- Hey, good morning, everybody
and welcome to the vlog.
Today is gonna be amazing. We're gonna have a great time.
We have a bunch of projects, they're gonna get started.
But before that, I've got a little story time for you guys.
So why don't you just sit down,
you know, get yourself comfortable,
get yourself, maybe some popcorn or something like that
cause I'm about to hit you with a story
that I'm blown away about.
So remember the other day
when I got bit by this little cheeky monkey right here
that seems like he wants to bite again.
Now these guys are notorious for being relatively tame
but he definitely got ahold of me.
So weirdly enough,
that day, about an hour after I got bit by this guy
and he is just cranky.
It's okay little buddy.
I promise things are gonna be okay.
I don't know why he's so cranky.
About an hour after I got bit, I was really concerned guys
because all of a sudden, I couldn't swallow,
I got kind of real feverish,
I had achy body, super low energy
and I was like, oh my God, do I, you know,
during this time of the life,
you know, you don't wanna have those symptoms, right?
I mean, it literally felt like I had the flu
but my glands were so swollen that I could barely swallow.
And I just thought that I caught a bug
and I was like, oh no, please don't let this be COVID.
I ended up going home that day
and just resting the whole day.
Felt like crap, I mean, just for six hours or so
I felt terrible.
I ended up falling asleep that night,
waking up the next morning and relatively feeling normal.
And I was like, oh my gosh, whatever bug I had,
it must've just been,
you know, 18 hour bug or a 24 hour bug or stuff like that.
Well interestingly enough, about an hour ago,
my buddy Ryan at Underground,
where I actually got this little dude from
called me up and he said, "Hey, I saw that video,
about you getting bit by Flapjack here.
I wanna tell you something,
these guys have a relatively nasty venom."
He said, "What happens when you get bit
within a half hour or 45 minutes,
all of a sudden, your gland swell up,
you get really weak, you get achy and it's hard to swallow."
And I was like, are you kidding me?
I literally thought that I had some bug and in actuality,
this little monkey right here, envenomated me.
That's right, the exact symptoms
that my buddy Ryan told me about
was exactly the way I felt, just from a bite
from this little guy right here.
So from now on, I'm gonna be extra careful with this guy
and trust me, when he gets bigger,
you don't wanna get bit by something like this.
So I tell you what, that was crazy.
People ask all the time, are monitor lizards venomous?
Well, the answer to that is, 100%.
Now I know I was envenomated by a monitor lizard this small,
and I'm telling you what,
that was some pretty severe effects from it.
So I never wanna do that again.
And this guy, the whole time,
has been opening his mouth wanting to bite me.
So I don't want that to happen.
So let's go ahead and get him back in
and move on with our day.
Come on little monkey.
Today is definitely a project day
or what I would say, checking projects off that list
that I told you about before.
Well, Lori actually climbed in here.
We've already got the enclosure
pretty much filled up a little bit.
She sealed everything.
Not only all of this, all of this stuff,
she sealed a bunch of stuff that's in here,
which is the filter itself.
She basically spent like two hours inside here
sealing everything that she thought could possibly leak.
I have high hopes, because number one,
Lori is much more detail oriented than I am, (laughs).
And I've already tried to fix this three times
and it failed, so I feel like it's kind of a broken record
when I say, let's give this a go.
The problem is, is that we're gonna just fill this up
another few inches, we'll turn the waterfall on.
We really won't know for another day, maybe even two days,
because it usually takes a couple of days
to build up and actually start leaking, so fingers crossed,
let's say a little homage to the reptile gods
and hope that finally, we have this leak fixed
because if not, I'm literally done.
And I'm gonna have one of you guys come and fix it
because I don't know what else to do.
So let's go ahead, fill this up by another few inches,
turn the waterfall on and fingers crossed.
(bright upbeat music)
Well, the waterfall works.
It looks good, but it looked good last time
and I think for the first day last time,
I was like, okay, things are looking good
and then it started to leak.
So, now I'm just gonna put Salt and Pepper back
and we'll just wait and see what happens.
Hi guys, come on Pepper.
Let's go bud.
(water falling)
And then Salty, here you go, baby.
Oh, got me a little wet there.
So, now it's just a waiting game guys.
We're gonna find out here in the next couple of days
if this leaks and keep a close eye on it
and fingers crossed, it all works out.
Guess what guys? We have five, maybe six days at the most
before this merch is gone forever.
That's right, Ho Ho Drogo, ugly sweater merch.
You will have it for Christmas
if you order in the next five or six days.
If you don't like the ugly sweater, we have t-shirts,
we have hoodies, we have mugs that you can..
It's a great Christmas gift.
Let's get in the Christmas spirit with a little bit a sloth.
