- Hey, good morning, everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is amazing.
Obviously I'm here with this little Bush Viper, of course,
and Bruce. You may remember... Bruce actually came in
and this little monkey was actually wild-caught, right?
- Yes. This is 100% wild-caught.
And I like, as you know, man
I was super paranoid about this one not making it.
It just was not eating for me. It wasn't doing anything.
That was the main reason I brought him to you.
- Exactly. And that's when we actually tube fed him,
if you guys remember. As a matter of fact,
I'll put a card right up here,
if you want to go back and look at it.
We actually tubed this guy just a little bit
of protein, some water, and then some medicine, some Flagyl.
And I tell you what... So now, how's it doing now?
- Dude he's crushing every week.
- Crushing foods now.
- Like, so I feed them fuzzy mice.
Actually, I have to give a shout out to Heidi
for this one because she actually did help me a little bit
on deciding what size to feed.
- Right.
- She actually suggested
that I might've been speeding a little too small.
- Oh so, okay. Needs a little bit bigger.
You know, it's funny.
A lot of snakes are like that, you know...
Say baby Kenyan Sand Boas...
If you feed it a pinky, which is what it looks like
it should eat, it literally isn't interested.
But if you throw like a fuzzy in it, for some reason
it's about the rolling around
as opposed to kind of like, you know, walking a little bit.
So that's interesting that it worked.
- Which makes sense cause you know, you have a lot
of stigmas in your head, like such a small animal.
It's probably only eating like...
I mean, for instance, like we know like Copperheads
eat like cicadas in the wild and things like that.
So I'm thinking like bugs, small little, little things.
But man, he crushes a fuzzy mouse pretty good.
- That is awesome.
And of course, these guys are some of my favorite snakes.
I mean, again, they're a front-fang, venomous animal.
So they have those pressurized venom systems in there.
And those teeth are pretty big
for this little tiny guy.
- Woo, scary looking too man.
- And again, these are a Pit Viper.
So again, you can see the little pits
at the front of their mouth. That is actually keying
on the thermal, right?
So whenever something comes in front of it, he knows
that it's there and that's when he's going to strike.
Heavily nocturnal animals, so these guys are
opportunistic feeders, going to be up in the trees.
Obviously when this is in a tree in Africa,
you're never even going to see this thing.
- Oh my god, no.
- Right. I mean it's so absolutely camouflage.
One of my favorite Vipers of all time, for sure.
So I'm so happy that our treatment that we did
together there just a few months ago
really worked well and that this guy is crushing it now
and is doing well. Again, I'm not telling you guys
you should ever do that on your own because we have to
tube it, we have to be very careful.
I've been working with venomous snakes for a long time.
Bruce has been working with venomous snakes for a long time.
But if you have the proper care, proper veterinary care,
you can see you can save an animal that wasn't
eating like this one. So it's just absolutely amazing.
Thanks Bruce for bringing it in
and kind of giving us the update
because this thing is a beauty dude.
- Oh dude, man. I think I got to say
thank you again so much,
for number one, letting me bring him in.
But again also helping me out with this.
I really, really appreciate it man.
- Oh, I'm so happy it's doing good.
So that's a good way to start the day
with this cute little monkey.
Alright, always fun times.
Today is fish day here for the Monitor Lizards.
So Bruce is going to be giving everyone fish
and I tell you, for some reason
whenever we switch up to fish,
which we do as often as we possibly can, they love it.
I mean, especially like the Water Monitors
and all that stuff, they go crazy for fish.
So let's just go ahead, have fun and
see these guys have a little treat.
- Fresh Cod too, I'm about to eat it myself.
- Fresh Cod? These are Michigan, homegrown Michigan.
All right, that's the way to go.
So this is from Bruce Saunders to us.
Come on, baby boy. Come on.
- Woo. Fire.
- Oh, he's going to be so happy.
Look at that big fish.
Oh my gosh, he is so excited.
- Skin and all.
- Oh, this is great.
And again, you know, switching up stuff like this is
really good for him.
There's a lot of vitamins and minerals that are
in fish that you don't get with, say, chicken or beef.
So this is really important.
And Water Monitors, in particular,
are going to eat a lot of fish in the wild, of course,
because they're in the water tremendous amounts.
Here he comes.
Come on... be motivated. Be motivated.
- You can do it. You can do it.
Get up there.
