- [Host] Okay, here we go.
Bowser!
Yay!
Oh you're crazy man
Oh my gosh.
Watch out watch out!
(upbeat jazz music)
Good morning, everybody.
It's 6:00 in the morning, I've got a couple hours of sleep.
We open up the Reptarium tomorrow.
Let's head over there.
We have a tremendous amount of work to do if we even
want to even attempt to open up tomorrow.
Let's see what's going on inside.
(running water)
Hey, good news, there's no water on the ground.
That's awesome.
Oh, and by the way, later on today we're gonna put
Bowser in his pond because the water is warm enough,
everything is cycled enough.
I tell ya, that's gonna be really exciting.
We have a lot to do today, again,
we're gonna get it done, but not by just messing around,
that is for sure.
It's gonna be an insane day.
But, with that said, today's gonna be the biggest
transformation since we really moved the stuff in.
Because again we're gonna get all that kind of
finish stuff, plus we're going to be bringing
a bunch of new animals in, so, it's really exciting.
Oh, and speaking of new animals, I actually
have a couple shipments of animals
that are going to come in,
that are going to come into the Reptarium too.
Lori's putting some finishing touches
on Gwac outside of his cage.
I mean, she put all these cool plants out,
to make sure it looks incredible.
Now she's hand-doing all the touch-ups on the wood.
Lori, if you had to give it a one to 10 odd?
One being there's no way we're opening the zoo on time,
10 being it's gonna open and it's gonna be awesome.
What do you think?
- Oh it's gonna open regardless.
(laughing)
Whether everything's done or not, it's gonna open.
- Good call.
Later on, hopefully in the vlog, maybe give you the
punch list of what's not going to happen.
Like obviously the 'gator tank's not gonna happen.
There's a few other things, there's just no way,
we're just pushing it off.
But the biggest thing is is we're definitely going to
have the majority of the stuff here,
the animals are gonna be here.
And we're gonna do the best we can do to make it
look good, and have an amazing experience.
Before I get too deep into anymore work,
I think I'm gonna go ahead and move Gwac over.
He's not a real fan of being handled, but I think
in this case he's gonna be pretty happy with the results.
And honestly, I might just take him over
right on this branch.
Don't worry Gwac, you're gonna love this.
Be free!
(upbeat jazz music)
Again, I think that the entrance is so important.
Right, that first impression.
We've got Bowser's tank that's coming over later today.
Now we've got Gwak right here, absolutely gorgeous.
And that again is gonna be what you're gonna walk
through the door, you're gonna see.
And then you can move around all of
these cages on both sides.
Of course, you're certainly going to see Lucy over here too.
Regardless, I am back to work getting
the fronts of these cages done.
(upbeat jazz music)
It's amazing how different things look when you
start to fixture out the front.
Of course, we gotta touch 'em up.
Lori comes in kinda fixes everything.
We'll hide all the last little bit of wood,
all that type of stuff, and then it looks really good.
But look at how different this aisle looks
when both sides are done.
I mean it's amazing what that front will really do.
You know, again, a lot of people that just saw the
two by fours probably didn't really visualize what
it's going to look like when it's done.
But, there you go guys.
This is the one side, we still have to
wrap around and do the other side.
But for now we actually got a shipment of
reptiles from a good friend of mine
that is gonna go into the reptarium.
What'd you go say we check out and see what we got?
So, here we go.
We have a few, I think there's four different species
of animals that I just thought would be
really good for the zoo.
So, I know that Eric and Mary and Andrew
is over here somewhere.
They were all excited about this too.
I haven't told them what it is.
So, it's gonna be pretty exciting.
So, the first one.
Eric, you get to open these up.
Don't look at what they are, just open it up.
- Alright, alright.
- Just reach in.
- Open it up and reach in?
Probably venomous.
- No, it's not
Don't look just reach in there.
- [Eric] You put me in danger like that.
(laughing)
- Oh you're crazy man, oh my gosh.
Watch out watch out watch out!
That's right we got some Tokay Geckos, guys.
These guys are super, super cool display animals.
But as you can see, not really too friendly.
And his color update turned really beautiful.
- [Male Volunteer] Wow, look at how beautiful that is.
Oh, my gosh.
Little pinchy pinch.
- Okay so, Tokay Geckos, check.
If you wanna come to the zoo,
you'll see these little monsters.
Oh and look it, we got a snake in the shipment.
(laughing)
Oh my gosh.
- [Mary] That's adorable.
- [Host] Is that thing incredible?
[Female Volunteer] What?
- [Mary] It's beautiful.
- [Female Volunteer] Oh they're so cute.
- [Host] These are a giant day gecko
That is gorgeous!
