Better Living Through Reptiles

<v Speaker 1>Okay, the first the first episode of crime pays, but
<v Speaker 1>herpetology doesn't. I guess it depends. I don't know. This
<v Speaker 1>is this is my only fourth or fifth time I
<v Speaker 1>dip my toes in herpetology once in a while. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I'm here with Kyle Elmore. How did did you consider itself?
<v Speaker 1>I hate that word amateur at this point.
<v Speaker 2>No, probably not amateur because it's been it's been twelve
<v Speaker 2>to thirteen years of doing this constantly for my enjoyment.
<v Speaker 2>So there's definitely that amateur phases into it. But basically
<v Speaker 2>I wouldn't know. But I'm not educated in herpetology other.
<v Speaker 1>Than I'm self educated and Bonnie, I don't have any
<v Speaker 1>fucking degrees. I will probably tell people, you know what
<v Speaker 1>it was that Patrick asked me that, He's like, are
<v Speaker 1>you do you have any degrees? I was like, I'm
<v Speaker 1>fully unaccredited. Y. You know, I've made everything I can
<v Speaker 1>do to stay out of that academic world. Yeah, I've
<v Speaker 1>done everything I can, you know, But Clint is an
<v Speaker 1>actual herptology He's a biologist.
<v Speaker 2>I think he has biology background, but you know, he's,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I think a curator. He works with the
<v Speaker 2>herpetology department at the zoo and background and they got.
<v Speaker 1>A handler's license. Sure. But anyway, so here we are,
<v Speaker 1>so we're talking about we're talking about herping. And for
<v Speaker 1>those of you who who don't know, it's not in
<v Speaker 1>reference to cold source. It's in reference to reptiles and
<v Speaker 1>basically doing what I do with plants, going out and
<v Speaker 1>surveying and collecting data and photographs and studying the living world.
<v Speaker 1>It's an element of the living world, and I think
<v Speaker 1>for a lot of people that do it, it's probably
<v Speaker 1>an antidote to the poison of the modern consumer death cult,
<v Speaker 1>which I'm always ranting about sometimes too long. So anyway, Kyle,
<v Speaker 1>how are you doing it? Thank you for coming on
<v Speaker 1>to talk about all this though.
<v Speaker 2>I'm doing great, you know. As you know, we had
<v Speaker 2>a great day out in the field the other day
<v Speaker 2>and we got to see a lot of cool.
<v Speaker 1>Stuff and twelve mili yeah, well Lam propeled this and
<v Speaker 1>fucking how many indigos it was.
<v Speaker 2>Eight or nine? Yeah, we kind of lost lost track
<v Speaker 2>of that, and it was a pretty epic day in
<v Speaker 2>the field. If you know anything about looking for milk
<v Speaker 2>snakes down here, if you're a person who comes out
<v Speaker 2>of town, you might you might find one if you're lucky.
<v Speaker 2>But you know, if you know what you're doing, you
<v Speaker 2>can set yourself up for the success that we had.
<v Speaker 1>Well blew my mind was that it was it was
<v Speaker 1>habitat that like I wouldn't be looking for for plants,
<v Speaker 1>you know, yeah, like like I I mean, I found
<v Speaker 1>interesting shit there, you know, I found some brilliant I
<v Speaker 1>found like three plants I'd never seen before in situ,
<v Speaker 1>which was really cool. Actually four including Heimia, that one
<v Speaker 1>that all the drug bros Are always mentioning because it's
<v Speaker 1>psychoactive lith racy. But uh, but there was so much,
<v Speaker 1>you know, there was so much going on there in
<v Speaker 1>terms of reptiles and amphibians. It was crazy, man, it
<v Speaker 1>was really cool to see.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, it's it's surprising the marginal habitat and
<v Speaker 2>how many animals can be in that. You know, you
<v Speaker 2>don't really know, you know, just looking at it on
<v Speaker 2>the surface, like what really lives in there, until you,
<v Speaker 2>you know, attack it with the right materials and set it,
<v Speaker 2>set it up so that you can actually discover what's
<v Speaker 2>living there.
<v Speaker 1>So where are you? How did you get into this?
<v Speaker 1>Where are you from?
<v Speaker 2>So I'm from Houston and born and raised there and
<v Speaker 2>still live there. And the way I got into this
<v Speaker 2>is as a kid. You know, my father would always
<v Speaker 2>encourage me to go spend time outside. Now I don't now,
<v Speaker 2>I kind of wonder if that's just to get me
<v Speaker 2>out of the house as a as a kid, but
<v Speaker 2>you know, I would go and walk along this drainage
<v Speaker 2>ditch in our neighborhood, and all along there were you know,
<v Speaker 2>turtles and frogs and water snakes. And I'd been given
<v Speaker 2>these field guides and I'd look in those field guides
<v Speaker 2>and I'd see what kind of animals are living out there,
<v Speaker 2>and I'd want to go encounter them, you know. And
<v Speaker 2>of course, in our in our drainage ditch in the neighborhood,
<v Speaker 2>it was really limited in the species that were there,
<v Speaker 2>but it was still fun to go out and catch them.
<v Speaker 2>And I'd always hope for something different. But then, you know,
<v Speaker 2>you're doing that as a kid, right, you know that
<v Speaker 2>high school comes along and your priorities and thoughts change.
<v Speaker 2>And I stopped doing it for a while, stopped going
<v Speaker 2>outside and like finding finding snakes until I was probably
<v Speaker 2>I want to say, twenty four or so, twenty four
<v Speaker 2>to twenty five and I was on a trip with
<v Speaker 2>my dad and I found a coach with was a
<v Speaker 2>snake that I'd never seen before, and it rekindled this
<v Speaker 2>big passion in me to go out and see more
<v Speaker 2>stuff that I'd never seen and I've only seen in books,
<v Speaker 2>and that basically started me on this path that's really snowballed,
<v Speaker 2>kind of out of control. Coach with maskakofu, Yeah, master cofus.
<v Speaker 2>This was Flagellum tastasius subspecies. Actually I think they're a
<v Speaker 2>culiber now so formerly masterkophus. Some people argue it's still
<v Speaker 2>mass to coo, but yeah, it's a caliber Flagellum tastasius.
<v Speaker 2>The Western coach whip is kind of what sparked me
<v Speaker 2>getting back into it. Finding that and then being like, Wow,
<v Speaker 2>I wonder what else I can find if I spend
<v Speaker 2>my time at it. And then you know, finding this
<v Speaker 2>kind of subculture of herpers and people who are also
<v Speaker 2>interested in it really kind of enlightened me as to
<v Speaker 2>what methods there were to go out and actually discover
<v Speaker 2>some of these animals and then started my journey, you know,
<v Speaker 2>hanging out with other people that did this and then put.
<v Speaker 1>It in my own niche there's been a crossover throughout
<v Speaker 1>my life with herpers and with reptile people, and shed
<v Speaker 1>a lot of plant people I know here in South
<v Speaker 1>Texas are in the reptiles too. Like I was telling
<v Speaker 1>Ken King about some of the stuff we saw and
<v Speaker 1>he was like, oh, yeah, that's great, black spotted newtes.
<v Speaker 1>I've seen those, yeah, there, you know, and he knows
<v Speaker 1>all about them. And it's it's like, you know, with
<v Speaker 1>my friends that are in the mushrooms of my cology,
<v Speaker 1>Like I love going out with them and I'll be
<v Speaker 1>looking at plants and I'll learn a little bit about
<v Speaker 1>what they're into and then but it's all it's all
<v Speaker 1>like embracing this living world. It's all about going outside
<v Speaker 1>and actually learning, exercising your mind and studying the diversity
<v Speaker 1>of life and then thinking about you know, natural selection.
<v Speaker 1>How these different forms have you know, evolved off the
<v Speaker 1>same common ancestor and in response to certain different different
<v Speaker 1>conditions environmental conditions, climatic conditions, whatever. It's really cool to see.
<v Speaker 1>But so during high school you kind of weren't into this.
<v Speaker 1>It tapered off during high school.
<v Speaker 2>Definitely, you know, So I moved when I was in
<v Speaker 2>middle school and moved to a new area and and
<v Speaker 2>I distinctly remember, you know, it was late middle school,
<v Speaker 2>and I had been spending time outside, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>I would get made fun of because it's like, well,
<v Speaker 2>why do you why do you have all these scratches
<v Speaker 2>all over your legs and arms? It's because I was
<v Speaker 2>spending all my time outside in the woods's fucking looking
<v Speaker 2>for you know, looking.
<v Speaker 1>Why you sitting in a basement playing video games?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know. So, you know, and as a young kid,
<v Speaker 2>you're you're very easily influenced, you know. You know, nobody
<v Speaker 2>likes getting made fun of. So yeah, so I start
<v Speaker 2>doing that, you know, trying to fit in, and obviously
<v Speaker 2>that's not where I fit in, you know, And I
<v Speaker 2>feel like I definitely with this this group of people,
<v Speaker 2>you know, going out and finding stuff, I fit in
<v Speaker 2>a lot better.
<v Speaker 1>How'd you find how'd you find your crew? When you
<v Speaker 1>were twenty four? Like? How did you find other people
<v Speaker 1>that were in.
<v Speaker 2>The So the first thing I did. So there was
<v Speaker 2>an old forum, you know, forums were kind of the
<v Speaker 2>thing before Facebook and Instagram, and it's called field Herb
<v Speaker 2>Forum and they used to have these different chapters you
<v Speaker 2>know throughout the US, and the Southwestern or South Central
<v Speaker 2>chapter had a meet up and I went to go
<v Speaker 2>meet up with some of these other dudes, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I didn't not even them, I knew online. So it's like, okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>let's go over here. And I went to Louisiana and
<v Speaker 2>they were starting out they were going to go to
<v Speaker 2>a zoo and go see Louisiana pine snakes in a zoo.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm like, I'm not interested in seeing this shit
<v Speaker 2>in a zoo. I want to go like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>seeing this stuff out in the wild. So I you know,
<v Speaker 2>did some herpin on the way and I got there
<v Speaker 2>a little bit later, and I met up with this guy, Arman,
<v Speaker 2>and Arman and I are still fast friends, you know,
<v Speaker 2>years later, but we basically met up and we were
<v Speaker 2>waiting on the rest of the people and we started
<v Speaker 2>talking and started talking about canebrake, rattlesnakes and kind of
<v Speaker 2>our passion for finding those, and really shortly after that
<v Speaker 2>we'd organized you know, a trip together, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>I think it was the next year we actually first
<v Speaker 2>came down to South Texas and we had what we
<v Speaker 2>thought at the time was an outstanding time. You know,
<v Speaker 2>I think we probably got maybe twelve snakes over two
<v Speaker 2>or three days, which, as you can see, is far
<v Speaker 2>cry from where we're currently at. But yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I found him and then we've basically been doing stuff
<v Speaker 2>together and we kind of added several people into the
<v Speaker 2>fold that have a like minded passion for similar animals.
<v Speaker 1>That's fucking that's pretty cool, the dopamine response. But also
<v Speaker 1>before social media, that's one of the best things about
<v Speaker 1>social media. I mean there's a lot of negative too,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like the echo chamber and the shit talking,
<v Speaker 1>and the opportunities for depression, anxiety, and self hate, you know,
<v Speaker 1>through comparing yourself to other people are extensive with social media.
<v Speaker 1>But you can also find your people.
<v Speaker 2>You can find your people very easily.
<v Speaker 1>Now, would you what did you study when you went
<v Speaker 1>to college? Would you do so for high school? So?
<v Speaker 2>I studied biochemistry. It's my undergraduate degree. And in that process,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you have to take organic chemistry, and I
<v Speaker 2>think that was probably a junior year or so I
<v Speaker 2>was taken organic chemistry and I absolutely loved it. You know,
<v Speaker 2>something that for me was very intuitive. I felt like
<v Speaker 2>it just made a lot of sense, and it made
<v Speaker 2>a lot of sense as to how things in the
<v Speaker 2>natural world happen, you know, forming chemical bonds, and just
<v Speaker 2>like how these different compounds came to being and how
<v Speaker 2>you can manipulate that yourself. So I then decided to
<v Speaker 2>pursue organic chemistry and graduate school.
<v Speaker 1>God damn it, and jealous, fucking wish that she came
<v Speaker 1>second nature to me. I'm so interested in plant I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I know a little bit plant chem but it's one
<v Speaker 1>of like nine different things I want to do on
<v Speaker 1>any given days, like teach myself working a chemistry.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that's it. It's something you really can and
<v Speaker 2>you have to have somebody who knows it and is
<v Speaker 2>passionate about it and can you know, confer that information
<v Speaker 2>in a way that is easy for you to grasp,
<v Speaker 2>you know, because it is a complicated subject. And I
<v Speaker 2>think I was blessed to have a good teacher that
<v Speaker 2>really roped me into it.
<v Speaker 1>Whenever I've looked at it, I always look at I'm
<v Speaker 1>always I always have questions. I can't just read out
<v Speaker 1>of a book and be like okay, and then I
<v Speaker 1>always want to ask, quite like why is it like this?
<v Speaker 1>Why is this? And then it gets me thinking about
<v Speaker 1>other things. For me, that's the most important part to
<v Speaker 1>learning and when people ask me, because people will write
<v Speaker 1>me and they'll be like, how do I learn botany?
<v Speaker 1>Like what books do you recommend? Field guides? I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>I don't fucking recommend field guides. Go the fuck outside
<v Speaker 1>and ask questions, think about this shit like you need
<v Speaker 1>I need to see the gears in your head journey
<v Speaker 1>like you can't. And I think that's what school fucks
<v Speaker 1>us up at, at least in this.
<v Speaker 2>Country, is just memorize shit, Yes.
<v Speaker 1>Memorized, don't fucking think about it. Memorize so that you
<v Speaker 1>can get a good job and you'll be able to
<v Speaker 1>you know, you'll be able to grind hard and have
<v Speaker 1>a fucking McMansion or whatever. Stupid shit where it's like
<v Speaker 1>that takes all the joy out of it, Like that
<v Speaker 1>takes the passion out, Like I want to think, I
<v Speaker 1>want to fucking create. I want to think about that.
<v Speaker 1>You know. That's and when I started approaching learning BONDI
<v Speaker 1>that way, it changed everything. Like you're out on an
<v Speaker 1>ecosystem or a landscape, like what does it why does
<v Speaker 1>it look like this what it looked like two hundred
<v Speaker 1>years ago? Why is this growing? Here. Why is this
<v Speaker 1>growing here? Why do these things like to live under this?
<v Speaker 1>What is I mean? I think that's and that's when,
<v Speaker 1>especially with something like chemistry, you need like a tutors.
<v Speaker 1>They are someone get this bond with this, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and that at least gets the ball rolling.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, organic was one of those you know
<v Speaker 2>you mentioned like you know, it's you got to go
<v Speaker 2>memorize all this stuff. And that's most of the classes
<v Speaker 2>that you'll ever take. It's go. And I think that's
<v Speaker 2>why doctors are people who are like trying to go
<v Speaker 2>into the medical field, you know, if you're on the
<v Speaker 2>track in college. That's why organic chemistry is such a
<v Speaker 2>hard subject because you cannot memorize everything. You have to
<v Speaker 2>develop this intuitive understanding of you know, electron flow and
<v Speaker 2>chemical bonding that allows you to then make inferences, you know,
<v Speaker 2>about what certain things will happen because you cannot memorize
<v Speaker 2>everything there, and you know it definitely it takes you know,
<v Speaker 2>somebody to guide you through that and get you kind
<v Speaker 2>of over the hump to having developed that intuitive understanding.
<v Speaker 1>But I think it's also easier, like memorization is easy
<v Speaker 1>when you're actually interested. Yeah, but to be interested. You
<v Speaker 1>have to understand why it's interesting because you're talking about
<v Speaker 1>the building blocks of life, or because like with plants,
<v Speaker 1>they're connected to everything else. They're what channel energy from
<v Speaker 1>the sun to us in every other life form, and
<v Speaker 1>there you learn about their evolution, the context in which
<v Speaker 1>they evolved. No plants an isolated entity. It's tied to
<v Speaker 1>a habitat and ecosystem, other pollonais, et cetera. And I
<v Speaker 1>think that that's what American education misses out on. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you know, the memorized shit. I was the one I
<v Speaker 1>was teaching last semester. I was telling my students. I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>don't do this. I don't want you to fucking memories.
<v Speaker 1>I want you to think about this stuff. If you're
<v Speaker 1>not asking me questions, I'm going to get mad at you.
<v Speaker 1>You know, like you got to be thinking if you think,
<v Speaker 1>if you're asking questions, that tells me you're thinking about it,
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>But so then so you got into chemistry and it
<v Speaker 1>was just your jam. It was like it was obviously
<v Speaker 1>giving you a little dopamine shot.
<v Speaker 2>Or oh for sure, yeah you were. It was very satisfying. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and uh yeah, I went to graduate school for that
<v Speaker 2>ended up with the Masters in organic chemistry. Like I
<v Speaker 2>was telling you earlier, I was going for a PhD.
<v Speaker 2>And my advisor resigned, you know, which, you know, especially
<v Speaker 2>if anybody knows about graduate programs, kind of can put
<v Speaker 2>you in a hard place because if you go to
<v Speaker 2>another group, you know, to do research there, you may
<v Speaker 2>be forced to spend more time in order to you know,
<v Speaker 2>fully uh finish researching a project or an idea. Uh.
<v Speaker 2>And then that you know, can impact your ability to
<v Speaker 2>be funded. And you know you can because after a
<v Speaker 2>certain amount of time, they don't pay for you to
<v Speaker 2>be there anymore, right, Yeah, yeah, So it's basically yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so I left with the masters and uh and yeah
<v Speaker 2>I went uh and I taught chemistry in high school
<v Speaker 2>for a couple of years after that.
<v Speaker 1>What were your experiences with that was? Because that's like
<v Speaker 1>that seems like a nightmare class when you're in high school.
<v Speaker 1>For most people, we're most a little bit.
<v Speaker 2>Of a nightmare to teach too, you know, because the
<v Speaker 2>thing is like, you you can have that passion and
<v Speaker 2>you can be excited to teach it and talk about
<v Speaker 2>the subject, but the reality is like in high school,
<v Speaker 2>if you've got like, let's say you've got fifty students, Uh,
<v Speaker 2>there's probably three to five of those that actually one
<v Speaker 2>you know, they they'll have an interest because it's exciting
<v Speaker 2>to them maybe, but then maybe they also just have
<v Speaker 2>the interest because they want to get good grades. But
<v Speaker 2>that's it's a very small amount of them. The rest
<v Speaker 2>of them are in you know, whatever, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>I can't I can't blame them for because it's the
<v Speaker 2>environment that we've created for them, right you know. Uh,
<v Speaker 2>it's this memorize everything environment that doesn't spark interest, and
<v Speaker 2>you've got to try to you got to try to
<v Speaker 2>light that fire in them, and some of them you
<v Speaker 2>just can't. So it makes it a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>I just want to shake And what's wrong with you?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it is just a good consumer. You want some
<v Speaker 1>nice shoes and like a shiny truck.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah that was Ah, that's the thing is that's that's
<v Speaker 2>that that was the stuff they wanted, you know, they
<v Speaker 2>wanted those things. And I'm like, okay, them, that's your
<v Speaker 2>If that's your goal, then at least like learn stuff
<v Speaker 2>well enough that you can go to afford it, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like try to you know, and and hope that maybe
<v Speaker 2>something of interest could sparked meme.
<v Speaker 1>I wonder, I don't this is like a this is
<v Speaker 1>not it has no relations perhaps obviously, But I wonder
<v Speaker 1>for people that want all the shiny shit in the
<v Speaker 1>mc mansions and are good like that do things that
<v Speaker 1>just they have careers that to me just seem so
<v Speaker 1>incredibly boring. Do most of them have passion for it
<v Speaker 1>or do you think they're just happen to be good
<v Speaker 1>at it because the way their mind works and they
<v Speaker 1>can use it to get money, But it's like killing
<v Speaker 1>their soul. I don't know. Like law, like some forms
<v Speaker 1>of like family law, seems like it would like if
<v Speaker 1>you don't offense to any family law attorneys by the way,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure there's some cool ones, but if you could
<v Speaker 1>do that, that seems like such a fucking draining, soul
<v Speaker 1>liess job. But there's got to be some people that
<v Speaker 1>enjoy it, but I think there's probably a lot that don't,
<v Speaker 1>and it's just as just a ticket.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, well, I think that's like anything, right,
<v Speaker 2>anything that anybody is doing, you can you are going
<v Speaker 2>to find some individuals who are really passionate about it,
<v Speaker 2>and then you have the rest of them, who are
<v Speaker 2>you know, it's just like that's their paycheck, right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they get through it and maybe they had a proclivity
<v Speaker 2>to some aspect of it or you know, you have
<v Speaker 2>a lot of a lot of people who for better
<v Speaker 2>or worse, uh, you know, had these big dreams and
<v Speaker 2>aspirations in a field, but maybe they weren't actually, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they just didn't have the machinations in their head to
<v Speaker 2>really excel or of.
<v Speaker 1>Inschasers personal injury. Do you think there's people are like
<v Speaker 1>I love going into work every day working on behalf
<v Speaker 1>of my clients with the network of corrupt and shady
<v Speaker 1>MRI for you know, pain clinics MRI blah blah. Who
<v Speaker 1>can give me a bill that I can present to
<v Speaker 1>the insurance company that just goes right up to their limit,
<v Speaker 1>you know, of what they'll pay, And that's just that
<v Speaker 1>gives me dopamine.
