- So much stuff has happened
with me being gone for several days.
It's so good to be back here at The Reptarium.
Good morning, Reptile Army.
I hope the start of your day is amazing.
It's certainly amazing for me 'cause I get to be back here
at my reptile zoo and I see all the animals.
But there is one animal that I wanted to check on.
Now, Gemma was actually gravid and was due to lay
within the last day or two, but something strange happened.
And I'm telling you, I've taken you guys on this journey
and it really makes me feel
almost like I don't know what I'm doing, right.
Because constantly, I'm like,
"I think this, I think that, I think this, I think that,"
and I am completely confused.
Again, she was supposed to lay
or she was due to lay, basically,
here in the last day, two, and sometimes it can go
three, four, five after, stuff like that.
But guess what?
She is deep in shed.
So we talk about pre-ovulation sheds,
we talk about pre-lay sheds, and it looked like
there was a pre-ovulation shed and then a pre-lay shed,
and then, 30 days from then, on average,
that's when you're gonna get a clutch of eggs,
which again, is about now.
But now she's back in shed again.
And this is what is so bizarre to me
because now I don't know what's going on.
I can't imagine that she's into another pre-lay shed.
Now what might be happening
is she might be reabsorbing her eggs, basically,
and that does happen with ball pythons.
Again, I don't have as much confidence in my retic ability
'cause I've only bred retics a handful of times
and it's always been completely like
every other breeding before.
Gemma has thrown me for a loop.
But with ball pythons,
this can happen where they'll actually go through
like a pre-ovulation shed,
then they'll go through a pre-lay shed,
and then sometimes they start to reabsorb
and go through another shed
and then they start eating after that.
She's been off food for like 3 1/2 months now,
which, again, is what happens with gravid females.
And I thought, okay, she was gonna lay a clutch of eggs.
She still looks pretty darn fat guys.
I mean, she looks big.
But at the same time, there's no way
that she's gonna lay anytime soon because of pre-lay shed.
So now, one of two things could happen:
She's gonna shed, she's gonna absorb, and she's gonna eat;
or she's gonna lay in 30 days.
I am completely confused about this girl.
And coming back, I was expecting to get eggs any minute,
and instead, I've got a snake in shed.
So yeah, you know, that's the way it goes.
But nevertheless, still happy to be back here
at The Reptarium.
Guys, remember just when I left,
the one thing I was really nervous about,
of course, was Brillo.
We had redone Brillo's enclosure and then I was gone.
So if something didn't go right when I was gone,
I don't know exactly what was going on.
So, sure enough, Lori said things were going well
and, you know, honestly, it looks pretty decent.
You can see a little bit where the cement is,
but it blends pretty good.
And the thing that's nice is they've been saying
that Brillo has been super good, not been digging,
not been getting into the cement at all, which is cool.
As a matter of fact,
before you could see there were little styrofoam pieces.
Hi, Brillo. Did you miss me, buddy?
Did you miss me? I love you.
I missed you too, big boy.
What are you doing, silly monkey?
Oh my gosh. I'm so happy to see him.
Oh, I love him so, so much.
I know, Brillo baby.
But you used to see like these little styrofoam pieces
all over his cage and that's what he would do,
is basically dig into the styrofoam.
Now that it's cemented out,
he's not digging anymore, which is really good.
I know, buddy.
I'm so happy to see you too.
You're so good.
So it's cool that the cement work,
it doesn't look bad.
Again, can see a little bit of discoloration here,
but it doesn't look like really bad.
You know, I mean, it kind of blends in pretty well.
And now he's not able to dig through this stuff.
Of course, if he gets up high here,
we may have to re-cement up here,
but so far, it's been over a week
and he hasn't dug at all, which is really cool.
So Brillo, you've been a good boy.
And again, he gets so much love
from all of us every single day.
He's running around like a mad man
getting all kinds of enrichment and we love him.
And this gives me an opportunity,
now that I've kind of done the cement,
to have a little bit more confidence
when I build Brillo's actual new enclosure in the expansion.
So now I know kind of how to do cement a little bit,
if that makes any sense.
And it's not like I'm an expert by a long shot.
And that's gonna be a much bigger job
'cause he's gonna have a much larger enclosure,
literally, probably like 8- or 10-foot round enclosure,
which is gonna be pretty cool for him,
oval or something on that line.
So super happy that I could see,
my God, Brillo again, number one,
and super happy that he hasn't been a naughty boy anymore.
You guys have been killing on the Reptile Army swag lately
so I appreciate you.
If you guys want some Reptile Army merch, join the Army.
Of course it's for a good cause on top of everything else.
And up until Christmas,
of course, I'm giving personal shout-outs
to every single person that orders,
so you will get a personal video message from me
every time you order, Reptile Army.
You can go to ReptileArmy.com.
I appreciate you guys and all of your support.
You're awesome.
So obviously, we have a bunch of tubs in our VIP area.
The reason for that was is that while I was gone,
the work was getting done.
You know, the work doesn't stop when I leave.
