- Hey good morning everybody, and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible.
As for me, I know it's gonna be an awesome day
because I get to spend some time with RJ today.
We have a lot going on,
but I'm gonna really focus on kinda RJ,
our relationship, how things are going.
Good morning my man, how are you doing?
And later on tonight at the Reptarium,
we're actually gonna bring RJ out.
I do it like once a month, typically.
Bring it out, let people hold him,
get pictures, stuff like that.
So I'm gonna take him out, get him all gussied up,
you know that type of thing.
Work with him a little bit.
And then later on today, we'll go ahead
and let people handle him, which will be awesome.
He's doing much better, but he's still
a little bit cantankerous,
so it's a little bit of a process.
RJ are we gonna be friends today,
are you not gonna be so nice today?
I'm not sure what's gonna happen,
but either way, it's gonna be a good time,
so let's go ahead and work on RJ,
and hopefully get him out of his pond.
(whooshing)
So again, you know, he's gonna give me,
his kind of threat display.
That's why you can hear him kind of chirping
and stuff like that.
He's, you know, let's get on our day.
Yeah, I know buddy I know,
and ultimately what I wanna do is just
wear him out a little bit.
What's the matter buddy? I know you're like, "No Dad,"
you're not going to come out.
I think it's just a maturity thing.
You know, he's getting a little bit bigger.
Come on, buddy you're okay baby you're okay?
You're all right baby, you're all right baby, you're okay,
we're all right baby, we're okay, come on,
we're not gonna do anything.
And what he'll do is he'll do that.
And then ultimately, what the idea is, is when he realizes
that he's not gonna win, he'll submit to me knowing that,
and that's the thing when you're training an apex predator,
we all know different than training a dog
or something like that.
You always have to be the boss, right?
So he has to understand, he's not gonna win
when he finally gets the idea that there's no way
that I'm going to let him win.
But you know, I definitely don't want to be on the side
of getting bitten, that's for sure.
He'll go ahead and submit to me, let's just take
a little bit of time.
It's okay baby.
And it does stink that I can't get in the pond with him
and swim around like I used to.
I really wish that I could because
it is an amazing experience.
But unfortunately, I just have to slowly work him get him.
And what I'll do is once I get him over by me,
and touch him and stuff like that,
you can see he's getting a little bit better already.
And that's a lot quicker than it was
just even a month ago.
But keeping in mind, I understand that he is an animal,
right, he's a, he's an alligator.
I'm not, I'm not being silly.
or thinking somehow, he's not gonna bite me
if I give him the opportunity.
So I have to always keep an eye even once I'm out with him,
even though he's completely submitted
and being really amazing.
I still understand he's an alligator, right?
When I hand him to somebody, I'm not thinking
there's not a chance something bad could happen.
I gotta make sure I'm reading every bit of his body language
and the fact that will work with him for nine years.
I know everything he's kinda gonna do thinking beforehand.
So I can see if he's starting to build to kind of run around
or strike or something like that.
Of course, I have to keep everyone
protected with that right?
And you can see right here where he's
tucking his back legs right there.
That means he's ready for a jump, right?
Jump! Just like that.
And you can always read a crappy alien like that.
If they tuck their back legs, that means
that they're ready for a strike.
First time, I'll try to take them out.
It may or they may not work if he comes back
and strikes at me, I'll let him go.
And there you go.
There you go RJ, ooow.
all right, baby, I know,
I know you were a little bit bummed out.
I totally get it baby boy.
But you can see, once he submits to me then he's my buddy.
Again, I'm not saying it's not a possibility for him
to strike right now and try to bite.
But I understand what he's doing.
I see his movement and stuff like that.
So we have an understanding, I understand
all of his body language.
So I'm going to spend a little time with him.
And I might actually take him out,
clean him up a little bit, so he looks really good.
I'm going to give him some time out of the park today
walking around as well.
So all right good job RJ.
Love you, buddy.
For those of you guys that don't know RJ lost his leg
to another alligator when he was a baby.
Just a couple weeks older.
So he actually got it bitten off.
Of course we've had him ever since he healed up really good.
