Morelia Python Radio

Australia herping with Scott Eipper

In this episode we are joined by Scott Eipper as we discuss his adventures herping in the Outback. Scott has conducted wildlife surveys, relocated problem reptiles, has gathered genetic material for various institutions and musuems. Scott has written a number of papers, articles and the book "A Guide to Australian Snakes in captivity- Elapids and Colubrids. If you have ever dreamed about what it is like to herp in the Outback this is the episode that you won't want to miss.

Duration:: 3h 0m
Broadcast on:: 28 Oct 2015
Audio Format:: other

Hey Chad Brown here, you may remember me as a linebacker in NFL, when I was 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 Markham 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. Feel it as a link so we can feature outstanding breeders and hobbyists just like you. The reptile report offers powerful branding and marketing exposure for your business and the best part is it's free. You're a buyer or breeder, you gotta check out the reptile report marketplace. 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Use ship your reptiles.com to take advantage of our discounted priority overnight shipping rates. The materials needed to ship your reptiles successfully, live customer support in 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] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm trying to sell as much bread as I possibly can so I get a huge bonus. I mean I'm just throwing bread in people shopping carts. I don't care. It's like bread. You always need bread. Just like bread. I'm going to pray for so many storms this winter because you know what everybody needs bread in a snowstorm. That's true. So yeah, I mean to see these animals that we keep and I guess to a certain extent we sort of take for granite, you know, and we work with them every day. And I guess to see them in their natural environment doing what they're supposed to be doing is I mean it's a dream for me. I would imagine most of our listeners dream about it as well. You know, just just the idea of going out and seeing a carpet place on your fence or, you know, you know, in your mailbox or, you know. [Laughter] Put that leg on the car. Oh, it's like that picture we were talking about last time where the guys like I pulled up to get gas and there's a carpet place on hanging out on a gas pump. It's, yeah, yeah. I've purchased quite a number of books on different Australian reptiles just to sort of, you know, take it in and sort of have an idea of what we're in store for. But yeah, I mean it's like Australia is like the holy land for reptiles. It's like the spot, you know. But it has everything. If you're interested in lizards, it's got lizards even sitting in crocodilians. It is crocodilians, some of the biggest ones in the world. If you want like, you know, geckos, skinks, snakes, venomous snakes, it has everything. If you're even into the fuzzy crap, it's got shit like that too. It's unlike anywhere else in the world. You know, that's why we really want to go because it's going to be that big of an experience and that cool kind of a trick. You know, and I'm just hoping that we are not brutally murdered by like Cassowary or something like that. [Laughter] If we can avoid that, I'm going to be so happy, ridiculous. So I think that I have the advantage. If it tries to gut me, it's probably going to just kick me in the head. [Laughter] So tonight we're going to live vicariously through Scott and his adventures and talk about some of the things. Yeah, we're definitely going to hear some cool stuff for sure tonight. But before we get started, two things I wanted to make sure we hit on the southeast carpet fest is right around the corner. So I want to send a shout out to those guys. It's 11-7. And you can go check out their Facebook group page, Southeast Carpet Fest page. I'm going to give you more details. So I guess if you're in the Florida area on November 7th or sometime around then, it would behoove you to stop over and hang out and talk more with your fellow Floridians. So have a good time, we promise. So cool stuff. And then I don't have the exact details of all this yet, but some people may know, I posted up a little blurb over on Morale. I picked the week last week. And it had to do with Bob Futo. And I know that name from jungles, you know, Futo Line Jungle. He also does Ocelot Breadly and a few other things as well. But maybe the jungle thing. So he's involved in Moralea. I guess sort of maybe under the radar for the newer people that are coming into the Moralea family, so to speak. But Bob needs our help. He has some medical issues that came up. And we were trying to do a fundraiser of sorts, Jeremy and Jason Ballon were sort of putting this together. But basically there's going to be some kind of auction. I think it's going to be on Moralea pick of the week. I know there was some back and forth on whether it's going to be on that page or another page or whatever. But rest assured, as soon as we know where it's going to be and all the details, we would definitely point you in the direction. But so a lot of people, a lot of people, well-known people are going to be donating animals to the cause. So here's your opportunity to maybe get an animal that you've been waiting to get and sort of sitting on the fence. So here's your opportunity to get a cool animal and support a good cause. So once the details are ironed out about when and where and how long and who's all putting in. You know, just to throw some names out there of people that said that they were going to be involved. Mike Curtin, Nick mutton, Jason Ballon, Howard Redding, myself, Julie, you, trying to think who else. I don't know, a few of them there, and I mean, that's pretty much the ones I can put on my head. Brian Schaeffer, there's probably some other people too, and I'm sure as the- We're probably missing everybody or most of you, but it goes with what we know. So it didn't happen pretty quick. I'm very happy and proud of us that we kind of all rushed in there and are offering to throw some stuff out. Even some of us who don't really know Bob too much. I think I've met him once or twice at a tinley, spoken to him maybe once. I'm not even sure if he could pick me out in a room, but it's a fellow helper that needs some help. So that's all you really need to say. And yeah, you and I definitely are always happy to help in these kind of situations. So, and of course use this platform that we have here to get the word out for that one. So, yeah, hopefully when we know information, guys, we will make sure we pass it along to all of you, whether it be on the pick of the week, on Ray Pardon, Ray, his Facebook page, on the website, on the Twitter. If I put a sticker on Eric's forehead and head and walk around, we will find a way to get the information out to you all. Don't worry, but this is something that's gonna happen. So keep your eyes peeled. I know I'm already looking at two year links and I'm probably going to chuck up there. So. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about maybe doing a JAG head albino and a head albino. You know, some kind of something like that or, you know, maybe I always do it. Yeah. I'll add albino and a. There you go. I was going to do a normal JAG in like, normal. So that'll help. So any, anything helps in years thing, even if you don't want to bid on any of the things that they're going to put up for all sharing or fundraising. If you just go over to the GoFundMe, there are links all over the pick of the week and a few other places. Just give, I don't know, five bucks, 10 bucks, medical bills for this kind of stuff is. They kind of accrue pretty quickly and they can be daunting. So even if you just empty got a jar at a frickin supermarket and use that. Go ahead and do it. I mean, you know, Rob, some of the smaller reptile people that you know, just like punch them and take their money. That'll work. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so we're going to, we're just waiting for Scott to call him. But have you seen, I sent it to you yesterday and this was probably one of the coolest carpets that I've seen in a while. It was the Exantic Granite zebra jack. Oh, that thing, that the uber much. I was the, I believe that was the, that was the, that was the price. I'm like, that is incredible. It's a granite zebra jack. Oh, and then uber much. And that was all I said, but it was gorgeous. I mean, it was, uh, I'll be interested to see what the color, what happens in color when it gets a little bit bigger. But it was, what was again, it was a. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. Not a fan of the crosses or whatever, but that was a cool snake. It was, but then I'm like, well, you kind of lose the, you didn't have the Santa color that I've seen in like the Exantic zebra that you have. Or he's any jebra jags kind of had a different kind of color to it. And I've been to see what the color does is it gets a little bit older. And of course, I can't wait for people to start putting these things next to each other. Like this is a granite zebra jag. This is a Exantic granite jebra jag. This is an albino granite zebra jag. I want to start seeing the differences, the progressions, the alterations. I think that would be cool. Yeah, it was Andrew Ivanson's picture, but Paul Hires produced it. Got it. So yeah. And if you're looking for it, there's a pic of it over on the Moralia Python radio.com website. You go to the, more of some Moralia and then click on the carpet pythons and it's the very latest one. So it was just a first because we had to add it to the website. Yes. All right. Well, okay. Now it's more interesting. So, okay. I understand now. Ah, you. Well, I like to keep you around. Yeah. So. Uh, but, uh, yeah. So I thought that was a cool animal. Definitely, uh, definitely worth bringing up. But, um, we have Scott on the line. So we're going to click him on and let this roll in because he's calling in the future halfway around the world. So. Well, Scott. Good. Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Awesome. So, uh, what, what, out of curiosity, what time is it over there? Down there. See, we, uh, we feel so bad when we drag you Australian guys on the phone, but we have to keep doing it. So, um, while we got you here. Yeah. I shadowed about that. I. Exactly. It's like you wouldn't want to jump on the phone at the wee hours of the morning and talk to us. So. So. Um, Scott, why don't you tell us, um, tell us a little bit about yourself, um, and then what led you into reptiles. Uh, so, basically, when I, I run a business over here called Nature for You, which is a wildlife demonstration business. And I educate the public on working with venomous snakes and also making them aware of how to react around venomous snakes and other reptiles and things like that. So that's what I was trying to do for a living. Um, but essentially the way I got into that is that I was, like everyone else, I was, I was running around catching very, very small wizzards and things like that as a really young kid. And then I was about five years old and I called my first row belly black snake, um, which is a venomous snake over here, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty big one. Yeah. So then I'll say that, of course. So basically, um, I was sort of infatuated with the way they were. And then, um, I kept bringing home lizards and snakes and things like that. And then every time I'll find a venomous snake, I'll bring it home and then dad would come out and sort of grab the snake and dispatch the snake and then I'll get a sore bum for a couple of days and then, um, I'd go back out again and go find another one and, and all the rest of it, eventually my willpower was stronger than his. And, um, that was that I started keeping, keeping venomous snakes. Um, so I started keeping venomous snakes from about 10 years of age and then, and I haven't stopped since. So that's, that's me. And then I've always enjoyed taking photos and getting out into bush and actually seeing the animals in the environment. And, you know, that makes a big difference when it comes to keeping. We'll talk about that I suppose a little bit later on. Yeah. Keeping venomous snakes since you were 10. Yeah. You were a kid catching them and bringing them home. Like, like my father would have shot me dead. Well, I come up, I grew up in Melbourne and in Melbourne, the, um, that's in the southern of the country. And, you know, sort of like colder parts, I suppose, if you will, you know, get fairly hot days in, in summer, but it's, it's cold in winter, but not cold, like snow, you know, it's just, it's just cold and miserable. Um, so the only snakes you have around Melbourne are, are tiger snakes and brown snakes and cop-eds and brown snakes and a couple of smaller upwards, but everything's venomous. There's no pythons or anything like that. So if you want to pick up a snake, it's, it's a venomous snake and you go from there. Um, so it's a baptism of fire, I suppose, if you will. Um, and then with keeping restrictions over here, um, it's very, very difficult. Especially a young kid to, to go and getting a license and then all these sorts of things. And, and you're, you're very difficult to, to get actually things like pet pythons and stuff like that. And as a result, because of the, the licensing that costed the animals was through the roof as well. I mean, to, to give you an idea, a, a hatchling children's python or a hatchling carpet python at the time was going for about $600. Now, $600, um, you know, twenty-five years ago, there's a lot of money. Mm-hmm. Sorry, you know. It's a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I say cop-of-life and selling for 50 dollars and 24 dollars and things like that. And I think, well, you know, that's all right. It's, it's not quite as bad as what it used to be. So. Yeah. So. So, so what was the first reptile that you came across in the wild? I mean, I, I mean, you mentioned the red belly, but what would it be? The first one that kind of stuck in your head. Oh, that was the first one. I really stuck in my head. You know, there were a lot of, obviously I'll call it a little skink and things like that. But that was the first one that really sort of, um, set it off for me, so to speak. Um, you know, there are such a beautiful snipe. They jet black with beautiful crimson down the sides of them. Um, you know, they're pretty well behaved. Um, and they're still probably one of my favorite science to this diet. I mean, them and coastal type animals are two favorite, favorite snakes in the world. So, um, you know, they're pretty amazing animals. Wow. So. Mm. I don't know. You just hit coastal type and it's like, okay, that's, that's a big one. All right. Um, what, what animals do you currently work with in captivity? Like, what do you have in your collection? Um, well, it's not just my collection. Um, it's my was also, my was also a herper as well. Um, and I suppose that it's fantastic that she's a herper, but at the same time, it's, it's really bad for those of us as well because we have, we have arguments about how to keep things. We've, we've both been taking them and typing and keeping for, for 28, 20 years plus. And I'm, I'm, I'm being keeping for 24 years plus. And we've both got our ways of doing things. And then I'm sure you guys are the same. You've, you've, you've all got slightly different ways of doing it. You know, there's an old saying over here. There's many ways to skin a cat. So, you know, you, you still get there in the end, but it, you do things slightly differently. Um, and the other problem we have as well is that we don't stop eating. We don't stop each other. You know, we have an argument of like, oh, oh, let's go get some parentis. And I'll come home with two parentis and she goes, well, what didn't you buy four? You know, what's wrong with you? You know, what didn't you get, what didn't just buy the whole clutch, you know? So, um, it's, it's normally, it's too animal here. Not why aren't, why are there only two? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, it's, it's definitely, um, interesting, but it's fantastic. I mean, she's a, she's a brilliant herper in her own right. And, you know, the, the amount of things that she's shown me and told me over the years is, and it's, it's fantastic. So, um, but, so as you can imagine, we've got a fairly large collection of across everything from, from turtles and crocodilians through to frogs and venomous snakes and pythons and colubrids and, you know, five different sort of family to lizards as well. So, uh, I mean, you know, everything from one of those to, to get guys and pretty much everything in toys. So, yeah. I'm always, but I'll spot it. See, you're sorry. Come on. I was going to say I'm always interested in, in, in when hearing people that have like, uh, very diverse collections of, you know, I mean, there's diverse collections of pythons and then there's diverse collections of reptiles. How do you juggle all that, you know? How do you, is it difficult? Yes. Yeah, it is. I mean, I suppose this is the other thing about good having to her because I, if I'm away doing something or toys or they're doing something, she, she can look after, she looks after everything. Except for brown snakes. She doesn't like brown snakes. Um, but, you know, at the end of the day, she'll, she'll deal with everything. So, she'll be walking past and you'll, you'll pick up on small things and enclosures and like, like you always do. You know, you'll, you'll see these little things and, oh, that needs to be adjusted straight away and you get into them, but she sprays. She feeds. I feed. I spray, you know, the geckos. There's a lot of, we've got a lot of skinks here. Um, so there's a lot of food that needs to be done there. There's pythons, you know, when it comes to egg laying or separation or gravity females or ovulation or anything like that. Um, all of those things are there. So it's a bit, suppose a bit more like a zoo system in some ways where you'll write notes on enclosures and things like that to each other and tell each other about what's going on. Um, bit like when you're doing handovers and zoos and stuff like that. Letting other keepers know what's going on in the same situation. Makes sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. Cool. Um, so, uh, I mean, obviously, we're going to talk a lot about carpet pythons, suppose, you know, because that's what we kind of love and enjoy. And we'll hit on many different species as we go through the talk. But, you know, when it comes to carpets, what are some of the most memorable experiences that you have, say, you know, out in the field, uh, anything that comes to mind that's? Yeah. I'll put a photo up in, um, NPR chat right now, actually, of, of one that's, uh, probably one of the more memorable font that I've had, um, over the years. And that was a, uh, a carpet python that, uh, made them on Adam Elliott, who, um, you guys have sort of heard about on the, um, on the show right now and then through Nick. Um, we mean him, uh, game, go back sort of 20, 25 years now, I suppose. And he comes up to Queensland and we go running around chasing critters in the bush. And one of the things that we were walking along this, um, fairly, fairly large cliff face. And then just to the sort of the track, there was a 11 foot long carpet python, or 10 foot 9 long carpet python that had just eaten a wallaby. So, um, it's a pretty precious sort of a piece. Wow! Holy crap! That thing is huge! So it's not quite like the carpets, you know, I hear about people talking about carpets, um, about, oh, you know, in captivity, they max out at about eight feet or nine feet. And, you know, you see something like that in the bush and that's a pretty impressive uh, carpet python. That's my kind of carpet. [laughter] Eric's like, that's, that's 12 feet too long. I'm like, yeah. [laughter] Wow! I get, I do get a bit of a laugh out of people sort of when they turn around