<v Speaker 2>It feels great, sure there is, right, you know that's
<v Speaker 2>and I think that's probably it, right, is a big
<v Speaker 2>dopamine hit of like having that win, you know where
<v Speaker 2>they come out with a lot of money and you know.
<v Speaker 1>That's when they get the stiffy it's the after right,
<v Speaker 1>So it's just a ticket. Yeah, like the career is
<v Speaker 1>just a ticket. Some of the fucking ambulance chasers down
<v Speaker 1>here are like straight up Saul Goodman. It's amazing, like
<v Speaker 1>gold everything. They've got these you know where their offices are,
<v Speaker 1>you'll pass their office. They got the led billboards, like
<v Speaker 1>pictures of their face.
<v Speaker 2>You know, there's not a single billboard that doesn't have
<v Speaker 2>their face. Yeah, a lot of it. It's about that.
<v Speaker 1>I love the one. It's just one lady and she
<v Speaker 1>must have a boob job, but it's like for head
<v Speaker 1>and then like her boobs are like right and like
<v Speaker 1>it cuts off just above or just below the where
<v Speaker 1>the cleavage starts. And it's like that is like such
<v Speaker 1>a you're like putting porn on the billboard like that
<v Speaker 1>is you you know that it's like gonna attract you know,
<v Speaker 1>and it's.
<v Speaker 2>Like millions millions, Oh wow, Yeah, I better call her
<v Speaker 2>when I need I have an injury and just the person.
<v Speaker 1>I want to interact with, right, but uh anyway, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and I just think about that all the time. I'm
<v Speaker 1>like God, because I can't do shit if I'm not
<v Speaker 1>if my head's not in it, I can't. It's just
<v Speaker 1>like fucking tedious to me. It's tedium and I can't
<v Speaker 1>do it where it's like I'm doing this so that
<v Speaker 1>I can have this. It's a ticket, you know, I can't.
<v Speaker 1>Mentality doesn't work with me.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's I don't think it's natural, right, I don't
<v Speaker 2>think that's natural. I think if you have like that
<v Speaker 2>organic uh, it developed, you know, you go back to
<v Speaker 2>something a couple of centuries ago and you you have
<v Speaker 2>this more organic passion that that maybe is struck in people.
<v Speaker 2>You see a need in your community and you want
<v Speaker 2>to go fill that, right, I think that's a lot
<v Speaker 2>more natural process, like well, how can I contribute to
<v Speaker 2>this community? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's why back in the days when we were
<v Speaker 1>banging the androthals, that's why it was. That's why we were,
<v Speaker 1>you know, able to fucking dig in the ground, foraging
<v Speaker 1>for fucking bulbs for hours, or chasing chasing analope has
<v Speaker 1>to suck like that's got a hunting analope on foot
<v Speaker 1>with a spear. That has to suck ass. There's got
<v Speaker 1>to be a dopamine response to keep you doing it, right, Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>For sure.
<v Speaker 1>Or like taking kids. My mothers take care of their
<v Speaker 1>children because it's it's love and nurture you get you know,
<v Speaker 1>octually posting. Anyways, Sorry, we're going off for rails here,
<v Speaker 1>which I tend to do. But so anyway, so you
<v Speaker 1>taught high school and then what do you end up
<v Speaker 1>doing after that?
<v Speaker 2>So after that, I ended up getting a job at
<v Speaker 2>Exxon and I work in the NMAR lab basically do
<v Speaker 2>analyze polymer spectra for basically, you know, we're getting comonomer
<v Speaker 2>content branching, basically just looking at that for for the
<v Speaker 2>research department.
<v Speaker 1>I'm knocking. He lives in Houston, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Ye, he's got a lot of choices.
<v Speaker 1>I worked for a horrible company too. I worked for
<v Speaker 1>Union Pacific and I fucking hated them the whole time.
<v Speaker 1>And it was but it was a fun job and
<v Speaker 1>I loved it. And you know, I was never a
<v Speaker 1>company man. I was like with the fucking workers all
<v Speaker 1>the time. Like that was you know, it was like solidarity.
<v Speaker 1>There was good solidity. Do you have a company that
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what X sounds like. They probably treat
<v Speaker 1>you guys good, but but you pete treated as shitty.
<v Speaker 1>And that was great for solidarity among all different political sides.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, railroaders like to complain and fight, but but
<v Speaker 1>so people still found shit to fight about. But you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I would get these kids lecturing me. They'd be like,
<v Speaker 1>you work for an evil company, And I was like, man, what,
<v Speaker 1>like I'm not, like I'm not towing the line, like
<v Speaker 1>I'm also stealing over time for them and fucking not
<v Speaker 1>saying anybody should do that for their employer. But you know,
<v Speaker 1>it was a Yeah, it was just crazy. Was like,
<v Speaker 1>tell me you've never worked or like interacted with real people,
<v Speaker 1>like you're demonizing God, what was it? There was some
<v Speaker 1>fucking strike that just happened a month ago for some
<v Speaker 1>company for Boeing I think it was Boeing workers, And
<v Speaker 1>there were all these people being like, you work for
<v Speaker 1>a horrible companies, Like, man, they're the fucking working class,
<v Speaker 1>Like what do you want them to do?
<v Speaker 2>Like some people, you know, for better or worse, we've
<v Speaker 2>set set our society up like that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, we're all playing into the poison. That's like, it's
<v Speaker 1>come on, man, like it's pissing in the ocean. When
<v Speaker 1>it comes down to it, it's just, you know, I
<v Speaker 1>hate thats nothing like getting lectured by some fucking twenty
<v Speaker 1>three year old with the life experience of a fart,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like shitting.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you got to you got to get out there
<v Speaker 2>and be on your own trying to take care of yourself,
<v Speaker 2>you know. And and you know, you and a lot
<v Speaker 2>of people can make it work by you know, giving
<v Speaker 2>their middle finger to the man and you know, doing
<v Speaker 2>their own thing. But for the most part, it's it's hard.
<v Speaker 1>You can't be playing about You've got to be tasked,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you got to be tactful about it, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>which is one.
<v Speaker 2>But also you get in those systems and you can
<v Speaker 2>also be the person for change too, right, Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 2>you know, you know, the the the organization of you know,
<v Speaker 2>these companies is it's all you know, complicit individuals, right,
<v Speaker 2>So you know, you go in there as an individual,
<v Speaker 2>you can make some of those changes that you want,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and put your influence out there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I'm so glad I didn't go into academia. I
<v Speaker 1>would have been picked out.
<v Speaker 2>So it's so far removed too from reality.
<v Speaker 1>It's a complete bubble. It's a complete bubble. And especially
<v Speaker 1>in a place like the United States, it's all rich kids.
<v Speaker 1>It's like it's predominantly wealthy people. I mean, there's a
<v Speaker 1>lot of scholarships and shit too, but or people who
<v Speaker 1>are going to be in debt for the next forty
<v Speaker 1>years of their lives. Like the system to me is
<v Speaker 1>so broken here. I'm so glad I didn't. I was
<v Speaker 1>in academia for like a year and a half and
<v Speaker 1>I was like fuck this. And then I went to
<v Speaker 1>community college. I was like, wait, it's the same class,
<v Speaker 1>but it's like fifty bucks, Like what the fuck? Like
<v Speaker 1>why am I doing this, like for the name for
<v Speaker 1>a piece of paper that like the you know, the
<v Speaker 1>economy doesn't value any of the things I'm into anyway.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, I'm so glad I didn't do it. I
<v Speaker 1>just went and I had people tell me that, like
<v Speaker 1>other botanists that mentored me in schooled me, who are
<v Speaker 1>like seventy now being like, you did the right thing
<v Speaker 1>by you know, we're getting a decent one of the few,
<v Speaker 1>like decent blue collar jobs and teaching yourself this shit
<v Speaker 1>on the side, yeah, which I did. I just was
<v Speaker 1>obsessed with that. I couldn't stop, which is like you're
<v Speaker 1>obsessed with.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, absolutely obsessed with herbs. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So when did you So when did you really like
<v Speaker 1>when it picked up, Like when did you start because
<v Speaker 1>now you're basically out there creating habitat.
<v Speaker 2>You've been all over the south, Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I mean where have you Where have you hurt Like
<v Speaker 1>what what region? Like the farthest east you've gone, the
<v Speaker 1>farthest west you've gone.
<v Speaker 2>So the furthest east that I've gone is probably Georgia
<v Speaker 2>Coastal Plain and I did that last year or what,
<v Speaker 2>well it's still this year. Yeah, so earlier this year.
<v Speaker 2>Furthest north I've gone is Montana, and I've hurped a
<v Speaker 2>little bit of Utah and Colorado, some in New Mexico,
<v Speaker 2>but I well, I've actually done a little bit in California, Washington,
<v Speaker 2>Oregon too. I forget about that. I did did one
<v Speaker 2>trip there and I think twenty eighteen, so I've actually
<v Speaker 2>I've really herped all over again. Know, there's a few
<v Speaker 2>regions that I've missed, like much of the Midwest. We've
<v Speaker 2>got a plan for that next year, are going to
<v Speaker 2>go out there and East coast. East Coast doesn't have
<v Speaker 2>a whole lot of draw for me, but I definitely
<v Speaker 2>will at some Pointy is it because.
<v Speaker 1>The habitats has been so destroyed or what?
<v Speaker 2>No, I think it's the most of the species that
<v Speaker 2>are there are other places, you know, there's a few
<v Speaker 2>endemics that I think are neat that you know, would
<v Speaker 2>be nice to see, but it's really you know, I
<v Speaker 2>think the species in the southern US and western US
<v Speaker 2>generally are more exciting.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, So when you're so explain to everybody,
<v Speaker 1>when you're herping wood, it consist of because there's flipping.
<v Speaker 1>And then there's also just road cruising, which is how
<v Speaker 1>I first started coming up on reptiles. I'd be driving
<v Speaker 1>out on like the fucking vis kind of peninsula in Bajad,
<v Speaker 1>eleven o'clock at night and it's still hot in the
<v Speaker 1>pavements on I'd see a cool rattlesnake or something.
<v Speaker 2>So there's road cruising and yes, so and I think
<v Speaker 2>I think the way it starts with a lot of
<v Speaker 2>people who are interested in is you start by hiking
<v Speaker 2>through habitat. You know, you're you're going outside your walking trails,
<v Speaker 2>you're spending time outdoors, and you happen to come across
<v Speaker 2>a snake, right, And I'd say that that's the lowest
<v Speaker 2>output type of harping. Right, You're gonna go out, You're
<v Speaker 2>gonna spend a lot of time with very few results
<v Speaker 2>because these are very secretive animals. You know, they don't
<v Speaker 2>want to be found, and it's you know, it's a
<v Speaker 2>very short window where they're actually surface active in a
<v Speaker 2>way that you can just come across some well hiking,
<v Speaker 2>So there's that, and then there's road cruising as you said,
<v Speaker 2>which actually it's funny, you know, you mentioned that's your
<v Speaker 2>first way of finding you know, really like finding herbs.
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't until I got you know, hanging out with
<v Speaker 2>other people and was like on those forums that I
<v Speaker 2>just discovered that was even a method to find you know,
<v Speaker 2>which that is the next easiest thing to do is
<v Speaker 2>go drive roads and wait for stuffs across the roads,
<v Speaker 2>which has variable levels of productivity you know, some places
<v Speaker 2>and some conditions. It can be really incredible how many
<v Speaker 2>numbers of snakes and lizards and different things you can
<v Speaker 2>find out on the road. But you know, as you mentioned, flipping.
<v Speaker 2>Flipping is my absolute favorite way of finding snakes because
<v Speaker 2>you can go and find some of the most secretive
<v Speaker 2>animals by simply laying out cover in a way that
<v Speaker 2>attracts them, and you'll find them using that.
<v Speaker 1>What do you think I mean? Because you the thing
<v Speaker 1>that strikes me here too, is like the further east
<v Speaker 1>you go in North America, the more the duns or
<v Speaker 1>the human population is, and the less habitat there seemingly is. Well,
<v Speaker 1>I guess it's different for Herbers because you're looking at
<v Speaker 1>you know, a lot of these places are disturbed habitats
<v Speaker 1>to begin with, Like there's no like to find a
<v Speaker 1>lot of plants. You need intact habitat to find the
<v Speaker 1>good ship, like ship that hasn't been scraped clean. But
<v Speaker 1>like reptiles, animals really can move when the bulldozers come
<v Speaker 1>in scrape a place to put up a cotton field
<v Speaker 1>or a fucking farm or yeah, you know.
<v Speaker 2>To an extent they can. Unfortunately, the reality is like
<v Speaker 2>once you bring those bulldozers in, a lot of these
<v Speaker 2>animals are fossorial and they live underground, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>you bring those bulldozers in and you flatten a place,
<v Speaker 2>get they're basically just going to suffocate and starve underground.
<v Speaker 2>And that's the sad reality of you know, clear cutting
<v Speaker 2>someplace and bringing bulldozers over the top of everything. Is
<v Speaker 2>a lot of those animals aren't going to escape. But
<v Speaker 2>what you do have is these margins and I think,
<v Speaker 2>you know, as Jeff goldblue, life finds a way, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, so you know, you know, these things want
<v Speaker 2>to survive and they will do so in marginal habitat.
<v Speaker 2>And then you know, okay, so let's say you've you've
<v Speaker 2>cleared out some space to put crops, right, you have
<v Speaker 2>cotton field or whatever kind of field you have. It
<v Speaker 2>actually kind of creates this artificial you know, artificial densities
<v Speaker 2>of certain animals. Right, so you know, the crops will
<v Speaker 2>attract rodents because rodents want to come in and eat
<v Speaker 2>whatever seeds or you know, stuff there. And then that
<v Speaker 2>whatever praise on those rodents can have artificial densities kind
<v Speaker 2>of on those margins of habitat because there's more rodents
<v Speaker 2>there because there's this this monoculture of whatever they're at.
<v Speaker 1>They're benefiting from what's initially human impact.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So yeah, that that space is cleared out, and
<v Speaker 2>of course that's a big dead zone, but the margins
<v Speaker 2>of that actually can have higher densities of animals.
<v Speaker 1>Like the spot where you were first looking for amphibians
<v Speaker 1>and reptiles when you were a kid, that canals it's
<v Speaker 1>still there, is it's still life and still there.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't been back there in many years, grown a
<v Speaker 2>little bit out of that, but I imagine it's it's probably
<v Speaker 2>the same thing. You know, it's going to have a
<v Speaker 2>lot of water snakes, red sliders, a lot of you know,
<v Speaker 2>some soft shell turtles.
<v Speaker 1>Because that was already the whole area was already pretty
<v Speaker 1>the best.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, so that's like that margin I had.
<v Speaker 1>So it's been kind of a static condition since you
<v Speaker 1>were a kid, I would imagine.
<v Speaker 2>So, you know, I think the only thing that could
<v Speaker 2>maybe change that is the quality of water that's getting
<v Speaker 2>dumped through that canal. So if you have a lot
<v Speaker 2>of pesticides run run off, you know, So I don't
<v Speaker 2>know what the end result of that is going to
<v Speaker 2>be on that kind of habitat.
<v Speaker 1>What drives men says that this is the first time
<v Speaker 1>I saw this, But I mean in Texas, they just
<v Speaker 1>mow the road margins, you know, which is where you
<v Speaker 1>end up looking for plant slot because it's all private land.
<v Speaker 1>But I was in fucking Missouri and they were spraying.
<v Speaker 1>I was just talk about a fucking death called. I
<v Speaker 1>was like, this is insane. I can't believe, like why
<v Speaker 1>you're spraying orbicide because you're too lazy to bring the
<v Speaker 1>mower out, like you're just poisoning everything, like what it like,
<v Speaker 1>that's it's.
<v Speaker 2>One of the most shit for brained, you know things
<v Speaker 2>you can do it just go indiscriminately kill stuff because
<v Speaker 2>you're you know, and that's it's basically like this cost
<v Speaker 2>benefit on als. Somebody's done. He says, Oh, well, it's
<v Speaker 2>cheaper for us to go spray this once and kill
<v Speaker 2>everything than it is to like hire somebody to mow.
<v Speaker 2>And what's the fucking point of moment in the first place,
<v Speaker 2>Like why why do you have to mow that and
<v Speaker 2>not lit it for a wild you know.
<v Speaker 1>I think in some areas probably just so people can
<v Speaker 1>pull off I guess, or for fire, but a lot
<v Speaker 1>of it, I mean, Texas just loves the fucking moment.
<v Speaker 1>They'll go away beyond what's necessary. And I think it's
<v Speaker 1>again this archaic European rooted fear, you know, not modern Europe.
<v Speaker 1>I'm talking about, you know, good europe fucking what three
<v Speaker 1>hundred forty years ago, This idea like the woods in
<v Speaker 1>nature are scary, We've got to control it. It's I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, this archaic shit. Maybe that's entertained the wild
<v Speaker 1>because I know, I look at the way people look
<v Speaker 1>at like nature here and it's just brush. It's just
<v Speaker 1>all the habitats just brush. Get rid of it. It's
<v Speaker 1>just brush. It's like now, actually, it's a fucking dynamic
<v Speaker 1>ecosystem that's unique to this region that's composed of you know,
<v Speaker 1>probably forty plants that only grow in this part of
<v Speaker 1>Texas and are supporting every although the entire you know,
<v Speaker 1>biosphere around it. You fucking moron, Like it's I try
<v Speaker 1>not to be that meaning I wouldn't want to just educate,
<v Speaker 1>but god damn, it just continuously blows up. But it's
<v Speaker 1>seeing that in Missouri, I was, it was so obvious
<v Speaker 1>they sprayed everything. I mean, you can tell herbicide versus
<v Speaker 1>drought or insect damage. These things were just it was
<v Speaker 1>fucking crazy. And it was like near a wetland too,
<v Speaker 1>just like poisoning the whole wetland, Like great, that's great.
<v Speaker 1>You know either someone's and why is that not measured
<v Speaker 1>in like why is the that would be a con
<v Speaker 1>That would be like a negative. You know, when you're
<v Speaker 1>looking at your stacking up everything before you make this choice,
<v Speaker 1>it's like, oh yeah, well we're gonna kill everything it's nearby,
<v Speaker 1>we're poisoning probably poisoning the water could lead the cancer
<v Speaker 1>rates for the you know, people that are draining that.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's it's so short sighted, right, It's it's the
<v Speaker 2>you know, you have whatever municipality is in charge of
<v Speaker 2>maintenance of that roadside, you know. I think it's like
<v Speaker 2>I say, it's a cost benefit analysis where they're like, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>we can spray all this stuff and it's cheaper to
<v Speaker 2>do this, but it's short sighted. It's it's that immediate
<v Speaker 2>cost that they're worried about as opposed to your long
<v Speaker 2>term cost where you're.
<v Speaker 1>Short term gain, long term loss, which yeah, and hurting
<v Speaker 1>society on so many levels.
<v Speaker 2>And I think one of the because you're never really
<v Speaker 2>going to change humanity in that way unless you introduce
<v Speaker 2>like an ecological value, you know, where you put a
<v Speaker 2>dollar sign really and increase uh, your awareness of like
<v Speaker 2>this has a actual value, you know, whether that's a
<v Speaker 2>dollar amount or you know, some way of thinking about it,
<v Speaker 2>and that Okay, well if we poison this, then we
<v Speaker 2>are diminishing that value and incorporating that into your plan
<v Speaker 2>for how you're.
<v Speaker 1>But I've been to other places though too, like either
<v Speaker 1>like just like first world countries where it's still fucked
<v Speaker 1>in many ways, but there's more of an awareness. There's
<v Speaker 1>like a yeah, we don't want to poison the aqua
<v Speaker 1>for and like this isn't harmless like spraying these chemicals
<v Speaker 1>that you know. I wonder too if like someone's like
<v Speaker 1>cousin is like in charge of the company that's selling
<v Speaker 1>this shit or what. But I've been to places where
<v Speaker 1>it's like, yeah, the world's not perfect, but at least
<v Speaker 1>they know not the not the shit where they eat,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like not the poison their land, their own land,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like we're all part of this living fabric.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, man, I don't know, but this is
<v Speaker 1>I've seen some crazy shit in the Southeast quadrant of
<v Speaker 1>the United States. I mean it's everywhere, but especially this
<v Speaker 1>tone def in terms of the quote unquote environment, I
<v Speaker 1>don't even like that word. But just like the living world,
<v Speaker 1>you know, but I think if you, if you teach
<v Speaker 1>people to approach it, all is literally it's a living
<v Speaker 1>machine that's like performs myriad services that benefit us by
<v Speaker 1>being intact and having more species diversity, and that like
<v Speaker 1>it's literally living machine. Like you want a solid quant
<v Speaker 1>like you want a solid quantification of what exactly this
<v Speaker 1>is doing. Like that that takes a little bit more
<v Speaker 1>education to explain that to you. But just think of
<v Speaker 1>it like a living machine. We want it like you
<v Speaker 1>want all the fucking pieces for the car to run,
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and uh, and I think that takes a direct
<v Speaker 2>focus in education. That has to start when you're younger
<v Speaker 2>to like bring that awareness because you know our current system.
<v Speaker 2>You know, you might have one or two classes in
<v Speaker 2>high school, like on general ecology and natural you know
<v Speaker 2>the environment, right, and that's it, right, and that unless
<v Speaker 2>that's really strikes your interest. You know, that's easy to
<v Speaker 2>forget because the rest of the world's not thinking about
<v Speaker 2>it most time.
