- Hey, good morning, everybody.
And welcome to the vlog.
It's bright and early.
We are excited because we are heading
on a little adventure today.
We're heading to the Cleveland, Ohio-area
to a really cool shop that has amazing animals
just to go see what they have and not, who knows?
Maybe we'll even pick a couple of things up.
What do you say?
We just push our problems aside and hit the road.
(upbeat music)
And we finally made it down here into the Cleveland-area.
And I tell you what, this place is amazing.
Some really beautiful animals starting
with this red eye crocodile skink.
Now, so many people love these things
and so many people like, "Brian, you need to put red eyed
crocodile skinks into the reptarium."
And I agree, they are some of the coolest looking animals.
I mean, you look at how prehistoric!
Absolutely amazing, beautiful animals.
The problem is, they do hide an awful lot.
I mean, they don't like to be out in the open
and they really don't like to be mucked with that much.
So even though we're spending a little bit
of time with this little monkey right here
we're gonna put it back pretty soon
and they don't just make a great pet
for a zoo like we have.
But one day maybe I'll set something up and just say,
hey, look at this beautiful environment
and you might not be able to see the animal
but it's pretty darn cool.
But nevertheless, definitely, really cool animals.
And I tell you what, they are definitely
amazing little critters, again, not sure
I'll ever get one, but maybe I will.
And trust me, there is a lot to see here.
So we're gonna have a great time just going around
and seeing some really eclectic reptiles.
The thing I love about this place
is just all the really, eclectic crazy stuff that they have.
Of course, this is a Caramel Albino Mangrove Snake
and you'll see a little bit something about this tomorrow
but I'm not gonna give that away,
but wow, what a cool animal!
You guys know, I love all the cat eyed snakes,
the boigas, and I tell you
a caramel albino is just ridiculous.
Got that purple and yellow thing going on.
Whoo, doggy!
I tell you what, that is one gorgeous snake.
So I'm here with Mike,
who of course kinda helps run this place
and knows a whole lot about these snakes.
So what do we have here?
- We have here an albino radiated rat snake.
- [Brian] Gosh, I love it.
- This one's about a year old
really cool snake, really underrated.
They're used in like snake shows
over in Thailand and everything like that-
- Yeah 'cause they have a lot of like big threat display.
They're kinda whippy, they'll puff up and stuff like that.
Also pretty high production animals too.
You can have a lot of babies from,
they call them trinket snakes sometimes as well.
So absolutely amazing.
- And of course this one is quite used to people
so, not gonna display too much,
but their throat will pop up really big.
Almost like a puffing snake.
- Absolutely. - And they're really cool.
- Yeah, and there's some that you saw like years ago
you saw a lot of albino radies,
now you hardly ever see them.
So it's really cool to see them here.
And that's the thing that's cool,
about Scales and Tails of Ohio
is that, there's all those snakes that,
I remember 10-12 years ago that you never see.
They seem to have.
Guys know I love Garter snakes.
And this thing is ridiculous.
Of course, this is a blue garter snake.
And originally I thought like,
"Oh, is that one of those Florida Blues?"
Because they look similar
but these are actually way cooler, the contrast.
And these actually come from the Puget Sound area.
So these are a Pacific Northwest animal.
And my goodness, that is incredible.
Now you do get a lot of those like red-spotted
and the red -sided garter snakes in those areas too.
But the blue ones are ridiculous.
I told you, I haven't actually ever seen these in person.
And I tell you what, I am blown away,
when they have babies
I'm getting some for sure.
And then this one is actually an axanthic,
of course it's lacking that yellow, right?
Because most mangrove snakes are black and yellow
but this one is black and white.
And of course, again, I'll have a little bit
of a surprise on this tomorrow too,
so I'm gonna be giving too much stuff away
but wow, this thing is in shed
but still looks absolutely breathtaking,
I mean, ooh, Doggy!
Tell you what.
Man, I love this place.
And keeping on with the mangroves.
This is the Sulawesis that are actually black as adults.
I mean, look at that animal.
Of course the normal ones would be yellow banded.
These guys' babies actually are really banded.
And even like twice, the band's a normal mangrove
but as they get bigger, they turn jet black.
Definitely one of my favorites.
And I tell you what, that is
an impressive snake right there.
And over at the reptarium
and we of course have an albino King rat.
Of course we call it Gramps,
'cause it's one of our older snakes,
but these are the kind
of more normal, but they really aren't very normal.
These are beautiful.
- This one right here is the female.
That one is the male.
- It's crazy how like light this one is
and how dark this one is.
