(upbeat music) - You guys know
that I always try to keep the vlog upbeat,
inspirational, everything like that.
But you know, there's times that things go the other way.
And it's always hard to wanna share these moments with you,
but at the same time, I feel like I have to.
If I'm not sharing it with you guys, I'm not being truthful.
And I knew this day was coming over the last week or so,
we've had an animal that wasn't doing well
and an animal that's been here since the beginning
of The Reptarium.
I've had it for four years it saw.
It was an amazing animal
and he was right here over the turtle pond
and although he didn't like people,
he didn't come out a lot for whatever reason,
Guac really took a nose dive about a week ago.
And this morning, unfortunately, we came in
and I actually found Guac on the bottom
of the enclosure right here.
And unfortunately, Guac didn't make it.
I'm gonna be totally honest with you,
I knew this was gonna happen because about a week ago,
he just started to turn a bad color and stopped eating.
Now, number one,
this was a wild Catanian Miller's chameleon.
It was in the country for at least seven years
before I got it, and I've had it for four years.
He thrived up until a couple of weeks ago, like I said,
a week ago in particular, he was doing so well
and eating, looked great.
He's such a beautiful animal.
Of course, it's the second largest chameleon on the planet.
And Guac, he was super special.
You know what I mean?
When I was first getting into chameleons,
he was one of my first chameleons I got Inkarma
and then I got Guac.
And it's sucks, man.
I mean, and like I said,
I almost didn't wanna tell you guys
because I don't wanna, number one, bum you guys out.
And it's just not a topic that I like to cover,
but at the same time,
I wanna always be honest with you guys.
And it's gonna be hard not to come in and see Guac every day
in this enclosure.
You know what I mean?
He was such an impressive animal
and people loved him to death.
I loved them to death and got to talk to people all the time
about all the cool facts about the Miller's chameleons,
and now we don't have them anymore.
And that's the part of keeping animals
and keeping any animal, but reptiles and running a zoo,
that's the hardest part.
And I felt like if I didn't tell you guys
that I'd be keeping it from you and I didn't wanna do that.
I wanted to be honest with you guys,
and I also don't want there to be a stigmatization on it.
I mean, the truth is guys, things pass away.
It sucks.
It's so hard because we all fall in love, and not just me,
but the crew that works with them every day,
they fall in love with these animals.
And I know a week ago
when all of a sudden he started to look bad,
everyone here was concerned
and there was not much we could do.
I mean, what do we do? Chameleons are fairly fragile.
There was no...
It wasn't sick. It was just old.
I mean, again, I know at least 11 years
between the person that had it before me
and the time I had it, and Miller's can live 20 years,
but you gotta remember it was an adult
when he came into the country.
So who knows how old Guac was,
he could have been 25 years old for all we know,
and he was great and I loved him to death
and it's gonna suck.
And now I don't know exactly what we're gonna do about it.
And I wanna get another big chameleon,
but it's not like you can just find them anywhere.
And it's not like we're gonna be able to replace Guac,
but guys, I just, again,
I didn't wanna start the vlog in a bad note.
I didn't wanna bring you guys down
and I wanna make the rest of the vlog upbeat.
Back to inspiration and good things,
cause there's so many amazing things
that are happening around here.
And the longer I'm in the zoo business,
the more this is gonna happen.
I mean, 20 years from now,
all these animals that are young
at The Reptarium are gonna old
and we're gonna go through it again.
And of course some animals don't live as long.
The panther chameleons are a seven, eight year old animal,
veiled chameleons three to five years.
I mean, that's part of the deal and it just...
I wish I could have done anything to change what happened,
but I can't and I wanted to just tell you guys that,
because I know you guys loved Guac.
It was such an impressive animal here,
and we're gonna miss him so much,
but again, I'm sorry that I'm starting it.
And I hope I made the right decision
by being honest with you guys.
Let me know if you guys are okay with that.
I want you to come along on the journey,
the good, the bad, the ugly.
But listen, we got a ton of great things happening today.
So I just wanted to get that out of the way,
get that off my mind and just move on with the day
but yeah, it sucks.
And like I mentioned, I mean, this is all part
of just the journey of what we do.
Take, for instance, Fetty Wap here.
He's probably two or three years past the life expectancy
of what a bearded dragon can live.
And he's looking a little rough. I'm not gonna lie.
He's been up at the BHB offices.
We bath him, we feed him all kinds of different stuff
to keep them going,
but we know that he doesn't have that much more to go.