<v Speaker 1>And it takes exposure to it too, which means leaving
<v Speaker 1>portions of it in tact so people can go experience
<v Speaker 1>it and et cetera. And I don't see society moving
<v Speaker 1>that way. It also takes funding education, which I don't
<v Speaker 1>see society moving that way. But anyway, okay, So, but
<v Speaker 1>keeping so, keeping back into bunch. So there's road cruising,
<v Speaker 1>which is just driving along looking for whatever is hanging,
<v Speaker 1>and that requires warmth generally do it in summer, it does.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you generally want warmer conditions, you know, and it
<v Speaker 2>I find I used to do a lot of road cruising,
<v Speaker 2>but at this point I find it very tedious. You know,
<v Speaker 2>you're trying to drive late at night, you know, waiting
<v Speaker 2>for something.
<v Speaker 1>To cross the road.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, it's it's a well, it's a slow dopamine drip, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you get that hit, you find something, you know,
<v Speaker 2>maybe it's what you're looking for, maybe it's not, but
<v Speaker 2>it's a very you know, but it works. Right. So,
<v Speaker 2>if you don't have access to habitat, or you're not
<v Speaker 2>willing to, you know, give yourself access to some of
<v Speaker 2>that habitat, then that's kind of one of the easiest
<v Speaker 2>ways to encounter some of these animals.
<v Speaker 1>So what do you guys do now?
<v Speaker 2>So what we do now, and this is really an
<v Speaker 2>evolution that's happened over the last I want to say,
<v Speaker 2>six or seven years, is we set out stacks of
<v Speaker 2>tint and we have very specific way of setting this out,
<v Speaker 2>and we look for the particular habitat and we're usually
<v Speaker 2>you know, after milk snakes hints milk right where we're
<v Speaker 2>looking for these places that those animals live and setting
<v Speaker 2>up a stack of tin that we know that they're
<v Speaker 2>going to want to use.
<v Speaker 1>So by ten, if people are listening to this, how
<v Speaker 1>would you explain what the ten is? Correated?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, corrugated roofing material. And there's different types of ten. See,
<v Speaker 2>if you're R panel, you have corrugated materials, you have
<v Speaker 2>like the corrugated it's got little ripples and each type
<v Speaker 2>actually has different levels of success. And we really like
<v Speaker 2>just the corrugated, whether that's big ripples or little ripples,
<v Speaker 2>it seems to offer the right kind of space for
<v Speaker 2>animals to get into and lays in a way that
<v Speaker 2>is attractive for them.
<v Speaker 1>So how did you guys figure this out? I mean
<v Speaker 1>to getting to the point where you're looking at the
<v Speaker 1>shape of the corrugation.
<v Speaker 2>You know it's from experience, right, Yeah, you go through
<v Speaker 2>and you're like, why was this animal using this and
<v Speaker 2>not this? Right? And okay, Well, I go and I
<v Speaker 2>if I have a limbit material and I find some
<v Speaker 2>R panel and I go set that out, and I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>why the fuck are these animals not using the panel?
<v Speaker 2>So it's the it's uh, basically kind of it's got
<v Speaker 2>a flat section and then a U shaped bend, and
<v Speaker 2>then another flat section probably six inches another U shaped bind,
<v Speaker 2>So it doesn't really you can stack it flat on itself,
<v Speaker 2>but it doesn't really stack in a way that offers
<v Speaker 2>a small enough like if you offset it. It doesn't
<v Speaker 2>offer a small enough layer for most fossorial snakes, like
<v Speaker 2>it's too big on the inside. Yeah, it'll be. It'll
<v Speaker 2>be too big of a gap. And you can get
<v Speaker 2>stuff like rattlesnakes or pine snakes, you know, gop for snakes,
<v Speaker 2>stuff like that will use it. But again it's not
<v Speaker 2>uh it's it's still not as good as the regular
<v Speaker 2>corrugated stuff in general, you know.
<v Speaker 1>But when the whole thing with using tin though, like
<v Speaker 1>you were, you were just out in spots and you
<v Speaker 1>would see somebody dumped. Yeah, that would take a lot
<v Speaker 1>of caught on or what well.
<v Speaker 2>I think it wasn't unknown. You know, you go flip
<v Speaker 2>ten boards.
<v Speaker 1>You know, we.
<v Speaker 2>Started setting stuff out ourselves. But you know, you go
<v Speaker 2>to a lot of places where they've got like an
<v Speaker 2>old barn that the roof's blown down and these sheets
<v Speaker 2>of ten are laying around that, you know, as it's
<v Speaker 2>all you know, growing back up and kind of rewilding,
<v Speaker 2>and those would always be the most attractive places. You know,
<v Speaker 2>you get this stuff. The grass is growing over the
<v Speaker 2>edges of the ten. You know, it's not been peeled
<v Speaker 2>up by anybody, you know, in the in the last
<v Speaker 2>ten years. And you go and you turn that over.
<v Speaker 2>That was always the best place to find a snake.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, So the way this evolved in what
<v Speaker 2>we currently do now with our current level of attunement
<v Speaker 2>to the ten is you know, we were going around
<v Speaker 2>and we had this trip in twenty seventeen where we
<v Speaker 2>were looking for milk snakes. I'd found an area that
<v Speaker 2>I could road cruise them fairly easily. So this started
<v Speaker 2>off as kind of a road cruising trip. So we
<v Speaker 2>had a week in South Texas. We're going to go
<v Speaker 2>and road cruise for milk snakes. So at night, that's
<v Speaker 2>what we did. You know, our first night, we got
<v Speaker 2>two of them, you know, but then during the day
<v Speaker 2>we're going around flipping and it was kind of uh
<v Speaker 2>considered that you couldn't flip milk snakes. It got too
<v Speaker 2>hot in South Texas, so we weren't expecting to flip
<v Speaker 2>any of them. But you know, because we're trying to
<v Speaker 2>spend some time during the day actually doing something as
<v Speaker 2>was just waiting for night time to come. We would
<v Speaker 2>go visit these junk sides, the abandoned barns or you know,
<v Speaker 2>places where people are dumping materials, and go flip for
<v Speaker 2>snakes and we'd find you know, patch nose and whip snakes,
<v Speaker 2>you know, coach whips, all the all the different common
<v Speaker 2>terrestrial stuff, you know, emory I, the orange gub rat
<v Speaker 2>snakes that are down here. And then we happened upon
<v Speaker 2>you know, this uh, this place we we we call
<v Speaker 2>it now the super Bowl, but it was basically this
<v Speaker 2>this bowl that was dugout. So they had this cliche
<v Speaker 2>pit and surrounding that is all deep sandy soil, but
<v Speaker 2>here was the harder cliche and they dug this out
<v Speaker 2>and I guess they extract that to make concrete. And
<v Speaker 2>for whatever reason, most of the people down here seemed
<v Speaker 2>to go and throw junk in these cliche pits after
<v Speaker 2>they're done mining the cliche out of it. So this
<v Speaker 2>particular place had a whole bunch of tin and we
<v Speaker 2>went in there and we're you know, I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's so much it was very exciting to look at this,
<v Speaker 2>and we go down in there and we start flipping
<v Speaker 2>through stuff and there I will never forget this. I remember.
<v Speaker 2>It was a beautiful acacia tree in the middle of it.
<v Speaker 2>There's a lot of grass growing down here at the bottom,
<v Speaker 2>and there was this white sheet of corrugated tin, you know,
<v Speaker 2>under halfway under this acacia tree, and I flip it
<v Speaker 2>over and there was a perfectly coiled milk snake, you know,
<v Speaker 2>just along one of those corrugations. I think we see
<v Speaker 2>it was one of the first ones. I think we'd
<v Speaker 2>seen one of the slanting but this was. Yeah, so this,
<v Speaker 2>well it started with that one, and we were so excited,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and then it's like this, you know, excited
<v Speaker 2>ape like fervor going through the rest of the materials
<v Speaker 2>there because it was just like yeah, you know, like
<v Speaker 2>oh man, they're here, you know, we can we can
<v Speaker 2>get them under this. And just probably a few feet
<v Speaker 2>away was this big pile of brush and you know,
<v Speaker 2>like old like mesquite trees and stuff that had been
<v Speaker 2>piled up, and it was piled up on top of
<v Speaker 2>a stack of tin that was extending out from it.
<v Speaker 2>So you had probably twenty or thirty sheets of ten
<v Speaker 2>stacked up sticking out of this brush pile. And my
<v Speaker 2>buddy Arman and my friend John that were you know,
<v Speaker 2>went over to this while I was flipping some other stuff.
<v Speaker 2>And they're going through there and they're pulling out rat snakes.
<v Speaker 2>There's like four or five rat snakes in there, and
<v Speaker 2>all of a sudden, I hear milk, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>John you know, goes diving into the stack of tin
<v Speaker 2>and comes rolling out with this huge milk snake and that, yes,
<v Speaker 2>Tom a leap in milk snake, and that just like it.
<v Speaker 2>It sparked this idea of well, you know, all these layers, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know here it is.
<v Speaker 1>It's not just having one.
<v Speaker 2>It's not just having this one sheet that that has
<v Speaker 2>this small window. It like opened our mind to well,
<v Speaker 2>maybe they really like stuff like this, you know, maybe
<v Speaker 2>we need to if we want to find them, maybe
<v Speaker 2>we need to not just you know, have single sheets
<v Speaker 2>of ten out. Maybe it's like this big stack of
<v Speaker 2>stuff because there's so many snakes in it, right.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe it's more insulated for sure. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Well it's like, you know, I made this reference the
<v Speaker 2>other day. It's like a sleep number bed, right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's like, what's your flip.
<v Speaker 1>Number, you know.
<v Speaker 2>You know, you have this snake and each of them
<v Speaker 2>is in a different layer, you know, so each layer
<v Speaker 2>has its own microclimate of temperature and humidity, and that
<v Speaker 2>snake can move up and down in those layers and
<v Speaker 2>find the right spot.
<v Speaker 1>See right. So like you're normally are you normally finding
<v Speaker 1>them at the bottom, Like you'll have eight sheets of
<v Speaker 1>this long ass corrugated tin and you're normally finding them at.
<v Speaker 2>The So we almost never find them at the bottom.
<v Speaker 1>No shit, really, so it's very rare to.
<v Speaker 2>Actually find them at the bottom of the stack because
<v Speaker 2>I think, you know, sometimes maybe the ground's a little
<v Speaker 2>bit too wet, you know, So we really only find
<v Speaker 2>them at the bottom when it's really dry, and that's
<v Speaker 2>like the last more fastion of moisture at the very bottom,
<v Speaker 2>where that's where they want to be for whether they're
<v Speaker 2>shedding or just like you know, milksnake is a very
<v Speaker 2>moisture sensitive animal. You know, it wants a very particular
<v Speaker 2>level of moisture and it seeks that out. That's, in
<v Speaker 2>my opinion, one of its primary drivers for where it's
<v Speaker 2>going to be.
<v Speaker 1>So you're creating like a multi story hotel and they
<v Speaker 1>can decide, you know, at any time of year, what story,
<v Speaker 1>what level they're gonna.
<v Speaker 2>Live, And that takes that window of opportunity where if
<v Speaker 2>you've got one sheet, you have a few hours maybe
<v Speaker 2>in particular days, in which that snake is going to
<v Speaker 2>be there, right because at some point it's gonna get
<v Speaker 2>too hot in the day and it's going to go underground,
<v Speaker 2>or if it's you know, a dry period, it may
<v Speaker 2>it's probably not gonna be using that tin at all.
<v Speaker 1>So what explain to people what a milk snake is
<v Speaker 1>and what these things look like, because they're really easy
<v Speaker 1>to confuse with coral snakes. The genus is lampropelt, this
<v Speaker 1>same genus as kink snakes. What do they look like?
<v Speaker 1>And what gets you going so much about this? Fucking
<v Speaker 1>I think the milks.
<v Speaker 2>What gets me going about it is the challenge of
<v Speaker 2>finding him in the first place, because if you didn't
<v Speaker 2>do what we do, you don't get to find them.
<v Speaker 2>You can maybe find them crossing roads, but you can
<v Speaker 2>almost never just go into habitat and expect to find
<v Speaker 2>When we could go spend weeks walking through that thorn
<v Speaker 2>scrub and the habitats that we went in, and you
<v Speaker 2>would never see one else boring.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, you know, the the misquite and the vicelia
<v Speaker 1>that we're formerly acacia that we sacha that have they've
<v Speaker 1>been able to come back. They're like ruteral, really aggressive
<v Speaker 1>native like weedy trees, and then a complete thick understory
<v Speaker 1>of guinea grass. Yeah, and I think that's what really
<v Speaker 1>cool what you're doing too. It's because that grass fucking
<v Speaker 1>smothers all the cool plants, monocultures, the habitat, homogenizes the habitat.
<v Speaker 1>But when you lay this tin out, it's a flat space.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, I don't think snakes would want to just
<v Speaker 1>hang out undergrass. They're going to be looking for some
<v Speaker 1>sort of structure or something, and you're basically building habitats
<v Speaker 1>for them. It's like what people do in their fucking
<v Speaker 1>backyards with like a bee house or something. Yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like for the solitary the native solitary bees. It's really cool.
<v Speaker 1>But what about I mean the milk snakes especially, they're
<v Speaker 1>beautiful snakes.
<v Speaker 2>They're really gorgeous, gorgeous. I mean, so you have a
<v Speaker 2>variety of shades of red. You know, you can get
<v Speaker 2>some brick red ones that maybe have a little bit
<v Speaker 2>of a less pop and then you have some just
<v Speaker 2>this glowing orange red bands on them that it's really
<v Speaker 2>you know, it's such a sharp thing and you you
<v Speaker 2>un you know, unfurl this stack of tin and you're
<v Speaker 2>going through it, and all of a sudden there's just
<v Speaker 2>this bright red.
<v Speaker 1>And I hear the excitement. Whoa, Yeah, it's fucking great, man.
<v Speaker 1>It's like that little kid comes out again. Yeah, a
<v Speaker 1>little kid that's like been you know, wiped out from
<v Speaker 1>most people's inner psyche. You know, they're just like dead
<v Speaker 1>on the inside. But it's like when when you guys
<v Speaker 1>are out there, I'm like, man, here's a grown ass man.
<v Speaker 1>It's like with the excitement of a little boy, it's
<v Speaker 1>fucking great. Oh yeah.
<v Speaker 2>We really like to compare it to Christmas. You're opening
<v Speaker 2>your Christmas presence or flip miss presence. You know, you've
<v Speaker 2>gone through here and you yeah, you finally get to
<v Speaker 2>be in touch with that excitement. That's really I think
<v Speaker 2>most people don't get to have anymore in their everyday lives.
<v Speaker 1>You know, no, it's no, they don't.
<v Speaker 2>I can't. I can't find anything in regular life quote
<v Speaker 2>unquote that really drives that level of excitement, and for
<v Speaker 2>most people life.
<v Speaker 1>Is a grind, at least in the US, I think
<v Speaker 1>in the economy and like the society we've set up,
<v Speaker 1>it's a fucking joyless grind. It is, and you can
<v Speaker 1>see it. They're angry, they're pissed off. They're sitting alone
<v Speaker 1>in their car, just fucking unhappy, unfulfilled, you know, bling porn,
<v Speaker 1>fucking booze, whatever the fuck.
<v Speaker 2>It's doing something to try to feel something.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they're like like the rats in the rat Park experiment,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like when they like when they gave the
<v Speaker 1>rats and the cage's toys, they stopped hitting the morphine
<v Speaker 1>drips so much. It's like that's what people need to find,
<v Speaker 1>you know, that passion. But okay, so how do milk
<v Speaker 1>snack because it's the same genus, it's lamparropeltis. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>also want to talk about how to knock confuse them
<v Speaker 1>with coral snakes, which of course, like for novice you know,
<v Speaker 1>is important. But how do they You've got king snakes
<v Speaker 1>which are also lamp propeltics and milk snakes. How are
<v Speaker 1>those different evolutionary? Are they different evolutionary groups, different clades
<v Speaker 1>or what is so?
<v Speaker 2>Uh? This is where I have more limited knowledge because
<v Speaker 2>I don't read a whole lot of evolutionary papers to
<v Speaker 2>with taxonomy, because I find taxonomy sucks the joy out
<v Speaker 2>of out of snake hunting, right yeah, and you have
<v Speaker 2>these people online that want to argue over, oh well
<v Speaker 2>this is actually it's just it just bullshits the real
<v Speaker 2>joy of the experience, right with.
<v Speaker 1>The DNA when people look at the DNA, you know,
<v Speaker 1>if there's like.
<v Speaker 2>So these yeah, you know, right, it's the same genus Lampropeltis.
<v Speaker 2>So they are related as far as you know how
<v Speaker 2>they split.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not sure there are color you know, like all
<v Speaker 1>the red and red and black and yellow ones are
<v Speaker 1>more closely related and the more black and white ones
<v Speaker 1>are not or does it not matter, Like that's just
<v Speaker 1>kind of I'm really not sure I have to. I'm
<v Speaker 1>just sure my limited knowledge here as far as like
<v Speaker 1>their evolutionary history. But in terms of practicality and choice
<v Speaker 1>of habitats generally, you know, your milk snakes are more
<v Speaker 1>water associated, you know, they have this kind of association
<v Speaker 1>between this seam of habitat next to moisture but not
<v Speaker 1>quite where it's drying out. So it's like you know,
<v Speaker 1>you want that sandy soil nearby, but you want to
<v Speaker 1>be close enough to a permanent body of water.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So in general, you know, they're associated with river
<v Speaker 2>systems and they're tributary to watersheds. So you can find
<v Speaker 2>populations by saying like, okay, well, like in East Texas
<v Speaker 2>you have the Trinity River and they're all down in
<v Speaker 2>the bottom lands of the Trinity, but you can follow
<v Speaker 2>all the watersheds of the Trinity up and follow those populations.
<v Speaker 2>You know, you can find them all along there, and
<v Speaker 2>they kind of operate in those those margins between where
<v Speaker 2>you know you have the watershed and kind of drier,
<v Speaker 2>maybe sandier habitat.
<v Speaker 1>Do you get kingsnakes in South tex It's not really right.
<v Speaker 2>Not a liar, Yeah, so, well you get them down
<v Speaker 2>here in the sand sheet. To an extent, they do
<v Speaker 2>like more moist areas, but they can associate in drier places.
<v Speaker 2>I think, and this is just personal opinion and supposition
<v Speaker 2>based on on the evidence of the animals that I've seen,
<v Speaker 2>I think that the size of the milk snakes when
<v Speaker 2>they're born, I think that they are able to out compete,
<v Speaker 2>at least down here. The I think Anulata babies can
<v Speaker 2>out compete getula, which is the king snake species, early on.
<v Speaker 2>So I think that gula have a harder time taking
<v Speaker 2>a stronghold here. And I think that's because they would
<v Speaker 2>have similar prey items when they're when they're little, you know, juveniles,
<v Speaker 2>And I think that the milk snake is bigger and
<v Speaker 2>more capable of eating those prey items when it's younger.
<v Speaker 1>The spot where we saw those newts, that stack of ten,
<v Speaker 1>what there was a there was two milk snakes and
<v Speaker 1>there was three three. Yeah, and so they don't eat
<v Speaker 1>the nuts. The nuts are probably toxic. Most neuts have
<v Speaker 1>evolved like toxic, you know, I know the one in California.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of them are really toxic, like deadly if
<v Speaker 1>you eat one. But that was a fucking cool thing too, man,
<v Speaker 1>seeing those things and then like just learning they're so
<v Speaker 1>rare and you see them.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's essentially a new population discovered, right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>so we had no idea. I mean you can look
<v Speaker 2>and say I would expect them in this kind of
<v Speaker 2>ephemeral water body, yeah, but you don't know until you
<v Speaker 2>actually can discover them. And you know, it's like the
<v Speaker 2>mooks that you need some sort of cover there.
<v Speaker 1>They haven't been found direct region.
<v Speaker 2>Or in that direct spot in that water body, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's they're not known from there.
<v Speaker 1>God, it's fucking cool. It's crazy, man, just like you
<v Speaker 1>never think. You never think. So okay with so you
<v Speaker 1>get coral snakes down here too, and what are those like?
<v Speaker 1>Because those are of course a member of the cobra family,
<v Speaker 1>they're deadly, very toxic. You don't want to confuse those.
<v Speaker 1>There's always that rhyme red what is it? Red and yellow?
<v Speaker 1>But that doesn't and that doesn't matter any more. I've
<v Speaker 1>seen I've seen coral snakes that from a distance before
<v Speaker 1>you look at the face scales, they look like they
<v Speaker 1>look safe. They look like milk.
<v Speaker 2>I think when once you've seen enough, you know, it's
<v Speaker 2>it's harder to confuse them because it's the shape of
<v Speaker 2>the head and just general look. I don't know, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's gets salt appearance. You know, it's like, okay, there's
<v Speaker 2>something about this. It's different. Sometimes it's hard to put
<v Speaker 2>your finger on it. But yeah, so that rhyme doesn't
<v Speaker 2>work everywhere, and there's always abronsies, right, you know, you
<v Speaker 2>have especially kind of like the genetic bottlenecks and edges
<v Speaker 2>of the range. Some of these animals, you get a
<v Speaker 2>lot of kind of weird abronsies, and I think that's
<v Speaker 2>just because you have that genetic bottlenecks, you get some
<v Speaker 2>weird phenotypes and morphs that come up. And especially Central Texas,
<v Speaker 2>once you hit the Edwards plateau, coral snakes are really
<v Speaker 2>restricted to riparian corridors. Kind of no, no, they really
<v Speaker 2>need like milk snakes, they need moisture, but they can
<v Speaker 2>do dryer habitats than milksnakes do. But yeah, so basically,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you get a lot of weird looking ones,
<v Speaker 2>and it's generally discouraged to use the rhyme as a
<v Speaker 2>method to.