That's amazing.
- That's kinda why we picked them out.
'Cause they're very contrasting
and just really beautiful snakes.
And I think they get a bad reputation
for being quite nasty.
But as you can see, I mean not the case at all.
- Yeah, the ones we have now are super tame.
The ones we used to have used to wanna bite our faces off.
I'm not even gonna lie to you
but the ones we have now are super docile
and it's definitely been a snake
I haven't been in love with
and I don't have any normal.
So I have to get some as soon as you guys produce for sure.
- Couple years. - Couple years?
(laughing)
And speaking of Oregon red spotted garter snake,
right here, they are and they can range,
this one's kind of orange.
They can be really red as well.
And this is an adult animal right here
able to be bred, which is pretty crazy.
Again, all garter snakes were live-bearing animals.
These guys are really cool.
And again, when I was out in Oregon
once I had the opportunity
and pleasure of actually catching a bunch
of these guys, absolutely incredible.
Of course, you know, how I go when I catch stuff,
I catch it, I look at it.
I may take a picture and then I let it go, right.
But this is absolutely cool to see these guys.
I mean, just incredible.
I definitely have to add a bunch more garter snakes
in the coming years to the collection.
Of course I work with African house snakes
You know, we get the brown ones
the black ones, stuff like that.
These are kind of my phase for sure.
These are the Aurora house snakes and this, that green
with kind of a little bit of red and orange popping through.
They have the cool eye-thing going on.
These things are incredible.
They're also sexually dimorphic,
meaning that the males stay much smaller than the females
highly prolific as well, you know,
four, five, six sometimes even seven
clutches of eggs per year.
So, definitely once again
every snake that I see here at Scales and Tails,
I'm like, "I need to get some more of those."
So, these guys are gonna get a lot
of my money over the next couple of years
because every time they produce cool snakes
like this, I'm buying them.
And once again, Mike did it
he showed me some snakes that I've never even seen.
I didn't even know these guys existed.
So these are Armenian red snakes.
- Armenian red snakes. - Oh my God.
- They're from Armenia.
They're just a really rare red snake that,
I guess is not too different from
a black red or you know, anything else
that is common, but they're quite uncommon.
- Yeah, so common over there probably
but I don't know too many herpetologists in Armenia
so, probably don't get very many collected out there.
These are really cool.
And again, a very unusual snake, bit grimy,
a little bit of a like a Pithyophis is
and a rat snake mixed or something like that.
Really interesting.
Maybe a little Fox snake even in there, you know
it's kinda interesting.
So, definitely cool.
I mean, see, even after all these years,
I'm still finding snakes that I've never seen before.
This is a cool little guy here.
This is actually another beauty snake.
You guys know we work with Chinese and Taiwan beauties
but this is actually what they call
a cave dwelling rat snake, or a taeniura ridleyi.
This a very interesting snake
has that kind of bluish head
kinda goes into a grayish greenish thing
and then ends with like a black tail with a racing Stripe.
I mean just a really cool animal for sure.
Love beauty snakes.
And these happened to be, Whoa,
one of my favorites for sure.
So Noah's along for the ride.
So we're gonna go ahead
and let Noah mess with this water monitor a little bit.
- This is Khima. - Khima?
- Khima. - Khima.
- That's nice. - Hey, Khima.
- She has a different pattern than Elvis,
cause she's got more circles and stuff like that.
- Yeah, just more gallant and stuff you know,
of course a girl too, so she's a big chunky.
She does look like she might have some eggs in there.
- She lays eggs about every three months, so-
- I love lizards.
I don't know why I feel like they're very doggish, you know,
like you're more of a snake guy.
- Yeah.
- You really connect to those little, the legless lizards
but I like to see more home base.
Oh my God.
Look at their claws digging so deep in my nipple.
- In my mouth.
- Right in the mouth.
Oh my God.
- So obviously this thing is absolutely incredible.
This is a female water monitor
produced by Kevin over at Nerd,
ironically enough, just like Elvis.
But ah, this girl is beautiful
and she actually lays eggs at this size.
You can see she's pretty plump right now.
So it wouldn't be surprised she has some eggs
growing in there, but really beautiful, nice patterning
really super tame, habituated, socialized
just another amazing animal.
We all have male monitors.
So at some point we're gonna have to probably
get some females.
Of course we have Aba Sucre, I guess, but that's it right?
So, nevertheless cool animal
and a cool display here, right?
As soon as you walk in the door.
Of course, mainly I'm highlighting the things
that are really unusual
but there's a lot of really kinda cool like ball pythons
and the normal pet treat type of stuff.
