- Of course Heinz here, the Sun glow Albino Iguana
came from my friend, Tom Crutchfield,
and an absolutely horrific thing happened a few days ago and
I needed to bring it to your guys's attention.
Obviously Tommy's down in south Florida.
He's been around, he's a legend in the reptile business.
Been around for 40 plus years doing reptiles.
We visit him here on the Vlog.
You guys have seen his place before
and he has so many cool animals.
Well, unfortunately on Halloween night,
someone actually broke into his place,
actually broke all the locks off all of his enclosures.
Left the doors open so that the animals could
just escape on their own.
There are a couple animals that are missing and
even one that was killed, unfortunately.
And I tell you what, this is unbelievable.
I mean, when I heard the news,
I was heartbroken because I just couldn't
imagine that happening.
And rather than hearing it from me and
me telling you what I think happened, what do you say
we get Tom on the phone and actually talk to him
and find out exactly what happened.
Hey Tom, how are ya?
- Hey, what's going on, Brian?
- How are ya? I just wanted to get it, you know,
from your mouth what exactly happened?
And, and so that we can get the word out
and try to figure out what we can do about this.
- What happened was somebody came in here Halloween night.
The roads in front of my house and the edge on the side
over there where the nursery is, people hunt chameleons
up and down that road three or four times a week.
We kind of monitor them and watch them.
They all know that we live here.
Certainly these are not the most savory people that any,
in some cases, you know, that you want even around you,
but we can't stop them going on the public road.
And the other neighbors don't like it anymore than we do.
For whatever reason on Halloween night, we came in,
we have a dog. we had it locked up on the side.
They went on the other side and they broke off
as many locks as they could
of as many cages as they could and opened the doors.
Wide. Not only broke them off but opened the doors.
And then we didn't even discover it. First of all,
Halloween night, the low here was 68 degrees,
the low temperature for about 30 minutes.
By 10:30 that morning, it would have been probably
84 or 85 degrees.
And that's when we actually discovered that they had torn
and opened the doors.
I looked down and I saw the doors on a number of cages
and I was like, "Holy Smokes."
So we went running out there and the big cages in the back,
which you know, the house, one of them has a
big pair of crocodile monitors. There's also seven adults,
(unintelligible)
and two more big crocodile monitors
and a big white throat monitor.
All of those cages were wide open
and we just expected the lizards to be all over the yard
at best or even in the neighbor's yard.
So we went to check the cages and we were stunned.
One white throat monitor had his head laid
over the door where it was
open, but none of them were out of the cage.
- Really?
- Except for Jimmy.
- Aww, that's a crock monitor?
- And Buddy, one little seminole Rhino.
He was sitting in the sun right in front of his
open cage door and as soon as we walked up
and he jumped back in his cage.
- Wow.
- This is weird too. The Blue tree monitor cage was
left open but we were only missing the female.
So we looked all over for her.
She's the one that had the babies that passed
out just like again.
We found her on the ground,
behind the crock monitor cages, dead on her back.
What I think happened, because she was an
imported wild one and we never interacted with her
or tried to socialize her.
She'd tolerate us, eat food from our fingers.
But if you tried to touch her or pick her up
she'd bite the snot out of you.
- Right.
- I guess that one bit one of the perpetrators
and they slammed her and killed her.
- Unbelievable, man.
- The crock monitor, I think they targeted
the crock monitors and her because of the
are layers and all that stuff plus they took
five red albino crusted ones.
- Tom, I'm sick for you.
I tell you what. It's absolutely crazy.
Well, I'm going to do the best I can to get the word out.
Now you said there's a reward?
- Yes, It's several thousand, I think it's
I think it's up to 2,500 already about.
- All right. Well, I tell you what,
you can tack a thousand dollars on that from me. Okay.
So to get the word out, I'll put a thousand dollars
of my money into the reward for you.
If you find these people and listen, you know,
hang in there anything I can do reach out to me.
I just want to hear from you what happened.
And, and I'll be praying that.
- We appreciate it. We have never done this report before,
but Vanessa suggested that we do that
like black with Richard five 'cause we all donated to that.
So she has one of those GoFundMe things.
If anybody wanted to do that,
because I feel like more money that's out there,
a person will get the more chance there is
that somebody is going to tell on somebody else.