and say, oh, yeah, carpets max out of it, six feet or seven feet. And, you know, you say, well, no, not really. [laughter] It's actually a photo of this animal in the, um, complete carpet python as well. Um, as I recall. Um, so it was a pretty impressive boost. And I suppose the funny thing was, is that where we were walking along, there's a walking trail on this cliff face. And there's so many people just walking within six feet, six feet, you know, six feet of this snake. And the snake's curled up in sort of dappled sunlight. And no one's seeing it. It's just curled up there sort of digesting its, its meal. Um, you know, they're, they're pretty impressive animal. So, um, we, we got some photos of it and measured it. And, and that was basically it. So, and let, uh, let that large mile off on his eye. You know, you know, I have a massive head on it and things like that as well. So, that's a pretty good font I suppose. Uh, for carpet pythons, that's one. Um, first jungle carpets was good as well. Um, it was a, one of the roughest looking pythons I was saying in the wall. Um, and, you know, I thought it was actually dead when I first saw it. I went up to it and I thought it was dead. And when it turned around, it beat me on the hand. I realized it wasn't. Um... Well, I just wanted to tell it to live. Yeah. Well, yeah, well, it was, it was a very sick and sorry looking snake. And, you know, I think it was sort of on its last legs. It looked like it had picked up as an infection of some description. And, you know, there was cuts in the sort of it. And it had no muscle tone and all the rest of it. And you sort of look and go, oh, you poor thing. But at the end of the day, I'm going to end up being food for a goanna or a bird of pride or something like that. So, and go back into the ecosystem. So, you know. But, um, yeah, and then, oh, if you look a few weeks later, I saw a couple of other pretty carpets mix as well up in that part of the world. So, you know, it's certainly good getting out there and seeing these things in the field. And the, I suppose the one thing that when you look at these things, whenever you go out and see animals in the wild, you bring so much home from that you see subtle variances in temperature. And, you know, you might have a, you might jump on the web and look at the temperature at a place like Quilpy or long reach or something like that where you get inland carpets. And see that you've got 38 or 40 degrees. But the thing is, as those carpets aren't living at 38 or 40 degrees, they're living in tree hollows that are cooler and they're living in places that are, and then in conversely, in winter, they don't get down to the two or three degrees. They're living in places like microhabicites that are warmer in winter as well. So, you know, it's always good seeing them and seeing what they're doing and seeing what sort of temperatures they're hunting in. Now, for instance, I see quite commonly see carpet pythons sitting in ambush positions, coastal carpets and inbricata and all these sorts of things. All these other carpets, you see these things in really, really cold temperatures. And they're sitting in ambush positions ready to feed. Now, these snakes are opportunistic, so if a rat comes along underneath them when they're sitting in this ambush position, they're going to take this rat, they're not going to let it go by. And, you know, we're keeping our animals at this, you know, 30 or the degrees, 32 degrees, and all the time. And, you know, we're giving them a hot spot. We let them cool down a little bit. They don't always run at those temperatures in the bush. And one thing that I do here is we actually let our animals cool down a lot more for a lot longer than what I suppose convention is in captivity. Most people run their six to eight week cooling off period. We're running about four months where the animals ramp down for a month, ramp up for a month, and then they're down for about two months in the middle. And we do that with our young ones as well. Wow. So, that's quite a long time, wow. Yeah, and the other thing is too though, I mean, it converts it changes to your longevity of the animals as well. I mean, I've got an Ollie's python here that I got from a guy by the name of Graham Gao, who was a pretty famous helper here in Australia, back in 1992. Now, that was a war court adult Ollie's python, back in 1992. Now, I've still got that copper, that Ollie's python downstairs. Wow. Now, anyone who keeps Ollie's python can give you a little bit of understanding of how long they take to get to 10 feet in captivity. They don't get to 10 feet long in a couple of years. They get to eight feet, nine feet very, very quickly, and then they start to slow up. And once they slow up, otherwise they just get very, very ugly. You look at those animals, you look at how big that snake was. That snake probably would have been born in the early '80s. So, it's a snake that's over 30 years old. You know, it's a pretty impressive animal to be still kicking around in captivity and still makes every year and does what it needs to do. He kind of shoots down the entire argument to them. People say that the python's oleman lived to be about 15 to 20 years old. This guy's 30 and still going strong, so. Yeah. And I think that comes to answer is that the metabolic rate of these animals is, if you feed them all the time, you keep them hot all the time, you run them really, really quickly. And unfortunately, they're not designed to do that. They've got to go up and they've got to go down. They go up and they go down. That's how they've evolved for these millions of years. And for us to keep them at these constant temperatures, they do well at them. They breed and all the rest of it. For them to do that all the time, I don't think is actually really good for the health of the animals. But again, you know, I mean, and I was saying that opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one. So, just because I say this is the case for me, doesn't mean to say it's going to work for you guys or anyone else in particular. But it's just sort of what I've sort of gained, I suppose, from looking at wild animals. Now, the other thing that I notice as well is that, and this is probably one of the most fundamentals, is that wild snakes very, very rarely have fat rolls or really, really good condition. Most wild snakes that I see are pretty lean, I suppose. You know, they've got plenty of muscle, but they're fairly lean animals. And generally speaking, most of the ones in captivity and where no different air animals are on the overweight side as well, even though we don't feed them, you're near as much as a lot of other people as well. You know, these animals are so overweight in captivity and they're doing all of these things. I do wonder sometimes how much they sort of gain from it. I know that, I mean, we experiment with keeping some stuff outside. And we find that the preference for a lot of our pythons to go outside and they'll curl up and prefer to bask in, in sunlight, as opposed to basking under heat lamps and things like that, if you give them the opportunity. And the scales on carpet pythons and things like that are kept out. So I'd almost get a thicker feel to them and they're a bit thicker and they're a bit heavier. So I wonder if there's, you know, usually light does play a part in these animals. And if there is a benefit to having you be over some of these snakes. So, you know, when you, when you talk about an animal like a diamond python who basically that animal has evolved to use the sun, especially, I mean, it gets pretty cold there where diamond pythons are from, you know. Yeah, freezing. Absolutely freezing. You know, so you would think that UV would play. I mean, I know that, I know they still survive and they still breed and they're still, you know, but is there a component that's missing from not having that UV? Some people swear that, like, if you take a brettles python by putting it in UV, you know, the colors better or the, you know, they somehow become redder or, you know, have more contrast. I don't know. So, when the, when brettles first came into captivity, they were collected by a black bullet. And Greg fought. Greg sort of brought quite a few into captivity on permits back in the early, early to mid 80s. And you see, when you see a brettles python in the wild, they're quite brightly colored. You know, they've got really, really good oranges and things like that. Almost a bit like the hypeos that are being kept in captivity now. And within six to 12 months, those same snakes sort of dull right off and maybe sort of become dull brown and all the rest of it. Now, UV was thought to be maybe the reason for that color change. It could be diet related as well. You know, we don't really know. But through selective breeding of, you know, people breeding the most orange, orange, red or fythons and things like that as they go through, you sort of start to get those colors back to what they're almost like in the wild these days. But what do they, what do they do? What are people picking up on or what are they not doing by not giving access to UV light? I don't know. Do the snakes thrive without UV light? You know, when people are breeding these things and they're having no problems at all and they're producing good healthy animals. So, they probably aren't thriving. But other snakes missing out on something that we're not quite picking up on. I don't know. So, you know, we're redoing a reptile building here. We're redoing a whole new room here at the moment. And one of the things I've installed into the roof of it is I've installed half a dozen large double glazed windows into the roof. And the whole idea of that is to allow for moon phases, moon phasing at night. And they let natural light into the building. And so, I'll have a proper photo period that goes, that has almost a sunset and a sunrise. And then at night, you're going to see changes in the room with how dark it is at night to a new moon versus how bright it is with a full moon. So, I wonder if that's going to make a difference. I mean, at this age, I don't quite know. I mean, a couple of years, and I can tell you. What happened? You've done it a few times, yeah. Yeah. What are, yeah, you said now you're talking my language. Can you say moon phases? Like, what are your observations with the animals in the wild when it comes to the moon phase? I mean, obviously, they're going to be more active when the new moon, right? I would think and it's dark and, you know, do you notice any other observations? Right. So, when I, I plan my herping trips usually around the new moon. The darker it is, the better it seems to be. You seem to get a lot more activity on the new moon versus the four moons. Now, I've just got back from a trip where I've done three and a half thousand kilometers in four days. I'm chasing, chasing bits and pieces. And when we saw, we saw 48 species of critter. Wow. We didn't do too badly. But at the same time, we could have done a hell of a lot better. And the problem was that the two guys that took care from Sydney, they flew up and then we went out in more vehicle and did a bit of a run through southern Queensland. They'd chosen the time that they could get off work, so that was all fine. And I looked at the time and I said, why didn't you? They'd already booked the flight. And I said, look at the moon phases. And they go, what do you mean? And I said, you picked it on the full moon. And I said, what does that mean? And I said, we're going out into the desert. I said, we're going to be able to drive a night without the headlights on, you know. I said, it's insane. So, it's so broad out there. He goes, oh, do you think it'll make much of a difference? And I said, oh, yeah, I think I will. I said, we'll see how we go. So, we had, we got very, very little snake fauna crossing the road. We saw, you know, eastern brown snakes, and strap standard brown snakes and milder snakes, and a few other bits and pieces. And we saw one carpet python. And that was one carpet python was when we got back to the rainforest in southeast Queensland, where you've got a canopy cover going over the top, where the moon phases don't seem to affect that closed, closed light situation down in the bottom of the rainforest. And it sort of makes sense, too. You know, if you're in a rainforest that has basically a big canopy all the way across the top, what the moons are doing and how broad it is and all the rest of it isn't really going to change too much from a new moon to a full moon in the middle of a rainforest. So, you know, I think that probably has something to do with it. You know, the other thing is to, I think, air pressure is huge. It's a huge, huge change. I mean, you look at egg laying in pythons and leopards and birthing in live-bearing venomous snakes and skinks and things like that. You'll often find that they tend to start laying on the, on a front, on an air pressure front. So, you'll notice that, and then you'll see a whole heap more activity out in the wild as well when you've got that air pressure front coming through. So, it just seems to click some little box in those animals' heads to get them to really do some pretty interesting things on those fronts. So, when you know that a storm's coming in, you just, like, run out into the bush and try to start finding whatever use you can find. I can run it, I can run into my backyard. Lucky bastard. Oh, you're running into my backyard? Never look. So, one of the things I do, if I can't get out, I've got quite a number of things outside. We've got a lot of skinks outside and monitors outside and turtles and all those sorts of things and a few pythons that we're moving outside. Those things there will all go outside even if I can't get out into the scrub. I'll go out and I'll have a look in the pits and see what the pits are doing at night and get a bit of an idea of the activity patterns of the animals. And it's amazing to see what's going on when you've got these preceding storms coming up and having animals outside that you can sort of walk out and have a look and go, "Oh, okay. These are moving tonight. Oh, all right. Well, maybe I'll go out and see if they're moving out in the wild as well and then jump in the car and then drive down the road on a pretty impressive patch of bushland. Or I can go to rain forest or I can go to a dry, squariful forest within about half an hour and apply some and say a whole different sort of species in each one. And, you know, copper pythons are sort of one of those ubiquitous animals that are running across the roll of it. And, you know, it's amazing to be able to see what's going on here in the bush. Wow. That is awesome. I mean, that is... Have you noticed certain activities more in certain other species, like do skinks really go wild before a storm? Or is it kind of everybody does the wrong thing? I thought everyone does their own thing, but I mean, I really like going out in the field with naturalists, as opposed to other herbos. I really like going out with herbos as well. But going out with naturalists that get excited about the bugs and birds and plants and all these things, you pick up on other things that are going on and you might see, for instance, there's a particular sort of beetle that, if you see them out, you tend to often see... When you see those out, you often seem to see lots of rust-gull snakes, and lots of even banded snakes. And so I might go out and have a look around for the things in the rainforest, and then suddenly I'm seeing this beetle. Now, if I'm seeing this beetle and chance that I'm going to see rust-gull snakes and see those banded snakes. Now, the beetles just happen to be easier to find than the snakes, but there's these other little correlations that go on. Now, the more time that you spend out in the bush, the more time you pick up on these other relationships, I suppose, or even though it might be something that's sort of happening almost like where they're both running along in that same thing. Whatever it is that triggers the beetles to come out, it also triggers the snakes. What all of those are, and for what each species that is, I can't tell you yet, and I think I'll die trying to figure it out, but it's a good way in the process. Yeah, that's exactly right. Keep trying. So, you know, I suppose the other thing with the experience, you get to learn different methods which are more productive in different habitat types and also different conditions in those habitat types. So, you know, there's a fair few varieties, I suppose, of fields helping and how to turn up critters, and you'll change your method depending on what you want to find, and also what the weather's doing and what the habitats are doing. So, like if you wanted to go find, say, lots of carpet pythons, then probably the easiest way to find good numbers of carpet pythons is to go out on a warm, humid night, maybe with a proceedings storm, and go drive the roads, and if you drive the roads, you're going to see lots and lots and lots of carpet pythons. But you could also walk along streams, and you could see lots and lots of carpet pythons, and you'll see frogs, and you'll see this, and you'll see that, and you'll see others. So, it really depends on what you want to do. I find so much more information from an animal that is either in ambush position or that is sitting under spurred as opposed to an animal that's crossing a road. If you say an animal that's crossing a road, you've just picked up a snapshot of somebody walking across the street. You know, you've seen him walking across the street, you don't really know what he's up to. If you see that person doing something up against, you know, let's say he's painting a fence or something like that, if you see them actually doing something as opposed to crossing a road, you learn so much more. So, you know, it's good to see lots of animals crossing roads, but you don't learn a hell of a lot about what they're doing. Right, that is true. So, you know, at the same time, if you guys are coming out from the States, you want to see them, you just want to see the animals to begin with. Yeah, yeah. [Laughter] We're taking baby steps, baby steps. Yeah. That's it. That's it. Tell us where we'll find them and we'll go. So, when you find carpets, are they up in the trees? Are they down on the ground? Is it a mix? Does it depend on the subspecies or what's your experience? Well, as far as we've seen in Lancaster, we learn to find a car for in places where you'll get them, they usually around cracks, cracks and also hollow logs and stuff like that. There was a guy by the name of Jeff Hurd, who did some really, really interesting radio telemetry studies in Lancaster Province and was looking at what they do and what they eat and where they eat and what they do after they eat and stuff like that. So, reading some of his papers are really interesting. They'll go down into burrows and they'll eat rabbits, and then they'll come up and they'll sit in pre-holos. Pre-holos was something where they spend most of their time. And then there was a shift a bit like the diamond pythons from the rocks to the trees, depending on summer and winter. So, depending on the species, you'll find them in different locations. So, if you're going looking for inland carpet pythons in winter, you're best off going for rock crevices. If you're looking for them in summer, you're best off looking for hollowed out trees and so, generally speaking, you're going to find inland carpet pythons around trees in summer and on those rocky ridges in winter. Diamond pythons, diamond pythons you found on cliff faces and rock faces and stuff like that in winter. And also in people's houses, the ruse of people's houses in Sydney. And then they sort of disperse out into the valleys and stuff like that. And in it through the summer months. Diamond pythons, you get even in places. In some places in South East and Australia, where you get diamond pythons, you have to get them on cliff faces that are butting the ocean. And they get sea spray on them and stuff like that. You've seen, I've got a friend of mine that found sheds that are being in caves that have seawater go into them during high tide. And they've got diamond pythons living in them. So, it's pretty incredible, you know, again, but you're not going to get seawater and put it inside your diamond pythons and you're right. No. I don't know, maybe. You look at your moi. You look at your moi. It might be a good day. You don't wait for me, you know, if my diamond is going to breathe for me, there is no option to worry about what I might do. But get yourself a great bottle and just spray them down with some seawater. Make ocean sounds. Yeah, I mean, for sure, for sure. Yeah. So, and then with regards to coastal carpet pythons, which are the ones that I sort of have in my backyard and running along. I've got one that sort of losing my shed and every time I go into the shed half the time, I'm saying stuff knocked over on the bloody ground where he's going onto a shelf or something like that and knock things over and sort of curse him a little bit. Kind of an all the rest. What was that? I mean, that's awesome. It's kind of annoying. I can see where that would piss you off, but that's awesome. So. Yeah. Well, we've got a nickname for them out here. We call them "crappets" because they give you the shits off of the wall, you know. At the same time, they are an amazing animal. They're beautiful snakes and they're so well sort of camouflaged and they do what they do and they're really innocuous. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, I mean, I don't do it myself these guys, but I have done it in the past as you get problem snake removers over here and they move snakes out of houses and stuff like that. You know, one of the things that I was doing when I was a snake catcher is I was telling people to really try and leave the carpet pythons and the harmless snakes in their properties. You know, if you move a carpet python, you move a male carpet python and move him from one location and then dump him down the road into a patch of bushland, you're putting him into the territory of another carpet python. Now, we all know how well male carpet pythons get along with each other. So you can imagine what's going to happen. So either that snake there is going to now fight and it's going to displace that one that has just gone, that you've just dumped in there, or it's going to displace the one that's been put in there that's already under stress. Chances are that the animal won't survive because it will try and move around to try and find where it was originally living and then that exposes it to more predators, it exposes it to cars, it stresses the animal out, if it stresses its animal out, then you have a lower immune system, the immune system starts to drop and then you have problems. So translocating reptiles is really, really difficult and it's not a great thing to do. So we try and convince people just to live with them. Now, it's a little bit difficult when a town like Brisbane, which has got about four million people in the southeast Queensland, every second house has a carpet python living in it. Wow. What a carpet snake. Yeah. It's a lot of carpets. It's a lot around. I don't really think it does a lot. That's a dream come true for the East Coasters here. Oh, look. Look, you know, the first one I moved to Queensland from Victoria, you know, ten years ago, I saw a first carpet snake. I was over the moon. I was so happy. And the purpose said to me, I said, "I'll find a carpet." And he goes, "Yeah." Oh, well, he goes, "That's nice for you." He goes, "That'll wear us to be quick." [laughter] And I said, "What do you mean if there's a carpet snake?" And he goes, "You find a tiger snake and all be impressed." Because we get to orders in the southeast Queensland as well. And I said, "Really?" And I said, "You'll get excited over the tiger snake." And I said, "Yeah, you will be too. Don't worry." And in the ten years, I've been up here. I've seen two roadkill tiger snakes. Now, I reckon I'd almost do a back flip if I saw a bloody tiger snake these days. [laughter] You know, it's something that I could go out in Melbourne and I could catch 15 or 20 tiger snakes in the morning. - Right. - Pretty much any day of the week. - Yeah. - Now, it's something that I'll be super excited to see. So you get used to it. I mean, you guys have got things like timber rattlesnakes and copperheads and cotton mails and all these other amazing critters. I'd love to go and say corn snake in the bush. [laughter] - That'd be awesome. - Come on over. - All of these-- [laughter] - Yeah. - We never see those. They're not anywhere near where we live, but they're around somewhere. - Yeah, but what do you go? - I mean, what do you go, ache and milk snakes and stuff, and walk that up in that part of the wheel. - Yeah. - Actually, just the other day, this girl that I work with, she had a black rat snake in under her house. So she, you know, 'cause they know me as a snake guy. So she's like, "Can you tell me good?" - Yeah. - You know? It was still cool to see, you know? It's like you think about it and you're kind of like, "Ah, yeah, it's just a black rat snake." But when you see it in the wild, you're like, "Ah, yeah." - It's really cool. - It's like when I went up to Anchorage, I went to Alaska and I got off a plane, and I'm like, "Holy crap, it's a bald eagle!" And they're all like, "You'll get used to it." And then by the time I left, I'm like, "Yeah, these things are freaking pigeons. They're everywhere." [laughter] So they're like four on that park bench over there. So like, it's kind of like one of those, "Oh, it's awesome!" And it's like, "You'll get used to it." The carpet voice on is a freaking everywhere out here. So I can understand that. - Yeah, yeah, awesome. - That sort of stuff is so cool. And I mean, I'd love to get out of the states and go down to Arizona and go chase and heal the monsters. And I mean, my favorite rattlesnake little time are the Mexican black trails. And you know, those black car rattlesnakes are absolutely gorgeous. And yet, rattlesnakes to you guys are like, "Well, a bit like carpet bathrooms for me." They're like, "Oh, you see them?" And they're nice and you appreciate them. But yeah, you get over it, I suppose, a little bit. But I mean, at the same time, I love being out in the bush and seeing all of the variation that we have here. I mean, we've got close on 1,200 described species of reptile and amphibian in Australia. And I say described species, not species, because there's a hell of a lot of stuff that isn't described. There's a lot of stuff that hasn't been described yet. And I suppose one of the issues that that comes around from is that because we've got such draconian laws over here that basically prohibit anyone doing anything in the bush, it makes it so difficult to bring a specimen. I mean, I caught some geckos while I was away just recently. And there was geckos there that we were seeing that probably aren't actually art described. But because we don't have permits to collect them, we can't take them back to the museum and say, "Hey, this is probably undescribed." So then it remains as being undescribed. So we've got things like marble geckos where it's at the moment presently one species. And then you actually look at them and you look at them in all these different localities and they're probably, from what I understand, from a friend of mine who's been doing some genetic work on that group, that's probably going to be about 15 different species. So at the moment, we've got one animal that we're calling one that's actually more like 15. Now, that's obviously a fairly extreme example. But there's a whole heap of other things out there that could be learned with the legislation that we have in Australia where it's so difficult to do things like that. Unfortunately, it becomes difficult and it just gets left off to be found to another day, I suppose. I mean, we can't pick up animals. We don't pick up stuff in the bush. I've got permits that allow me to, I've got some scientific research permits that I'm mixed up with that allow me to capture a certain species animal to either identify or to collect a tissue sample for genetic work or collect some animals for venom research. I've done that in the past as well. And I've done biological surveys, which allow me to do some of these things and handle some of these animals. But you're not allowed to touch stuff. Except at the point where if you see a carpet python crossing the road, you're not legally allowed to move that carpet python off the road so it doesn't get hit by a car. You're not allowed to touch it. Really? That's how full-on our laws are. Wow. And it's so counterproductive. You know, we say conservation, conservation, conservation, conservation. And then we ban people and prohibit people from doing things. And prohibiting people doesn't do anything. It doesn't help the situation at all. If you can embrace people to do things that are going to be done through, whether it be through a hypothetical society or in conjunction with museums and things like that, where they do things the right way and they do it really well, then you don't get this us and them mentality between hobbyists and scientists. People can have a hobby and people can be amateurs. They love what they're doing. That's basically what amateur means. It doesn't mean to say you're doing it any less professionally than a scientist that has sat there in a university and under a university degree for a few years. If you've got passion for it, it means that you can still put out to that greater knowledge and hobbyists do all of this fantastic work with things like reproductive biology. We wouldn't know half of what we know about any of the species that we've got in captivity these days if it wasn't for hobbyists and people keeping things. You guys would know so much more about keeping carpet pythons and keeping your enjoy and carpet pythons than I had to guess than the people I nearly enjoy wouldn't do. People I nearly enjoy, they get a carpet python, they probably don't know much about it. Whereas you guys have got an understanding of pre-lay cycles, clutch sizes, how long the incubation is. You could look at maternal incubation, with data loggers inside clutches if you're maternal incubate and see what temperatures these guys are actually incubating their eggs at. And seeing if there's any differences. All of this information can gain from people and hobbyists that are in keeping animals in captivity. And to us and them mentality doesn't have to be there but unfortunately it is there a little bit. I see some of these things going on in the states where we're legislating for venomous snakes and they're legislating for things like using the LAC Act to stop people moving reticulated pythons from one state to another. It's so counterproductive. It's not going to help. It's not going to do anything. But there's still going to keep them. How many reticulated pythons are there? How many reticulated pythons are there? How many bermase pythons are there in the US? You can't even count. Well, by understanding under the LAC Act it means that you can't move them across borders but you can still keep those animals in that state. Is that correct? You're correct. And you can move them within the state. So let's say you live in New York and you've got a reticulated python and then you're not going to get checked as you go across the border into New Jersey. Well, there was a reticulated python in New Jersey, didn't I? It's not hard. It's not hard. And you don't have licensing so you don't know who's keeping anywhere, anyway. So I can't have productive and it's helping you. One of the things that I never understood about, you know, about Australia is the fact that I know that if I can understand importing animals, you know, because, you know, invasive species and all that, I get that. But exporting and, you know, taking some of that and putting it in towards conservation, because I know for one, I'd be broke. You can give me a report. Oh, dear God. It's not much money. No. The amount of times I've got messages and emails and phone calls and things like that. Oh, can you just send me over one of these and just like, I'd love to. I'm sorry. I can't. Does it make a difference? No. Not at all. There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to export carpet, or export anything. I can understand saying, all right, well, we don't want anything getting out, so we don't want to import anything. Cool. Fair enough. There's an argument there. Yeah, right. Exportation of captive animals. Yeah. I see no problem with that at all. And at the end of the day, I mean, you guys have got rough-scale poisons. I know of people through the grapevine that have probably been breeding on-pelly poisons in Germany. There's what all the miners do. Right. I know there's been on-pelly poisons in the U.S. Yeah. You know, it's not like they're not around. Yeah, sure. You know? Well, I guess that's my point because we still have those animals here. We have warmer pythons, blackhead of pythons, olive python. You know, I mean, the list goes on and on and on, and not even just that. I mean, I'm sure there's venomous species here that, you know, people have that geckos and blue-tunk skin. Well, there's a bit of a laugh, I suppose, going around that things look... You've got these things that will pill the rock one of those. Yeah. And right, absolutely gorgeous, small one of them gets with it. It's an 80 centimeter long. You know, half and two thirds of that is tile. You know, it's an incredibly beautiful animal. And I know of six in Australia that are being kept in captivity. There's only six that are legally held in captivity as mine stands, bro. Wow. Right. Now, you guys have been breeding them in the States. Oh, shit. 15 years? Right. Maybe 20 years? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's more sort of rock one of those. There's more, you know, your lysistic king orum over there. You know, the kings rock one of them. They're all over there. Yeah. King orum over here are rare species. You know, there's probably half a dozen people that keep king orum. We certainly don't have any lysistics. They can't give them away over here. Well, there you go. There you go. So you guys have got really cool animals that we can't have in Australia, basically. You know, you guys have got Australian stuff that we can't have in Australia. Yeah. Yeah. It's absolutely full on. You know, there's things like that. And, you know, you look at some of these different things that you guys have. And, you know, I suppose the grass is always greener on the other soil, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I look at some of the stuff that you guys can do. I go, oh, and I'm there. I'm sure you sit there and go, well, he's still going out into the bush and playing a carpet. Yeah. You go out and go find it. Yeah. Got you. Oh, yeah. I'm going to go out and have a look. Yeah. Yeah. You live near the portal that goes from Australia to Germany. Like, I hear it's a big hole that they just, they can't help them. Germany. Yeah. It's cool to leave your post apparently. Yeah. Oh, okay. Good. Yeah. I think that, I think a lot of that's actually stopped. After, after 9/11 happened, they changed a lot of the, um, change a lot of postage and things like that. It's a lot more, it makes right packages a lot more now. And, and from my understanding is a lot more people have been picked up that were doing the wrong thing. So, um, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, I, I find it really hard to believe that somebody can say that they're a reptile lover. And then turn around and then post an animal, put an animal in the post to someone. Yeah. You know. Pretty horrendous way of shipping your animals around. We ship, worship animals around the country here and, you know, I'll use, um, heat insulated in, in containers. And then I'll double bag the animals and I'll put them on, uh, I'll usually put them on, uh, paper, shredded paper. And so the, the, the bags sit on shredded paper. So they're, they're cushioned. And then the shredded paper and crumpled paper on top. So the bags can't move around, they can't bounce. And then that container's then screwed shut that's in a thermally insulated enclosure. So that if somebody leaves that, that box on the tarmac for 20 minutes in the sun, the animal's not going to cook. Um, right. Or, or get too cold. Um, now we're not dealing with so, like you guys are. And that, that's what I suppose you guys use heat packs and stuff like that until the, the shipping stuff. But can you imagine going out into the bush seeing all these beautiful snakes that you've spent all this time? All this time saying in the wild and, and all that. And then choving them into a, you know, a sock or, you know, you know, a cardboard box effectively. And then laying water bottle around the world. And then just hoping it's going to survive. And then, and then, and then seriously calling yourself a reptile lover afterwards. Uh, you can't, you can't say that. You can't do that. It's pretty selfish act. And I'll be a horrible way to die. Um, so, you know, I don't have a lot of, um, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people. I've got a lot of sympathy for people to get busted smuggling animals. Um, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, there's, there's legal ways of doing it. Um, and getting animals out. You know, it just takes a hell of a lot of time. And, you know, people like Terry Phillip that spent all that time, um, dealing with Australian zoos to get caranata. You know, you've done all that work. The reason you guys have got caranata are people like Terry Phillip that put the hard yards into, to get them for you guys. Um, and, you know, such an amazing snake. I mean, we've got caranata here. They're fantastic. There's, I never really saw the interest in them. Um, and then we ended up, more wharf, said, "I want to get rough-scale snakes." Uh, rough-scale problems. So, okay. Fair enough. And when we picked them up, they absolutely stunning, the salty, the eyes and the color and all the rest of them. And boy, if they got a bite on them, you know, they got a bite on them. They got a bite on them. You know, they got a bite on them. Yeah. You know, I'm amazing. Yeah. So. Now, have you ever come across them in the wild? No, no, no. There's a few grails for me. Um, there's a guide recently just actually got every Australian python. There's quite a few people that are at one or two left. Um, there was a guy by my name is Stuart McDonald, who the other week, about a month back, finally got a rough-scale python, which was his last one on the list. Um, a lot of people are either missing ruffies or missing Owen Pelley's. Um, Owen Pelley's are probably the, the, the tougher one of the two. Um, because you can spend, spend lots and lots of time there in their habitat looking for them and not find them. Um, and same thing with, with rough-scale pythons as well. So, um, for me, I think an Owen Pelley python is the, is the one that I, I want to see the most that I haven't seen. Um, I've got to get up to Iron Range as well and go and see green tree pythons. I haven't seen green tree pythons. Um, and I haven't seen Perth, Inc., either. I've missed out on those, but I've been over in WA. So, you know, some stage I'll, I'll go around and try and knock all the other ones over. I think Owen Pelley's or, or green pythons will be the next ones. And then, you know, fucking jag, something to go into the, um, and the Kimberley chase and ruff-scale pythons will certainly go and do that. So, you know, I'll, I'll get there. You know, I'll, I'll get there eventually. I'll, I'll get a wolf. Yeah. What was your, what was your last, uh, species that was sort of the, the, the must catch and that you actually found? What was the, you know, um, I suppose it wasn't, wasn't the species, but it was, it was to