And then we got some take-out Chinese.
I actually was pretty excited about this.
Again, I thought it would be a really
good display over at the zoo.
These things, I've always loved these,
ever since I was a kid.
- [Mary] Aww.
- [Host] Look at that.
Is that incredible or what?
- [Female Volunteer] Oh look at you.
- [Host] Is that awesome, or what?
- Wow that's a nice Jackson's right there.
That's a nice green one.
- Yeah he's really green.
- He's amazing.
I've always wanted to keep this species.
I've never kept them, and we've got a male and two females.
Of course, the females don't have the big horns.
(laughing)
- [Host] An angry monkey.
- Oh look at you.
- It's okay buddy.
He's gonna get a nice big vavare.
He's gonna be so happy later today.
And hopefully, with any luck, we'll have some babies
in the future because these are actually live bearers,
they're not egg layers like some chameleons.
That is pretty awesome, how cool, huh?
- [Female Volunteer] Oh look at it.
- [Eric] So pretty.
- Now we have a nice little male veiled chameleon
that can grow up in a cage here at the zoo.
So it's awesome.
We've got Jackson's chameleon, we got veiled chameleons,
we've got some giant geckos, crimson geckos,
and of course we got some tokay geckos.
All their cages will be set out today
and they go into the zoo.
Now that we have that unpacked we're back to the reptarium.
Finishing out all the fronts of the cages.
Once that's done we're gonna actually move
Bowser over into his new tank.
I am super excited about that.
Remember I told you I wanted to hang a sign right on top.
Like kinda big log walking into the reptarium.
Well, these guys surprised me with this amazing sign.
Take a look at this.
Oh my gosh, you guys, you killed it.
This is, so, when you walk in the door, you're gonna
see this hanging before you walk in.
And these two are the ones that made it happen.
So, thank you, guys.
I am blown away, I absolutely love this.
Whatever, I just wanna put this in my bedroom or office
instead of hanging it up.
No, we are gonna hang it up.
You guys are gonna be able to see it.
Oh, my God, I am so excited.
I feel like I keep on showing you guys the same things
over and over, but things do change a bunch, right?
So, Lori finally has all of the kind of seams done
on this side it's looking really good.
You guys have already seen this side.
We're about to head over and grab Bowser
and release Bowser into the Bowser pond,
as I call it the Turtle-rarium.
It's gonna be absolutely amazing.
I can't wait to see how it is.
And I know RJ is gonna be so happy
to get his solitude of his pond back
without having to share it with Bowser.
It's gonna be absolutely amazing.
But, I think I'm gonna have this guy
right here bring over Bowser.
- Hey.
- [Host] Alright, you ready for that?
- Yes let's do it.
- I feel like I've mentioned with the reptarium,
if it wasn't for the people that were volunteering
this could never have happened,
and the list goes on for a long time.
But, certainly these guys have been my workhorses here.
Cory, of course, has asked me if he could move over Bowser.
And I'm gonna be honest with you, not carrying a
100 pound snapping turtle that's trying to bite
my hand off, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
I'm happy to let him do it.
These guys are hanging out watching, so.
Cory, you ready?
You did sign the disclaimer, right?
- Of course not.
- Oh crap, here we go.
Alright, I'm gonna go ahead, hand it to him,
he's gonna carry it over and do the honors of
releasing Bowser into his new turtle-rarium.
There you go, just be careful
he might pinch you a little bit.
Yup, there ya go.
Be careful.
And just set him down.
And then you know the best thing to do is to, yup,
just carry him like that.
Away we go!
- Look at that face.
He's just a little guy.
(laughing)
He tried to get you.
- [Host] Bowser what's going on buddy?
And Bowser, are you ready?
Okay here we go!
Bowser!
Yay!
Oh my gosh, you can now see him.
Oh my gosh is that awesome or what?
- [Lori] That is so cool.
- That is so awesome.
Oh my gosh.
You know, after having him next door,
it's been awesome to see him from above,
but we haven't been able to see him like this, so.
This is cool, oh my God.
And people have asked me, like,
can people just put their hands down here?
The answer is yes, but we're gonna try to make sure
that no one puts their hand in here and gets it bit off.
The good news is is that Bowser really doesn't
come up that often so I think we're gonna be okay.
But we are going to have to keep a very good eye on
this pond because we don't way anyone to lose their fingers.
Of course, we're gonna put signs do not put your
hands in there and so on like that.
But look at how amazing he is.
Oh, my gosh.
That is epic.
10:00 at night.
Still making progress.
Obviously Bowser found his way into
the very back of the thing.
And unfortunately the water is going
through that cloudy stage.
