- The cops are on site.
Hopefully nothing went wrong.
This is where it could go all wrong.
She's gotta take one bite towards it.
(jets flying)
You guys know that Verde has been
kind of stuck on live chicks.
Well today, I am going to do my absolute best
to start the process of weening her over to rats.
And by doing that, I call it the Choo Choo Train Effect.
I'm going to throw a live chick in here.
Now I'm not going to show you guys.
Because you guys know I don't do
a live feeding on the vlog.
But, I'm going to let her take the live chick.
And once she starts eating that,
when she gets the very end of that live chick,
I am just going to slowly put the rat in.
She just finishes the chick and goes right on to the rat.
I call it Choo Choo Train.
Now the hopes are with that is that
she will eventually get the feel for kind of eating a rat.
Not to mention, rats have a little bit higher protein.
It's going to be a little bit better for her growth.
So hopefully if I can do this two, three, four times,
Verde here will start to take rats
and then she will really start growing really quick.
So what do you say we go ahead and see what happens.
Funny the sharp albino boa just shed out
it looks absolutely stunning.
What an absolutely incredible snake.
I do probably need to try to breed her at some point.
She is so stunning and the truth is,
with vlogs like today, sometimes you may think
that everything goes swimmingly.
But the fact is, I've been waiting for
like 45 minutes and Verde still hasn't taken the chick.
The problem really is is that the chick
isn't really moving much, which isn't
enticing Verde to come out and eat.
I don't know if this is going to work.
I've got a rat thawed out, waiting to Choo Choo Train her.
I want her to just take that.
I think it would be a really good opportunity
for me to teach you guys a really cool trick.
As well as the fact that it will be
some pretty cool footage and a great meal for Verde.
But the truth is, that's how the vlog goes sometimes.
I'll be honest with you, there's times
where I spend like an hour or two
on a specific thing I want to film
and it just never happens.
And I just have to give up and move on.
Hopefully today Verde will eat.
In the meantime, I'm gonna try to do some work
and just kind of keep an eye on her off in the distance.
Of course Eric and Mary are playing Hooky today.
Which means Lory has to do three people's jobs.
- (laughs) Yes, pretty much.
- What are you doing today then?
- I have to go through and pack eveything.
And now I went through Colubrids
and now I'm feeding them.
- So now you gotta feed all the Colubrids.
I would be willing to help but
I'm a little bit tied up, if you know what I mean.
- Yeah, I got it.
- (scoffs) Truth is I can; Let me know if you need the help.
Do you need me to feed Razors or anything
or are you just going to skip that.
- I'm skipping Razors, just feeding the Breeders today.
- Okay so tomorrow, Eric will be back tomorrow
and he can feed that stuff.
But everything's going good; everthings' looking
good so far?
- Yeah no, things are looking really good.
I've seen a lot of breeding so far.
Everything's looking nice and plump.
So yup, I think it's going to be a really good season.
- I cannot wait for eggs guys.
I mean, you're starting to slowly see
these females plump up a little bit.
It's in the early stages, but we're not that far off.
Three or four weeks.
- We're not and Jessica is doing good.
She's already getting ready and
clearing off the top of the rack space.
Because we are going to need a lot of room for eggs.
- And then babies; this place is going to be
full up here in a few months.
So I couldn't be more excited.
So for now, I'll let you finish feeding that off.
- Yeah let's go, let's go.
- She's feeding?
- Yeah
- Awesome, awesome; all right good news guys, she's eating.
I literally thought that she wouldn't eat.
- She just got it.
- Okay, she just got it.
Look, she just got it; that's absolutely perfect.
So I'll go ahead let her feed on this.
And I'll show you the Choo Choo Train technique.
So that hopefully, she'll get a big rat in her.
And then ultimately, hopefully that scent
of eating a rat will continue to stick with where she'll go.
I'll be honest with you, this doesn't always work.
I've never tried it on an Anaconda.
So I don't know if I'm going to be able to.
