- He is absolutely spectacular with his yellows.
- I've never seen one so beautiful before.
(light melodic music)
- [Mike] There you can see,
you can see the venom flowing, very nice, very nice.
(dynamic upbeat music)
Hey, good morning everybody,
you beautiful people out there,
can you do me a favor before we get started on this vlog,
can you go down the comments
and tell me something awesome about you guys?
I really need it today,
I need to read some uplifting things,
I've been going a million miles a minute
for the last three months
and I need some energy from you guys,
so let me know in the comments something awesome
and let's get this day started.
It is gonna be a busy day,
because I have a tour coming any minute
and then I have the first ever birthday party
at the reptarium, I'm a little nervous,
because we haven't done it,
I've done plenty of birthday parties,
when I've traveled to places,
the first one at the reptarium,
so fingers crossed everything goes well.
I did wanna share with you guys a couple of things,
that we just put on exhibit yesterday
for the very first time,
of course, this is that little Dumeril's boa,
that someone donated to the zoo
the first night that we were open
and the person that donated it
said it was having a little bit of an issue with feeding,
but ever since it's been here,
it has just been crushing food.
So I finally thought this is a beautiful animal,
let's go ahead and put it on exhibit
and let people enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed it for sure.
Another animal that we've had is this beautiful guy
right here, take a look at this monkey right here,
of course this is a Northern blue-tongued skink,
that we produced a few months back,
Mary actually kind of has been babying this one
and then handling it a bunch, so it can be really tame.
Of course, you guys know that we have Potato,
but now when you come, if you wanna see
a Northern blue-tongued skink, not just a Centralian,
you can see this little bugger.
Now both of these guys do need names
and by the way, there's a handful of animals
that still need names at the zoo,
I'm gonna have to update you guys on it,
but regardless, anyways, busy day today, gonna be awesome,
comment down below, let's get this day started.
Hanging out today with these guys right here,
how do you feel about Perdida, cool?
- Yeah. - Alright, cool
and it's your birthday and your birthday
- Yeah. - coming up, right?
- That's awesome. - Yeah, tomorrow.
- [Brian] Well, I appreciate you guys
spending some time with me.
(mellow upbeat music)
Thank you so much for coming down,
you guys are awesome, you're welcome here anytime,
thank you guys. - Thank you.
- [Brian] Keep it going, happy birthday,
happy birthday. - Thank you.
- [Brian] Alright, come back and visit me
anytime, right guys?
- Okay. - Okay.
- Alright, thanks, bye. - Bye.
- The tour done, absolutely amazing time.
I've been so lucky to get just a bunch
of really cool people, that wanna come and hang out,
never had any issues, these guys were super, super cool,
so into the animals.
Now we actually have our first birthday party
ever at the reptarium,
I mean, we had people come for their birthday,
but this is the first actual birthday party
with a 45-minute presentation attached to it,
so this ought to be fun,
I've done plenty of presentations in the past,
so I guess it's the same, but this is the first one
here at the reptarium, wish me luck.
- It's very scary! - Lovely.
(mellow upbeat music)
- Just wrapped up Sam's birthday party,
it was cool, I mean, definitely
they were a little bit older,
so we didn't do the kind of presentation
that we were initially planning,
honestly, we spent an hour and a half
just kind of pulling animals out and having a good time,
- Yeah.
- But it went pretty well, right?
- I think so, they were super happy,
Sam's Mom said he was over the moon
and honestly, that's all we care about.
- Exactly, we always say it,
when you come to the reptarium,
whether it's a private party, a birthday party,
or even just visiting, we want you to leave happy
and it worked out well.
So now just a bunch of little things to do
and then we open to the public in about an hour.
Okay, so I'm about to get pretty deep with you guys
and you know I like to keep things upbeat,
I like to keep positivity,
but there was a situation, that happened to a friend of mine
over in South Africa recently
and I've been wanting to do a video about this,
but I wasn't exactly sure how to do it,
more importantly, I wanna try to help the family.
So you might remember my last trip,
that myself and Forrest went to South Africa
and we stopped at a friend of mine, Ryan's house.
You have some amazing animals,
you definitely do a lot of Bothrops, which is amazing,
we're gonna see a bunch of different things.
He had an amazing venomous collection,
he also worked with Mike Perry,
who did the venom extraction for black mambas.
Oh, my gosh, this is fantastic, Mike!
- [Mike] There you can see,
you can see the venom flowing, very nice, very nice.
- That Ryan was one of the more passionate people
I've ever met, when it came to not only snakes,
but in particular, venomous snakes.
- He's absolutely spectacular with his yellows.
- I've never seen one so beautiful before.
- To be honest with you,
I mean, I've taken a lot of pictures of this snake
on my camera, you can't capture the beauty.
- You can't capture how beautiful this snake is in person.
- You wanna have to keep her.
- [Brian] My time I spent with him was absolutely incredible
and I know that all he cared about was doing what he did
and I know that when it comes to me,
that I wanna do what I do,
no matter what the consequences are
and Ryan, every day worked
not only with his own venomous collection,
but also extracting venom at Mike Perry's Venom Lab
with black mambas and cobras.
(melancholic music)
So,
so I was very upset to hear the news recently,
that Ryan was bitten by a black mamba.
- Ryan, my mentor, my friend and my brother.
On the 26th of September 2018, Wednesday,
Ryan Vincent Soobrayan was busy milking a black mamba,
which he had done countless times before
and his one finger, his index finger
got caught on the fang,
sorry, this is quite emotional for me.
- Again, Ryan spent his life
not only keeping these amazing, amazing venomous snakes,
but also risking his life to extract venom
to save other people's life.