Maybe we'll be lucky to get another six months
or a year out of him.
That would be absolutely amazing,
cause he's been part of my life for so long.
And that's one of the things that's so difficult
is that when you embark on the journey of keeping animals,
a lot of these animals are not gonna live as long as you,
let's hope anyways.
I mean, their life expectancy is 10 years, 15 years,
maybe 20 years.
Certainly we have animals that are gonna live 200 plus years
that are gonna one day being taken care of
by my great grandchildren or something like that.
But the fact is, it's just like when you get a puppy
or something like that.
You know there's a chance that one day you're gonna lose
that animal and its sucks and it's sometimes hard
and it makes you wanna cry.
It makes you defeated.
It takes the wind out of your sails.
There's oftentimes when I have days like this,
where I wanna just give up.
I'm like, "Why am I even doing this?"
I hate the pain of losing stuff.
But at the same time,
you think about all the joy that you've had
for all the years that you actually have had the animals.
The good news is like I mentioned that the vast majority
of the animals at The Reptarium are under four years of age
and of course we have an animal like Neo here,
that's only a few months old
and at least he can live 25 up to 40 years.
So a lot of these animals are gonna be around
a long, long time.
There are a few animals
that have a little bit shorter life span
and we're just gonna have to deal with it
and it sucks, man.
Whenever I lose any animal, it's hard.
I mean, it never gets easier.
It's never something that I ever will get used to.
I can tell you that much, but again, the thing is,
is that most of the animals we're working with now,
especially at The Repterium are super young and again,
sometimes just baby still.
So we're gonna have these guys for a long, long time,
there's no doubt about that.
And I can't wait till Neo and some of the other animals
we've gotten recently will be at The Repterium.
And I can see those smiling faces at The Repterium
when they meet them.
I mean, look at the snake right now.
I mean, it it's surreal how it looks.
It's incredible, and you could see it's absolutely
a wonderfully placid animal.
It is gonna be like a Perdida.
There's no doubt about it.
There'll probably be one of the most popular snakes
at The Repterium for the coming years,
there's no doubt about that.
And the fact that it's gonna stay this color
is even cooler.
So again, as much as it sucks losing animals
and knowing that some of the older animals
are on their way out, so to speak,
the fact is the vast majority of our animals
are gonna be around for all a long, long time.
The Sanzinia madagascaran tree boas
are doing amazing as well, and these are babies too
that are gonna be around for a long time.
And the fact is is that animals are gonna pass away.
I've said it over and over again.
As long as it's not something that you've done some neglect
or something like that, it's just part of the deal.
And again,
I hope that you guys don't mind me talking about it.
Let me know in the comments if you guys are okay with this,
I hope that this doesn't happen very often
because I can't emotionally take it
to be totally honest with you.
But again, Sanzinia cannot wait til people
can actually see these at The Repterium.
It's the holiday season guys.
If you're looking for some cool gifts for a reptile lover
or you're a reptile lover and wanna wear a cool shirt,
Reptile Army now has it's new gear out.
That's right.
Some amazing, amazing designs.
And I'm just gonna show you a few of them right now.
There's nothing like tree monitors
that are putting up Christmas tree lights.
And the holiday isn't a holiday
without a mom turtle reading a Christmas story
to a little baby turtle.
Isn't that true?
How about Mrs and Mrs. Santurtle Claus hanging on
a Christmas tree.
This is definitely one of my all time favorites,
the snake eating your Christmas tree.
How about some snakes coming out of a Christmas stocking?
I'm absolutely loving this drop so far.
And they always say, you should never stick your tongue
on a frozen pole.
The same goes for chameleon or in this case, a frog.
Have you ever thought what lizards do in the desert
for Christmas?
Well, yeah. Now you know.
And last but not least, Santa looks a little bit different.
That's right. He's a chameleon.
The truth is these are only a handful of draws.
We actually have more.
So you can go over to the reptilearmy.com,
wear your swag for the holidays,
be out there, be our foot soldiers
or if you know someone that wants a cool gift,
this is a great gift idea.
So these are gonna be available from now until Christmas.
If you order them soon, make sure you order them soon.
So that they get there for a Christmas gift for sure.
And I'll show you a few more here
in the next couple of days.
You guys know that Lori loves Christmas.
So I thought I would surprise her
with a little Christmas tree.
I think she's gonna be so excited about it.
You guys like this Christmas tree?