It definitely takes patience and a very steady hand.
So let's go ahead and let her eat this.
And then we'll do the best we can do
to make this Choo Choo Train rat trick work.
(hip hop music)
As you can see, she's about halfway done
with the chick right now.
And the whole idea is that again,
as she's finishing up, kind of down
by the feet there, we're gonna kind of
sneak that rat right into her mouth.
So she actually has like a continuous feed.
Again, it takes a pretty steady hand.
It definitely takes some patience.
And maybe even a little lot.
But she is really crushing this
little chick right now.
But again, this rat is gonna have
a lot more nutritional value than that chick is.
It's going to put a lot bigger dent.
And then like I said, hopefully,
when she gets the hang of eating
something like this rat, it's going to
just kind of entice her to continue
to eat it in the future.
(hip hop music)
See how she's finishing up here.
Now the deal is, I gotta somehow
get her to think that the rat is part
of this end of this chick.
Now I'm going to sit here real gently
and hope for the best that she makes
the right movement that will get me
into a better position with her.
Come on girl, you gotta just move it a little bit for me.
Come on sweetheart; okay good, good, good, good, good.
And I got of just kind of sneak it in here like this.
Oh, she pulled back, no, no, no.
This is bad, this is bad.
I've tried to readjust her a little bit.
This is bad; okay here we go.
(ambient music)
I can't see.
Okay so right now; good, she just grabbed it.
She just grabbed it; okay good.
That's what I was hoping for.
Okay, so now we just kind of keep it gentle.
See how she's got it.
But this is where it could go all wrong.
She's got to take one bite towards it.
If she takes one bite towards it, we're gold.
And that's the bite, that's the bite we're looking for.
Now she has that rat; now she should
just continually feed right like that as the chick.
See, there it is; Phew, I tell you what,
I was really concerned. This is the first time I've ever
done this with an Anaconda.
I've done it a lot of times with other snakes.
But this is the very first time.
And look it, it's a success.
Oooo doggy; okay I'm gonna just back off
and let her eat this.
And then we'll see at the end what she looks like.
Oh my God, I'm so excited; hopefully this is
the first step towards getting Verde to eat a rat.
(hip hop music)
And as she's finishing up, she looks absolutely amazing.
I mean, look at that thing well.
And Anacondas actually eat in very large meals
compared to a lot of other snakes.
So although this seemed like kind of a big meal.
This is a pretty typical meal for an Anaconda.
And that's really going to put some amazing growth.
The thing that I noticed about Verde
and other Anaconda's I've seen is that
one meal can make a huge difference.
I mean sometimes you get one big meal
and literally it looks like he grows overnight.
It's pretty spectacular and it's
pretty cool that she did it.
I was definitely nervous, me and Nor were
working on this thinking, are we
going to be able to do it?
Is she going to eat? You know it's funny like I said,
sometimes I'll base a whole vlog
out of an idea that I have like,
oh it would be really cool to show this,
show people not only how to train something.
But also if you're trying to switch
your animal from one type of food to another,
this is a great idea to do it.
Or even if you're a breeder and you
have to assist feeds, say a baby Ball Python a fuzzy.
Then you can train it a mouse.
It gets a lot more energy and potentially
switches over at the food much quicker.
That's how we got Helen to eat in the very early days.
And of course now she's doing really well.
But like I said, sometimes you have an idea
with a vlog and the whole thing falls apart.
Because what if Verde didn't eat that chick.
I would have been, oh, well there goes
a few hours of the day trying to do
a vlog that doesn't work.
Regardless, it worked out well.
I'm super excited; she looks amazing.
You cats may notice that I have
a couple scratches on my face and lip right here.
That is from this guy right here, Andy.
Thank you so much Andy, the new Trinity Forest Dragon.
Oh my God, that thing is so cool.
But literally, it was just on me.
And it wasn't like an aggressive thing.
He just used my face to climb.
It was like this boom, boom, boom.