see, to see one in the world. It's to see a big one in the wild, not, not so much the species. It was a scrub python, uh, amethystina. Um, wild and amazing critter. I mean, they're so gorgeous, they're so interesting to see scrub pythons in the wild. And they're not the, the absolute psychotic, so-and-so's, they are in captivity. Um, you know, you see a, uh, a beautiful scrub python crossing the road that's around eight, nine feet long and, and it doesn't, doesn't try and bite you. It doesn't want to try and kill you or anything like that. You see that same snaking captivity, that same sort of snaking captivity, and it wants to murder you. They are, they are, they are, um. It's true. Oh, they're, they're, they're off their heads. They're evil. Yeah. Give me a bloody type and any day of the week, you know. Uh, you know, I don't use tongs for anything except for using them to feed rats off to, to snakes. Um, I don't believe in using Pilsram Pongs on handling snakes. And I use big long Pilsram Pongs to feed the scrub pythons. Um, because I don't want to get bitten by them. They suck. You know, a two foot long, a two foot long, three foot long scrubby hurts like a bitch. I hate to think what it'd be like to get done by a big one. Yeah. Scrubs are no fun no matter what size they are. Um, yeah, when you start getting into like the, the, the, the double digit lengthwise. It's death. So no, no, no, no. No, thank you. So last week I put up a video of a, um, on NPR chat of a, a good source scrub porthon, which was, that was the one thing that I was hoping to, to really see. Um, and that was the one thing I was really hyping to say was a big scrubby. Um, about 12 months ago now, I was out doing a snake catching course up at Mount Ida, which is out in the desert. And I didn't drink enough water. And what ended up happening is I ended up getting fairly severely dehydrated. And then when I got back, I didn't think anything of it, mind you, um, I had gut pain about a week later. And I went to the hospital because I wasn't really going away and I ended up having a interception in my bowel and having 30 centimetres of my bowel removed. Um, so that was three months off work and rehab and, and all the rest of it. And, you know, I'm only just starting getting back to, to being where I'm sort of meant to be out, I suppose, um, in regards to strengthen stuff like that. So anyway, I was doing this job up in Cairns about four months later. And I was running around the, running around the time when I was working here in the day, so night time's herping time. So, um, because I'm away from my family, I was like, right, okay, well, every night, every night of the week, I'll be going out chasing critters because, you know, I don't particularly like watching television. I'd much rather go out and find animals in the bush. And so I was at a place called the Casino Wetlands, which is about 25 kilometres north of Cairns. And Eastern Queensland. And I was walking around looking for frogs and snakes and crocodiles and all sorts of things. And I saw, I'll use a method called eyeshining. Now I'm not sure. Do you guys know what eyeshining is over there? Do you guys eyeshine on it? Yeah. But even for gators and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, if you're wandering around the woods out here and something's eyeshining at you, we have no idea what that is wrong. So, okay. It's a new dirty devil. Watch out. Exactly. This shouldn't be happening. So, okay. Okay. So, so I'll use eyeshining. So, eyeshining for things like crocodilians and stuff like that and mammals is really easy. With snakes and stuff like that, it's actually a lot more directional. So, you use a fairly high powered LED head torch and you try and get it down close to your brow line as possible. And basically what you're looking for is you're looking for the reflection of the retinas of the animal coming back and seeing so you can see it. So anyway, so I've got this eyeshine off this animal that was, the eyes I suppose were about four, four and a half inches apart. And it was a whitish colored eyeshine which was, didn't quite make sense to me because that size should have been a small crocodile. And, you know, that's usually quite orange. Orangey red is their eyeshine. So, it didn't quite make sense why it was sort of silvery white. So, as I get closer and closer to this thing, I start sort of making out the head of it and you can sort of see the shape of it. And I'm probably about 30 or 40 meters away from the animal at this point in time. And then about 10 meters away, the penny drops that I'm looking at a scrub python that is absolutely huge. Now, I've been told by my doctors at this point in time that I'm not allowed to pick up anything over two kilos. And I'm looking at this snake and I'm shaking with adrenaline. I'm just like, oh my God, you know. And I'm sort of thinking about it right now and I'm starting to get all fired up again. And so the first thing I did is I got my phone and I rang my wife and I rang her and I video chapped. No, no, I video called her. I did the video call thing on the iPhone. What a fake phone, whatever it is. And I said, have a fucking look at this. And she looked at it and she's just gone, that's a big snake. I'm shaking like a leaf. I don't know what to do. Now, I'm about two and a half kilometers from my car. I haven't been dragging around my big camera gear or anything like that. I haven't got any bags with me or anything like that because we can't catch snakes over here or anything like that. So I haven't got anything with me. And I've only got my phone and I'm walking around and I'm looking at this thing and I go, oh my God. What do I do? What do I do with this thing? So anyway, so I'm just sitting there watching it and then at the sides it didn't really like the head torch going on at the whole time. So I started to move away. So I've got some video, I just followed it for about 20 minutes. This snake and then eventually it just went off on the same thing. But in that video it shows you an idea of how big this snake is. Now, this snake is thicker than my calf and I'm not the smallest fellow out there. I'm a little bit portly should they say. I like my tucker. And this snake is incredible. It's just huge. And to see the size of this thing and see a really big scrub python in the bush, absolutely amazing. And so to me now that is still one of those things that I was never sure if I'd ever see a really truly big scrub python because big scrub pythons get seen by people and people are half holes and they kill snakes. So unfortunately I wasn't sort of holding out. I hope and seeing a really big scrubby. I estimate its lengths to be between 15 and 18 feet. I know other snake catchers who have seen photos and video of this particular animal that catch scrubbies all the time. And they've got measured lengths of scrubbies versus this thing. They said this thing is over 5 meters. It's a big snake. So to see a python that's over 5 meters long which translates to about 18 feet is absolutely amazing in the wild. And this thing is eating wallabies and stuff like that in the bush. Not eating rats anymore. So that's probably one of the coolest things that I've seen in the bush I suppose of recent times anyway. I've got an absolutely cracking jungle carpet python about a week later up on the Lake Morris Road. I'll put photos up of that. And it was basically a suppose easy way to describe it. It's like a high yellow jungle carpet python. It's a pretty incredible sort of colored animal that has almost black tipping through the gold as opposed to a black snake with gold on it. It's a pretty incredible carpet python. So that was good as well. And then first diamonds are always good. First olives are good. All of these things are amazing animals to see in the bush. And then for me I really like that in the snakes as well. So going out and seeing brown snakes and death odors and vulgar snakes and all that sort of stuff. That's also really really cool. I was going to ask about have you come across warm ones or blackheads? Blackheads, heaps of the heaps of blackheads. Blackheads are pretty common in a few locations. Around that eye you see them almost in plain proportion in some nights that they're sort of everywhere. I know one guy that's sort of thirty-five blackheaded pythons in one night. He's pushing them off the road. He's driving around. I haven't had a night like that. The most blackheads that I've seen in one night is four. I think that's the top of me. All some critters, all some critters. One of these things aren't bitey like they are in captivity when they're in the wild. They don't try and bite you. They're more worried about getting away from you as opposed to trying to do anything. The other thing that you see with a lot of these wild stuff is you see different habitat partitioning between them. You're blackheaded pythons are usually living in really rocky areas. We're a warmer python living in sandy areas. Even though they might be in the same area according to a distribution map, they're not using the same habitat types as each other. That goes for a lot of the other snakes as well. You look at jungle carpets. Why jungle carpets python so much more? Well, you've got scrub pythons where jungle carpets live as well. They're living in the same environment. I think the scrub pythons are taking over the ecological niche what coastal carpets do. Where coastal carpets down south, there's no scrub pythons so they get really big. They're eating things like wallabies and bandicoots and stuff like that. Whereas in North Queensland where you don't have coastal carpets, you've got jungles. You've got jungle carpets that are quite small. They're eating smaller rats in the mice and playing gales and any kinds of stuff like that. You scrub pythons are eating the bandicoots and the wallabies and stuff like that. There's all of these sort of little ecological partitioning that goes on between these animals and little relationships that don't really correlate too well and transpose into books and things like that and distribution maps. That's always interesting. With regards to worms, I've seen one in the wild and that had been hit by carp. I haven't seen a lot of worms yet. This was the whole reason for going out where I was going just recently. I was trying to see a Queensland inland carpet because I haven't seen a Queensland inland carpet yet. I hadn't seen a Queensland Y myself. That's what I was after. I was hoping for both of those. Unfortunately, the moon phases weren't too good for me on both of those. Unfortunately, I miss out. You like your water pythons. I do my psycho water pythons. You know they're a rite of passage over here? Water pythons? They're a rite of passage. Water pythons. If you go ahead and see water pythons out in the wild, there's a place called Fog Dam up in Northern Territory. A lot of people go to Fog Dam because this incredible place has actually got the highest biomass of predators in the world. There's more predators at Fog Dam than there is in the Serengeti of Africa with its lines and leopards and cheaters and stuff like that. There's more predators in Fog Dam with water pythons. Absolutely amazing how many water pythons are there. The dam wall at Fog Dam is about maybe a kilometer I suppose, 1000 meters or so. You drive out and you'll usually see two or three water pythons on the way out and two or three different water pythons on the way back. Then you see death adders and crocodiles and all sorts of cool stuff there. That's awesome. It's always funny when you see somebody who's never seen a water python before. If they get all excited, "Oh, it's a water python!" They're like, "Oh, you're actually." And you laugh about it because you know what's about to happen. So they get out of the car and they go up to the water python. And then one of two things happens first. Now both of them always happen, one of two things happens first, is they get musked and they get musked beautifully. And then you sit there and you go, "I don't know when you're getting back in the car smelling like that." So what if I can get a piss and shit everywhere? And then the other thing is that they bite you. So you're really going to get bitten first and then get shad on. Or you're going to get shad on first and then get bitten. So it's one or the other or both. Most likely both. Most likely both. So it's a bit of a rite of passage. But believe not, coastal carpets will do it as well. You know, coastal carpets can mask you as well. And you know, we were out one night and there's this quite a large coastal carpet python. I didn't see what it was initially. It was just sort of underneath a bush and I could sort of see a snake getting away. So I just reached in and grabbed it and as I pulled it out it was a coastal carpet. And we were doing some, this was a snake call out. And so as I pulled it back, it's pissed and crapped all over the front of me. And I got sprayed or stuck, stuck painters across the front by this bloody garbage. And I ended up throwing the t-shirt and the bin. I just threw it in the bin to stand back there. I couldn't wash it out. I tried washing it. I hit it with the hose. It was just, oh, it was, and let me tell you, it doesn't taste very nice either. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So ollie pythons, they're almost like the exact opposite. They don't tend to bite. They don't tend to wee or urate everywhere. They tend just to do what they do. I suppose they get to a size where they think, you know, what no one's really going to harass me anymore. And they start to calm down a bit and they don't do too much. So they're an absolutely amazing snake. They're probably one of my favorites, nice to see in the bush. It's all important. I do love mine. I've only ever seen them in their cage though. So it's, I think seeing animals that I've kept personally, where they're supposed to be would be like this really cool thing for me. So definitely jealous you get to see olive pythons cruising around the wild. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're one thing that you don't see many of them. What you do send is that when you see them, you don't see them in huge numbers. But when you do see them, it's always a special experience. You know, they're an amazing, amazing critter. And, you know, they often live in sort of rocky environments and places like that where you see there's usually deep cracks and stuff like that. Not get any other cracks and they'll live in areas that are actually quite cool versus sort of hot environments that people think that they're living in. They're living in these really hot places. They've been quite cool environments and come out at night to breed. So, yeah. So, yeah. So is there any other questions you've got for me for now? Oh, you want to talk about names? I told you I ramble. I'll just ramble along with you. No, but you've got to understand that's what we live for on the show. We can just do a lot of things and let you go. Nobody calls to listen to us talk. So, yeah. Why? The thing is, is I could talk underwater. So, you know, I'll just keep going and you guys are just going to hear anything. I'm just putting a couple of photos up on Chatney. I have a couple of wall things. I'll put up that jungle carpet that I was talking about before. That's a dull colored thing. That picture you just put up is a jungle carpet. Oh, no, that's a silver coast to that one. Oh, thank God. Okay. There's a jungle. There's a jungle. You're the cat or everyone. The thing I've ever thought about jungle carpet python has been ruined my entire life. What? There we go. No, you don't understand. We've got, there's a breeder up here that frees local specific jungle carpets. And he's got these things called gelatin black and white, gelatin carpet, which are black and white. And we've got those and we've got the last pick of his litter, the last pick of his clutch when we were up there last time and he had basically two buckets for us to pick from. One bucket of females, one bucket of males, which is how we like to pick. Certainly how I like to, if I'm keeping going through and sorting animals to keep. I'll put all the males. I'll sex them all. I'll put all the males in one container. And I'll put all the females in another container. And then from that, I can look at those and go, that one is the standard and that one. And that one is the standard and that one. I'll take those two. There'll be the ones that I tend to keep because we don't have the room to be raising up. 20 or 30 babies at a time each time and not, and sort of hope for the best. So that's how we tend to do it. It tends to work pretty well. You end up getting some really nice, high contrasting with the animals. I'll put some photos up with those gelatin as well. I'll get rid of taking some photos of them. They're just starting to get the size now. I'm getting some size on them now. And they are the crispest white and the darkest black that you've ever seen. They're absolutely amazing. They're really, really incredible looking things. And I used to think, I like black and gold jungles. No, I like black and gold. I really like black and white jungles now. They're stunning. Absolutely stunning. I've seen some pictures that people have sent me of some captive bread ones from down there. They're pretty spectacular. Man, is that in England? Yeah, that's a mistake for them. I love England. God, I need it. Wow. All right, I'll get there. Have you noticed? Sorry, I gone. I was going to say, have you noticed where do you see a difference in the coloration? I've heard that I forget which way it is, but it's either north. The northern's have more bread coming in. Yeah, so the northern ones have got lots more white and lots more orange. And so that's why I was in Western Queensland looking for these things. I was like, I really want to find one. And it would have been like a nice little thing before the show to be able to go. Look, what I found yesterday, you know, to do is up. I mean, as it was, I stirred you up by throwing up that video that I found at the coastal park at the other night sort of showed you what it's all about. It's come out open in Australia, I suppose. You know, the one thing here about us over here is that we're, we're, we're chitsters. We're a nation of chitsters. We're going to steer you off from all the rest of it. You know, we are going to, to get you incredibly jealous. And we're going to, if you come over here, I will ensure that you are, you've never been quite as tired as you've ever been before. You know, it does absolutely ruin you when you go there being tired. It's so worth it. It'll be so worth being that dog tired because, you know, you, you rile us up. We don't realize this. We're, we're really easily pleased. I mean, you're like, I don't think that somehow it's something new with a carpet pipe. I'm like, oh my God. I mean, like, if you, I want to see that video of you with the scrub because I think I would treat you over that. I mean, you could, honest to God, take a picture of carpet pipe on shit that you found in the wild and post it up on the pick of the week. And half the people would be like, oh my God, wild carpet pipe on crap. So we're really easily pleased. So yeah, well, as I said, might we call them crap inside of you for a reason, say, you know? [laughter] Yeah, look, I mean, look, amazing, amazing animals. And it's such a good experience. I mean, I love going out with people from, from overseas and other states and stuff like that as well because you get that enthusiasm from you guys. And then, that enthusiasm then sort of spurs me on to do more and find more and enjoy more, enjoy it more myself. Right? So, you know, going out, everyone going out together and getting out in the group and going out into the, going seeing animals in the bushes are really, really awesome experience. And, you know, it'd be great to get a few yankies over there and over here and come over and do some herping and see some prayers. And, you know, I'm sure we'll be able to rope, out of melee it into it and myself and maybe a couple of others and take a whole heap of you guys out across and go and find a whole heap of bloody snakes. Very awesome. And get stupidly tied in the process and have a lot of fun. It's probably a good idea to bring somebody like you around because I would be the idiot that would grab what I was thinking was a walnut or no. Well, remember the laws over here. You wouldn't be grabbing anything. No, I can't touch it. You're right. That's another reason. You wouldn't, you wouldn't grab anything. You wouldn't touch this thing over here. You know, you have it all the way around from the other side of the glides and just look, you know. It's a real test of your willpower. That's a very good point. Oh, I can't even say that with a straight face. Nice. Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely not. You know, you see all of these critters out there and all of these things that are around. And, you know, you guys, you get so much from it. And I suppose what you don't, it's so hard to sort of articulate what you're going to get from it. The one thing that you are going to get from it is the feel of what it's like to be out there when it's humid and warm and all the rest of it. I mean, to give you an idea at the moment, it's probably 27 degrees outside at the moment here. And it's just about the storm again. The ground's all wet and all the rest of it, and I'm just looking out. And half of the lizards are out in the pits, and it's about to rain again. You know, so this is what activity periods are like over here. We've got this 75/80 cent humidity here at the moment and everything like that's all out and about and doing bits and pieces. So, you know, it's pretty cool to see what things are doing in the bush and having that feel and seeing what the habitality is like and all the rest of it and then seeing what the animals are doing. And then looking where sheds are, I mean, sheds can tell you a lot, cracks can tell you a lot. All of these other subtleties can teach you all this other stuff about the animals and what the animals are doing and where they're going and all the rest of it. So, yeah. I think it's sort of like you're absolutely right that the thing that I want to gain most from it is to understand. I mean, it's one thing to read in a book that it's, you know, this is the temperature and this is, you know, how hot or how cold or how humid or whatever. But it's a totally different thing, you know, to be there, to experience it, to feel it, to have a temperature gun and shoot it on the rock and see how hot it is, you know, or be there at night and see how cold it is and, you know, or see. I think this is what I think even seeing just you were talking about earlier about how not underweight, but, you know, how skinny or thin these snakes are and, you know, we're used to these, you know, we probably would think, oh, my God, I think it's got to eat, go get a rat or something. Some of these photos that I'm, you know, you're saying that I'm putting up photos of bits and pieces now on the chat there. These are all wild snakes. They're not captive bred or anything like that. You know, these animals are skinny in places. They're not all fat and things like that. And, you know, we see a skinny snake in captivity and we automatically say it's sick. That's what we think, you know, that's about animals. You know, see, it's in bad niggas and it's not being looked after correctly or whatever it is. No, that snake is how that snake looks. That's what that snakes should look like. Now, I'm about to put a photo up of a six-foot coastal carpet. Well, it's probably not a coastal. It's probably an actual wild intergrade between a coastal and a jungle. It's from a place called Paloma. And if you look at that animal, that's six-foot long and they'd be lucky to be a kilo in white. Wow. Jesus. Okay. That's an adult mile. What's that? That's my size carpet. Yeah, there we go. It's an adult mile. Wow. Jesus. I'm sure that they get bigger, but that's an adult mile sign. Um, now, how many coastal carpet pythons are the six-foot long in the U.S. that weigh under a kilo? Uh, yeah. Under a thousand grams. Um, probably not a lot of them. Yeah, it doesn't have any that are six-foot, so I don't know. Yeah, the other thing that I look at as well, and that I notice in carpet pythons, is you look at the head saws on a wall carpet sign versus a captive carpet sign. And the heads are always in proportion to the body. They don't have these small heads, and then they go to a neck that was almost in distinct, which is what usually happens in captivity, versus in the wild, you look at them. They've got these big, chunky heads. Um, you know, you can see that snake there. It's got a head. It's got a neck. Uh, and the head is actually larger than most of the forebody of that animal. Whereas in captivity, you generally see the forebody. As soon as you get to the head and you've gone that little depression in from the neck, it starts to get fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter to these hugely overweight, uh, snakes. You know, I honestly think what that means is it's a bit like people. People that are, uh, quite overweight tend to have a shorter lifespan. Um, they, they seem okay and they're healthy and they can breed and they can do all of these things, but they're not as healthy as a, you know, a little Japanese fellow that eats, eats well and, and doesn't overeat or anything like that and isn't incredibly obese or overweight or anything like that. So, I think there's a lot to be said for, um, sort of correct weights on animals and correct fields and, and seeing, seeing what muscle tone these animals have now. I think the other thing that we try and, we're trying to get away from one one, we've got a lot of snakes in, in racks here like, like everybody because it's a good way of keeping animals. I say it's a good way of keeping them. I don't think it's a great way of keeping them. I think the Europeans have probably got it, got it a bit brighter with, with keeping things in, in clothes where you can really see what's going on and, uh, and all the rest of it. And so this, this new snake room that I'm building at the moment is incorporating a lot more enclosures into its design. Um, so I can actually observe a lot more about what's going on and, rather than having to pull a tub out and see what's going on inside a tub. Um, I don't know, Tom will tell us both. I think the other thing is to, I, I like being able to observe the animals and see what they're doing without necessarily, you know, moving their whole world out to see what's going on because I've, I've opened a tub. Um, but, you know, I just don't know. It's all, it's all these questions and quandaries that we have with either ourselves or that that he thinks of it with it. Yeah, yeah. You know, but at the same time, if you, if you never give it a go, you're never going to know either. So you better off giving it a crack and, and seeing how it turned out. Sure. Um, do you have any thoughts on one of the, uh, one of the things that I've been thinking about recently, and I've, I've sort of done this since last year of breeding. As far as cycle feeding, is that, do you think that that is, are you observing anything like that in the, in the wild? Is that something that, uh, yes, yes, definitely. You don't see, I don't see carpet portions. I mean, I see carpets fairly regularly and because I go out, I'm into herping in general, so it doesn't matter if it's, um, if it's a good night for, for carpets, it might be a good night for something else or, or whatever. And in winter, I quite often going out looking for frogs because a lot of our frogs breed in winter. Uh, so that, you know, you're, you know, you're, you're, you know, I think, trucking out into bush looking for frogs and things like that and other bits and pieces. And so you, you do see, you do come across carpet pythons in, in winter and, and stuff like that. And I'm yet to see a carpet python in winter that's been in, in ambush posture, and I'm yet to see a carpet python in winter that's got a feed in it. And it's got, um, when I see carpet pythons, you see them quite often entering the day as well. You know, we think of these things being nocturnal. They're not so nocturnal. They do come out of what during the day. Um, what they're doing is they're curling up and they're basking in, in, and they've got usually quite a tight coil. And that tight coil is, is something that is, um, reminiscent of, of keeping, keeping the animal, uh, retaining heat. And, and, and being able to gain that heat. And they usually basking, basking in dappled sunlight. So that's what they, I suppose that those beautiful carpet markings are, you know, that, you know, you look, look from a, um, look across the forest floor. And that dappled sunlight that's coming down is, you know, it's got light patches and dark patches. And so it looks quite similar to what a carpet python looks like on its back. So they'll often situate themselves sort of half underneath the bush or in between some tree roots or in between some rocks or something like that. And, um, usually have the head sitting up on the top in the sun, and then they'll, they'll have a position, they'll position themselves there in such a way that they're sitting there ready to go, waiting for just the temperature to come up. And then as it starts to cool off, then they'll go back into wherever they were, whether it be a rock crevice or something like that. The other thing that you'll sometimes find of, I've seen it a couple of times where they'll throw out a coil. So they'll still be in a rock crevice or still be in a tree hollow, but they'll just have a coil that's hanging out. So they're, they're getting, obviously they're using that coil to heat the blood up in that particular section. And then the rest of that is then going back into the rest of the animal now. Um, I've never seen it, but I know of people that have found blackheaded pythons, um, just with the tops of their heads exposed in tree hollows. So the, the snake's been inside a tree hollow and just the top of its head's been exposed. So the, the black from the head is then allowing the snake's brain to heat up and then get the blood flow down and then actually heat the whole snake up. Um, right. But you, you get those sorts of things happening as well. Um, so, you know, but again, I've never seen them feeding in winter. So if you're not seeing them feeding in winter, then they're not eating in winter. And now if their brains aren't saying I should be eating, but they're still getting warm, then cycle feeding probably use something that's actually going on because they're not looking for food. They're not looking for food and they're, they're run down. They're the other thing that would happen as well and they're not, I don't know, I'm, uh, scared guessing here. All right. It's an educated guess. I'm imagining that their metabolism is going to slow down as well. Now, what tends to happen is that when you feed a snake, their metabolism, they'll go under the heat and their metabolism rises to process that, uh, digest that meal. So if, if you're got an animal that's, that you're keeping the metabolism high all the time all the way through, you're going to get good growth rates and you're going to get, um, weight gain and all the rest of it. But you never give the animal a break. Right. Which isn't what's going on in the world. They're always having that break. Now, we can, you know, most of us do silly hours, I suppose, with our, with our work and our life and all the rest of it and we're burning the candle at both ends. And you see people, if they run ragged for six weeks or eight weeks at a time, you see them, they start to really become, they almost look a little bit sickly in their appearance. They start to get run down all the time. You can see that, you can see that in people. And then they go away on holiday and they relax and they do unwind and detention and all the rest of it and they come back and they're better than ever. Right. We're effectively doing that with our snakes. If we're always feeding them and always keeping them warm, we're always keeping them going. They're never getting a break. Now, when they have that break, that's when they're doing their repairs to their body. You know, they're repairing their muscles, they're repairing their skin, they're allowing their circulation to slow down. They're having those breaks that they should have. How detrimental to them is it? I've got no idea. I don't know. I don't know how you'd even test for it. I suppose that's where you need a physician, a physicist, a physiologist or something like that to go through and do all those sorts of tests that they do on snakes. There's a really fantastic book that I don't know how available it is in the States. It's called The Biology and Evolution of Australian Snakes by Dr. Alan Greer. It was published by Surrey Beatty and Sons. It's now out of print, but you should still be able to get copies of it if you hunt. It's got some of the most amazing data on wild and captive snakes in that book. It's absolutely amazing. Now, it's something that I use all the time, because Alan was a very meticulous fellow, and he, even in his references and stuff like that, he's made references to the data, whether it's wild or captive. It talks about things like the work that Rick Schein has done with looking at volatile growth in reproductive test size, enlargements and foodings and all that sort of stuff in wild snakes. You could see these reproductive sort of stuff in museum animals. He's listed a lot of that stuff in his data as well. And then there's a whole heap more beside to the stuff that Rick has done in there as well, so it's an amazing book that's got all this information. I would be really interested in seeing if there is any correlation between looking at feeding specimens that have been collected from museums that have got prey records within them and seeing if they were collected in winter. Now, I would have had to guess that the ones that have got prey records in them are probably coming from the warmer periods of the year as opposed to during winter. So I think cyclic feeding is probably something that's fairly important. Certainly with some of the island species where you've got, you know, you guys have got those bowlers that have the birds that come down and basically they're nesting for a certain period of time during the year. We've got mutton birds that nest on island in Bass Strait where tiger snakes can only eat for a few weeks of the year because other than that, outside of that period, the birds are too large for the snakes to eat. And so they can go for 10 to 12 or 10 or 11 months without feeding at all. And then they have this six week to eight week period of absolute gluttony where they're eating as much as they can to get them through for a year because they do not eat for 10 months of the year. Their temperatures are up there, but they don't eat for 10 months of the year. So I do wonder if you get things like that in Inbricada. You know, there's populations of Inbricada that live off to the islands of the south of Australia that are maybe eating in smaller numbers at smaller times or whether they've got birds coming over and nesting on those islands, I'm not quite sure. I think cycle fading is something that's important and certainly worth looking into. Here, that's more best guess or surprise on that particular matter. Cool. Very cool. So we got a question kind of emailed over to us from our friend Rob Stone. And he wanted to know if you kept any monitors or what is this? Pocket? Pocket birds? Yeah, you have to put it back. Yes. And yes. Okay. So monitors. We like big monitors here. We're not small, small monitor keepers. We leave the little ones to other people. So we've got we keep parentis, lace monitors, yellow spotted monitors, which is veranas panopties. And we have Spencer's monitors here and Rosenberg's. There are our large monitors that we keep. And then in regards to pikeopods, we keep common scaley foots, which are the largest Australian pikeopods. The world's largest pikeopods, which gets almost a meter long. They're incredible beasts. That sort of flip out and that's quite difficult. You know, putting them together, you keep them a bit like a snake that eats crickets. You put them in together and you've got to be very careful because the females brutalize the males. You know, they're pale off and do all sorts of stuff. It's horrendous. That's lovely. And then parentis, we're always worried about the parentis. About them sort of ripping into each other. I mean, they're pretty expensive animal. They sell for between $1,500 and $2,000 each year. So, you know, you don't want a $2,000 ripping another $2,000 lizard apart. It's not a good look. You know, so, I mean, I suppose that's the beauty of us being where we are in Australia. I mean, Brisbane here. It's not Brisbane. It's Brisbane. You and your buddy and warmers. You hear people talking about warmer pythons. It's Woma, you know, but that's all right. Woma. Yeah. We call it albino and you guys call it albino. So, we can go to this the entire time. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, we can do that. But at the end of the day, right, you say, "Woma python." Yeah, that's the name of it. It's not Brisbane. It's Brisbane. Brisbane. Brisbane. Got it. All right. Okay. It's like me, we're about to you in Philadelphia or something. Is that right? Yeah. Philadelphia. It's like me saying it's Philadelphia or something like that. It's not right. You know, I can say it's Philadelphia. It doesn't make it any brighter. This is, you know, had my English right now. Oh, God. You have... I'll stay up. From this point... Let me tell me. Tell me, how do you guys pronounce the scientific name of the jungle copper python? Moraleous. Solota. Chaney-eye. Chaney-eye. It's actually Shane. Shane-eye. Shane-eye. Shane-eye. There's a guy by the name of Richard Wells. He's a mate of mine. He was the one who actually describes them. And it's, I don't think it was named after. I think it's named after Wellington's daughter, something like that. No name Shane. And so everyone says "chaney-eye". And they say, "Brett-a-lee, brett-a-lee, brett-a-eye". And all that. It's actually "Brett-a-lee" is the way it's pronounced. Really. But that's all right. It's all good fun. You know. [laughter] That's my Philadelphia accent coming out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all right. That's all good. All good for a lot. All right. It's to me listening to you talk about the monitors that you have because you're like, you have a couple of lace monitors where I think there's like eight lace monitors in the country if you know correctly. And in the United States, I think a normal lace monitor is like $10,000. And a belt-based lace monitor is like $15,000. Yeah. So it's just, it's just another aspect to be on the snakes of, you know, lizards are rare over here too. So. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I suppose it's like we go through, well, I mean, we've got a quarter emerging on exact years about to get all excited. You know, you talk about blue tongue morphs over here. You know, we've got some amazing morphs in our blue tongues. Oh, yeah. And, you know, we've got black bluish here and we've got an undefined, unproven morph here at the moment of a calico eastern blue tongue, which has started off as being a completely normal-looking baby. And then each shed, it just goes, gets lighter and lighter and lighter. And now it's basically a yellow blue tongue. You know, there's, there's pied blotch blue tongues. And, you know, all of these other things are over here that, and there's a lot of stuff that hasn't really been publicized yet. There's some of these other, other morphs of blue tongues that are kicking around over here. And you talk about, are these going to be the next big thing? Yes, they will. Yeah. Yeah, they will. Wow. Because they're awesome. They don't want to bite, they're friendly, they're easy to keep. They're like the ultimate pet lizard. You know, people ask me, oh, you know, should I get what, I want to get my first lizard, blue tongue. So do I. Right. Sheaps all over a breeder dragon. So much better than the breeder dragon. So much better, you know. They're easier to keep, they're friendly, and they actually deal with periodic handling. Because you've got to remember, the person that's getting their first lizard, that lizard's going to sit on their couch while they're watching television with them. They're going to take that lizard everywhere sort of around with them and all the rest of it, and that's what they're going to do. Yeah. Bit of dragons don't necessarily do really well with that. You get some beets that do really well with it, and then there's other beets that don't. Where a blue tongue lizard, that's just like, that's what they do. They're just friendly, and they're happy, and all the rest of it. I mean, I've got a blue tongue lizard here that's called horse. And I've had horse since 1992. Oh, correct. And he's 760 millimeters long, and he's seven and a half centimeters across his head in width. Okay. So he's a big blue tongue. And horse can't do any wrong. All right. And it's like a bit of a running joke here. There's horses absolutely stuffed three or four other blue tongues that we've had, because he just bites their tails off and eats them. He's a huge lizard. But he's my pet. He can't do any wrong. You know, he can turn around and chomp down and I'll be, you know, or something like that. And I'll go, oh, that's just horse. Oh, yeah. He was just staring, you know, whatever it is. He lives with another blue tongue these days, and he's not allowed to play with others anymore. But, you know, they are amazing critters. And they think, you know, I can hand that lizard that absolutely savages other blue tongues. I can hand him to a four-year-old kid and go here, hold this. And he just sits there and he loves it. He loves being patted and all that sort of stuff. And I'm answering more fighting over here and saying that they really love being patted, which probably isn't the case. But he tolerates it really, really well and he doesn't stress out about it. So that's probably a better way of describing it. But they work so much better for kids. You know, I've got a crocodile I've used in demonstrations. And that crocodile thinks it's going to kill me until I've got a tie rope on its jaws. And the minute I get a tie rope on its jaws, he goes, "Oh, okay. I'm in show mode now." And he calms down and basically sits there and just polarates being patted and touched by people and all the rest of it. But until that jaw ropes on that for a crocodile, no way. That crocodile was a crocodile. So it's interesting seeing the changes in these animals and, you know, how people can interact. And I think that education through touch and education through fear and education through exposure is so important whether it be a blue tongue lizard or a carpet python or, you know, in the case of where you guys are, you guys can be educating the local kids at the school with things like, you know, you take your carpet python along. If you're a positive experience to a child, a child, and you've got somebody who's then going to act as a conservationist for the rest of their lives. You know, they're going to worry about, you know, whether they throw that piece of rubbish in the bin or whether they just let it go out into the gutter. You know, and if we conserve the habitats and do those sorts of things, we make for a better earth coming forward. So, you know, it's really important what we sort of do and how we behave. And at the end of the day, if we do the right thing, it means that there's going to be carpet pythons out there for you guys to find over here. Whereas if you just trash the habitat, it's going to be terrible for everybody. Yeah, the more and more that I'm doing this, I'm kind of drawn to doing more of that. We're going out and talking to kids. I've done it a couple of times and it was actually, it was really fun, you know, because probably like you were saying earlier about how, you know, if we're coming over there, we'd get all excited because this is the first time we would see a snake and hold, you know, in the wild like that and sort of feeds you. And, you know, it's just like this, you know, relationship that kind of happens to where, you know, it's like when I would do music, you know, you'd get up on stage and you would play and people would get inspired by that and then that would make you more inspired. You'd play better and just, you know, you'd feed off of that. And yeah, I get kind of excited when, you know, you're talking to young kids and the first time they see, you know, a snake or a lizard or, you know, a reptile and their thoughts of what they think it is and then, you know, you break down that wall and, you know, show them what they're really about and, you know, it just changes and you can see in their head, you know, like, wow. This is why I love doing wildlife demonstrations over here because it's a job that, as a job, I get paid to go out and change people's lives like that, you know. It's absolutely amazing, you know. I mean, I was doing a talk last night and there was a person there that was incredibly concerned when I come to dealing with snakes and I had cuddles which is the olive python that I got from Graham Gayle and, you know, again, another thing we're, instead of calling it fang on, got this nice, friendly name. The whole idea of these things is to try and break down that, oh, it's a snake. It's going to kill me type attitude and have this friendly sort of attitude and give people a good, friendly experience. And this person was, she was looking at an albino carpet and she was looking at this thing and a couple of other bits and pieces and she was like, oh, she goes, oh, I really want to touch her. Come up at the start of the night, come up and just touch the tail and then walk away. So she's walked away and all the rest of it. One of the ends she's holding, by the end of the night, she was holding cuddles. So she's gone from somebody that was really unsure about whether she even wanted to be in the room at the start of the night and was really nervous to somebody that's holding a ten-foot olive python around their neck. You know, it's a pretty awesome experience. And she turned around and she said at the end she goes, thank you so much, you've changed me to the better. She goes, now when I see a snake, instead of getting really, really scared, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to cause snake catcher and get the snake catcher to move it on for me, as opposed to maybe getting a son to put a shovel through or something like that. Now, if I change one person every month for the rest of my life through teaching, you know, it's not much. If I change one person, so it's only twelve people a year for the rest of my life, they're all going to then change their habitat, the way they deal with people and the way they deal with animals as well. And they may not save snakes, but they might save a lizard. I may say it to her or anything like that. Or they just might decide that they're going to try and take green power, as opposed to something else and save the environment in some way, shape or form. And all these small little things make a big difference in the end. And that collectiveness of everybody working together is going to turn people's attitudes around. And we're seeing a change in the Australian population through a lot of the work of wildlife demonstrators, you know, where, you know, you don't kill snakes anymore. You know, they're not hanging snakes on fences anymore, they're not killing snakes. A lot of people now, instead of seeing a snake thing they reach for as a camera, as opposed to reaching for a shovel, you know. And leaving that snake alone and not trying to kill it. Fantastic. And then from you guys yourselves, I guarantee that you guys have affected people, you don't even realise this. But I guarantee that you guys have affected young people through, whether it be this radio program or selling them a carpet pipe and then actually dealing with them as a human being and having some respect for a new person that's just starting out. And we've all been guilty of it, and I'm included here, where you jump down the throat of somebody who's just starting out and they haven't done quite enough research and they haven't done this and they haven't done that. And sometimes we forget how new we really are. We were new once too. You know, we know what we know now. We were new as well. And, you know, there's no such thing as a dumb question, and sometimes this little hobby gets so naffy to ourselves, where we're sort of nailing each other on things to try and try and get people to do the right thing and we come across like ours. If we were a little bit nicer to everyone and sort of spoke to people how we wish to be spoken to, I think there'd be a much nicer hobby and a lot more people would be to get a positive experience out of all of it as well. Yeah, as our good friend Bill puts it, tolerance. You know? For sure. For sure. For sure. For sure. Is that video going around Facebook at the moment? I'll put it on more. Share it on my page. I don't know who he is. It must be a ball poth and go over in the States. He sits around and does these rent videos in his car and he talks about newbies and tolerance and stuff like that. He's just done this one on newbies and stuff like that. We've heard more wife watch this morning actually. We both said, "Yeah, fuck yes." That's what we need to do. A good on him. A little thing like that, it affects things. You turn around and you give a positive experience to a kid. That person, that kid that you've just given a positive experience to, might be the next Tom Crutchfield. It might be the next, Kevin McCurley, it might be the next Blind Bar Check, it might be the next Hal Cogor, Rich Sean. You don't know that at the time. You don't know who you're dealing with. But if you're giving them a positive experience, they're forever going to be grateful for it. Likewise, if you give them a negative experience, they're going to remember that too. They're going to remember you for being an asshole. Not much, but I would be remembered for not being an asshole. And don't get me wrong, I've got an ego, and sometimes that ego gets in the way of doing the right thing by people sometimes. You get these regrets over the years, and I'm trying now to be a little bit more pacifistic I suppose, if you will, and not try to get into many blues. I suppose the one thing that I've learned, I started keeping reptiles after about five years I thought on your fair bit, and then after ten years I thought on your lot, and then maybe 20 years after 20 years I started realizing, maybe I didn't know quite as much as I thought I did. Now, 25 years in, I'm starting to realize I don't know much at all, and it's sort of the longer you do it, the more you realize you know, bugger all, and you're always learning, and you know, every time I go out into the bush, I learn something new. Every time I talk to somebody, I learn something new. Just because I haven't witnessed it yet, doesn't mean to say it's not true, and doesn't mean to say there's nothing else to go from. All of the people that I look up to that really know a lot about animals, they're almost all the same, they all sort of say the same thing, I don't know that much, I don't know that much about this. I've got to always do more research into this, I've got to always do more about that. You know, there's always stuff out there to learn, there's always stuff to draw. Yeah, you know, I equate it to sometimes I'm talking to, you know, Python breeders over here in the States, and you know, I'm the type of person that's always trying to push things forward, or try to learn some more, try to figure out, you know, what else can be learned from these reptiles. And sometimes when I'm talking to people that have been doing it for 20 years, well, this has worked for me for the past 20 years, why am I going to change? And, you know, I mean, I don't know, to me that becomes, you know, I mean, I just think that there's always something else to learn, or something to push it forward. Because I think if the people that, you know, started working with reptiles and captivity at the very beginning, we're that way, we want to be where we're at today, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean, look, we used to have almost this recipe, I suppose, in Australia, how to keep snakes. It used to be, you set your thermostat for 30 degrees, you have a blue globe or two blue globes in the corner of one end of the enclosure, and you had substrate that was gravel, and you had it in fish tank. That was how you used to keep snakes, that was how you did it, and it worked. And you know what? There was a pioneer by the name of Brian Barnett, and I say he's a pioneer because he's truly a pioneer. He has read more and more reptiles and so many people understand in this country, you know. And Brian is one of those people that I'll always look up to, and a hell of a lot of respect for him. I've known him since I was a young teenager, and, you know, I'd ring him up on the phone and I must have been such an annoying little shit to talk to. I sit back and I bloody cringe, and you know, but Brian would always take the time to talk to me and go, "Oh, well, you know, no, Scott, I think this is what you should be doing, or you should try this, or you should try that." And he was one of these really meticulous sort of keepers that kept a lot of records, but he always published, he was a publishing person and he was a president of the Victorian Perpetological Society, and he used to write papers and he was really into scrub pythons and type hands and capillary and tiger snakes and all that sort of stuff. And some of the papers he's written is where he's actually weighed the food items before he feeds the snakes, so he has a food item weight and then he's got growth rates that go with those animals for two years, three years, and actually has all of this data and how to keep them and all the rest of it. And he pioneered a lot of egg incubation techniques and he was a pioneer of this and that and the other. He's the first person I know who ever bred blackheaded pythons in Australia. He's one of the first people that really knew how to breed scrub pythons in Australia. Probably the first person to breed coastal type hands in Australia with any regularity. You know, he's one of those fantastic guys, Neil Sonomans, another guy like it. There's all these guys that were real pioneers in the 80s, 70s, 80s and 90s that were breeding a lot of these things before they were being bred in captivity commonly. And they did it with using, having to build their own enclosures and do this and do that. You couldn't go and just go and buy some heat cord and a thermostat off the shelf. You know, your thermostat, you were getting out of an air conditioner and you were rewiring it to make it work and using thermometers and all sorts of stuff. So, you know, there's these pioneers out there that did things, but then you talk to those same guys today and a lot of them are using tub systems and they're using heat cord and they're using this and they're doing that and they're over water incubation and sintubs and all these sorts of things that they're doing. So, you know, they're adapting to changes. But who was the first person to go, you know what? I'm going to put my reptile eggs over over water and see how it goes. See if that's better than covering a minivinicular. Well, you know, until somebody does that, until someone has a crack, no one else is going to do it. Right. So, to the people that are pioneering and trying different techniques and trying things, yeah, sometimes it's going to fail, but at least they're having a go, you know, and we're not going to really learn or improve if we always do exactly the same thing all the way through. So, yeah, boy or me, if you think you've got something that might be worth giving you a go, give it a go. Try it. If it doesn't work for a season, it doesn't work for two seasons. All right, well, you can always go back to here. It was working, you know, but you're not going to learn if you keep doing things exactly the same way as you always have. Yeah. Absolutely. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. I told you. I stopped raging. Don't worry. No, no. No. Again. I love the rinse. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I do, I wanted to make sure that we got a couple of questions in before we cut off. There was one of when you're going out into the field, right, and we're back into Herpen and field Herpen, what are some of the things you have to make sure that you have that maybe people would overlook? Okay. So, seriously, there's two things like, well, I'll say three things are the most fundamental three things. All right. The first one, decent attitude, go out there with a good attitude, go out there going, you know what? It doesn't matter what I'm going to do. I'm going to have fun today. I'm going to enjoy myself. So that's the first one. The second one is to have a compression bandage with you. All right. Because everything, every day, and then something like stuff up and you might fall down and hurt your ankle and twist your ankle or something like that. If you've got a compression bandage, you can at least wrap it up and strap it up. If you happen to get a finger because you've fallen over and landed on a snake or something silly like that, then you've got a bandage there to be able to bandage it up as well. So a bandage is very important. The other thing is too, when you're looking for carpet snakes and other patterns, you're generally going to go out at night. So you're going to have a torch with you. So it's a really, really, really good idea to have a backup torch or a backup battery with you. So I can tell you, it really sucks going out into the bush, watching out for a four kilometer of the bush, and then having your head torch shut itself. And then now you're in the middle of the bush, you know, it's mid night, two o'clock in the morning, and you're two kilometers from nowhere and you've got no way of getting back because you don't know how to find your way back. So people die. People die out in the bush. I suppose the thing is Australia, and it's the one thing that people don't quite understand, I suppose, is that, you know, mobile service, we had this last trip that we did. We had three of us were away, and there was a young fella from Sydney by the name of Jake. And Jake's mobile phone was with a different provider to Maughan and Aaron's, and we all had different phone providers, but poor Jake's phone didn't work for two and a half thousand kilometers of that, three and a half thousand Ks. You might as well just turn it out, please, there was no service, no service of all. Okay. Wow. So, you know, you go into these places where, you know, I think there's a sign, the other one of the signs, please be warned, there's no fuel for 190 kilometers. Oh, wow. There's no fuel, no shops, no nothing for 190 kilometers. Wow. Okay. So, you have to, you know, let's tell you, you broke down half, yeah, you broke down half way along. Yeah. You're lucky. I mean, we, we drove, I'm sure I think the whole road was, we drove a road that went from probably six, about 600 kilometers a road, and we passed two cars in 600 kilometers. Wow. Wow. Two cars and 600 kilometers, that's from where, how far is Philadelphia from the, from New York? I don't want to say what, what would you say, Owen, 400, 300 miles, 400 miles? Yeah. Maybe. I mean. So, there you go. It's pretty close. So, can you imagine driving from Philadelphia to New York and saying two cars? No. Yeah. And, and also too, not having any phone service in that whole face. Wow. No mobile phone, no mobile phone