Anyone that does aquariums knows that, when you
set up an aquarium usually two or three days after
you set it up it starts to get cloudy so that's kind
of a bummer but it's not too bad.
Justin's back working on frog stuff.
Bruce is back there helping over there.
Lori is over here touching up all of my work on this side.
She said I used too many screws.
Andrea's down there working on this.
So we're still here strong at 10:00.
Tomorrow is the open, I'll be honest with you guys.
Yesterday I literally thought there was
no chance that we were gonna open.
I mean I thought, this is impossible,
we have so many hours of work to do.
Everyone pitched in today and worked their butts off,
and guess what we're definitely going to open tomorrow.
Again, we're not gonna be completely done, but,
as you can see, it's gonna look pretty close to being done.
And then over the next couple weeks we'll
put the finishing touches to things.
Lucy's in shed.
She's been in the water for days.
Our girl over here is in shed.
Oh gosh.
Not many hours to go people.
I think we are gonna make it though.
Just a couple cage updates.
This is actually gonna be Karma's new cage.
We'll probably put a little bit more foliage in here.
But, you get the idea how cool it's gonna look.
And it's definitely a big upgrade.
He's going from an 18 by 18 by 36
to 24 by 24 by 48, so that's gonna be awesome.
And he's absolutely gonna love all of the
different sized branches and stuff like that,
which is really good for their hands,
so I can't wait to get him in here.
And here's Fetty Wap's new cage.
He's got all the terracing and things to climb on.
All kinds of different stuff.
I think he's gonna look absolutely amazing in there.
Here's a gargoyle gecko cage here that Jessica put together.
I think it's absolutely amazing.
This one right here is gonna be
one of my amazon tree boa cages.
It's got several branches it can climb on, some foliage.
They do like to go on the ground
so I got a spot back there where it can kinda
feel comfortable and hide, but.
Also, it'll be able to climb as much as it wants.
This is one of the dart frog cages right here.
The waterfall's actually gonna be coming right down
from here into here, and this is gonna be
bio-active soil here, some live plants.
Absolutely stunning.
The new day geckos that we just got are
actually going to go into this cage right here.
I'm not sure you're gonna find 'em too much.
I think they're gonna hide quite a bit,
but it's a really cool cage.
And that's part of the fun when you go to zoos, right?
Is trying to find the animal.
And speaking of finding the animals.
This is actually one of our leachie cages here.
Definitely gonna be hiding up here, hiding up here,
hiding over here, but they're gonna absolutely love it.
So, Big Bertha's gonna go in here.
This is a habitat I was really excited about.
This is gonna be the rhino rat snake exhibit.
And again, I love the fact that we're using kind of
a more a boreal set-up for the rhino rat snake.
They definitely like to climb.
They definitely are gonna be super happy
in an environment like this.
I'm not gonna go cage by cage because hey,
I want you guys to visit me.
But, that gives you an overview of what we've been doing.
And again, this kind of gives you an idea of what the
aisle looks like now that it's all fixtured out and all set.
So, I'm super excited.
We are like, I don't know, 14 hours away from open.
Still a lot to do, but I think we're gonna make it.
I have a feeling we're gonna be here pretty late.
Probably get a few hours of sleep, and then get up
and get going again, so this place is spic and span
by the time people start showing up.
So, we are finally shutting it down for the night.
Getting a couple hours of sleep and starting tomorrow.
I promise you, I will take you
on the emotional journey tomorrow.
I'm gonna be stressed out that no one shows up.
I'm gonna be a little stressed out that when people
do show up they'll be disappointed.
I'm not really sure.
We've worked so hard, and I think that it's coming together.
Yeah we have some fixing up to do
over the next month or so, but I really do believe
that we kinda achieved what I was hoping to.
And to think that 20 days ago this building was empty.
In 20 days we made this happen.
It is absolutely incredible.
So, thank you guys for joining me on this journey.
Again, like I've mentioned before
the journey is just beginning.
We have tons more work to do.
Tons more animals to add.
All kinds of great stuff, and I hope that
you will continue to join me.
And if you're in the Utica, Michigan Detroit area,
please come stop by and see me.
I would love to have you.
You can check out all the information at
www.thereptarium.com
But as for now, I am gonna wish you a great day
and end the vlog.
Thank you as always for all your support.
You guys mean the world to me and
I truly do love you guys so much.
Can you do me a couple favors before we get outta here?
Can you smash that like button.
Turn those post notifications on
so you know when I upload a video.
Make sure to comment down below
because I wanna read about you.
Let me know what you think about
my crazy dreams coming true.
Be kind to someone and I promise
I will see you guys tomorrow.
(upbeat jazz music)