(upbeat music)
(whooshing)
- Hey good morning everybody.
Welcome to the vlog.
I am beyond excited today because,
I think if everything goes well I am gonna be getting
a super rare lizard.
That's right, I have known about this animal
for the last couple weeks.
It came from Africa.
A friend of mine sent me pictures. It was a baby.
I was like, oh my god I gotta have it.
But I gotta talk to Lori first,
because it's one of those things that
I hope she's gonna allow me to get him.
I think it'll be absolutely perfect here at the Reptarium.
So uh, wish me luck.
I think I'm gonna go talk to Lori right now.
Hopefully she'll give me the approval.
If she does, we're actually gonna get it on a plane today
and get it later this afternoon.
Because of the rarity of this animal we didn't want to
overnight it FedEx.
We want it to get here as quick as possible
so we're literally gonna have to go to the airport
and pick it up.
But that way it's only only in transit for like two hours
as opposed to FedExing, that could be eight or ten hours.
'Cause it's so rare it literally, I think,
is the only living one in existence.
So, it's gonna be rare.
Hopefully Lori gives me the green light.
Let's go talk to her.
Hey Lori.
- What?
- I gotta talk to you about something.
You may or may not be happy with me but--
- I never, I never like the way that sounds (laughs).
- No I think this is seriously, I got an offer on an animal
from Africa.
A little tiny baby (bleep)
and you know that I love those
because they're, I mean we don't have any (bleep) at all
let alone (bleep). And this is,
if I'm not mistaking there was one other one in the world
but I think it passed away last year I heard.
It was down in Florida.
So, this will the only one
and you know how I feel about that in the Reptarium.
To have these like, really unusually cool,
like one of a kind animals.
So what's your thought process?
- You know me, my thoughts all over the place. (laughs)
- Like what?
- Well...
So how established is this animal?
- It's about, you know I saw pictures when it was first born
before I was, you know I mean,
I never said I was that interested in it.
But when it was coming in the country,
it's about a month and half or so.
So it's nice and chubby. I mean it looks really really good.
- Okay. So it is established and doing well?
- Yeah I mean it's not like a fresh baby
or something like that.
But I mean it's like twice the size of a baby.
But they've had it since it hatched,
I mean it hatched in captivity
in one of the farms over in Africa.
I mean it's so cute.
- So...
It, is it already being shipped here?
- Well no, I have to call him and find out if its okay.
He said he could ship it here.
And what we talked about
is that rather than like overnighting it,
'cause obviously, it's a one of a kind,
it's not like I wanna take that risk.
He said he can get on a flight
and it's only like an hour and a half flight.
But so it's like four hours from the time he drops off
to the time I pick up.
So I have to go to the airport
and pick it up so I don't want to just,
I just didn't feel comfortable FedExing it overnight.
So it'll be here this afternoon.
- (laughs) Oh that's convenient (laughs).
- I have to call him, I mean it's not like,
I mean he's not just gonna ship it to me.
I gotta call him back and tell him yes.
I told him I'd talk to you
'cause I'm not gonna just have him ship me an animal
without talking to you first.
- Okay.
- You good?
You excited?
- (laughs) How about, I'm good. (laughs)
- All right, cool. That's all I needed.
- We'll go with that, and then I'll wait to see the animal.
Whether I'm excited or not. - Oh it's so beautiful.
I'll text you a picture.
- [Lori] Okay.
- (laughs) Okay. All right cool.
(upbeat music)
Yeah hey, I was just talking to Dave, so if you were
good to go, Lori's on board so you can definitely
ship those animals to me if that's good for you.
Yeah, it can still be on that same flight?
Okay. All right so yeah, like four, four thirty, right?
Okay. All right. I'll head there.
So all right, I'm excited man.
All right, thank you so much.
All right, talk soon, bye.
(upbeat music)
- All right so I'm collecting eggs today.
And it's kinda crazy, we have already got like over
a thousand eggs.
I've only been collecting eggs for about a month.
So it's gonna be pretty crazy.
We still have about three more months to go
so we're probably looking at
three to five thousand babies this year.
Which is pretty crazy.
It's about the same as every year
but, it's gonna be a lotta babies.
(calming music)
- He'll eat stuff like crickets and meal worms
and cockroaches. - Ew
- And stuff like that, that they eat.
I know it's crazy.
And look what we have here.
This is kinda what I was concerned about.
Remember yesterday when Lucy was stretched out
over there and she's moving up.
Oh which, by the way, oh my gosh.
She is not happy. All right I'm gonna back up.
You see as soon as I even open the cage
she's just like coming right out.
She is so unhappy.
Regardless, found this.
She was running around yesterday and sure enough,
she deposited an infertile egg.
Now I will say this, I've seen it happen before
where there's been an infertile egg or two
pop out a day or two early
and then they've laid a beautiful clutch.
I've also seen many times that when you start to see
a day or two early they're popping out infertile eggs
the entire clutch could be infertile.
