Morelia Python Radio

Brad Waffa from Waffa House Reptiles joins us.

In this episode we are joined by Brad Waffa of Waffa House Reptiles. in the first half of the show we will be talking about something that most people don't like to bring up........Mites. We will talk about the lifestages, treatment and different products used in the treatment of mites. In the second half of the episode we will be talking about Brad's collection and some of the different species that he works with including: Chondros, angolan pythons, boas and someother cool reptiles. Check out Waffa House Reptiles Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WaffaHouseReptiles/timeline Check out the website Waffa House Reptiles http://www.waffahousereptiles.com/page1/index.html Check out Morelia Python Radio www.moreliapythonradio.com

Duration:: 2h 59m
Broadcast on:: 27 Jan 2016
Audio Format:: other

Hey Chad Brown here, you may remember me as a linebacker in NFL, where as a reptile breeder and their owner of Projak. I've been hurtful 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 breeding and keeping reptiles as a hobbyist, which is why my partner Robin and Markle 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 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 branding and marketing exposure for your business and the best part is it's free. You're a buyer or breeder, you gotta check out the reptile report marketplace. The marketplace is the reptile world's most complete buying and selling definition full of features that help put you in touch with the 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 marketplace.the 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 and maximize your exposure with a platinum med. It also gets fed to the reptile report and our powerful marketplace Facebook page. Buy on a selling and ship your reptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rate. Ship your reptiles.com can also supply you with the materials needed to safely ship your animal successfully. Use ship your reptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rate. The materials needed to ship your reptiles successfully, live customer support, and our live on time arrival insurance program. We got you covered. Visit the reptilereport.com to learn or share about the animals. Click on the link to the marketplace. Find that perfect pet or breeder. Then visit shipreptile.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 Moralia Python Radio. Tonight we are joined by Brad Waffa of Waffa House Reptiles. I was lucky enough to be able to co-host a episode of GPP Keeper Radio with Bill. Brad was the guest. When we had that episode, there was a topic that I thought would be cool to hit on. He keeps some other cool reptiles. I know in that episode, we mostly hit on chondros, which we will get a little chondro talk and such. I don't know, he was a cool guy to listen to. I think the perspective from a reptile keeper and breeder that is also a vet is pretty priceless. What's up Owen? Not much. We are digging out from the snowstorm, still constantly up here. But it was cool to see how was it? We got clobbered pretty bad huh? It was horrible. I got like three feet up here. It was cool watching everybody who was affected by that storm. Like what their animals were doing during. Everybody, tons of people were getting locks and all that stuff. I kept going down and checking my room and nobody was doing anything. Like no one was locking up. Everybody was kind of staring at me. I don't know. I was like, I'm like, come on guys. This is what you're supposed to do. I don't know if they were all just being really sneaky if I was going down at the long times. I did notice that some animals that were like on the opposite ends of cages from each other were now like curled up together. So maybe we're getting in the right direction. I don't know what the hell is happening down there. The vets show up. They show up at this point. Whatever. And the the the the brettles finally stopped looking for food. So that's a good sign. Again? Well, you can never get those things to not stop being hungry. They're like the alaf python. So like it's 60 degrees. Don't care. Feed me. So, you know, it's when they finally stopped looking for food, I'm like, all right, we're going in the right direction now. So they'll be coming up probably in the beginning of February. So I'm excited. It's like the next step of breeding season. Yeah, I think I'm at the point now where I'm just going to start warming back up. I think I have three girls gravit. I have that ocelot jag that was bred with an alino. I believe I believe she's gravit. I think my tigers with the albino. I think they're both gravit. Oh, she is more tiger's head albino for Owen. Yeah, sorry. And my coastal girl, my m-pank coastal girl, I believe she's another thing. She's gravit. Another thing for Owen. Yeah, crap. So, so yeah, not a big season for me. I don't know, man, just a couple of those two girls. I don't know, they must be broken or something. We need to sit here and think that it's not the season ain't over yet. It is January. I mean, I have some females that I haven't been in with their boys yet. I mean, that's the way it is because the boys are like, I have those males are going to multiple females. So it's like, this is your first priority and then second priority is this one. And I've had girls lay eggs and coastal and some of that, I've had them lay eggs in July and August. So you're by nowhere means fun with the season. So, you know, don't let everybody, just because you might have to start warming up, doesn't mean that she's end over. Keep putting boys in with girls because they might surprise you. And the other thing is you might want to hold off on warming up because we're expected to get snow Friday and then again on Tuesday. Oh, man. More snow. Yeah, I said it. So that is what they are saying. So hopefully it's not too crazy. Yeah. So, okay. Well, that's cool. Oh, interesting. Well, I don't know. I mean, I wonder if it's one of those things that I think that you may be right. Like, I think that they should fit into this, you know, computer program. And maybe they go later that they went sooner. Maybe they ovulated at a different time and I'm just not paying attention to it because I'm not looking at that for that. So maybe that's why I can't get them to go. I don't know. Right. Let me put it this way. I had a few years ago I had a, I had a clutch of breath alive late and then a week later I had a clutch of costals. So it's like, um, one of you is a spring breeder and one of you is not. So what the hell are we doing? You know, don't, don't, don't ever, don't ever follow the book. Goddamn it. It's like, when you almost want to like start, you want to grab the complete carbon python and go to the coastal base, you smash it against their cage and be like, that's how you're supposed to feel. This is you. This is what you're supposed to. So it's, it sometimes it happens. I mean, I had coastal babies, my infant female, um, her eggs hatched in September and I'm like, crap. And then those were the worst babies ever because I tried to get them to feed and it was September. And then we were like, the weather outside was messing with them. The entire clutch took me forever to get going. It was horrible. So you're not out of the woods yet. Yeah. Well, um, one of the topics that we, uh, we're going to be talking about tonight. Um, and you know, and I listened back to other rept, I listened to all the reptile podcast. I've never really heard any in-depth talk about the subject that nobody likes talking about and has might, um, no one likes might. No, no. Nobody likes it. No, don't, don't say the name. Nobody likes answering the questions. Um, you know, and every, and there's different approaches and people think different things. And I thought since, you know, Brad has a background and being a vet, thought it would be, uh, would be awesome to hear his, um, you know, his take on, uh, you know, just the different ways of, uh, you know, I think the most important thing is prevention. Um, you know, uh, so if you follow, you know, I hope, hopefully you can give us some tips, which I'm sure a lot of people know, maybe new people don't know. Um, maybe they don't follow it. Um, you know, or maybe they don't know, like all the steps they should take. Uh, so we're going to hit on that. I think, I think a big part of, uh, taking care of Mike's is understanding the life cycle of Mike's. And there's a article on VPI's website that, uh, pretty much goes in depth about, about that whole thing. Um, and I think that, uh, that really helps on how to treat them, you know, you know, how they're going to, uh, you know, breed and how, you know, when they're going to hatch and all that kind of stuff, you can sort of, uh, be ahead of it. So, to destroy our enemy, we, destroy our enemy, we must know our enemy kind of thing. It, oh, it might start, it might start. Go ahead. I was going to say this might sound crazy, but, yeah, why, I don't know, maybe I guess it's just, it's so difficult to deal with, I guess, or like, you know, like, just, if you get fleas on a dog, you're like, people don't like say, but, um, you don't treat the dog, but, um, it'll freak out like reptile people do. Well, imagine, well, imagine if you're a big dog breeder, of course you do, can I get a treat everybody? It's, it's basically the thing of imagine if you have Mike, imagine if you have Mike's and you're a guy who wants him to do it. We're going to have to if we're going to do this episode. Um, imagine if you're a guy who is a huge collection, and now imagine if you're one of those guys who uses like, sandy chips, or mulch, because now all of that has to come out, and all the cages have to be put on paper, and all the snakes have to be treated, and you have to do all of this all the time. It is a huge at hassle, and I do know some people that actually, um, have had snakes infections, or get stressed out of them and get sick as a result of mites, or, um, yeah, if they attack like a little baby, um, they they they become like an e-maker or something like that. So there's a lot of shit that can go wrong. I hate little buggers, um, but, you know, yeah, well, we talk about it. I feel like I'm talking at my ass, so that's why I want to brad to talk about it, because, yeah, I don't really have that much. You know what I mean, but I'm sure as a vet, that probably is. I would imagine that respiratory infection, the thing that probably pops up the most, right? Yeah, and I imagine that he, you know, those would probably be my two things. Um, and I imagine that he sees, uh, a lot of the problems that people can go to their vet with is either poor keeping, or something like that, or they just bought a baby. So he probably sees animals in rough shape a lot, and mites is going to be like the first thing. I mean, we've gone, we've all been at reptile shows, some of them very, very big and classy reptile shows, and you just gotta, no matter what, you gotta treat the animals. I mean, you gotta, I treat all my guys, uh, going out and coming back in. Um, you know, I, I, if we're coming back from a, good. No, no, go ahead. I mean, if we're coming home from a show, I have the solutions and stuff that I use mixed up and ready to go, and everybody takes a dip before we go back into the room, because I'm not about to, you know, I don't know if the guy next to me was as clean as he should be, or somebody was handling something over at that table and then came over and handled one of my guys. I mean, it's just the way it goes. So. Yeah. So real quick, before we get Brad on, we're talking about breeding accomplishments and out of, yeah, I thought we should give a shout out to Ryan Young from molecular reptile, um, to, uh, to produce a clutch of southern white lips, pythons for the third year in a row. That's a very awesome task, if you ask me, you know, they're not as easy as snakes to breed. He's got a dial that, you know, there's so my favorite, uh, damn it. So it's like, I love that he's able to do this now, and this is his third year in a row, because he got that pair dialed in. And we, we've talked about this as being the success when it comes to certain other species like bollins and stuff that is having a pair that can year after year produced babies. And those babies can now be raised up and then potentially produce year, like eventually when they get old enough on their own. So it's like the establishment of a cast of born and bred population finally. So I would love a pair of those white lips. And I will talk to Ryan about that later on this year. And if we're capable to do that, I will. The problem is, is that I keep having this little bug in my ear that goes, no, and remember all Australia. And I'm like, damn it. So, um, it might be one of those, like, I'll wait patiently and be crying on the inside as we're getting on the plane to Sydney or wherever we're going. So, yeah. But, uh, it'll be cool. Yeah, definitely. No doubt. So, um, the other thing I wanted to shout out real quick is, um, the Southern Carpetfest has announced their date, um, for the, for the second annual Southern Carpetfest is April 30th, 2016. Um, and, you know, if you couldn't make it last year, Owen, um, definitely should try to get down there. I'm going to be, as long as I can get off work, which I just shouldn't be a problem, I'm going to be down there. Uh, and it's going to be a blast. When you start getting to everything in order, let me know because I will see what I can do. Um, because I can't let you go on traveling with, like, you know, by yourself, you could get lost. You're, you're awfully sick. So, yeah. It's a very true. Actually, could you just be my carry on? I mean, do you fit in the over 60s? I probably could. No problem. Anyway, um, see, enjoy the flight click. I mean, like, um, uh, it would be one of those things that's cool. And it's really kind of like the Southern Carpetfest is, you know, uh, announced their, um, their date. And I'm like, oh, yeah, we should get on that. So it's like, it's like, they're, they've already set up and announced and like crap, we're, we're the slackers in this group now. Damn it. So, nearly where the first one, but this year it's going to be Southern, so it should be a good time. Well, that's enough of us rambling. Let's get, let's get Brad on here and get this go and, uh, so, hey, Brad, welcome to Mariah Python Radio. Glad to, uh, be talking to you again. Hey, thanks a lot, guys. It's an honor. I wouldn't go that far, but all right. That's a, it's, it's a pleasure. There you go. Let's stick with that. Brad, can you, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself, um, and how you got your start and direct house? Yeah, sure. Hang on. I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually switch your pieces here because this one keeps cutting in and out, but go ahead. Let's see. You guys still there? Yes. I was, I had my, my, uh, headset and I could hear you in stereo, which was extra cool, but it keeps cutting in and out. So it was like, I had one of you in each year, like the, like the, the devil and the angel on one shoulder. Do you guys have a carpet fest? I was getting all sorts of devious thoughts, deviant thoughts. Um, the magic, let's imagine real quick, who would be who? Because I already know the answer, but go ahead. Um, yeah. So, um, sounds like a great time though. I've obviously never made it down to carpet fest, but that sounds like exactly the type of venue where I would have a lot of fun. Um, oh, yeah, I, I try to make it up to 10, at least for the October show every year. And it's, you know, it's like the, the actual expo is half of it and just getting to catch up with everybody and, you know, sit around and tell stories and, you know, swap notes and drink beer. It's, it's always just a good time. So, uh, I, I, I could have, my hat's all that you guys. I hope it's awesome. And if I could make it down there, I'd love to, but, um, yeah. Yeah, that's like the best thing about carpet fest. It's like a show without a show, you know what I mean? It's like you don't have to worry about animals and stuff, except, you know, checking out the collection. So I haven't even vented thinly yet. And I honestly don't really have a plan to any time in the near future because I think it would take away from it. You know, I'm really glad that everybody else does, but I just love to be able to get up there and enjoy myself and not have to worry about all the everything else. But, uh, let's see, deja vu. So how, how I got my start in Madison or, or with reptiles, let's go with both. Cause then we can, let's go with both. Well, don't. Yeah. Well, we'll have to listen to my GTP keeper, uh, interview later and compare notes and see if the story is still line up or, if it's evolved and become like more of a tall tale. Uh, but let's see, I, you know, I was all, I was, I was a dinosaur kid. I mean, my story is not that unique. Uh, you know, I, I was, I grew up, like, you know, in the pre Jurassic Park world, it was just fascinated by all my books with the dinosaurs in them. And I grew up in like a boring suburb of Chicago, but just being able to just get outside and look under, you know, the railroad tracks and underneath logs and rocks and stuff and just find the occasional salamanders. Cenk was always really exciting for me. Um, you know, so I grew up with the same passion and the same interest. Um, my parents still still, still tell stories about like finding dead lizards in the wash machine and stuff like that. Cause just whatever I could find and, you know, I put my pockets and take home with me and hide under the bed or whatever. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's a familiar story for most people. I did end up, uh, you know, I got to the point of course, you know, where as I started keeping animals and started, you know, putting them together, you know, sometimes you'd find eggs, sometimes you'd find babies. And as that, as that interest developed and became more serious in time, I did become frustrated, you know, as a, as a keeper, I took a lot of animals. I had some really bad veterinary experiences or what to me felt like horrible veterinary experiences at the time where I brought an animal in and, uh, you know, it did not have a favorable outcome or I felt like the quote unquote exotic set who like clearly was a bird guy or clearly was a rabbit guy, you know, and didn't even know the species I had when I brought it in. You know, if it didn't work out well, it was, you know, I was sure the guy was an idiot. Um, you know, so I, I kind of hoped that, you know, it's an interest in medicine grew and that as I eventually someday became a veterinarian, I would be able to get back and, you know, kind of a positive and a meaningful way and, um, you know, be able to apply what I noted. Basically what I'm saying is everything in my life has led up to this moment to be on the show with you guys tonight to talk about. Actually. Oh, horrible. We're making dreams come true here. What the heck? Yeah, look at that. No. Oh, no, no, aim higher, buddy. All right. So, um, all right. So, so you're saying is that that, that whole passion is really what led you to become a reptile vet. It really was, and to be clear, I see primarily dogs and cats, you know, I'm a, I try not to, you know, pigeonhole myself. I'm a veterinarian. So if people bring me something, I try to apply what I know to see it. But that said, you know, I've always sort of lived by the philosophy that if you're going to do something, be awesome at it. I mean, it's the same approach you guys take to breeding, right? You know, if you try to, try to focus if you can, try to be really great at what you do. Um, you know, and so to that end, you know, like, I, I tell people I see, you know, pretty much any reptile or amphibian or invertebrate or fish or something really cool that comes in the door. Um, I'm really lucky to have some vets in the area that are just phenomenal with birds and phenomenal with small mammals. Um, you know, so I, I kind of punt a lot of that stuff to them because they're great at it, you know, so why, why stick around and not do a good job? Um, you know, but, but I see primarily dogs and cats and I'm really, I'm really fortunate really lucky to get to see so many cool herbs. Um, we've got a lot of, a lot of keepers and breeders in the area that I work with and, uh, and, you know, the words starting to get around. I do see, I do see patients by mail too. And that's kind of something that can talk about more. Um, but yeah, so I'm really lucky typically people that are going to take the time to really package an animal carefully and spend the money to ship them to me are typically the people that really want good veterinary care too. And you're not, your, your hands are not tied by finances and, and other things. Um, so it's, you know, you, you get kind of a, a very committed cohort of people and it's nice. Yeah, that is good. Yeah, very cool. So, um, how does your experiences as a vet kind of, like, have you seen any kind of a way it's been shaping your keeping? Like, did you go through vet school and realize that there's certain things we're doing differently? Yeah, actually probably, uh, becoming a veterinarian shaped being a keeper more than anything. Um, it really, basically, like, I find I just really don't have time anymore to be a very good keeper. I was listening to you guys talk about your really light breeding pieces and I was like, I think I got three clutches this year and it was like a big deal. Um, I, you know, and I got to be very honest with you. You know, I used to be so entrenched in the breeding world and I, I like to still think that I'm there and I have that background, but, um, you know, I'm, I'm very lucky. I think most, I think you guys have met Shalomar or no, Shalomar at this point. You know, she has been, uh, I mean, she's amazing. Like, um, you know, if, if I didn't have her to help me with so much of what we do, I wouldn't be able to keep the collection that I have. I would be in way over my head just because, um, you know, you guys know, it takes a lot of time to keep up with all of those animals, um, especially, you know, document what you're doing and really do a good job with it. So, I'm very fortunate. Um, probably in a lot of ways, it's not that my interest of shift is just that my responsibilities and time, time have shifted so that I, you know, I end up doing a lot more of the clinical duties and a lot of the day-to-day and maintenance and observations and stuff. She gets the pleasure of dealing with now. Um, but, but I don't think that was really the heart of your question. You know, certainly, yeah, absolutely. I think about these animals a little bit more differently, uh, a little different. What am I trying to say? When, uh, you know, and when somebody sends me an animal too, it's, it's a big