The truth is guys,
we actually are gonna do a full-on Christmas tree over here,
but we actually wanna have your ornaments on it.
So P.O. box is down below.
If you have a cool reptile type of ornament
or something that's really special,
we would love to have all of your ornaments
on our Christmas tree.
So again, if you guys wanna do it, P.O. box down below,
send us it and we'll lot will definitely feature
all of your guys' ornaments.
RJ's going back in the water over here,
but I wanted to show you guys again,
just little things make me happy.
It's like this area here used to have enclosures
just like this.
As a matter of fact, this rack
is going away pretty soon too.
And then this area right here,
we can start putting those toad ranch cages
and start having some of our overflow educational animals
here in more naturalistic enclosures.
We'll probably get universal rock to build out the backdrop
so that they have climbing areas and stuff like that.
So this whole area is changing from this look
to a more naturalistic look,
a little bit like The Repterium.
But again, these are gonna be our overflow animals
for educational purposes and this entire wall,
eventually will do this over the next six or eight months,
of course, until the expansion.
Because when the expansion happens,
this'll all be part of the dig site
where you can seef for gems, you can dig for fossils
and stuff like that,
but that's a ways away.
So right now we're trying to redo this
for the educational animals,
and then eventually this will be the dig site,
which is gonna be absolutely incredible.
And by the way, with RJ just popping out,
going back in the water saying,
"Dad, don't muck with me."
Hey, RJ, how are you doing buddy?
Please don't bite.
Of course, RJ's gonna be over at The Repterium.
I wanna take you guys on this entire exciting journey
with my girl, Gemma, who is about to shed out.
She went opaque a while ago.
She's now clear.
I'm assuming she's going to shed here
within the next day, two tops.
And then what happens
when you have a gravid female like this
is that she'll shed out.
In about 21 to 30 days,
she's gonna actually have eggs.
I would think a girl this size
is probably gonna have somewhere about 40,
maybe even as much as 50 eggs,
to be totally honest with you.
Hopefully they're gonna be fertile,
but I wanted to update you on the progress here.
Like I said, she'll shed any day,
and then we're literally three, maybe four weeks away
from collecting eggs.
I wonder if she's gonna be aggressive with those eggs
or she's gonna be a puppy dog.
I don't know.
Let me know in the comments, what you guys think.
She went through that one little aggressive phase
and now she's a puppy dog again.
So I really don't know what's gonna happen,
but I am over the moon excited about these eggs.
- Female, but they both eat.
So now you can't tell.
- So my dad's been breeding these black-headed pythons
and it is our job to see and palpitate masculinity.
- That was...
Okay.
- I don't know.
- We're gonna see if they got eggs.
- We're gonna palp them and see if they got eggs.
- That's her?
- I'll go in.
As you can see, he's immediately defensive.
Mike, where are you at?
- Oh, that's her.
- You have to get in here.
You've got it Mike?
- No.
- Just grab the body, I'll feel it up.
We're gonna have to find out.
- I think this is him. I don't think this is her.
I actually think this might be her.
- Feel it up.
- I think I can feel.
- Be gentle though. Be gentle.
- Unless she's just moving your bones.
- Oh my God.
- I think I feel some stuff in there.
- How are we supposed to tell?
- This is your dad's job.
- I know.
We don't know what we're feeling for.
- You dad's been breeding since he was 15.
Me, I've never bred a snake before.
- Next one.
Fortunately I didn't feel anything.
I think Mike's lying.
- Maybe this is the female, I don't know.
- Okay, this one looks a little more juicy.
- Oh, this one's in a bad mood.
- Dude, I think I feel something there boy.
- Wouldn't be in her belly. This is a rat.
- Where do you mean?
- Look, if it was ova or eggs, it would be down here.
- Oh, there's a little something, man.
It could just be body.
- I think we need to professional.
Verdict is we didn't get bit and we didn't feel any eggs
but we also don't do this every day.
So I don't really know what the heck we're doing.
So Mr. Brian.
- Thanks so much for joining me today.
Again, I'm sorry that there was bad news today.
We will get through it.
I wanted to take you guys on the journey
and I really do appreciate you guys.
Could you do me a couple of favors,
hit a playlist if you don't mind.
Also on this side, you can subscribe to this channel.
Mainly inspirational, fun, upbeat stuff.
Today was a little bit different,
but it will go back to normal I promise you.
Have an absolutely wonderful day reptile army.
Remember, be kind to someone
and I promise, I'll see you in the next one.