So, Lucy, I'm not so sure how she's gonna do.
I'm definitely a little bit concerned about it.
But I'm gonna leave her alone 'cause this is a sign
that she's gonna lay eggs any time.
The problem is,
I don't know if they're gonna be fertile or not.
So I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see.
Definitely within the next few days you're gonna see me
inside pulling either a fertile clutch
or an infertile clutch of eggs.
And I might as well put this infertile egg to the use
and feed my guy Elvis here.
I think he's gonna definitely like it.
Come on bud, come on.
Here.
Here you go, out here. Out here.
Here you go buddy.
(metallic sound)
Go ahead.
I don't think he knows what to think about it.
There it is.
Ooh, Elvis!
Oh my god, that was gross. Oh my gosh (laughs), Elvis.
You silly monkey you, what did you do?
Oh! He's just making a mess.
Oh, I think he likes it. He's like a dog. (laughs)
You're gonna have to clean this up.
- Oh my god.
- Oh my gosh.
Well that didn't work out exactly what I expected it to be.
But, at least it was some enrichment for Elvis,
'cause he certainly seems to be having a great time
trying to figure out how to eat it.
And certainly make the floor look bad but,
oh my god. Look at this dude.
Unbelievable. (laughs)
Oh geeze (laughs), oh my gosh.
Okay bud. (laughs)
All right well, hey listen,
at least if she has a clutch of slug eggs
we know Elvis and probably Abusuku and Argumus,
they probably all love it.
So, as for now, this was quite the mess.
(upbeat music)
Let's go ahead and pull a couple clutches of colubrids
starting with this one.
Mexican Black King snake.
Ooh doggy, look at that man, that is a gorgeous clutch.
Now you remember that I actually pulled a couple
other Mexican Black King clutches over the last few days
and they were pretty small clutches.
I think one was four eggs, one was three eggs.
So finally it's nice to get a decent clutch
from a Mexican Black King.
These are some beautiful eggs too.
What do we have here?
We have two, four, six, seven eggs.
That's more like it.
I think that I've had clutches of up to ten eggs,
but this girl isn't very big.
She's a first time female.
So the fact that she laid seven eggs
is really a good clutch for her.
And again, like I always do,
I always get her shed out of there, get her cleaned up.
We'll get some water in with her.
These guys again, will eat right away
so we'll give her some food today.
Get her beefed up and start breeding her within the next
seven or ten days and hopefully about six weeks from now
she'll have another clutch of eggs.
And we only have two colubrid clutches today
so let's see what this one,
and this is actually an anerythristic het scaleless.
Which is bred to an Orange Flow
which is kind of a cool little scaleless.
Let me see if I can show you the male real quick.
It's this little monkey right here.
He is absolutely gorgeous.
So he's the dad, and what's nice is every time
you start to get a clutch from this group here
he's bred all five of these females
and you have a fertile clutch.
That means there's a good chance that he's gonna be fertile
in all these other females too.
Which is absolutely incredible.
And this year has been just unbelievable so far.
Okay, so we have a big anerythristic Corn Snake.
I mean look at how big this girl is.
And of course anerythristic is just lacking the red pigment
that's called erytifor.
And what I have to do is just gently pull her off the eggs
so she doesn't roll any of the eggs,
make sure I check momma out really good.
Like I always say I wanna make sure that there's no eggs
or anything else stuck in there.
We'll pull the shed out, we'll get some water in with her,
we'll set these eggs up and see what's going on.
Let's go ahead and check to see how many eggs there are in
this clutch.
Hoo hoo, this is a nice clutch right here.
We've got two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen,
sixteen eggs.
I tell you what, I could get spoiled like this right now.
Colubrid season's done well which means
Eric and Lori have been doing an amazing job.
They deserve all the credit.
I just get the glory and go around and collect eggs
to be totally honest with you.
They do all the hard work.
So, I am absolutely over the top happy
with the way this season is going so far.
- So what I'm doing today is I am going to be
ultrasounding my breeding females.
Anyone who hasn't already ovulated.
The ultrasounding is how I keep track
of their follicle growth throughout the season,
and then I record it on their breeding cards.
So I've got my little ultrasound wand thingy here,
I've got some of the conductor gel
and I am going to try,
if she will like kinda uncurl a little for me...
Try to get about, maybe like 60% down the length of her body
is about where the oviducts gonna be
and where I'm gonna wanna scan.
Look at the follicles,
there we go, and they show up right away on the screen.
That right there, those little orbs. Those are follicles.
And they're actually, they're pretty big.
These are pretty advanced, which makes me happy
'cause I love this girl.
And I'm really rooting for this clutch.
So let's see where we're at.
Nineteen. All right that's good.
It's not a big jump from where she was last time,
but she was at 15 millimeters last time.
The fact that she's continuing to grow is very promising.
(upbeat music)
- Things are wrapped up here at the shop.
It's that time we can head to the airport
and get this animal.