service at all. Wow. No. Right. There's, there's no Facebook updates or anything like that, make you, you're out there in the bush. Damn. You're going to be young. Yeah. You know, there's no Facebook updates or anything like that, you know? You know? It's funny, right? You see people, you see people and they go out in the bush that much and, and you see them out there. And they, they're like almost having withdrawals. Like, they keep picking up their phone in, in the hopes that they may get service, you know? That's for. But, dude, to start in the glove box with a car and forget about it, kid, it ain't. But, you know, you're not, you're not talking to anyone, you know, that's it. Right. Yeah. You know. So, I suppose that it's hard to explain, but until, I suppose, I don't know, for, for you guys over in the US to understand that, you know, if you can understand that, you know, imagine a fathom driving that sort of distance. You know, I suppose it's something go out of, like, a post-apocalyptic zombie movie or something like that. We literally don't see anyone for, for 600 kilometers. Um, I remember, I don't know, did you guys get anything, hear anything about the barley bombings that, that happened in, uh, maybe 2002 or 2003? In barley, there was about 140 Australian killed, Australians killed in the terrorism accident. Do you remember hearing anything about that? Okay. So, anyway, so it was all over the news over here, as you can imagine, you know. And I was out in the field when it happened. I didn't know about it for two weeks. No news, no nothing. There was nothing for two weeks, I didn't know anything about it. So, I'll come back and there, there's things on the news about these reads of all of these Australians have died in these, these bombings of these bars that these, these people have just gone into bars and just struck bombs themselves and blew themselves up in, in bars. And, you know, we knew nothing of this. And I suppose it changes, you know, these things, things can happen all around the world. And when you're out in a place like that, you got no idea, you don't know what's going to happen, right? Because there's nothing out there for you to know. Um, so, I suppose that the remoteness is something there that's, it's something that's, um, it's pretty difficult for a lot of people to apprehend, um, and comprehend I should say. And from that you need to, to have some sort of safety things in place where you, you take spare batteries, you take some first state equipment with you, um, ideally you want to go out with somebody who, who sort of got half a clue about what they're doing. Um, and especially if they're going to take people out into, out into the desert. Um, you know, I got dehydrated in three hours. Um, you know, if that, if what had happened to me happened to, to me a hundred years ago, um, they would have been put in flails on the tombstone as far as. Right. That's much. You know, that, that's, that's the other thing I suppose to look at. So it's, it's, um, it's potentially dangerous, but it's, it's not dangerous if you do things the right way and, and doing things with a bit of intelligent. Right. You know, just being prepared. And I'm sure I could go out into the US and get myself into all sorts of trouble. You know. Oh. Oh. Oh yes. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, it's, it's, I suppose it's, it's the same thing. You know, I could go into Arizona or something like that and I could look at somebody the wrong way or something and then get shot, I suppose, you know, you got to seem to, everyone seems to be carrying Gund in the US and it's, it's, it's crazy thing, the other week about Gundets in the US on just like, oh my God, you know, we have, I think we have 200 homicide a year in Australia. And it seems like you guys almost have that New York in, you know, I stay in my sneaker and I'm not any guns there. So beautiful. Yeah. The worst thing is you got to get a miss all from a, I'm early after coming with that. Normally it's a white lip, but yeah, it's not a cranky bloody thing, so they are evil. So, yeah. Here's, here's a question though. When you're out there and you are in that remote area and you're not getting cell phone service. Does it feel different? I often wonder like, you know, like, you're, I've been in some remote places, but not nearly as remote as what you're talking about. And it just has a different feel to it like, you know, there's no cell service or, you know, I don't know, is that, is that the thing? It's funny, right? Because you, when you drive in places like that, you, you, you flick your fingers out when you say another car, because you flick your fingers up on the, on the, there's something raised to finger it up on the steering wheel, and just sort of give the people a wave. But, so they sort of see, you know, you sort of do that for two reasons, because, and the first is because you want to make sure that they've seen you, because you sort of go into this almost, when you drive in long distances, you're almost going to like this semi, semi combative state, so to speak, where you're just sort of driving on the road and you're all almost on autopilot, so to speak. And you sort of really want to hope that they've seen you. And then the other thing is to, is you sort of hope that, you know, you're saying hello, you know, you haven't seen anyone in a long time, and the other thing is too, is that if you see a car broken down on the side of the road out there, you generally stop, because you may not have seen, they may not have seen anyone for a day, you know, or, or longer. The other thing that, you know, always carry water in the vehicle, you know, and when I say water, I'm carrying like 20 litres of drinking water, each, for each person in the vehicle. Right, because if your car breaks down, you might be stuck out in the desert for weeks, you know, before somebody finally knows that, knows where you are, and then goes out and searches for you. So if you're, if you're going out herping, you make sure that you're carrying water with you. You tend to stick to tracks as opposed to, to just going off into the scrub. If you can stick to a track at least, then you've got a way of finding your way back. Doing a handheld GPS is a really good idea as well, GPS pointing your car, so you know where your car is, and then getting your Jeep, and then using your GPS to get you back. The problem is, is that you need to have some form, form a bushcraft, because GPS is not infallible. Batteries die and all that sort of stuff, and if you've relied on your GPS to get you to that point, and the battery is dying to GPS, how are you going to get back? Right. So there's all these sorts of things that you've got to sort of take into consideration. Right. You know, and it's really easy, it's surprisingly how easy it is to get lost in places like the desert and stuff like that, where you sort of go off and wander and think, yeah, it's everything's low, and you know, I can see from kilometers and everything's fine, and then, you know, you go over a little rise, and then you go over another little rise, and then you walk down a kilometer from that rise, and then suddenly that little rise that was a few little rocks has now turned into a like a range or something like that, or an outlier, that now you're not quite sure where you are, and you can get turned around pretty easily in the bush. So then, you know, at night you might be using stars to try and get you back to where you were meant to be, or, you know, you use tape or flagging tape, or GPS or any of those things to try and get you back out of it, so it's pretty full-on in those sorts of places. So, is there a different feeling? I always sort of, I like going in vehicles that are of decent quality, I don't like going in this bit rough, and I was doing a chasing some animals at a place called Law and Hill National Park, which is about 400 kilometers off the main road, the main sort of drag, so gravel road for about 230 odd kilometers, I suppose, and it's quite rocky. Now, I had one spare toy, two spare toys with me, and then I had a punchy kit, and then I had a compressor. And so, I got to Law and Hill, that was all good, and then about, oh, what have been maybe a kilometer coming out of Law and Hill, I've got to fly it. I was like, oh, yeah, okay. I've still got two spares. She's, she's, she's examples, that's all right. So, you know, didn't just throw it in the back and change to try and get gone. And then, I reckon it would have been 40 kilometers more? I had a blowout. I was like, oh, that's not good. That kind of sucks. So, now, now I've got, I've got no spare toys left. I've got one toy that's shagged, I've got one toy that's stuffed, and I've got one toy that's got a leak. And now I've got four toys on the vehicle. I'm sitting there thinking, shit, I've done that in 40 Ks, and I've got 200 kilometers left to go. What do I do? Do I go back to where I was and then hope there's somewhere in 40 there who might be able to fix my tyre? Or do I run the gauntlet? You know, well, I got here with there, getting any flats surely. I'm not going to get another one. 50 kilometers? Oh, you're getting me. I looked across, and Adam Elliott was in the car with me. I looked across Adam, I looked at him, and he looked at me, and we just go, fuck, that's not good. And there's a feeling you get where you're like, you know, this is actually kind of serious. And I suppose this is the one feeling that I get now whenever I go into these remote areas. I do have a somewhat nervousness, I suppose, when I go out into these areas, and then when I get back into, I hit the bitumen again, and the dense bar, I'm going to see another car again. I start to feel a little bit better because, you know, things like that happen. Now, as it happened, anyway, we put the spare tyre back on the car, and the tyre just had the flat in it, and drive it along. We dropped the air pressure and all the tyres down, so we dropped them down, didn't go over about 60 kilometers an hour, and then had the compressor out, and we were plugging the compressor onto the car every sort of 20 kilometers or so, and pumping the tyres up again that were going flat. And eventually, we hit the bitumen, and then we sort of limped into town. In a trip that should have taken us about three hours and ended up taking us 16, and then got the tyre fixed and then happy days. But we saw some cool critters on the way, and it was an experience. Anyone that you walk away from is a good one to say. That was pretty cool. And then, I suppose, the other one is you have a few injuries while you're away. I remember I was walking along, and we rolled the swags out for the night. Usually, what we're staying is a thing called a swag. Now, have you guys ever heard of a swag before? No. All right, so it's basically like a one-person tent. But you have your sleeping bag, or your sleeping mat, and all that sort of stuff, all inside it. So it just rolls up, and then you just roll it out, and you've got a sleeping. It's got a mozzie thing on it, and a little pile on it, and that's what you're sleeping. So you literally just roll it out and you sleep on the ground. There's no hotels or anything like that. You don't worry about it. And besides, you don't want to stay in a hotel when you can stay where the animals actually are. You're a bit off-site animal. They're more vulnerable. You know, it's good. And then you roll up swags, and there's some snakes curled up, sleeping underneath my swag, every time. There's all these cool things. So we've rolled out these swags on this river system. And we probably are maybe 15 meters away from the edge of the river, I suppose. So now we're a bit off the river. And this is northern, northern Australia, tropical Australia. So, you know, crocodiles are a concern, but we were quite a way inland. And, you know, there's not meant to be any crocodiles in this particular river at this point, and we're just like, oh, well, you know, it's freshwater crocodiles, but there's no salty. So, that's the way about the big swamps geckos. We're okay. And, anyway, so we're walking along, and then we were eye-shining along the river and seeing things like laboratory turtles, and water pythons, and northwest carpet pythons, and stimpsons, pythons, and all these pythons, and all that sort of stuff. And seeing all these really cool critters, and had a really good night in all the rest. Anyway, I've walked back across this causeway. A causeway is where the road goes down where the creek goes over the top of the road. And so there's no bridge. It's just this concrete that goes through the water, basically. And what happens is, because the water runs across the top of it, you get algae and plants and stuff like that stuff, and it becomes quite slippery. And anyway, so I'm walking back, and, you know, we've had a pretty good day. I was in a really good mood, and really, really happy. And then I've gone arse over to it on the causeway, and the legs are giving it a slip out from underneath on the algae, and I'll smack my head and land it on the concrete in the back of my head. And I opened up about 40 mil, so an inch and a half gash in the back of my head. So, again, you know, we're 350 kilometers from the nearest medical attention. So just go to the back of the car, get the super blue out, pinch the head back together, and just glue it up. And happy days. She's fine. Had a head after all the night. But, you know, that's okay. So you want to have a decent first aid kit. You want to know what you're doing out in the bush, and you go there with a good attitude, and you see lots and lots of really cool animals, and you get these crazy little stories to tell people about, you know, blowing out tires and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, it's fun. It's good. It's a really good experience. And to see what these things actually do in the bush is just absolutely amazing, and really get out there and experience it. And not enough Australian Herpers get out into the bush, and see what's around, you know. They're content to look at their snakes in their boxes and all the rest of it. And don't get me wrong, I love looking at snakes in boxes, and I really love keeping snakes and other reptiles, but nothing beats going at and seeing them in the wild. You know, I can't wait till I finally see that on Pellepythin, just sitting on a rock ledge up in Arnhem Land, you know, that's going to be longer. But one of those moments, mate, that I'm just going to sit there and just go, yep, this is about as good as it gets out in the bush, you know. Wow. You know, it will happen. It will happen. I am convinced. It may take a long bloody time, but it is going to happen. Now, just before we get cut off, I was just thinking, too, we've got to say something. Scales and Tails magazine in the US, in Australia over here, they do a pretty cool magazine. I know you guys have spoken about it before. Steve Castell, who's one of the owners of Scales and Tails, I was talking to him, and I said, we've got to try and do something for these guys out in the US about this magazine. And I guess, oh, what can we do? And I said, well, if I'm going to go on this radio program, I said, well, I want to give it a bit of a plug on there and see what you can do for them. He goes, all right. So he's come to the party for you guys. So if you guys, if your listeners send Steve an email, now the email is admin@scalesandtails.com.au. All right. And so Marillia Python radio in the subject line of that email, he will mail you guys out a free copy of the magazine for the first five people that email him and say Marillia Python radio. So you guys can actually get a paper copy of the magazine and see what it's like. That's awesome. Right, too. So a little thing that we did for you guys over there to try and look. And I think what he said is after that is any of the other people to miss out. If they email him, he'll give you a link to an electronic copy of one of the back issues in the magazine as well, so you can have a bit of a look and see what it's like. But I mean, it's $76 Australian. Now with the dollar, the Australian dollar versus you guys, I think that works out to being like, I think we're about $0.75 to the dollar for you guys. So I think it works out about $50 US for six issues or something. I don't make $55 US for six issues of this magazine. And it's a pretty cool magazine, mainly centered on Australian species and field-herping and stuff like that. And you get to see photos of stuff in the bush. So that's a pretty cool thing. I just got, well, for a long time, I was getting the e-magazine. But there's something, call me old-fashioned. I don't know. I want the actual copy in my hand. So I finally ordered it and I got the new one. It's the one where you actually did the article on VenomDoc, the book VenomDoc. So I actually picked that up because of that. But what an awesome magazine. I mean, if you listen to this podcast and you do not have a subscription to that magazine, you're missing out because I mean, it's everything that we're talking about. I read the account where they were out in the field-herp and trip that they were on there. There was an article on O and PellyPythons. I'm like, wow, this is just the greatest ever. Oh my gosh. Is that not a bad magazine? Is it? No, it's probably bad because we're ordering it as well. Sorry, huh? I mean, if you're into Australian species, why wouldn't you want to reptile the magazine from Australia? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Kind of a no-brainer. And what an awesome thing for them to do as well, to turn around and get, we'll send out five copies over the people in the US to say they can have a bit of a look and say what it's about. And then hopefully, I mean, at the end of the day, these magazines that are run by these people, the only way they survive is if people support the magazine. At the end of the day, we all give and give and give and give. But we can only give so much if no one ever gets behind people in the hobby. And it's like US ark and things like that. If people don't ever give, then the hobby's never going to gain from things. And there's a Texas rattlesnake festival that happened last year or the year before or whatever. They're doing these things that are out there to try and sort of conserve. If people get behind and help some of these things come along, it's a great thing for everybody. Yeah, absolutely. I can tell you, like I said, first of all, thanks to Scales and Tails and thank you to you, Scott. And that's an awesome thing for our listeners. So if you're even remotely interested in Australian reptiles, it's definitely a pickup that you want to support these guys so they can keep doing it. I'm going to be greedy on this one. I want you guys to do it so they keep making it so that I can keep reading it. Don't give your own. I'm not saying that they're thrown in the tail or anything like that. I don't want to make out what you're going to do. I'm not suggesting that. We've got to get behind our fellow hobbyists and follow people that are supporting things. And likewise, supporting things that people like yourself. I mean, you guys are doing things that are getting a wider readership out into the community and understanding and stuff like that. I mean, I listen to you guys on the way to work each day and all the rest of it. And then I'm sort of bummed by the time that the thing's finished because I'm like, well, now we're going to listen to it. I've started listening to like some of the other reptile podcasts out there as well. All the various ones are out there. And I've learned stuff about all of these things. I'm not really into morphs or anything like that. I'm much more of a person that's into the wild type animals. But at the same time, I'd much rather listen to someone like Nick talking about genetics on how morphs and climereas and paradoxes and all of these various things out there are sort of formed than listening to too close, just talking crap on talking about local sport or something like that in Australia. I'd much rather learn something and come away learning something as opposed to seeing there and not understanding. So you guys should be commanded by getting people on to talk about stuff and listen and learn. And some of those things you have with ARRI about the Boalans pythons and stuff like that. That makes me want to go to New Guinea and go and see Boalans pythons. That's for sure. It's an awesome thing to do. But then also too, and you talk about the way you're keeping things. I mean I never really thought about cycle feeding. And yet now I've sort of got this cycle feeding going through my head. I'll give this a go. This sounds intriguing. Whether it comes off or not, I don't know. But I'm curious. And we can all learn from each other on these sorts of things. And opening these lines of communication up is such an important thing. So this is really, we haven't really done a lot of field hoping stuff. We've touched on it here and there. We've sort of gone to shit on this a bit. But I'm just looking back over this thing. You sent me through about some of the topics and we'll sort of go through some of these things a little bit. So try and get back to things. But do you have any other questions you want to get through before we get cut off, before we get back down some of the scripted stuff? I think this is, I was interested in this. Everything is all relative. But if you could field harp anywhere in the world, where would you go? And what would you hope to see? Could you live in Australia? And that's where we want to go. So where do you want to go? Caccidou and go get a bloody out on Pelleypaw. That's a fair answer. Yeah, look. I mean, after listening to it, I've gone back to a lot of your back catalog and been listening to a lot of those. And listening to that stuff about why Manor and going up in the hills and seeing violence, violence, sitting on clutches of eggs, that would be a pretty epic herping trip. I mean, I mean, I'm going to lap it nuts. So I mean, I'm not trying to go and see venomous snakes. But Jesus, violence, violence is pretty cool. I'd love to see manching vipers. So I'd like to go up into the manching mounds. I'd love to see bush masters in Costa Rica. I'd love to see black marbles in South Africa. There's so many things out there that I'd love to go and see, black cow rattlesnakes in Arizona. I can sort of just keep going. Which one do I want to see first? I don't know. I like them all. You know, I suppose, I mean, I've got, because we keep Australian species here, I really like seeing seeing how Australian species lives and how they interact with the environment. There's a, there's, I'd like to see a lot of the snakes that live in Australia, but also see their guinea versions of the same species and see if they're utilising the same habitat. So I'll be really interested in looking at scrub pythons, amethystino, and seeing how they utilise habitats in Papua. So I'd love to see scrub pythons in guinea and those sorts of things. And then, you know, type-ans in guinea versus type-ans in Australia would be a good one as well and a few of these others as well. So I think PNG is probably the one herping destination that I'd really like to, to cut my teeth in overseas. But at the same time, there's so many other places that I'd love to go and have a look at as well. You know, I keep getting people sending me photos of having been to Bali and going over to Komodo and seeing King Cobras in, in Bali and going and got Komodo dragons on Komodo. That's got to be a rite of passage as well, too, don't it? No. It's a pretty good thing to go and see a lizard that can eat you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That'd be pretty cool. I keep thinking, I look at a Komodo and I think about Australia, 24,000 years ago, where we have Megalania. You know, I mean, it's a seven-metre-long Komodo dragon that eats people, that used to eat people that could be in Australia. That would have been a pretty cool thing to see in the scrub. You know, or scary thing, or cool and very fun. That would be over. I mean, the last thing I'd say, yeah, I, you know, I, I can't bring Eric to Komodo. He'd be really quickly. Mike, they've got hobbits there already. What are you on about? No, that's like seeing my kid. Wasn't Rinka, wasn't Rinka there was a hobbit on Rinka? Yeah. Rinka there was a hobbit. I'm sure there was one of those places there was a hobbit and they all died out. So, you know, it'd be like a homecoming for Eric. Sumatra had. Sumatra, they had hobbits too. Yeah, it'd be good to know. Oh, Sumatra. Okay. Well, I knew it was, you know, the less the sun does there somewhere. So, you know, we've seen him back into the wild. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's it. It'll be like a giant over there, you know. He'd been out cropping over here over there and getting tall on, you know. You got tall and white. He'd like an albino giant morph. You do realize this, because they end up being a running joke. So, when you get over here, I'm going to be caught in calling you the albino giant hobbits. I finally found it. Oh, my gosh. Hold on. Stop it. It's the old. I'll be like, I'm found a morph. I'm found a morph. Having a little shock to the woods. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And like, you know, like the other thing as well, what you, you know, you've got all of these other things out there. There's all these books that are out there and stuff like that that are good. And, you know, you go out there and you're, I mean, I look at a book and I read a book and I look at this and look at that and I go, oh, look at that. How awesome is that critter? And then you look on Facebook and all these people are sending these things about, oh, I've just been out here and I've seen this and you're like, oh, I wish I was there to see that, you know, it was like, fuck. You don't know what to do. But yeah, definitely, I mean, on my list, I think New Guinea is probably the highest place to, the highest person place to go and look. So, yeah. Well, as a Moralia guy, I can't say that I blame you. I can't say that I blame you on that. Well, that's a mile here. I thought, but, you know, we're not going to go down that road this week. Yeah, really. Still have, but, okay, so, I think, I think that's, I mean, that's all I got. I think for now, let's see, I think we're now, well, you say, every now and then we're going to have to go back on when you go in Pelley Python or sooner. I'll take a video and I'll tell you what it's all the day out of the sun. Dear God, yes. We have to, I'll do another shit, sir, in video. I go, how good is this? But yeah, I mean, I suppose, yeah, I make this so many, so many things, but, um, yeah, I don't know where to begin with some of these stuff. There's so much stuff that's so cool out there to go and see. What about you guys? What do you want to see? Oh, man. I always have an assassin. If I, the harbor wants to see an him ricotta. Yes. Whether it be alive, dead, in a tree, or in someone's cage, you just want to see an number. Oh, we've got four of them being said. There you go. And he's like, yeah, good luck pulling away from me. You know what, yeah. Yeah, I look like, I just look like coastal carpets with a slot twist. You can't have a look at a coastal carpet with a bit of a lindown, the sort, lateral lindown, and then it's from the invocados. How dare you? You didn't even put it. You don't think I'm ricotta that good enough to have it in your calendar? I know. I said, just, oh. Yeah, do that, I wouldn't be. I reckon I reckon you're in ricotta love is just, it's not really there. My love is, my love is the best deal. You know what it is, it's him that had the invricata. You know what it is, is that I'd never thought that any, we did that the first year, and nobody. Nobody's submitted pictures. What a picture. Yeah, but the thing is, in your rules, you say you can't have wild stuff. Well, we're, did I put that in there? Yeah, in your, I only, I only captive animals. Had to be your animal. You have to be your animal. Well, hey, you didn't want to speak to other people's pictures. Well, I've heard that. No, I understand what you're saying. It's like, if you found the damn thing in the wild and took a picture of it, I'm pretty sure we're going to consider it. Like, oh, yeah, but it's not, but it's not in the rules though, is it? You know, it's not. No, but I'm not going to put that many damn hairs about it. Oh, okay. All right. Well, that's okay then. That's fine. Well, I will send through a whole heap more wild stuff. I mean, I suppose at the same time, in your defense, how many wild carpets nice do you really got to get to see? Exactly. And how many wild carpets on is there people in the United States, which are most of the people submitting to the competition going to have, and except for like Justin and Nick. Well, I've got to catch up with Nick. I would love to go field-earthing with Nick. Adam's told me some absolute cracking stories about chasing critters with him. And I've taken Justin out before, and he has been in Brisbane. So, you know, Justin's a really cool guy to go out with. And you always learn so much going out with people like that. So, you know, it'd be great if we could get like a whole heap of people from the U.S. come out and we get like Justin and Nick to come along and then sort of get maiming himself and Adam to come along as the Australian people. And I think it would be absolutely hilarity would ensue. We'd see a lot of cool things that would all get some fantastic experiences out of it. And, you know, I'm sure that we'd learn hell of a lot from you guys as well. Yeah, it's going to be the ultimate carpet fest. It's happening. It's coming. It's going to happen. It's happening. We're going to pick this gate and then if you want to come with us, you have to buy your own plate to get and then get over there. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, if we organize it right, we organize it right. You hit like hire a bus or like a 15 feet of bus, right? And then you get all you guys together. And, yeah, you just have the bus driver and then just be just insane. Just put one big open trip all the time. It would be crazy. And then also, too, what your costs would come right down because everyone's sort of staying in together and stuff like that. So, you know, you'd have a ball that, you know, you've got to try and get Adam on one stage as well. I think Nick called him the Silverback at one stage on one of your programs. He's a hairy, hairy dude. But he's a really cool guy. He wrote the, I did a book on Alapids and he did the Python version of it as well. And just doing the stuff like that and running around the bush with him is an awesome amount of gear. And I suppose the thing is that when Adam and I get together, it gets a bit competitive every now and then. And, you know, he tries to find more things on me. And I try to find more things on him. So, sort of hilarity and competition and lots and lots of critters, ensure, and sort of end up happening. You know, he gets quite competitive, but it just means that we all get to see a lot of shit at the end of the day and see a lot of stuff. So, it's really a lot of fun. That's the win-win for us, yes. Oh, so win-win for everyone. And he can take some absolutely brilliant pitches, you know. I mean, he uses a cannon which sort of sucks, but, you know, other than that, yeah. If you haven't picked it, all my Nikon photographer. But, you know, he uses a cannon. So, I'll just lay, you know, he's even got a, you know, I've got to give him credit there because he's using inferior gear. So, and he can still reproduce. Okay, I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it takes a cracking shot, that's for sure. And, you know, I mean, so many of those photos in his book are wild animals, whether it be, I mean, I've got a few photos in there, whether it's more photos, or Adams photos, or some of the other people's photos in there. You know, there's heaps of wild Embracada in there and all this wild, wild stuff that's out in there. And, you know, in habitat photos and habitat photos in those books and gives you a bit of an understanding of what these, where these things actually live in the bush. Yeah, so, yeah. So, it's good stuff. Yeah, I just picked up both those books actually, and I'm quite enjoying them. So, it's good stuff. Well, we're probably going to get cut off at any second. So, I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for coming on and chatting with us and letting us live vicariously through you and your experiences and, you know, sharing all your stories with us. And, you know, thank you to Scales and Tales for doing the magazine giveaway. And, you know, you're always welcome back. You know, you say the word and you're on, you know, hopefully you find your own bellies soon. And that's it. Well, there's a couple of other things. There's a couple of other things I want to touch on really quickly. One thing is my wife has gone into business with another lady in Cairns. She's one of the most amazing wildlife artists out there. And they're producing t-shirts and stuff like that. So, they've got python t-shirts and all this sort of stuff. There's some rough scale python t-shirts, which are absolutely amazing. And, the website is www.ouranimalsourearth.com. And there's a shop on there with these amazing, amazing paintings and stuff like that that are on t-shirts and jumpers and stuff like that. And, you've got to go and check them out. So, I'll put the link up on, in the, really a chat now. So, if you want to go and check that out, I'd really appreciate it. And, you know, even better if you buy something that would be even better. Because the more stuff that's out there for that is, the more stuff that's out there for me to be able to go herping again. So, or she goes herping either way. It's a bonus for all of us. So, yeah. So, that's that. And, yeah. So, and also, too, if anyone wants to contact me or anything like that, I'm pretty accessible on Facebook or anything like that. And, you know, sometimes I don't get back to people straight away, but we'll go back to people fairly quickly if I can. And, if someone's got any questions or anything like that and they really want to know about what something does in the world or something like that or how something lives, you know, shoot me a message or something like that on Facebook or I'll do my best to answer it. Or, if I don't know, I might be able to direct them to somebody who does. So, yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah. I'll put that, I'll put that link over on the Maralee Python radio, Facebook page and the website and all that for that website, for sure. They have a, they have a Blue Tongue Skink t-shirt. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they do. Yeah. They've got some really cool stuff on there, right? And they're always updating it as well. Rebecca's a, Rebecca and Tyre are pretty productive when it comes to doing these things. They're doing some pretty cool stuff. And, you know, they're producing stuff that they would want to wear themselves. So, it's not, it's not stuff that's crappy quality or anything like that. It's all good quality gear and really nice stuff. And they're, it's herper's producing stuff for herpers, you know. So, yeah. Oh, I'm going to add a blackhead of Python shirt. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I'm going to film myself now. Look at this reptile shirts crap. All right. Well, anyway, we will do like that. So, yeah. Like I said, I think it's going to get cut off at any second. So, again, thank you so much. Appreciate taking the time and chatting with us and, you know, I've haven't rounded for too long anyway. So, I'm just trying to think what else. I'm just looking at this list here or some of the things out there that you've got. Probably the best time of year depends on what Python you're after you at what time of year is the best time of year for Python. I reckon March is probably, overall, is the best time of year to be Herping in Australia. Basically, the reason March is the best is that the females have all propped their eggs. The eggs have been hatched and the babies are out and about and they haven't quite necessarily gone in for the hibernation down at the southern of the country. And the other thing that's really good about it as well is that you've usually had it up in northern Australia. You've had your reins and all the rest of it. And so, you still got activity because it's still moisture around. Quite often, you'll find that activity is moisture related in the north and the west. So, where it's hotter and drier, the rain's really important. And then in the south, it's mainly temperature dependent. So, if it's really cold down there, you're not going to get much stuff out and moving around, but if it's warm, you get stuff moving. With diamond pythons, you know, diamond pythons are out during the day, barking during the day, and then they're mainly active moving around at night. You don't tend to see that many diamonds moving around during the day. They tend to be more sitting curled up. With inland carpet pythons, again, you see them moving at night and out and coil up during the day. In Brisbane with carpet pythons, though, the carpets up here, they'll move around all day and then they'll curl up, but then they move around more at night. They tend to move into more exposed locations at night, more so than during the day. Jungle carpets, I haven't found that many in the world, so to make a call on what they're doing is a bit difficult. I have found a lot more jungles, though, in ambush at night, and I've found them moving across roads at night, as opposed to, I haven't seen one out during the day at all. Scrub pythons, you see them out during the day, and you see them out at night, pretty sure you'd be curious that they're doing things all the time. Popping carpet, pythons, darlin carpets, although you haven't found them out at night, I've never found them out during the day. I suspect that's probably a temperature-related thing. You've got most days in Darwin, even in the middle of winter, you've got days that are up around the 30-degree mark. In the sun, obviously, it's hotter again, so having that temperature come up even higher, the animals are looking for shade and cooler conditions generally, so they tend to have a bit more active at night. The other thing is too that the predators, it's a bit harder for predators to see them, birds of prey and things like that, seeing them when they're out about at night as opposed to during the middle of the day. In Burkata, or during the late afternoon, you get them curled up in the late afternoon, and then you'll get them crossing roads at night. Burdles, you see them occasionally basking on ledges on the edges of during the day, and in trees as well, and then at night, you'll get them moving around as well, and creek beds and stuff like that. They're an amazing sight to see. Awesome. I would love to see them. Yeah, and it gets pretty cold there at night, right? Where are they from? Oh, in the middle of winter, it can get below zero, so that's bloody cold. And then during that same day, the following day, we'll get up to 30 degrees. So it's pretty amazing, but the thing is that the rocks that rocklages and things like that, you know, those rocks heat up, and so they act as a big heat sink, big thermal sink, and you know, back in those crevices, it can be sort of 25 degrees. Even though it's zero outside, it's like 25 degrees in the back of those crevices, because the rocks swarmed up, and they just sort of radiates heat up out during the night and keeps the animals a bit warmer. So yeah, but I mean, awesome animals. I mean carpet snakes, I mean, we joke about them and all the rest of it. They're a pretty amazing animal to see in the bush. I haven't seen one fighting yet. That's one thing I'd love to say. I've never seen a car before, 40. I'd love to say... [silence]