deal. You know, if I have the honor of keeping somebody else's animal for two weeks in the hospital, you know, you better believe I'm, I'm all over that animal. I'm watching every little behavior. I'm trying to decide if, if the things I'm seeing are significant. And, um, you know, one thing I've really come to appreciate is there's, I mean, there's so much that we still don't understand, especially about behavior and about, you know, and the way we interpret behavior. I, I mean, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. I, I think one of the things that's really changed for me, for example, is, you know, I, I, I used to, God, I like, I really wanted to be just a power breeder. I wanted to be like on the map. I wanted to be one of these guys that just produced tons of cool stuff. And there's guys out there, you know, some of them have their own TV shows now, you know, I mean, you know, I'm talking about it. I always wanted to be, right? I always wanted to be like that guy who like would go to the show and everybody would be like, oh, there's that guy with all that cool stuff, you know, and, um, and there's certainly a place for that. But I think I've, I've really come to appreciate too that, you know, when you really get to know a species as intimately as like you guys know carpets, as intimately as I've, I've started to know green tree pythons and there's still so much to learn and emerald tree boas and boygo, which we'll talk about, I hope. It makes me just more excited to be able to keep them and to keep them in bigger, more naturalistic enclosures, to get to observe more naturalistic behavior and try to, you know, replicate a more natural environment. That, that's probably what excites me more now. And I think my responsibilities of a veterinary, as a veterinarian have certainly played into that. Very cool. Right. What about, I have a question, like, what about if you get a species that you're unfamiliar with, sent to you, like, what's your process as far as trying to diagnose that species? Like, do you have, I mean, is that like major research I would imagine you have to undertake about a species? Actually. And that's part. Yeah. Absolutely. It's a great question. And actually, one of the things that makes my job so fun is because I get to work sometimes with keepers absolutely know more about the species than I do. You know, I might be able to infer more about the physiology, never even having seen the animal before. I may have a better understanding of, you know, some aspects of the way they tick and, and, you know, I could read their blood work, but a lot of times they know a lot more about the natural history than animal than I do. And, you know, so I think that's part of, part of being a good, not just a reptile veterinarian, but any veterinarian is being willing to, you know, kind of humble yourself and sit back and say, you know, yeah, I know a lot of cool stuff, but, you know, this person gets to see this animal day and day out. They know it's normal, you know, it's like when, when somebody comes in and with a dog, even, and they say, you know, I'm really worried about this. This is not like her. And I look, and I'm like, that's near infection. And they're like, no, she's had her infections before. Like, this is different, you know, that's when you kind of have to sit back and say, like, okay, what am I missing? You know, you've got to look very clearly, you've got to kind of step back. And so you have to do the same thing too with unfamiliar species. But yeah, I get jazz too, you know, if I get really excited sometimes, if I get something really unusual, you know, and you go home, you hit the books, and you start reading everything there is to know about it. But it's amazing too, just what you can learn from the keepers, because, you know, if they're, if they're worth their salt, they know what they're doing. Right. Yeah, I would imagine that that's like one of the cool things of the job, because I know for myself, like sometimes the coolest part of like, you know, looking at a new species is the research, trying to figure out like what is all about, everything, you know, you know, that's awesome. Cool. Yeah. And sometimes too, you know, there are species that you, like you think you understand, like, shall a few years ago, really developed this interest in your mastics. And I was like, I know your mastics, you know, really hot, really dry, you know, lots of grains. And then, yeah, there's like, there's a gigantic complex of your mastic species that we're still starting to understand. And some are actually semi-roporeal. Some eat a lot more, you know, the flower part of the plant, as opposed to the green part of the plant. Some, you know, are highly insectivorous, and some like do not give them insects. You know, some like it really hot, and some like it really, really, really hot, you know, there's a lot of variation there. So, you know, sometimes even just thinking, you know, as species, you're thinking you have a jumping off point, you know, thinking, I know green tree python, so I can do emerald tree boas. It's not always true, you know. Right. So, there's definitely a huge degree of kind of stepping back home when you're self and learning, for sure. Awesome. So, we were asked, we were talking about wondering what is the, what is the one problem that you see more than any other with your reptiles? What's the main issue that people have? You know, I guess it kind of depends on what type of reptile, you know, you hit the nail on the head with green tree python, certainly respiratory disease is so common. And we talked a little bit about that in the last show, but, you know, I see all sorts of things for, and it honestly depends on who on the type of client that I'm getting into. You know, I often do see people still crazy to say 2016. I mean, we have Google at our fingertips, but you get people that literally buy everything on, you know, the handout from PetSmart that says, "This is what the species is." And, right. And, you know, that breaks my heart more than anything because they come in and they've spent the money. They've spent tons of money. I mean, you know how expensive PetSmart is compared to Home Depot where we get most of our substrates and water bowls. I mean, you know, I mean, it's crazy in my heartbreaks. And these people come in and it's like, they're looking at the exam fee, they're looking at radiographs, they're looking at blood work, and they're like, you know, we quickly get to $200, and they're like, "I can't afford that." And you're looking at this, like, 20 gallon glass aquarium with this hood and this reflector and a hot lamp and a cold lamp and repped a carpet and stick on, you know, thermometers. And I mean, you're looking at all this stuff, and you're like, "I know you spent way more than that." You know, I know this stuff wasn't cheap. Clearly, you cared enough that you were trying to do it right. You just, you took a wrong turn. You know, you didn't, you didn't Google. But it's funny, right? If they're a dog and a can't, a dog or cat client, I'm saying, "Damn it, you Googled." But, but if it's a reptile client, I'm like, "I wish you would have just Googled." At least we could have, you know, kind of jumped off from the same point. But to your point, yeah. I mean, it depends on what I'm seeing. If it's somebody who really knows what they're doing, often it's really weird stuff. I had a guy recently that brought me what was supposed to be a prolapse, and it wasn't a prolapse. It was Chloicitis, inflammation of the Chloic. I mean, this was a full-blown Chloica that just wanted to pop out, but it hadn't gotten there yet. It's not a presentation you see every day, but I mean, I was glad that he was on top of this stuff, and he was like, "Don't know what this is. I guess it's probably a prolapse. I'm not really sure. Definitely abnormal. I wanted you to look at it." I'm like, "God bless you." I'm glad you brought it to me now, and not when it's like hanging out in black. Not when everything's cool with it, right? Right. Well, yeah. But it depends on the species, it's on the type of client. I can't say there's any like number one cause. I know you guys mentioned sort of before the show that you'd think mites would be really common. It's funny, mites kind of fall into one of those categories of diseases that I think people do a lot more self-help. They try to figure out by reading or talking to friends who've dealt with it before, and often I don't see a lot of that. I'd like to think it's because we're getting better. I'd like to think because we're importing fewer animals or importing at least fewer the common species that we typically associate with mites. I'm sure that's probably part of it. Some of it too may be though that people have found strategies that work for them. It may be too that I'm seeing them for different things like they're coming in with toxicity because they use the wrong stuff or because an animal already so debilitated mites are on the list, but it's not really the reason it's there. It's there because it's ghost white and it can't move. Again, it's just one of those big it depends. Well, speaking of mites, we're going to talk a little bit about mites. I think that it's, I don't know, my feeling is like one of those topics that nobody wants to talk about. I think if you're a keeper at some point, you have dealt with mites. Even if you don't have it in your collection, I'm sure that you've had an animal come from somebody at some point that, you know, that's had mites. Sure. I'm surprised that it's not talked about more freely, I guess. I mean, it's like as soon as you say, "Oh, I might say you're like a bad person, or can you get a bad mark?" Exactly. It's like having a weird fetish or something, but you know, it's like, "Oh, that guy, I was like on that guy." Yeah. Can we talk about it? So maybe you could talk a bit a little bit about like where do they originate from and then maybe let's talk a little about their life cycle and stuff and what's actually going on so maybe we can have a better understanding of treatment. Sure. Well, I would love to talk about mites. They're kind of nasty. You know, I think there's a lot of reasons people don't talk about them. I don't think anybody, I certainly don't, I couldn't tell you where they come from and I don't think that anybody really knows that there have been a lot of theories and I could talk to you about that because they're really interesting, but I don't think we know definitively one theory is that we know they're pretty closely related to a lot of other mites, which isn't a huge surprise. They look exactly under a microscope unless you're a parasitologist. You wouldn't be able to tell them apart next to a lot of other mites. I mean, mites are mites. We think that they probably evolved from mammalian mites of some sort and the most interesting theory that I've heard about, you know, like, okay, well, how do we go from mammals to like these mites suddenly thought, hey, it's cool. You know, it's really warm-blooded, delicious, like highly nutritious meal here. I think I'll jump on this cold snake. Like, that's kind of a brainstorm to me. One theory I've heard is that they probably were rodent mites, and there are a group of rodent mites that morphologically look very similar, and it sort of stands to reason. Like, if you're a mite and you live on a rodent and you're going to eat, you know, if you have an opportunity to jump to a snake, now I don't think there was that forethought involved, but, you know, it probably opportunistically crawled onto a snake, found that it was, you know, suitable, and you had a population of mites that did well and succeeded in those types of environments and started breeding. You know, that's at least been one proposed theory for how they jumped from rodents to reptiles. So, as for geographically where they come from, people have suggested either Asia or Africa, which would make sense because we do think that they probably really originated or really took off with the pet trade, and a lot of, you know, our popular species came from Asia, Africa, or South America. So, and we also know that they really thrive in tropical environments, you know, so it sort of makes sense, but I think the short answer to your question is nobody actually knows where they originally came from. Okay. All right. So, what about the life cycle? How does that work? Yeah, the life cycle is, you know, I think it was Owen that mentioned in the beginning, he said, you know, "No, you're an enemy." And I think these are actually really great, great questions because it's true. I think often this part really does get lost in the whole conversation. You know, we talk all about, like, well, how do you kill them? But if you understand how they work, they're actually really interesting. So, there's five stages, and those get really boring, and I won't talk a lot about that, but there are five stages. They start as eggs, eggs that are kind of stuck typically to the side of an enclosure. And by the way, as we talk about this, I'll refer to most of the life cycle as if it's taking place inside of a terrarium because that really, very know about it. There's very, very little known about the life history outside of a terrarium because everything that we studied has been in a terrarium. We don't, again, don't really know where these came from. They're kind of a big unknown, I think. And by the way, I should also back up and say that, you know, you mentioned VPI's website, which Dave Barker does a fantastic job kind of summarizing some work, and gives great credit, I think, to Joseph Cayman, who was the guy in the '50s, late '40s and '50s who really worked all of this stuff out. There have been a few papers since then. There have been a few, like, little life history observations and a few great summaries and people, you know, kind of expanding upon, you know, this work with their own observations and stuff like that, and some of the veterinary literature. But almost everything that we know about this stuff comes from this one guy who was working basically in isolation. He was at the Ohio State University and was actually doing a lot of his work. His interest was because this is a major problem in zoo's worldwide. Like, everything that we know came down to, guys just like us who were, you know, doing this at a, you know, in a professional level, were, you know, working in these zoos and institutions. A lot of the species they were working with were coming straight in and out of the trade out of the wild. And then they were dealing with this as a major problem. And so, somebody actually sat down and started as his PhD work. He published a few papers and then finally just published like this massive dissertation and studied these for years straight, published this in 1953. And so pretty much everything we know, it all comes out of this. So, you know, a big razorglass hat tip to Joseph came in because everything we know about the snake might basically come from him. Which is to say that basically I'm summarizing from memory a lot of what, you know, I've read over the years. So, if I get some of this wrong, don't shoot the messenger. But yeah, some of this stuff is boring, but I think it's important. So, the snake might, starts as an egg. These are typically plastered in groups of like 20 to 40, you know, kind of to the side or up underneath a log hide or up underneath the rim of a water bowl, just somewhere in the terrarium. These eggs hatch into this little larval stage. The larval stage is non-feeding. You can actually see the eggs in the larval with the naked eye, but people usually don't because they're sort of tucked away. They like warmth, they like humidity, they like darkness. A few days later, they will go through a molt, they molt just like reptiles do. And they call it like dices just like in reptiles. When it emerges, it comes out as what they call a protonymph. And this is one of the two stages in the five-stage life cycle where these things feed. Protonymphs are ravenous. Protonymphs are fast. If you've ever like picked up a snake that was infested and you've looked on your hands and you see them like, you know, twirling this way in that, running all over your arms, those are protonymphs. The protonymphs are, yeah, and they're nasty, and they bite. They're nasty, and they bite. One of the first things they do is they try to lodge underneath the scale. The common misconception, they don't bite through scales. They lodge between scales, and then they bite the soft skin. Once they're in, they'll feed there. Again, this is for memory, but I want to say it takes anywhere from like three to seven days for a protonymph to feed. Once it's fully engorged, it will drop off. It will go find a nice place to rest and digest its meal. It will go through one molt into what's called a deuteranymph. Deuteranymphs aren't cool. They don't do anything. They just bolt again, and then they become adults. Deuteranymphs don't feed. They literally just sit there molt, and they're like, "Hey, I'm a deuteranymph," and then they're adults. Once they're adults, they go back to being nasty, ravenous feeders, and from the adult stage, I think they can live, I want to say like 30 to 40 days. It's about two months, in my mind, I think of it as about two months. It's not a long period of time, and they're not like fleas where they go and they lay, you know, 50 eggs a day. They lay like a clutch of, I want to say like 20 to 30 eggs, and that's it. And they'll continue to feed, and then eventually they die. One kind of interesting thing about their breeding is that when the females lay eggs, if she's lucky enough to have males nearby, they will be fertilized, and they become females. If there aren't males nearby, they lay unfertilized eggs, which become males. It's kind of interesting, huh? If they don't have males around, well, I guess they can't get fertilized, you'd think. We've got to make some males. We've got to make some males, yeah. They go through like this, you know, there's a lot of talk about parthenogenesis now, and boa is another snake species, but you know, these were one of those early critters that we started to learn about parthenogenesis from. They lay unfertilized eggs that become males. So yeah, really interesting things about these critters, but yeah, you know, some take-home points, they only feed two of those stages. So if you think about like, okay, well, I want to try to treat the snake so that I can kill these mites at like a certain point in the lifecycle, where those are two areas to target, you know, the coordinate stage, the adult stage. If you're thinking more environmental control, you can think, well, I'm probably going to be killing mostly eggs, larva, some dutordims. So, you know, again, we kind of start to tip to into the world where if you know your enemy, it opens up doors to understanding how to break through. Huh. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So what makes it such a problem for snakes? Like what is the actual, I mean, obviously get bit all day long, you know? I would enjoy that. Is it, I would imagine if ones make you sick, they can transfer illnesses and, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Issues are? That's basically at the heart of it. I mean, you hit on one thing, stress is huge. I mean, if you're sitting there, you know, trapped in a cage and you're just getting literally eaten alive and you're itching like crazy, it's very irritating. And we talked, you know, on the green tree Python keeper radio about how I really think that stress is one of the huge underlying features of disease in captive reptiles. You know, certainly you can have that primary causes of disease. You can have some nasty viruses and things, but, you know, for snakes that are otherwise doing well in captivity, eating, feeding, driving, breeding, you know, something that's dialed in nicely, suddenly introduced mites to the environment. You've got an animal that's very stressed. And once you have stress, then comes the cascade of other events where they get sick. So, yeah, stress is a huge part of it. Anemia is huge, you know. In a wild environment, and again, we're sort of inferring because we don't know much about, you know, the wild life cycle of mites, but in, you have to figure that in the environment, snakes are moving around. They're picking a few mites up here and there when they drop off because they're done feeding and they have to go become boring through an imps, they're leaving the snake for a while, you know. So, snakes have an opportunity to kind of get it from these things. And we have to presume that in the wild, they're probably not as abundant. I mean, they're not infested like they are in a cage. In a cage, a snake is a sitting duck for this type of a thing. You know, sitting there, a can't escape. They can't move on to the next place. And these mites are just increasing exponentially. You know, the burden is just increasing exponentially. They're getting bitten, they're getting stressed, and the mites are literally draining them of blood. So yeah, you can see anemias, you can see weakness, you can see deficiencies in certain minerals. You can see yeah, you can see animals that just come in so sick and debilitated. When you see the mites, you don't even know is this from the mites or the mites just a secondary feature of this animal coming in sick and imported, you know. It can be really difficult to tell. The same guy who wrote the whole life history of the snake mite, Joseph Keenan. In 1948 published a paper that I actually admittedly not read. It's been kind of like in the back of my mind is like one of those things I have to get to, but he described, you know, some horrible debilitating illness that he believed to be attributable to the snake mites. In other words, you know, in the same way that fleas and ticks transmit a lot of different diseases that we know about to dogs and cats suggested that, you know, why wouldn't mites also be a perfect vector for transmitting? Bloodborne pathogens or viruses to snakes, and that has been kind of one of those unproven, but widely talked about things in the veterinary literature since then, you know. I've talked even a little bit about IBD, like, because is that a virus? Is that an arena virus that's potentially transmitted by mites? And I think the jury's still kind of out, but it would make sense. Sure. Perk, interesting. Yeah. What about, okay, so let's talk a little bit about, I mean, to me, the most, like we said earlier, the most important part of this whole thing is prevention. Yeah, so huge. What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to a lot. You know, people talk about quarantines, you know, something I think is really important. And I think mites are one of the most important things to quarantine for. To your point, it's one of those funny taboo topics in reptile keeping that people