<v Speaker 1>I imagine if you're like an actual herper too, it's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you you you know.
<v Speaker 2>When you see it, you know, you know, it's kind
<v Speaker 2>of it's it's very obvious to a herper the difference
<v Speaker 2>between them and a milk snake will almost never have
<v Speaker 2>an aproncy that makes it look like a coral snake.
<v Speaker 2>A coral snake can have an abroncy that maybe look,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, it'll never to me look like a milksnake.
<v Speaker 2>But really, your lay person, I think it can be tough,
<v Speaker 2>right because they look at it and then just they
<v Speaker 2>don't have enough experience of seeing the animals to actually know.
<v Speaker 1>Have you seen a lot of I mean, do you
<v Speaker 1>see it? And I mean you see all kinds of
<v Speaker 1>stupid shit on the internet and social media, but do
<v Speaker 1>you see it where people can like will kill indigos
<v Speaker 1>thinking they're fucking cotton miles or like just dumbasses.
<v Speaker 2>No in it gooes. They're actually usually pretty easily identified,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, because it's like it's like a cultural
<v Speaker 2>thing almost right, Yeah, because they like them and they
<v Speaker 2>you know, oh, the blue indigo, they they love it
<v Speaker 2>because they have this idea in their head that it's
<v Speaker 2>protecting them from rattlesnakes everyone. I mean, they will definitely
<v Speaker 2>opportunistically eat a rattlesnake, but they also would probably get
<v Speaker 2>a hot dog if you.
<v Speaker 1>Try. Yeah, how often are these things? Like an indigo?
<v Speaker 1>Ho often? Does it need to eat every six months
<v Speaker 1>or something every two months?
<v Speaker 2>They can go a long time, but they're very active foragers.
<v Speaker 2>So usually you know, as long as it's warm enough
<v Speaker 2>and in the evening, you can usually come across them,
<v Speaker 2>you know, while hiking. Yeah, through their habitat, as long
<v Speaker 2>as it's not too dry. There's something. I think they
<v Speaker 2>eat a lot, and they're they're a high. They have
<v Speaker 2>a lot of activity, you know, So I don't know
<v Speaker 2>how often they eat naturally in the world wild, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I think they can go a long time without food.
<v Speaker 2>But I think because of their metabolism that keeps them
<v Speaker 2>very active. I think that they probably do eat a
<v Speaker 2>lot they get to the size they do. As far
<v Speaker 2>as why they're so chill, you know, it's a it's
<v Speaker 2>very I think it's a very confident snake. I think
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't have a lot of things in uh once
<v Speaker 2>it gets to a big enough size, I don't think
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of things in the habitat that in
<v Speaker 2>the environment that can actually kill it. Which is the
<v Speaker 2>biggest one you've seen, So the biggest one I've seen
<v Speaker 2>is probably about six and a half feet six and
<v Speaker 2>a half to seven feet, and they get thick. You know.
<v Speaker 2>One of the things when you get a snake that
<v Speaker 2>size is it's not just the link, it's the girth.
<v Speaker 2>When they're that big, they're just it's really it's a
<v Speaker 2>different animal The last one that we got was so
<v Speaker 2>big I could almost not fit my hand around it.
<v Speaker 2>And I've got pretty big home got what I you know,
<v Speaker 2>yeah almost maybe not quite greatful, but baseball baseball size. Yeah, definitely.
<v Speaker 2>You know you got a meati scen rats frogs, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I think they spin a lot. I think they are
<v Speaker 2>death to a lot of pack rats. You know, I've
<v Speaker 2>seen them coming in and out of packrat bittens.
<v Speaker 1>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>I think that's a terror. If you're a pat.
<v Speaker 1>That's like, that's what barnes need instead of barn cats.
<v Speaker 1>Those fucking barn cat programs need. The cat ladies are
<v Speaker 1>just like, oh, we've gotta save all these feral cats
<v Speaker 1>that are you know, have roundworm and fucking toxo and
<v Speaker 1>hate people, and we've got to save them, put them
<v Speaker 1>off at the barn and then they kill everything, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like everything you might as well organism fucking you know,
<v Speaker 1>spray poison. But they I've never seen it. Have you
<v Speaker 1>been bitten by an indego? They don't bite? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Yesterday, really it was a yeah, because I was surprised.
<v Speaker 1>They will buy it.
<v Speaker 2>They will, they will bite, but it's rare.
<v Speaker 1>It's fun, it's funny. Seeing that milk snake like just
<v Speaker 1>chomp on that six year old on a on wally. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the poor kid. Well, I think he was freaked out
<v Speaker 1>at first because you're like, why this animal wants to
<v Speaker 1>hurt me? But then like you know, playing with millipiece.
<v Speaker 1>That was a grumpy, fucking milk snake. It was, and
<v Speaker 1>it had a big scar on it from god knows
<v Speaker 1>what fighting another.
<v Speaker 2>Snake or something, and I don't know, you know, sometimes
<v Speaker 2>they don't get to be big adult animals without you know,
<v Speaker 2>being a little bit of an asshole.
<v Speaker 1>Some Yeah, I think, yeah, he was bummed. He did
<v Speaker 1>not want to be come out and I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>But but so you.
<v Speaker 2>Got bit by an inego yesterday, Yeah I did. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it was. It was actually a pretty big animal. And
<v Speaker 2>I was really surprised because you just pick him up
<v Speaker 2>and you don't expect to get bit And then this
<v Speaker 2>one came and he got me on the arm. Here
<v Speaker 2>you can see some of the teeth marks all through there,
<v Speaker 2>and uh, yeah, I was.
<v Speaker 1>Worse scrapes from just walking through Thornton.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. It's never really that bad, you know, It's just
<v Speaker 2>it hurts for a brief moment in the moment and
<v Speaker 2>then you forget about it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, man, my son got bit by a whip snake,
<v Speaker 1>a striped whip snake in Utah, and his mom fucking
<v Speaker 1>lost it. And like by the time he was back
<v Speaker 1>in Chicago, she was because we were we were out
<v Speaker 1>looking at Bristol Coms or whatever, and by the time
<v Speaker 1>he was back in Chicago was healed. She only found
<v Speaker 1>it because she was just interrogating the shit out of him,
<v Speaker 1>and it ended up being like a really big deal.
<v Speaker 1>She like tried to get all this she was she
<v Speaker 1>went nuts. Man, it was I mean, this lady, like
<v Speaker 1>doesn't she lives on like a North Short condo, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's whatever. Yeah, but uh but it's and I think
<v Speaker 1>a lot of people in Chicago too, because it's so
<v Speaker 1>disconnected there. There's you can't first off, it's so cold
<v Speaker 1>most of year, you don't actually get snakes. Second, it's
<v Speaker 1>there's no habitat. It's so disconnected that I think people
<v Speaker 1>don't know, you know, I mean, especially in that habitat,
<v Speaker 1>the only real dangerous snakes are have rattles on them.
<v Speaker 1>There's I don't even think there's corals.
<v Speaker 2>No, there's no corals. Corals basically don't go north of Oklahoma.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, we were in the house range of Utah, like
<v Speaker 1>very dry habitat, and it was a fucking hilarious thing
<v Speaker 1>and it didn't cause him to bleed or anything like.
<v Speaker 1>It was a little it looked like half of what
<v Speaker 1>you just showed me, and it bit me, and yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, it was.
<v Speaker 2>Nuts, But well, I think a lot of people will,
<v Speaker 2>even for whatever reason, seem to think that you can
<v Speaker 2>get some sort of infectious disease from getting bit even
<v Speaker 2>though it's a non venomous snake. I'll tell you what.
<v Speaker 2>I've been bit by tons of snakes over the last
<v Speaker 2>twelve years, and I've never once like put anything on it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I just keep upping your rubb a little
<v Speaker 2>dirt into it, and you just keep going. And that
<v Speaker 2>I've never had anything significant happened other than maybe like
<v Speaker 2>some teeth get dislodged there and you gotta oh really, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>got away for me to come out. I got bit
<v Speaker 2>by a diamondback water snake at one point, and they've
<v Speaker 2>got you know, pretty strong recurved teeth, and when it
<v Speaker 2>pulled back, you know, it left one of the teeth. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's a. Well, it's a nature scene actually, so enough.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I shouldn't even dabble. I don't have to talk
<v Speaker 1>to a lot so yeah, but christ, that's hilarious. Man.
<v Speaker 1>It must have been big, though I can't.
<v Speaker 2>I can't remember at this point how biget what? You know,
<v Speaker 2>the average you know, probably about four feet, you know,
<v Speaker 2>but it's probably not even that big of a snake.
<v Speaker 2>But one of the pieces of the tooth got left
<v Speaker 2>in my finger, and you know, I was poking at
<v Speaker 2>it for a couple of weeks before it finally came out.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, that's hilarious. The scariest thing about any of them
<v Speaker 1>to me is the musk is just the fucking sense
<v Speaker 1>like you're going to guard especially cheese.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, horrible, brutal, Yeah, damn Nopus especially is a pretty
<v Speaker 2>rough genus because and one of the reasons I don't
<v Speaker 2>really pick up a lot of water snakes either is
<v Speaker 2>because it has one of the most foul musks. And
<v Speaker 2>you know, you can appreciate the snake from a distance,
<v Speaker 2>but once you put your hands on it, you and
<v Speaker 2>anybody around you is going to smell that.
<v Speaker 1>You just can't get it off.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, until you go take a shower. You know, go
<v Speaker 2>really really wash yourself.
<v Speaker 1>You get you get cotton miles in eastern Texas, right, Yeah, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they're beautiful. I've never some of them. I've just seen it.
<v Speaker 2>They kind of brown out when they're adults, you know,
<v Speaker 2>but the young ones can be very sharp, look and
<v Speaker 2>I wish they retained that coloration.
<v Speaker 1>You've never been bit by anything venomous?
<v Speaker 2>I have one? Really, I did get bit by a
<v Speaker 2>copper head.
<v Speaker 1>No shit, what happened?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So, so we were doing this this trip, I
<v Speaker 2>think it was twenty eighteen or nineteen, and we'd done
<v Speaker 2>some stuff in Louisiana and we were basically traveling for
<v Speaker 2>the night, and we had finished our banks. So I
<v Speaker 2>was in my tennis shoes. I'd taken my boots off
<v Speaker 2>because you know, after you've been out for a day
<v Speaker 2>and them it's they're not comfortable anymore.
<v Speaker 1>Hold on, I got a pee, I gotta I want
<v Speaker 1>to this is going to be good. I wanted to actually, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>here we go. All right, we're about okay, So where.
<v Speaker 2>Were we We're talking about the bite? Yeah, So I'd
<v Speaker 2>done this trip to Louisiana and we were basically heading
<v Speaker 2>up to Arkansas and we were basically again search of milksnakes,
<v Speaker 2>and we wanted to go see some up the Mississippi
<v Speaker 2>River Valley or Delta further north. And you know, so
<v Speaker 2>we we had finished the day, I'd taken off my
<v Speaker 2>boots and I put on tennis shoes, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>here it is near twilight, you know, it's it's getting
<v Speaker 2>dark and armand and I passed by this tiny patch
<v Speaker 2>of woods. You know, it's really it really wasn't much
<v Speaker 2>of anything. But we saw the glimmer of a stack
<v Speaker 2>of tin in there, and we of course like, hey man,
<v Speaker 2>turn around, let's go look at that and put it there. No,
<v Speaker 2>this is just yeah, some stuff stacked up.
<v Speaker 1>You know you really you gotta put You got to
<v Speaker 1>like make an offering to the industrial roofing manufacturers of
<v Speaker 1>like the mid twentieth century for making this such a phenomenon.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, I know, it's really yeah, they've really made me
<v Speaker 2>and my hobby what it is. If it wasn't for them,
<v Speaker 2>that wouldn't be half as half as excited about this stuff.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, so I see the glimmer of tin, They're like,
<v Speaker 2>oh man, we got to turn around, let's go go
<v Speaker 2>check that out. So we park, we run over there
<v Speaker 2>and we flipped through it, and of course there's a
<v Speaker 2>milk snake, you know, in the couple of layers down
<v Speaker 2>and then we see a copper head. So there's a
<v Speaker 2>copper head down there, and we're kind of leaning the
<v Speaker 2>tin up against some trees and brush that was behind
<v Speaker 2>and right as we get near the bottom, we hear
<v Speaker 2>this dude yelling at us. And of course the guy
<v Speaker 2>who owns the property lives across the street and saw
<v Speaker 2>us there, and it's like, what the fuck are y'all doing,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and you know, we so of course we
<v Speaker 2>go talk to him. And this almost always happens that
<v Speaker 2>you go talk to him and as soon as you
<v Speaker 2>tell them that you're snake hunting, they it's like it's
<v Speaker 2>like you've hit this reset switch on their brain and they're.
<v Speaker 1>Like, suddenly they're a nine year old boy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, they're like, and this guy's it's snake
<v Speaker 2>hut night. Never heard nobody looking for those snakes. And yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so we we kind of, you know, tell him a
<v Speaker 2>little bit about it, and he's looking over there at
<v Speaker 2>his pile of tin and he says, well, you're not
<v Speaker 2>gonna leave it, like that are you. And I'm like no, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>you know, so we go and because it was he
<v Speaker 2>was still still leaned up right because he kind of
<v Speaker 2>got us in the middle of it. So we go
<v Speaker 2>walking back over there and I've got the milk snake
<v Speaker 2>in my hand, but the copper head, you know, of course,
<v Speaker 2>we've lost track of. So We're in the middle of
<v Speaker 2>talking to this dude and explaining snake hunting to him
<v Speaker 2>and trying to go set his tin back down, and
<v Speaker 2>I felt what felt like a wasp sting my foot,
<v Speaker 2>like ah, fuck, you know, through your shoe. So I
<v Speaker 2>you know, the funny thing is these are old tennis
<v Speaker 2>shoes and I had worn away the where the pinky
<v Speaker 2>toe is. So there's a hole there right where my
<v Speaker 2>pinky toe is. And he bit right there on that
<v Speaker 2>hole and got me on my pinky toe and uh.
<v Speaker 2>And I look up at Armin and because I still
<v Speaker 2>can't see the copper head, and I'm like arm and
<v Speaker 2>I think because they blend in, yeah, and it was well,
<v Speaker 2>it was almost dark, and you know, he's like on
<v Speaker 2>top of leaves, and uh, you know, I just couldn't
<v Speaker 2>see it very well. So I look up at arm
<v Speaker 2>and I'm like, I think that copperhead just bit me.
<v Speaker 2>And we all kind of had this, you know, ten
<v Speaker 2>seconds of just like you know, staring at each other
<v Speaker 2>like oh shit, what do we do? And meanwhile, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the guy that got caught us on his property is
<v Speaker 2>kind of freaking out a little bit, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>I looked down and eventually I laid my eyes on it,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm like, yeah, sure enough the thing did like me.
<v Speaker 2>So so we're kind of like, okay, well, let's put the
<v Speaker 2>tin back down. And there was actually another stack of ten.
<v Speaker 1>What's the paint add Now?
<v Speaker 2>It was pretty it was pretty significant. You know, it
<v Speaker 2>was like was the initial impression was wasp, but then
<v Speaker 2>it's kind of throbbing and getting a little bit worse,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, so but there was still another stack
<v Speaker 2>of tin there that we hadn't got to, so it
<v Speaker 2>was like check this out real quick. Yeah, so so
<v Speaker 2>so we we went and thumbs through that real quick.
<v Speaker 2>We didn't get any more snakes, and uh, you know, meanwhile,
<v Speaker 2>this dude's kind of caught us. There's freaking out a
<v Speaker 2>little bit, and we're like, no, no, no, yeah he knew,
<v Speaker 2>well you're telling yeah, it's Okay, you know, we'll figure
<v Speaker 2>it out, you know what I mean, while he thinks I'm
<v Speaker 2>probably gonna go off and die somewhere. But we get
<v Speaker 2>back in the truck and we start driving away, and
<v Speaker 2>Urmand's worried a little bit too, you know, and uh,
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, you know, it doesn't feel that bad. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it hurt, but it didn't really seem that bad. And
<v Speaker 2>we get up probably a mile down the road, there's
<v Speaker 2>an intersection. It literally said like had the little hospital
<v Speaker 2>signed to the left, and our GPS was, you know,
<v Speaker 2>taking us to the right to where we were going
<v Speaker 2>to go stay for the night. And I'm like, oh, man,
<v Speaker 2>just let's just keep going, you know, don't worry about it,
<v Speaker 2>don't worry about the hospital. So I call. I called
<v Speaker 2>some friends and that I knew had gotten bit by
<v Speaker 2>comprehends before, and basically it's like, how what was your experience?
<v Speaker 2>What was this like, you know, and how are you
<v Speaker 2>feeling around this time? And after talking to them about it,
<v Speaker 2>I was like, Okay, it sounds like my experience is
<v Speaker 2>so far a lot less than what you guys had
<v Speaker 2>to deal with, And uh.
<v Speaker 1>I just got your pin.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean it barely got me. And I want
<v Speaker 2>to say that, you know it, it stung and it hurt,
<v Speaker 2>but it wasn't as painful as it sounded like. You know,
<v Speaker 2>my friend's bites were which they didn't even need anti
<v Speaker 2>venom for. So I was kind of feeling confident at
<v Speaker 2>that point, all right, as long as it's doesn't get worse,
<v Speaker 2>I think I'll be okay. And uh, within thirty minutes,
<v Speaker 2>I'd say that was the peak of the pain for it.
<v Speaker 2>And then you know, by I basically we went to
<v Speaker 2>the hotel that night. I didn't go to the hospital. Yeah, wow,
<v Speaker 2>went to the hotel and you know, Armand's kind of
<v Speaker 2>regularly asked me, okay, how's it feel now? How are
<v Speaker 2>you doing? And I didn't have any systemic effects. My
<v Speaker 2>foot got a little puffy, and then basically the next day,
<v Speaker 2>you know, we went herping and I was a little
<v Speaker 2>tender on that foot for probably two weeks after that.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I could tell something had happened there. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>But other than that, that was basically the extent of it.
<v Speaker 2>So I feel like I got really lucky in terms
<v Speaker 2>of how bad the five comes. In general, they're not I'm.
<v Speaker 1>Sure if one gets you like, it really gets you,
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>You know, after talking to armand a little bit more recently,
<v Speaker 2>because there was a kid who got bit by an
<v Speaker 2>Eastern diamondback and we were talking a little bit about
<v Speaker 2>you know, bites, and he said that actually, some of
<v Speaker 2>the people that have gotten bit by copperheads have a
<v Speaker 2>pretty bad time of it. But I think it just
<v Speaker 2>kind of depends on how much venom you get, what population, so.
<v Speaker 1>They can be but they're not They also be bad.
<v Speaker 2>It can be bad. Yeah, So you know, I think
<v Speaker 2>I would never recommend somebody just don't get treatment. You know.
<v Speaker 2>I did that based on my own judgment and based
<v Speaker 2>on talking to people, and it sounded like I really
<v Speaker 2>didn't have anything to worry about at the time because
<v Speaker 2>I knew people that have got bit and whatever I
<v Speaker 2>was experiencing was far less pain than they had and
<v Speaker 2>they never even needed treatment.
<v Speaker 1>Really, So who got bit by an easter? Not who?
<v Speaker 1>But what happened when this kid got bit by an easter? Donald?
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, of course everybody's talking about it right now,
<v Speaker 2>but the story that he's given, and some people will
<v Speaker 2>dispute it, but I think he's been honest about it.
<v Speaker 2>It's Basically he had seen a tree stump on the
<v Speaker 2>side of the road and went to go peel it
<v Speaker 2>looking for scarlet kingsnakes. And I guess as he was
<v Speaker 2>going around that tree stump, and you know, you get
<v Speaker 2>tunnel vision as a herber. You know, you're looking specifically
<v Speaker 2>at you know, maybe a stack of tin in a
<v Speaker 2>tree stump or some particular thing that you're looking at,
<v Speaker 2>and you may not pay attention to everything around you.
<v Speaker 2>And I think what he did is just had tunnel
<v Speaker 2>vision for that tree stump and stepped right next to,
<v Speaker 2>or maybe even right on top of the Eastern diamondback
<v Speaker 2>and it got him on the shin. And he's still
<v Speaker 2>in the hospital right now. I think we're thirteen days
<v Speaker 2>past Wow where he was in Florida.
<v Speaker 1>God damn man. Yeah, that's a that is an undesirable
<v Speaker 1>snake to get bitten by. Yeah, and they're huge and
<v Speaker 1>they just dump and.
<v Speaker 2>It's a it's a nasty venom. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>What it's like hemo toxin and neurotoxin or what like
<v Speaker 1>latest or what super familiar on what is that Crodalus
<v Speaker 1>horridust horridis has some neurotoxin in it? What's eastern diamond
<v Speaker 1>back adam Antius eighty eight vials of anti venom. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>is he gonna be okay? You know, he's not gonna
<v Speaker 1>think I think I think he'll probably be fine. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you know, he'll have a significant medical bill to deal with.