And all the sudden I'm bleeding.
It was crazy how sharp those nails are; incredible.
Of course we won't trim those nails
because he's an absolute climber.
He needs those nails for climbing.
But he is absolutely awesome.
Thanks buddy for the new face that I have now.
And what we're basically trying to do with Andy
is similar to what we did with Nova here.
I mean, when we first got Nova, he was really cool.
But he definitely wasn't great at handling.
And he would jump and do that type of thing;
jump on your face, jump on your head
and stuff like that.
You can now see how absolutely incredible he is.
And if you notice, again, I'm never holding him.
I'm letting him hold me.
That's where he's happy and when
people come in, I always do the same thing.
I put him on, let him wrap his arms around my fingers.
And that's where he feels safe.
And if he gets any kind of crazy,
you just go way up in the air like this
because he loves trees.
So when he's up in the air like that,
he's feeling comfortable.
And when he's down like this, he doesn't
feel quite as comfortable.
But he has become such an incredible animal.
And I think Andy has that same potential.
I mean once you get him out, he's really really cool.
So it's not that we're going to pull him out all the time.
Because I don't know that those guys are really
as handling of animals as maybe even a Frill.
But we want to get em to a point where
we can take them out every now and then
if people are really interested in them.
Never the less, that was the idea.
It didn't end quite as well as it normally would of.
I know we're just getting into our Colubrid season now
where we're gonna be getting eggs pretty soon.
But I am super excited about these guys
coming up for next year.
Look at how gorgeous that is.
We used to produce a bunch of Gray Banded King Snakes.
It's been a handful of years since we've had the group.
So last year we bought some beautiful babies.
And man, they are looking phenonamenal.
Remember those little Porp Racers
or Bamboo Racers I got recently.
Look at how amazing they are.
Ooh, and he's a feisty little monkey.
What is wrong with you buddy, oh my God.
These things are adorable, but again,
definitely a feisty little dude right here.
Oh, but why do you keep biting me, buddy.
What is wrong with you, oh my God.
But these things are unbelievable.
Now again, another year or so and these will be breeding.
And what we have here is our Orange Nuevo Leones King Snakes
or the Variable Kings.
They're absolutely incredible.
And again, these are these ones,
because they're called Variably, Kings can
come in a ton of different colors.
This color here is one of my favorite.
Which of course is that beautiful orange color right there.
Really quick, I've got to show you a couple of my
Holdback Honduran Milk Snakes.
This one is unbelievable; I love these big wide
yellow bands on this Albino Tri-Color Hog Nose.
Now usually these Albino Tri-Colors have like
really narrow yellow bands.
But this one has super wide bands, which make it incredible.
And then there's the polar opposite
with this Albino Tangerine Honduran Milk Snake,
where it doesn't have any of the yellow bands at all.
So basically, the yellow bands are replaced
with these beautiful tangerine bands.
Man, that pair is going to be super cool
next year when they're big enough to breed.
Now these are one of our Sunset Johnii or
Smooth Scaled Sand Boa; look at how crazy cool it is.
This guy has a long way to go.
Because these typically don't breed until
five or six years of age.
But never the less, we hung on to
a couple of these guys because they're
absolutely stunning.
And a lot of these, as they get older,
turn kind of solid brown, a little bit kind of dull.
But this particular one, the sunset stayed nice and orange.
You could always see those black bands on their tail.
And the fact is guys, every now and then,
I just want to show you a handful of animals.
Because I really probably only show you guys
about ten percent of our animals
when we're going through the daily vlog.
So I'll try to do a little bit more of this.
Let me know in the comments if you want me to
kind of do a more kind of just show off
a bunch of animal vlog, I'm happy to do that.
Oh, and while you're down there,
can you smash that Like button.
I know this isn't animal related,
but I'm always dinking with a bunch of different projects.
This actually is a bench that I'm trying to make.
You can see this is one piece here.
And I'm thinking that it will go
right in this corner right here.