And he gets around time, yeah, he's kind of limp
for an alligator, just a little bit of a bomber to watch him
walk, so he has to limp like that and go down.
But again, you got to remember he's coming up
on 10 years old now and he's dealt with this his whole life
and that's one thing that's amazing about the alligators
is their ability not only to heal, but also to live through
some unbelievable injuries.
In this case, the missing of an arm doesn't seem
to inhibit RJ at all.
Lool at RJ
- Dude, so heavy!
- He is kinda heavy so crazy
- Oh my gosh, I remember a couple years when I started here.
He was so much smaller than he is now at least lighter.
- So oh my gosh,
- I remember being able to hold him with ease.
But now it's a,
- I tell you.
- It's a real chore.
- Just last month I took him over to the reptarium.
He has had to have gained at least 20 pounds
because I was like carrying around pretty easy.
- Yeah
- Now, It's like. it is crazy.
- He is crazy heavy.
He's crazy big.
I just, I love this guy, man, I love him.
- all right baby.
- Thank you so much, oh my gosh, oh my gosh
- Come up here.
- Oh my gosh.
- Come up here big boy, now, you calm down, you calm down.
Well, I think I'm gonna take him upstairs,
give him the afternoon to kind of walk around a little bit.
Sometimes it's good to get them exercise, you know,
obviously, he is missing a leg.
So it's a little hard for him to leap around.
But the truth is he loves to be out and kind of explore
and it's kind of good enrichment for him.
I think also, I might take him outside because
it's like really warm outside today for the winter time.
It's crazy, I might just give them a little
enrichment scrub down you know,
they actually love that feeling.
And hey, take advantage of this nice warm day.
And then he'll look really good and be super clean
tonight at the reptarium.
And just so you guys know we put Speedy away
so he's not running around.
The last thing we want is RJ and Speedy to come
head to head because that would not probably
end well for speedy.
Yeah, yeah, I realized it it's just that the problem
is that, we don't have two weeks.
I've literally got less than three weeks
to get this project completely done.
If it shows up two weeks from now,
there's no way you're gonna have time to install
electrical done and everything else.
So I'm sure there's another supplier out there that you can
find that, yeah, okay, yeah, we'll just do the best.
Please keep me posted.
I mean, obviously, we got deadline our deadline
is gotta be February 3rd.
So I don't have, I mean, there's no way
I can push it back.
It's got to be done by then, Okay, all right,
all right, keep me in touch, all right bye.
Yeah, so definitely getting a little bit stressed out.
I mean, the hardest thing about projects like this
is that you know, especially when you're like me that
I'm overseeing, I'm basically like, the general contractor,
I'm doing a bunch of myself, but I've got other people
I'm hired, I'm kind of keeping track is that,
we have deadlines that we have to meet.
And often times things come up where the deadline
needs get pushed back, but in this case,
it can't get pushed back.
It has to be February 3.
The main reason for that is number one,
people have already booked their flights to come help us.
Number two, I have people that are really important
like filtration people from Aquascape,
that this is the only window they have
if they can't come on February 3,
they can't come for a month or two.
So it would literally push the project back a couple months.
Not to mention, I don't want anyone
that's traveling all this way booked flights
and stuff like that, not to be able to do it.
So a little stressed today, but you know what,
it'll all work out you know it's uh
it's going to be what it's going to be, February 3.
come hell or high water it's going to happen
- Down here helping out Mary today.
I'm so glad Jay came down to film us.
I absolutely love these mangrove snakes.
Look at this animal man!
Dude, these are so sweet.
This is like a type of boyega
they're called cat-eyed snakes mangrove snake.
Just look at the large scales, the black and yellow pattern,
the large eyes.
Now these guys are slightly venomous.
I wouldn't want to take a bite from one,
but I hopefully I wouldn't have a bad reaction,
if anything if anything did happen.
But you can see he's kinda starting
to come up the hook here at me.
They're just very fast moving very frisky little snakes.
This is mangrove number five
and this is the first grisly of them all let me tell you,
so I really like working with these guys.
Oh, my gosh did you get bitten?
