- This is Chicken Strip,
the only Albino Nile Monitor in the entire world.
Or is it?
A buddy of mine was over in West Africa
during the hatch season, and he actually sent me a message
on WhatsApp. And guess what it was.
A baby Albino Nile Monitor.
I was like, "Oh my gosh."
I had no choice but to say, "I wanna get it."
So I told him, "Let's work out the deal
and I'll send the money."
Oh, we ended up making the deal,
and we're gonna get the baby Albino.
- Mine's bigger.
- Nuh-huh.
You wanna compare?
- Well, your bowl's bigger.
- Mines doubles your size.
- We're gonna do the puzzle feeder again, couple animals,
but we're gonna start with Diddy and Dixie.
- Close it. Close it.
Oh no.
They're sliding underneath the gate.
We have to keep the whole yeah, yeah.
- Because yeah.
Oh, God!
Yeah, let's see if they're smarter than us.
- Looks like it's getting into
that breeding mode again, too.
- Oh, shit.
(scrapping sound)
- Oh, oh, oh.
Maybe he wants the free digits.
- Oh, no!
So what do we do?
- We interfere then they hate us.
You probably just put her back.
- Ow
- She wants the babies to see little snakes.
(groaning)
I'm actually very interested to see.
I don't know about you, but,
- Not really.
- So Monitors use their tongues to smell everything.
Iguana's don't really do that.
They'll lick, taste stuff,
they mostly smell through their nose.
- Obviously.
- I'm very curious to see if he can smell that.
- Oh!
- He did just do that.
- He did that one.
He moved in with his back foot and he saw it.
- Look at that tongue work.
- I just got off the phone
and I got some really disturbing news.
The Albino Nile Monitor was supposed to be shipped today.
It was supposed to be here, not tomorrow, but the next day.
But unfortunately, it got delayed.
Now it's not gonna go out for another five days.
Now the problem is, is that,
I don't know if the exporter is gonna leave him
at the airport for the five days
or if he's gonna go back and get him.
I can't get word.
So I'm definitely stressed out
and I'm hoping that this animal makes it okay.
- Oh! You see that?
- I saw that.
- See it better.
I saw that, dude. You did great.
- It's usually that we're making it up.
- Oh!
Oh, oh!
- Look at how big he's getting.
- So how many does he have left? Just this one?
Push it, push it.
- There you go.
- Yeah.
- Ugh!
- Oh, that was-
- He was licking it like soup.
(gagging)
- Oh, shoot.
- What?
- He shooted.
- Damn, boy.
- Oh, look, he didn't drag his tail through it.
- That's gotta be how they get soy milk.
- Ooh!
- Ew.
- I saw his pee-pee!
Put that away, dude, there's children watching.
If I had to rate it, I'd give it a four out of ten.
- Let's go feed some Monitor!
(imitates trumpet)
- It's a sailboat.
(laughs)
- So sure enough, my worst fears actually came true.
They did leave the animals at the airport for five days.
It just arrived into California.
And a bunch of the animals that were in the shipment
actually arrived dead, unfortunately.
And it's such a tragedy.
Now the Albino Nile Monitor is hanging on by a thread.
I talked to the guy, he said it is still alive
but it's very dehydrated, very weak and barely moving.
So he's gonna have his vet check it out and
hopefully we can actually bring this animal back through.
It's definitely stressing me out.
I won't know much until tomorrow.
And the reason I wanted to get this other Albino
is obviously we have the only one in the world.
Why not have both of 'em, right?
And we know that Chicken Strip is actually a male.
We were hoping that maybe this Albino baby
would turn out to be a female
and we could potentially produce some more Albino Niles.
Don't get me wrong,
we're still planning on breeding Chicken Strip
to a normal Nile to get heterozygote,
but then we have to raise those up and produce those
in order to actually produce more Albinos,
which will take four to six years.
Whereas we bred Albinos to Albino
would be much, much quicker.
- I didn't know he could do that.
- That last time we actually fed chicken in this thing
we did Toothless, Elvis, Frosty,
and it went really really well.
So we're gonna try some other stuff too.
I say chicken strip, but we all know how that'll go.
Gotta get all nice and situmamated.
Let's do this!
(laughing) You wanted to use your hand.
(laughs)
- Now the fun begins.
- He knows there's chicken. He can smell it.
- There we go.
- Oh!
- It's happening.
- No.
- No, dude.
- Well, he opened that smelling chicken, so that's a win.
- [Cameraman] He's so close.
He's like right on top of it.
- He's sitting on top of the book.
- You see that?
- He revealed it!
- Oh, oh, oh!
- Oh yeah, buddy.
- He's trying to eat the knob.
- Hey, Hiccup, I don't think that's chicken.
- Oh!
- You're gripping it, boy.
- No, you're-
- Get it.
Oh, yeah!