<v Speaker 1>And don't pay your medical bills. And the moral of
<v Speaker 1>the story here on crime pay is always don't pay
<v Speaker 1>your medical bills. It might ruin your credit. That's okay, right,
<v Speaker 1>You're better off if they come after you and a loss.
<v Speaker 1>You're better off paying a lawyer to knock it down
<v Speaker 1>than paying these shitty medical bills. You're incentivizing a broken system.
<v Speaker 1>So you're worried about your credit, just take out a
<v Speaker 1>fucking credit card and you know, put it on auto pay.
<v Speaker 1>Don't buy anything you don't have money to immediately pay off.
<v Speaker 1>Damn though. Yeah, Jesus Christ, that's gotta suck. I wonder man,
<v Speaker 1>that's going to be a story to tell, like the
<v Speaker 1>pain of you know, you.
<v Speaker 2>Have the out of the field for a while, I'm sure.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the hospital food. Yeah, Jesus glad he's okay, though, Christ,
<v Speaker 1>that's so okay. Another thing I want to ask you too,
<v Speaker 1>because being that this is Texas, and there's basically no
<v Speaker 1>public land. Like whenever I say this, the Texans always wow,
<v Speaker 1>we got state parks and blah blah. I'm like, that's nothing.
<v Speaker 1>That's it's fucking crumbs, there's nothing. What do you do,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, how do you navigate that?
<v Speaker 2>So we we we look for what I like to
<v Speaker 2>think of as the liminal spaces, these kind of forgotten
<v Speaker 2>pieces of land that yeah, it's it's private property, but
<v Speaker 2>it's stuff that's unfenced.
<v Speaker 1>It's tennally private property. It's not like you're hopping a
<v Speaker 1>massive fence and going past nine to no trespassing signs
<v Speaker 1>and it's or it's next to someone's house or some shit.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you're you're looking at this piece of land that
<v Speaker 2>clearly has been forgotten. You know, somebody owns it, but
<v Speaker 2>nobody cares about it. Nobody's doing anything out there, and
<v Speaker 2>you know it's it's ripe with opportunity, you know. So
<v Speaker 2>we like to identify those places that like, yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>sometimes we do get you know, caught out there because
<v Speaker 2>like I said, it is trespassing, but it's also it's
<v Speaker 2>not like you're in somebody's backyard, right, you know. You
<v Speaker 2>But for the most part. Even even after getting it's
<v Speaker 2>usually okay because once you tell people that you're snake hunting,
<v Speaker 2>then it sparks this kind of interest and they never
<v Speaker 2>would have expected it. So we have permission at a
<v Speaker 2>lot of places now.
<v Speaker 1>End up getting permission. Yeah, the landowner finds you when
<v Speaker 1>you talk to them and you're.
<v Speaker 2>Cool and yeah yeah, and they're usually okay, well, I
<v Speaker 2>understand what you're doing out here, and you know, we
<v Speaker 2>kind of work our way into well, hey can we
<v Speaker 2>set out stacks attend here? You know, like hey, you know,
<v Speaker 2>oh your barn, you know, all this stuff is falling
<v Speaker 2>off of it. You know, we can kind of move
<v Speaker 2>it into the into the woods or over here, kind
<v Speaker 2>of out of your way in a way that we
<v Speaker 2>can enjoy the snakes and then you don't have to
<v Speaker 2>have maybe an I soore. So we work in those
<v Speaker 2>spaces because the reality is like, okay, and I respect
<v Speaker 2>state parks and refuges and wild land right, so these
<v Speaker 2>are places where if you go touch herps, you're you're
<v Speaker 2>really kind of doing stuff against the law. You know,
<v Speaker 2>I want you to go into a state park and
<v Speaker 2>pick up a snake.
<v Speaker 1>It seemed like you wouldn't want it to serve a
<v Speaker 1>state parks because those are what's actually been left instead
<v Speaker 1>aside and conserved.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it's intact habitat, and you
<v Speaker 2>want to leave it as undisturbed as you can, you know,
<v Speaker 2>while still enjoying it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So I don't want to go set up ten stacks
<v Speaker 2>in state parks or refuges. I want to I want
<v Speaker 2>to do it in these liminal spaces where it's forgotten,
<v Speaker 2>forgotten land, and I can go see some forgotten animals.
<v Speaker 1>And so most of the time, when someone approaches you,
<v Speaker 1>what do you do? I mean, you just try to
<v Speaker 1>be as kind and chill as possible, apologize, and then
<v Speaker 1>explain what you're doing or what.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, the first thing I tell them usually
<v Speaker 2>is oh, we're just looking for snakes, right. I got
<v Speaker 2>to throw it out there as soon as possible, because
<v Speaker 2>I want to. I want to hit the reset button,
<v Speaker 2>because you know, they come at you with their like,
<v Speaker 2>why are these people on my land? You know, are
<v Speaker 2>they stealing stuff? Are they? They don't want poachers, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I don't want people poaching deer, right, So
<v Speaker 2>you throw out the snakes thing as soon as possible,
<v Speaker 2>and then that really opens up this opportunity to actually
<v Speaker 2>explain more of what you're doing, and usually people are
<v Speaker 2>very receptive to it. You know, you could apologize to
<v Speaker 2>them and armand and I like to joke about making
<v Speaker 2>them apologize because that's actually happened a.
<v Speaker 1>Few times before where it came off so hot.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that well that that happens, right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>you they come off real hot and then you you
<v Speaker 2>walk them down from that and you kind of make
<v Speaker 2>friends with them because I think you can connect with
<v Speaker 2>them in a way of like, Okay, well this is
<v Speaker 2>actually kind of interesting. These guys are really just nerds.
<v Speaker 2>They just want to go see some cool animals and
<v Speaker 2>they happen to be doing it, you know, because I've
<v Speaker 2>got you know, this old barn or whatever on my
<v Speaker 2>property that brought them there, and you know that has
<v Speaker 2>given us a lot of permission at places, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>really opened up that access to us.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I think that's the thing that always strikes me
<v Speaker 1>in Texas when because I've had a couple of run
<v Speaker 1>ins with landowners even just being close to their property,
<v Speaker 1>and a guy who was telling me, like anytime I
<v Speaker 1>see a car even parked on the side of the road.
<v Speaker 1>I don't assume they're changing a tire. I just call
<v Speaker 1>the call the you know with the DHS, what is it? No,
<v Speaker 1>not DHS, what's the fucking dps? Dps? Yeah, safe. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's like Jesus Christ Man, Like, have you ever thought
<v Speaker 1>like people just like to look at stuff, Like you've
<v Speaker 1>severed the connection that people have to the outdoors into land.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy, Like, yeah, there's probably there's nefarious people out there,
<v Speaker 1>of course, but there's also a lot of people that
<v Speaker 1>just want to.
<v Speaker 2>Look at the number of nefarious people out there is
<v Speaker 2>very low, it really, you know, because because the thing is,
<v Speaker 2>you get exposed to all the stuff in the news
<v Speaker 2>and the media, it makes you think that everybody out
<v Speaker 2>there is like this bad guy that's trying to come
<v Speaker 2>and do something to you, right, And.
<v Speaker 1>It's been a political tool for decades now that.
<v Speaker 2>Just in the reality is like, because people are really uncommon,
<v Speaker 2>like not to say that they don't exist, obviously they do,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, for the most part, yeah, you most
<v Speaker 2>people are fine, right, So I think unfortunately you have
<v Speaker 2>to convince that landowner that you're you're not one of
<v Speaker 2>those usually yeah, and I think you know, throwing the
<v Speaker 2>snakes thing out there is so far outside the realm,
<v Speaker 2>Like there's no excuse that any normal person would think
<v Speaker 2>of if they were nefarious, that would be I'm looking
<v Speaker 2>for snake, right, you know, like, you know, you get
<v Speaker 2>some nefarious person, maybe they're you know, well, also you guys.
<v Speaker 1>Are wearing like snake shirts and shiit. Yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I try to really sell obvious. I'll tell people sometimes
<v Speaker 1>you're like, you can look at my ID man, I
<v Speaker 1>don't care. I got nothing to hide, you know, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>like take my name down if you're if you're worried,
<v Speaker 1>if you're like, you're worried, So I'm gonna go missing.
<v Speaker 1>Here's my goddamn I d you know. Yeah, but uh,
<v Speaker 1>have you met people that have really like that aren't cool?
<v Speaker 1>There's just there's no fucking way around it. This guy's
<v Speaker 1>a dick, and he's really pissed off. Who knows, Maybe
<v Speaker 1>he's got something going on in his life. Maybe he's
<v Speaker 1>just had, you know, a harsh thirty years of untreated
<v Speaker 1>emotional trauma and anger. Who knows, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we definitely have come across those, but they are
<v Speaker 2>again not the majority really.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Most people probably chill out.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, and it's also regional too, you know. So
<v Speaker 2>I've found that off and down here in South Texas,
<v Speaker 2>most people are actually pretty chill, pretty cool, And it
<v Speaker 2>can be a little bit of a demographic thing too,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you have certain people. You know, it's like
<v Speaker 2>South Texas is pretty chill with that anglow. People can
<v Speaker 2>be a little bit more harsh about it than others.
<v Speaker 2>But I'd say, you know what, one of the most
<v Speaker 2>more interesting places for this actually is like just a
<v Speaker 2>kind of west of Austin and some of that hill
<v Speaker 2>country where you get a lot of like cattle ranchers
<v Speaker 2>and stuff there. I want to say, maybe closer to
<v Speaker 2>like Bernie, you know, some of that area. The people
<v Speaker 2>that I've interacted with there are very you know, like
<v Speaker 2>you know, I had this one interaction many years ago.
<v Speaker 2>They can a lot nastier, you know, like it's got there.
<v Speaker 2>They're more of that stereo typical like Texan that you
<v Speaker 2>think about that wants to have the bravado And.
<v Speaker 1>It might be related to the pastiness and the culture
<v Speaker 1>that goes with it that I don't know, but I've
<v Speaker 1>certainly experienced that too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I had this this one time I went down
<v Speaker 2>I had to pass a cattle guard and I went
<v Speaker 2>down this dirt road and I saw this big rock
<v Speaker 2>out crop. And this was many years ago before i'd
<v Speaker 2>even seen my first rattlesnake. And I was around there
<v Speaker 2>and I want to just go walk around it and see,
<v Speaker 2>you know, maybe there's rattlesnakes hanging around here. I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>And the rancher that actually owned the property came up
<v Speaker 2>and it's like, hey, what are you doing, And you know,
<v Speaker 2>they gave me this, well, there's no snakes around here.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we killed them all, and you know this
<v Speaker 2>is private, this is a private road and you need
<v Speaker 2>to get out of here. And they really, you know,
<v Speaker 2>try to do the bocho thing, like okay, you know, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I had another one actually was on a public road
<v Speaker 2>up near up near Freer, and I was road cruising
<v Speaker 2>at night and I go drive down this road and
<v Speaker 2>I actually drove by their house several times. It would
<v Speaker 2>go turn around at the cattle guard before you got
<v Speaker 2>onto the private property, and they came up behind me
<v Speaker 2>in like you know, a gas powered golf cart kind
<v Speaker 2>of like a mule kind of thing, and came up
<v Speaker 2>and blocked me from turning around. And then came out.
<v Speaker 2>You know, dude's got a gun, and you know they're
<v Speaker 2>trying to, you know, really say, try to try to
<v Speaker 2>bluff me into not doing what I'm doing, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and they ask them, I'm just looking for snakes.
<v Speaker 1>You know. You know you're on a public road.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and I know I'm on a public room. Like here,
<v Speaker 2>I've got you know, hunting license.
<v Speaker 1>I haven't heard permit. Go join a motherfucker. Go move
<v Speaker 1>to where there's an hway if you want to act
<v Speaker 1>like that, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, they tried to threaten me and say, oh, well,
<v Speaker 2>you know, if you go past that cattle guard, you
<v Speaker 2>know there's people out there hunting. You know, I can't
<v Speaker 2>can't promise that they're not going to do something. Blah blah.
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, I'm not going there, dude. You know, I'm
<v Speaker 2>just on this public road. And uh, you know, they
<v Speaker 2>tried to call my bluff and I basically was like, no,
<v Speaker 2>I can do this.
<v Speaker 1>You know this is legal.
<v Speaker 2>This is a public road, and you know, do it.
<v Speaker 2>And they eventually left me alone.
<v Speaker 1>Do you have any kind of app that will tell
<v Speaker 1>you like what's public private property? Lines?
<v Speaker 2>Or no?
<v Speaker 1>Somebody hooked me up with an app that does that
<v Speaker 1>because they used to work for the company, which I'm
<v Speaker 1>so grateful for whoever did that. If you're listening, I
<v Speaker 1>owe you one. And uh, it's really helpful too, because
<v Speaker 1>like when this dude was calling the cops me for
<v Speaker 1>planting trees, you know, I was like, man, you don't
<v Speaker 1>own this, Like I can see I'm not a fucking idiot.
<v Speaker 1>Like it's also County record, Like you don't own this.
<v Speaker 1>You just don't want to treat there for whatever fucking reason.
<v Speaker 1>You know, also like go hit the fucking exercise bike
<v Speaker 1>for Jesus Christ. Say, you know, like it's like worried
<v Speaker 1>about you. You look pre diabetic, buddy. Yeah, it's it's crazy though,
<v Speaker 1>because there's so much good habitat and in geology and
<v Speaker 1>so much that needs documenting here in this state, and
<v Speaker 1>it's there's a real impediment to it. You know. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's a drag, but it's cool to see the way
<v Speaker 1>you guys do it though. We'll see We'll say that.
<v Speaker 1>So where do you get the tin? Like if you can't,
<v Speaker 1>if there's not some there, where do you get the
<v Speaker 1>ten to build these snake hotels?
<v Speaker 2>So Clint has really been invaluable in this and that
<v Speaker 2>he's had some good connections, you know, where we've been
<v Speaker 2>able to have people essentially donate it to us, you know,
<v Speaker 2>so excuse me, he uh so, he works at the
<v Speaker 2>zoo here in Brownsville, and I guess across from the
<v Speaker 2>zoo was a big tin building that they were going
<v Speaker 2>to demolish, but they're basically taking it apart. And he
<v Speaker 2>went up to him and asked like, Hey, can I
<v Speaker 2>have all this tin? You know, you guys are taking
<v Speaker 2>taking this building down? Kind of have it when y'all
<v Speaker 2>deconstruct it. And they gave it to him and it
<v Speaker 2>was well over a thousand sheets. And where do you
<v Speaker 2>store it? It's in Clint's backyard. Yeah, a massive bastion
<v Speaker 2>of tin right now. And we've been slowly making a
<v Speaker 2>dent into it because he's had it a few years.
<v Speaker 2>And then you know, of course, just we can we
<v Speaker 2>end up getting three of those piles out, you know,
<v Speaker 2>about one hundred and fifty sheets of ten getting those
<v Speaker 2>set out right now?
<v Speaker 1>Wow, how will you guys transport it?
<v Speaker 2>So we just yeah, throw it in the back of
<v Speaker 2>back of his truck. Can we go drive down to
<v Speaker 2>our you know, liminal spaces and go.
<v Speaker 1>And normally set up with like ten sheets.
<v Speaker 2>So we do five layer stacks. So basically what we
<v Speaker 2>do is we'll clear out the the grass or whatever
<v Speaker 2>groundcover is there and create a footprint for it. And
<v Speaker 2>what we do is we lay.
<v Speaker 1>Use shovels or like maddex or something or what.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I've got a Mattic and we've got you know,
<v Speaker 2>basically garden hoe. I really like pro hos. They're very
<v Speaker 2>it's like it's got a a pro Yeah, Brennan likes
<v Speaker 2>to just call them pros, but uh yeah. So so
<v Speaker 2>we get get these, uh and basically clear out the ground,
<v Speaker 2>and we get two sheets of ten that basically overlap
<v Speaker 2>about halfway on onto each other for the bottom right,
<v Speaker 2>and then we just kind of layer the like that.
<v Speaker 2>So they've got this small overlap of about you know,
<v Speaker 2>about a foot in the middle right. So it's like
<v Speaker 2>if you took a deck of cards and you're shuffling
<v Speaker 2>that deck of cards, how they overlap one right after
<v Speaker 2>the other.
<v Speaker 1>And they're not directly on top of each other, right,
<v Speaker 1>it's literally like the deck of card.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, exactly, So it's offset. So you have about a
<v Speaker 2>foot overlap and then that's your footprint, so you and
<v Speaker 2>then we layer about five at a time. I don't
<v Speaker 2>actually know what the five on each side or five total,
<v Speaker 2>five totals, so I don't know what the actual ideal
<v Speaker 2>number is. But that's really worked for us. And as
<v Speaker 2>you can see, we got a whole bunch of fucking
<v Speaker 2>snakes with that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and the news we're loving it too, like everything
<v Speaker 1>loves it. And that's what I think too, is I
<v Speaker 1>think about that, like, where would this stuff be. It's
<v Speaker 1>so obviously attracted to this habitat that you're building for it.
<v Speaker 1>Where would it be otherwise? And would there be as
<v Speaker 1>many you know, I think.
<v Speaker 2>That they you know, they're they're going to use either
<v Speaker 2>underground refuge that maybe allows them to be close to this,
<v Speaker 2>you know, where the surface can be a little bit
<v Speaker 2>warmer there. But it's obviously that kind of stuff's not ideal, right,
<v Speaker 2>or maybe they're in a rotting log, right, but it's
<v Speaker 2>limited in the ideal conditions for them, right. So then
<v Speaker 2>once you've set this tin out in their habitat, it's
<v Speaker 2>like a magnet, you know, and they're just drawn to it.
<v Speaker 2>And one of the most remarkable things that I've seen
<v Speaker 2>and witness and it has really been this year, is
<v Speaker 2>seeing how they know about multiple tin stacks. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it's not like you just see the same animal goes
<v Speaker 2>and finds that one. It's gone through this habitat in
<v Speaker 2>a significant range and found all these tin stacks.
<v Speaker 1>So you see, you keep track of like individuals, yea,
<v Speaker 1>of the individual animals doing everything short of naming them,
<v Speaker 1>we do.
<v Speaker 2>We do give them names, you know, once we've seen
<v Speaker 2>them twice. You know, we usually are like, okay, you know,
<v Speaker 2>what's a good name for this, come up with We've
<v Speaker 2>got this one. Clint came up with this, but it's
<v Speaker 2>a it's a really it's one of the most stunning
<v Speaker 2>milk snakes that we've scene. And a buddy said, it's
<v Speaker 2>like the Ferrari of milksnakes. So the guy who created
<v Speaker 2>Ferrari is named Enzo Ferrari. So we like to make
<v Speaker 2>a little puns, you know, based off ten So this
<v Speaker 2>is Tenzo Ferrari.
<v Speaker 1>Nice to ital your name.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so you know we've got milk clearing, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like you know, so just silly things like that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>we can kind of keep up with them, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So you know, you see them multiple times. You get
<v Speaker 2>to know these animals and it's really cool seeing them
<v Speaker 2>using either the same stack atin or you're going, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and maybe this week it's in this stack of tin,
<v Speaker 2>and then a couple of months later you find it
<v Speaker 2>one hundred yards away or half a mile away in
<v Speaker 2>another stack of tin. And it's kind of remarkable the
<v Speaker 2>range that that animal has and how much it's moved.
<v Speaker 2>But regardless of wherever it is, it's picking that stack
<v Speaker 2>of tin in the habitat to stay in.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, right, It's not like staying in ten once then
<v Speaker 1>going to a log and you never see it again.
<v Speaker 1>It's like they're attracted to the tin.
<v Speaker 2>They love it so much that that's like where they
<v Speaker 2>want to be.
<v Speaker 1>Do you have indigos you see like the same individual
<v Speaker 1>indegoes or is it a little harder with them because
<v Speaker 1>the power is not there.
<v Speaker 2>I think you have a more limited time with the
<v Speaker 2>indigo where you know, like you saw, most of what
<v Speaker 2>we flipped on our outing were juveniles that were either
<v Speaker 2>young of this year or younger last year, and they
<v Speaker 2>can fit under the tin at that time, but at
<v Speaker 2>a certain point they grow out of it. Right, they're going
<v Speaker 2>to be too big. So you know, some of the
<v Speaker 2>ten that we have gets cleared out on the bottom
<v Speaker 2>by pack rats and you can get big indigos under that.
<v Speaker 2>But at a certain point it's like, yeah, you get
<v Speaker 2>to see the same individual because it's we usually assume
<v Speaker 2>that it's the same one because they're harder to tell
<v Speaker 2>the difference in. But they'll be hanging out maybe in
<v Speaker 2>that tin for a while using it.
<v Speaker 1>I wonder, what the is it a native pack rat,
<v Speaker 1>you know, or is it they just look like roof
<v Speaker 1>rats or what?
<v Speaker 2>Think that they are native?
<v Speaker 1>But they still have that big do they have the
<v Speaker 1>tail like the roof rats kind of like fleshy possum
<v Speaker 1>like tail, or what.
<v Speaker 2>The big neotomas do. Yeah, I'm not that familiar with the.
<v Speaker 1>Different species going on. I'm just curious and.
<v Speaker 2>You know, like, oh, that's just full of rats.