Oh my god, I cannot wait to see it.
I hope everything goes okay.
It's gonna be so amazing.
Let's hit the road.
(upbeat music)
I tell you what, I am so excited about this.
There's kind of a back story to this particular animal,
or this type of animal,
that I'll tell you guys about some other time.
But the truth is that I've been kinda dreaming
about getting one of these again.
And again I'll tell you about that later.
So it is pretty cool to know that
I've got about a forty five minute drive to the airport
and then I'm gonna finally get a chance
to see this little monkey.
Oh my god. It is amazing.
Fingers crossed everything comes in good.
I'm sure it will.
It's only been in transit for the last three or four hours.
So, all right let's get to the airport.
(upbeat music)
(chiming)
So the animal arrived.
I cannot wait to actually open it up!
The anticipation is killing me!
I want to open it up right now,
but I knew I couldn't.
So we have to get back to the shop, get it opened up,
take a look at this cute little monkey.
I cannot wait to share it with you guys.
And then of course I already have a cage all set up
and ready to go.
So probably about an hour till we get back to the shop.
I tell you what, I'm just like exploding with excitement.
(road sounds)
(upbeat music)
Finally made it back to the shop.
I've got my little package here.
I tell you what,
you have no idea how excited I am right now.
All day, it's even worse the fact that
normally I get shipments at like nine in the morning,
ten in the morning.
The fact that I had to get it at the end of the day
makes it that much more anticipation.
But nevertheless, let's just go ahead,
jump in, and see this little monkey.
Oh and by the way, I found my little knife.
Remember the other day I said I couldn't find it?
Well guess what? I found it.
Which makes it awesome,
which means this shipments even gonna be better.
Oh my god, it is gonna be awesome!
Let's go ahead and see what we got here.
All right. Here's the bag.
And you guys know, I've mentioned it before.
The people that I have a disdain for,
for using zip ties on packaging.
So, sorry guys that do this but it just drives me crazy.
I mean it's just one more step of hassle that I have to do.
But it's all worth it for this particular animal.
Okay, deep breaths Brian, deep breaths, deep breaths.
Where every, ooh, it's such a cute little dude.
Oh my god, it is so small.
Oh my gosh. (laughs) What in the world.
Oh my gosh, it's so chunky.
This is unbelievable.
Okay so now you guys, if you don't know,
this right here is an albino Savannah Monitor.
Or an albino Bosc Monitor as they call them in West Africa.
Oh my gosh. This is the deal guys,
I actually owned four of these about fifteen years ago,
and I actually had sent them off to a friend of ours
to breed them.
They ended up not making it which was really a bummer.
And then there was one other one imported a couple years ago
and it lived for a hand full of years
and then unfortunately,
my understanding is that it perished.
So this is the only pure red eyed albino Savannah Monitor
that I know about.
How crazy is that?
Now I'm not saying that there's not anymore.
So if you own one, please don't get mad at me.
I don't know.
I just don't know of any other albino Savannah Monitors
and I absolutely freaked out when I saw the picture.
This is a baby and I got it so, oh my.
It is so much cuter.
And I remember getting mine when they were this big
and mine got to adult size before I put them out on loan.
Oh my god, it's so cool to have one again.
I'm gonna get this guy set up.
I'm probably gonna have a sleepless night tonight
just making sure that this goes good.
I want it to get hydrated, I want it to eat,
and then I'll feel a lot better.
But as for now, that was the surprise guys.
I hope you like it as much as I am.
I am over the moon with this.
It is so absolutely adorable.
I kinda feel like this is a revolving cage.
And it's really because
it's a perfect cage for a monitor lizard.
We've got a 115 to 100 degree hotspot over here.
We've got lots of rocks and crevices that it can get on.
So we had Toothless in here until he got too big,
we moved out.
Then we put the Ackie Monitors in here.
We've actually moved them to a different cage just because
this cage was so big they almost got lost in here.
So we have them in another cage.
Now we cleaned it up.
And now the albino Savannah's gonna go in there.
So again, we have a nice spot where he can climb,
get really close to the hotspot.
We've got a cold spot over here.
Lot's of places for him to hide.
So I'm just gonna go ahead, let him go in on.
And he looks unbelievable in this cage.
I mean look at the red eyes!
There is no doubting the albinism
in this little monkey right here.
So again, these guys are pretty chill.
I'm sure he's a little bit stressed out from the trip.
So I'm gonna just leave him alone.
He's got a fresh water over here,
he's got lot's of places to go.
And I'm just gonna let him be until tomorrow.
And I tell you what guys, I'm ending the vlog
because I am freaking out.
I'm gonna have a hard time sleeping tonight
till I get back here tomorrow to check on him.
And hopefully he'll cross some crickets tomorrow.
Oh my god I'm so happy.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this journey.
You guys are absolutely wonderful and I love you so much.
Remember to be kind to someone and I promise,
I'm gonna see you guys tomorrow.
(upbeat music)