- 50 seconds later, after the prick,
Ryan was unconscious and went into anaphylaxis,
anaphylaxis is an allergic reaction to the venom.
He was quickly raced off to hospital
where they resuscitated him,
he spent a few days in a coma,
in which the 27th of September
was his 27th birthday.
- I wanna believe that the time that I've spent with Ryan,
that although this is an unbelievable tragedy
and I know some friends of mine
in South Africa are completely gutted,
but Ryan lived his life the way he wanted to.
- Yesterday morning, 29th September,
Ryan went in for a brain scan
and after that, they switched him off life support.
(melancholic music)
Ryan, you're my hero, you'll live on in me forever.
Ryan sadly died from that black mamba prick,
but he wouldn't want you to not love the animal
or hate it or anything like that,
he would in fact want you to love the animal
and respect it with all the respect you can give it,
that's how good of a guy he was,
even though it took his life,
he would want you to still love the animal.
- This is always such a touchy thing for me,
because I've always said
that if I were ever to pick a way that I wanted to go,
it would probably be doing something
that I really love like working with animals
and I realize that isn't good
for Ryan's family and his friends.
I've actually personally always had this reoccurring dream,
since I was pretty young,
that I was eventually gonna be killed by a venomous snake
and in particular, a cobra.
Now whether or not that happens, I don't know, you know,
but for me personally, if that happened,
I would know that I died
doing something I absolutely love.
Now again, that doesn't make the family better,
it's not what I want, it's not what I wanted for Ryan,
of course every time I go to South Africa,
not having an opportunity to spend time with Ryan
is gonna be really devastating
and certainly people like his family and Bryce
and all his friends and family are devastated
and that's one of the reasons I wanted to make this video
too is to try to give them help.
We've put a link down below
for a GoFundMe page for Ryan's family,
if you so choose, you can donate to that GoFundMe page
and help all of the expenses going forward
and I just know that Ryan left a mark
on lot of people in this life,
he saved lives and he lost his life
doing something that not only he loved,
but also something that was gonna help others,
save their lives.
So Ryan, I'm gonna miss you, buddy.
The short amount of time that we spent together
really impacted me and I can't thank you enough
and I guarantee you one day,
me and you are gonna be running around
somewhere in the future catching snakes together again,
so rest in peace, Ryan, you will be truly missed.
Again guys, I don't mean to bring things down, you know,
again, it's a terrible tragedy,
I know a lot of people are really hurting right now
and all I can know how to do is to bring you guys the story,
let you know what an amazing person Ryan was
and then carry on in his name,
kind of doing the things that he believed in,
which was just the love of animals
and getting people to understand
some of the most mistaken animals on the planet,
things like black mambas.
We have to open up the reptarium soon,
so to get me into the best mood that I possibly can,
I think I'm gonna feed my frogs,
I hope you guys don't mind
transitioning to something like that, but regardless.
(mellow upbeat music)
And again, there's no real easy way to transition
from that kind of news I shared with you
to kind of let's have a great day at the reptarium,
I'm just gonna try to do the best I can do
to again continue to kind of carry on
the love and the passion that Ryan showed to so many people.
So let's go ahead and open up the reptarium
and do our best to enjoy this evening.
Hi guys, how are you?
Hey, what's going on?
Good to see you again.
Hey bud, what are you doing?
Hi, how are you?
Hey guys, how are you?
Hi, welcome, welcome, welcome.
Hi guys, how are you? - Hi.
- Hi. - Hi, how are you?
Another really great day,
I mean, there's definitely been a lot of people, busy.
So what do you think, you know,
I mean, it's been a month now or so,
I mean, how do you feel about it?
- I feel like it's very hot in here
and we need some fan installations in the ceiling,
that's what I feel like.
- It does get warm in here, the bodyheat,
we actually turned the temperature down
and then the body heat kicks it up,
it is definitely hot. - Yeah, no,
but it's really cool, it's awesome to see all the people
here come in and enjoying all the reptiles.
Look, there's like a little three-year old over there
just holding a little snake,
like it just doesn't get any better than this.
- So you were here for the opening weekend,
so you've been here since, this is what,
how many times you been here? - Four times.
- She's been here four times,
you're just having some time with Callan right now.
It's really cool to see people continuing to come back,
I think it's absolutely amazing
and she's been unbelievably supportive,
so thank you for that.
(mellow upbeat music)
Another person that actually came the first weekend as well,
you're getting a little Perdida time, huh?
- She said it was with Ryan. - Yeah.
- And there it is, guys, wrapping another one up,
we've got one more day of open at the reptarium,
but tomorrow I may be traveling
to go to Critchlow's Alligator Sanctuary,
you guys may remember that I donated Mitch and J-Paul,
RJ's roommates, alligators to Critchlow,
so we're gonna go move some alligators from outside inside,
because they're here in Michigan and it's getting cold,
so they need to go into hibernation.
We may do that, if I'm feeling up to it,
it depends if this silly cold is over or not,
so tomorrow we may be going on an adventure,
but we will definitely be back at the reptarium
at night to open up and have some fun.
With that being said, I'm gonna go ahead and end the vlog
and wish you guys an absolutely amazing day,
evening, whenever you happen to be watching,
your support is so amazing, it means so much to me
and I truly do love you guys so much.
Can you do me a couple of favors before we get out of here?
Can you smash that Like button,
turn those post notifications on,
leave a comment, because I like reading about you guys.
Be kind to someone
and I promise I will see you guys tomorrow.
- Though Ryan's no longer with us
and many of us are flipping heartbroken,
I'm fighting back the tears, that's all.
(mellow upbeat music)