But this in the ball python is definitely unusual.
This is actually a black head jigsaw
which is the Mojave and the pinstripe.
And I've been talking about how I wanna get
into blackhead after I visited Mike at Willbanks Reptiles.
And I tell you what, this thing is cool.
This could be a pretty cool addition
for my black-head colony, right?
Just to get it started.
But I don't know.
It's definitely a good mutation.
We took a look at the Oregon red spotted garter snakes.
These are actually the California red sided garter snakes.
And it's interesting how, I mean, there are so many species
and subspecies of them, no fuss with garter snakes.
It's absolutely incredible.
And this little monkey is holding on tight right here
but look at how beautiful,
it's got that bluish kind of turquoise, red sides.
I mean, these things are unbelievable.
Definitely I'm telling you guys, I started my passion
of reptiles with garter snakes
and I think I need to end it with a huge group
of garter snakes here in the next couple of years.
And this is definitely rekindled my passion.
Every one of these garter snakes we've seen here
has been breathtaking.
Garter snakes, garter snakes, garter snakes are us.
This is actually an albino rattie.
but it's a really interesting patterned one.
This is what they will call a Great Plains
but normally they don't have all the red coming in the sides
is a much more bland animal typically.
We have albinos melanistics and even snowed
but I've never seen an albino
that has had so much orange in it before.
Definitely a very unique animal.
Very cool.
Again, so many cool eclectic snakes here.
This is actually an albino Korean rat snake.
Again, you just do not see these around hardly ever.
I love it.
It's really bringing back my kind of teenage years
when all of these snakes were kinda so common
being bred, nowadays you hardly ever see them
and it is so cool to see that they're still out there.
They're still being bred.
And it's definitely time for me
to start adding more of these to the collection.
Another really cool snake here are actually
the Russian rat snakes or what they would call shrenckii.
Interestingly enough, these guys actually turn black
and yellow when they get older.
So this is the juvenile color
and they'll go through kind of an ontogenetic color change.
Interesting real story.
When I was dating Lori, I actually bought her a pair
of Russian rat snakes for Valentine's day.
And just to tell you,
that was the last time I ever bought Lori any snakes
for Valentine's day or any celebration for that matter.
What an amazing time and some amazing animals.
Again, these guys are actually moving shop here
in just a couple of weeks.
So I'll put a link in the description.
If you're in the Cleveland area
if you're here in the next couple of weeks
you can come visit this location.
If not, you can visit them when they actually get
to their new location
I'm definitely gonna be back, um, amazing animals
and they're gonna be shipping some pretty cool stuff.
As a matter of fact, tomorrow, we may see something coming.
So let's see what happens, but nevertheless
let's go ahead, get on the road
and get back to the rep area.
Every city I go to, I try to go to something iconic.
You know what I mean?
So this is pretty iconic.
This is the Cleveland sign,
with the Cleveland in the background.
- What makes this iconic?
This is a sign!
- It's a sign Cleveland.
- What (laughs) is so iconic about this?
- I'm in awe.
I can hardly, I'm speechless.
- I can tell. - It's pretty amazing
Cleveland no, I told you I'll take you places.
- Thank you so much.
I'm in (stutters and laughs).
(upbeat music)
- (indistinct)
Hotdog here.
(laughs)
- You all better now?
- Never had a better moment in my life.
Remember I made that video titled "The best day of my life".
Oh, that's nice, like your parent's work.
(laughs)
- I got you.
- I guess, I get to have a signed bun at Tony Taco's.
I'm pretty excited about this.
To be honest with you.
(laughs)
There it is.
Thank you guys.
I appreciate it.
(laughs)
- I will get back to my manager
and I'll take it upstairs and put it
in like a box or something.
- Thank you, thank you, thank you,
that's awesome, that's it, man
I mean you never know what's gonna happen.
You know, dreams do come true.
(cheerful laughter)
(upbeat music)
Finally back here at the shop,
it's been a long day of travel
but it's been absolutely incredible, what amazing animals.
I was so excited to see those.
Oh, and by the way,
tomorrow you do wanna to tune in.
'Cause I do have some special things
that I may have picked
out once I was there.
If you enjoyed this video, hey, here's a playlist
of us doing a bunch of really cool stuff as well.
You can also do me a really huge favor.
Right up here.
Subscribe to my podcast channel called "Checking in."
Think you guys will enjoy it.
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turn your posts notifications on
and have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember, be kind at someone and I promise
I'll see you tomorrow.