And I'm thinking for the legs, I'll do
something like this that kind of look
like big wood tree stumps or something like that.
I just brought it up here because
I just kind of got it put together.
Now I'm going to see if it kind of fits in the back there.
And then we'll add the legs, add the stumps
and stuff like that.
And then, when people come here, you know,
kind of like a dad bench, right.
You know sometimes dads go to the zoo,
and they're like, I just want to sit down,
let my kids run around.
So that's pretty cool.
And basically what it is is just Polyurea,
just like the other stuff.
But then I foamed the bottom like this,
so it's super hard, super durable.
And now I just have to add the bottom.
I don't know why I'm showing you guys this.
It's because I'm excited about these types of things.
I love when I have little projects like this.
I love to work on that stuff.
It will be kind of cool for people
to kind of rest a little bit when they come
to The Reptarium.
After five or six days of day to night,
I mean literally early morning 'til late at night,
I finally get to get to get out of The Reptarium
a little bit early and see a bit of the daylight.
What do you say we head home and
see what's going on with the fam.
Well I'm kind of freaking out right now
because I was on my way home thinking,
oh I can have an evening off.
And I got a call from Lory saying
that our alarm went off at the zoo.
And when she went on the cameras to see
what it was, someone was actually
walking out of the building.
She didn't get a look at who was walking out.
And then I realized that as I was leaving
I forgot to lock the front door.
Now thankfully, it's only like six thirty at night.
It's daylight obviously; I can't imagine
someone went in there and was going to take anything.
I'm assuming what probably happened was someone walked in,
thinking we were open or something like that,
the alarm went off and then they left.
And now the cops are on scene so, definitely panicking.
I've got about 15 minutes before I can
get back to the building here.
The cops are onsite; hopefully nothing went wrong.
This is totally my fault, oh my God.
So, I gotta just deep breaths, deep breaths right now.
Unfortunately traffic is really bad.
And I need to get there and I'm freaking out.
(cars revving)
- Hey, do you lock those damn doors.
- Are you kidding me man.
- They're still right here man.
- I have never not locked the door in my entire life.
- And I was like, he's got a lot of props.
- Oh my gosh, no dude, I can't go;
I have never done this in all the time
I have owned a business. This is the very first time I have
never not locked the door; thanks again.
- No problem.
- I appreciate that, I owe you big time.
- Well you're okay; hey, this is the coolest part.
Because these things can't really hurt me.
- (laughs) Those guys are good, thanks again man.
- No problem man, take care.
- Okay, thank you so much, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Okay guys, I gotta take deep breaths, deep breaths.
I looked around, everything is fine.
And that's exactly what happened.
Lory looked back on the camera
and we have cameras that even do
the outside and the parking lot.
And sure enough, someone came up,
they just opened the door probably thinking,
Oh, are they open.
As soon as they opened the door, it triggered the alarm.
But then what happened was, Lory ended up calling me
to find out if I was still here.
I said no, and as soon as she said that.
She jumped on the cameras and saw
someone walking out of the building.
Well it turns out, it was actually the police
that were in here.
And they walked out of the building.
So that's what she caught; she was panicking, she got to me.
I started zipping back to here.
Thank God, we have a great police department.
They're literally a half mile away.
As you can see, they're really friendly to us.
They always hang out with us.
They come in, they're really really cool.
So they took care of me; everything looks completely fine.
No problems, my fault.
I have never not locked this door, ever.
As a matter of fact, even my other building at BHB,
never have I not locked that door.
Totally my fault, I am freaking out.
I'm almost hyperventilating because of the panic
of getting here just hoping that nothing happened.
I love these animals so much.
If something happened and it was my fault,
I don't know what I would do.
Well that's it guys, I'm done for the night.
I'm ending the vlog; you have a wonderful day.
Thank you guys; send positive vibes for me, please guys.
Be kind to someone and I promise, I'll see you tomorrow.
(hip hop music)