Oh big hefty, big hefty. That's all yours.
That's how you earn that one big guy.
You earned that one.
- Good job buddy.
- He's in love, he's loving it.
You guys know, I love Elvis a tremendous amount.
And this thing is the coolest animal
and he is super excited about his fish for today.
Next up is our girl Ubusuku.
Again, she loves fish too.
Again, Nile Monitors, you don't think of being really
fish eaters that much in the wild, because you know,
they will eat some fish, but it's not as high of a diet
as say the Water Monitors.
But still, Ubusuku loves it.
So let's go ahead and see what she's got going on.
- Oh, you can tell she's smelling it, too.
- Yeah. She's like,
"Oh, I can see something coming."
- She didn't even see the ball.
- Here she comes, he she comes.
- The fire.
- There you go, girl. Good girl.
Oh my gosh. Look how cool.
- Good girl.
- Stay girl.
- Oh, come on, take that.
- There you go.
- Oof, juicy. Oof.
I think I got a little bit in my mouth.
- Good job.
Tail and all, she's got it.
Ah, that's so good for her.
She's like, "Oh, I'm just going to take it over here
and run away just so that you guys..."
It's like a dog with a treat, right?
"I'm going to hide over here
so you don't take my food away from me."
She is so adorable.
We actually took a bunch of the little baby turtles out
because you know, they need more floating, like more air.
As we found out, they were getting kind of stressed out
having only a handful of things.
So what we did was we actually foamed some just pieces
of polyurea right here,
and then these will actually float.
But of course it's a little bit too much here.
So what I'm going to do is just shave these down this way.
And then these will go in here and then we can put the
turtle back in and they'll have a lot more surface area
because they need to get out of the water, right?
So we found that out kind of just through the fact
that they seem to be getting stressed out
that they didn't have enough area to get out.
So we made a whole bunch of these.
So all I'm going to do is just shave it down a little bit
see if they float really well.
And then we can put the turtles back in.
♪ (upbeat music) ♪
As you can see, they have tons of places now
for them to get up on, you know, just kind of the surface
because you know, little babies need to be
out of the water a bunch and they just kind of bask.
You know we have a UVB light here,
actually going to add another one.
We also have a heater in here to heat the water up. So,
altogether, the environment should be pretty good for them.
Now that they can get out of the water,
I think they're going to be a lot happier.
And I think that that was a success.
And what we'll probably go back...
You see how we have some moss on this one right here?
We'll probably go back and put some moss on these,
so it kind of almost looks a little bit more
like a natural pond.
So just wanted to make sure it worked.
And if it's working good in the next couple of days
we'll go back and we'll kind of, just kind of touch them
up and make them look even prettier.
What are you doing you silly monkey?
What are you doing?
- It looks like she's attempting to multitask.
- I know. What are you doing?
I love how she's just like chewing on it.
Like she likes the taste or something.
Again, you don't think about that that much.
Usually she just gulfs stuff down.
So it's pretty cool that she's actually getting
some enjoyment out of it.
Again, fish is something we don't feed them all that often.
So when they get it, they seem to love it, for sure.
The other day we actually fed Beetlejuice.
You guys remember he loved the hornworms.
Now he gets the treat of a fish,
so I think he's going to actually love it.
So let's see what we can do.
Of course, Bruce works with Beetlejuice more than anyone.
So he has it pretty good, as far as the socialization.
You can see Beetlejuice will come right over.
Cause he's probably thinking,
"Hey, I'm going to get some food."
I think he's really going to like this treat, of course,
which will be little pieces of fish
with the skin on and everything.
So you can see how cool...
Look at how great Beetlejuice is doing.
Really getting to that more curious stage.
And here we go.
Oh yeah.
Immediately loves it.
Good job, Bruce.
He's definitely getting there, isn't he?
- Dude, he's come along and I'm so proud of him too, man.
I couldn't be more excited with an animal than this guy.
It's just like... You're making me emotional.
Right now, I really am like...
I'm so excited in him and his progress.
Like you're just a freaking monster.
- Look at him, he's just coming out.
He's starting to gain that confidence.
- You want the bucket?
- Go ahead, go on in there, buddy.
He's like, "I don't know what that bucket is.
I've never seen that before."
- He's like, "I trust the tongs, not the bucket."
- There you go bud.
- Oh that's a big piece bro. Come on, get that one.
- There you go.
- What a good piece.