- No, we're good bro, we're good
- Call 911 huh.
But they really do just like that, Kind of bite first
ask questions later attitude of these guys.
I'm glad Jay is got him kind of preoccupied
on the end of the hook there.
But look at the length of these animals
and just the strength and the power of them.
Absolutely incredible man love these guys
have to get one, one day maybe Brian will hook me up.
Careful, careful.
- Like I mentioned, I think I'm going to go ahead
and just get RJ here, take them outside because
it's actually really warm and raining of all things.
And I've got my little brush with me
and it's good enrichment for them to actually get a brush up
plus to clean them up that way
when people are handling him tonight he's nice
and pretty and nice and clean.
So let's just go ahead and take them outside.
(upbeat music)
I always say that people that think
that working with animals is just nothing but fun.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fun,
but the truth is a lot of what we do is cleaning poop
and cleaning up stuff.
Snazz I'm not food , you're okay, buddy.
First thing I want to do is just make sure he knows
I'm not food, which I don't know that he has the memo yet.
So I'm going to just go ahead and just move them around
a little bit what the deal is with Snazz,
he's a super, super tame animal,
but he's been really food aggressive lately.
So I just have to scrape off all this food because,
again, with him eating so much.
He's definitely been going to the bathroom a lot too.
So we're cleaning him up, we'll get a little disinfected
and then we'll get ready because again,
we have a bunch of stuff going on today, we got parties,
we got tours, we got reptarium later on where we're going
to take RJ over, so lot going on, we got to get the place
cleaned up and ready to go.
But again, most of people that work with animals realize
that a lot of maintenance slaughter husbandry,
but that's all part of it all, if you don't like cleaning up
snake poop, probably not a good idea to own snakes.
So this is pretty wild, Mary actually came to me
and a water, it looks blue.
Now sometimes snakes will pee in the water
but I've never seen blue Water,
so you sure you didn't even put like
a slur pee in there and stuff like that.
- I have no idea what it is,
oh, wait a second, I know what it is.
I just figured out we ultrasounded, gel gets on them.
They crawl through the water, ultrasound gel!
- Okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, I was like freaking out.
I'm like, why would a snake have blue in the water?
Guaranteed that's what it is.
That's the blue from the actual gel or the ultrasound.
So, our mystery solved.
As you guys saw when I had RJ outside
that a big storm is coming through.
It's like really warm today.
And then it's getting really cold.
There's ice coming huge star Pro.
So we definitely want to get males in with females.
For sure today because there should be
some big breeding going on.
They've had a couple days off for feeding,
rest and so on like that.
So we're going to get males back in today.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a banger of a day
for breeding down here.
That's her job security is always
to keep candy in this jar.
Looks like we're going to be looking
for a new officer Laurine
- Hahaha
- hahaha
Popping here at the reptarium its not packed tonight
but definitely a bunch of people having a really good time
going to bring RJ over in a little bit.
Just going to spend some time hanging out with everyone
for a little bit ,first, about half hour 45 minutes bring
RJ over, that's always a good time.
(upbeat music)
Time to get RJ over upto the reptarium.
Oh my gosh, he is so much happier than he was last time
I brought him over.
It's gonna wear me out but,
RJ you're gonna like this,
you gonna have a good time, buddy, let's go.
(upbeat music)
Anyone that wants to hold RJ can or get a picture
with him whichever you prefer.
(upbeat music)
RJ is always just a big kid here, just an amazing animal.
I love him so much.
And in all those years of work, it made me just
be able to read everything he's going to do.
So I know when he's kind of firing up
and all that type of stuff.
The only thing he's been starting to do
is he's been starting to pee on me a little bit
when I take him out.
I don't know exactly what maybe that's his way of saying,
"Hey, let me down", but he's always amazing
and I love him to death.
(upbeat music)
There you go baby, oh my god, I am so worn out
he's so much heavier than he used to be,
that Uuhm, I don't know how many more times
I'm gonna be able to do this 'cause he has definitely
grown so much.
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Have a wonderful day and be kind to someone.
I promise, I'll see you guys tomorrow.