradio.com https://www.facebook.com/santabarbarazoo/?pnref=lhc

Duration:: 2h 59m
Broadcast on:: 18 May 2016
Audio Format:: other

Hey, Chad Brown here. You may remember me as a linebacker in NFL or as a reptile breeder in the owner of Projekt. I've been hoping since I was a boy and I've dedicated my life to advancing the industry and educating the community about the importance of reptile. I also love to encourage the joy of breathing and keeping reptiles as a hobbyist, which is why my partner Robin and Markland and I created the reptile report. The reptile report is our online news aggregation site bringing the most up-to-date discussions from the reptile world. Visit the reptilereport.com every day to stay on top of the latest reptile news and information. We encourage you to visit the site and submit your exciting reptile news. Photos and links we can feature outstanding breeders and hobbyists just like you. The reptile report offers powerful brandy and marketing exposure for your business and the best part is, it's free. You're a buyer or a breeder, you've got to check out the reptile report and marketplace. 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Use shipereptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rate. The materials needed to ship the reptile successfully, live customer support in our live, on time, arrival insurance program. We got you covered. Visit the reptile report.com to learn or share about the animals. Just click on the link to the marketplace, find that perfect pet or breeder, then visit shipreptiles.com to ship that animal anywhere in the United States. We are your one stop shop for everything reptile related. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Good evening everybody. Welcome to another episode of Moralea Python Radio number 247. This is a little bit of a different episode that we're going to be doing tonight. It's something that we haven't done before, but I think it will be a very interesting look into a day in the life of a zookeeper. There goes that beep. It's already come over from the GTP keeper radio show. The problem is that I was doing all the stuff so I didn't set it up right now. [Music] I mean everybody I think has dreamed about working with the reptiles as your job, not having to go to work and all the stuff that comes along with it. Hopefully we're going to discuss is it really a dream job or is it something that you do because you just simply love animals. You know animals that you're working with. We're going to be talking with Riley Jimson. He works at Santa Barbara Zoo. There you go. So when you have zoo background you've worked in a zoo more so you'll be able to relate I guess on some level right. So on a smaller level I mean obviously the Santa Barbara Zoo is a full-blown AZA accredited facility and I never got that far but a lot of the stuff transfers over. I mean kind of the same ideals so yeah I'll be able to relate a little bit. So I'm interested to see how that is all that fun stuff because you know we have talked to other people who work in zoo settings like Ari and things like that. So it's kind of interesting always to get another zoo keepers take on making it your job to take care of a collection for a zoological place. Now our friend Chris Lemme he works at the Bronx Zoo but he doesn't take care of reptiles he's in charge of a big bat. He does kitties. So I don't know I mean to me that would probably be like a job even though I love tigers and all. Dude tigers are annoying it's like they're they're wildly ever had cubs but they're so damn loud and when they want attention there's no stopping them from getting it and oh yeah so but working with the big guys has got to be really cool. So yeah but in other news before we get Riley on. You were out and about this past Sunday night hanging out with the GTP keeper radio boys. What was that like it was really weird to be honest with you. I'm getting ready to go and I'm like all right here comes the interim music time to get pumped and it's like rainforest noise like that was like this isn't mine is like you know it's like you ever watch like a boxer or something coming for the ring. I never imagined like him coming out to the wrong music or he's gonna be like all kinds of youth like this what is this. That's pretty much what it felt like it's just like all right this is like normal this is like everything and then he rainforest music I'm like no it's not this is not your show none of us and how it should be. So it kind of it took a little bit of getting used to because they're like asking me the questions and I'm like all right do I answer them now. But it was fun. It was great hanging out with buddy and bill and Alexis and oh my god why am I blanking on the left. So all of them yeah all of them it was really cool talking with all them and it was really cool reminiscing about Carpafest and also you know Bill's going in and he's like you're on Mac entire. You own real reptiles you're good so far keep going and it's like you're also in the like I'm like yeah good uh huh that is a bio and it's like it's really weird to be on the other end of that because like you never ask or give me kind of an introduction other than here's Owen so it's like it's weird to have all those things lined up at once just like crap. I think so I was listening to that it was funny I was listening to that on on speaker and my wife was there and she was cracking up because he said he's like yeah you host the moral your python radio. I do. You own and operate rogue reptiles. I do. And you are going to be hosting Carpafest this coming weekend. Clearly you have done your research. The problem is that when I'm nervous all he was cracked up so yeah well I mean what am I going to say you you run rogue reptiles. No that would be bad. No no no. And it's all that but one quick thing we're going to sidetrack you for a little bit because I've been threatened numerous times if I don't bring this up on the show there will be dire consequences. My father would like to apologize to you and the fans who may have heard him celebrating at a very loud volume during the show last week. Okay apology accepted. There we go see he said he would be listening and if I didn't say this he might find the number again so I'm going to do this so that he would be there. And he goes off and does whatever he does. He refused to actually stay at my house this week because I've been prepping for Carpafest all week so he's been gone so oh okay. No help whatsoever but anyway. He's just going to show up when the beer gets there right. Yeah. Yeah. So doing GTP keyboard radio again it was fun. It was cool being on the other side of it and it's you never realize just kind of how daunting it could be to be a guest because it's like we're getting ready to go on the show. If you like Alexis and the few and Matt we're kind of talking about how you know they've done it and she's never been on a show before so she's a little nervous and I'm like wow. What's it like to be nervous before you go on a radio show I mean I just don't remember anymore it was just like it's just a phone conversation with you and just happened to be that everybody else in the world is listening in on it so. Yeah. That was a good show it was entertaining. I was wondering I said I'm waiting for you guys to talk chondros and you're like you get it out of the way right quick you're like I have one. I have one. I have one. She's over there. Any other questions it's okay. You know I I my conjure card is not a powerful one so. Yeah but that doesn't matter. Yeah. She's there. I'll get more eventually you know right now other things are on my mind like more ruffies and also I have this teamwork Python that needs to make. Oh yeah by the way. Oh she's there. Oh interesting here because she was too big a lot of people get shit on a carpet fest. She has been. I don't know what K.J. was doing with her. Right. She has been. She's not bitten. She is not pissed on me. Not taking a shit. She's been calm. Every time I hold her she moves slow and deliberate huh it's like not what I expected at all. I'm like holding your waiting for like the other shoe to drop and nothing happens. So I don't know I think my team or Python's broken. So I'm not going to complain but yeah. It's just that must be the same thing. Maybe maybe I am just you know. That's like well dude it's like in you out. Yeah. You don't get your. Yeah it's going to get your. A lot of raptor in me just learning how I do it. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah figuring it out. Yeah you were. Yeah of course it pissed all over you at the vet office. You were trying to probe it. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll happen. But oh yeah she's been fine. So you can play with that one. I'll let you clean the white lips and her. Oh wow. I'm so excited. I brought it. Yeah I know. I do that for friends. Yeah. I'm going to enjoy that for sure. Uh huh. Yeah so this Saturday is a Carpetfest. The North Carpetfest. Um Owen is in a state of paddock. But everything will come together. A little bit of paddock. I told him a little bit of paddock. The uh ingredient that's missing from the Carpetfest equation is a wife. To help him with the. What the. What the hell did you become my mother. It's like. So you could bar. You could bar. I should have let you bar mine for the week. You know maybe you should have helped you out. But uh let's see what else. So yeah Carpetfest is uh this Saturday. Um yep. It looks like where it's going to rain. Which kind of sucks. Yeah. Maybe it won't be the case. Or maybe it moves quick enough that it's like one of those things where just kind of happens and then gets out of the way. Yeah. Even if it does. You know obviously we're still going to have Carpetfest or just you know. Yeah. I have a roof over both my deck and my patio. And I have the bar and the dining room and. There's plenty of space if we have to end up staying in and inside. So that's totally fine. Um so yeah well we will work brainer shine. We're going to get this done. This would be the second time it's rain on Carpetfest. Yeah I remember that other one. That was uh that kind of sucks. But you know it looks like uh we're going to have uh you know a birdie decent turnout. Uh we got Nick Button. I'm in all the way from the west coast. Uh to come and hang out with us here on the east coast. You know it's funny. I was talking to him today. And uh you know. Yeah I know because I was talking to him before you. Yeah Eric's pulling me. I got to go. You know what I'm talking to. If I don't ready a begging order. Uh so yeah he uh he tells me he's like well Owen's a lot easier to get in touch with. So I called him first. He actually answers the phone. I'm like he is this phone. Yeah Nick he sits at a desk. What do you expect? You know I'm like. Oh easy killer. Um actually today I didn't pick up the phone when he called. Because my dad's like why is your phone vibrating across your desk. And we get to Nick. I'm like I got a bunch of stuff I got to do and I got to call back some clients. If I get on the phone with him now I'm done for at least an hour and a half. So he's going to have to wait until I get out of work. Yeah. Um so at the very end of the conversation we're talking about. Um uh I chase and you know I was telling him about um you know just my. I guess he never realized or maybe he wasn't paying attention to the group of iJs that I have. So you know I was telling him about some of the stuff. So we're probably going to be doing some type of breeding loan. Um nice. Where he has a like a wild caught hypo type looking iJ. Uh and I have my PC iJ. So we're going to probably going to do some kind of joint pairing and see what happens. But uh it was funny as I said you know um I said you know I'm the morph guy at all. And you know I like all this morph stuff and everything. But I gotta tell you man you know it's hard to beat like uh you know an inland carpet or an iJ or you know a little coastal blah blah blah. And he's like you know what this reminds me of? He's like I'm like Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi where I'm like there's a little hope for you. I can see the good of you and I'm Darth Vader. I can turn you to the good side. Oh it's cracking up. I do love it. Absolute nerd dump. We make these reptiles. That's fantastic. You know my nephew is down at dinner at Disney right now doing all the Star Wars crafts. I've been getting nothing but pictures of him with like lightsabers and on the speeder bikes. And I'm like yeah so. That's awesome. It's really cool. Anyway so let's see one more thing I guess before we get going. I just wanted to send a congratulations out to Tim Tyndall. He's over there over across the pond as they would say. And he hatched out day 60 his clutch of inland carpets. And the reason I bring that up is that I know he's been trying for as many years as I've been trying to breed my axanic. Oh that long huh? Yeah so it's awesome that he persevered and he figured it out and he got a clutch and they're hatching out so congrats to him on that. That's really cool. Yeah anything else you got going on or? I separated all the super caramel jag babies. Oh okay. Oh yeah. Speaking of bait. Speaking of bait is real quick. The tiger head albino started to shed. And they're pretty aren't they? Yeah. I was kind of like on the fence like. Yeah. Oh dude. There you go. Okay. I have to come back over your house then. Yeah. Anyway you said you separated the carmels. Yeah. Go ahead. Well the red tiger jag clutch had its first feeding and four for four. Everybody took. So that's exciting. And then I separated the super caramel clutch. I have a crack ton of what appear to be super caramel jags. I got to know if I hit the odds the right way. But there are a lot of girls that look super caramel check like so I have my eyes on all of them to see how they develop. But it's like everybody really looks good. So I'm excited about that clutch in that group. I'm going to wait till they kind of shed before I post pictures of some of the girls and stuff like that. The boys are definitely no slouch either. So it's a big clutch. I'm kind of happy with that clutch. And I still might have a female drop the day of carpet fest. So I don't know. That's her drop dead date. And she looks for avid so we'll see. Question for you when it comes to picking out the supers. What is it that you're looking at that would say that they're supers? Well when they're all clumped together. You can kind of tell. Because remember how baby caramels are born red? Right. Supers are almost born goldish. Like they look caramel already. So also they have a light patch right where their head meets their neck. That's kind of like a little bit brighter. So that's what you look for. And everybody that I have labeled as a super caramel. Might have their first shed and it might not look as super caramel as I originally thought. So I always am on the fence and I do always err on the side of caution. Where it's like I would rather call it a caramel jag. Somebody buy it and then it turns out to be a super caramel jag. Then tell someone a super caramel jag that wasn't. So if I say it's a super it's because it's way better looking than the majority of its siblings. And it resembles what I've seen to be a proven super caramel. Okay. Anything with the eyes? Anything you notice with the eye? No. I haven't paid that much close attention to the eyes. Okay. I haven't heard anything about the eyes. Nick does talk about the light patches around the necks. But that's with normal super caramel. You kind of lose it a little bit with the jag. You still get the light patch, but it's kind of hard to tell what's jag pattern and what's not. When, uh, Saturday, I'll show you what I think is a normal caramel jag and then the super caramel jag. So. Gotcha. All right. Cool. Very, very cool. Um, anything else you want to hit on before we get going here? You and I get a set up the auction as soon as possible. So I guess we're going to set that up and go live with that tomorrow. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, we were supposed to go today, but, um, work got in the way for me. Um, yeah, I've been working basically, uh, 12 hour days. Right. Getting, getting up at three o'clock in the morning, uh, to get the work and work until like, uh, you know, three in the afternoon. Damn. Yeah, it's been, uh, it's been a rough couple days for me, but we'll get it up and going. I got a few people. Go ahead. I mean, so if you had, if you're out there and you're listening and you have a voucher or donation for the auction, contact myself or Eric. Uh, either tonight, Tuesday or sometime in the early afternoon. Um, uh, tomorrow, which is Wednesday and we'll put it on and we'll get it going. And then we'll try to go live with the auction by eight o'clock tomorrow night. On the merrily applied on radio, Facebook pages and things like that. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we have a, we have a couple of cool things for sure, but, um, not as much as we usually get, but that's, that's okay. There's, there's a couple cool things. I think it will bring, uh, bring some. Yeah. I mean. You're voucher. You're voucher. My voucher. I know buddy said for a voucher. Um, putting a voucher in. Contact him. Crystal Lemmy's donating some stuff. Uh, yeah. We can probably convince Nick. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just, uh. We'll start bugging people. All right. Cool. Yeah. Let's do that. Okay. Um, so yeah, let's, uh, I guess without further, further ado, let's get this going and, uh, get some. Hey, Riley. Welcome to the show. I should say welcome back. You were with us, uh, during the, uh, carpet Python round table number what six or something like that. Um, so welcome back. Uh, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. You guys can hear me right and trying some new headphones on this one. Yeah, we can hear you. I don't know. I never trust technology. Yeah. No, we never should never. Yeah. Yeah. It seems that whenever we have like the guests that we've been waiting for forever, regardless of, uh, where they are calling from. Uh, it's always technical difficulties for them. Like, you know, the one that every. Super pumped about and, you know, that's always something. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So all of a sudden it comes from my end. Yeah. No. So I thought that with this episode in particular that we would, like I told you, we would kind of keep the conversation open. Um, I don't really know, uh, you know, what's the right questions to ask? But I thought that as we were go through, um, they would just come and have a number of things. Uh, oh. Oh, it's coming in somewhere. How are you doing? Oh, my, that thing's so obnoxious. Uh, how we slave Owen. It's not my fault this time. It's just happened. Sorry. That's cool. It's awful. Altran is just runs right by my house and we'll be watching a show or something. And, uh, it's down the hill. It's far enough away where you wouldn't think it'd be an issue, but I guess it is. I'll be watching a gamer show or something and a really crucial line comes on. Oh, man. Um, I thought we started the beginning. So I guess the beginning would be, you know, um, you know, what got you started wanting to go into the zoo field. Uh, where, you know, what pizza interest with that? Yeah. Um, well, I mean, it really started when I was a kid and I bugged my parents. Enough to finally, uh, let me get a king snake when I was eight or nine years old. And then I kind of grew out of that and was skateboarding a lot. And, uh, realized I can't have partially broken limbs and work a full time job and support myself. So that tapered off and I started looking at, you know, what else do I like doing? And I looked at my living room. I had a water dragon. Uh, I had a couple cats. I was like, you know, I really like animals. I wonder if there's something I can do with that. But I've always been a little bit apprehensive putting myself out there. So I was like, you know, I don't know how to go about doing that. And the whole time my mom's in the background just pushing me like, go to the zoo, go to the zoo. Just talk to them, put your foot in the door. Just go see what volunteer opportunities it had after kind of pushing it off for a while. I really ran out of arguments on why I shouldn't. And, uh, she finally convinced me to go. I went talk to somebody and, and I got, I got enrolled in some of the, the classes that they require or starting volunteers to take really basic stuff like natural history, interpretation, what zoos are all about. And in the first couple months of some of these little one hour to our, uh, evening classes, I realized this is a lot more than I thought it was. I had no idea. This is really interesting. And I started taking more and depending on the avenues volunteers wanted to go, there are a certain number of classes and I just find out for everything. It's like, I want to do it all. And I kind of went hog wild with it and, um, got the, got the basics done in order to start, uh, trying my, my hand at the, um, the animal care aid or the keeper aid line. And they start you out doing rotations right here. So a couple, um, a couple shifts on bird line, mammal line and then herb line. And I got through all of it and I couldn't, uh, I couldn't get an ideal day for the herb line. So my one day a week, I started on birds and, um, I found a window to, to add a second day of volunteering. I mean, pretty quickly I was doing, uh, a full day helping out the bird team on my weekend and a half day before going to my, my paid job, uh, helping out the herb team. And I got to tell you, my, my world was turned upside down pretty quickly. Um, I knew I like snakes. I knew a little bit about them, a little bit about losers. In the first few months, I was, like, googling everything left and right. And just grabbing books and, you know, talking to people and asking questions. And, uh, I became really, really obsessed, uh, pretty quickly. And went out and got a rainbow boa, uh, just dove full on and then got a, a blacktail creepo. Not really knowing exactly what they were about. And that was the best day. And that guy's a blast. Um, and anytime I'm like, man, I don't know what I'm doing. I look at him like that. That's what I'm doing. And, uh, he keeps me really intrigued. And I volunteered for about a year and a half. Uh, just doing everything I could, uh, to put myself out there. And I was kind of working a boring, you know, part 10 job that was like, I was working at a UPS store. And I ate dealing with rich people and delivering their mail. So I was like, I gotta, I gotta do something else. And an opportunity opened up, I applied, uh, about six months in. And I didn't get it. And I was like, all right, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going. And, uh, and then because I had all my info on file one day, about a year later, uh, position on the hurt team opened up. And it, you know, looking back on it, obviously it makes more sense. It's easier for them to hire from within. Um, you know, they can start somebody off fresh and really mold them to how the system works. And they called me and basically said, Hey, uh, you know, you applied a while back. You want this job. And the one I had initially applied to was a mammals job, but I was just going to get my foot in the door and take whatever I got. And this one was like, it was like a holy grail. It was a hurt job. And they were offering it to me without me asking. I was like, uh, yeah, I'll be you tomorrow. So, uh, that was kind of how I got started in the zoo field. And I really, I would be, uh, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank my mom for just really kicking me in the butt and pushing me to do something that was a little bit uncomfortable at the time. Yeah. That's, that's always the good thing. Yeah. Um, and the rest of the history, I guess. Well, actually I wanted to talk. Um, can you tell us a little bit more about the zoo you're working for? It's a Santa Barbara zoo, right? Correct. Yeah, so Santa Barbara zoo, uh, asian accredited institution were, I guess you could say we're kind of on a smaller end. We're 30 acres. A lot of it. We can't necessarily develop. So it's not like all 30 acres are exhibits. Um, we've got a lot of nice picnic areas and fountains and, uh, a stage in this mat. And we are limited on all sides by a bird refuge, a freeway and a mountain. So we were forced to be really creative with, uh, the space we have, but we're a big credit. So we hold ourselves to very high standards and we're subject to a lot of, uh, inspection and protocols and this and that. And, uh, you know, everybody's like, oh, where are your tigers? We'd love tigers. And yeah, we'd love tigers, but we do not have a space for tigers. So we do it again. We keep the species that we can, but we also really focus on. Uh, as much of the. The local aspect of things is possible because, uh, one of the things they teach you is if you really want to gain support. And something you're doing, if you can get local people behind it and you can actually get them. That's really going to empower that initiative. And so we've got an excellent, uh, California condor exhibit and we're heavily involved in that program. And that's fantastic. I mean, we, that's probably one of our, our bigger draws aside from, uh, our quote unquote giraffe factory. We seem to have no problem breeding giraffes, which is awesome. And then we do some work with Channel Island boxes. We've got the islands right here, so it seems to make sense. And we've been able to, uh, take in some, some, uh, orphan animals, uh, send animals to other facilities, really help out with, uh, their recovery program. And they've since rebounded, uh, very well, um, partially due to some of the work we do, but there's a lot of other people who play major roles in that as well. So, um, and this year, uh, one of my team members has really taken our amphibian, uh, field work program and just run with it. And now we get a lot of, uh, red legged frog work. Um, I don't know, right behind here and as far down to Santa Monica Mountain. So we do really well with the local stuff. And then we also try to incorporate some of the bigger draws, elephants, snow leopards, giraffes, lions, things like that, and really just have as much variety as possible. Um, but yeah, we, we, I like to think we do a little bit of everything and what we do, uh, we do pretty well. So, especially for, uh, what some people would consider smaller. I mean, you go to San Diego and you can't see the entire place in two days. And, uh, you can see the entire Santa Barbara Zoo in two hours, but, um, you know, people quite often, uh, are viewing the zoo and they're walking out with them. You know, this place is beautiful. You guys do really well. This is like a, a mechanical garden almost. And it, you know, it reinforces everything we're doing. So we like to think we, we do pretty well with the, the smaller size that we have in, in our limitations and we work really well within that. So smaller zoo, big art. Very cool. So why don't you tell us a little bit, give us a kind of a overview of the reptile collection, reptile and breeding collection. What do you have? What is kind of like your favorite? Yeah, um, we actually have a pretty darn diverse collection. Um, a small group of tarantulas. Uh, we have zero issue breeding poison dark frogs apparently because we were going through and redoing an exhibit right now and we've got like 50. Uh, a lot of us like, how have we even need to do that? How did that happen? Um, we've got, uh, we've got some cool amphibians right now, some smoky jungle frogs. We got a bunch of Amazon milky frogs that we actually just, uh, hatched out 114 babies, which is a lot of work. A lot of babies. It's like, well, I'll admit that, uh, the local zoo for us is Philadelphia. And somehow, I guess they do really, really well with the glass frogs because what started off as like four. I mean, one cage has now, like, amassed to like 50 in every single tank along the wall, making a bunch of other animals. So, like, I, I, does that happen where everyone's a well, those ones just, you can't get them to stop breeding? Yeah. Um, it's ironic because I guarantee there's a lot of people who are going to hear this and go, I want one, but, uh, monkey tail skinks. We, it's, it's a ridiculous story. Um, we have what we call our, our family group. And when I first started, it was, uh, one male, one female, and another female that they produced in 2008. So, it's three individuals on exhibit, plus, uh, our other guy, P.D., who's our education animal. And so, it was really small group. And everyone said, well, I was like, oh, but we got a baby. Really? How did that? Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. One person equals two, it makes sense. And, uh, and so we had a baby a few years ago, sir, plus it. And it's now where they had another, like, good recall. And then, um, I think what, what I was initially told is that we don't need to breed any of those. They're pretty well represented in zoos. There's not really a huge need. And so we're like, okay, we won't do that, but we didn't really do anything to stop it. And then, next thing we know, um, baby, another baby, I come in one day. I'm like, what is that goo? Oh, my gosh, there's something in it. Oh, baby. And, uh, yeah. So it was exciting, but it was like, oh boy, I hope this doesn't cause any issues. And then, uh, our male, because he was just so good at making more of him, uh, was just didn't stop. So we ended up getting some abrasions that required some, uh, surgery on his henny peens. And we ended up having to amputate one of them. We're like, oh, well, that should probably solve that issue. They have two birds in his hand. What the hell? He's determined, man. He is, he doesn't take no for an answer. And then, uh, last year, again, I walk in and this is probably August. And I see two little choppy, bitey, squirmy, wet things crawling around. I'm like, oh, no, we did it again. We have two more. We have twins. And, of course, both of them are doing fine. Um, they're doing it. Oh, good. And so we're like, okay, we need to separate him. So we put him in another enclosure. Problem solved. Great. Fantastic. You're wrong. Um, in November, again, I walk in and I'm like, hey, this baby, like, I'm smaller. And it's now blue. And there's two babies over there. This one. Uh, not Brad. So she was pregnant before I left or something. Yeah. So whoops. Um, we're good at that without even trying. But, uh, I think that that should be it. And those babies are going to find your homes. We're going to keep one of them because she's very docile and gentle. And why not make, uh, make her an education animal? We, we like doing that. So, um, there's a perfect example of breeding when we aren't even trying. And they just seem to keep going. Um, it's like he's shooting, shooting, uh, shooting his, his little offspring from across the building somehow or I don't know how he's doing it. But, uh, he's magic, he's a magic fan. Um, so that, yeah, I would say that's probably the best example of that on our end in terms of, uh, breeding without even trying. Um, and as far as getting back to other animals. I mean, we've got, um, like I said, a variety of frogs and amphibians. Um, we have a small venomous collection, but I, I appreciate our venomous collection a lot. Um, we have a couple seven Pacific rattlesnakes. Uh, we have a false water cobra who before I was working there was breeding like crazy animals. Um, and he's a blast, especially when he comes flying up the door at you when you're just opening it. Um, we have a. That sounds like fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. I mean, he's just a ball of energy and love. Yeah. Um, our Eastern Diamondback is, uh, she's a big girl. I think her last wave was a little over six kilos. So she, uh, she doesn't like anything to do with people. So she's fun to work with too. Um, yeah, she's, she's something, something intense for sure. Every once in a while, we'll, we'll pull her out in a big open space just for practice handling. And yeah, that's, that's one way to get the blood flowing. But she is, she's beautiful. And I have a very, very intense appreciation and level of respect for that animal. Um, we've got a couple of beaded lizards that are just. If you know anything about beaded lizards, big corn, you know, a lot of those. But they're awesome. They're fun. Um, and then I think our last, uh, our last venomous on that list is, uh, we have a Taylor's Cantile who is just striking and beautiful. And I love that animal, but she, uh, when we, we go to do anything with her, put her on hook, she likes to hit the reverse button and go backwards and flop off the hooks. Oh, Christ. Oh, wow. She's fine. So that's our venomous collection. Um, we've got a few other odds and ends in terms of snakes. Uh, we have a really, really friendly 21 year old, uh, Bernie's python male who, uh, athlete named Chief, he's our big guy. Um, the red tail, a couple other things. Uh, we've got a Woma who we got him as a baby from good, Atlanta. And he was your typical bitey Woma. And he's actually now one of my star education animals because I just spent a couple of years handling him and just really creating positive associations and not reinforcing that biting behavior. And now he's just a mellow, you know, pretty lax animal. And I can have kids petting him for 20 minutes at a time without influencing it. Fantastic. It's also, um, so it can be done for anybody who works with Woma. And it's trying to mellow him out. It's not too tough. Keep going. God, I love them. Thanks, man. Yeah. They're fun. Those are pretty. I love them. Yeah. Yeah. I have, uh, a very fond appreciation for them. I might have to add them into my collections at home one day, but that's, you know, down the line and probably not necessary, which means I'll get yelled at if I do that. Never stop me. Yeah. You get yelled for a day and then, you know, I'm fine. Yeah. Exactly. I'll stop them. I'm like, but it fits with this and this and it's fun. And look what I can do. And then it's like, okay. It's so pretty. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, uh, as far as crocodilians go, we've got an American alligator, Mary Luke. She is 54 years old and has all this funk and a two year old and she's very, very smart. Um, she's been target trained for a decade. So I can get her doing eight of these back and forth, uh, across the pool. I've recently been training her to just shift off the exhibit into a holding space just by following my voice and a bunch of thing. And she's, she's blind in one eye and so that presents some challenges of presenting cues or things like that. And she has zero issue whatsoever. She's, she's a great example of reptilian brilliance. And I can't tell you how many times people are blown away when I give them any sort of info on that. Not fun. Um, we see all my alligators were stupid. So one of those, you know, mine were all mine were dumbass boys. And that's why I got chewed on. So, yeah. Yeah. They're kind of big clusters, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but they're bigger. They're, they're, they're not as dumb as people think. So, no, absolutely. You end up getting a problem there. Yeah. People are shocked when they learn that, uh, they can remember things. They can recognize and differentiate between people's voices. But you can train certain behaviors and things like that. So, uh, they are impressive animals in their own right one way or the other. Um, we, uh, we have a dwarf Cayman female who's bigger than most that I've seen. And, uh, she's got that, that Napoleonic complex that most dwarfs have. And she is, she has the best name as far as I'm concerned in our collection. Her name is Muffin and, uh, it's fantastic. I did always enjoy giving like the most badass animal, like the dumbest name. Like, I think I named a Nile crocodile chuckle once just because I thought it'd be hilarious. When it's like, what happened? I have a chocolate egg somebody, so, you know, uh, that was. Yeah, it's, it's nice people love it. And, uh, soon as I hear that, you've got their attention. That's for sure. So, uh, and then, and then my favorite crocodilians, we have a female Chinese alligator who's, uh, gonna be, she's gonna be 22 years old this year and that girl. Wow. I love that animal a lot more than some other animals in our collection, not because the other ones are any less impressive or important, but she is just, she's something special. She likes to follow me around the pool, but not in an aggressive way. She likes to just see what I'm up to. Um, she is very tolerant. She's great when feeding. She is not aggressive at all. I can walk right in and she just, all she wants is what's at the end of the tongs and, uh, uh, she's, uh, she's awesome. I love watching. They're so pretty. Yeah, she's gorgeous. They're gorgeous. Yeah. So, I'm working, I'm working on, uh, potentially arranging a male to come to the zoo in the next year or two with, uh, all those well with the, the SSP and if we get a recommendation or, or go overseas to knows, but, uh, and Chinese alligator babies, that thought has me, has me tickled, um, they're gorgeous, beautiful, beautiful crock. So, uh, yeah, not to, they need, they need all the health that they can get. Yeah. They're, they're wild counterparts are taking a beating. So, I mean, even if, even if, even if there wasn't my own selfish interest, uh, of wanting to see baby Chinese alligators, I've got, you know, institutional support with that. So that's fantastic. So, I got a, I got a question that's kind of on that topic. So, if you guys are, you know, doing something that do you do anything as far as reintroduction into the wild, um, anything along that line? We currently don't have any animals that we are breeding that are also poised to be reintroducing the wild, that being said, um, there's no reason why we wouldn't do that if there was an animal on our list or in our collection that would benefit from that. So, say down the line, we, we end up getting approved brains and red-legged frogs, do some captive propagation, um, wild repatriation would certainly be on the list of tasks in that program. Um, now I have no idea if that's, if that's in the works yet or not, uh, I would imagine it could be, there's no reason why I can't. And, uh, that's, that's definitely part of, uh, in terms of AZA program animals, uh, that's definitely one of the, the categories when looking into, okay, do we want to work with this species? Yes or no? What sort of efforts do they need? Can we pull this off, um, with our institution? Can we make this happen? And oftentimes the answer is yes, let's get our first, you know, step done and we'll work towards it. Uh, if there, if there is suitable habitat, uh, in their native environment and there's government support and protection if need be and everything looks like, you know, it's a good time to put them back then absolutely. Um, that's definitely on the list of things to do with, with program animals and, and uh, um, the, the, the AZA institutions, whether it be animal bird reptile. So. I guess that would be the biggest, uh, the biggest problem is not necessarily, uh, is the, uh, the habitat for the animal that's being destroyed. I mean, yeah, you got a place to put it back. I mean, right. Yeah. Yeah. Across the board for most species, the biggest detriment to helping Indian species is a lot, lack of habitat or lack of government support in protecting that habitat. Uh, in the case of Chinese alligators, a lot of their habitat has been destroyed for, uh, uh, farming for, for personal use for people and, um, it's very fragmented as well. There is, I believe, uh, a recently reintroduced population in another province that is not their natural area, but it's, it's somewhat close. And, uh, last I heard there are actually some individuals out there that are doing well. It's essentially even reproducing in this new, uh, new territory. So, um, that it's always encouraging to hear things like that. But yeah, that's usually the biggest issue is those animals are in need of some sort of health because there is an habitat, especially when you're talking about like frogs in South America and Brazil and Amazon and Peru and how a lot of that is just deteriorating or, or India, uh, a lot of their, their habitat for say, uh, garyos. I mean, that's all just being wiped out for, for mines and things. So you can breed as many animals as, as is possible in a zoo setting. But if there's no where to put them, then what do you do? Right. So I'm, I'm also curious, like, um, how does, how does an exhibit come about? Like, how do you go from adding an animal or adding a species or, you know, uh, who comes up with the, you know, putting together the exhibit? Is it, how does that all come to play? It's, uh, it's a very elaborate and well thought out process. And I'm actually still learning a lot more of it as I go along cause I see all these emails, like, who wants to make it those? Who need me? Okay. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. You need to get approval and there needs to be a space. Yeah. It's not, yeah. It's not all that easy. No. No, it's not like, okay, there's one for sale. I've got an empty enclosure in my house. Um, there's a lot, a lot more consideration, a lot more people involved. And it usually starts with, um, at least for our facility, I would imagine other facilities do it somewhat similar if not the same, uh, every year or every other year. Um, there are meetings that are called collection planning meetings where the curators, animal care directors, uh, people, the managers of other departments that aren't even animal related, get involved and they sit there and go, okay, here's what we have. Here are some suggestions for the coming years and what we'd like to possibly add. What are your thoughts? Can we put this off in these ways? How does this work for everybody? I want to make it through the first just kind of propositional stage of suggestion. Then, um, then they go into looking at, okay, can we budget for this animal? Do we have this space? Do we have the knowledge expertise or do we need to bring some consultants in? Um, is this feasible with our capabilities as far as in-house or do we need to contract out for, you know, say an exhibit design thing like that? So there's a lot of considerations and, uh, and I appreciate this aspect more than most, but our safety and security director, he listens to everything that everybody on animal care has to say. And he's not necessarily an animal guy, but working at the zoo for 20 some odd years, trying to nose his way around certain things. And, uh, he has a very powerful, say, in some of those considerations. And, um, for example, we only keep venomous animals that are covered under the crowfab antivenom spectrum because the rest of it is considerably, uh, more potent. A lot of them are anyway, and that antivenomomomom expensive. So there's budgetary and safety considerations right there that are, for example, some of the decision-making process. But, uh, you know, if it's something that isn't super dangerous and it isn't going to require heavy modification and it actually fits in something that, you know, has already been discussed and kind of approved to start looking for, uh, in those collection planning meetings, then it really does make it a lot easier to just say, okay, does this fit? Is this animal that is available on this list of months? So, uh, we do sit some of these preset plans that we've discussed about. Um, so we, for example, um, we used to have a, a bangle monitor who, uh, passed away with old-age natural causes when I was still a volunteer, so about six, seven years ago. And ever since then, we've kind of been lacking a big lizard in the collection. And my, my, uh, director, she's always been fond of having some of the, our players in, in all the, the different departments. And a big lizard is a big animal, a big draw, and as much as we, like, showcase every animal, no matter how big and really get home, they're important. Sometimes you've got to get people into the way that big, hydrogen animals. And, and we also like to have a good variety of education animals, so we're sitting there going, okay, let's see if we can, somewhere down the line, find a big lizard, either for display or something for education. And then immediately we're thinking, I don't know, taboos, monitors, something along those lines, but we'll, we'll, we'll keep our options open to see what's out there. Well, one day, um, monsters are trying to find, uh, a water monitor and a local rescue that, uh, young guy or young animal. And, uh, there's no December. I got the vets to come take a look at him. I was personally there handling him, so immediately this position is, you know, pretty good to go, and his bill of health looked pretty good on initial inspection, and it's kind of fit the, it's fit the bill, fit the plans. It just will happen to also be a rescue, so it's fit the mission of what some of what we do is. And next thing you know, we're setting up quarantine and bringing them into the zoo, and now it's been about a year and a half, and we've got a, uh, I guess it's a little, you know, uh, Asian water monitor in our collection, and it's, it's awesome when it works out like that. It doesn't always work out like that. But it doesn't work. Right. You know, uh, Owen was on GTP Keeper Radio, uh, the other night, and they were talking about quarantine. I'm just curious about how strict is quarantine when it comes to a zoo setting? That's a great question. I actually have learned a lot and, and modeled my own quarantine procedures about that. But I think every facility has somewhat similar quarantine regulations, and I think the final say comes down to the vet. Uh, okay, but our vet likes to be extra cautious with our quarantine, and I couldn't appreciate that anymore. I mean, it's fantastic. We have a very, very extensive procedure. So if an animal comes into quarantine, we have certain spaces set up that are strictly quarantine buildings, nothing else goes in there. And we have separate, uh, like water bowls, furniture, tools, gloves, disinfectants, whole water systems, air conditioning systems, like everything is separate. There is no cross contamination with any of the collection, one, something's in quarantine. And, you know, we don't service them until the end of the day, if possible. Otherwise we set somebody as quarantine for, you know, the rest of the afternoon or the entire day. Um, we, you know, have a certain minimum for a fecal sample collection, especially with our, our reptiles and the duration is pretty long for the majority of them with, with a lot of mammals and birds. You can usually get pretty, uh, extensive results that are reliable in a shorter timeframe. But as anybody knows reptiles take a long time to give you fecal samples. It's hard to get blood. Um, a lot of the potential diseases, parasites and things like that that you would be looking for. Sometimes you don't show up for the first six months to a year or years, even, um, in some extreme cases. And so, for example, uh, my vet likes to quarantine any new snakes for a minimum of six months. And it's, it's great and it's very cautious and there's a lot to be said for that. Only downside to that is, man, I really want to work with them all to get them out, but I can't wait till much here. Um, but we, you know, for that, that level of caution, we've never had any, uh, any outbreaks of diseases, never any issues. I'm not talking about what is I'm saying this. We, we've never had anything like that. And, and everybody who works on our team pretty much from the get-go learns about those cross-contamination quarantine procedures. And, and our vet staff is, uh, is really on top of that. And I commend them highly for how well they do that. And it's great. And the animals show, you know, the, the benefits of that by being healthy and living a really long time. Because of that level of, of care and, and, you know, caution that goes into that. So, you know, feeding tools, don't leave the building once they're in there furniture and, and hides and water bowls do not leave those buildings when they're in there. There's, you know, whole like gloves and gowns and smocks and all sorts of covers and clothes and masks and things that you wear. Because it's, even if I'm doing it at the end of the day, I still have to come home to my animals. So, I changed my clothes before I even do all things in my animals. I mean, it's very strict. And for that, for those reasons alone, I actually do the same thing with some of my animals that I get in. I got those import IJs that Eric, you got a couple of those and I saw the same quarantine protocols. I have them in a completely different room in a different part of the house. And, you know, I got clean their water bowls tonight and I'm going to do that at the end of the night and take a shower afterwards before I do anything else with any of my other animals. And, you know, there's no crop contamination. I've got gloves over there. I've got fecal containers, everything set up sterile. I mean, it's important. There's a lot of value to quarantine your animals properly, especially if, you know, you've got a pretty extensive collection or there's a lot of, I hate to bring money into it. But if you've got a lot invested in it and hate that word of investment when it comes to your animals, but ultimately that kind of is a bottom line sometimes. Sure. You hate to lose an animal because you're a little laxative procedure or something like that, but, you know, it's, it's worth it. You might miss a breeding season because of it, but hey, it's better than missing breeding season for years to come because your tire can actually not wiped out. Yeah. So quarantine is a big deal. It's the, you kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, the survival plan for your animals, or the SSDs, because that, like, set off a chilled down my spine for, you know, having to do with those, but I have several friends who work in other zoos. Not in the reptile setting, but more in the mammal setting, and one of which was rhinos. And they had to get approval to breed their rhinos and they got approval and then the approval got taken away by the ACA. So they had a pretty much like hope to God that no babies were coming for things to get a little dicey. Have you ever really had that, and that's only like one story. Have you ever had any kind of ACA involvement with your collection with the reptiles that would kind of like maybe might kind of rub somebody who would just get into the zoo setting, maybe the wrong way. Yeah. Well, right off the bat, if you don't know anything about that, and then you're sitting there going, well, why not? This is a great idea. And then there's some, you know, proverbial arbitrary florida says, no, you may not. And you're like, oh, why not? That's frustrating, right? Yes. And then you start learning more about why they make those reasoning. And the more you learn about it, the more you realize, oh, that's actually a really good idea. I get it now. But yeah, I can't say I've ever had any sort of ADA ruling or sort of decision that has interrupted future plans for breeding or things like that. We are a smaller facility, so we're not chock full of all these animals that need everybody to breed everything. But for the longest time, I was under the impression that our Chinese alligator was a recommended degree because she was produced at the Bronx Zoo. And that year, a few years, they had a lot of success breeding them. And so that gene pool was fairly well represented, and I'm sitting there going, but I want baby gators. And they're like, no, no, no. And come to find out that their situation is a lot more dire than I previously understood. And there's some talks about maybe increasing the number of recommended breeding. I know the SSP coordinator, personally, after this conference I did in Florida last month. And I got to know him a little bit better and learn more about the program as a whole. And so now there's light at the end of the tunnel. And I'm like, oh, you're saying baby gators is a possibility. And he says, well, maybe let's leave. And when they make those decisions, there's actually a really extensive logarithm in this whole program. And they get together and they look at an entire database with all the animals in the collections in the country. And they look at the genetic diversity between all of these individuals in this program, orders them in terms of the most diverse lineage. So you've got animals that are 96.7% different than unrelated from other ones. And they'll make pairing recommendations based on that level of unrelatedness. And oftentimes some of the smaller zoos that might not have facilities, the whole 20 of these animals that are really well set up for breeding. And typically those in those facilities and the being holding facilities. And there's nothing wrong with that because that's equally as important because you can keep animals from another facility that are otherwise taken up space for animals that need to be better represented. You're still contributing to the entire population as a whole by relieving some pressure on that other facility. So yeah, I mean, it's bound to happen sooner or later, like, hey, I really love to breed a false water cobra that I could find that, you know, our guy has enough babies out there and he's not very high on that list or, you know, who knows. And it's the same with mammals, birds, you name it. So I definitely have heard that and I've also heard that the, like, if you had animals of opposite sex group together and they're not clear to breed, they may actually ask you to destroy the eggs or something along those lines as well. So, yeah, yeah, if you're holding animals, I mean, yeah, if you're holding animals that are not recommended to breed and something happens, it's usually consideration that is, is talked about and discussed even at the time of placing that animal in your facility before you even get to that point. So, let me just putting that little note in your folder that says, hey, around this time of year, be a little more alert about any breeding sort of things and, you know, do what you can to keep them separate a certain time of the year or don't, you know, cool by Mr. and the building for you to try to prevent any unwanted breeding as much as possible, like what we separated that male PD stink and kind of ended that magic show right there. Right. So, yeah, I mean, there's definitely something to be said, or not breeding animals for the overall good at that. True. Right. So, when I was working with the zoo, probably the biggest shock or disconnect is that these, you try to treat them almost like your collection. And of course, you do get a text of various animals. And the biggest shock is that, at one point, we were quite requested to send one of our Nile Crocs to another zoo, and there was nothing we could do about it. And it was like, he's going Monday, and that was the biggest shock, for me at least, is that, you know, these aren't your animals and they can be removed at any moment. I mean, would, have you guys, have you had any kind of, would that be something you said you kind of need to kind of come to terms with, if you're going to be in a zoo job or a zoo setting? Yeah, definitely. You know, when I first started out one of the things that there wasn't like a main focus of a point of discussion, but it was definitely referenced was that, you know, these aren't your animals don't get attached to them. And it's like, okay, yeah, I get it. They're probably going to go out at some point, and they're not my animals. But, you know, it's hard. You can't ever do it on this, like, yeah. I'm not going to get attached to it, because it's the rest of the world. What the hell are you doing, doing a glance? Yeah. I thought it was on mute, my fault. Hell. Yeah. Me. Everyone else there? Yeah, you're drinking already. Christ. Anyway, back to what you were saying. Um, I could imagine, like, that, you know, that's got to be one of the biggest things that you kind of try to hammer home. But it still, again, it's almost like if someone were to wander into your collection and be like, guess what? This one is leaving tomorrow. And it's like, wait, why? Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely, it's going to happen one way or another. Um, it's, I guess, for me, it's easier to deal with because there are several hundred animals that I take care of on a daily basis. So, I'm literally spending a minute or two or maybe five with the majority of these animals on a daily basis. So, some of them, you just don't even build that level of repertoire or familiarity with. And some of them, I mean, it's really easy to, like, you're like, oh, that's a cute little fuzzy baby giraffe. And then it's got to go. And you're like, no. They're adorable. And they're fuzzy. Yeah. But, yeah, but then, like, you got this, I don't know, I guess, say, a stick in chat. Something that is not, it does involve images and feelings of, oh man, I really want to cuddle this. This is my best friend. And then when it goes out, you're like, yeah. Sticking a stick in chat. You know, it's, it's not like that. Yeah. With the majority of them. Like, you're not the gate. You're not the gate. You're not the gate. You're not the gate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. It's there, though. I mean, I feel bad for the, the bird mammal keepers. They have fewer animals that they work with. So they, they bond. Yeah. And actually a lot of them do require that sort of intense level of relationship. And then they come out, our two male silverback gorillas, one of which just went out to his new home. And shy and mountain zoo, like a week ago, and the other one, they're actually preparing for transport as we speak right now to go out. They're probably waiting for him to get in, like, to do their exam before getting them in all ready to go for his travel. But, you know, the keepers that work with those animals. They work with that line in particular. They take care of a mob of meerkats. They're, they're heard of five or six five, five draft, five draft. And these two gorillas. And so they spend a significant amount of each of their days with each one of these animals to a point where they learn what they look like. They learn their personality. They learn what they do. And they, without even trying to develop some sort of relationship with them, and they part on them. When these animals go off to their new home to breed or, or for us to make room for more animals that need to breed here or whatever it is. And, you know, they're, I'm, I guess, I'm a little more close to that particular line. My girlfriend is one of the, the gorilla giraffe, meerkat keepers, and so she's over there. She, she was telling me like, Oh, I'm really sad about Goma going out and I'm really going to miss him. And they're really excited to get updates with him. Like, I don't know what that's like. I really, I really haven't had that experience. I would imagine I would feel the same way if, if our Chinese alligator went or something like that. I would be pretty bummed. I mean, yeah, that's something else is that you may correct me from wrong, but you may submit to the Chinese alligator to be bred in the SSP and they can determine that rather than send the boy to you, you should send her to wherever he is. And then now you've just, now you've just written this project. It's almost like if I were to be like, you know what, I really want rough scales and I would get all this up ready for rough scales. And I would buy a female rough scale, then it would be like gone because I bought the rough scale. It goes over here and it's reached somebody else's place. It's one of those things that it's like, by you wanting to, or having an interest in possibly breeding this animal, you may have taken it away from you. Absolutely. Yeah, that's a very, very real eventuality. And the one thing that you've got to tell yourself in that type of situation is that there's a reason that's happening and it's important and it probably needs to happen. And as much as you want to keep them all and, you know, name them all and have birthday parties for them and stuff, sometimes it's better for that animal is to go somewhere else. And can you please make a cupcake for that really big rattlesnake or it's birthday and like just put it in its cage or something like that, or nearby, and take a picture and throw it up on the pick of the week when that happens. Oh, yeah. I'll just turn it against something going. Yeah, we, whenever we have, whenever we have birthdays come up for some of those animals, we definitely do some goofy things. Like, I'm pretty sure for our Burmese Python's birthday, we like took photos of them and we made like, scented the boxes that we wrapped in wrapping paper and put those in ribbons and put them into the enclosure. So he got some enrichment with it. It's melly and it gets them and we're just like, let's get the photos of them. Yeah, and I'm going to give him a big old rabbit and he's going to be so happy. And it's like, yeah, it's like our kid and it's a snake and he doesn't care about this. The spot, the color. Yeah. Yeah. So looking back on it, some of those things, I'm like, man, I'm sure some people walk a mile like, what the heck are they doing? These people are weird. You got to have fun. If you're not having fun, it ain't worth doing. But absolutely. What? Go ahead. Go ahead, Eric. No, no, no. If I keep asking. All right. You mentioned enrichment. And when I was in the zoo, I was the head of the department for reptiles. And we went through obviously the inspections for, you know, the powers on high yet have a lot of enrichment for mammals, birds, things like that. And we had very little enrichment for reptiles just because of how much was required. You kind of see it shifting a little bit more. We need to include more enrichment, especially with the smarter species like monitors and crocodilians, things like that. Yeah. At first, I kind of didn't see like a few years ago when I was first getting started. I was like, man, there's snakes. I don't care. Yeah. A lot of my animals in particular, like it's, to, at first glance, and with very limited thinking into it, it doesn't seem all that beneficial. But then once you do it, a few times, you realize, you know, what happens as a result that you start realizing, like, how important it is. And then you start thinking about what their life is like in a zoo. And let me say, first off, that mammals and birds, they have to do a lot more of it because if they don't, those animals get bored much faster. And that can result in cranky animals with don't shift or don't eat or, you know, attack one another or the keepers and things. So it's actually much, from my perspective, it seems much more in the forefront of their minds. And so they do it a lot better than we do admittedly. But, you know, there are certainly some animals that when you give them that sort of enrichment, you see a shift in their behavior. Like, wow, I'm really glad I did that. I need to remember to do that more. You know, especially like stereotypic behaviors, you'll see a lot like an elephant just standing there bobbing its head or an animal pacing at the front of the enclosure or, you know, just doing something that they wouldn't naturally do. And the public sees that and they sit there and their first impression is, man, that animal must be bored. And that looks terrible on the zoo when somebody walks away with that impression. And so AZA actually mandates enrichment in all of the facilities that are accredited for all of their animals. Like, there has to be an enrichment program. And so here at Santa Barbara, we have an enrichment committee that meets some regular interval and they discuss a lot of the different things and then make sure it's going and it's written into our protocols and the standard operating guidelines and what you can and can't use. And we actually have a lot of people that are very passionate about the enrichment and they've taken that program just in pretty great length. And we have an entire room with racks for the ceiling of all sorts of boxes and toys and boomer balls and things. And we actually have a lot of publicity revolving around that. And we get tons of donations of like dozens of grocery bags that are stuffed full of empty toilet paper rolls because they can be used extensively. And so we have a pretty well developed program about it. There's like binders and lists of what's approved enrichment for certain animals, certain things that you're interested in about. We can cut brows on grounds, but it has to be approved and it's got to be the right kind. So we have an entire browse book and everything that's on ground and what's toxic and what is it and what you can't use. And so with our animals, it is challenging. You know, take snakes, for example, they don't care that you threw a cardboard box with puddles in it. But if you drip, say, some fox scents or some deer lure in that box, that snake is going to go bonkers on that thing for even if it's only 20 minutes. You've totally changed that animal today. We have a bull snake, a big six foot male bull snake, and that guy is puppy dog pain by the way. He's done fun, another education animal. But if we leave his enclosure the same way for like a week to 10 days, we see this odd behavior out of him where he starts doing this really twitchy, jerky, like, it's almost like a nervous tick. But he's like, looking, he's like, and he's just kind of like jolting around and we even got like that. That's a law that we did all these exams to see if there's something going on and like obviously nothing is wrong. And we started looking at the behavioral thing. And the next thing you know, we made it about a major point to change up the furniture's enclosure a lot and do all these things and both that behavior is gone. You don't see it unless we, you know, are slacking on the enrichment. So we start giving it piles of substrate from another snake enclosure or I'll take all of the different like rocks and sticks and things out. And I'll take all of the different. Oh, there's that time again. All right, we got it. No. Stop it. No. I know. At this point, just kill them. I mean, they had so many chances to move. Yeah. Anyway. But yeah, so when we, like the other day, we had this big old like five foot panel of a half a core ground and I cut half of it and just gave it to it. I just did that. It took me like all of two minutes. And all of a sudden he just, he's awake. He's cruising all over the place. He won't leave the dank thing alone. He's going to the bathroom. He's flipping it over. He's doing this and that. And for three days, this animal is obsessed with this piece of cork. And that's all I did. I didn't, I didn't spend, you know, hours playing this out. I didn't have to like interrupt my day. I just, as I'm going along, I'm like, he's had the same set up for a while. That move the water over here or do something like that or give them a two or whatever, or like all the snakes. I'm taking all your hides out and everybody's getting somebody else's. And, you know, it makes a big difference. And the same thing with training. Training can be used as a form of enrichment as well. And it can also work to, you know, modify or improve some certain behaviors that might make your day easier, like shifting for cleaning or offering a land for furthering. Or, you know, whatever it may be. So enrichment is very much an important and necessary part of what we do. If you think about these animals, we've, we've taken a lot of their choices. And they're not saying we took them from the wild and we've limited them. They were already there. We're trying to resolve some of those things so that maybe dudes don't have to have, you know, everything. And, anyway, that's a whole-minute ball game that can upset a lot of people. But, yeah, it's really, it's really important to do some of that stuff. They can't just roam around and explore your territory. They can't go walking for miles to find a mate. The lions cannot follow herds of whatever their prey item is for an entire migration. Until they get the right spot where it's good for ambush. I mean, they don't have that option. It's not like they know it because most of them didn't come from the wild. But at least what we can do as their caregivers is try and give them options. Give them, you know, foraging opportunities. Give them a chance to say, no, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to do any training or I don't want to play with that toy. Or I do want to look for that food or I do want to climb up that rock and jump and try and spend hours getting a branch or whatever it is. And when you give them those opportunities, you get a whole different animal. I mean, you see a different side of that. You see natural behaviors that animal then is, I guess, from an anthropomorphic perception a little bit happier. And, yeah, I mean, enough can't be said for getting them at Richmond. It is very awesome to see an elephant reach up and have to stand and move this big ol' stub and a big ol' log to reach this palm rally. You've hung up on an 18 foot umbrella, you know. I mean, it's impressive to watch. It's cool. Yeah. It is. That's awesome. Definitely. So, I'm just curious, what is the day in the life of a zookeeper like? How does your day start? What do you do? And, you know, when does it end? Well, I'll give you an insight onto my day. I can't say that it's the same for everybody else, obviously. But, for me, every morning we have a morning meeting, everything that's on the calendar, whether it be encounters, tours, birthday parties, things like that. Everybody meets and we just go over that. So, it's on everybody's radar first thing in the morning. Then, from there, we go to the animal kitchen. We're very fortunate to have a nutrition staff that preps the majority of our diets for us. So, we go there and basically I'm walking a big old freezer for a refrigerator and I have a shelf. And if there's any diets for the day, and we have a schedule for everything, so we know we should and shouldn't be getting. I go in there and grab these buckets and take them up and we start incorporating that into our day. I usually don't have to do much food prep, although I want to get the opportunity. But we get up, grab the diets, take them to our area, turn on the few lights that aren't set on timers. First thing is we go get coffee. That my team is absolutely caffeine. It's unspoken. We grab the diets. We go into the area and everybody grabs the coffee cup without fail. First thing, down to the kitchen, you go get coffee. And then we start today. And then we usually, we break up our line in certain times depending on how many of us are there that day, what we've got going on. And then, you know, it can either be divided into two lines or three, again, depending on how many people are there. And it's usually just going around and doing some routine maintenance on every single species and every single space throughout the day, whether it be just changing the water, misting, and throwing it into the dark frogs or scooping up what little cordous food is left, changing their waters, making sure they're done, they're clean. Or for some of them, it's just like they're alive, okay, they're good. And that's it. That's all they require, especially with the venomous animals. If we don't need to feed them that day and there isn't a mess in there, we usually leave them alone, just make sure that they're alive and well. But yeah, I mean, there's a whole building where I put all the food, water, and diets, and things that I might need on this cart. And I just go down the line, change water daily, mist the animals that our team is requiring species, give them food, if it's their day for feeding, get a visual inspection on everybody. We usually start a couple hours before the public is there, and that's just to get things open and go on, and if there's any issues or anything wrong, we can usually at least start to address it before the public's there. Again, we don't try and pry their sugar coat things to the public, but some things are really hard to interpret, and we'd like people to see animals doing well rather than give them something to see that might be a little bit harder for them to discern what's going on. And it's not going to start right out there, because most people don't read signs, but we try. And so usually, the first half of the day is changing water for no diets, taking care of the real basic stuff. And unless we have something crazy going on, then the afternoon, we do project related things, whether it be, you know, working on digging up holes in this yard, or adding up brows and rich men are cleaning the alligator pools, or building, you know, new things for some of these spaces, or just long term projects that we've been getting going for a while. We just chip away a little by little so the afternoon is without being kind of like free time, it's whatever we want to do. So like, oh, we should really clean the gator, but we can kind of must eat. But oftentimes we'll start that right before we go to lunch sort of thing and then finish at the afternoon or this and that. But most of the year it's eight to five during the summer, we come in an hour earlier just to get these open early because it's light earlier. So seven to four those days, but it is somewhat the same routine every day in terms of procedure that every day is different. And my team is really, really fortunate because it's not the exact same thing every day for like, you know, some of the mammal lines. That's all they do is they take care of those three species and it's almost the same thing every day. But for us, it's like, okay, what part of the line did you do yesterday? All right, did you want to do the other part? Cool. Great. And now we're going to do this. And then, you know, I can go an entire month without having to be on this part of the line that requires me to clean filters and scrub the piranha tank. But then just by virtue of how things worked out and the entire next month, I'm scrubbing that for a week, you know, it's totally different. So, it's really nice. It keeps things novel. So, yeah, paper enrichment. So, what would you say is the biggest misconception about zoos today in 2016? The biggest thing that is across the board is the perception that zoos are a prison for animals. And it's the -- I mean, anybody knows that there's somebody somewhere that they've talked to that has that opinion. And, you know what, it's a tough subject because you can end up losing that audience if you're trying to discuss it at all within seconds, depending on how ingrained that perception is and some of the word choice you use. And so, it's a really delicate thing. I mean, you could say one word and all of a sudden they're often raised to say, but you said this, but you said this and all of a sudden they're not listening to you. And then you just, you know, secured them as a zoo, hater for life sort of a thing. But I think what we try to do, and this is really put out that zoos are not just an area where these animals live. These animals are ambassadors for the wild counterparts. These animals, you know, might be the last of their kind if their wild ancestors don't exist out there anymore. And so, they serve as an educational component and say, "Hey, look, this is why pollution is bad." Or, "This is why you should be more water-wise." Sometimes, you know, like with some of the snakes, like, "Womas aren't necessarily endangered. I don't believe or anything like that." But, you know, I'll take him out and because he's brightening orange, and he's, you know, somewhat sizable already, people are walking by like, "Oh, my God, a snake. Wait, he's gold. He's kind of pretty. What is that?" And next thing you know, I've got an entire audience that 15 minutes from then, that point on, they're going to be talking about snakes on their entire drive home. It's going to, you know, translate into more conversations later on in the positive perception. And so, conservation is the biggest thing that people don't necessarily know that zoos participate in. And it's not for lack of advertising, trust me, that our PR department does a lot of that. And you can only reach so many people. You can only change those with people's mind. Some people just, you know, if they don't want to be helped, you can't help them sort of the thing. But, yeah, we take a lot of pride in at least doing some educational components. But we also do a lot of direct conservation work, like I said, with foxes and combos and grab them like a frog and things like that. So, you know, at Camp Arbo, we have this program that we do. It's our keeper talks program. And every single day, we have a minimum number of required keeper talks that we schedule, whether it be five on weekdays and eight on the weekends. We try to, like, make a concerted effort to at least reach out and connect with people because you never know who you're going to