- Yeah. - Absolutely. Well, you can count on
a thousand for me as well then.
- You know what, we all need collectively
to stop this kind of thing.
You heard about the Tegu guys, right?
People that live in Homestead.
We're looking at them as suspects.
They, they broke into Jesse Hardin's place,
which is north of here.
You'd never been to his property
But they used drones to scope out the property.
They did the same thing to him that was done to us.
And they opened all of his Tegu cages and stole some cages.
- I tell you, I mean, it's, it's unbelievable.
What's happened. I mean, you know, like I said,
when I heard this, I was sick.
Cause I, I mean, I couldn't imagine what I'd feel like.
So, so, you know, like I said, anything,
I do stay in there and I'll get the word out on my end and
keep it, keep me posted.
Okay. And anything I can do to reach out to me.
All right, Tom, thank you so much.
So listen, Reptile Army.
You heard it from Tom what happened.
It's absolutely a tragedy. I mean,
thankfully it could have been so much worse,
but there are some animals missing.
We need to find those guys, like he had said,
there's a reward. I'm going to put a link
in the description. Any information that you
possibly can have. And again,
this is what Reptile Army is all about, right?
Joining together and trying to figure out things. I mean,
if this has happened more than once in Florida,
it shouldn't even happen one time.
Not only animals being stolen and cages being open
so that they could get loose,
but actually killing animals.
I mean, this is, these people need
to be held responsible for what they do.
I mean, I've said this a million times, you know,
I worry about it all the time at the Reptarium.
And now we have cameras. We have alarm systems.
The police station is a couple blocks away.
So, you know, I think we're okay, but it still scares me.
I mean, you know, like losing animals is different.
I'd rather someone steal my money than my animals because
these animals mean more to me than
any financial gain at all. You know?
So I can really appreciate how hard it must be for Tom right
now to have went through this and
to have to see that some of these animals are missing.
And that is just, it's unbelievable.
So please Reptile Army, if you know anything or
spread the word, you know, get the word out.
Let's try to figure out who did this, bring them to justice.
And hopefully Tommy can get all of his animals back.
Unfortunately, obviously the blue tree monitor is dead
and there's nothing we could do about that,
but we can raise together as a community and
we can actually make sure that he gets his animals back
and that these people are held to justice.
I mean, I am gutted. I am heartbroken.
I cannot imagine how bad it must feel
to have gone through what he's went through.
And he's not the first person that this happened to.
So anyone that's had anything like this happens,
knows what it feels like.
So listen, Reptile Army it's it's our time.
Let's make this happen.
And let's really do our best to try to help Tommy out.
Now, listen, I wanted to get that out to you guys.
I don't want the rest of the vlog to be a downer
so we can move on to other great things.
As a matter of fact, here in a minute,
I actually have someone coming by to
drop off a really cool animal.
So we'll keep the rest of the vlog, upbeat and happy,
but I really have to get the word out
about what happened to Tom Crutchfield.
And that animal happens to be this little monkey right here,
which is really cool.
Of course, it is a False Water Cobra right here.
Now I actually had a female I was raising up from before
and the same guy that actually produced her produced
this little monkey right here and said,
"Hey Brian, are you interested in another one?"
And I said, "Of course I am."
I mean, they're so cool. You know, when they're babies,
they're typically a little less like flaring
and stuff like that.
Especially if you can habituate them at this size.
Although my sub adult, to be totally honest with you,
isn't bad, she'll flare out and stuff like that,
but she's not like a bad animal by any sense.
Again, these guys have some mild venom.
I've never been bit by him or envenomated by them.
So I don't know how I would react,
but if it's anything like the mangroves,
I don't have any real major reaction and anyone I've ever
known that's been bitten by them
has never had anything serious.
I'm sure some swelling, some localized swelling
and stuff like that.
Nevertheless, don't want to get people bit
to be totally honest with you and
I don't want to get bit,
but you could see this one is super docile and
why they call them False Water Cobras, of course,
is that they like to live kind of in a watery area.
They're kind of a swamp land animal,
but also they have that neck flare, just like a Cobra,
which is really cool to see a threat display
from a non front-fanged elapid
and see that in a rear fanged animal.
And that's why they call them False Water Cobras.