Hey!
Number... whatever.
20 minutes later.
- 20 minutes.
- 27 minutes.
(snoring)
Let's move on to Beetlejuice.
- Okay.
- So guys, it's been a few days
since I last updated you on what was going on,
and sure enough, the following day I got the word that
by time the vet even got out there to take a look
and see if they could rehydrate it get it going
other than what they had already been doing,
the animal had passed away along with a sibling, too.
So there was a couple other siblings that came in with it.
One of the siblings died.
So, my buddy in California put it in alcohol
so I can actually preserve it.
I mean, obviously this is a horrible situation.
I'm completely devastated. I'm gutted.
The fact that there was only two of these
in the whole world, and now Chicken Strip
is the only one again.
I mean, I was so excited for the potential future.
But this is the thing that you guys don't see.
You always see the triumphs.
When we bring animals in it works out great,
like Frosty the White Monitor.
But this is what happens.
I've been importing animals for 20 something years,
and sometimes these things happen.
And every time you do it, you're taking a risk.
There's no guarantee on this.
There's no refund on this.
When you put the money out
and it shows up and it's not alive, you eat it.
And this is just absolutely devastating to me.
Not because of the money, but the fact that I wanted to
have the two only Albino Nile Monitors in the world.
And I mean, I guess I do, but I didn't want one
in alcohol preserved like this.
I can't even express to you how disappointed I am
in the whole situation that this poor animal
didn't have an opportunity to thrive like Chicken Strip.
But you know, listen,
I don't wanna make the vlog all about a downer.
There's a lot of great things happening now as well.
Even though we have death on one side
there's always new life that we can celebrate.
Doesn't take all the pain away from losing stuff
but it at least makes it feel like,
hey we're doing something and it's just the way it goes.
And this clutch actually just hatched out,
and I was so excited about it.
We actually cut this clutch just a handful of days ago.
You guys might remember.
We got some really beautiful animals here.
Looks like we have a little Bumble Bee Vanilla here
which is actually a Pastel, a Spider, and a Vanilla.
And then we have just a little Bumble Bee here
which just is a Pastel and a Spider.
Then we have a couple little Pastels
looks like this one might be a Pastel Vanilla.
Once it sheds I'll have a much better opportunity to know.
And these two here, take a look at how beautiful those are.
Those are very similar animals.
One is a Bamboo and one is a Pastel Bamboo.
This actually looks like a Pastel, Bamboo, Vanilla, as well.
And the Vanilla just kind of fades things out
and makes it a little bit cleaner.
And then this was the animal that I remember cutting
and being like,
"Wow, I'd never seen something like that before.
It's so beautiful!"
This is actually a Super Pastel.
It's a Bamboo, it's a Vanilla, it's a Spider
I mean, look at how gorgeous that is.
So again, we can always celebrate life,
even when there's some tragedy
that doesn't make us feel good. Right?
And as a matter of fact, as these snakes are hatching,
we have even more eggs to collect.
- Look at it.
- What?
- Look at it.
- He doesn't even want it off the tong.
- Please don't run on him much.
- No, you're fine.
- Ow, that hurts.
I can't hold him up like this.
- Well. dudes getting big.
- Hence the reason why I can't hold him up forever.
- Use your other hand or something.
- Forgot I had two.
- Uh-oh.
- Maybe he doesn't want chicken.
- It's just 'cause it's not seasoned.
- Yeah, but you gotta get the Ranch on it.
- Ranch and raw chicken.
- Ooh.
(clattering)
You dropped somethin.'
- What a gentle little baby.
- He's flingin' chicken juice everywhere.
(laughs)
- Wow.
- He chewing it?
- Wow! Did you see that? He opened it all himself.
- Never been close to his face before.
Oh, he's gonna get- oh, oh, dude! Oh, holy crap.
- You see how easy that was for him?
- He didn't, he didn't eat - that's my finger.
- Hey, Hey, oh, where you going buddy?
- Look, dude
- He's opening all of them.
- It's right there on your-
- Wowzer!
- Dude, he's doing this faster than Toothless did.
- He looks much more calm, collected.
- Does he want another?
- No, no, no, no. He's getting it. He's getting it.
Oh, he just opened two.
- Dang, boy. Look at that.
- Oh crap. Did you see his teeth?
- [Cameraman] I ain't gettin' bit by that.
- Mhm.
- And this is an absolutely beautiful clutch of eggs here.
This is actually a Firefly that's Heffers Ghost.
So it's a Pastel, it's a Fire and it's Heffers Ghost.
And it was bred to a Champagne Ghoster,
what's called a Mimosa.
And look at those beautiful eggs.
Mama, it's okay. I know you're upset about it.
But you know, again, you can dwell on the negatives in life
or you can just kind of focus on the positives
the best you can.
Does it make it easier? Does it mean that I don't care?