don't like to talk about. I had a green tree python over a while back, actually, that came from a really reputable guy. And I was really surprised when, while I was working it up, I actually found some mites on it. It was like just one or two. And that was like nowhere ever mentioned in the history. And I talked to the guy, and he was like really, you know, caught off guard, like, whoa, yeah, okay, hang on it, let me backtrack a little bit. So I actually got him from my guy. You know, there was like this long, like, really wasn't my fault. I didn't do it. You know, it's like, I caught him right hand doing something, you know, naughty or something. He was really, he was really, like, embarrassed. And it was just one of those things where it was like, no, I mean, this is helpful information. This is something that I need to know about. You know, I forgot what you asked me. That's what I was just saying. Like, what are some of the preventatives that you would recommend? That you recommend, yeah. Right. So that's where quarantine is one. Lost my train of thought. Yeah, exactly. So, so exactly. But it was one of those things where it was like, you know, he was caught off guard. But obviously, this was something that was shipped to him, apparently, you know, and it was, it was one of those things where it was coming from somebody so reputable. And I was surprised because this was coming from somebody so reputable, just one of those things that kind of slipped through the cracks. I think we have a tendency, especially like in these really small niche communities, like the locality milk snake guys, the green tree python people guys are, I'm sure, you know, the carpet community. It's like, you kind of know there's sort of this who's who like, I don't know, it's coming from him. It's trust me. Like, it's legit. It's cool. You know, and it's about a knock against any of those people. But, you know, somewhere along the way, something can slip in. Might not be anybody's fault. It could be something we picked up at a show or something like that. You know, it could be something that, you know, somebody recycled a shipping box because they weren't a pinch and they promised somebody to ship the snake up by a deadline. You know, things can happen. And I think it's always a good idea to quarantine because, you know, again, it can take what up to 40 days potentially for, you know, if it starts as one or two mites, you know, what are the odds that you're going to see one or two mites on a big black snake? You know, I'd say give it a month or two and, you know, see if it's really going to blow up. I like to, when I quarantine, I like to keep new animals. If the species is, you know, amenable to it, I love to try to keep things on paper towels, things with white backgrounds, things with disposable hides or disposable purchase so you can really kind of keep a close eye on things. If you have the luxury of having, you know, some black cages, some white cages, I think quarantining and white cages is great because, again, you can see those things a little bit more obviously. If you've never seen snake mites, by the way, they're the larval stage. They can be almost see through. They're really difficult to see. But as adults, they're about the size of a pinhead and they're black. They show up pretty easily. So if you've got them on a white background, they kind of pop out if you know what to look for. But yeah, you know, quarantine prevention, obviously, you know, my background was in public health even before that school. I think an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure for sure. You know, if you can, if you can just prevent yourself from ever, ever even having to deal with them, you're so much better off. And that happens the moment you take a new snake into the collection. Yeah, I would, I think that's another thing. I don't know. It seems, I could be wrong, but it seems like that's something that people, I've even been guilty of this myself. I sometimes, just to speak to your point, like I'm getting something from somebody that I've got a million times. Yeah. And I interacted with this for, you know what I mean? And then all of a sudden, it's like, I just put them in my collection because you know, so and so, you know what I mean? Absolutely. I'm going to get screwed on this because, you know, yeah, exactly. And you know, it probably nine times out of 10, you wouldn't, you know, but the one time that I see somebody that said to the hospital for that, and I go through the history, how did it happen? It's not because they, well, it's usually, if it's, if it's a serious keeper, it's usually not because they didn't know any better. It's like, no way this is going to happen to me. You know, so it's one of those things. Yeah. I think you kind of have to use your best judgment and, you know, we certainly all take risks. I've done it before. You know, it's like totally, I mean, you know, you're getting, you're getting this male just in time. Oh my God, the female is ovulating. I can't, I can't wait another two weeks. It's fine. It can be, it'll be cool. You know, right. I've done it. I've done it, but, you know, so you can get trapped. I mean, the glance over kind of thing. I mean, like, you can decide that you really want to buy this boy and you buy it and you're buying it from somebody you've done dealings with. But you don't really realize is that maybe two days ago, that same animal was on display at a reptile show. And now you bought it. Now it's being boxed up and straight off to you. And nobody ever really took a second to look and see, hey, there could be something on it. And now it might blow up at your place. So yeah, somebody else really serious was interested in it. Didn't tell you that they'd just been down, you know, two rows over at another table holding something else when they were staring during buying it. They took it out. They held it. You know, I remember there, I've dealt with my twice and my reptile keeping, you know, years. And once was when I was in grad school. And to this day, I couldn't tell you where the mites came from. The only thing that I could say, and of course, you know, I was active in shows and stuff like that. So things were coming and going. But I wasn't doing a lot of buying and selling at that point, at least not at that time. But I had done, I was, you know, very active in my local reptile, my local Herp Society. And we had done a behind the scenes tour at one of the local zoos. It was a very legit zoo. But, you know, I mean, they deal with stuff that comes in and out. And it's just kind of a nature of the beast. And shortly after that, I had a small outbreak of mites. And you know, the only thing I could pin it on, I was like, really? I brought like, I brought like, zoo mites home. Like, I wasn't sure if I should be like honored or like, or just impressed or confused. There's just kind of like, I got like, zoo mites. Like, how does that even happen? It's like, yeah. The same world that are draining mites makes strange those important ones that is zoo. Yeah. Exactly. The ones that I can't afford, you know, it's like having special mites. I wasn't sure if I should read them or that thing. Yeah. Exactly. So, okay, so let's say that you, you did what we just said and you didn't quarantine or however, all of a sudden, you recognize you have mites. What's the recommendations as far as getting rid of these guys? Well, let's back up a second and touch on some details of quarantine because I just said, you know, watch out for them. Okay. You know, but I started to see them, you know, or what do I do? Or, you know, what happens during this time? Well, maybe they're there, but you haven't seen them yet. I'll tell you one really cool gem, one really cool pearl that I gleaned. By the way, if you have a chance to buy Joseph Cayman's original work, I don't know if either one of you guys are reptile literature nerds, like I am, but like, I really like some of the really old cool literature, you know, being able to dig into like the old, you know, the original writing. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's some awesome old papers on, you know, still archived on the MBF that have been added over the years. So, Matrupa Walsh is like original work, you know, and that's not even like old, you know, compared to, you know, some of the stuff that's out there. I mean, Cayman's work was from the 19, early 1950s and late 1940s, and there's stuff even from before that. It's funny, all the stuff he cites is from like the 1800s. I was like, who was working on snake mites in the 1800s? You know, but if you have a chance to pick up this, this book, my mom and I shared an Amazon account when I was in college because she could get free shipping with my student, whatever, you know. And she saw that I put his work on my wish list, which I think this is so cool of my mom, especially for somebody like who doesn't understand technology. She was like, what do I get, Brad? And she, she saw on my wish list, I had Joseph Cayman things. So I was like, so shocked and impressed and delighted when I opened this Christmas gift one year. And it was like, like the life history of Ophie and this is natresses, the snake, my, I was like, seriously? So anyway, if you have a chance to get it, it's really cool. It's really, really cool. And reading the original literature is so much more useful, I think, because, you know, when you read, everybody is kind of still down version of it. And with all due respect to the guys who've done it, you know, hats off to Dave Barker, he made that so accessible for most people. It's not easy work to get your hands on it. But when you read the condensed version and you read kind of his interpretation or anybody's interpretation, you get kind of the, you know, their interpretation of it and their ideas from it. One of the things that I really gleaned from it was, you know, it was, if you read the materials and methods paper, you know, the section of like the primary literature that nobody ever takes the time to read because it's boring, you know. I took some photographs too, and then I took two snakes. And, you know, it's like, it's the boring stuff. But it was really interesting. I was kind of fascinated as I read it because I was like, how, how do you study snake mites? Like, how, you know, it's not like you have like six turtles and you move two into a different tank. It's like, you have 100 snake mites of very, you know, different life stages. Like, how do you keep up with all this stuff? And the way he did it, I think, actually has really practical implications for reptile keepers. So it's really clever. Like, basically what he did was starting with a group of adults. He kept them basically quarantined to like the adult section by keeping them in moats. This is hilarious if you think about it. This is like, he basically, he reasoned, okay, this is a really slow-moving organism. It's not like a flea. It can't jump out of the cage. It's not like a horse fly. It can't fly. All it can do is crawl and it's an exceptionally poor swimmer. This is why snakes soak themselves, by the way, because it helps. And he said, well, I can take every cage and just get a slightly larger cage and put some water between them. And now they literally can't go anywhere unless I carry them out. Isn't it cool? Like, you could literally take, yeah, if you've got a cage and you can put it in a moat of water, I mean, just take a flat rubbermaid and have an inch of water in it. And as long as you're careful not to carry something in and out, they literally cannot escape that enclosure. To me, that is so, that is so easy and so brilliant. You know, you, I mean, if we ever want to study the snake mites that are growing in our coalitions. Yeah, if you want to try to weed out the albinos so that you can sell them from the albinos. Oh, my God. Oh, a stinker project with mites. Oh, my God. Why didn't I think about this before? Lying up the mites. Yeah, but I see what you're saying like, so if you see, what you're saying is that if you take that information and you were to see that, say, in a stack of cages, you see that. And somehow you can make a moat, you might be able to, you know, maybe keep some room from surrounding your other stuff. Yeah. And on a flip side of that, if you can't necessarily quarantine like outside of your room, like if you don't have a quarantine room and you set up a quarantine cage, you could put that cage in that moat and if they add mites, it's not going to travel outside of that. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and this is one of those things where it was like, you know, that's not what people typically talk about. You know, most of the recommendations in there are about, you know, understanding the life history and stuff like that. But I'm reading this and I'm like, hang on, hang on. You basically just told me this is how you control mites from getting from one place to the other. I need this part right here. Yeah. Yeah, I can't take credit for the idea. It's just cool, you know, that it was, I mean, it was right there spelled out for us. It's not the part that most people talk about. So yeah, I think, you know, quarantine goes without saying, how do you quarantine more effectively? I think doing that is one way to do it. Some people have advocated putting, you know, if you do make a moat, put a little drop of like soap in it to lower surface tension to make them sink even faster. But yeah, mites are very, very poor swimmers. And this is why, this is why snakes seem to like to soak themselves. I think it actually is pretty effective. Probably one of the reasons also that mites manage to find their ways to the snakes head because it's the one part they don't typically submerge for very long. Right. Right. So, so yeah, quarantine. And if something's going to get past that, it's going to be because you cured it out of the cage. So I think it goes without saying that, you know, if you do have to work in the quarantine cage, what the other snakes up first and then do that one last and then go wash your clothes, you know, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to think, I keep thinking of all sorts of other little things that we could touch on. But I don't want to, you know, I know that you guys had questions and things like, well, I'm sure you'll touch on some of this, not that I'll just board it all out at the end. Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, you got it. Go for it. Yeah. Well, I don't know what this will fall. I knew we're going to probably talk a little bit about treatments and stuff like that. This, I mean, might overlap a little bit with quarantine. But while we're talking a little bit about life cycle and life stage and stuff like that, maybe some important points I didn't touch on, you know, these things really need a very specific set of temperature and humidity parameters. Okay. These things really, they need humidity. They desiccate very easily. And this is one of the reasons why some that proposed that, you know, if they did come from the wild and wild snakes, they probably came from some place in the tropics. They really thrive in warm moist environments. Interestingly, they like it up to about 95 came and showed this in his paper. They like it up to about 95% relative humidity. Anything above that, they actually avoid. So they avoid dry environments and they avoid anything above 95%. What do you think they avoid things above 95%? Because they can't swim. They're not good swimmers. Exactly. Yeah. You start to get water accumulation. You start to get condensation and they start to drown. So they really seem to like, you know, up to 95%, nothing beyond that. And they don't like dry environments. They start to desiccate really, really rapidly. And so this is something else I've kind of proposed. Now, again, we can talk about this a little bit more when we get to treatments. But, you know, one of the things I always tell clients if they do contact me, consulting with me about snake mites and managing them is that a little bit of your treatment, a little bit of your approach is going to depend on your animal, not just the species and their own parameters, but kind of how healthy it is. You know, if this is one of these wild cut snakes, it's really stressed. The last thing I want to do is be putting it in like horrible suboptimal, you know, dry husbandry conditions. If it's a snake species that really needs humidity and I'm not going to start bombing it with really heavy hitting. But if you have a snake that, you know, gopher snake that comes in and it's covered in mites, like, dude, dry the thing out. You know what I mean? Because you're going to, the snake will be fine for a few days, but you're going to kill every, I mean, you're going to dry out every egg, every might need in that cage. And so, you know, that is certainly one thing to keep in mind. I kind of consider this even sort of like a, a non-pharmacologic approach to treatment, sort of alternative approach. Is there a humidity percentage that you would shoot for? Like there is, I would probably say, like probably below 60, below 50%. And I'm sure that, I'm sure the real number has been published somewhere, but since I don't have it in front of me, I'm just going to say that and pretend like I'm right. I think it's probably about 50 or 60% of what I would shoot for. And same with temperatures, I do remember one magic number, 104 degrees Fahrenheit, is where they really, like, get uncomfortable. And they, like, the eggs start to dry out really quickly. They really start to die really quickly. I think 120, 130 degrees is where you really start to cook them on contact. So this is definitely something I've never actually tried. But like, I suppose if you had a cage and you took the snake out of it and you tossed your very wisely selected disposable toilet paper roll hide box, and you're glad we're water bowl, and you were just trying to sanitize the cage, you know, sir, you could bleach the hell out of it, or if you were trying to be a little greener, if you will, you could go in, you could go in with a hair dryer, right? I mean, you could, you could literally take every corner with a hair dryer. You know, I imagine that's got to get 120, 130 degrees at least, right? I don't have a hair dryer. I'm sure Shell could answer that question. The one thing I've heard is, if it's in the summer months is taking the cage and putting in a black trash bag and then sticking it, like, in the sun. Yeah, for the same reason, like, the exact words, it just cooks, and that really kills everything in there. So I'm just curious, you got me thinking real quick, is that why you don't see snake mites on lizards, because typically they're basking at those types of temperatures? Absolutely, that's one of the reasons. So okay, certainly desert reptiles are not going to be conducive to my growth. So at least not the types of mites we're talking about, and it's worth mentioning that they're, you know, we kind of talk about snake mites as if they're all this one mite. There are some other mites, there are chiggers that you'll sometimes see, especially in like North American snakes and lizards. There are other arachnids, ticks and things that you'll see, especially in wild-caught species, but for our purposes, you know, we're talking about the little black mite that we all, you know, are familiar with. Another reason you sometimes won't see them on like, you know, I mean geckos live in a perfect environment, for example. There's kind of this, like, not widely talked about fact about them, they, they, there's something about their shape, they really kind of need a scale to hide under. Part of it is because they don't attach well, so they kind of rely on the scale for protection. If you've got silky skin like a gecko, they just don't, they don't thrive well on those animals. And so even, even lizards that meet the right temperature and humidity requirements, if they don't have just the right type of scales, they don't do very well. I guess that's why blue-tone skinks, they pretty much go just to their ears. Yeah, they got to hide someplace. Yep. And a lot of exposed skin, which they like. Yeah. Okay, so, is a way to, to, that's, that's a pretty good tip, you know. I never thought about the air dryer thing. What, what about the other direction, like, do we know if there's a temperature, like, if I stick, like say, I have a tiny cage or, like, a little pub, or could I take all my water bowls and stick them in my deep freezer for the night? I mean, yeah. I think the deep freezer would kill them. I'd feel pretty confident about that. And I know those numbers are published, but I can't remember them off the top of my head. The reason if I have a choice, the reason I would probably choose heat over cold is because, for the same reason that, like, when you're shipping a snake, it's much worse for the snake to get suddenly too hot for a few hours than it is for it to get a little too cool. You know, the, the mites will cool down. You know, the, the metabolism will, will shut down and they can, if anything, you can really slow down the life cycle as opposed to actually killing them. Of course, if you're freezing them, you get to extreme temperatures, you're, you're going to kill them just as, just as handily, but, but I think drying them out, hitting them with hot dry heat is, is probably faster and more effective. Right, but better to cook them than to potentially not kill everybody with freezing them. I got it. Right. Exactly. Potentially get them to, you know, where they just are much slower to come out of hibernation after you introduced them to your collection. Oh, yeah. You, you, then, that's how the usually goes by with like, oh, we've had a couple of weeks where we're safe and boom, you're back to, oh, well, that would be terrible. Yeah, I don't know if that on my worst enemy. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's asserting. Okay, what about, um, better, better, no, no, no, no, I was just, I was just saying, what about like, uh, chemical preventatives? I mean, we're kind of getting into that a little bit. Yeah. Um, I think everybody's got a mom and a pop remedy. What about like, you know, what, what have you heard and what would you suggest and what do you feel is dangerous? Yeah, this is, this is one of those areas where I can probably talk generally about, you know, some of the different things that are out there and some of the pros and cons, but, um, where, where unfortunately, I just don't think there's like a one-size-fits-all, which, you know, seems to be perfectly safe for some species or really toxic to others and, and, um, and to be quite honest with you, there's a lot of things that seem to work awesome, like most of the time, and they're like the go-to product for a lot of people. Uh, you know, and then same species, same age, same everything, just randomly, you'll get these idiosyncratic animals that just die for, you know, or get really sick. Um, you know, and, and there's a lot of different variables that have been proposed, you know, whether, you know, like when you spray something out of an aerosolized can, are you really getting the same dose, the really same amount every single time, was it, was the can shaken beforehand? Was it the same temperature? Was the snake, had the snake just taken a meal and so it was actively metabolizing and it was metabolically active? So many variables out there makes it really difficult to say, like, yeah, this is the one safe and effective treatment, you know, this is, this is the breath, the silver bullet. Um, like that said, you know, I mean, there's, there's pro, there's products that we all know and like, um, you know, I think preventamite is a great product when used as directed. You know, it's not a product that I recommend spraying on an animal. Certainly, there are people that have diluted it or that have, you know, done it and wiped it off really quickly and gotten away with it. But, you know, I mean, it is, it is, it is a high concentration per, per meter and I don't recommend it. Um, you know, I probably, if I had to pick one thing that I turn to most often, um, and this is just something that's been handed down from, you know, this isn't my recipe. This is, you know, the reptile that's for years have used ivermectin. Um, and, and that's something I've recommended for some clients, again, under the right circumstances for the right species. Uh, ivermectin is widely available at, you know, cattle feed stores. Um, usually I'm like a 1% or 10 to make per mill solution. And, and it's not very amissable with water, but you can absolutely take a small amount of that mix it with like a liter of water, shake it up really well. And that is something that you can spritz inside enclosures is something you can spritz on animals. I wipe it right off afterwards, but, uh, and I never, by the way, never use ivermectin with, with turtles or tortoises. But, uh, for snakes, they seem to handle it really well. It's really good at, um, really good at killing mites. Um, I'll say this with a degree of hesitation, but yeah, I'm sure there's another reptile vet listening to me that's like, are you kidding me? Like, we don't recommend this anymore. But honestly, I grew up, I used those no pest strips. I mean, I was, I was from a generation where we were, you know, we, we, we knew the guy at the pet store who taught us to cut the little no pest strip and to put it in, uh, you know, you've probably seen this method before where, you know, and for those that aren't familiar, uh, no pest strips contain an organophosphate called dichlorobose, old school, nasty pesticide, kills everything, including people at the right concentration. Yeah, don't eat it. And, and yeah, don't eat it. Don't eat it. Don't breathe it. Wear gloves when you touch it, but you'd literally like, you'd like open the no pest or package. Like, you'd rip right through the little warning label that says, do not break that. Do not open it. Then you break it open. Then you break it open and you really click the lab. Yeah. Exactly. And then you, you take the little yellow square. Um, there are actually some dosages. I think, I think Dr. Mater's book, uh, publishes, uh, not a recommended dose, but a commonly, commonly cited dose, which is, it was like a certain, when I say it was like a, an inch per 10 cubic feet of aquarium space or something like that. But, um, you know, when I was growing up, it was like, yeah, I just cut a small amount for a small cage and a large amount for a large cage. But you'd put it in like a little, you know, ramecan, punch some holes in it, the idea, and you don't want the snake to have direct contact with it, but you wanted it to be able to kind of aerosize and fume up the whole cage. And, and that was basically what you're doing is, you know, we would always say like, take the water bowl out because we know dichlorobosis is very water soluble and it will concentrate in there and you can have a snake drinking poison. You don't want that, but you take it out for like 24 hours and you just basically gas the whole cage and take it out, you know, toss everything, uh, you know, change this upgrade, clean the snake off. And most of the time, in my experience, snakes did really well with that. I probably could have five or six of them along the way. Uh, not gonna lie. Um, you know, I mean, it would happen. It would absolutely happen. So it's not like my favorite, but from a cost standpoint, from like a time and efficiency standpoint, uh, I mean, there's a reason that the pet stores did it. You know, they didn't have time. Um, you know, and, and when you're talking about misting an individual animal and wiping it off and cleaning the cage and stuff like that, I mean, this was, this is kind of a nuclear bomb. Uh, you know, you throw it in with a snake and take it out and often they seem to do fine. Now we know better now. I mean, as we start to do blood work, we've seen blood work changes associated with those things. And, um, I, I know, I think that Corvus is listed as a carcinogen in the state of California. But what is it really? You know, um, you know, I think it's, I think it's been shown to be, uh, a mutagen and human skin. Don't quote me on any of this stuff. I'm not a physician, but, um, you know, it's, I, I know it's not recommended for a reason. It's, it's kind of a nasty stuff. There were a lot more idiosyncratic, idiosyncratic reactions that at least that I've seen with it and that I've heard reported. Um, you know, it's cheap, it's efficient, but it's, it's nasty stuff. So it's not my go-to, at least not anymore, now that I know better. Um, right. You know, there's, there's all sorts of things. There's seven powder that's been recommended. Um, my favorite, uh, my, I should say my favorite idea is I keep hearing about biologic control with these, I think they're called Hiapsis cannibal mites. Uh, okay. Have you heard about these? I, I don't have, yeah, I don't know about that. Yeah, the idea is they're, they're basically a mite that is known to cannibalize other mites. I don't, I don't know. I mean, it's probably, maybe, maybe Joe came and is still working and like, making this stuff. Like, I don't know who rears mites may, but there's, there's people out there. You can buy, you can buy like this giant can of mites that somebody's reared. And, uh, the idea is they, they feed obligately on other mites. And so the idea is you dump them in with the snakes and they have to go kill and eat all the mites and eat closure. And as soon as they run out of things to eat, they die. And like in theory, it sounds awesome. And practice, yeah, in practice, I just don't know that many people that have done it and had a lot of success with it. Um, I think there's like a few things in some of the veterinary forms where people have talked about using it or asked about using it. I just, you know, if, if you learn of a case, I'd love to hear about it. It's one of those things that sounds so cool and I'd love to be able to recommend it. I just, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I kind of feel like after, I kind of feel like I would try it. I'd be the guy that'd be like, all right, good go. And they eat all the mites. And then after all the mites are gone, they'd be like, you know what, feed on the snakes. And then I'd be like, God damn it. So like I, I remember how that would go where I would like killer bees or something like that. Exactly. They do their job and then it would go horribly out of control. It's now like I've bred super mites. So, you know, those horrible, those horrible carry on flies that we all hate. Yeah. If you're familiar with the, the little, they like scurry across and then they fly away right before you can slap them. Those, my understanding of those came over, those were supposed to be a biologic control for fire ants. And they're not working. But they have turned out to be horrible. Yeah. Biologic control. Sometimes it goes crazy, case in point, cane toads and various other things. Right. I don't want to, I don't want to, I'm not sure if I want to try that. But yeah, it's a great idea in theory, but I just, I can't, I can't, no, I can't do it. I can't speak for it, but it's a neat idea. So one that I have heard and actually use is a dilution of like lice shampoo where you kind of dip a snake in it and then kind of clean it off. I mean, would you, I think the, but the one thing they tell you is don't let the snake drink it because it is still poison regardless of what we're talking about here. Would you kind of recommend? I've seen it used. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I, you know, it's absolutely one of those things that's, you know, commonly cited as this works for me. You know, I think most of those products are, are, what do they call that? I want to say they're like sip or no based products, the same types of things you'll see in like ant traps or, you know, flea and tick shampoos. I mean, the dose makes the poison, right? You know, that's a, that's a big principle of toxicology. You know, even water's toxic at a, you know, high enough dose, right? You know, and I think the concern in most of these cases, you know, while drinking it, of course, is a great way to ingest a toxic dose is kind of this transdermal, you know, like how much of that toxin is going to go through the skin. And again, I think it's one of those things who's going to be highly dependent on the animal, how permeable the skin is, how long they're soaked, how, how concentrated the solution is. And I think, you know, if you're judicious in your use of these things, you may have some success, but, you know, this is where, too, I got to step back and say, talk to your vet, you know, if you, if you hope this is a theme that came up before, you know, in my last talk and it's self-serving, granted, but, but seriously, you know, I love when my clients call me and they say, like, you know, look, I don't want to take up a lot of your time, but I just, I wanted to touch base about this, got this, I've read this, you know, we've talked about this before, you know, me, like, I'm in a good position to handle this, but I just wanted to run by this with you real quick, you know, like, I have so much more respect for that than, like, when they come in and like, something's crashing and they're like, uh, fix it, you know? Yeah. I don't know what you gave in. I broke it, I broke it. Yeah. It's really frustrating. And then, of course, you know, when it doesn't turn out, well, then it's like, it's on me. I couldn't do it, you know? It wasn't, it wasn't good enough and I have to go home and cry or drink or something, you know? So, it's one of the, there's no one size fits all. There's no cookie cutter solution, but, you know, I don't think any of these things are unreasonable as long as, as long as you do it in kind of a controlled and rational way and ideally, you know, having, you know, involved your vet. What do you think about items like reptile relief? Do you have any thoughts on those? I, I'm trying to remember what the active ingredient was in that. I knew there was a girl with the blue tongue skinks thing that blew up a while ago and followed that for a little bit. Do you remember, do you remember what the active ingredient is? I don't. Hold on, let me look. I can, I can look at the bottle. I just still happen to have one right here. Great product placement, Eric. Good job. For only, for only three payments in 1995. Ninety five. See, who said we couldn't do commercials halfway through the show? Perfect. Kind of, kind of small writing here, but it says, effectively ingredients, getting old. I can't read what I said. You have your bifocals on. I really thought you would have been more of a member of the guy. I can't, I can't, I can't call sodium, salt. Is this, is this a Breyer's ice cream commercial? No, no, no. It has some weird-ass chemicals in it. It does, it's natural chemistry, but hold on. What a look. I can't get a, what is unnatural chemistry because I kind of thought all elements were found on the planet, but I, whatever. All right. So, now I, I know we're going to kind of backtrack a little bit, but you were talking about Ivermectin. What I've learned with Ivermectin is that if you spray the snake, you inject the snake and then you put a little bit in the snake's water and then you call it a date. I agree with all of that except for the water. I will, yeah, I typically don't put it in the water. I suppose you, I wouldn't recommend putting it in the water. It's not that Ivermectin can't be ingested. It's just that I feel like I wouldn't have any control over the dose ingested. On the snake, yeah, on the snake, in the environment, again, you know, for quick contact and then wiping it right off and at the right concentrations and I always use the same concentration. Again, for most species, I have a lot of luck with that. You know, I'll typically dose them like once a week and then, you know, kind of let it ride and then repeat, clean the whole, you know, enclosure, toss everything that's tossable, start fresh and do that, you know, once a week and often after two or three treatments, that's all it takes. If you have a really massive infestation, though, or if you have a whole collection that's infested, it becomes a whole different. Same principle, but just a lot more labor intensive. Right. Now, what's your dosage for Ivermectin? I typically do about a half a cc, half a mill, mixed into a liter of water. Yes. Again, and that's not mine. It's been handed down for, you know, many years. But that's a commonly cited one and one that I've had some luck with. Again, Ivermectin solution is kind of an oil-based solution. It does not mix well with water, so you can't just pour it in and then start spritzing. You have to shake it like crazy. I mean, you have to shake it, spritz a little bit, shake it some more like crazy, spritz it a little bit. You know, so it's not a perfect system, but it's, I think it's one of the safer ones that I've used. Okay. Have you figured out how to pronounce that thing yet, Eric? Yeah, I got it. Well, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce it right, but it's a diagtol sodium sulfa-senate. Oh, yes. Oh, for me, it's over my head. I don't know what the hell that is. I don't know what it is. I'm not a chemist. I'm not a toxicologist. It's not one I had to talk for nearly an hour. I think one of the things that they say with this is that it doesn't kill the eggs, but it's something that you can spray on the snake. Yeah. So I think we had Don Patterson all one time, and I kind of got this tip from him, and this is how I kind of use it. He said he would go to a reptile show, and when he would come back, he would put the snakes in a tub, and he would spray the tub, and his feeling was that the snakes could get in there, and when they go into a new, you know, a new type of environment, they sort of like get around, so it would get all up in their, you know, their heat pits, their eyes, and all that sort of stuff. Again, we're talking pythons, but you know, since it's a natural product that, you know, you could actually spray it on the snake, and you would kind of kill anything that was coming in to your collection. It's like a quick type of quarantine, I guess you would say. Yeah, it's an interesting idea. Again, I'm not familiar with the compound, or with the product really, so I couldn't say whether I would endorse doing something like that or not, but I guess my initial thoughts would be, you know, I don't think there's anything that really is the same as a real quarantine, you know. It would be nice to be able to fast forward a little bit, and God knows we've all done that, and not, I mean, just not done a quarantine, but, you know, I think you either quarantine or you don't quarantine, something like that might make it a little bit safer, but I, you know, I wouldn't say that's a replacement. I do know some people that are, I mean, you know, people that do the ivermectin thing just when stuff comes in and out, trying to be that safe, and I guess, you know, my thoughts are if you can avoid use of a drug, wherever you can, you know, or if you have to use a drug, use the lowest amount of it possible. I'm not one of these, like, granola-crunching anti-drug people, I just think, especially when you're dealing with, you know, so many, at least for me, I'm dealing with so many different reptile species, and it can be really difficult to keep it, you know, to remember, like, you know, who's going to have the sensitivity to what drug or to what product, you know, I think that just the safest rule of thumb, you know, if there is a way to correct the husbandry or a way to correct the environment or to change the environment in some way that you can just avoid, you know, exposure to chemicals that we really frankly may not have any idea what it actually does inside the snake or what the long-term implications might be or whether it can have, you know, effect their hormones, which might affect their brewing, you know, I just, if I can avoid just dosing them with stuff for the sake of dosing them, then I tend to try to do that. Sure, yeah, I think that's probably everybody's approach would be, would be that, there's so, I don't know, from everybody that I've talked to, they're afraid, you know, I'm not going to give too much, this is going to kill my snake, I'm going to drink chemical in the cage, oh my gosh, this can't be right, you know. One of the things I was going to ask about is, I can't remember who posted this, but they said that they had a slight might outbreak, they were using Provenomite, sprayed the tubs, no big deal, you know, they came back, I think it was like maybe a day or two later, they were feeding, and they were offering, you know, frozen thaw rodents that were thawed out in water, it was wet, they came into contact with the, you know, the newspaper that had it on there and, you know, ingested that and died. So, yeah, I thought that that was something worth mentioning because, yeah, that's activated with water, right, I mean. Well, yeah, it's ingested, you know, normally when you're using Provenomite, you're using it just in the enclosure, just on the, you know, some of the cage furniture, and then you're wiping it off, or rinsing it off, and at best there's going to be residues, hopefully not much, and, you know, maybe a little bit of an aerosolized component, but again, you know, in almost undetectable amount, and we're talking about a snake that just took in a massive ingestion of pyrethrins, and, you know, that that's all going to be absorbed and quickly go to the bloodstream, quickly hit the brain, and could cause paralysis and kill a snake really quickly. Right. Yeah, again, the dose makes the poison. Sure. Yeah. That's unfortunate. You know, and that's, again, we're one of those things where, you know, I mean, this is a product most of us have used at some point that we largely consider safe, not knocking the product at all, but, you know, it's just one of those things where it's like, there's a right way and a wrong way to use it, and even an accidental or a wrong way can still be devastating. I would guess that, I mean, I'm just going to put it out there that I guess my thought is, is that basically you take that product, you spray the enclosure, you let it air out, you take the water bowl out, and you put the snake back in, and, you know, you got to go from there. Would you say that that's, is there anything wrong with that approach? I don't think there's anything wrong with that approach. Again, just again with the disclaimer that, you know, you may get an animal that's just exceptionally sensitive to it, and, you know, I would try to keep in mind the size of the animal, the amount of stuff that you're using. I, I actually honestly tend to let it sit, and then I'll usually wash it out too, and if some people just wipe it out and then kind of let it evaporate, I tend to wash it out to remove any additional residues, because it's not the residues that are, it's not what you leave behind that is really helping. I mean, it's what you've killed once you spray it in there, so my thought is, if I can clean it as best as possible before I put an animal back in, that's ideal. That's what I'm trying, that's my goal, you know, and the common theme regardless of what you're doing is you never leave a water bowl in, not when I'm treating it, you know, and once the animal's been cleaned, that's another, by the way, that's another thing, you know, you don't clean the animal well enough, you put it back in, it soaks in its water bowl, because it has mites, goes and it adjusts a bunch of water that's contaminated with whatever you just dumped all over the snake, and that's another great, you know, potential toxicity waiting to happen, so, you know, no perfect system, but I think you basically summarize pretty well the way most people have used preventamite with success, yeah? Right, you know, there are some, we didn't go ahead. I was gonna say, you know, you touched on some of these chemicals and things, and I touched on a few of these kind of environmental things, we didn't touch on some of actually other really commonly cited methods, which are like, because here's used olive oil. I have never used that, but I have never used that, and Eric's little out line says, how should one use a product like Pam, and I'm like, does he mean the cooking oil? So, I mean, this is where we're going here, because I'm like, I never thought about, you know what, that snake's got bugs on it, you know what I should do? Yeah, spray him down, spray it with Pam, put it in the oven at 250 degrees for about six minutes, flip it over, there you go. Like, now he's trying to slither, and he's like, phew, the other side of the cage, because he's like greased now. So, he's a greased snake, I can't catch him. So, olive oil and Pam, these honest-to-god things we can do for killing the mites, or help them out, but not Pam, and that's preventive mite, Ellen. Thanks, God, all right. God damn you and your abbreviations. Have you, have you never been on a reptile forum? Good work. No! No! I learned everything I had to learn in 2000, and then I stopped off to people. And then, yeah. Okay, so olive oil, what, I've heard that before, but I'm not really sure what, what, what people are doing to get rid of the mites, whether they basically drown in the olive oil, is that the idea? Basically, exactly it. It's the real thing. People have used olive oil, and by the way, I remember, like, the first time I ever dealt with mites, I, and I was a kid, but you know, this is probably early days of the internet, but I had used, I had used olive oil because I'd seen it recommended, and it seemed like it was safe enough, certainly safe enough. It was a rosy boa, and I'll never forget this rosy boa. Crawling through my hands, all lubed up with olive oil, like in retrospect, like, it probably looked like some weird fantasy or something, like, sure out of somebody's weird twisted dream, but I'm like sitting there with this fat lubed up snake, like greasing with olive oil. It was like the messiest thing ever, I had paper towels, and I was trying to wipe it down. There's a little science behind that, and it's very, very safe, by the way, you're gonna, I mean, unless you drown your snake in oil, you're not gonna kill it with olive oil. And if you were really concerned about that, or you really just wanted to play it as safe as possible, I think, you know, it's a great thing to try at home first. The idea is, there are little pores on the side of the body of the mite that they actually breathe out of, and that's how they can have their head buried in the snake skin and still be breathing. And so the idea is, yeah, I mean, you literally smother the mite, another thing that makes mites a little bit different than, or these mites in particular, different than, say, ticks, they don't have any barbs on their little, it's called a hypostome. It's like the little needle that they stick inside the skin. They don't have, like, if you've ever tried to pull a tick out, it's not easy. Mites, it's a little bit of manual pressure that come right out. And the idea is, a combination of the oil kind of smothering them and killing them, which realistically, it would probably need to sit on there for like an hour to really kill them, but a combination of just kind of smothering them and making their life suddenly like an oily hell. And then actually rubbing the oil off of the snake with a paper towel, you end up removing a lot of them at all at the same time. Now, unlike Ibermectin or any of your others, it's not doing anything for the environment. So you still need to be doing something in the environment. And the people that have tried to do this, and they keep, you know, some people will say, like, well, I clean the cage really thoroughly. Some people use bleach, by the way, 3% bleach solution will work too. But again, bleach can be caustic and bleach can linger in the air and can be really hard on the respiratory tract. But, you know, if you wanted to do something that was like all natural chemicals, right, from the earth, you could, you could spray a bleach solution into the cage and you could oil your snake. I feel dirty just saying this is horrible and blew up your snake with olive oil. Just let it go and move forward. I love it, God. Yeah, exactly. You know, and that may work. I mean, there are people that have had some success with that. So, you know, that's one of these kind of like, it's not biologic control. There's no risk of like a bino mites, you know, taking over the eating your tarantulas or anything like that. But you know, it's an option. So like, you could rub it, I mean, you could basically rub that on the snake's head, eyes, all that kind of stuff. And you really wouldn't cause any issues with the olive oil. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you got enough of it in the nostrils or in the mouth, certainly it would be a problem. But yeah, you know, snake eyes are covered by that smooth spectacle. They're not like our eyes where they're exposed. You can literally pretty much every inch of the snake. You can rub down with like a sponge or a paper towel with olive oil and help to smother the mites and get a huge number of them off. That might be one of those things where, and again, I'm just kind of seeking theoretically here, but you could, you could probably kill a huge percentage of the mites leaving very little behind. And then maybe get away with using a much lower concentration of even ivermectin or whatever your cocktail of choice is. And, you know, again, dose makes the poison. So if I can reduce the dose, that's always a better thing and still be effective, of course. That's a good thing. And the snake will be all nice and shiny for like a couple of days. I'm not kidding when I say like they really do shine afterwards. I mean, I feel ridiculous thing that I remember putting it back and being like, well, I don't think that was very effective, but at least he's really shiny. So that's actually, it's a, there's the trick at a reptile show is if you get there early enough, everybody buffs. I swear to God, everybody buffs their tortoises with olive oil. Oh, yeah. When you're walking through, they're all nice and shiny. The shelves and stuff like that. So if you get to a reptile show early enough at certain tables, they have like tubs of olive oil and they're, and they're shining the tortoises. I swear to God, I was, I've seen that too. And by the way, it doesn't look, it doesn't help you build any relationships with fellow breeders. If you say, Hey, can I borrow some of the olive oil? I need to go buff some of these mites off of my snakes. Exactly. Nobody will. It never goes over well. Stay away from that. It doesn't work. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. Okay. So what about, I mean, I think one of the things that I think about is, if you have a large, I mean, I've talked to people that have had mites in a large collection, basically, they're at the point where they're going to quit. How do you, I mean, how do you go in and approach? Can you, okay, let me put it this way. Can you go in and say a treat like, you know, this set of cages and the next day treat this set of cages or does it have to be, you have to treat them all in one shot? No, I mean, I think, I think you just need to be systematic and I tend to apply the same. I'm dodging your question a little bit because it's, I don't have an answer, but I would say, I apply the same principles that, you know, that I do with quarantine. Like I'll take the cages and try to take the ones that I know are the worst and make sure they have a moat or if you have a rack, put the whole damn rack in a moat, you know. Right, it makes sure it's not up against the wall or they can crawl, you know, onto something else, but, you know, you can start to isolate things and then step by step, start to replace all of your substrate with paper towels, you know. It can be, it doesn't have to be all in one day. I mean, I guess that is sort of related to your question. I don't know that you need to do every single cage at once, but I think if you're taking a systematic approach and just kind of deconstruct your setups to where you've got things really bare bones and you can take some of that control and put it back in your own hands, then you're going to be a lot faster and a lot more successful. You know, again, thinking back to your life cycle, if you have, if you have a particulate substrate, if you have wood chips and you have a snake that likes to dump his water bowl, dude, you've got a perfect, perfect medium for microth, right? It's warm, you've got a heater, you've got moisture, you've got tons of little dark crevices where they can reproduce like crazy. I mean, get rid of the particulate substrate. If you've got, you know, wooden log hides or something like that, I mean, wood creates an excellent material, excellent medium for them to get up into lots of little crevices and stasis, right? You know, get rid of it. It gets plastic. It's something you can disinfect. You know, if you're using it, the types of cages that have like little lips or, or if you're using, if you're using sliding glass. Right. You know, I know everybody loves it. I hate sliding glass. I'm like the guy that I get so much particulate substrate in the sliding glass. I know some people square by it and it's preference, but I can never get that stuff clean. I can never get a cage fully clothed. And, you know, any, again, any kind of nook and cranny, I mean, that's what they look for. They look for something that they can get into that where they're protected as they, as the eggs hatch. So they're looking for like warm, dark places and any sort of like nook or cranny in a cage is going to be perfect for that. So if you've got vents cut into your cage, that might be another place where they hang out. Could you wipe down your cage with, I know this is just an off top of question, but could you wipe down the cage with olive oil or fill them with mics too? Yeah, I guess you could. But I think the way it's waggs or, no, I don't think it would, well, I don't know the answer to that. You know, the eggs are breathing through a membrane. I suppose maybe it would smother them or at least when they hatch, they wouldn't be able to go anywhere. But, you know, again, I'm extrapolating from like the one snake that I covered in olive oil, and I'll probably never do it again. I don't know that I would want olive oil or all of that stuff because it's like, it does not come out easily. It would smell nice. Maybe if you spray it with enough can, then we'll wipe it out. I don't know. Okay. I know that was great. Maybe you could make an olive oil. It just popped in my head. There you go. Now we've got the best of both. We're learning. The best of both worlds. Yeah. And fill it with Ivermectin. There you go. That was triple bed. Yeah. And that, by the way, is when I did walk through the snake room after the lights went out, the tub, the one tub that I would step on and spill everywhere, that's what would, you know, like when you go walking through the, you walk through the snake room at night and it's like somehow you find like the the one warm, once warm bowl of water that you thawed some ice in and forgot to pick up and you like, oh, yeah. It's like of all the places in the room, that's the one place your foot found. That would be, would be my tub of olive oil permethrin. Oh, yeah. I'd take it every time. Every time. Yeah. I think I was going to say, you know, time frame for treatment. I mean, I hear this come up a lot. Yeah. One of the things that people say, you know, basically, I, I, a responsible breeder, some of you that, you know, even if they're selling just a couple snakes, basically they should shut down their, their sales, you know, and not really sell anything for X amount of time. Some people say months. Some people say, you know, maybe four months. Some people say two months. I mean, for a treatment, if you do a treatment, how often should you repeat that treatment? That's, that's a great question. I mean, you get, you asked two questions in one and one is a very, you know, kind of ethics based question that I think is really intriguing. I don't know that somebody needs to completely shut down. I think as long as they're honest and straightforward about, hey, you know, I had a small outbreak of mites in this corner of my snake room and involved these snakes. I've got them in quarantine now. I haven't seen anywhere anywhere else. You know, it happened on this date and then you can let your buyer choose your, you know, choose the, the length of time where they're comfortable, you know, and they can kind of rely on the reputation of the, and by the way, you know, this kind of goes back to what you're saying in the beginning. Nobody likes to talk about mites and I think it's so interesting because I have so much more respect. Somebody comes out and says like, hey, it happened to me, you know, I dealt with it. This is, here's what happened. I saw it, you know, I have so much more respect for somebody who is very forthright. Rico comes to mind, you know, I mean, somebody who just, it's like not afraid to hide their faults or their failures, but this is what I learned from it. This is what worked for me. I mean, just full transparency. Sure, you know, you know, nobody wants to, nobody wants to buy from the guy that has mites. It's like, nobody wants to make out with a girl with herpes, but that's what, that's what people, but you know, one is forever and one is, you know, you can manage this. And I think if somebody's really forthright about it, I think it says a lot about that person and that they're managing it properly and it's got something that it seems to be working, you know, buyer's discretion, I think. Right. As for how long you actually need to treat before you can officially say, we know the life cycle is only two months. So I think if you nip it in the butt early and you're really diligent about watching for it and you're diligent about treating for it, you know, I think it's something that doesn't probably need to be more than just eight weeks. Again, as long as you're following a good protocol that is working, you know, if it's, you saw some mites in a cage and you kind of drive it out and you think they're gone, but you haven't seen anything for two weeks and you're kind of quietly selling stuff again and you're not really, I don't, you know, you don't get a free pass there, you know, it doesn't count. Right. So basically you should treat until you really don't see anymore because there's sometimes I hear people. I mean, I guess my question would be is like we're using chemicals, the least amount of, you know, use of those chemicals would be the best case scenario. So, sure, you know, say the month goes by, you don't see anything. Would you recommend to stop treatment or continue to treatment even past, you know, safety? Well, it's, even when you talk about like treating for a month, remember, again, if you were using kind of what I, what I offer, if you, if I were me doing my go-to, even with the Iberbectin, I'm only treating once a week. So we're talking like three or four treatments. So we're not talking about like 30 days versus 60 days. We're talking about like three treatments versus four or five treatments. And if I didn't make it clear before, if I am treating a snake, like if I find an outbreak in the collection, those animals are going immediately back into whatever my quarantine protocol was, my quarantine room, you know, ideally going into, you know, a separate cage where they can be monitored really closely. It's really difficult to look for my, it's in a normal setup, you know, with cage furniture and backgrounds and things. But yeah, if you can get them kind of into a quarantine cage and you treat them, you know, and by the way, the treatment interval isn't just about, you know, taking advantage of the my life cycle. Part of it is, certainly, because I know that, you know, I'm getting eggs or hatching in that week. And so I'm killing, you know, more vulnerable stages. And then as they, if they lay eggs, I'm going back and I'm giving you mites that are born. So yeah, part of it is, is life cycle strategy. But part of it, too, is I'm using that week to really watch carefully, you know. So if three weeks go by and I see nothing, maybe I do one more treatment. And, you know, if week four, I'm still not seeing anything, you know, maybe I do one more treatment just to feel good about it. You know, a common approach to parasites is to treat, you know, two treatments after. You think you've eradicated it and then, you know, give it one more week. And if it's done, then declare it free and carefully introduce it back into your collection. But, you know, you're right. Not everybody's going to advertise like, oh yeah, I treated these snakes for mites. And if it was six years ago, and you haven't seen anything, does it matter at this point? I mean, I guess that's kind of debatable. But, you know, kudos to anybody who's really forthright about that. I think that's awesome. Yeah. Like I said, I think that's one of those taboo subjects for whatever reason. I don't know. I think it may have to do with, and I don't want to blame, you know, ball pythons in particular. But I think that the thinking is that if somebody comes along and they have a choice between buy-in this more from this person and this more from that person, and you're talking about, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars and, you know, it's going to be the make or break between, you know, selling that snake or not selling that snake. I think people, you know, they shouldn't, but probably they go and hide it. And, you know, then all of a sudden now it's in somebody else's collection. And not to say that more screw in that kind of thing. But when you add that money into it, you know, and, I don't know, people kind of, sometimes they get shady, you know. No, well, and it, I think there's a stigma around it too, because it's like, it's one of those things that if you quarantine really effectively and if you're watching really carefully and you're really scrupulous about who you buy from, theoretically, I mean, you could go years or an entire snake-keeping career never has might, you know. So I think part of it is, you know, if you, I mean, it's a preventable thing. It's not like, you know, it's not like one of these in city is like, it's not IBD where it could sit, you know, late for years and suddenly it just rears its ugly head. Nobody ever saw it coming. It's like one of those things where, you know, theoretically you could, it doesn't have to happen to you. And so I think a lot of people feel really bad when I doge, you know, they're like, well, crap, I was really, I wasn't careful. I didn't practice good quarantine. I bought from somebody shady because it was a good deal online, you know, because it was an auction dammit that supported USARC. I just had to do it, you know. I won the auction I had to buy it. Yeah. Yeah. I had to buy it or that we're going to blast me on board. Yeah. Okay. So, I don't know. Is there, I don't know. Yeah. It's, I don't know if there's anything else as far as, you know, the mites that you can think of that, you know, maybe it would be helpful. I, you know, again, I think my take-home message is there's a little information out there. It's to the point where there's so much good information and there's, and it's so readily available that I think a lot of people take mite treatment and their strategies right into their own hands. I hate to sound patronizing and self-serving, but again, I would reinforce this is really where I think although people do it and have great success with it, ideally if you're keeping reptiles, especially a lot of high-end reptiles or any reptiles, you really should have a relationship with a vet who sees them, you know, and this is a great opportunity to pick up the phone and just touch base, you know. Hey, I know you've seen my collection. You've seen a bunch of my snakes. Do you think this is a safe method? Would you recommend this? I think I'm going to try this. What are your thoughts? You know, just run it by them. It doesn't have to be a long conversation. It probably doesn't even need to be an ex, you know, like a, a visit, just touch base because it's so much better to prevent problems than it is to try to deal with them once they're, you know, to have gone. And this is one of those things that is like hit or miss, like it may work or it might kill your snake. You know, it's like it's really what it comes down to. So, you know, touch base with your vet if you can. And yeah, and just be persistent. It's one of those things that could be so, so frustrating. But like it always drove me crazy. It occasionally see like the pet store and it was like that was just part of the routine. They just always kept the pet strips, the no-pet strips, like in the cages at all times. You know, it was just assumed that like, you know, all the snakes there had much and, you know, the goal was to just sell them as quickly as possible so they could be somebody else's problem. It's like, they didn't even try to hide it. It was just like, you know, if you find yourself getting so many snakes that you just have a quote unquote low-level mite and section, I've actually seen and heard of this, like you're doing it wrong. Stop. Stop what you're doing. Don't do that anymore. Don't do that anymore. Because you're asking for problems, not just for your own animals, but for the people that make the mistake of buying from you, don't do that. I don't know. That's it. I didn't think there would be so much to talk about mites, but you really could talk about mites. Each situation is so unique. Yeah, I will put it out there that you're so right about the, I really haven't had the need, fortunately, to have to go to do a reptile vet, but there's a guy that's local and he knows oh, and he knows me through my dog and he knows the other guy, Matt. And, you know, it's so, I guess, I was recommended because it's so relieving, like, I just felt so relieved that I had this snake, I had a rest of action, I took it to him. Typically, you know, it's always a check to fix the environment, something's wrong, blah, blah, blah, make the assessment. The situation was that I just after talking to him, he thinks it's the case too. The hotspot was too small. The male that I put in with the female was too big and he basically bumped her out of the hotspot. So when I was cooling down, she didn't have a chance to warm back up. Maybe she was stressed also because this snake was so big. Anyway, it was such a, I just felt so much better after going there and having this snake taken care of. And, you know, he just reassured me that it wasn't that bad and, you know, and now the snake's doing great. So, you're absolutely right that, you know, you should try to find, you know, somebody, you know, I know some people have a problem because it's not one local, but I would assume that I think, I don't know if you talked about this before, but isn't there some kind of like, like, you know, a directory for sets? There you know, there's a really great one. There's the association of reptile reptilian and amphibian veterinarians. And it's A-R-A-V dot org. And I recommend going to that website right now. If you're at your computer, go to A-R-E-V dot org. Right there on the home page, there's a link for find of that. And by the way, don't Google search this because we're actually in the process of completely revamping the website, but right now Google has a very old link archived. And if you go there, it's, you'll find people that are retired, you'll find, you won't find my name most importantly, which is really embarrassing. You need to make sure to go to the webpage for an up-to-date link, but go to A-R-E-V dot org and click on the find of that link and find your area. The search feature is a little bit weird right now, and I think they're revamping that too. Like I think it says like location, and it doesn't really specify like zip code versus city versus state, but I think you can type in any of them. And just search by your location and see what comes up. You'd probably be surprised what that is pulling up is anybody who is a member of A-R-E-V dot org. So it doesn't necessarily differentiate between somebody who's board-certified versus somebody who just, you know, like me at this point has a very strong interest, but everybody on that list is paying an unfortunate amount of money and dues to stay very active in that organization. And what that also means is that