Because again, to someone that didn't know,
you would see this in the wild,
of course you would think, oh my gosh,
it's gotta be a Cobra. I better stay away from it.
And that's an adaptation that they have for a defense
mechanism, which is pretty cool.
Even Hognose will do that to some extent, right?
Just not as severe as the False Water Cobra.
So pretty cool to add this little monkey.
He is absolutely cute as a button.
And this happens to be the yearling
that's going to get paired up with that animal
and you could see the kind of difference
that they go through
as far as their color change, as they get bigger.
This is almost like a hypo-ish animal.
And there actually are hypo False Water Cobras,
and there's even lavender False Water Cobras,
which are really cool.
I don't really understand the genetics behind the hypo yet
because some people say it's recessive.
Some people say it's incomplete dominance.
Some people even say that it's polymorphic.
So I'm not a hundred percent sure. But look at this,
look at this, see that, see that right there.
That's what I'm talking about.
That flaring effect where it's just kinda like don't muck
with me and it really does look like a Cobra. Doesn't it?
That is just absolutely amazing to see something like that.
Fortunately, this is a really docile animal too.
So I've never had any issues with handling this one either,
but they are so cool and they could get really large.
I mean, this animal one day can be like seven foot long
and they'll have like 25 eggs. I mean,
they are definitely a heavy producing animal.
So I'm excited about working with these more in the future.
Now I have two of them, which is really, really cool.
And I can't wait to get more, to be totally honest with you.
I'd really like to get those lavender's because they are
absolutely ridiculous. So yeah.
So there it is. See, cool things are happening,
getting new snakes all the time.
It's a matter of fact, I've been on a reptile
collecting spree lately.
I've gotten more reptiles in the last month
than I've gotten in a long time.
I may have to slow down a little bit because after all I do
only have so much space until the expansion.
- Hey Mike, I just wanted to let you know.
I know that you're working on whatever,
but I just want to let you know that in Daisy's enclosure,
there's, there's a, there's a big urate.
And just wanted to let you know that so that you can clean
that in the future because just a big urate
that I thought you should clean.
- I appreciate that a lot.
- And you're welcome
- It means so much.
- It's a big urate right there.
- I'll get it right on it.
- Get it. Yeah. Get on that.
I don't know. It's pretty juicy.
I think that maybe we can use it for like
remember frozen lemonade cans as a kid?
Your parents ever get you one of those.
- Oh, absolutely.
- Yeah. Maybe we can do like a little Daisy urate lemonade.
- It's got some good weight. We could throw this.
You got part of it.
- I caught it.
Someone's got to pick this up.
- I mentioned the other day that Tyson,
the albino box turtle,
that is absolutely such a cutey, I tell you what.
I love this animal so much.
We have to weigh him obviously to start really
keeping track of what kind of growth he has.
He is actually eight grams right now. That's right.
Eight grams. That is definitely small,
but now we can kind of keep track.
What we'll do is we'll weigh him once a week
and hopefully start to see growth, right?
So hopefully next week he'll be nine or 10 grams.
And then we know he's going in the right direction.
And for some reason he stays at eight grams.
We've got to increase the food.
For some reason he's growing too fast, we might want
to reduce the food, but the only way to really know
not with like the sight test is to actually
do it, you know, with a gram scale.
So he is eight grams and he is the cutest thing ever.
I tell you what, look at that little monkey.
He's just sitting up on both his front legs.
I mean, I love this animal so much.
I don't even know what's happening.
- It pissed on my face.
- I told you.
- What are you holding a roach in your mouth?
- Not a roach. But a mealworm.
- Did it take it?
- It scared them that big ole mug of yours.
- I know. Hold on. I'm going to get them. Don't worry.
- See, look, and look, and look at.
- Mike, you get the shot, get the shot, Mike,
get the shot, get the shot, Mike.
- Get the shot, Mike.
- That is crazy. I can't believe that that actually works.
What, where do these guys, do?
You know what I mean?
- We have fun. We're in the best job in the world.
- Again, guys, as the Reptile Army,
we've got to do our best we can do to make sure
that all animals are being protected.
So I hope that you'll help us out on it.
I do appreciate you guys. If you don't mind,
could you do me another favor.
Hit that subscription button over here.
Turn your post notifications on.
Have an absolutely wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember be kind to someone and I promise,
I'll see in the next one.