<v Speaker 1>I'm curious what's been able to because all the landers
<v Speaker 1>has been scraped clean, you know, one hundred years ago whenever,
<v Speaker 1>it's all like there's so little habitat left. I'm just
<v Speaker 1>curious what's been able to survive that initial scraping, Like
<v Speaker 1>what natives are? That's cool though, so the pack rats
<v Speaker 1>end up Yeah, using it too, like everything is.
<v Speaker 2>Using Yeah, so rodents use it.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>Sometimes we'll flip through it and there's like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>a whole family of rodents in there, you know, fifteen
<v Speaker 2>or twenty mice you know, just all come scurrying out
<v Speaker 2>when we go flip it and kind of ruin their house.
<v Speaker 1>You know. Do you guys keep data on this? I
<v Speaker 1>mean beyond photos.
<v Speaker 2>Not a lot, but you know, as we are encountering
<v Speaker 2>the same individuals over and over, you know, I think
<v Speaker 2>that's kind of drawn a little bit of interest in
<v Speaker 2>maybe keeping some more data about it.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>One thing that's been interesting is seeing a snake, and
<v Speaker 2>it seems like the milk snakes at a certain point
<v Speaker 2>have this huge growth spurt. And we found this one.
<v Speaker 2>We named him Dirk the Dangler because the first time
<v Speaker 2>that we saw him, we flipped over this big, you know,
<v Speaker 2>four x eight board and he was dangling from underneath
<v Speaker 2>it because there's a little bit of a cavity. And
<v Speaker 2>he was maybe a young adult snake, you know, probably
<v Speaker 2>twenty twenty five inches or so. And I want to
<v Speaker 2>say it was about a year later we found him,
<v Speaker 2>and he was just enormous. It's like he went through
<v Speaker 2>this huge growth. When you saw him the time, he
<v Speaker 2>was almost three feet you know, he was a big yes, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's cool Jesus. So we got to see him a
<v Speaker 2>second time. He was very obvious because he's got these
<v Speaker 2>like white flares on his nostrils and kind of like
<v Speaker 2>one of his bands has a little bit of a
<v Speaker 2>different So.
<v Speaker 1>It's easy to tell him apart when you've got the
<v Speaker 1>milksnakes are very easy to tell. There's so much I mean,
<v Speaker 1>especially since you know that cell phone photos with metadata,
<v Speaker 1>there's so much data there already. I mean, you've got
<v Speaker 1>a record of these things that probably I would imagine
<v Speaker 1>there's no one really paying attention. Maybe there's some agencies.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think that anybody, But it's South Texas now,
<v Speaker 1>no one's doing this.
<v Speaker 2>We're the first people to do stuff like this.
<v Speaker 1>And if someone's doing this for a job, like doing
<v Speaker 1>a survey for reptiles, they're not going out. They can't
<v Speaker 1>go to private land, they can't go to the margins of.
<v Speaker 2>A public land and or you know, like some kind
<v Speaker 2>of refuge or something like that. And to be honest,
<v Speaker 2>they're not very good at it either. You know, they're
<v Speaker 2>not they're not very good at targeting them because you
<v Speaker 2>have to you have to know the animal. And this
<v Speaker 2>is something that we've learned of the last decade is
<v Speaker 2>what exactly that animal wants is you can see, we
<v Speaker 2>can give it to them.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>So, you know what a herpetologist is going to do
<v Speaker 2>is they're going to go set up a grid. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it'll be like a board and then maybe a sheet
<v Speaker 2>of ten and maybe a board. They're all going to
<v Speaker 2>be cut to an exact size, so it'll be like
<v Speaker 2>a two foot by two foot board, a two foot
<v Speaker 2>by two foot piece of ten, and they're gonna go
<v Speaker 2>set them, you know, specified number of feet apart over
<v Speaker 2>this little grid that they've made, and they're gonna have
<v Speaker 2>a relatively low number of incidental encounters, right, And they'll
<v Speaker 2>be like, okay, well, I'm gonna go survey it, you
<v Speaker 2>know these times once a month and go check what's
<v Speaker 2>using it. And I don't think it gives you a
<v Speaker 2>real understanding of the populations that are there because you
<v Speaker 2>have incidental you know, you have such a small window
<v Speaker 2>to actually encounter the animal.
<v Speaker 1>Also, you're working for a fucking agency too, which has
<v Speaker 1>read you have to you're stuck and there's things you
<v Speaker 1>can't do, you know, yeah, that you guys can't because
<v Speaker 1>you're doing it for free for yourselves because it just
<v Speaker 1>gives you dopamine and it's fun, and it's like, it's
<v Speaker 1>I see that so much with I'll have kids write
<v Speaker 1>me and they're like, what should I do to get
<v Speaker 1>a job in botany. I'm like, don't, man, Just nerd
<v Speaker 1>the fuck out and immerse yourself in this and use
<v Speaker 1>it as the medicine that keeps you alive when you're
<v Speaker 1>dealing with how much you know, life sucks, which I
<v Speaker 1>don't think I love life. I'm just saying, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I think it's there's a lot of bullshit a lot
<v Speaker 1>of people have to deal with, and this is like
<v Speaker 1>a nice medicine for it when you're doing it for
<v Speaker 1>that and you're not trapped in some agency or department
<v Speaker 1>or you don't worry about your reputation or whatever. You know.
<v Speaker 2>I think it kills the joy and a lot of
<v Speaker 2>the people that went to academia because they loved animals
<v Speaker 2>or some kind of science, you know, they're studying mammals, megafauna, herbs, whatever.
<v Speaker 2>I think the way academia is just kills that joy
<v Speaker 2>because you're so stifled and how you can go about studying.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's good to go to academia, but only
<v Speaker 1>for if your go if you're doing go for the knowledge. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>don't be like I'm doing this so I can get
<v Speaker 1>a piece of paper and a degree. It's no go
<v Speaker 1>for the knowledge.
<v Speaker 2>It's stuck trying to get funding and they have to
<v Speaker 2>come up with these bullshit projects to get to continue
<v Speaker 2>to get funding. And I think.
<v Speaker 1>That's in a society that's acomy because of that, in
<v Speaker 1>a society that doesn't want to fund science. Yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 1>where everything is just business, business, business. The best thing
<v Speaker 1>you can do is I'm a businessman. I'm a bit
<v Speaker 1>you know, I'm an entrepreneur. There's no funding for especially
<v Speaker 1>for natural sciences, because there's no there's people don't see
<v Speaker 1>innate benefit in this, Like what is the innate benefit
<v Speaker 1>in studying reptiles. It's going to benefit humanity, you know
<v Speaker 1>as well. It's part of the living skin. It's a
<v Speaker 1>cog in this living machine. It's important. These things we
<v Speaker 1>want to prevent from going extinct. We want to nurture,
<v Speaker 1>you know. But that doesn't worry. It's kind of how
<v Speaker 1>does it benefits or we could use it for pharmaceuticals
<v Speaker 1>or something. Is it how about a.
<v Speaker 2>Zoom benefits this because it's part of the living you know,
<v Speaker 2>gears that make the world.
<v Speaker 1>Work right exactly.
<v Speaker 2>And that's it's hard to like get somebody to really
<v Speaker 2>believe the value in that.
<v Speaker 1>That's with my friend Alan who studies mushrooms and it's
<v Speaker 1>just so fucking immersed in it and in love with it.
<v Speaker 1>And it's like he's discovering their species all the time,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, he does DNA sequence thing and you know,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, why has no one this has been here,
<v Speaker 1>This species has been here forever. You know, if last
<v Speaker 1>one hundred years people have been studying mycology for a while,
<v Speaker 1>why has no one done this taxonomic work on it?
<v Speaker 1>Is because there's no money in it. There's no benefit
<v Speaker 1>from it. It's like Jesus man and you're you're learning
<v Speaker 1>so much and you're you're acquiring so much data and
<v Speaker 1>insight into how the living world works, and our society
<v Speaker 1>doesn't value it monetize, you know, our only values that
<v Speaker 1>if it's a certain way. So that I think the
<v Speaker 1>moral of the story is we need more people doing
<v Speaker 1>this and keeping track of this, and of all these things,
<v Speaker 1>we need more herp nerds, we need more her words,
<v Speaker 1>and the more people that are out there keeping track
<v Speaker 1>of it, the easier it will be to protect.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I think so because I think if you
<v Speaker 2>can go and you can operating these spaces where you can,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you go find that that plot of land
<v Speaker 2>that nobody's using, nobody's doing anything with right now, right
<v Speaker 2>at some point, unless you know, you've developed a community
<v Speaker 2>that loves that for maybe the opportunity to go see
<v Speaker 2>certain animals. They're going to build a fucking parking lot
<v Speaker 2>on it or put those people general.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, my friend Arnesta was talking about that they turned
<v Speaker 1>there was a patch of it was all second growth.
<v Speaker 1>It was Paulo Verde and you know vicelia and other stuff.
<v Speaker 1>You know, there's those weedy native legumes. It was a
<v Speaker 1>patch of growth and they just bulldozed it to put
<v Speaker 1>up some fucking hideous make mansions. The ship they built
<v Speaker 1>it so ugly. But uh, and he was, you know,
<v Speaker 1>he was talking about and I saw coyotes running out
<v Speaker 1>of it and all this other stuff. I'm like, man,
<v Speaker 1>imagine what can only imagine what reptiles might have been
<v Speaker 1>in there and now it's all gone, and no, it's
<v Speaker 1>nobody pays attention, No one cares. Everyone's oblivious except for
<v Speaker 1>one or two people that maybe Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And I think one of the great benefits to getting
<v Speaker 2>more herpers which is it's it's a hard thing, right,
<v Speaker 2>because sometimes you don't want more people coming in and like,
<v Speaker 2>we have to be very secretive about everything, right, you
<v Speaker 2>don't want those people to find your stuff. Let's yeah,
<v Speaker 2>talk more about that. But like, the more people who
<v Speaker 2>are interested in it, they can go and know, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>this space has these living organisms, right, and the more
<v Speaker 2>public knowledge that is, I think you have a growing
<v Speaker 2>population of youth, you know, gen Z and the next
<v Speaker 2>generation that care about that stuff. But they just have
<v Speaker 2>to know, right and then go and basically okay, well
<v Speaker 2>you know they they want to develop this ship here
<v Speaker 2>and do this to it. Well, we actually know what
<v Speaker 2>lives there and care about it. It's able to go.
<v Speaker 2>It's just some patch of grass, right. You have multiple
<v Speaker 2>plant species, You have all these different animals that are
<v Speaker 2>secretive that you can't find unless you go lay out boards.
<v Speaker 1>You some of them are very rare, and there's things
<v Speaker 1>that live there and they have a fucking right to exist,
<v Speaker 1>and you don't get to just put up your sleazy,
<v Speaker 1>get rich quick scheme of these houses that are going
<v Speaker 1>to be obsolete in forty years because they were built
<v Speaker 1>with fucking you know pine.
<v Speaker 2>The reality is, we can take the spaces that we
<v Speaker 2>have and make better use of it. Yeah right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we can develop urbanized areas better than just a fucking
<v Speaker 2>parking lot everywhere.
<v Speaker 1>And leave patches intact too. Like that's the thing that
<v Speaker 1>drives me nuts. Like when the way it's set up,
<v Speaker 1>especially in this state, is like they come in, they
<v Speaker 1>take everything, like they don't build any reason of even
<v Speaker 1>keeping the fucking trees in a certain neighborhood. Like don't
<v Speaker 1>you want trees around? You're gonna scrape everything clean, leave.
<v Speaker 2>The latin and plant a token live oak or something.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, that was that's from the Florida populations.
<v Speaker 1>So it's not even adjusted to the dryer Texas heat,
<v Speaker 1>you know, where it's like, yeah, you build your fucking
<v Speaker 1>stupid housing tract of these you know, car dependent you know,
<v Speaker 1>slums with the fucking retail plaza or whatever, but like
<v Speaker 1>leave a patch of habitat somewhere in the midst of
<v Speaker 1>all that. Intact, it's not idea. It may not be
<v Speaker 1>enough for some things, but there's a point in leaving
<v Speaker 1>that there. It's cooling the landscape, holding the soil together,
<v Speaker 1>acting as a bank for seeds and the organisms that
<v Speaker 1>live there, the insects, the birds, like you need to
<v Speaker 1>do bet our society doesn't even do that. Like again,
<v Speaker 1>it's this living machine thing is so fucking irrelevant, Like,
<v Speaker 1>leave it there. It's a fucking machine. Leave it. It's
<v Speaker 1>serving a purpose, you fucking idiot. You know. See, I
<v Speaker 1>get really worked up, which it's not. I should not
<v Speaker 1>be the one to I should not be the the
<v Speaker 1>I'm not a diplomat, but still it just you look
<v Speaker 1>at places like Fort Worth in Dallas and they're just
<v Speaker 1>these sprawling shittles where everything's been taken, and I have
<v Speaker 1>friends there who are bodanists and they're just man, it's
<v Speaker 1>got to hurt so much that fucking Now the Leopold
<v Speaker 1>quote about the more awareness you have, you're just like
<v Speaker 1>living on a world of wounds, you know, because you
<v Speaker 1>know what's been lost, And then they're shifting baselines and
<v Speaker 1>people don't know what's been lost because they were never
<v Speaker 1>paying attention in the first place. The parents weren't and
<v Speaker 1>it's crazy, but I mean, huge swaths of things are
<v Speaker 1>just not here anymore. Yeah, of living things are just gone,
<v Speaker 1>just wiped out. You know, they might be still extants,
<v Speaker 1>still living somewhere else, but they're extirpated from the region. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>Well I want to talk about Yeah, you guys are
<v Speaker 1>understandably very secretive about certain things because spots can get
<v Speaker 1>blown up. And I've noticed this in all Herpers I've
<v Speaker 1>met and that I've made friends with, you know, California, Arizona, wherever.
<v Speaker 1>What's up with that? Like, what can to someone listening
<v Speaker 1>who may not understand it? How would you put it?
<v Speaker 2>Well, there's two aspects to it. One, it's like, you
<v Speaker 2>don't want people to come there and collect animals, right,
<v Speaker 2>because that's going to directly impact your ability to observe
<v Speaker 2>them if you start taking individuals out of the population,
<v Speaker 2>right you know. So I think there's that's the initial fear,
<v Speaker 2>and that comes from that mentality that at the old
<v Speaker 2>guard the old older herpers used to go and collect stuff, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, that was part of their hobbies.
<v Speaker 1>This is fighting fifties forties, like twentieth century, mid twentieth century.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, anywhere from the forties, probably the seventies, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and I think it's kind of dwindled since then. Right,
<v Speaker 2>you go out and part of your herping is collecting stuff.
<v Speaker 1>What would they do? We keep them in tanks and
<v Speaker 1>breed them or something, or.
<v Speaker 2>Go sell them, you know, to people who are interested
<v Speaker 2>in finding them, you know. So that was a lot
<v Speaker 2>of the fervor. It's like, oh, let's go out and
<v Speaker 2>find these animals and then we're going to go sell
<v Speaker 2>them and they breed them or whatever. Right, But you know,
<v Speaker 2>now there's there's so many less animals. You don't have
<v Speaker 2>these speak strongholds of animals anywhere. There's obviously exceptions to that, right,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, if we went and collected every milk
<v Speaker 2>snake that we found, you know, we wouldn't We wouldn't
<v Speaker 2>have any more milk snakes, right, you know, these are
<v Speaker 2>small patches of habitat that supports a population. But the
<v Speaker 2>more I've spent time at this, the more the less
<v Speaker 2>animals I think are there, because we keep seeing the
<v Speaker 2>same individuals over and over, so it's like, well, how
<v Speaker 2>many of them are really here?
<v Speaker 1>So you think populations are still declining.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, as long as, like, if you have good habitat,
<v Speaker 2>I think that population can be stable. But if you
<v Speaker 2>go pull individuals out, I think then you are directly
<v Speaker 2>impacting that And if you do it at a rate
<v Speaker 2>faster than they can replenish, then you're going to lose
<v Speaker 2>that population.
<v Speaker 1>For species that don't benefit from humans being there, like
<v Speaker 1>you know, coyotes or ravens or whatever, magpies and fucking
<v Speaker 1>grackles whatever. I think. Yeah, like it can only gets
<v Speaker 1>so big when all the habitat's gone.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, there is a limit to that space, right,
<v Speaker 2>And you can have artificial densities like we talked about,
<v Speaker 2>because you've got maybe a monoculture that supports more rodents
<v Speaker 2>and then you know, you can get this kind of
<v Speaker 2>artificial increased number of certain animals based on the change
<v Speaker 2>in the habitat. But there's still a limit to that, right.
<v Speaker 2>So that's one aspect, you know, is you don't want
<v Speaker 2>people to go through and collect. But also you know
<v Speaker 2>there's the social media aspect to herping, right because you
<v Speaker 2>go and you know, I like posting and sharing the
<v Speaker 2>stuff because I'm excited about the animals that I've found,
<v Speaker 2>and I want people to be more interested in the
<v Speaker 2>natural world. But you have people that follow and want
<v Speaker 2>to go find where you found those animals? Right, They
<v Speaker 2>want to go to that spot because they either need
<v Speaker 2>to check it off on a life list or they
<v Speaker 2>just want the.
<v Speaker 1>Social validation a social social validation.
<v Speaker 2>Want to they want the likes, they want all the
<v Speaker 2>comments that say, oh wow, that's awesome that you found that.
<v Speaker 2>You know, and I get that to a certain extent,
<v Speaker 2>but then when you know, when they're their whole goal
<v Speaker 2>then becomes to get that. So the methods that they
<v Speaker 2>use is they they go look through people's videos and
<v Speaker 2>pictures and they try to piece together all these different
<v Speaker 2>clues from the background to go find exactly where they went, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, So they do they become this internet sleuth
<v Speaker 2>for the wrong reason where they go find this spot
<v Speaker 2>to go see my animals, well my quote unquote right
<v Speaker 2>that I've seen, and that can ruin a spot, right
<v Speaker 2>because then okay, this person found it and they go
<v Speaker 2>tell their.
<v Speaker 1>More draftic it's blowing. Suddenly you get someone in there,
<v Speaker 1>he's either gonna make a mistake, fuck up the habitat,
<v Speaker 1>take something whatever. And also I think the goal is
<v Speaker 1>when you're doing it for that and it's you see
<v Speaker 1>this with everything and related to social media, it becomes
<v Speaker 1>less about education and educating others and inspiring others and
<v Speaker 1>being like, yeah, this is medicine from the fucking garbage
<v Speaker 1>out in the world that we've created, this consumer dystopia,
<v Speaker 1>and it becomes more about social I need social validation.
<v Speaker 1>They may not be aware of it, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Like, yeah, it's I think it's their natural tendency.
<v Speaker 1>People want to watch sad twenties. Man. Like when I
<v Speaker 1>was twenty, I was doing all kinds of dumb shit
<v Speaker 1>that I wasn't aware of. I had no self awareness,
<v Speaker 1>no self insight, you know, I hadn't really experimented with
<v Speaker 1>psychedelics enough yet too, so there was yeah, man, I
<v Speaker 1>it's so. I'm not shitting on anybody, but I definitely
<v Speaker 1>think it's. Yeah, there's something to be said for blowing
<v Speaker 1>up a spot.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you get that increased traffic. You know, I
<v Speaker 2>don't want to go to a spot and know, oh,
<v Speaker 2>well these kids from Florida were just here last week
<v Speaker 2>and they just flipped this stuff. And eventually also the animals,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I think they can only take so much
<v Speaker 2>interaction now.
<v Speaker 1>Man exist for our amusement.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, they I think milk snakes, you know,
<v Speaker 2>as much as all of them. I think they're kind
<v Speaker 2>of dumb, you know, and I think they can they
<v Speaker 2>can take a little bit of abuse in terms of that,
<v Speaker 2>because we do see them come back, you know, they
<v Speaker 2>stay in those ten stacks. We see the same animals, right,
<v Speaker 2>but I would say the higher intelligence snakes don't come
<v Speaker 2>back sometimes, right, you know, like coach whips for example,
<v Speaker 2>are very they'll have site fidelity for for a little while,
<v Speaker 2>but if you start messing with them, you pick them up,
<v Speaker 2>you pull them for photos, you know, maybe you get
<v Speaker 2>to see them one more time.
<v Speaker 1>The the same genus as whip snakes or related.
<v Speaker 2>They're related. Yeah, so they used to they're supposed to
<v Speaker 2>be really smart too. Yeah, they used to be the
<v Speaker 2>same genus. Uh, they got divided whether or not, you know,
<v Speaker 2>but the same thing. It's that it's a terrestrial snake
<v Speaker 2>that's fast moving, it hunts down its prey and it's
<v Speaker 2>very Uh they have good eyes sight, you know, they're
<v Speaker 2>very strongly aware.
<v Speaker 1>To them is like the velociraptors of like very smart.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, they are very smart. And like chasing other
<v Speaker 2>prerie and also evading predators.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they're very good at, you know, shooting up
<v Speaker 2>a tree or something. You know, while you're standing around
<v Speaker 2>looking at the ground, it's already it's already twenty feet
<v Speaker 2>up a tree.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>So they don't respond well to being flipped a lot,
<v Speaker 2>you know. Now there is exceptions to that, because I
<v Speaker 2>know of a guy who had some coach whips in
<v Speaker 2>Arizona that lived on his property and he would actually
<v Speaker 2>feed them, right, so he'd get like frozen throwd mice
<v Speaker 2>and leave them out for this. So they actually started
<v Speaker 2>to come up and expect that, you know. So it's like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you can have the opposite effect too.