get. Every once in a while, you might be talking to somebody that works for PETA or something. That is just a complete do-hater. And they're incognito. You're never going to know who you're talking to or who you're really sharing that positive message with. Right. Especially with all that negative press out there with stuff like Blackfish and, you know, all that. Sure. It's enough to battle. I'm getting wrong. But I got to tell you, it's worth putting that extra effort because I've probably talked to thousands of kids this year already that started off and they wouldn't even come within a hundred feet of me. When I'm out there with a snake, and, and minutes later, they're like, "Mom, I want to pet a snake." You know, and next thing, you know, I've got a snake advocate walking away from me. So it's conservation. Zoos are probably one of the biggest network of organizations that are out there supporting conservation. I mean, there's plenty of other ones. There's the Orient Society out on the East Coast. There's Arizona Perpetological Society out here. There's tons of these people that are out there, but, you know, the biggest thing across the board is limited time. There's limited staffing and resources. So zoos are a really big network that essentially perform large, widespread conservation efforts, whether it's just the education or actually sending people over overseas into all these countries to, like, teach these local voters, like, "Hey, don't kill these across the movie, guys," or whatever it is. So zoos used to be very much so just our roadside attraction, like, 100 years ago, whatever, sometimes even less far off in the past. And that has shifted significantly in the last few decades because, you know, it's becoming more apparent that the natural habitat and the, quote-unquote, "wild" is disintegrating, disappearing. Animals are disappearing, and everyone's going, "Hey, we should do something about that. How do we do that? Who do we do this?" And next thing you know, the people that work in zoos, they are already in the position because they know a lot about these animals. They're passionate about it. And next thing you know, you just got this body of people. They're totally motivated. They're going to bend over backwards to do whatever it takes. At least, where and where it is, does not get boots on the ground to do stuff. So I would say the biggest thing that zoos do, that people don't know about, hear about, are oftentimes overlooked, is perform some very essential tools in conservation efforts. Right. Yeah, I mean, when you think of a book like The Invisible Arc, and the idea that, you know, more and more habitat is being lost, I guess in some instances, the only place that, like, you know, kids, 20 years from now, are going to be able to see something like a tiger is going to be in a zoo. So, you know, I don't know. I never understood that, I mean, I kind of, I guess it's kind of a struggle that you go back and forth with, you know, I don't know about you guys personally, but sometimes you look at the snake and it's in a box and, you know, that kind of thing. It's with your personal collection and, but, you know, if you in turn touch somebody that then in turn cares about the environment, you know, just because they're now appreciate a snake. I don't know. I think that makes a difference. I don't know what you guys think, but. Well, that's something I definitely want to wrestle with when I was working in the zoo, but it was kind of like the, you know, this is, this is here for this one reason, and it is to, one, preserve the species, to raise awareness for its wild counterparts who are in some kind of a bad way, sometimes in a real bad way. So, there's definitely that. And then there was the option of the if it's here, I'm going to try to give it the best life as I can because it's here, because one of the same thing of what you were saying, Riley, if you can get somebody appreciating snake just by hanging outside of the llama by the next time you end up seeing that cat, he may be all about reading it up, getting the preservation for stuff, you know, you may have started somebody who could, for all we know, become somebody just like you or become a researcher, a conservationist. I mean, they got to start somewhere, and the only way you're going to get people to care about an animal or a situation is to show it to them, kind of like in their face. Like, no one really cares when you show you pictures. They need to see the animal. Yeah, you've got to make that personal connection. You've really got to bring it to them, and it's interesting. I, for whatever reason, my brain like to remember certain phrases, but not like where I remember them from or who said them. But one of the things that always sticks out to me is, you know, people don't want to learn. If you tell them like, hey, we're going to go do something that's education, you're going to learn something like, great. I don't know, I lost TV. But if you say, hey, we're going to go do something cool. We're going to go hiking. And then next thing you know, you're like catching lizards or something like that. Or whatever it is, or you see something, next thing you know, you've got somebody's interest. Or, I don't know, it could be something as simple as like, look at that. It's because snakes get, you know, snakes shed, and all of a sudden you just blow somebody's mind. And for the next four hours, that's all they can think about, and all they can talk about. And, you know, then they're going to start looking it up, and they're going to stumble across this. And this ripple effect just takes off. And it's kind of like that movie pay it forward, you know, it's contagious. And it's bread, it's just get going. So it's a fantastic thing to watch. And I don't know, if anybody's never had the opportunity to share a snake or something with somebody for the first time for that person's experience, and you see that person's face light up, and you don't think that's a magical experience? I'm sorry, like you missed the point, but that's now some of the most profoundly like, significant impactful things you can do to somebody, and it's, and it's positive. And I don't know, there's very little that gets me more excited than seeing a like, a two-year-old come up who's grandmized and like, "Rattle snakes are evil, we kill them all the time." So like coming up and seeing like, "This is a gopher snake, they're different from rattlesnakes, but they live in the same habitat, and they're really important, perhaps Y and Z, and would you like to pet it?" And all of a sudden the kids are like, "Wait, I can touch this? Don't they bite them?" And next thing you know, that kid asks you a question. If that kid is asking you a question, he is thinking you inspired him, you've stimulated some thought, some original individual curiosity, and I gotta tell you, there's no looking back after you do that, it's contagious. I love, absolutely love doing that stuff. Yes, and even if the kid doesn't grow up to be a herpetologist, maybe he won't beat a freaking, you know, gopher snake to death with a shovel in the garden. I mean like, you know, maybe he won't get away from that crap. So it's just kind of that stuff, and you know, the inspiration for anybody, for any type of animal, is always the best way to get someone to care and to help. I don't know if you, either of you guys have ever been to the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. Yeah, I love that zoo. It's one of the only perks I have for working with Nationwide as I get to go there. So they have the one thing in front of their tigers, I used to be my one friend, he's the tiger keeper there. And they have all the statues of all these tigers and of all the different subspecies of tigers. I've been, have been destroyed and crumbled and are like in shattered. And you start reading and you're realizing that the shattered statues are the extinct subspecies of tiger. Then you're like, now all of a sudden you feel just sad for all this. And because you just spent 20 minutes looking at beautiful how-more tigers and the cubs and all that fun stuff. And now you come out here and they have all the statues and several of them have destroyed. And then you see this bell that apparently they ring when a species become extinct. And they're like, well, we don't do it all the time, but if we did, we'd be ringing it every eight minutes. It's like, now it's just a wonderful punch in the gut. And, you know, maybe that won't inspire a kid, but that'll inspire somebody older who really cares and doesn't want to have to see that thing happen anymore. I mean, I don't want to go back and have to worry about, you know, if I go back in a few years, is one of the other statues going to be destroyed. I mean, that's something you think about and it's terrible. So that's what zoos should be doing is trying to help the animals as well as inspire us as zoo goers to do a little bit more to care a little bit more. So, and that's, yeah, I'll do a very good job of that. Mm hmm. I think it's, I think it's Toledo Zoo or, no, maybe it's, no, it might actually be Omaha's Henry Dory Zoo. I don't know, either way, whichever zoo it is, they've, they've started doing these exhibits where they have some of their animals in the space that is designed to look like this destroyed eroded habitat. And it's not like trash cans and junk and garbage and like dead tree stumps and this and that in there. And then there's this like leopard walking around and you're like, oh my God, what's the name there? That's horrible environment. And it's like all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute. That's brilliant because now people are not only seeing that animal that they came to see, but they can't not see the fact that that habitat doesn't exist or it is not pristine and green and full of, you know, that animal. Food and things like that. And they can't ignore that point at all. And it's, it's very creative. It's, it's rough to see though. I got to tell you, I saw some, some photos and it's, oh man, talk about the pressing. Yeah. Um, I got a question and, you know, as far as like, with your breeding programs and whatnot works, how does like, how do you guys set up a pedigree system? I mean, do you keep lineage? How does that work? Yeah. Any sort of breeding, especially for program animals, even for animals that are not in like an SSP, there is a lot of attention towards keeping lineage. So that, that, um, that computer program with all the logarithms that I've told you about that, like, it keeps track of like the most genetically diverse individuals in, in captive populations. What it also does is it has the information on who the cyber data that animal and who produced them and what year and how related they are to other animals. So, uh, lineage is absolutely crucial for those decisions. Um, and even the animals that aren't, uh, aren't related, it's still a very important consideration. So with those Amazon Milky Tree Frogs that we popped out more than we thought we would, um, they, uh, they came from two different gene pools. Um, we had some individuals that we got from Oakland, they would have since grown up and are now breeding like crazy. And then we had, um, a couple of individuals that we already had in our collection from, gosh, I don't even remember what facility they were there before I started. And so they're from two different gene pools. And so we actually favored the eggs that those individuals laid versus the ones that finally grew up from Oakland and were just breeding amongst themselves. Now, right with a lot of insects, uh, invertebrates and fifties and reptiles, some level of, uh, in a related breeding doesn't show any ill side effects for several generations. Now, that's not to say that, like, we're just like, okay, yeah, go for it. We don't care. We try to avoid it at all possible, but, um, it does happen, I guess, I should say, but, um, yeah, we certainly try to prioritize that. If we want to breed anything, we try to make sure it's not a related breed and that's across the board. So it's a high consideration. Huh, interesting. What was the other question then ahead? Uh, I was going to also something I was interested in. Like, how do you, how do you, do you have to have a certain amount of time in before you're working with, like, say, venomous reptiles? Like, how does that work as far as training and, yeah. Um, for, for venomous, it is very much at the discretion of the facility. But that being said, they kind of run the same sort of system where there's a certain level of, uh, of training that goes into it. And then those that are already venomous certified at their organization, they also have to first step is, like, be comfortable with even getting somebody started on training. Like, yeah. Yeah. They're not going to train some guy who, you know, likes to pick up animals when you're not looking or at least doors unlocked all the time, sort of thing, or likes to take his fingers through the mesh and it will be not paying attention to sort of thing. Um, so the first consideration is, okay, who's, who do we trust? Who do we think is capable? Who has the flexibility in the schedule and would improve our overall coverage on a weekly basis in terms of having more or trained individuals than then we all meet together as a team. Uh, those prospective individuals are discussed and then we talk to them and we, we don't say, hey, we're going to train you. We say, hey, would you like to start this training because, ultimately, if you're not comfortable doing it or they're walking, you don't want them on the team. Um, that that's just dangerous. Um, there's no real error. And so those are kind of the first steps. And then the way we do it is kind of have, uh, three different stages. The first stage is just observational. You just simply watch, um, how the existing certified individuals are doing their things, how they go about doing the feeding, the cleaning, the shifting, whatever it is. And you, uh, you have to hit a certain minimum of observations for each of the venomous species. Once you do the minimum, you bring it up to the person who's kind of in charge of making sure you're trained up and then they decide whether or not they want you to do a few more or if they want somebody else in the team to see it just so they're comfortable sort of thing. And then the next stage is some practice handling with non venomous animals. So that's when you really get the feel first snakes on hooks and how to shift and how to lift them up and manipulate them around and how to keep yourself at a safe distance and deliver food and clean around the next Y and Z. And, um, and then same thing, you have a minimum number of those for each species. It's got to be approved by the folks training. They've got to make sure everybody's comfortable with, with what you're doing. And then once you get through that and that those two stages alone can take six months or more just because it's sometimes difficult to knock them off the list in a short amount of time. But, um, the third stage is then actually doing the venomous procedures. Whatever be feeding, handling, cleaning, and we start with the quote unquote easiest or less dangerous one. Um, so for us, it's like we start with, uh, you know, because it's a big lizard. And, and you kind of work your way up. And once you're comfortable with that, you do a set number minimum of that. It's not more. And then we move you up to the next one. And you kind of go up the ladder until you hit, um. Eastern diamondback and false water cobra. And the reason why we consider false water cobra up there is because, first of all, technically they're rare thing, mildly venomous sort of thing. They're still risk of, you know, allergic reactions. That's why the ender big snake and he's fast. And he doesn't have to eat on you. So we treat it the same way. Um, not just because insurance wants to do, but because it makes sense. And, um, and then everybody's got to be comfortable. Everybody's got to feel confident that you've existed. You at least know what you're doing and can make smart decisions in, in these situations. But then you're not done. Then behind that candidate's back. Everybody goes and we talk to the safety and security director and he sets up a drill. And you don't know what it's coming. You don't know what the circumstances are. And he's, oh man, he will. He really likes to go career balls in there. He likes to do a species that, like the backup space isn't necessarily ideal. Or, you know, somebody's been, uh, like hypothetically, then you've got to respond to this. But then in the middle of it, there's an earthquake or something like that. You know, and you've got to respond based on all the training and protocols. And you've got to make the right decisions and you've got to communicate properly. And he's filming it. And then he's recording it. And everybody else is responding to this. It's a real situation. And then afterwards, everybody gets together. They talk and they read about it. What went wrong? What worked? What didn't. And then he types it all up. And everybody gets a written explanation and break down of how everything went with the actual radio transitions. And then the team basically says he did great or we need more practice with his individual. And for me, it took a while. And, uh, gosh, I want to say a little over a year before, um, before I went through all of that and then had my drill. And, yeah, it was gosh, I was sweating bullets. It was nerve-wracking. Because, the previous form is on. You've really got to demonstrate that your teammates can rely on you and can count on you and that you're not going to make them stupid decisions. They get somebody killed or yourself for multiple people or let the animal out, you know? It's no joke. It's a very intense program. And I would imagine every other zoo has something very similar, if not almost identical to that in their protocol. Yeah, um, I had to handle a Gaboon Viper as they shot questions and quizzed me. Um, and I had to answer them all appropriately and correctly while I took the Gaboon Viper out, clean the cage and then put it back. So, that was my drill. It was not, well, luckily our Gaboon Viper at the zoo was so fat and stupid that it really did kind of, it was like handling a beaded lizard. But at the end of hooks, so it was like, yeah, it just kind of sat there. It made noises and then you put it down. He did other stuff. But yeah, it is one of those things where also, it's kind of like a culture shock. You know, at my zoo, you were not allowed to get injured. You're not literally allowed to get bit. I mean, obviously they would understand if something happened, but if you were bitten by a venomous, um, you had to go under review and you could potentially lose your job because it means you were doing something you weren't supposed to be doing. Also with almost any other animal. If you're somebody who's a keeper who gets bit a lot, you might not be cut out for a zoo position. So, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, all of that is taken under consideration. You know, it's ironic that you say that somebody who gets bitten a lot, maybe, and they look at you that. I guess I was kind of without even trying to develop a slight reputation as a guy who gets bit every once in a