- Oh, now he's going to do the Ubusuku and take it away.
"I'm going to hide from you guys."
Oh, look at him gulf down...
- Except he figured it out a lot better than Ubusuku did.
- Yeah. Ubusuku took awhile.
He took about two seconds to figure that one out.
Here he comes. He is really motivated.
Look at that.
Oh and here he goes.
- Calm down. You're alright buddy.
- Awesome man.
Beetle juice is definitely... you can see how far he's come.
Not going to be long before we'll be able to take him out
with the public and really interact with him.
I'd give it a couple more months
and we're going to be there.
You know, it's days like this where we're just
kind of having a good time, feeding animals
getting the enjoyment of it.
That's... it's just the cool part of our job, you know?
I mean, we're always cleaning and doing stuff
and construction and all kinds of stuff.
So the feeding part, and of course, interacting part
is the funnest part at all.
But we can see if Bowser...
he's kind of back in the back there.
It might be a little hard to get him over here.
I know Bowser loves fish, but when he's back there
it's a little hard to coax him over.
So we'll do the best we can do.
- Oh here he comes.
- We got him coming, we got him coming.
He's on the prowl now.
Here he comes, the monster.
Oh that's so cool.
- He really does love him some fish.
- Get it, get it, get it Bowser.
- There he goes. After all of that,
he just like gently takes it.
I mean, this guy does seem to be getting
like more and more docile.
He doesn't seem to ever strike or anything like that now.
And now he'll just go right back into his spot.
So that actually was cool Bruce.
I'd never seen him coming out like that.
Normally once he's in the back, he's done for the day.
So that was cool to see him actually kind of almost hunt
right? Cause these guys are ambush hunters.
That's why they got that little tongue
and stuff like that. So to see him come for a fish?
That was pretty awesome.
- He was moving.
- That was awesome.
- He was crazy about that.
- And the last animal that's going to
get a little fish treat today
of course is Baby Kush, the Croc Monitor.
Baby Kush loves, loves, loves fish.
So this should be really good.
And again, these are good things
not only for a variety and stuff like that,
but also our opportunity to train stuff.
So Bruce will get inside, spend some time with Baby Kush,
kind of desensitizing, socializing, stuff like that.
So already Baby Kush looks like
he's looking like, "Hey, what's going on?
I'm about to get fed aren't I?"
- I actually want him to come right here.
- Oh, he's going to come over there? Alright, cool.
- I'm going to try to.
- Come on baby Kush.
Here he comes.
He's ball-trained obviously really well.
So he's targeted on that red ball.
You can see he's coming down for sure.
We're going to try to get him all the way down
to the bottom here.
And it looks like it's going to be pretty easy.
Oh yeah, he's all over it.
Oh, he got the ball now.
- You gotta let go.
- Let go buddy.
- Let go of the ball. There you go.
- Here we go.
Velociraptor's almost out of the cage.
It's almost time to panic.
- Clever girl.
- Clever girl. And look at that.
That animal has no problem with scarfing that down.
Like nothing. Look at that.
Alright. Definitely coming a long way.
Listen, we've got a long way to go still with Baby Kush.
Cause the penalty is so bad if you get bitten
but you could see he's definitely come a long way.
He's not upset. He's not nervous around us.
He can come right up to us.
He's just focused on feeding
and right here at the front of the cage.
Again, a couple of months ago, this would have been
impossible to do. So definitely getting much closer.
And Bruce is spending some time in with Baby Kush, too.
And he's coming up right...
And like climbing up his leg and stuff like that.
So we're getting there. Slowly but surely we'll get there.
Eventually, this is going to be a dragon
that we're going to have tamed. I can promise you that.
♪ (upbeat music) ♪
- So as you guys can see,
I honestly think he ate...
this went about as well as it possibly could.
I mean, you could even tell
he's actually thinking a little bit.
He's processing this little opportunity.
And, even better: he hasn't bitten me yet.
Now I'm going to say, "Yet." He's still a baby.
He's pretty unpredictable at this point.
But man, that was kind of cute.
He ate a little bit for me.
He even let me actually pull him out
without a whole lot of struggle
And man, he's just cute as a button.
- So I'm happy to see that that Bush Viper is actually
on the mend, doing well, and stuff like that.
It only took one treatment, which I was super happy about.
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Have an absolutely wonderful day.
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I'll see you tomorrow.