No. It's the opposite.
I probably care more than most people.
Every time a tragedy like this happens, it actually guts me
and I have to work really hard to just kind of be like
"Don't let it take the wind outta your sails."
Still look around to realize how grateful you are
for all the things you have.
Like these beautiful eggs.
2, 4, 6, 8, 9 gorgeous eggs.
And that's what I'm gonna do.
Yes, I'm gonna be sad and I'm gonna be upset
but I'm also gonna realize how lucky I am to
have all these beautiful animals around me.
This next clutch is actually a Chocolate female.
And she's bred to literally one of my favorite males.
This is actually a Super Chocolate Banana Ball Python.
Just look at how beautiful that is.
So this clutch is gonna have a ton
of Chocolates and Super Chocolates, potentially a bunch
of Banana Chocolates and a bunch of Super Chocolate Bananas.
So let's see how many eggs mama has.
Looks like a decent clutch here.
Perfect. There's no doubt about that.
So we've got 2, 4, 6, 7 eggs.
So like I mentioned, guys,
we have so much to be grateful for.
- I love you, you cute little baby.
(laughs)
- [Cameraman] That was weird.
- Yeah. Why can't he feel that?
There's somethin' squishy on your foot.
(chuckles)
- Ooh-ooh!
- He almost saw my tongue and he was like,
"Is that a pinky?"
- Oh, crap, he's pulling-
- There it is! There it is!
- Yeah. Get it.
- Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Do you think our Monitors are gonna get so smart
that they're gonna like overrule us
'cause of all the puzzles one day?
- [Cameraman] Oh, like "Planet of the Apes," almost.
- Yeah. Like we're gonna train their brains so much
where they're gonna start making fires.
- I think they have to start talking first.
- Oh no.
- [Cameraman] You think that humans talk
before we made fire?
I don't think so.
- No. I think we grunted.
(grunts)
- But we still made noises.
Monitors don't really talk to each other.
Last piece.
- Ugh
- He got it.
- Bite that, boy!
I give this one a 7.6 outta 10.
- I was gonna say 7.5. So yeah, that's pretty good.
Took 'em a little bit longer,
also chicken's not his favorite food in the world.
He's taking the whole puzzle now.
That's it buddy! That's all it is.
- You know, we just brought Hiccup in
just a couple months ago.
And every single time that you import an animal
or ship an animal anywhere to be honest with you,
there's always some risk and it's certainly something
that's very scary.
And you know, I've been very fortunate recently,
obviously with Hiccup and Frosty and stuff like that.
But believe it or not, three years ago to the day I actually
imported an animal from West Africa, the same exact region.
It was an Albino Savannah Monitor.
And that one didn't work out well either.
(intense music)
Yesterday it looked a lot more fragile and it looked
like it was kind of skinnier.
It had puffed up the day before, so it looked better.
Yesterday it was much more deflated
and I was very concerned.
Threw crickets in and it had no interest.
I was trying to decide what my next steps were, you know?
Pedialyte, do I tube feed it?
You know, when is the fact that you don't wanna stress
an animal out, but you wanna make sure that it lives.
And, and, I was definitely really concerned about it.
And I mentioned that I was gonna have some sleepless nights.
Well, quite frankly, last two nights were kind of sleepless
'cause I was worried about the animal.
I came in this morning and...
it was gone.
I guess I really haven't learned my lesson when it comes
to taking risks like that.
But when you get these amazing animals like Hiccup and
and Frosty and, and Chicken Strip and stuff like that
how can you not take the risk, right?
Because they're so amazing.
And they're so rewarding when it works out.
And you know, that animal was gonna get shipped somewhere.
Someone was gonna buy it.
So the same exact thing
would've probably happened to someone else.
And that's just the risk that you take.
And it is difficult when you're dealing
over in Africa in particular,
because there's no really guarantees
for it to get there alive.
At least when you're buying from someone here
in the country.
Like our company feels there's live arrival guarantees.
Unfortunately, over in Africa,
you're basically just taking the risk.
But I tell you, look at Hiccup here. Wow.
I tell you what, that animal is absolutely stunning.
And when this does work out, then it's all worth it.
And again, most of the time you guys only see the successes
and you don't see the failures.
And the failures are kind of just all part of what we do.
You know, it sucks and it hurts it's a-
I think of what could possibly have been.
But you know, if I wouldn't have taken the risk
and I saw that animal in someone else's collection,
it would've been devastating to me.
This one certainly didn't end well that's for sure.
And speaking of ending,
- [Narrator] hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did, there's a playlist that you can watch
all kinds of videos.
You can also hit that "Subscription" button.
It would mean a lot to me.
Also hit that "Like" button while you're down there
have a wonderful day Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to someone.
And I promise, I'll see you in the next one.
- You sweated more like a (incoherent)
- (laughs) Catholic church