What do you guys say?
Again, another five or six days, link in the description.
Get you some now.
We have a bunch of work to do in Drogo's enclosure today
to be honest with you.
I'm gonna go inside here.
Hey, Jay. - Hey, how are you?
- What are you doing?
You just hanging out with Drogo?
- Yeah, I'm feeding him some kale.
- Some kale? Drogo you're gonna be so cute today,
you little monkey. Don't worry, I love that little guy.
So, a couple things going on.
We have ledge here that we're going to secure over here
but I have to start the process.
So this is gonna take a few to kind of get it together.
I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do here.
Also, we had a humidifier that was installed up over here
because you wanna keep the humidity about 60 to 70% in here.
Well, unfortunately it was really loud
and it was scaring Drogo,
so we decided, we are gonna get a rheostat to put on
to kind of dull down the fan.
So hopefully it will run on a slower level
as far as like, the noise, but it will be effective.
Cause right now we've been filling up
humidifiers on the ground
and Drogo likes to actually knock them over.
So, first thing I'm gonna do is climb up here,
put the rheostat on, see if the humidifier will run
and it won't scare Drogo
and then we can start working on this ledge.
(bright upbeat music)
So we ended up putting that rheostat on here.
You can see that actually right now, it's at 34% in here
according to that.
We've got to set on 50%, but now you can barely hear it.
Whereas before it was pretty loud.
So what was happening is, every time it would cycle on,
it would scare Drogo.
He would literally like freak out.
We didn't want that, so we shut it off immediately.
Now it's nice and quiet,
but I can really feel the steam coming down right here.
So this will be way better
than having, you know, humidifiers.
They're just out on the floor and stuff like that.
That way, he can't get to it, number one.
The other thing is, this is piped right into a float
where it'll go 24 hours a day.
So I think it's gonna be really good.
And Drogo, did you approve? Is that okay?
Was it good for you baby? (laughs)
He wasn't happy, I'll be totally honest with you,
but I think this is gonna work out well.
Now we've gotta tackle the shelf to get this up here
because sloths like to be high up on ledges,
as well as the food and everything else,
and his bed will go here.
You'll notice we removed the cage
because the other day, he decided to flip the cage over.
So, we are slowly getting into the point
where now his bed can stay on the shelf,
but we want that shelf to be up here.
So we'll get working on that.
(bright upbeat music)
All right, back from Home Depot.
And this is actually the bottom side of the ledge
that's gonna go into Drogo's enclosure
so that we can put his bed on there, the food on there,
because sloths like to eat in an elevated place.
And so, this is where it's gonna go.
It's gonna go about 42 inches off the ground.
I've got these boards,
that are gonna actually attach to this on the bottom side
and then ultimately the boards will attach to the wall.
That'll keep it safe.
Then we'll wrap it with the polyurea, the rock thing,
so it looks like this leg is actually built into the wall.
So the first thing I have to do,
is kinda do some measurements,
do some cuts so that the boards are all even here,
strap them down and then I'm gonna show you,
I have to conform them on top.
And then when the foam dries,
it literally becomes hard as a rock.
And that will actually give us a good platform
so that the ledge actually stays up.
So let's go ahead and make some measurements.
(bright upbeat music)
So what I basically did was make a jig here, right?
Really all this board, this board and this board
are the only thing that's gonna actually be on this,
the rest is just to hold in place.
But I want these boards to be leveled
and I want them to all be jigged this way, right?
So that I can actually then bolt it to the wall.
So what I have to do now,
is literally take foam and foam all of this area,
all on top of it, fill up this gap like here,
fill up all this foam
and then those pieces will be locked in there.
I can then take this jig up,
I can bring boards up this way
that will eventually attach to the wall
and they'll keep it in place.
So, I know it's a lot of work.
Trust me, it's all gonna work out when it's done
but this is the first step.
So now, I just have to use a lot of Great Stuff Foam.
(bright upbeat music)
And then once this foam dries,
these pieces are gonna be like attached like cement.
I mean, they're gonna be right there.
Then I can actually attach the legs
that are gonna attach to the wall itself for sturdiness
and just kinda put the whole thing together.
And then the front here, I'm gonna rock out,
so you don't see any of the foam and stuff like that.
And then Drogo, will have a nice place
where we can put his little dog bed
that he likes to sleep on,
we can put his water bowl as well as his food bowl up there
and that's it.
So again, I probably won't be done for another day or two
but at least we've got the start done
and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.
Hey, Ivy, what's going on girl?
How are you doing? Ivy just looked too cute
to not come in here and hang out.
And this is usually what she does
when she wants to hang out with me.
And she'll just kind of sit up on this spot right here.
Hey baby, how are you doing?