they're getting a monthly journal with, you know, new studies, new reports, interesting case reports. It means that they're active in an online forum that all of those people have access to. It means that they're attending a conference once a year where they go and sit through talks or are presenting their own talks. You know, these are people that have demonstrated a commitment to reptile medicine. And you know, I've mentioned before, like I know when we were talking about with Condros, like if you can bring your snake to a reptile bit, awesome if you can bring her Condro to a reptile that really knows Condros even better because they're very different. I know I've mentioned that before, but I hope that doesn't dissuade anybody from not going because they're like, you know, well, my vet says they see reptiles, but I have a Herman tortoise and I don't think they see Herman's tortoises. It's like, just stop, just go, you know, because if they don't know, a good vet will tell you as I do all the time. I don't know, you know, you get in a habit of just saying, I don't know, but you know what, I'll find out. And the nice thing about, you know, the reptile veterinary communities is so small, you know, we, I mean, we've all got each other on speed dial. If I don't know a species, you know, I worked on a heila monster recently. I have a heila monster. I mean, I know heila monster is pretty well, but there's a doctor in Arizona. Guess what he sees a ton of heila monsters? I get on the phone and, you know, we're, we're having a consult, you know, so, so, it's a very tight-knit community when people tell me like, you know, oh, there's no good reptile, that's in my area. That's bullshit. Sorry. You know, it's, there's, there's just no excuse now between telemedicine, between the number of vets that will let you ship an animal and myself included. And, and the awesome network of veterinarians, even small animal practitioners that have opened their doors to reptiles that will quickly get on the phone with a colleague to get an answer or to get the drugs achieved. I think it's always worse. Yeah, it's, it's worth the time to, to establish a relationship because you don't want to do it when shifted off and, and, and that's what happens. You know, you don't want to wait until it's too late, establish the relationship now, so they know who you are, so they can do things for you when it, when, when the time is necessary. Yeah, awesome. Okay. Yeah. Very cool. So let's get away from the horrible bugs that we absolutely all hate. And let's get on to your chondros. What do you, can you give us an overview of your chondro collection and what you're working with and what you're trying to build up? Yeah, we're, we're working with a lot of cool stuff right now. So we kind of got, we dove head first in the chondros a few years ago. And so, and did what probably a lot of early chondro buyers do, which is like they go chondro crazy and they buy like tons of baby chondros that hold tons of promise. And it's been a lot of fundraising them up and watching them grow up. But we're not at the point where I don't think any of our females are quite at breeding age yet. Part of that is, is honestly they're just too young, too small. Part of it is, and if some people would breed a three-year-old chondro, I'm not in that camp personally. Just, I'm not, I think it can be done. I'm just not pushing mine. Part of it, too, like I mentioned, been very, very busy, so I'm not, I'm certainly not fast-growing these snakes. We've got a handful ofaroos that we've held back from, we raised a few years ago. We've got, I've got cheese. I got a, you're going to make me walk into the snake room. I'm going to have a kick over that tub. We've got some local animals. We've got some, we've got a few designers. I have an affinity for the high-elos. Shower really likes the blues and blacks. Okay. So, we've got, so I'm looking here. I'm kind of going down the line, so. Yeah. We've got, I've got one of David Newman's, Timley Diablo babies. Sorry, Brian Susan. David Newman, Brian Susan. Oh, I got to, Brian, everybody forgets Brian. We've got, I've got a Kofi Obeach that I got at ICAST a few years ago from, from Ryan Burke. That's something else. I think I mentioned this before. A lot of these, you know, almost each of these animals we got from either a friend or somebody who's become a close friend. Got a beautiful Cyclops from Melbourne now in the few years back. We've got Boboshi who was featured in the calendar a few years ago. Very dark baby who's become a really beautiful blue-green adult. That was a TSK animal, snake keeper animal. I've got one of Kim Burgess, Fern and Squeeze Babies, very cleverly named Burji. Beautiful tri-color. We've got Sundrop whose lineage goes so far back. I couldn't even begin to recount at all, but I got him from a gentleman who left the Condor community a few years ago. I got Lemony Peasy over here. This is, this came from Bob Kelly. This is one of the jackpot pineapple express babies. I've got a really interesting biocanamed tempera. That was another one of David Newman's animals that he sort of gave to us on permanent loan after it had a little medical issue that I don't think any of us expected it to get better from, but it did. She's just kind of a permanent fixture in our collection now. We've got some of Peter Jones's animals. Two from him. We've got a few interesting little locale mixes. Shao has a blue line that she got from Nima that just turned into the solid mustard and refuses to change colors. That's kind of cool. That's cool. We've got a lot of cool stuff here. That's the Condor's. We've got a much bigger collection from that. We've got a small collection of colubards. I was briefly big into locale milksnakes for a little while. I've got a clutch of pueblans from this here. We've got some shao hatched, an adorable little clutch of tester of corn snakes that are kind of cool. We've got, I just actually paired up some of my emerald tree boas, northern emerald tree boas this year. I've been really disappointed in my lack of success with them so far, but the season's young. Who said that, right? Yeah. We're just now getting the snowstorms, so maybe we'll see some action there yet, but yeah, we're tinkering with all sorts of fun stuff over here. Who else is working with Angolans? I'd like to think I'm working with Angolans too. That's him. They look too much. Yeah, I can't get behind them. They look too much like ball python. But they feel like helemonsons. They're so different. Yeah, but you know what? I'd rather have a helemonster or... Well, I have one of those too. I mean, those are cool too. I don't have one of those. You know what else is bumpy and I love love scale python. So I'm good. I don't know what the bumpy reptile. I thought he was coming on to me for a second. I know whatever. Anyway, you guys have a... Yeah, breeding's going on with the chondros and the Angolans and all that fun stuff. No, the chondros, like I mentioned, are all a little bit too small still. We've got a lot of cool plans in the works, but nothing that we're trying for this year. The Angolans, I will not be breeding because my pair is two boys as it turns out, but I do have a female in the queue. She's on a breeding line to somebody else right now from a friend of mine that I'm hoping we'll get next year. But no, so that's a no-go for this year. I did just get a clutch from the boiga though. That's been a very small but very consistent project for me the past few years. That has been so much fun. Absolutely love those little snakes. If you like chondros, if you like emeralds, if you like, pretty green snakes that will bask openly, that are very interactive. They go through a cool antigenic color change and that not a whole lot of people are working with and that are challenging but also very engaging. Boiga are for you. I absolutely love these snakes. This was just kind of a... Go ahead. That was going to say, just... Sorry, I cut off. I was going to say, yeah, just talk a little bit about them. I was looking to your Facebook and I saw that you were working with them and I thought that was pretty cool. I'm curious that I really don't know much about them. Yeah, they're really neat. They were kind of one of these, something I just saw a picture on the internet at some point like years ago and I thought they were super neat. I'd seen pictures of the adults and they look like green mombas with big alien heads and I'd seen pictures of the babies and they were like bright orange and cool green heads. I mean, they were just such a neat and intriguing species and you could find pictures that were pretty readily available because people keep them in Europe. With some degree of success, apparently, but I had just never seen any here. I'd been dying to get my hands on some. The handful of reports that I had, people would talk about like they came over and they just died. It came over and they just died and that seemed to be everybody's experience. Nobody was really sure why. I finally found a guy out in Utah who had some great success with an F1 pair. We think the second person in the US to ever produce them and I just had to get some and I paid an ungodly amount of money when he was the only person that had them and I ended up buying my first pair. They grew amazingly quickly. I was really lucky to breed them at their third year and they were very different snakes than at least our three-year-old condos. I ended up acquiring another pair and then another pair and then I held back what I produced and now I have this giant collection of boigas. I've kind of just been teasing the market, taking pictures. Every people have expressed a ton of interest and I guess at some point I'll probably just have to start letting them go. I've been very greedy about them. I just think they're so cool. I love each one of them. It's always kind of a challenge. They're a little bit difficult. They get started but I mean, so are chondros. They were an interesting intersection for me because I spent a lot of time working with some of our local lampropelteens species like your king snakes. Oh my god, starting Red Milks or starting Scarlet Kings, which I did that for a few years, it was kind of like an arboreal version of that. It was kind of interesting. But I got them started and I got them growing and learned some things along the way that really seemed to help. I was really excited about two years ago. I bit the bullet and I bought you know, Jim Sharport and PVC cages. He's got like the giant. You probably have these for some of the carpets but like four foot by two foot by two foot. I set up a few of those. I just got a giant stick of those and set them up with huge pro products panel. I mean, just spared no expense, like the thick quarter inch glass with huge branches and big, you know, wide surface water bowls. And up to this point, I had been keeping them kind of like in a shoebox system. And again, this is where like, you know, we grow up on ball pythons with all do respectable pythons, but like a lot of those, you know, a lot of people keep those and they think like, oh yeah, snakes, you just keep them in shoeboxes. It's like these snakes really do a lot better not in shoeboxes. Not just, I'm sure, from a breeding standpoint, from a keeping and growth standpoint, but they're just so much more enjoyable. You know, I mean, they do so much. These are snakes that and I've never been to Thailand, but I know people that have and they, you know, photograph these snakes for me when they've been there. They are quite common and they are snakes that will use like every aspect of their environment. You can find them like near humans. You can find them on the forest. You can find them up in the trees. You can find them on the ground. You can find them in tree holes. You can find them under a lot. It's like they really will use every aspect of their environment. So it's really interesting to have them in a huge cage and watch how to move like from the perch under the branch to like they're basking, you know, swimming in the water bowl. And now they're like under a hole or in a tree, like in a log. Like they will go everywhere. It's really cool to see how they use their environment and especially like when they're feeding the way they'll ambush from, you know, how to have a log or when they're breeding the sites that they select to do that. Like it's just been so much more enjoyable to have them and an enclosure like that. But yeah, they're really cool. I actually took a picture the other day. The last clutch that I got, she gave me what looked like five fertile eggs and what's probably going to turn out to be a slug. But she laid one on a branch, which I'd never seen a snake on an egg. Like it was really weird. It was like perfectly balanced between the branch and the temperature probe. Like just on a stick. I was like, oh, okay. Well, thanks for laying an egg on that stick. I'm thinking that one will probably be a dud. It was probably just, you know, an afterthought, but it was kind of an interesting place to put it. But yeah, they're very, very cool snakes. Not a lot of people working with them. I'll mention to you, by the way, because I did find a guy who won't mention any names, but was supposedly importing them from a breeder in Europe and, you know, like seemed to be getting them in quantity. And so I bit the bullet kind of against my better judgment. I got a supposedly European captive bread pair, again, hoping to kind of be able to outcross my friends a little bit because there's not that many different lines in the US. And I repeated the same mistake. Everybody else did they, and they I got them in and they seem to be doing fine. And then they just both suddenly died. So I don't know related to, you know, something that they come in with or something that they're not exposed to, that they are exposed to in our collections, or if it's just the stress of the travel, or if they're not actually captive bread and they're coming in, you know, I didn't, it's not like I just doped them with parasites when they came in and I quarantined them and fed them, and they seemed to be thriving and they just, but they crashed and burned. So I don't know what that's about, but I think there's definitely still some kings to work out if we're bringing them wild stuff, but the captive things seem to be doing really well. And I've been, you know, really excited to be kind of like right at the forefront of something that very few people are working with. Are they kept similar to, I mean, are they, is it kept similar to a chondro or is it a cooler? You have to keep them cooler? You know, I would say probably very similar, you know, they come from a pretty similar region of the world, but I guess the big difference is I give them a lot more room. You know, they're, they're kind of like in our boreal race or almost, they, you know, whereas chondro seem to be, seem to be, I don't know if this is ideal for them, but, you know, they seem to do okay and we keep, we tend to keep them in relatively smaller cages as long as they've got like a slightly warm side and a slightly cool side and they can move between the two, they seem to do okay. But these guys really do take advantage of like every aspect of their environment. So I like having them at a bigger enclosure. They're a lot more active. I was going to back up for a second too and say speaking of like working on cool stuff and being right at the forefront. I wasn't plugged in. You guys were talking before, but a big hat off to, to Ryan, a molecular reptile. I just want to say I've never met Ryan, never spoken with him, but I've kind of watched like just amazed from a distance from many years. He's working with a lot, a lot of the, you know, the species that I either capture always dreamed of keeping. It just have been so, so impressed. He's one of these guys that's really, I don't want to say going against the flow, but he's, you know, he's taking species that, you know, a lot of people either dreamed of working with or said, you know, well, that's cool, but we just, we can't do it and he's doing it. And I just think that's, I'm just impressed and he's doing it in a very professional way. Just they look like top notch animals and their presentation is just excellent. I think some of those species are so difficult and it's not just because they're difficult, but it's because people haven't taken the time to really learn about what they need. And the fact that he's had that kind of success with them says, to me, he's doing something right, so a big kudos to him. He's like, he's the type of guy, you know, from talking to him. He's the type of guy that really takes the heart that pay attention to your snakes type of thing like, yeah, really, as that dialed in to, I call him the Python whisperer because it seems like it comes to Python's bow is that guy kind of, you know, he kind of has it nailed it. Yeah, that's so cool. I had a, I had a white-lipped Python. She was, got her from Probiotics 2001 and she was hand raised big golden northern and she was puppy dog tame. I still have some awesome photos with her. I got her a male who was good. I mean, you got lucky as long as you say. Oh, I know. I mean, she was captive hatched. I can send, man, I can send you pictures. Like, I actually have really stellar like professional photographs. I mean, you could hold her tail and she'd reach the floor and I mean, she would just, now she was cage aggressive like all of them, but once you got her out and she would just sit on the arm. I mean, she would sing to you. She would whistle. I mean, she was just the coolest snake I'd ever had. I bought a really awesome male from, actually a carpet person, Charlotte Johannes, and you may know her. Yeah, but yeah, I bought my male from her. He was a douchebag, but gorgeous. I always had dreams tonight. I tried two seasons in a row before vet school to try to pair them up. And they never showed any interest in each other. I mean, he hated the world, of course. So I never had any luck, but I sent them to a friend of mine for my hair out on the west coast when I went to vet school. It was supposed to be a little breeding one. And she kind of fell off the face of the earth like two years in. And it took me another two years to finally track her down through her husband who I had no relationship with. But long story short, she like couldn't ever face me. She just felt so horrible about what had happened. But apparently, in all their work through a local reptile rescue, they had some horrendous virus that supposedly swept off the question and killed everything. And so I never got those two snakes back, unfortunately. But that female was my heart. And I've always dreamed of having another white lead. But I just, it would be hard to find another one ever like her. I will add you to my, I'm right now I'm raising up, I have two Captain born and bred girls that I'm raising up. And the one is a tiny little like, doesn't even have the gold on it yet because it's so freaking tiny. Like it is a noodle. And then the boy I got was a wild caught, but I brought him in as a little guy. She's an asshole. So two of them act just like carpet plights on the girls because they're like, maybe they might nip or whatever. But they're perfectly fine. He's just a psychotic little, so I might be replacing him. But hopefully I do what Ryan does is like something I, if I ever get a blackface wet lip to be in my collection sitting on a clutch of eggs, I may die right there. I might just dissolve it and you know, edit it. It's over. So it would be like my dream. They're such cool snakes. I'll tell you a cool, you know, one of my cooler white lip stories. So this is not, this doesn't have like a profound moral or like, you know, but it's just something to chew on because I've been chewing on it for several years now. I remember one cold night. This is when I was in New Orleans. When I was a grad student, I lived one. I had a one bedroom apartment, which meant that I slept in the living room and I had a snake room. And I had a futon that was adjacent to the snake room wall. And I remember like falling asleep. Like I didn't really have, I had a space heater that I used in the snake room. It was a lot cheaper not to heat the rest of my house. So I just remember I could like, practically see my breath in the room that I was in. And it was cold. And I had just introduced these white lips and they were in a big enclosure just on the opposite side of the wall. And I remembered, I remember hearing them hissing at each other and not like an aggressive like, like my douchebag male was like hissing at my female. It was almost like a, it was kind of like a soft like, like a call and answer like they were responding to each other. And I just remember like, yeah. And I just remember like, like thinking, you know, certainly if they were scared or if they were buffing or if they were, you know, striking or something like that, it just didn't sound any day. It was, it was more of that calm, like, you know, if you have like a, like a python or a bow that's crawling right on your arms and something that is kind of let out like a relaxedness and it's like they're just talking to you. That's like kind of how it was. And sort of with this call and answer for hours where they were just kind of like talking like that. And, you know, I realized some of it might have just been they were moving or they were expelling error through their, through their glottis. And it was just happening to make noise that was in the frequency that I could hear. But, you know, we've said for years that snakes are deaf and we're challenging that idea. Snakes do have a tympanum. They do have the same internal structures in the head that allow them to hear sound. We thought for years that it was probably only lower frequencies. And there's some data now where we're questioning that. And, and I've, I've thought, I've gone back to that over and over and over again. And I've thought like, could they have been courting each other? Like, could they have been communicating in some way that didn't really make sense to me at the time? But like, was there maybe more to this vocalization then? And, and I don't know, you know, I'm sure people would probably disagree and you're, you were probably really high. But, but I don't know, you know, I go. And I swear to God, man. I've gone back to that over and over again. And I, and I've wondered if there was maybe something more to that. I can't, I can't say, but I just remember thinking they were, if nothing else, they were just such cool snakes to have. Oh, and maybe I'm wrong. But when you had your adults weren't, aren't they very like, mate selective? Isn't that initial of those? I did. Because, and it just seems to be, and that's something I actually talked with Ryan about is they seem to be like compatible. And if the pair isn't compatible, it's never going to happen. Even if they are compatible, it still might never happen. But you have a better chance if they're compatible. So, um, I had two pairs of blackface white lips at one point. And the one pair was never compatible. And those were the one that turners by any chance? Yes. One pair was bought those snakes. You asked why seriously. It seriously was brought away from buying those snakes. But remember how I said, I was, I could be my own heir because I wasn't turning on the heat. That was a why I didn't buy those snakes. But I know exactly the pair you're talking about. And I almost, I almost owned those animals. Yeah. They, they were, they were sight. The male was psychotic. And we had two females, and we had a female and a male are own. So when they got, when we got that pair, I'm like, screw it. We'll swap because then obviously they're not breeding with each other. So we'll change it up. And we did. And the one pair was actually getting along very nicely. But then the other pair, which was the male and our big ass female, they decided like one day at three a.m. So keeping them in my bedroom, that they'd had enough of it with each other. So I woke up to them like throwing each other against the glass and biting each other. I'm like, Oh, shit. So I actually had to separate them and they, they messed each other up. I mean, they, they never saw each other again. I never got the female up to snuff again to attempt to breed. The male was just pissed at the world after that point. So it was never, they were definite compatibility issues. The, the golds that I have, they were all compatible with each other. They never really fought, but they just never bred either. They, they just stared at me. So we decided to redo the entire projects with tiny little ones. They'll be raised like in-house and it's a better shot. Plus those ends were all 10 feet long, like huge animals that had skipped from people, owner to owner to owner. So it was, it was never going to happen. So yeah, they were big. Yeah. Yeah, everything, everything to you. So yeah, that is true. That is true. That is true. I, I missed those snakes though. Yeah. Yeah, one, I, I remember going to Owen had what he called site B where he kept all the, that goes, all the crazy species. You, as you will, like the white lips and scrubs and, you know, olive pythons and all these like, you know, species that most people don't care about type of thing. Right. But Chris pulled that out, that, that white lip out and it's just striking and admit it. I'm like, oh, no. I don't want this. Yeah. He just loved it. He's just like, oh, yeah, so cool. Beautiful. He's like chewing on it. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, there are cool snakes. Yes. Very cool. They're, they're very cool snakes. I could, you could talk me into some of those again. Again, though, that's a species where if I could do it over, if I could do it over, again, that was where I feel like I was less mature in my, in my snakekeeping, if you will. I was, not a, not a Jedi yet. I was, I was, you know, I was, I was keeping a lot of, especially the, you know, if I needed a larger, larger enclosure on the budget, I was on it. I mean, by all estimation, I was breeding a lot of snakes. I was doing well for myself, but I was, I was cutting corners and I had snakes like that in large 50 to 75 gallon aquariums and stuff like that. And if I could do it over again, I would have, you know, like what I'm doing with the boy guy would have much larger enclosures. I would be dedicating, you know, entire closets, entire rooms, even, you know, to, to really giving them the type of different strata that they need, the different perch elevations, different temperature ranges, different, you know, types of hides. I, I really think that that's, and I'd be interested in Ryan's thoughts, but I would bet that he's probably giving them a lot more than I was. That could be wrong, but I know when I talked to Tom Keogin and, and granted, you know, this was conversations from years ago and maybe some of the thinking's changed, but he was telling me about some people he knew that we're even having a limited success, preliminary success with Belen's back then. And it seems to me they were just giving them so much more space, you know, and, and when he was having success with, with his white lips early on, you know, he was saying he was just giving them so much more room. He was letting them be snakes since we're not, these were not shoebox snakes, these were snakes that really needed, like a, like a big environment. And I'm sure that had to play a little bit into the success as well. Yeah, I guess that, that's interesting. They do move a lot. Yeah, well, to your point, I mean, some, I mean, the, some of these blackface, almost 10 feet long. I mean, that's not something you can cram into a, a little glass box or a big note that they're gonna, I mean, they, they just, they need more than that, you know? Yeah, to be honest, it's like, you got to set them up like, I'm like an olive python. You got to, yeah, like cage wise diameter kind of felt like cage measurement wise. They got to be, it's got to be big, in my opinion. Right. Right. Even if the snake is that big. I will defend the python people, you know, they're, they're anthill snakes. They're, they're termite mountain snakes. Very, very happy to live literally curled up on a ball in a dark place. They'll emerge debris, they'll emerge to feed, they'll emerge, you know, around, but, you know, I mean, for the most part, they're, they're happy. They feel content where they're protected and warm inside a box. But to the extent that that type of housing has sort of dictated the way that we, you know, keep so many other species, it's really unfortunate because, you know, that's not how probably the vast majority of snakes need to be kept. Yeah, you know, that would agree. I think to think that, you know, first, attracted me to Moralia in general, both carpets and chondros is the fact that they were out in the open and that you could, you know, have this python that pretty much perch and, you know, you could see it and check it out. And, you know, I guess as the collection grew in space and all the stuff, it's like, I keep my animals much smaller than, than most people. So, they're, you know, I have them in like, you know, vision, division racks and stuff. And I think they're quite content in there, but I always felt that part of the reason for caging is more for the keeper than the kept, you know, like, you want to see it, you know, it's not necessarily better for the snake and sometimes maybe stresses them more. I find that with, it's weird. Matt was always talking to me about, you know, bluffing short tails and keeping them. They like to be crammed in. Like, you know, you take them and put them in a bigger, a bigger, as you're moving them up and raising them up, they kind of stress out sometimes and then they don't eat. They're like in a bigger enclosure. But I guess look at the type of snake that is, you know, but I don't know. The more, more like, when I move my, when I finally move and move the collection, I probably move to a lot of like cages, like diamond pythons. Like, you know, I don't use that. Like, my diamond pythons are in, I move them to cages because I want to see them. You know? Yeah, exactly. That's another thing. I was going to say interesting enough that I would, I would go with what you're, uh, what you're saying with the, uh, with the species that you're keeping is that you notice these habits like so when the light clicks on at six o'clock in the morning, you know, it goes up to this one part of the perch and it perches there and it stays there for about, you know, maybe an hour or so that it moves down and, you know, when the light gets all the time, it comes back up. It's pretty neat. So yeah, it really is. I'm sorry. And you're absolutely right. I mean, that's another thing that like has always boggled me. It's like, you know, we gravitate towards just the most stunning holes of our species, the most brightly patterned, the most colorful, the most, you know, the most robust. I mean, just these, and then we put them in a box under the bed, you know, where they don't get. Yeah, we never see it again. You know, honestly, that was one of my frustrations and this was an entirely keeper error. You know, I, when I was keeping a lot of these gorgeous locality milk snakes, it was like, you know, I was drawn by all the guys posting these incredible pictures of them or, or even better, the in situ pictures, you know, from, you know, the field helpers. And I, man, and I had entire boxes, entire piles of shoe boxes, you know, and even if you, even if they were see through, I mean, the snake was still under a log somewhere, you'd never see it. And that's what I loved about the animals, you know, that were, are some willing to bask and perch and show off. But, you know, I was a few years ago, I was down in Brazil, I was doing some veterinary stuff down there when I was still a student, but I remember I got to go to this awesome place called Institute of Bhutan Pahn, and I spent about a month there. If you were in the venomous community, you would instantly know the name. It's where they produce all of the anti-venin for pretty much the entire country of Brazil. So they've got like entire collections of hundreds of bothrop species and all these, all these different venomous, they have an entire veterinary division just dedicated to their spiders. They've got widows, they've got reclusive, they've got, you know, 16 different species of scorpions and they're, they're literally a veterinarian down there who just manages the invertebrate collection and helps to like, you know, literally extract venom from those animals, but they're really cool. You know, they knew that I was like interested in, you know, the herb stuff, the creepy crawly, and so like they'd take me around and show me stuff, but of course they had to show me some of the local things. I'll never forget, you know, one of my, it was like my first week there and this guy like pointed up into this palm tree. Like the type of palm tree, like you really kind of need binoculars to see the top of it. I mean, it was one of these just giant 60, 80 foot tall Brazilian, you know, probably 100 year old palm trees. And I'm looking at like this bunch of coconuts and he was like, no, no, no, look closely. And I realized that this massive ball at the top of the palm tree was not coconuts. It was this huge boa. It was just just a wild, you know, Brazilian boa constrictor constrictor. And I'm looking up at this thing and thinking to myself, the thing's got to weigh 60 pounds, 80 pounds, you know, and there it was at the top of the canopy basking in direct sunlight, you know, and I was trying to think like, you don't even think of that. It's like a species like that. You know, you think of that as like, yeah, people keep them in racks. You know, people ram and keep them in racks. And these are, I mean, these are snakes that even at that weight are climbers, they're baskers, they're utilizing that space. I mean, think how muscular a snake like that is. You know, they're not muscular to sit on a floor, you know, they're climbers, they're constrictors. And it's funny too, because I've, you know, when I designed my herb board at Churchlands, and I haven't really talked much about the clinical work, but, you know, when I came there, I got to design the entire herb board. It's all built by habitat systems. It's just an incredible state of the art. That's awesome. My boss was really cool. He let me design it from scratch. I worked with Tom and the people over there at Nigel over at Habitat Systems. You know, Pat was amazing at communicating with me and helping me to get exactly what I wanted, but they built like this beautiful custom ICU just for snakes. And of course, you know, of course, I created it to be very versatile and I can have, you know, climbing species and burrowing species and a little bit of everything. But, you know, I definitely, it was a little biased towards like our boreals, like, you know, some of the, so those are some of the higher-end snakes that people are willing to pay a little bit more for. And I really want, and something that you really need specialty terrariums for. You know, you can't, they're not ball pythons. They need very specialized care. So I have some really, like, nice, you know, beautiful habitat systems like our boreal units. But, you know, of course, not everything I see is an arboreal snake. So, you know, I see a lot of, you know, very common BCI and stuff like that to come in, you know, pet store snakes. Well, the units aren't always full either. And so just for grins, especially after those types of experiences, when I get boa constrictors in, I'll set them up. Guess what they do, guys? They perch. They perch, man. These boa constrictors, I mean, they bask like anything else. You know, people are like, oh, I wish I could have an arboreal. It's like, did you have a boa constrictor? You have an arboreal. Set it up like an arboreal watch approach. You know, they won't always perch. They won't always perch. But, you know, they're, but yeah, certainly they'll take advantage of that space when it's ready, when he wants to, you know, when he feels secure enough. Especially some of the smaller ones are hilarious. It puts them, you know, like the neon's in there that are just a few months old, and they've got these huge big branches. And you'd think like, you know, that's the type of thing. You'd post a picture in some asshole on the internet with other branches way too big for that. Well, guess what? He's perching. He's perching. He doesn't want to perch. Yeah, right? You're right. You're right. Because there's someone that goes out in the wild and makes sure that all the branches that are not the proper size are nowhere near this animal. Like, right, branch. You know, you might, if I gave him an option to perch somewhere smaller, he very well might like that. But guess what? Given the choice between your shoebox and this big branch, he'd rather be perching. He's having a ball. He's having a ball. I think that stuff is really telling. And it's, you know, to go back to your original thing about like how my thoughts about keeping snakes has changed as a veterinarian. I guess these are the types of observations I get to make now. And it's just, I don't know if it's changed, but it's definitely shaping in a way that I look at once, you know? I think that there is, you know, we used to say like, if you can keep, like they're eating, they're pooping, they made eggs, must be happy. You know, that would use your criteria. If it didn't die and it reproduced, then this is as good as it gets, you know? And I, I would challenge reptile keepers, and I challenge myself every day to, you know, think like, okay, that's, that's where we were a few years ago. Let's push it forward. How can we make it better? You know? And I don't mean like, bigger clutches and fatter snakes, you know? I mean, like, how can we, you know, we're challenging ideas about UV. I think probably more animals need UV than we even imagine, you know? And there's some guys at University of Illinois that have really pushed some of the science forward that have shown that animals like leopard geckos and nocturnal species that, for years, we've said these guys don't need UV light. Well, we've shown that if you expose them to UV light, there are blood work parameters that absolutely skyrocket. And it stands to reason that the moon transmits a ton of UV light. It's bouncing sunlight directly off of its surface and there's a ton of UV light that comes from that. They absolutely use it. Some of the same parameters, parameters haven't been shown to be true in ball pythons, but, you know, I was talking to a guy recently that pointed out, you know, but, you know, you're looking at things like vitamin D and vitamin D analogs, those are not the only things that are potentially upregulated. I think that there's, you know, these are even ball pythons are out at night, you know, just because we don't see some of those things elevated doesn't mean that they're not using light. I mean, reptiles descend millions and millions of years, you know, where their world was completely dictated by light and dark, you know, just like birds, which are also no reptiles, you know? I mean, these are, these are animals that strongly use a photo period. I think, I think we deprive a lot of our animals of light. And I'll say, by the way, I think there's a place for it, like, if I get a stressed green tree python that comes into the clinic, no, I'm not blasting it with the light, you know? I think that a lot of animals do exist in the understory, you know? I'm not saying that every snake needs a light on it, but I'm saying I think every snake needs an opportunity periodically to get outside and bask, you know? I think that's, that's something we deprive the bunch. It's a, it's a very natural thing for them that they don't typically get. You know, I could get up on these soap boxes, but you know, I, case in point, I think there's a lot that is, is changing. And I think our attitude about keeping snakes is going to change dramatically. And I think if we want to stay ahead of the reptile, the anti reptile groups, the animal rights groups, I think we need to be staying on top of that too. Yeah, you know, you hit a, you hit a point, but you know, that point to me is like something that really hits home because I get, to get ridiculed, I get my, my, my balls busted all the time about, like always thinking of like these crazy things. Like, for instance, last week when we had this carp around table, you know, I'm talking about do we need vitamin supplements for, for, you know, we were talking about carpet pythons, but it could be pythons in general. Like, you know, what about a varied diet? Like, you know, it does, are they, are they getting everything they need from, I don't know, to me, if I'm eating, and I know that, that again, they're a snake and, and, you know, I'm a person, you know, mammal, reptile, different, da, da, da, da, da, da. But like, it just seems odd to me that animals that, you know, and they're in the wild, they're, they're getting, you know, different prey items that just help, like, you know, you'll see animals just drop dead, you'll see animals like slugs, you know, and we just brush it off as, oh, well, yeah, just, you know, just the male got too warm, or, you know what I mean, just to, to go through answers that we've always had, it's never like pushing the envelope, you know, and do they, do they need you be, you be like, you know, it just seems like if you take diamond pythons again, animals that are evolved around the sun, you know, they're dark because they go and they bask to absorb, you know, you know, absorb heat because they're in such cold temperatures, it just seems strange to, like, that's what made me take them out of, like, keeping, even though they're still, you know, young, I just couldn't keep them in a rack because it just seems to me that those animals need that light to bask, you know, I don't know. Yeah, that's it. It's a great point, and, you know, I think, and you're absolutely right, I think sometimes you take a little bit too literally when we say, well, these guys are whole prey carnivores, so they get everything they need from their food. It looks like to me, that is partially true, you know, probably everything they need to subsist to survive, but you're absolutely right. I mean, in the wild, a lot of species, not all species, but a lot of species have hugely varied diets, or they have, they have dynamic diets that change throughout the course of their life, you know, I think we talked about, we touched on this with the green tree pythons, you know, there's some evidence that, you know, juvenile green tree pythons probably opportunistically taken vertebrates, you know, when was the last time I offered invertebrates to our, to most of our captive snakes, especially pythons, you know. Right, you know, and does this have developmental implications or implications for pubescence, or we don't know, you know, is what it comes down to, you know, am I going to say, well, we need to be supplementing all of our green tree pythons in each of crickets, like, I don't know if I'm doing that far, you know, and, you know, you could bust my balls if I said that, but I certainly don't think anybody should be busting your balls for, for questioning, you know, whether or not, you know, feeding nothing but an entirely rodent diet for the entire life of a snake is, you know, necessarily best, especially when they're, you know, a rat snake, maybe, for good reason, but, you know, not, I mean, not a python, not a tropical species that has, you know, so many different opportunities to take, you know, such a wide range of mammalian amphibian reptilian invertebrate prey, you know, you know, I mean, could they be missing something? I think the answer is absolutely, could, I mean, sir. It's about optimization, you know, it's like, you can, you can have an animal that, yeah, it does, it survives, and it thrives, and it breathes, and, you know, that's great, and it lives, but is it optimized, is it like, are you optimizing every aspect and really getting that? I mean, it works with people and everything else, why would it work? I don't know, just, you know, you are with me, you know, you're, you know, Mark Mitchell, the same guy at Illinois who is pioneering a lot of this research, you know, he gave his presentation at one of these ARD conferences a few years ago, and, you know, really was quite passionate about it. Mark's a very dynamic speaker anyway, if you ever get a chance to see him talk, or read any of his papers, I mean, he's brilliant, but, you know, he is very quick-witted to, and I remember somebody, probably somebody who kept a few snakes, probably ball pythons, you know, let's keep picking on them, you know, but, you know, in response to his, you know, talk about UV, had said, you know, the very interesting results, sir, but, you know, we've kept these snakes for decades, we have multigenerations, they continue to breed and thrive, and, you know, I don't think you've demonstrated that these animals really need this, you know, experience would seem to show otherwise. And he basically said, I mean, put it right to him and said, listen, if you're proactive as a breeder is just to produce more snakes, and you're comfortable doing this, that's fine. But he said, I'm a veterinarian and I'm a champion of animal welfare, and if I can, if there's anything that I can do to push the envelope forward and make life and captivity better and more enjoyable and healthier and longer for these animals, then that is my project and basically just boom, shut up. You know, and I thought that was, I love that. I was like, I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, why