<v Speaker 1>But for a snake to be able to do that, though,
<v Speaker 1>it seems to me, I mean I don't know anything
<v Speaker 1>about snakes or much about them, but that seems like
<v Speaker 1>a sign of intelligence.
<v Speaker 2>You know, you have that is a sign of intelligence.
<v Speaker 2>And there's also a there was a study of a
<v Speaker 2>black tail rattle. So I can't remember if it was
<v Speaker 2>New Mexico or Arizona, but they were watching these black
<v Speaker 2>tails and they had to add them tracked or whatever,
<v Speaker 2>and they're watching them from binoculars, and this one's in
<v Speaker 2>ambush and you know, waiting for rodent to come by.
<v Speaker 2>But there's like a piece of grass, you know, that
<v Speaker 2>was in front of it, and it actually like moves
<v Speaker 2>its body like push that piece of grass down, so
<v Speaker 2>it can actually have you know, full strike range.
<v Speaker 1>So that's you know, the recognition whereas habitat environment, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and how it can modify that environment to better succeed.
<v Speaker 2>Elaboratory is supposed to be really smart, huh. I think
<v Speaker 2>some of like king king cobras are very smart, but
<v Speaker 2>it's actually a totally different I guess despite being called cobra,
<v Speaker 2>they're not considered true cobras. And from the discussions I've
<v Speaker 2>had recently, like stuff like monocle cobras, like actual Naja
<v Speaker 2>genus is kind of dumb too, really were And I
<v Speaker 2>think that's why you know that you have those people
<v Speaker 2>that can handle them in a way for show, because
<v Speaker 2>you know, the cover will focus on whatever is in
<v Speaker 2>front of it and not realize that the person holding
<v Speaker 2>it is really what it needs to turn around by.
<v Speaker 1>It's just one guy that oh my god, man, he's
<v Speaker 1>so fucking annoying. He's like a million followers and he's
<v Speaker 1>always doing whoa look at this bro, he's old, like
<v Speaker 1>these giant cobras and all this ship that. Yeah, man,
<v Speaker 1>come on, like this is you know, like you're educating.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, But do you have a would you go to?
<v Speaker 1>Do you have any interest in, like any other really
<v Speaker 1>dangerous lapids, Like would you like in Australia or you Asia?
<v Speaker 1>Would you like if you're over there, if someone was like,
<v Speaker 1>you can take two weeks off, I'll pay for it,
<v Speaker 1>send your ass over there.
<v Speaker 2>Oh for sure, you know, I'd like to see this stuff,
<v Speaker 2>you know. But yeah, part of the part of the
<v Speaker 2>joy for me is the setting out cover and discovering
<v Speaker 2>a new population, getting to know you know. So there's
<v Speaker 2>but there's definitely a lot of fun to be had
<v Speaker 2>and just going to a new place and seeing new
<v Speaker 2>things and kind of getting that tour you know.
<v Speaker 1>Just what in other words, like the danger wouldn't the
<v Speaker 1>increased risks wouldn't.
<v Speaker 2>That doesn't appeal to me, you know, like just because
<v Speaker 2>it's dangerous doesn't make it fun.
<v Speaker 1>What I'm saying, well, what would discourage you? Proud?
<v Speaker 2>Definitely like the putting my hands on it, it's higher stakes. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>for sure, you know, and like getting pictures of them. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I definitely want to. Yeah, yeah, that definitely doesn't feel
<v Speaker 2>as uh is up to what I like, how I
<v Speaker 2>like to enjoy things.
<v Speaker 1>I saw a fucking tiger snake in alpine Tasmania, like
<v Speaker 1>what happen to be forty five fifty degrees fahrenheit but
<v Speaker 1>is that like twelve celsius maybe less? And I shrieked
<v Speaker 1>like a little girl. I was like, fuck this. It
<v Speaker 1>was in the middle of the fucking trail too, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm looking at athro Taxis, all these cool conifers
<v Speaker 1>and ship that I'm just obsessed with and have been
<v Speaker 1>for years, and there's a giant black and they're more
<v Speaker 1>melanistic at higher elevation because it's been selected for they
<v Speaker 1>hold up there they get more heat from the sun.
<v Speaker 1>And this thing hurt me. It was just like just
<v Speaker 1>like took off. It was no threat at all, but
<v Speaker 1>it just didn't Just seeing it and knowing how dangerous
<v Speaker 1>they can be, it was like fuck that. Yeah, way, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>for sure. It's like I'm not trying to do it,
<v Speaker 1>and I.
<v Speaker 2>Think it takes knowing the animals too, and especially you know,
<v Speaker 2>you grew up in a place that has them, and
<v Speaker 2>you interact with them, and you kind of get those
<v Speaker 2>slow baby steps to interacting with them. I think you
<v Speaker 2>can understand how they're gonna act more, right, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So like we can catch coral snakes here and you
<v Speaker 2>can grab them by the tail and you give them
<v Speaker 2>a little shake so they don't have strong muscle tone
<v Speaker 2>like a viper does. So it's really hard for them
<v Speaker 2>to come back up and bite you if you're grabbing
<v Speaker 2>the tail and you know, shaking it so that it
<v Speaker 2>can't actually like can't actually do anything, yeah, just kind
<v Speaker 2>of flopping there.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>So I think knowing how to handle those animals makes
<v Speaker 2>that experience better. But if you know, I'm here, I'm
<v Speaker 2>a foreigner going to some place like that, I can't
<v Speaker 2>treat it like anything. I know.
<v Speaker 1>No, No, There's a dude I follow in Australia who's
<v Speaker 1>always posting himself handling tiger snakes and he does it total,
<v Speaker 1>you know, professional, on top of his game. You can
<v Speaker 1>tell you is what he's doing. But I'm still just
<v Speaker 1>like Jesus christ Man. Yeah, wow, those I mean that,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I always say they supposedly come at you whatever,
<v Speaker 1>I'm always skeptical of that because that's in any ways,
<v Speaker 1>aggression can be a defense mechanism, you know. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>know from personal experience, you know, tend to be a
<v Speaker 1>little spiny. But but still I just yeah, they just
<v Speaker 1>seem a little bit smarter and a little more yeah,
<v Speaker 1>a little more agro.
<v Speaker 2>The lepids, I mean a lot of them over there,
<v Speaker 2>like are described as like a venomous coach whip. Right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, we've got our coach here. That's terrifying because
<v Speaker 2>they're so fast.
<v Speaker 1>Man. Yeah, yeah, do uh but you never do you ever?
<v Speaker 1>Are you ever using hooks or anything?
<v Speaker 2>For I do occasionally because I don't really mess with
<v Speaker 2>high It's a whole lot you know, a lot of hots.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah they are hot, you know, so I think that
<v Speaker 2>the most interaction I have. You know, we go see
<v Speaker 2>a lot of cane brakes in Louisiana when we go out,
<v Speaker 2>and I try not to mess with them one because
<v Speaker 2>that's another animal that is more sensitive to interactions. Right,
<v Speaker 2>So if you if you keep disturbing it, they're not
<v Speaker 2>going to be there.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>We want to keep seeing them, so we try to
<v Speaker 2>photograph them in sit you we don't pick them up
<v Speaker 2>and you know, mess with hooks or tongs or anything
<v Speaker 2>like that to grab them for pictures. If we can
<v Speaker 2>we photograph emend sit you or if they're already moving
<v Speaker 2>when we flip them, then we just put this stuff
<v Speaker 2>back down and just kind of let them be right now.
<v Speaker 2>Rock rattlesnakes, you know, it's a small rattlesnake. They're you know,
<v Speaker 2>highly variable and how they look. And I like to
<v Speaker 2>see those and get pictures of them. And you're usually
<v Speaker 2>finding them at least like in Texas right You're you're
<v Speaker 2>finding them moving out in habitat on a rock cut
<v Speaker 2>or whatever at night. You know. So I've got some
<v Speaker 2>big tweezers that I might use for those we welding
<v Speaker 2>gloves that you can actually grab the snake with.
<v Speaker 1>They can't pierce welding gloves.
<v Speaker 2>A lot of snacks came the one might be able
<v Speaker 2>to but little yeah, for the black credit, it's considered safe.
<v Speaker 1>You're not going to use it for like an Eastern
<v Speaker 1>diamondback little stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for little stuff, it's fine, so you can you know,
<v Speaker 2>you can handle those a little bit more. But it's
<v Speaker 2>also something that you're gonna get in habitat you're gonna
<v Speaker 2>it's already moving. You're gonna see it for the night,
<v Speaker 2>and then you're probably never gonna see that snake again.
<v Speaker 2>You know, you're not disturbing its home. In the same way,
<v Speaker 2>there was a there's a rattlesnake.
<v Speaker 1>It's what is it? MITCHELLI? I think the speckled Is
<v Speaker 1>that what it is?
<v Speaker 2>Mitchell?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Yeah, that I would always see in the Mojave.
<v Speaker 1>And each population was different depending on what the geology was. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and they were beautifully, incredibly gorgeous snakes. I was on
<v Speaker 1>mushrooms once hiking in the Turtle Mountains in the Mojave
<v Speaker 1>and stopped right the fuck over one. And it was
<v Speaker 1>this beautiful purple and pink color because all the rock
<v Speaker 1>there was rhyolite, which is volcanic like purple rhyolite gravels.
<v Speaker 1>And it was kind of chilly too. I'm so glad
<v Speaker 1>the thing didn't bite me because we were fucking miles in.
<v Speaker 1>That would have sucked. That would have fucking sucked. And yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we were there after a rain two ecis. It had
<v Speaker 1>just come out of its little hole. But it was
<v Speaker 1>just an incredibly gorgeous snake. And then you'll see them
<v Speaker 1>where they're pink, if it's on pink granite, or orange
<v Speaker 1>if it's on orange sandstone.
<v Speaker 2>Just yeah, there's some blue ones, there's white ones.
<v Speaker 1>There's a Have you seen th before? Have you ever?
<v Speaker 2>I've never. I've never heurped Arizona. It's one of my
<v Speaker 2>one of my goals to eventually do that.
<v Speaker 1>Like southeastern California. Yeah, but I mean I had herper
<v Speaker 1>friends out there where they would get they would get
<v Speaker 1>hell or even just having a snake hook like in
<v Speaker 1>the truck if they drove through a National park or
<v Speaker 1>something really strict.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, some places are really strict about that. And I
<v Speaker 2>think we talked a little bit about this earlier. It
<v Speaker 2>is like like in Washington, you can't even like be
<v Speaker 2>directly looking for herbs, right, They don't want you touching
<v Speaker 2>any of them. I don't want And I think that
<v Speaker 2>really takes away from you the naturally. It's crazy. That's
<v Speaker 2>one of the great things about herps is there. It's
<v Speaker 2>a it's really hands on experience with wildlife. You can't
<v Speaker 2>go catch a dear.
<v Speaker 1>No reptiles, amphibians you're allowed to touch.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, wow, why is it like that?
<v Speaker 1>You know?
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you know why is Portland the way you know, So.
<v Speaker 1>That's another version of help for me. I like thinking
<v Speaker 1>of like terrible experiences I could have because I'm like that,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I got my childhood. But I think of
<v Speaker 1>like if I was like if I got the hell
<v Speaker 1>and they're like you have to live in Portland and
<v Speaker 1>like a communal house in Portland for eternity, that would
<v Speaker 1>be I would be.
<v Speaker 3>So fucking bombed and polyle Yeah, it's just like it's
<v Speaker 3>going to be being shamed and talked down to for
<v Speaker 3>the rest of my life by some of the most
<v Speaker 3>insufferable people in the world.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, so what are some of the what are
<v Speaker 1>some of the things? Because I know you have a
<v Speaker 1>dreaded fear of bees, as do I. Of the feral bees,
<v Speaker 1>they're fucking and they're all Africanized on there. I have
<v Speaker 1>a friend who's a beekeeper, Like how often you get
<v Speaker 1>Africanized bees. She's like, they're all Africanized down there, every
<v Speaker 1>single one of them. Yeah, there's none that are just
<v Speaker 1>like the docile Northern They're all that fucking hybrid that
<v Speaker 1>was made.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and it's if it's even remotely hot out they
<v Speaker 2>come and find you from a.
<v Speaker 1>They're in West Texas too.
<v Speaker 2>Man.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy. You'll be sixty feet from a fucking hole
<v Speaker 1>in a cliff where these things are. You know, you
<v Speaker 1>won't even be able to hear the buzzing yet, and
<v Speaker 1>all of a sudden you're getting attacked and then they
<v Speaker 1>mark you with the pheromone and then you're, yeah, what
<v Speaker 1>experiences have you had with those?
<v Speaker 2>So I had my first experience with this is actually
<v Speaker 2>just south of Houston, near Freeport on one of the islands.
<v Speaker 2>And I hadn't been hurting a whole lot a lot
<v Speaker 2>of time at that point, but I was going and
<v Speaker 2>looking for rattlesnakes and king snakes under hurricane debris and
<v Speaker 2>I came across this. It's like corner to a roof
<v Speaker 2>of a house, laying in the scrub there. So I
<v Speaker 2>flipped it over, so it was just pieces of it,
<v Speaker 2>you know, So I don't know where it came from,
<v Speaker 2>but it's just like I knew it was like these shingles.
<v Speaker 2>It was the corner to a roof bread. So I
<v Speaker 2>flip it over and I see this writhing mass under it.
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, oh shit, beat, So I put it back down,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, I had flipped wasps at this point,
<v Speaker 2>and I ran off probably fifteen yards or so, you know,
<v Speaker 2>maybe maybe fifteen feet, and I thought, okay, let me
<v Speaker 2>look for other stuff because I'd flipped wasps. And I
<v Speaker 2>put this stuff back down and I just never get
<v Speaker 2>bothered by yeah, And I stopped, and I'm looking around
<v Speaker 2>for the next piece of cover to flip. And it
<v Speaker 2>felt like all of a sudden, like I got lit
<v Speaker 2>on fire, and I had bees swarming all over me.
<v Speaker 2>And here I am one hundred yards away from my
<v Speaker 2>car in this tall scrub with kyotie bush and all
<v Speaker 2>this stuff around me, and I have to run all
<v Speaker 2>the way back to my car.
<v Speaker 1>And they're stinging, and they're stinging the.
<v Speaker 2>Fuck out of me, and you know, so here I am,
<v Speaker 2>you know, waving my arms. I ended up knocking my
<v Speaker 2>glasses off. I lose my snake hook that I had,
<v Speaker 2>and I fell two times running through there, tripping over
<v Speaker 2>stuff trying to get away. And eventually, you know, I
<v Speaker 2>got fairly close to the road and it's really thick,
<v Speaker 2>and I had to basically walk, you know, while I'm
<v Speaker 2>getting stunk, and eventually get in the car and I've
<v Speaker 2>got probably twenty bees in there in the car with
<v Speaker 2>me smacking them against the windows and stuff. It was
<v Speaker 2>it was one of it was the first time in
<v Speaker 2>my life that I actually thought I might die from this,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I really thought that that might be it
<v Speaker 2>and ended up getting away and uh, and of course,
<v Speaker 2>you know, being me, I kept.
<v Speaker 1>Trying, did you get the bees that world? Just drive
<v Speaker 1>fast with the windows down?
<v Speaker 2>No, I mean I had the bees in there, and
<v Speaker 2>I basically smacked him, you know, because I was too
<v Speaker 2>exhausted at that point, basically smacked him in the car
<v Speaker 2>was fucking hot and just yeah, and uh, I ended
<v Speaker 2>up trying to herp after that, and with such a
<v Speaker 2>bad headache and just feeling bad overall that I didn't
<v Speaker 2>last very long.
<v Speaker 1>How many drugs?
<v Speaker 2>So we counted them when I got home, and it
<v Speaker 2>was over one hundred and twenty stings that we could find.
<v Speaker 2>And that's like not because you can't really see them
<v Speaker 2>on your head, but I had them all over in
<v Speaker 2>my hair and my head. I mean they were lighting.
<v Speaker 1>They could they sting you through your shirt too? Yeah. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So there's nothing I mean, unless you have like a
<v Speaker 1>sweatshirt in your place.
<v Speaker 2>The only thing that you can do is go get
<v Speaker 2>into like a building, a car somewhere that they can't
<v Speaker 2>get to you.
<v Speaker 1>How far when you got to your car? How far
<v Speaker 1>was that from where?
<v Speaker 2>So it was probably about one hundred, one hundred and
<v Speaker 2>fifty yards that I had to run through, Jesus, And
<v Speaker 2>that was so that was my first experience with them,
<v Speaker 2>and ever since then, I've been you know, high alert.
<v Speaker 1>But you were fine.
<v Speaker 2>You didn't go to the hospital. I didn't go to
<v Speaker 2>the hospital. I had a fever that night. I didn't
<v Speaker 2>sleep very well. I was really sore the next day.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, of what one hundred low grade high grade.
<v Speaker 2>It's probably about ninety nine, you know point but there
<v Speaker 2>it was just serious inflammation though, yes, yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 2>I was red all over. I was hot. I didn't
<v Speaker 2>you know, I uh, basically into the next day, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and then uh slowly you know, dissipated, and I was
<v Speaker 2>pretty sore for a couple of days after that.
<v Speaker 1>Things, man, Jesus, it.
<v Speaker 2>Was it was pretty rough.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I had I had a friend get attacked and
<v Speaker 1>he just laid down, I think because he couldn't. He
<v Speaker 1>just gave up. He's like, this is it, I'm gonna die.
<v Speaker 1>But and he came out of it. I forget what happened.
<v Speaker 1>I think he maybe eventually walked out, he walked aways
<v Speaker 1>away from the nest, but he walked up the same thing.
<v Speaker 1>There was like a down tree. Yeah, and just yeah,
<v Speaker 1>if you got to like start running the minute then
<v Speaker 1>you see him and fucking just get away, that's that
<v Speaker 1>would be a horrible way to go to water.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe would work, I guess, but I've heard that they'll
<v Speaker 2>basically stay and wait for you to come.
<v Speaker 1>Out of the water. Jesus Christ fucking sat I've never
<v Speaker 1>tried it myself.
<v Speaker 2>I'm pretty be aware at this point. You know. So
<v Speaker 2>whenever we we don't do this as much, but right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, part of what we used to do is
<v Speaker 2>look on Google Maps for you know, old barns and
<v Speaker 2>stuff that this clear tint missing and go try to
<v Speaker 2>find herbs around there. Right, So you go, and a
<v Speaker 2>lot of these abandoned buildings will have bees in them.
<v Speaker 2>You know, there's almost it's almost a surety that if
<v Speaker 2>you've got to abandoned, falling apart building that there's bees
<v Speaker 2>somewhere in it down here at least. And you know,
<v Speaker 2>so we have to just kind of be conscientious of
<v Speaker 2>that and look for it. Basically everywhere we can.
<v Speaker 1>Can you normally hear the buzzing.
<v Speaker 2>If you get close. Yeah, But basically what we're doing
<v Speaker 2>is looking. You know, you get like a big three
<v Speaker 2>D pile of junk, you know, and we're looking to
<v Speaker 2>see the bees kind of popping out. You know, you'll
<v Speaker 2>see the few of them buzzing, kind of coming in
<v Speaker 2>and out, you know. Looking you know, you see like
<v Speaker 2>a hole in the side of a building, you know,
<v Speaker 2>you obviously don't want to walk right next to it
<v Speaker 2>because they're going to be coming out.
<v Speaker 1>They're in the desert too, was in a cliff. I
<v Speaker 1>was near like a rock outcropping in West Texas, and
<v Speaker 1>they were there and they were just they started thing
<v Speaker 1>in us. And when lewis alone, yeah, I think I
<v Speaker 1>got like five stings. It wasn't that bad, but it
<v Speaker 1>sucked and we had to leave. We're like one hundred
<v Speaker 1>feet from the nest. Yeah, it's just, yeah, it sucks.
<v Speaker 1>And we had a friend who's pretty old and couldn't
<v Speaker 1>walk that well, and so we're having to like help
<v Speaker 1>him get down and it's all this crumbling talus and shit.
<v Speaker 1>It was so dangerous. It sucks. And I've seen him
<v Speaker 1>in the Mohave Desert too, but they weren't that aggressive.
<v Speaker 1>There was actually like honey leaking out of the rock
<v Speaker 1>shealting they were in there. But yeah, how many times
<v Speaker 1>do you encounter them and they'll come at you if
<v Speaker 1>you don't even disturb the.
<v Speaker 2>Nest, right, yeah, if you're exactly so obviously you don't
<v Speaker 2>want to flip a nest. But yeah, being just too
<v Speaker 2>close to them can can set them off. And it
<v Speaker 2>feels like, you know that I've got some kind of permanent,
<v Speaker 2>you know, marker on me, because if I'm out with
<v Speaker 2>a group of people, I'm almost the first and sometimes
<v Speaker 2>the only person stung by them.
<v Speaker 1>Es.
<v Speaker 2>So I've had several experiences now, so I've had a
<v Speaker 2>couple of Mustang Island. One of them, I was there
<v Speaker 2>with a friend and I was the only person stung.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we were flipping through some boards and stuff
<v Speaker 2>and didn't see them, and I go running off because
<v Speaker 2>I got the first few stings, and she's standing there
<v Speaker 2>like what are you running for? You know, And I
<v Speaker 2>get back to the car and I got probably maybe
<v Speaker 2>ten stings from that, and then yeah, so evil, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>getting the whole high back to you if you let him.