while by some of our lizards and things. Just doing the video was up, and it's not because I make me think necessarily, but it's because, like, well, I guess some people consider the mistakes. Maybe that's not the best way to go. Like, I got bit by, um, one, actually, I'm a bit twice by the monkey tail skinks. And, gosh, the worst thing is, you know, baby, like a month old, a thing launched off a wall and nailed me and just took a hole out of my thumb because I just wanted to go pick it up and move it, you know. I guess I probably should have realized that the baby ones are even, you know, dodgy or, but, uh, actually April and Terrell witnessed that firsthand. They have a great laugh about that. And they were visiting. That was not my final hour. It was so good. April laughs every time I mean about that, and always has to remark about how the thing seemed to just fly off the wall after me. Um, like fighting against the wall. Yeah, exactly. So there are certain people where you're like, yeah, you're kind of crazy. We probably don't want to trust you with some of these animals, but I think it was a little different for me because, um, you know, there are very few people who want to work with some of the animals that I do. And, right, I don't take any unnecessary risks with any of these animals, but, um, there are certain, certain animals that you can kind of get away with doing some silly things like a go for snake, you know, you can reach in there. It's a go for snake. It might still bite you, but, um, nobody's going to, you know, like, write you up for that or file or report against, like, whatever you, nothing happened to animals flying. You didn't necessarily do anything wrong. Maybe you could have used a hook, but it's a go for snake. So, uh, it's very circumstantial. So, um, and then everybody else knows that I have a bunch of carpet pythons at my house and that I get nailed by those things on a weekly basis. And so I was like, oh, yeah, you got that again. I come into work and I've got claw scratches all over my forearms like, what'd you do now? I'm like, oh, I was just, uh, giving my monitor a bath and he just has sharp claws and they're like, oh, okay. So it's, I think it's kind of expected for me now that, uh, I work with some of the animals that just by working with that animal as part of the territory, you're going to get some little cuts and bruises here and there. Oh, yeah, that was the, uh, that was always the memes that went around at the zoo was like, you know, your keeper. If your hands always look like they went through a paper shredder or you can talk about poop, even if you're like in the middle of dinner with your family. So yeah, it's all that fun stuff is just par for being a zookeeper. So, yeah, you're right on there. Yeah, but that's really cool. I mean, uh, you always, you said you had the one water monitor. You have any other, Brandon at the zoo, correct? Correct. He's the only one currently. Yeah, it gets back to like, we are limited on space and enclosures and things. So we have to be very selective. We just have to have like plans for him in the works before we even had an individual selected. So, uh, yeah, he's, gosh, I'd say he's like four and a half feet long right now. So being that you work in the zoo with all the enrichment things that we talked about and how you kind of see that obviously the animals are a little bit more intelligent. But like, does it just kind of like blow your mind when you see somebody who keeps an animal like a water monitor or a Nile monitor in like a glass tank on AstroTurf with like a rock. And that's it. Oh, God. Yeah. You answered my question with your noises. That's totally fine. So, yeah, it's, uh, you know, that that's a lesson in patients right there. I got to tell you. Yeah. Everybody goes to their learning curve. Everybody figures it out one way or another and you hope that nobody suffers in that process of learning. However, sometimes information doesn't get as far as you think it would despite the internet and smartphones and sometimes you just got to walk away and hopefully that person and that animal make it through the day. Yeah. It's tough though. But I mean, in all fairness, there are there are ways to reach out to people and delicately educate them to improve their situation and the animals. It's just really frustrating at times. See, you did your delicately reaching out. I just called them an asshole and move on. But there's, well, it's like, and I'm kind of, this is something new to me because I have a pair of Nile monitors right now. And I literally just filled their enclosure up with a bunch of brand new mulch to the point where everything that they had ever sent marked was under about two feet of dirt. And then I watched them over two weeks systematically excavate all the way down to all the stuff that they had originally recognized. They moved dirt. They were doing nothing but moving dirt for three days straight. And then they took a break. They were building tunnels. They were going through all this stuff. And I watch these animals do this. And it's like to have an intelligent animal like that and not have something for it to do. It's got to be just, or to not keep it even remotely like this, it's just got to be batshit crazy to me and just asking for trouble. And you are in a zoo setting and you would be with this constantly. Yeah. Yeah, I got to tell you, I've worked with a few green iguanas and everybody has an easy time with green iguanas. Maybe I'm just looking at it's wrong. The first two weeks on the job at Santa Barbara, we had this big male green iguana named Axel who up until that point had not shown any sort of significant level of aggression. And we've got target training. He really likes my assistant curator Mark, Mark would be able to go in there and like just pet him. He would close his eyes. He'd got his head. He could pick shut up. You could do anything with an animal if you were Mark. And it never crossed anybody's mind that the new guy who just started might not get that same warm reception. And so I'm walking in. There's this big branch into rock work that almost goes right over the top of the door. And this is a big six foot door. So this is an eight foot ledge. And I'm walking in and the first thing I'm doing is putting the target just so his first focus is voluntarily deciding to train rather than trying to test me to figure out who this, you know, this rookie is. And I walk in there and he gives me a couple like really aggressive stabs at the target. I'm like, okay, I think he's performing. I don't know. I've only been working with this guy for like three minutes. And he proceeds to run down this log that is well overhead high and gets halfway down does a 90 degree turn and just needs off the thing. And that was a five and a half, six foot animal. And he put me on my butt real fast with my elbow full in his mouth and he gave me one good shake, sliced my elbow open pretty good. And I had to offer my foot to chew on so I could reach stand. Oh, push the door open it and launch myself out cascading out this door to get one piece. And as I close the door, I can see him through the vents in the door like scrambling after me. And it was terrifying. And for like a few minutes of like, what the hell just happened. And after like looking into it and realizing there were some breeding season aggression and missing that and realizing that he had kind of demonstrated some aggression to some of the females in the enclosure. You know, in prior situations, I realized that's kind of normal for a green iguanas. And I've seen all these like 12 year olds and 13 year olds like my green iguana. I'm like, oh, it's the winter. Just wait a few months buddy. You're going to regret that one. And maybe it's just me. Maybe I suck at taking care of green iguanas or maybe it's just axle axle in like us or the facility or who knows what. But yeah, after working in a zoo, I, you know, now I see all these people with big monitors and I'm not going to rip on monitor people. There are a lot of people who do that stuff really, really well, a lot better than I do. I don't get myself expert at all by any means. And I can't help the question when I see people like posting something like, Hey, what's the plan? Do I need for a crock monitor? I'm like, Oh God, oh God. Oh God. Oh, yeah. So it's a 45 gallon breeder. My crock monitor can be fine in there, right? Yeah, I think you posted a photo on Facebook a few months ago, an American alligator that was like four feet long, shoved in a 40 gallon tank, but think couldn't move. He was already bent around there. He's like, does anybody want to train a table for this alligator? He's getting kind of big. Like, dude, he got big. Yes, that happened already. Yeah, I've been at shows where my one friend who does monitor has like done everything. But like get down on his knees and beg a person on the other side of the table to not go four tables over and buy a baby crock monitor because of what he has described about where he will keep it, how he will keep it and all of this stuff. And you just kind of, and then he comes back 20 minutes later, he goes, Hey, I bought it. You're like, like, do the feet in the eyes? It's like, no, I mean, have you kind of had that with animals you've worked for in the zoo, worked within the zoo as far as the private sector? Like, have you seen somebody come walk it up and say, Hey, man, I really want a water monitor or a monkey tail or whatever. And for what you have known from the species and what it requires, have you just been like, No, don't do it. You can't do this. Don't do it. Yeah, most often with. So I, I mean, yeah, yeah, no, they're there. I don't get me wrong. I consider them easy to keep, but I know what they require and I know how big they get. And I know how big they are. And I know how much they destroy yards. And I can't tell you how many times not just at the zoo, but every once in a while, I work reptile shows at the local pet store. People come up either at the zoo and tell me they've got this tortoise or they come up to the bison supply of the show and they've got a little baby socata and they're kind of like, Oh, do you? No. Yeah. And they're like, Can I keep this in a 20 gallon tank? It's like, yeah, for a month, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then, you know, I give them the harsh truth. I'm like, you know, they're great animals. They're really fantastic. But I got to let you know, if you like your backyard, this is not a good animal for you. He will destroy that. People will eat everything in it and likely dig under a fence and disappear. And it happened. And then it calls all the time for people saying like, uh, I've got this tortoise. It's like an African spike leg or something. It's it's digging up my flower bed and my mom doesn't like it. Can you take it? Oh, my gosh. No, not again. And, you know, every time I have that moment where I put the phone on mute and I'm like, Why, why, why, why, why, why, why don't people learn? Okay. Here's what I suggest, you know, and it's, it's not going to end. I mean, you'd think, you think it wouldn't happen anymore with care sheets and the Internet and responsible breeders out there that, you know, give you that information when we get the animal, but it's just, if you can't win them all, I guess. Well, it's also because the sulkatas are one 45 bucks a piece and baby leopard. 200. So, yeah, there's that evaluation. Yeah, and I do love how you brought up sulkatas because I totally forgot that was the only ever reptile escape I ever had is I came into the zoo and my staff was working. And as I'm parking my car, I get on my car, and there goes our spurtide tortoise across the parking lot. And I'm like, well, this isn't right. What are you doing here? And he had systematically dug huge shuttle that it's like, I'm like, how the hell did we miss this? And he dug his way out. He just ran under the fence. So, yeah. Yeah, turtles and tortoises are impressive like that. You never expected from them, but you're right. It's one of those things that there are certain animals you never, I mean, obviously, if you were on the mammal side, it's like you hear about these people who own tigers, and you're like, why? I know what these things are capable of. What are you doing? So, obviously, there's got to be that kind of thing with the reptiles too. Oh, it's everything. I mean, for birds, you're most common one in that situation are macaws and parrots. Caws, caws. Yeah. Those think terrified the living day life out of me. I've been bit by a few of those things, and that will have to be like, why do people keep these things? This sheer terror, and Eric will tell you, like, you will agree. If you ever mentioned the word, all right. If you ever mentioned the word, take it to you around me. I start talking out of my freaking head. Take a Jew or Kawani Mundi, all right. I've been on the business end of both those animals, and I never want to see them again, so it's not fun. So, I was at a reptile show once, and the kinkajos have this, like, peeping noise when they're upset. So, I'm walking, and I hear that noise, and I'm like, I guess I started having, like, Vietnam flashbacks. Because some jackass has got a teacher over there. I'm like, I need to leave. I need to get the hell out of here. So, yeah, it was, you know, it's just, again, it's one of those things of, why would you own that animal? So, yeah, yeah, no, I get it. You know, people who don't work in the animal sector, their first impression is what they base all up there, like, sentences that come out afterwards on, like, when they see a fuzzy little little cat, and they're like, oh, I want that. They're adorable. Like, you have no idea. No idea. Like, I encourage everybody to look up what a black-footed cat is, and to somebody who doesn't know what that is, they just look like your typical house cat. That doesn't have a tail, but, like, a miniature Bobcat, and you're like, that's fantastic. They're cute, they're spotted, and my goodness, I know people that are more terrified of a black cat than a lion, and it's just like, those things are insane. And so, yeah, just the first perception or an image of an animal is never something to base a decision off of. People are like, oh, that's so cute. I want one. And everyone's like, no, you don't. So, well, it's funny you bring up the cats, because I think Philly had a litter of those, I think, two summers ago. And I was there, and, of course, like, I'm looking in there, and I see them, and the guys next to me are like, well, it's just like a normal house cat. I got six of them at home. I'm like, a completely different animal, but all right. Yeah, that thing will mutilate and kill all your house cats. That being said, I do want a serval, but that's just me and my own stupidity, so. Yeah, well, to be honest, I was just at the NorCal Reptile Show, and there's an educational group there that had a lesion artist trained very well socialized serval there that you could take photos with. And I, about me in my pants, I was so happy. I got to say, after spending time working in zoos, I kind of regret this decision, but I had, at one point, a Bengal cat, as well as a Savannah cat. And savannas, for those of you guys who are listening to go know what that is, that an African serval cross with domestic cat, and my goodness, they are gorgeous. And at first eventually, like, oh, hey, these are great. Yeah, it's just like a really pretty, really expensive house cat, and it's not. It is, that is a wild animal, which way you've got it, and I have the scars to prove it, my friend, that I got. Oh, man, yeah, nightmare, wow. I love that little guy. He was fantastic, and he really showed me what it's like to care for a high maintenance animal. You know, make you rest in peace. He died from a FIB, or FIP, or whatever it is, three years old. No. Yeah, he, man, that thing was as wild as it gets, and that's a hybrid. I mean, that thing is the 50% bloodline domesticated, so you don't want, you don't want something like that, especially if you're not prepared for it, and you don't know what you're getting into. And it's the same thing with big monitors, you know, like, yeah, you can take Nile monitors out to be pretty mellow, but I hate to, I hate to put somebody, you know, in the line of fire, even in like a somewhat positive light, but Andrew Bryan, I've actually met him before, a really nice guy. His Nile monitor, the work he did with that thing, is nuts. Just on sheer, like, what he can do with that animal, and how trusting he is, and how well behaved an animal is. But he's not stupid. He knows that that thing is still a Nile monitor, and that thing has kicked him around once or twice, for sure. And he doesn't, I guarantee you he doesn't forget that, and I have a lot of respect for that guy because, yeah, he can take all sorts of selfies and play with that animal and has a great relationship, but, you know, he doesn't kid around that is still a Nile monitor. And there are tons of people just like him that do excellent work and socialize their animals really well, but I guarantee you that the guys that do it best like him and others are not, they're not fooled by that animal. That is still, that is still a wild animal, whichever way you cut it, captive bred and born, it doesn't matter, that thing is still a Nile monitor. So, yeah, I mean, I really, it's funny because I keep, you know, a bunch of animals and some people probably pull the same argument on me, and it's like, well, yeah, okay. So, yeah, I have a lot of respect for people who do it well. Yeah. Yeah. Do you get, do you get any, do you get any flack at all, keeping animals privately by working in the zoo from other people in the zoo field. Yeah, I'm sure some of my coworkers have some lesson favorable opinions about my animals. And so I'm very, I'm very selective and cautious when I invite people over for even a barbecue at my house because inevitably, they're like, so, you know, those animals, and I see them. And, you know, there's this part of me that's like, yeah, so I want to share everything with you, but then there's this other part of me that's like, who are you, can I trust you? Because I'm worried about them taking an animal, but because, you know, I want to give off the right impression. And I've had people come over and go tub and wrecks. What are those? They don't have life. That's paper vetting. You're depriving that animal, aren't you? And they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm very told I'm about to explain the natural history of what this animal prefers, how the benefits of this style of system work and why you might be getting the wrong idea. And I've never had anybody after that still think I'm some animal abuser for keeping snakes in tubs, but I can see how that comes off just tasteful to certain people. I tried to just be as completely open and honest about, like, would I love to give this animal an eight by nine foot slice of the jungle just for itself? Absolutely. Am I Bill Gates? And do I have a mansion to do that with and give every single frog its entire bedroom? No. You know, and it really comes down to one of the basic needs. Are they happy? Are they eating? Are they surviving? Are they thriving? There's a big difference between surviving and thriving. And to me, if an animal behaves normally is not acting abnormally aggressive and especially with, like, snakes, like breeding, the fact that we can keep an animal in a really bare minimum enclosure with just, like, paper, water, heat, cool and inclusion. And they breed. To me, that's an animal thriving. Animals don't want to reproduce. If they're not happy, healthy, and they don't feel like there's adequate resource for them to feel comfortable to devote the amount of resources that they are programmed to be sparing with to breeding. So it, you know, people who want to say, oh, keeping ball pythons or anything for that matter in a tub and rack system, it's like, look at that animal though. That animal is healthy. That animal is disease free. That animal has fresh water. Regular access to food gets attention, which, you know, they don't necessarily need. And they're reproducing in large numbers. They're doing really well. And so there's something to be said for that. So, yeah, I mean, I get, I'm sure I've got some people that wouldn't tell me to my face that what I'm doing is cool. But I always try to go the extra mile to spend extra time with some of those people like, hey, come experience this, really get a better idea of what, you know, what it is that is going on here. And I try to exercise that same open-mindedness when I'm looking at other people's collections or different species and things. I don't know what that's about. I don't know anything about keeping a blue-toned skin in a tub. And I was shocked when you could do that. I was like, no way. That's fantastic. I didn't know that. But if I had that open mind, I'd have been like, you're evil. You're depriving an animal of UB and this and that. Like, there's so much more that we've got to learn about all these species that, like, you really, you really can't be close-minded. And why do we close-minded? Why not ask questions? Why not learn? Why not, you know, get excited about something that you never thought was even there? And, I mean, I blew my mom's mind the first time she saw my animals. I heard my brother were like, whoa, 30 animals look different in person than I have the number on. But then, you know, I put a little snake in their hands and I showed them the green tree pipe on the enclosure that isn't a horse. And they're like, wow, this is fantastic. These animals are great. You're amazing. And it's like, I'm just doing what these animals need as best as I can and with the resources that I have. And yeah, inevitably, I'm going to get somebody who's going to point a finger and try and calm down on me, I'm sure. Right. Do you guys deal a lot with that in the zoo? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're on high alert. And actually, I think at least we'll get a lot more of it because of the population down there. We're a little bit of a smaller town up here. So we don't get too much of it. But yeah, it definitely happens, especially with some of the higher profile animals like elephants. And people are like, that's not enough room for 245 year old fully grown female Asian elephants. And, and if it happens to be me talking to them at that point, it's like, well, you know what, you're right, we would love to give them several dozen acres of forest. But let me tell you about these individuals specifically, and once I kind of give them a little bit more insight into the amount of work that four keepers put into these two animals to enrich and train and maintain and care for and provide everything that's tailored to their sensitivity. You can't walk away from that thinking they're being slighted. I mean, these girls have their quirks. They don't like being with other elephants. They prefer to be by their themselves just them to not in a big map. Those will hurt like the majority of other elephants. And, you know, there's a lot of legislation going into places changing things for certain species elephants in particular. Now there's a lot of emotional considerations for that. And it's great. But you also have to look at the individual circumstances for that individual animal in that individual facility. You can't just look at an animal and say, one way or the other, that animal is happy or not or healthy or not or exercising or whatever. I mean, you really don't know. And you've got to ask those questions. Oftentimes people come to the zoo with a preset notion in their mind. And you can change that if you talk to them and you listen to them and you appeal to their nature and you really take it from their perspective and try and learn the way they're looking at things. And if you take that extra 10 minutes to just answer some questions and maybe be a little sensitive to these people's misunderstandings, you can really do a lot of good for at least that one person and every one person counts whether they're going to make a difference or not. And it happens. But I think when people start getting into the finger pointing about some of that and you're not doing this and you could be doing this, the one thing that immediately that's forgotten on all sides is that the people that are taking care of these animals, they love these animals. They're not doing it for the paycheck. None of us are getting rich doing what we're doing. Most of us work second and third jobs. Most of us have to have roommates and rent rooms and like deal with tiny expensive living conditions because we're devoted to properly caring for these animals and spreading like the proper information in being spokespeople for these animals and really trying to make a positive impact. And I think that gets overlooked and lost 99% of the time. It's very easy for people to point a finger and say so and so is abusing this animal and they're depriving them. They're doing the best with what they've got and they're probably trying to change things and it's just not like being plastered all over Facebook. They really want these animals to do better. What I prefer to see and I keep going back to them, but Chinese alligators back in their native habitat so they don't need to be bred in captivity to the point where we all may have a couple of animals just so people can see them without having to go to China. Absolutely. 100%. I would love that. Is that the reality? Unfortunately not. So that's, you know, people need to only pump the brakes and stop yelling at everybody and like everybody's a keyboard warrior. Everybody's an expert until they're not sort of thing. So I think we need to be a little bit better about being sensitive and asking questions and trying to figure out exactly what's going on and not assuming. You know what they say when you assume you make an asset of you and me. So it's very true. I think one of the things that, you know, Bill, Bill always talks about this is that tolerance is what's really needed in the world today. You know, just a little bit of tolerance about before you go judging somebody else and you may not agree with what they're doing or whatever, but, you know, just trying to see it from their perspective, I guess. Yeah, take a walk in somebody else's shoes. You're like, just really try and think about things from a different perspective. You'd be surprised on what you might see or what you might hear or learn. Every once in a while, if I'm just doing some routine maintenance, I exhibit and I hear somebody say, "God, terrible." I can't believe they're doing it. If I've got the time, I'm going to go, "Hey, excuse me, sir. Actually, I'm a few minutes in my schedule. Would you like to come see something?" Like, I'll take them in a behind the scene area. I'll take them somewhere where you don't get to go just because I know that I can change as persons miseducated perception of something by really enlightening what they think is going on to be like. So you might not see this, but it's this, this, and this. And the biggest thing was used that I would encourage people to always keep in mind is it's the little things that you don't see that are going on that make all the difference. And yeah, there's a lot going on that people don't see because it's tough to really explain that in a sensitive way without people running off going, "He said this," and it's a complete misinterpretation of what was said, and it's fun because it's really easy to get something out of contact. So, right. Cool. So, I don't know. Is there anything that we missed that? You know, we're going to be running short on time soon, but I'm just curious if somebody was interested in, say, going into the zoo field, what would be your recommendations to them? Yeah. The best thing I could say is if you live in an area where you have a zoo nearby, go there, ask questions, see what sort of volunteer programs they have. It's really hard to get into the zoo field. There's not like college courses. You can't just go get a degree that's like, "Oh, you're a zookeeper." There are a few training schools. There's more park college out here that is basically a mini zoo for training students in, like, a two-year program on how to train and work with animals. There's Santa Fe teaching college out in Florida, which is fantastic. I got to see that last month, and they do some amazing work, but not everybody has a resource like that. So, if there is a zoo nearby, let's see what sort of volunteer programs they offer. You never know what they're going to have. We have key parade programs. LA's do has stuff. San Diego's do stuff. I'm sure the majority of zoos have some sort of program. What it does is it gets you a little bit of a different perspective on things. You can really get to know the staff, the facility, and really see what it's all about, and then you can find out what avenues are available for you to go in and maybe volunteer some of your time and get your foot in the door just helping out. And, you know, people think they're like, "Oh, I'll just volunteer, and they'll give me a job." Well, it's like, "Well, there's a little bit of timing in the right place, right time." And some luck that is involved too, and you also got to flush your butt and prove it to them that there's something you want. And we get volunteers all the time that come in, and they're like, "I love animals. I want to work with animals." Fantastic. That's great. But you've also got to be able to rake a yard and get peed on and pooped on and do it with a smile and engage with the public. And, you know, really take that job, and you can't just treat it like a job, and that once you clock out, you're done. I mean, nobody is like that. That is a serious zookeeper. Nobody's like, "Oh, it's just a day job. I'm here for the money." It's impossible to survive in a zoo and not be fully devoted. So you've really got to want it. You've really got to put the time and effort in, and you've got to be prepared that you're not going to make a lot of money. You're going to smell like crap when you go home after work. You're not going to have normal weekends. You're not going to be able to take holidays off. You're not going to go buy a house as soon as you graduate from college or whatever. I mean, it's not glamorous. You've really got to want it. But volunteering is definitely the best avenue to get in. That's how I got my start. That's how a lot of people got their start. So if you can get into some sort of a volunteer situation and just set yourself up to be in the right place at the right time, the stars might align, then you might get in there. You might be really glad you spent four years working for free, scraping crap off in the concrete or whatever, getting peed on by macaws or chased around by armadillos or whatever it is. It will pay off. And there has not been a single day that I've woken up in the morning and then like, "Man, I got to work today. This sucks. I don't want to get to work every single day." Whether I'm getting up at five in the morning, four in the morning, whatever it is, I'm happy. I am thankful. I am very grateful to be able to do this stuff, not because it's fun for me, but I get to share that with everybody else. My entire family, it has learned so much just by virtue of me working there, and I know all the people that I talk to is the same thing. Every benefit from that. You've got to put in the hardware, get your foot in the door, get to know some people, put yourself out there. I guess the same could be said for any sort of career. You've got to put yourself out there. You've got to share a motion work for it. But it doesn't always work out. You can't get down about it like I've had volunteers that would make absolutely fantastic keepers. And they're doing it for two years and then they finish school and they can't get a job and they've got to go home and that's the end of it. And it sucks. But that's how it goes sometimes. But you can't wrap up on that. You've got to find another way in another location to keep pursuing it if that's what you're interested in. It will work out. It always does. It's what you really want. Yeah, absolutely. Can you volunteer without the idea of maybe making it a career? I mean, is that possible? Absolutely. Yeah. We have a lot of, yeah, it's not like we only accept people who want to work in animal care. We have folks that are retired and they just want to volunteer their time whether it be in a dose of program or actually do a key break stuff. We've got people that work full-time jobs with bankers and accountants and they don't need another career. They're not looking for another career. And they certainly are limited on on free time, but they enjoy doing it. So we've got people that do it just for fun. We've got people who do it because it makes them feel good and we've got people who do it because they've got time to time. So why not? And every single person who does it, that does it like for any reason and stays more than like a month, they enjoy it. And it's pretty, pretty evident and it's fantastic to share that with other people. Awesome. That's awesome. Cool. So our closing questions usually entail asking, you know, what species would you want to work with, et cetera, et cetera. So a little bit of a twist on that. If you could have, you know, a species to work with at the zoo, you know, what would it be and why? Ooh, you know, there's, well, okay, I guess I'll go with the more far-fetched one on this one because one answer is comotos, but I think it's actually a little more realistic. And I won't go off-handed too much on that because that might end up happening in, you know, less than a decade. But saltwater cross. Oh, no. And what really led me to that one was I was out in Florida for conference. They have the St. Augustine alligator farm and they have this absolutely beautiful, like I think he's 16 feet and his name is Mark. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. If you don't think that animal's beautiful, you need your head checked. That animal's head is bigger than my torso. That animal could take me down like a shot. That animal eats chickens like I eat chicken nuggets. And let's go play with him. Yeah, I know. And their staff are some hardcore people. They've got these keepers that work there. And I hate to put any sort of emphasis on gender, but those are some badass women that work with that dude. I mean, those ladies deserve all the respect in the world because they do it without flinching. And I guarantee you the first time I'd have to do anything with there. I'd be like peeing my pants wet and bullets and like, "Ah, he's coming after me." And they're just like calm, cool as a button. They just don't care. They're like, but they're doing it well. They're not being like lax or anything. They're impressive. And so, saltwater crocs, just for the sheer size of the amount of intelligence that comes with working with an animal like that. Kind of like working with a big venomous animal, except they'll kill you a lot faster. And they're just impressive on every single level. And I think that very few people get the opportunity to work with such an impressive animal like that. And so, I think that would probably be up there on one of my top five that's not the top species I'd love to work with one day. Wow. You know. That's awesome. It wasn't until I saw saltwater crocs in person that I had a whole new respect for Steve Irwin. You know, it was like, "Holy shit." Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's what he did jumping on, yeah. Oh, my goodness. It's nuts. Yeah. I mean, and you can't, as much as like, there's an emphasis on working safely with the animals and like not sharing a space with them unless you're absolutely happy. You can't work with that animal without somehow sharing that space with them. And so, just the basic care that comes with taking care of an animal like that is nuts. I mean, that's just, that's a whole other ball game. I thought I was, you know, the bees need getting to work with a six and a half foot American alligator. And I went out there and was like, "Gosh, my American alligator that I take care of looks like a puppy dog compared to this. I can't even say anything on that." And it's just, those animals deserve a ton of respect. Yeah. Absolutely. That's awesome. Cool. Oh, and you got anything else you want to hit on or? I guess I'll ask, is what animal would you want in your private collection then? Ooh. Private collection. You know, as much as I don't think working with hot would be the smartest thing for my house, I have to think for rattlesnakes. I find them absolutely gorgeous animals. You know, they deserve respect on a whole other level. And I really like each and I'm in the background. I think that's a terrible idea. And I'm probably going to regret saying that because somebody is going to be like, "Hey, you should keep one." And that you really like when I went out and got one. It's like, no. Oh, yeah. Okay. My six of them. Yeah. Yeah. So if we're going to get away from that, I don't know. I really think, well, I guess Chinese alligators is equally as silly as it could have been. I love those things. I have a weird fascination with them. But gosh, cobras. Again, gosh. I keep coming back to those really dangerous, potentially, ones. They're missing eaters. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't have the room in my place. I really love all of Python's. Some of you guys have them. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that to me is a bit of a holy grail animal for me, I guess. And monitors too. The water monitor I work with. I'm very blessed that he doesn't kick my butt every day. And I really, I learn a lot when I work with him. The intelligence on that is very fascinating. If I had space and resources to do that, I think I'd love the water monitor too. Awesome. So far, it's a good. A lot of animals. Not too cool, I guess. Some people keep those. No, no, you're not too far off. Nothing's too kooky. But it's definitely very cool. And we're going to have to, we'll send to Eric out. There's zero or something like that. But if I go to the center of our run, I don't see my sister. She's going to kill me. So. Well, yeah, if you guys are out, please look me up. I'd be happy to show you around the zoo. It's something that I can easily fit into my day and definitely make time for it. Again, part of what we did. That's awesome. Then if I went out to the Santa Barbara Zoo before I went to the Bronx Zoo, Crystal Lemmy would kill me. Yeah. But Crystal Lemmy is Crystal Lemmy. It's fine. We can ignore him for a day. But, you know. Awesome. Yeah. He's a lot closer to you though. So I get it. Yeah. Yeah. He's not a massive plane ride. He was making fun of me because where what do you think Owen? Like a couple hours away from there? Two hours. Two hours with that hit. Yeah, which isn't crazy bad. But, you know, I haven't been up there yet. And, like, from, you know, Casper's going there. Nick Button's going there. I was talking to Nick. I was talking to Nick today. Nick's going behind the scenes to feed and pet the rhinos. So, oh, wow. You know. Now I've done that at the Columbus Zoo and the Maryland Zoo. So I got black rhinos and white rhinos that I've, like, fed. They're slobbery animals. They're not, you're like, look at this majestic creature. And then it opens its mouth and grows everywhere. And you're like, oh, never mind. I know. I know Chris' angle there. He's trying to get in good so he can get some rough scales or some stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I see his plan there. Yeah. Cool. I see his plan there. So, I guess you want to throw out the information. Like, if somebody is in the area for them to, where, is there a website that they could check out the zoo to get some information on it? Yeah. So, if you go to, I believe it's spzoo.org. That's our general website. And they've actually since rebuilt it and redone it. So, I'm still kind of unfamiliar with it. But you can definitely get all the contact information for a volunteer program. There's all sorts of videos and things about some of the events that we have going on. We do a Subaru. We do a Roar for a Wine event. We have open registration at certain times of the year where we take science from volunteer stuff, zoo camp. We have a lot going on. So, spzoo.org is going to be your first go to point to see all the opportunities for visiting, weddings, birthdays, camps, or even what potential employment opportunities are volunteer opportunities. There you scroll down and there's an employment and volunteer tab there. So, that would definitely be the best resource. And then, they'll usually point in the direction or give you the right office or person to call. And you can get asked indirectly to the keeper office phone number as much as my coworkers are going to be like, "Dang it now, if you answer the phone more, thanks." Yeah, you can certainly call us and you can get right into the office. And if I'm sitting there and it's going off, you can get me on the phone right there just getting that extension. So, send an email call. It's really easy. We're always happy to talk to people. We've got a really friendly staff that would be happy to give you whatever information if you're having trouble navigating the website. Cool. Very cool. Awesome. All right. Are you going to be at the southwest car profess this weekend? Yeah, I am. I initially didn't think I was going to pull it off with wedding and bachelor party and a few other things going on. But I'm actually going up after work on Friday or, excuse me, Thursday. I'm going to stay at Travis's house and we're going to do a school presentation Friday morning. But, yeah, I managed to pull it off. So, Friday we're doing the day barbecue and we've got an auction going. If you go to the southwest carpet fest Facebook page, we've had the auction up for about a week and a half now and everything's going to run until a certain time on Friday. I'm actually talking a little bit about it. We'll probably have it announced that it'll sort of come to an end on like four o'clock or something like that. Don't hold me to that. And that way people who aren't attending on the east coast, wherever can still get some bids in the last minute and try and win some of those cool stuff, whether it be animals, art vouchers, things like cabbage, a lot of cool stuff in that. So, definitely check that out if anybody's interested. So, I'm going to be there. It's probably going to be seven or eight of us. Terrell and April from designer exotics are coming. Andy Raya from, I guess I would pronounce it a area hertz or area hertz reptile. He'll be there. He's a great guy. Quality cash is coming. Travis, of course, you know, it's his place living like those reptiles. He's got some great stuff. I'm actually excited to see the Australian water dragons, but he'll be there. There's a few people who aren't able to make it. He even cats isn't able to make it, unfortunately. But he's another great guy who donates and stuff. So, I think it'll be a small group, but it's only the second year. It's been around. And, you know, just by looking at the amount of stuff that's been donated to the auction and potential for what we're going to send off the U.S. arc, it's pretty great for a second year. And I think it's only going to get better. And, yeah, big shout out to Travis for hosting it this year. Last year, we did it at a prehistoric pet team. I think it's just going to keep getting better every year. And, you know, maybe one day we'll catch up to the caliber of the East Coasters, your carpet love. Yeah. You know, the 45 people that are going to be in my house. Yeah. That's exactly what we want. I would have loved to come out, but, you know, you guys picked the day before ours. So, yeah. Yeah. And if Eric, if Eric is not at Northeast Carverfest, I will kill him. So, you guys have to wait until next year. Yeah. So, NPR will become the Owen in Riley show. Yeah. There you go. Well, I mean, I'm just waiting until the week that, you know, I call in and Rob Stone, it's already here and I'm told I'm not needed. Nobody has your wit, Owen. Nobody has your wit. That is true. Well, maybe one of these years, we'll get you guys out here. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Do some convincing to have Nick flight down from, like, the, because he's flying all the way across the country to come to our Carverfest. When he just flew further down from, like, Washington to where you guys are, he could attend yours. So, yeah. Yeah. We'll get there. It works. Yeah. We're getting there. We're building it up. So, who knows? You know, I love to get eight people this year, get nine next year. And then you're, you're exponentially getting bigger. So, yeah. I love the fact that the, that these carpet fests are popping up all around the U.S. and the fact that we're all sort of trying to do the same thing and do these auctions and raise money. And, you know, although it's not a ton of money, I guess when you look at someone like the other auctions out there that raise money for Carverfest. But still, I mean, we're doing something. It's a song. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. I don't know. You don't see really any other Python community. No. They're just, you don't do that kind of thing. Not at all. No. Or any other repos you need. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I've said it before, we have five Carverfest now in the United States. What the hell? Europe, Australia. Yeah, one. No, they did have one, but. They didn't make it official. It wasn't official. Who did? No, you got to make it official. Call it a car. No, they don't get together. But they didn't call it a Carverfest. Just throw in a bone here. If you're all one of these Carverfest t-shirts that I've sent to people, just call it a damn Carverfest. Yeah. That's all I want. Not acting too much here. Right. Right. Cool. All right, man. Anything else you want to throw out there before we jump off? Oh, I guess I'd like to say. Big thank you, honestly, to you guys and everybody else who just really keep promoting, you know, everything that's good in reptiles in general. I mean, we have a really unique community and I can't be more pleased about what we're a part of. This is exciting stuff. You know, it's only going to get better. So you guys included everybody else who's out there that does anything for educating people and bringing snakes to classrooms and doing that stuff. Like, yeah, you might not be getting paid much if anything, but keep it up. It's a difference that you're making and it's definitely being felt everywhere. And, you know, with everything else, it's crazy and going on in the world. You know, more people need to tune into this stuff. And I think everybody's in reptiles, in particular, is a very special breed of person. And it's fantastic to be a part of a community like this. I couldn't be more honored to be on a show like this and involved with everything that's going on. And, yeah, you guys, keep my, what little faith to have left in humanity as well as you folk and everybody else who works with animals, especially with everything that's going on these days. So keep it up. Everybody rock. Right. I like it. Excellent. The passion is flowing. Absolutely. All right. On that note, with his passion coming out. And who's your passion, guys? Anyways. Yeah. That's always a good thing. Thanks for coming on, dude. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you guys for having me. Again, really honored and it's a privilege to be on here. You guys do excellent stuff in your own projects in the show and it's fantastic. Good stuff. Thanks, man. Yeah. Thank you. Have a good one. You too, guys. Have a good night, all right? Yeah, sir. You got it. Cool. All right. Well. Yeah. That was cool to learn about the behind the scenes, so to speak, of the zoo world. The flashbacks. Yeah. It's like a pack of memories. Yeah. It's just going to ask that. Oh, horrible, horrible memories of, you know, more. Can't get you. And bucking out crap. Stop it. No, it's a lot to talk about those things. But yeah, it was. It's really cool. And it also was very cool to have that. Because the private reptile community as well as the zoo reptile community, they always seem to be like different patterns cut from the same cloth. And so, yeah, it's really cool to have that. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's really cool to have that kind of stuff. So, it is very cool to kind of get that aspect of it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so, the next time we talk, we'll be on the show, at least. We'll be after carpet test. And that's next week's episode. I'm just going to do a catch up of how things went and what's going on. The week after that, pretty excited about our good friend, Wayne Larks, coming on. Nice. All the way from Australia, talk about carpet morphs. We're going to be talking about sun glows and moon glows and snows and all those crazy things that he's got going on. If you haven't checked out his collection, Morelia Magic. He's got some pretty cool stuff, man. Here's a couple of time, a couple episodes of the Kay Brothers had, you know, highlighted his collection. So, check that out. But, looking forward to talking to him again. And what he has going on. I mean, it seems like the Australian fellows are beating our ass pretty quick, man. And they're going to be jumping ahead in some of the, you know, the morph carpet projects. Yeah. Which we knew would eventually happen. Yeah, I mean, it also helps if you live, if you live in the animals, natural habitat. I mean, they'll never have us on corn. If you live. Yeah. I have a blood python that I never see. Take that. Yeah, right. Yeah, but, yeah, some cool stuff coming up and, you know. Probably some more, a couple more, et cetera shows and such. But we've got to get a condro show in there, man. We need some condro talk. If only we knew so, condro breeders. I mean, God, if only maybe we could talk Matt into coming on to do a condro show. You've had him on for blood. Let's make him talk about his condros. Yeah, that's a good point, you know. I just came up with a great idea on air. Now we're locked in. Yeah. Cool. All right. You can listen to that and be like, what now? He's going to say, well, I put the snake male with the snake female in the box and they breathe. They breathe. I'm more looking forward to his experiences once they. Once those babies hatched out, he has to get them going, you know. But I have faith in a bit. It's got to be close, right? Yeah. That's kind of good, right? I think so. Jeez. So. That's going to be crazy. Yeah, for sure. But cool stuff. All right. Let's get this wrapped up and get the heck out of here because we got a lot to do in the next few days. Sorry. No. Sorry. No. All right. So, mariupythonradio.com. You can check it out. See what we got going on. If you want to get in touch with us about a topic or you got a question or a comment, you can send it to info@mariupythonradio.com. Check out our Facebook page. You can follow us on Twitter. Also, we have what do you call it? Mariah, pick of the week, which is out of our little Facebook group page. If you're interested in, you know, Mariah. And sometimes every once in a while, people throw some other stuff up there like blackheads, walmas, olives, waters. You know, so it's not just necessarily Mariah, but all, what would you say? Australian, Indonesian as pythons, I guess, is the theme. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Just can't sell anything on there. That's all. But we will kill you. No. For sale ads or remember, no for sale ads and no feeding pictures or videos or bites. Yeah, they've been doing pretty good with that. I will delete them. Somebody threw up a video of one of their snakes eating a rat. But yeah. Good. Sorry. Glad you're paying attention. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So info@mariahpythonradio.com. I got some kind of email today from blog talk about the RSS feed. I got to read more about that. And people having some issues and problems with downloading it on anything like these odd podcast apps, you know, like, yeah, I don't even know which ones they were. But hopefully, and I, you know, yeah, and yeah, not iTunes or something like that. But another thing is that I know some people had contacted me about the thing not working on blog talk itself, like the link and you click on it. Now, I know what I first was trying to listen to the GTP keeper episode with you. Same kind of problem happens. So, but eventually it worked. Weird. So I don't know if it was just like a buffering thing or whatever, but, you know, I don't know. I think that just might be how blog talk is. And eventually it'll kick on. So. Hopefully stupid. As far as myself, E.B. Moralia, check out my website. My citrus tiger head alminos had their first shed. They're starting to shed out. Half the clutch is shed. So I'll get some more pictures of them up and go and probably sometime next week. And they're looking good, man. So I know a lot of people were interested in them. And I'm not going to be holding them back. They're not. Everybody can go in. Holding them back. So. They can all look after I've picked. Yeah. Yeah. You people. So, yeah. That's all I got as far as myself. I hope to see a lot of people at Carp professors this weekend. If you're on the fence, definitely should make it out. It's going to be a good time with a lot of cool people there. And, you know, just awesome, awesome time. So go ahead. Take us out. Cool. All right. What I will say is you can go to rogue-reptiles.com checking all the stuff we have going on there. You can also give rogue a like on facebook.com to find out all the latest stuff we're doing over at Rogue. Right now we have the super caramel jag clutch that is just hatched out. They are just starting to turn blue a little bit. So we've posted up pics as we get along with that. And we have the June 10th show at Hamburg. And I'm hoping to have some of these little buggers ready to roll by then. But we will see. Like Eric said, this Saturday is Northeast Carpafest. It's at my house 136. Hope Well Street in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. If you can make it, please come out. We would love to have you here. If you have not contacted me about coming and are worried you will not be welcome. That is completely not true. You don't need an invitation to come to this event. We just ask that you bring something to eat or drink. If you show up at my house without something to eat or drink, I'll tell you where the closest supermarket is. Run out by whatever your little heart wants to come back. So we're not going to kick you out, but we actually bring something. So if you're on the fence, please, please come. If you're not honest, you will have a good time. You will enjoy yourselves and you'll be able to meet up with a lot of the people you've only ever met online or only ever heard of. We're going to have a two-time book author here. I mean, the hell. So yeah, you guys should definitely come out. Yeah, I mean, Jesus. And my cousin has my copy of the complete carpet python and Nick Mutton's coming over my house. And my cousin has my copy of the complete carpet python. Anyway, what I'll say is that's all I got. And we'll hope to see everybody at carpetfest. And we will catch you all back here next week for some more Moralea Python radio. Good night, everybody. Hey, Chad Brown here. You may remember me as a linebacker in NFL or as a reptile breeder on the owner of Pro Jock. I've been herping since I was a boy and I've dedicated my life to advancing the industry and educating the community about the importance of reptiles. I also love to encourage the joy of breathing and keeping reptiles as a hobbyist, which is why my partner Robin and Marklin and I created the reptile report. The reptile report is our online news aggregation site bringing the most up-to-date discussions from the reptile world. Visit the reptilereport.com every day to stay on top of the latest reptile news and information. We encourage you to visit the site and submit your exciting reptile news, photos and links, so we can feature outstanding breeders and hobbyists just like you. The reptile report offers powerful branding and marketing exposure for your business. And the best part is it's free. You're a buyer or a breeder. You've got to check out the reptile report marketplace. The marketplace is the reptile world's most complete buying and selling definition full of features to help put you in touch with a perfect deal. Find exactly what you're looking for with our advanced search system, search by sex, weight, more, or other keywords. And use our Buy Now option to buy that animal right now. Go to marketplaces.reptilereport.com and register your account for free. Be sure to link your marketplace account to your ship your reptiles account to earn free tokens with each shipping label you book. Use the marketplace to sell your animals and supplies to maximize your exposure with a platinum med. It also gets fed to the reptile report and our powerful marketplace Facebook page. Buy your own selling, use shipereptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rate. Shipereptiles.com can also supply you with the materials needed to safely ship your animal successfully. Use shipereptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rates and materials needed to ship your reptiles successfully. Live customer support in our live, on time, arrival insurance program. We got you covered. Visit the reptile report.com to learn or share about the animals. Click on the link to the marketplace. Find that perfect pet or breeder. Then visit shipereptiles.com to ship that animal anywhere in the United States. We are your one stop shop for everything reptile related. [BLANK_AUDIO]