do we keep these animals? You know, like, I mean, absolutely, they do something for us, but, but to meet, two, part of the enjoyment is, is me doing something for them, you know, me giving back to them, me providing an enriching environment where, you know, I, I'm happy if they're happy, if they're sitting in a tub and they're not thriving and they're not interesting to me, then they're no fun, you know, but if I get to bring a little, you know, at a fundamental level, that's what it's about, right, is bringing a little piece of nature into your home. And if you have any animal that's just sitting there tail hanging and miserable and doesn't want to eat, you know, and is dropping prey like that's, I mean, it's stressful for everybody, you know, that's not why you bring an animal in. And if you can make their, their life, their environment more enriching and more interesting, I think that's what it's all about. So, you know, I say, could as do you push it, push it forward, ask the dumb questions because 10 years from now, somebody will think it's brilliant and we'll probably all be doing it differently. Right. Yeah. Awesome. Now, we're, we're cutting close on time, but real quick, I wanted to talk to you because I sort of have a bit of a boa bug at the, at the moment, um, I find that. The dull picture of a pretty boa and now you don't. Yeah. No, I, I find, I've always been fascinated by boa. I always like them, um, but, you know, as in one of the questions that I sent you is one of the things that, that is in the back of my mind is this IBD and like it seems like we'll talk about boas with just IBD. Yeah. I always sort of steered me in the direction away from them. I have, I have a couple pairs of boas, but, um, you had, I forget what the, what the ones that you're working with, legacy red line, litter, what, what is that? Yeah. Well, so what are, what is the red line or what are the tamaleepus boas or what? Uh, what does it all mean? Yeah. All, all of the above. What is the meaning of life? Good. Um, continue. Yeah. Well, you see, you probably know legacy reptiles, right? Uh, Joel, Joel and Orlando Diaz. Uh, yeah. Orlando actually is a veterinarian. Um, Joel was a veterinary technician that works with his brother. Uh, both of them awesome guys have gotten to know, uh, Joel, uh, Joel, sorry. I call him Joel Joel. Uh, I'm not pronouncing it properly. Joel is, uh, awesome. He's, he's been very good to me and taught me a lot at the, and I've enjoyed talking to him at the shows. Um, he is, uh, they inherited a lot of Gus Rundt for his stuff, inherited slash purchased. Um, you know, that was kind of how I think that's where their name comes from. And you could ask him, but I think that was the idea was they were kind of carrying on Gus's incredible legacy, uh, and, and producing incredible legacy quality book instructors, and that was the whole idea behind their operation. Um, but yeah, that sleep always come from cloud forests of Northern Mexico. Um, some say all the way up into even like Southern California, but, um, they were a, a, not, not an undocumented locale, but not a locale that was represented in captivity at all. Um, as of a few years ago, I think Gus and some other guys like literally swapped him across the border. Uh, there are no papers that go with them. Unfortunately, so you can't say, Oh, these are real. These are authentic, but, um, you know, the stories go back to, you know, some of the original group that had them. And that's where they came from. That's where they descend from. And, um, so Joelle and his brother have a handful of pairs, and they have this one pair in particular, but the male and the female, um, just have these fire orange bellies. And, um, and so, you know, I was looking at the groups when I decided to, to get into these, and, uh, he had a handful of males and females from this red line. And, um, I guess I'm kind of one of these people that like, I know this is another one of those controversial topics we could spend hours on, but if I can avoid inbreeding, I do, especially if I've got, you know, really rare, unrepresented locale, I'd rather, you know, kind of start with as, as diverse a gene pool as possible. And, um, you know, so I absolutely bought, you know, gorgeous female from this red line. And I mean, right off the bat, she's got a, just a, a fire orange belly. I mean, she's just a stunner. And the male has got all the same dorsal markings, and we'll continue to change and, and get more beautiful, but her colors and the pictures of the adults were just stunning. So, it's a, um, the quote-unquote red line just refers to this one pairing they have from these two exceptional animals. Um, and, uh, and I have one of those in my collection, and then the other one, uh, is, is from a, a separate pairing, same locale, but different lineage. So, I've got, you know, an unrelated pair at the moment. Um, and, and between you and me too, I've been under a little bit of pressure. Shell's been encouraging me to sell them just because, um, I've, I've not had, have not been working with as many boas. I just have the hog islands at this point. And, um, you know, even, even that project has been one that is, uh, like I'm not planning to breed them right now, just because there's a very limited market for hogs. I think the tamaleepas will be, I'm, I'm hoping and expecting would be much more interesting, especially, you know, most of the local people, but the hog islands are, are pretty small, and we've got so many condors up and coming just size wise. She's been kind of discouraging me from taking on any other snakes that are going to continue to get large. So, they're yearlings, and they're coming up in size, but, um, you know, if you were interested, we could certainly talk some more because I don't know if that's a project I'm going to keep forever, even though it was when I was really excited about a year ago. And then I still think it's super cool. Um, but, but was in general in terms of like, IBD, I don't know that I could shed any light that's going to make it like suddenly more clear. It's very, very murky waters, even for veterinarians right now. Um, and part of that issue is we're getting so much new information, um, particularly telling talk I saw Rachel, Dr. Rachel Marshan gave, uh, at ARAV last year. Um, she's a virologist, and, um, with the full disclaimer that a lot of her lectures are like 90% completely over my head. Um, you know, she's got these phylogenetic trees up there, and my mind is just wondering, and I'm like, this is, you know, like, I mean, she's brilliant, but it's like trying to make it, like, try to make sense of all the information is sometimes overwhelming, but at least one thing that she showed that was really kind of shocking was that some of the blood samples they were taking, and these were not from symptomatic boas. These were just from boas in, in Europe. Um, that had presented for some of the reasons where they just happened to be doing blood draws, they tested like some hundreds, something samples, and they found some shockingly high number. It was like upwards of like 40 or 50% were testing PCR positive for IBD, in other words. Oh my god. Yeah, which makes you wonder like, I mean, I don't want to make light of this like, potentially like devastating virus, but at the same time it was like, you know, it turned out to be one of those things like crypto where, you know, when something devastating happens, we can point our fingers at crypto, but then if you actually go looking for it, it's way more prevalent than labor thought, and it's just sometimes we get unlucky. Um, and I don't know, you know, I don't mean to simplify it and distill it down to that. That's not like the nugget to take and regurgitate forever, but that's kind of like where I've been with this lately is like, you know, I don't know what to make of this. You know, we, um, I had been talking with a friend of mine that has been working with Pete Call and we were talking about, you know, like maybe just for grands because he had actually expressed some interest in like, I want to test these in anything that's positive. I just want to get rid of, which I think is actually very foresighted of him, um, or at least responsible thinking about that. Uh, and that, that idea to the best of my knowledge hasn't really gone anywhere. Um, there was another veterinarian that was interested in working on a project and I think funding was the big issue because he's got several hundred something snakes and that's like $50 a piece to test them and, um, or maybe something, I think he's got thousands of snakes actually. It was, anyway, it was a little bit logistically and, uh, and financially prohibitive. Um, but, but it was a neat idea nonetheless and it's, you know, the other thing is like, God forbid, you know, and what if 50% of your collection is I'd be depositing them, you know? I don't, I don't know what to make at this point. Eric, I, um, I really don't know. I mean, if I get an animal that's symptomatic, it's thick and I test positive for it, you know, we kind of have an algorithm from there, but as for like how prevalent is it in the United States and is it something I need to be scared of when I buy a boa? I would, I mean, my gut inclination just from years of experience keeping these snakes is like, yeah, no, just quarantine and be really careful. You know, um, on the other hand, uh, there's still so much that we don't know, so much that we don't know. Um, I think that, uh, you know, I mean, I keep just a handful of boas and I'm not like, I'm not like buying and trading all the time and I'm not, I'm not trading boas like ball pythons and you know, like livestock where I'm trading them every two months for new stock that, you know, I have just a handful of snakes that I got from small hobby breeders like myself that I quarantine properly have, you know, um, and I guess I, you know, I've, I've treated those animals like they're pretty low risk. I will breed them. I will, I will sell them. I, you know, represented as they are, uh, I haven't really planned on testing, but maybe I should. Um, you know, I guess long story short, I wouldn't discourage you from getting boas, but it's certainly something to think about, especially if you have a large python collection. You know, I do. That's what you do. You know, it's like, yeah, it, it, it, I don't know. I, I really, like I said, right now I have a basically my rule has been, and I don't know if this is a good rule or not, but if I see somebody that has boas that I know personally, um, that also works with pythons and their pythons seem to be okay, then to me, that's sort of a, a good parameter to say, okay, well, okay. Like, I give it a shot. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's reasonable, but that's actually an interesting point. Um, you know, because I have, I have a rack full of, you know, half boas, half boathons, and I haven't had any shoes yet, not come wood, but again, you know, I'm moving things in and out, and I've had my hogs for half a, actually more than half a decade now, you know, and, um, and I came from a small friend. I got them directly from, right. Oh my god, Vin Russo, some, who knows, but, um, right, you know, stuff, okay. Well, we could definitely talk more about the Tamaleefas. I think they're, I think they're a really, really neat locale. Really cool cloud for our species. Yeah, definitely, uh, definitely cool for sure. So, Owen, I'm just going to hand on the, uh, closing questions real quick before we just get cut off. Uh, so go for it out. All right. So Brad, if you could work with any species without any type of restriction, be it legal or money, what would it be and why? Oh, I think I got asked this before, and, and, I don't, I don't know if my answers have changed or not. Man, I'm still dying to work with Teotara. Uh, you know, I, I'm a snake guy at heart, but I just think that would be so cool, you know, and we have, we have lizards and we have snakes and we have turtles and we've seen like a million variations on that. I just can't imagine getting to like hold another, like, like tetrapod reptile that actually doesn't fall into any of those groups. You know, that completely unique that like, kind of looks like a lizard in a picture from a distance, but is way more dinosaur than anything else. You know, I just think they would be so neat. I actually have some friends that have been to New Zealand that have worked with them. Um, I'm like infinite, infinitely jealous. I hope at some point in my career, I get a chance to see them first hand, but, um, yeah, I think those are super cool. Um, who, who doesn't like dream of boelen spike thumbs? I would love to be able to work with them too. Um, I, I just, I couldn't right now, you know, space limitations and things like that. I think, again, that's one of those pieces where I wanted to do it. I would want to do it right with huge naturalistic, you know, my humidity, cool temperature, you know, kind of high elevation, cloud forest enclosures. And, and, and I can't right now, but I mean, kudos to, oh, and you've got some, don't you? What, boelens? Yeah. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, they're, they're one of those things that I thought it would be all, it would be awesome, but I, the money that you for the babies versus the space that they need and, you know, it's one of those, I can fit two boelens cages in that corner, or I can fit like five carpet fights on cages. So it's, it's one of those things. Uh, I'm waiting for Eric to bite because then he'll get them and then he'll be like, these are awesome, told them and then I'll be done. So what, what I keep trying to stop myself right now is, uh, if, if I get left alone for too long, P more pythons are going to be here and then I'm going to screw. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Those are, those are cool. Super cool. Yeah. Yeah. But, but I think it's really, you know, we all have like the shortlist, which includes 19 species. I mean, I could go on and on, but those are two that are up there, you know, yeah, there's all, I'm still, I'm looking for my next healer. I love healers. I think those are super, super cool, highly underrated animals. Um, you know, I'm a little disappointed by like all the people on the internet that like post pictures of the new healer, the new baby healer that just bought and they're like totally free handling it. And you know, it's like one of these species where it's like, you almost look like a door when you were in gloves, but it's like, guys, it's a venomous animal, like please don't be bad. You know, it is, you know, I know people don't die from it, but it's, it is. Don't be stupid. I used to work with them at the zoo that I worked with and they were so much fun. And yeah. So easily defeated with two hooks, like under their armpits, they're like, yes, yes. And then you pick them up and they're like, damn it. And they just kind of hang there. And I'm like, I'll just sit here for hours. All right, fine. We're going some blaze. So, and that's, I would love a pair of them because I thought they were so cool. So, all right, Brad, if you could go herping anywhere in the world without restrictions, where would you go? And what would you hope to find? Okay. I mean, well, it's kind of a no-brainer. I probably go straight to a pop one again here to look for what I just said. But both the animals you just saw, yeah. But I mean, you could, you could drop me down with a, you know, some short shorts and some knee-high leather boots and a snake hook, just about any jungle in the world that I'd be pretty happy just to truck around and look for, look whatever there is to find. I'll tell you what, too. I have, I think crocodilians are really cool. And I have admittedly, like, a lot less experience with them. I could tell you some funny, funny stories of me with crocodilians. But, you know, that would be, that would be cool, too, is to go and see, you know, some good Andy or something and season Gary, I'll see something like really unusual. I know there's a few species out there that unfortunately are really, really struggling and I'm a decline. And it would be neat to be able to see them in the wild while we still can. That would be cool. I would like that, actually. All right. So, if someone wanted to contact you, what is the best way to reach you? Do you have a website, a Facebook page? Yeah, actually, this is a really great question because, and my apologies, my apologies if, if the people who did contact me are listening. Facebook has this, like, dreaded other folder and I think they recently renamed it, but it's just a shitty. And it's basically where, like, if you're not my Facebook friend and you send me a message, I might not see it for weeks. And I recently found, like, a few questions about, like, my snake is dying, like, how do I send it to you? It's like January 3rd. I'm like, well, that's awesome. So, I look like, yeah, like, I look like an incompetent douche that, like, doesn't care that your animal is, like, not doing well. But, yeah. So, there's a lot of ways to reach me. Probably, actually, this is a really good question. If it's a clinical question, if it's a question about the health of your animal or about sending me an animal or about doing a phone console with me to talk in detail about a sick animal, I would contact me through the clinic. That's the fastest way to reach me because I'm at work almost every day. And the name of the clinic is called Churchland Animal Clinic. We have a website that I'm really praying we'll get cooler right now. It's a very cookie cutter. We've got a new breakfast manager who's kind of revamping a lot of that, which I'm excited about. But it's a very cookie cutter website right now. It doesn't have any reptiles on it. So, if you just see, like, a bunch of dogs and cats, we're pictures of, like, female veterinarians, which we don't even have right now. It actually is our clinic. It's churchlandanimalclinic.com. I think my name is on there somewhere, but you can, you can just request a, like, an email, or you can request an appointment. And there's, like, a thing all through the website that you can do that. There's also the phone numbers on the website. And I'll give that to you now. It's Area Code 757-484-2733. And again, that's Area Code 757-484-2733. If you call that number, you'll get the receptionist and just explain, you know, and say, "Okay, I've got a reptile, whatever I wanted to talk to Dr. Brad about setting up a console, about shipping it to him." The receptions are actually very well trained in, like, handling a lot of that. They may not be really familiar with the species if you've got something really unusual, but, you know, how to set up the appointments for me, or how to arrange the shipping, or whatever. So, or how to set up a from console or whatever. So, that's probably the quickest way to reach me. If it's just, "Do you want to talk snakes?" And this is the other thing that I've run into that's a little weird lately, is, like, sometimes people just want to chat or ask kind of a cool question about breeding and stuff like that. And I'm not against that. Like, I was a snake keeper long before I was a vet, and I don't mind people reaching out to me out of the blue, cold calling me, like, "Hey, what worked for you? Hey, what do you think about this?" Like, I can chat snakes all day, but don't take advantage of it, please. It takes a lot of time to get a lot of random questions, where, you know, it starts as, like, friendly, just shooting the shit about some snakes, and then, like, it suddenly turns into like, "Oh, by the way, what do you think this is?" And they're snakes, like, blowing bubbles. And I'm like, "I can't help finding the picture." Like, "What would you do more?" But I am, you know, I'm my full name on Facebook, Bradley J. Waffa. And of course, Waffa has reptiles. I respond to messages on both of those things. If you're not my Facebook friend already, it might go to the other folder, and apparently, it might be weeks before I see it, but, you know, be persistent or try to make one of the other places, you know, or friend to me, and then, you know, we'll talk some more, for sure. Cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. Well, thank you for having me. This is always fun for me. I don't mind this at all. No, it's cool. And nobody's, nobody's, like, called it. That's why we, you know, probably when we get people calling in, that's when it'll get really old people will call in, and, you know, you're Dr. Brad's an idiot, and it's not the right temperature. He saw, he's blown smoke. People start calling me out, and I'm going to get really embarrassed and have to, but no, this is a lot of fun. Thanks again for having me. It was a pleasure and an honor, seriously. And yeah, I'll have to look more into Carpetfest and be really fun to come down and see you guys. And if I don't catch you there, then Shallen and I are hoping to be at Timley again this year. So we'll look forward to catching up. Definitely. All right. And there's, there's multiple Carpetfest. So find your closest. So there you go. Cool. Well, thanks again, guys. All right. Well, you have a great night. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Brad. All right. Take care. Bye. Okay. Oh, and we were against the clock. We'll run quickly real quick. That was an awesome show. Good stuff. Absolutely. We'll have to have them back sometime. Shout out real quick. You're looking for pics of Jag Carpetpythons. I'm working on the website, and I need pictures of Jag Carpetpythons. We're going through morph by morph and hooking up the section. And we're going to link the episode that we do on the individual morph, etc, etc. So if you got some pictures of Jag Carpet, it could be adults, neonates, different lines, bloodlines, not bloodlines. Just grab that. Different lines. Send them on over. You can send them to me on Facebook or email them at info@merrelipythonradio.com. Give a shout out to GTP Keeper Radio. They're going to be doing a show with Tim Morris on the 31st, January 31st. So be sure to check that out. As far as us, we're going to play timeradio.com. You can check us out on iTunes if you don't listen to the show live. If you have any questions, comments, guest suggestions, etc, etc. You can send it to info@merrelipythonradio.com. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. We're ready to pipe down radio. There you go. Do us a hand and help share the show and spread the word so people can get good information from these great breeders and keepers that come on the show. As far as myself, ebmerrelia, ebmerrelia.com. If you want to get in contact with me, Eric@ebmerrelia.com. Go ahead. rogue-reptiles.com, rogue-reptiles on facebook.com. I'm going to be an host. If you want something call me. That's all we have for you tonight. Goodbye. See you all next week. God damn it. Go. [laughter] [silence]