And she's looking amazingly big.
I tell you what, she has grown so much.
Hi baby girl, how are you doing?
How are you doing baby?
I gotta weigh her for sure.
I mean, I remember last time we weighed her
I think she was 65 pounds, if I'm not mistaken,
she's definitely grown a bunch since then
there's no doubt about that.
It's crazy how big the snake grows.
And anacondas do hit that spurt rate, right?
Where they just get to that, you know,
six foot mark or something.
And then the females just explode in size.
So she literally went from six and a half foot
when we got her, to probably closing in at 11, 12 foot now,
and again, 65 pounds before, she has to have gained.
I've gotta imagine that least 15 or 20 pounds.
So here in the next few days maybe,
I'll go ahead and weigh her.
She still has a little bit of a lump from the rabbit
that we fed her just a few days ago.
And so I'm gonna let her completely digest.
And I won't like, you know, move her around
and stuff like that, because it's not good for snakes
especially with big meals, like Ivy had
to actually get moved around.
So I'll give her a few more days to get completely digested
and then we'll weigh her.
Down in the comments, let me know,
what do you think she weighs now?
Again, she was 65 pounds about two months ago,
after a lot of meals, she definitely has grown.
So let me know in the comments
and maybe I'll pick the closest one that gets it.
Again, to the pound.
I'll pick the closest one that gets it
and I'll send you some swag.
What do you think? Down in the comments, let me know
what you think this girl weighs.
She's definitely gained some weight.
Again, things never stop here, we're always on the go.
Always changing things.
I'll be honest, we just drained the turtle pond
and we're disinfecting it.
And we're gonna change things up a little bit.
You know, I've loved the turtles in here
and they've been really, truly amazing
and we're gonna do something with them
but I'm thinking that what could bring this more to life
because the turtles really hide a lot
they go under water, is what do you think about,
you know, putting maybe 50 baby turtles in here?
Not babies, but you know, well started babies?
Maybe, cause they're gonna stay
on top of the water a lot more, a lot more movement.
I think it might have a little more action.
I'm not a 100% sure I know exactly what I'm gonna do yet
but definitely wanna change this up.
I've just never been completely happy with the turtle pond.
Because again, you get one or two turtles that come up
and then the rest of 'em just go and hide all the time
and it's just not really great for interactive.
So I wanna maybe do that
and I'm thinking, maybe baby turtles are the way to go
but I'm not sure yet.
In the meantime, we just drained it, disinfect it
and get it ready for whatever I end up deciding to do.
We're finally at the end of the first breeding cycle.
I told you, I start the year
typically with like a 10 or 11 day breeding cycle
and then I narrow it down to five days
and I do five day cycles, so we are at the end of it.
Unbelievable how many animals bred.
This is probably the best start to the breeding season
I've ever had as far as copulations with males and females.
So, today I actually take all the males back out,
put 'em back in their house, they get fed tomorrow
so the next, you know, 24, 30 hours,
they're gonna be chilling out.
We're gonna feed the females.
We're gonna feed the males tomorrow.
And then that's when things really start getting exciting.
Cause after they feed, they usually have a lot of energy.
The females sometimes give off more pheromones
right after they eat.
When I put these guys back together
here in a couple days after feeding,
I expect some really good breeding going on
and that's when things get really exciting.
And then a couple of weeks now,
we'll do our first ultrasound
and get our first glimpse to how the season
may actually turn out, or at least the timing of it.
Is it gonna be an early season and late season?
Nevertheless, gonna put all these males away
and get ready to feed 'em tomorrow.
(bright upbeat music)
Hey RJ, what are you doing silly monkey?
You can stay there.
You are okay, little buddy.
Can't wait to get RJ a bigger enclosure
for the reptile when we expand.
But, what are you doing, bud?
You're going back in?
You can just stay right there, bud, hang out.
A lot of people ask me,
you know, yes, he does get up on the top of here alone
but he never comes down.
He just hangs out here, likes to be in the dry a little bit.
We have a spot over here for him to bask as well.
But a lot of times she likes to climb up
and I think he just wants to see what's going on.
So that is, instreamly wild that I got envenomated
by a little tiny monitor and had such bad effects
so I guess that solves it, guys.
Definitely some monitors are venomous.
I can attest to how bad I felt, that was absolutely crazy.
If you liked this video and you enjoy stuff like this,
here's a playlist you can run through.
It helps me if you watch some of that.
So thank you so much.
On this side, you can actually subscribe
to my podcast channel called Checking In.
Three days a week, you'll catch us over there.
On this side, I hope that you'll subscribe
to this vlog channel.
Turn your post notifications on,
have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember, be kind to someone
and I promise I'll see it tomorrow.