<v Speaker 2>Another time also, I mustang. I was with a group
<v Speaker 2>of friends and we'd gone we basically exhausted all of
<v Speaker 2>our flip there, and we went over that. I said, well,
<v Speaker 2>I got this other place I've never been to. It's
<v Speaker 2>RB Park. There's some junk in the dunes. Maybe there's
<v Speaker 2>something there worth flipping, but it just gives me the
<v Speaker 2>impression that there's probably bees. We get over there, we
<v Speaker 2>look around at night. I noticed my buddy hadn't flipped
<v Speaker 2>this big black like one of those it's like a
<v Speaker 2>big black tube right two feet across. I guess they
<v Speaker 2>put him. It's like a culvert kind of thing. And
<v Speaker 2>I noticed he didn't pick that up. And I go
<v Speaker 2>and I lift it and and I get buzzed, and
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, oh fuck, you know, so I go galloping
<v Speaker 2>from you see where was I didn't even see the nest,
<v Speaker 2>but I got buzzed. So at that point I'm like
<v Speaker 2>skittish of them, So I go zipping across. Yeah you
<v Speaker 2>hear it yet, And the guy that was next to
<v Speaker 2>me ended up getting attacked by a lot of them,
<v Speaker 2>and they came after him, and we basically were running
<v Speaker 2>around the car because he was trying to fumbling for
<v Speaker 2>his keys and we're trying to get in the car,
<v Speaker 2>and our other friend went running through the RV park
<v Speaker 2>and we're basically I'm smacking them off of Matt's back
<v Speaker 2>and he's fumbling for the keys, trying to get in
<v Speaker 2>the car, and eventually we got in and probably had
<v Speaker 2>fifteen stings each.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't terrible, but one of the things that they
<v Speaker 2>just come after you and they don't stop. So that's
<v Speaker 2>those times, and most of the time since then, I've
<v Speaker 2>found the bees before they found me. But we were
<v Speaker 2>actually flipping a few weeks ago and it seems like
<v Speaker 2>they've kind of moved back into some places and I
<v Speaker 2>got lit up after we'd finished flipping a stack.
<v Speaker 1>Places that you were familiar with.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and then they've kind of started to move in
<v Speaker 2>and I got I think three stings from this latest one,
<v Speaker 2>you know, but I got hit with the first one.
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, I'm out here.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I remember with you once you want a
<v Speaker 1>year or two ago and I bees and I'm like, what, yeah, God,
<v Speaker 1>they're just yeah, what what about ticks? How often you
<v Speaker 1>get tics?
<v Speaker 2>What other like hazards that the Tic series that's just
<v Speaker 2>part of the That's what I was run of the mill, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you watch them. I mean, I haven't got
<v Speaker 2>any tick boorn illnesses yet, luckily knock on wood like
<v Speaker 2>the Alpha girl or yeah, that I'd be really worried about,
<v Speaker 2>you know, because I you know, I know, we've talked
<v Speaker 2>a little bit about the red meat, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>I would obviously probably should cut it out a little bit,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't want to be forced to, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's just for me.
<v Speaker 1>It's just like you know, the Italians and colon cancer
<v Speaker 1>to ask.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>But uh but yeah, man, that's uh yeah. My friend
<v Speaker 1>got that. He can't he can't. He get like severe
<v Speaker 1>allergic reactions and his stomach as all of said. You
<v Speaker 1>didn't even know he had it. He got tested. He
<v Speaker 1>was like, why am I having these reactions? Yeah, man,
<v Speaker 1>I don't. I guess. I think the other thing to
<v Speaker 1>think about, too, is do you feel like the habitat
<v Speaker 1>being gone one day, like his land use changes, because
<v Speaker 1>I it doesn't seem like the sprawl's ever gonna stop,
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>I think it depends on where you are, you know,
<v Speaker 2>And one of the benefits to where we've set up
<v Speaker 2>a lot of this stuff where we have. I don't
<v Speaker 2>think that these places in particular are going to get developed.
<v Speaker 2>They're too far, it's too far out. It's also not
<v Speaker 2>good for farming, you know. You see it's got a
<v Speaker 2>lot of agriculture land around it. But they haven't, you know,
<v Speaker 2>messed with this habitat. So you know, in places around
<v Speaker 2>Houston though that I used to go to, I can't
<v Speaker 2>go there, go there anymore one because it's just been bulldozed.
<v Speaker 2>It's been absolutely completely just. But that's the urban sprawl
<v Speaker 2>that is coming out, and it's the constant new developments.
<v Speaker 2>We got to build more tract houses, we got to
<v Speaker 2>build more apartments. We got to do this. You know,
<v Speaker 2>I had this great place, and I guess I can
<v Speaker 2>tell exactly where it was. It was off a highway
<v Speaker 2>to eighty eight and Airport roads south of Houston, and
<v Speaker 2>it was this patch of prairie. It's a wonderful little
<v Speaker 2>patch of prairie. And I could go there and there
<v Speaker 2>was they used to have cattle out there and some
<v Speaker 2>kind of barn, so there was some tin, there were
<v Speaker 2>some boards out there, and it's kind of a ghetto area.
<v Speaker 2>But I used to go find caligaster, so prairie king snakes,
<v Speaker 2>so Lamberpeltus caligaster was very numerous there. I was real
<v Speaker 2>close to where I lived. I could go there. It
<v Speaker 2>was basically a ten minute drive. I could pop over
<v Speaker 2>there in the spring and see prairie king snakes and
<v Speaker 2>I loved it. And eventually they bulldozed, you know. I
<v Speaker 2>went by there one day in the spring and I
<v Speaker 2>was ready to go flip and they had bulldozers out
<v Speaker 2>there and they were flattening everything. You know. I guess
<v Speaker 2>the person who owned it ended up selling it and
<v Speaker 2>selling it to land developers, and now there's apartments on
<v Speaker 2>top of it, you know. And it's just like that's
<v Speaker 2>the reality of her being anywhere close to a city.
<v Speaker 1>You know, like a sinking feeling.
<v Speaker 2>It was, you know, a sense of loss, you know,
<v Speaker 2>because I had a lot of great times seeing animals there.
<v Speaker 2>But it's like I know that whatever animals were there
<v Speaker 2>were bulldozed over, you know, that was flattened. They suffocated
<v Speaker 2>and died underground, or you know, got got turned up
<v Speaker 2>by the bulldozers right and crushed and torn to shreds.
<v Speaker 2>You know. So it sucks, you know, but it's also
<v Speaker 2>it's it feels inevitable, it feels unstoppable, especially in those places,
<v Speaker 2>because you can have that pocket of habitat and somebody
<v Speaker 2>that's got more money and less morals is going to
<v Speaker 2>take that and use it. They see dollar signs. They
<v Speaker 2>see that as well, we have this population growing and
<v Speaker 2>here I can put cheap homes or apartments and I
<v Speaker 2>can make money off of this, you know, And they don't.
<v Speaker 2>They never look at the ecological benefit of that. Because
<v Speaker 2>the joy that it brought me is priceless. But that's
<v Speaker 2>not something that everybody shared.
<v Speaker 1>It sales me with the hate. I think it's safe
<v Speaker 1>to say it's a hate. It's not just like, oh well,
<v Speaker 1>I just stopped that mobile. It's like, no, I fucking
<v Speaker 1>hate I hate it. I hate you. I hate not
<v Speaker 1>you personally. Maybe people can change, but like your values
<v Speaker 1>are poisoned their garbage. It's not just we're different, it's
<v Speaker 1>your values, our garbage. You don't value the living world
<v Speaker 1>that we came from. Like you know, it's I hate it.
<v Speaker 1>I fucking hate that. I would hate a lot of
<v Speaker 1>that shit even if it wasn't destroying things I love.
<v Speaker 1>But I just don't. But I also know it's not
<v Speaker 1>gonna last. It's so ephemeral. It can't last. There's no way, man,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you can't. Just tumors don't last. They kill
<v Speaker 1>their holes eventually. Yeah, it just sucks all the everything
<v Speaker 1>that happens, all the byproducts, you know, like the people
<v Speaker 1>who don't do that, who are going to suffer, and
<v Speaker 1>all the life forms that are going to be extirpated.
<v Speaker 1>And do you what do you think is probably the
<v Speaker 1>rarest one of the rarest herbs in Texas?
<v Speaker 2>I think if they still exist, it would be the
<v Speaker 2>Louisiana pine snake. They have a couple of strongholds in
<v Speaker 2>Louisiana and they've done really a great reintroduction program in
<v Speaker 2>a particular area I won't mention, but they have introduced
<v Speaker 2>them and there is now a breeding population there, so
<v Speaker 2>they've found they've gotten they Basically what they do is
<v Speaker 2>they have like a camera trap. Basically it's kind of
<v Speaker 2>like a drift fence that forces animals to go a
<v Speaker 2>certain way past a camera and they photographed to new
<v Speaker 2>individuals so they know that it's a breeding population now.
<v Speaker 2>So in in Louisiana they definitely have some still and
<v Speaker 2>hopefully well well maintain, but in Texas with the land
<v Speaker 2>does not managed properly for them, and they haven't been
<v Speaker 2>seen in many years Jesus even you know. So, And
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if it's a detection problem or if
<v Speaker 2>it's you know, really the population's just not there. But
<v Speaker 2>they stopped getting him in traps, I want to say,
<v Speaker 2>in the like, uh like two thousands or maybe early
<v Speaker 2>twenty tens.
<v Speaker 1>Oh wow, So that's it's.
<v Speaker 2>Been a while, probably extricated, probably probably probably are I
<v Speaker 2>remain hopeful that want to show up, But I mean,
<v Speaker 2>nobody's seen one.
<v Speaker 1>Like so many things, man. Yeah. And then the yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the shifting baselines thing of just kids growing up and
<v Speaker 1>not being able to see this stuff. Yeah, and just
<v Speaker 1>being stuck on video games and TikTok and shit, that's
<v Speaker 1>so sad.
<v Speaker 2>Well, that's why we want more people to go hurt, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And how I was gonna say, that's why you
<v Speaker 1>the best thing you can do is create a culture.
<v Speaker 1>It revolves around this stuff, you know that holds it.
<v Speaker 1>It holds like a reverence and a respect for it.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, it's fun as hell, you know, and it
<v Speaker 1>is an antidote. But I wanted to ask to lastly,
<v Speaker 1>like mass of Saga. There's a couple like Mass of Sagas.
<v Speaker 1>I've never seen those. I'd love to do you get those.
<v Speaker 2>We do get them down here.
<v Speaker 1>I know.
<v Speaker 2>One of the places that we drove to when you
<v Speaker 2>when you're dropping off CC, we went through a Paturbally
<v Speaker 2>Sandy habitat that does have them. I've not seen when
<v Speaker 2>they're saur shed skin under some of the tin that
<v Speaker 2>I've got out there.
<v Speaker 1>Mass Saga ship.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, based on the patterning on the head, because they
<v Speaker 2>have a very distinct pattern on the head. We have
<v Speaker 2>seen them out out for the West in jim Hogg County,
<v Speaker 2>you know where it's real sandy. Yeah. But you know
<v Speaker 2>they seem you know, sisters in general, seems like a
<v Speaker 2>very sensitive genus and even like pigmies in Texas, I
<v Speaker 2>feel like, you know, they used to I know, they
<v Speaker 2>used to have a lot beer range and occupied a
<v Speaker 2>lot of areas that they don't anymore. And one of
<v Speaker 2>the things that I've always thought that has imperiled them
<v Speaker 2>is wild hogs because it's a it's a very terrestrial
<v Speaker 2>animal that doesn't if you're like a wild boar or
<v Speaker 2>invasive bore, it doesn't have a bad bite, right, and
<v Speaker 2>bores come through and root up habitat and basically eat
<v Speaker 2>everything that's on the surface. So, you know, I had
<v Speaker 2>a place in northeast Texas that I could go and
<v Speaker 2>not easily find pigmy rattlesnakes, but I would encounter them occasionally,
<v Speaker 2>and after seeing some wild hog come through, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>you know, it's the evidence that their destruction is pretty obvious.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't seen a pigmy there since, so I feel
<v Speaker 2>like it's a it's something that's implicated in their decline,
<v Speaker 2>and it's just it's a species that really I think
<v Speaker 2>is very sensitive, but they're definitely and you know, places
<v Speaker 2>at the King Ranch, you know in Kennedy County has
<v Speaker 2>a lot of has a lot of habitat, and I
<v Speaker 2>know from secondhand accounts of people that work on like
<v Speaker 2>the wind turbines and stuff out there, they'll actually see
<v Speaker 2>them crossing the road. So it's like it's not that
<v Speaker 2>there's not populations that are still doing well, it's just
<v Speaker 2>the access to those populations.
<v Speaker 1>Sterial hogs are so bad. We just got some a
<v Speaker 1>thorn scrub and and in six months they've fucked up
<v Speaker 1>so much, Like on on one end of the property.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>I was.
<v Speaker 1>I was reached out to a friend. He's like, oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we'll go out there with air fifteens and just let
<v Speaker 1>them up. I was like, man, you can't know, like
<v Speaker 1>we got like there's neighbors to one of them is
<v Speaker 1>a fucking nut job. Like I don't want to, you know,
<v Speaker 1>we have to be more like as much as I
<v Speaker 1>would love that, we got to be more targeted. If
<v Speaker 1>you're gonna use rifles, get a suppressor, you'll need night vision.
<v Speaker 1>You have to hang you know. I've heard too with
<v Speaker 1>like suppressors too. When you start dropping them, they don't
<v Speaker 1>It takes a while for them to even figure out
<v Speaker 1>what's going on. You know, you can't they don't hear
<v Speaker 1>anything but or corral traps. There was one I was
<v Speaker 1>looking at that seem really but they're expensive. Yeah, they can.
<v Speaker 2>It's such a temporary solution for something that breeds fast.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and you'll have to keep it out there and
<v Speaker 1>just it's like constantly.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, I think you know something that I've
<v Speaker 2>thought it's just kind of a theoretical idea, is that
<v Speaker 2>if you could breed some that have like some sort
<v Speaker 2>of genetics that uh, you know, compounds over generations that
<v Speaker 2>eventually produces you know, ani that are that are infertile
<v Speaker 2>or the only males or you know. It just they
<v Speaker 2>never and it eventually never allows them to reach breeding age.
<v Speaker 2>Then you could introduce those to the wild population and
<v Speaker 2>be like, okay, go spread these. Yeah, eventually you get
<v Speaker 2>something that kills them out.
<v Speaker 1>I think they were doing that with frail cats in
<v Speaker 1>Australia too or something. I mean, it's not it's not immediate,
<v Speaker 1>but it's certainly worse.
<v Speaker 2>You got to have some kind of long term solution
<v Speaker 2>because they are so destructive to happitat.
<v Speaker 1>God, they just yeah, they're really they're like vacuum cleaners then, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they just like wrote a tiller mixed with a vacuum cleaner. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and their dicks too. I have one a friend get attacked.
<v Speaker 1>He carries a gun now because he was He was
<v Speaker 1>attacked at is a nursery. He's got like a native
<v Speaker 1>plant nursery and he'd bunch him come through and one
<v Speaker 1>of them just went for him. He had the chin
<v Speaker 1>up a tree, fucked up his dog. You know, yeah, brutal,
<v Speaker 1>but anyway, man, I think that's it. I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>what do you? How can people find it? You got
<v Speaker 1>a YouTube channel, you got an Instagram?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so Instagram is pop Milk underscore herping pop Milk
<v Speaker 2>itself was taken already, so but YouTube you can find
<v Speaker 2>me at pop Milk and yeah you can, you know,
<v Speaker 2>watch me. Basically what I do is I wear a
<v Speaker 2>GoPro and we get the live flip clips of finding
<v Speaker 2>snakes as we find him, so all the there's nothing stage,
<v Speaker 2>you know that. The whole idea with it is that
<v Speaker 2>you get to have that ride along experience of watching
<v Speaker 2>you know, us find animals in the habitats that we've
<v Speaker 2>created for them and get that really raw excited emotion.
<v Speaker 2>You know, that helps us connect with being that kid again.
<v Speaker 2>And uh, you know, if you're if you like to
<v Speaker 2>watch that, then I hopefully it can kind of give
<v Speaker 2>you that same, that same feeling.
<v Speaker 1>Are you still using drones? Some of your earlier videos
<v Speaker 1>had drones. I see, I have pain in the ass though.
<v Speaker 2>I have a back and forth with that whereas I
<v Speaker 2>want to use the drone to get some aerial footage,
<v Speaker 2>but I also don't want to show too much. But
<v Speaker 2>right now, so I have a newer iPhone and I
<v Speaker 2>can't connect my drone controller to the phone. I didn't need.
<v Speaker 2>I need, like, you know, some kind of little connector
<v Speaker 2>cable that can make that make that happen, or just
<v Speaker 2>get a new drone that works off its own little remote. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>because it's definitely something I want to do more of
<v Speaker 2>because I like that that aspect, right and seeing that
<v Speaker 2>kind of footage.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it really helps understand the habitat and and see
<v Speaker 1>I don't know I have I'm just have such a
<v Speaker 1>like for me, Like the other day going out was
<v Speaker 1>so what was so cool to see was not just
<v Speaker 1>the reptiles, but like the plants that are able to
<v Speaker 1>survive in this habitat that's fully synthetic. It's created, it's
<v Speaker 1>like inadvertently created, but it's still you know, it's really
<v Speaker 1>attractive play like that. Like when I was doing videos
<v Speaker 1>on like rust Belt Botany and just walking the train
<v Speaker 1>tracks in Oakland, you know, past fucking homeless camps or whatever,
<v Speaker 1>seeing what's growing on the side of these marginal areas
<v Speaker 1>and nobody pays attention to or power lineisements or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's so cool. What would you suggest for like
<v Speaker 1>kids that are interested in this and don't know where
<v Speaker 1>to start, and especially like in other places like California, Arizona,
<v Speaker 1>fucking Nebraska, wherever Midwest colder climate. It's like what would
<v Speaker 1>you what would you suggest if someone rote you was like,
<v Speaker 1>how do I get started into this sound school?
<v Speaker 2>Go spend time outside, you know, go spend that time
<v Speaker 2>getting one, get to know the habitat, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>just enjoy it for the whole ecosystem that it is.
<v Speaker 2>But also in order to like find the snakes, you know,
<v Speaker 2>if you've got you know, if it's a habitat that
<v Speaker 2>has rocks in it, you know, and if it's too
<v Speaker 2>many rocks, sometimes it can be just too much to
<v Speaker 2>actually find something. But you know, in places like Nebraska,
<v Speaker 2>Kansas or whatever, you can go flip rocks and find snakes,
<v Speaker 2>ring necks and stuff real easy. But also, you know,
<v Speaker 2>get some plywood boards, get some junk, you know, like that,
<v Speaker 2>you know, go find dumpsters or whatever kind of junk
<v Speaker 2>is being discarded, you know, plywood boards and ten and
<v Speaker 2>go set it out and see see what ends up
<v Speaker 2>living under it. You know, find find a place that
<v Speaker 2>can be your space, you know, and then go go
<v Speaker 2>set that out and see see who's ends up using it,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, follow whatever interests you you know, I
<v Speaker 2>like milk snakes and king snakes, but that's not that's
<v Speaker 2>not everybody's interest. You know. Some people like the racers,
<v Speaker 2>they like the coach whips, they like rattlesnakes. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it could be ring necks. You know, whatever sparks your interest.
<v Speaker 2>I think you should follow that and and and chase
<v Speaker 2>it and get to know those animals. And I think
<v Speaker 2>that I think we need more people who are interested
<v Speaker 2>in them because that's ultimately the people who can vow
<v Speaker 2>for them and vote for them.
<v Speaker 1>You create a culture around any of these elements of
<v Speaker 1>the living world, and it's like it's fucking so healthy
<v Speaker 1>for the people that do it, and it's also really
<v Speaker 1>healthy for the land and the organisms that they revolve around,
<v Speaker 1>you know. I mean, if you really want to know
<v Speaker 1>what you can do, the best thing you can do
<v Speaker 1>is study something and learn about it and observe about it.
<v Speaker 1>Like that takes respect for it, you know, like you're
<v Speaker 1>respecting it by learning it and studying it. I think
<v Speaker 1>it's so important and it's so fulfilling. Like what the
<v Speaker 1>fuck else are you gonna do? Man? Well, you can
<v Speaker 1>try to like save up money for fucking shiny shit
<v Speaker 1>to oppress people.
<v Speaker 2>The shiny shit's not gonna stay for very long, you know.
<v Speaker 1>That, man, And it's it could be such a ruge too,
<v Speaker 1>Like it doesn't. I'm not happy unless I'm creating or
<v Speaker 1>learning something like. That's what I'm like. Okay, I'm actually
<v Speaker 1>like doing something with my ship now.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>If I'm just fucking sash around in like a nice
<v Speaker 1>truck or some shit, I'm like, it's not it's ephemeral.
<v Speaker 1>It's fleeting garbage. Yeah, but I could talk to you forever, man,
<v Speaker 1>But thanks a lot. I really appreciate, appreciate you being
<v Speaker 1>down to come on this and thank you for dragging
<v Speaker 1>my ass out with you and Kyle littlemore everybody. So, uh,
<v Speaker 1>all right, I guess that's it. So you got to
<v Speaker 1>drive to Houston now, yeah, along, drive all right, man,
<v Speaker 1>take you everybody else have a go ress to digg
<v Speaker 1>fu yourself back