As a matter of fact, the work probably gets harder
when I leave and Lori's always on top of it.
We had to get the Klubers into brumation.
So these are just the last tubs that need to be cleaned.
Everything should be revamped.
So let's go take a look inside
and I'll show you what's going on.
So obviously, as you can see,
it's actually dark in here now
and it's gonna be dark in here for three months.
During brumation, basically, you know,
they're gonna climb into a little den.
They're gonna burrow down and they're not gonna come out,
literally, maybe but for water, right.
So obviously, all of these enclosures have fresh water.
Now they're completely clean.
You can see they're still alert.
They're not, like, asleep to a point
where they don't move around.
When I open the enclosure, they're gonna see,
"Hey, what's going on?" and stuff like that.
But all of these enclosures now are spotless, clean.
They have fresh water in them.
The room is at about 62 degrees.
We're gonna drop it down to about the upper 50s.
And basically just how we do that
is this pipe here is attached to this fan right here
that is actually attached to a thermostat.
It draws air from outside.
Obviously, it's cold outside.
It's winter, right?
So what happens is it draws cold air until it hits
whatever degree we want it to hit and then it shuts off
and that's what keeps it at about 55 degrees,
you know, 60 degrees at the most.
So these guys are actually brumating for the next three,
two and a half to three months let's say,
then they come out and then the breeding season starts.
So I'm gonna miss these cute little monkeys,
but it is good to have them down
and gearing up for the next breeding season.
Just coming back and seeing all my animals
is what it's all about.
I mean, you know, I miss 'em so much.
It was so cool to see other people's animals,
but coming back and seeing Perdida
looking absolutely gorgeous up in her tree,
I mean, that's what it's all about to me.
It's just I'll spend all day just kind of walking around,
just kind of enjoying these animals as much as I do.
I mean, I missed 'em so, so much,
so definitely cool and Perdida's looking gorgeous.
Of course, the main reason we went down to Florida,
not to mention we wanted to tool around and things,
was for CrocFest.
And of course, that was conservation for Orinoco crocodiles.
That's what we're raising money for.
And I got this really cool rock.
You guys know that people come to The Reptarium,
they paint rocks all the time, and they, you know,
kinda put 'em all over the place.
So I think this'll be a good addition
to our rock collection here.
And I'm just gonna literally stuff it right here
so people find it and say "What does that mean?"
And the thing that's cool is that people will see that
and be like, "What is CrocFest?" and I could talk to them
about conservation when it comes to Orinoco crocodiles,
or the next time there'll be another species of crocodile
that we'll be raising money for.
So CrocFest was definitely awesome.
It was definitely an amazing time
and we raised over $60,000 for Orinoco croc research.
I mean, that is absolutely amazing.
This is so crazy, guys.
As I was gone, so many animals seemed to grow a lot,
but this particular animal, Flaming Hot Cheeto,
shrunk to half its size.
I don't know what happened.
No, the truth is this is actually Clementine, guys.
This is a new bearded dragon that Lori surprised me with
when I got home.
You guys know that we're kind of building
an educational kind of group of animals
that won't be on display here at the zoo
that, you know, just so that when we're going to Zoo-to-Yous
and birthday parties and stuff like that, school events,
that we don't have to actually take the animals
from The Reptarium itself.
So this is another animal to add to that.
This is now the second bearded dragon that is in that group.
We want to build three groups of animals
because our educational side is growing quick.
And we know that, in the future,
things are gonna be even more crazy
when schools kinda open up for us to come back in.
So it is awesome.
This is beautiful.
I guess someone came by
and actually dropped it off as a present.
So whoever that was, I'm sorry, I don't know who you are,
thank you so much.
This is amazing.
What a beautiful, beautiful bearded dragon.
I mean, it's just like Flaming Hot,
but again, this guy's name is Clementine.
Couple other things showed up while I was gone too.
What is this one?
- This right here. - Let's take it out
and see it. - Hard to see.
- I love these things.
I tell you what, you know,
I'm not exactly always like the best with bugs,
but for some reason, this particular type of stuff is...
It's a stick bug, right?
- Yeah, so this a Diapherodes gigantea, so it's a,
otherwise known as a green bean stick bug.
- Green bean, it makes sense, right?
- Yeah, it does look like one.
So this is actually a female here.
- Okay. - They are actually
sexually dimorphic, so males are brown with wings
and females with green like this.
- [Brian] Interesting.
And also, often males are incredibly smaller,
just like tarantulas actually.
- Okay. - But they're all over
the Caribbean islands, mainly found in Grenada.
Usually, that's where they're coming from
when they're being imported here.
They're usually coming from Grenada.
- [Brian] How long do they usually live?
- About a couple years,
to three. - Couple years, okay,
so this one's probably already an adult, I would imagine.
- Yeah, but I mean,
they grow between five inches
and maybe even five, four inches, just about.
- Interesting.
So they move so weird.
Like I said, I love stick bugs,
but there's not a lot of stick bugs
that you can get in the US so that's pretty cool.
Like some of the stuff down in Australia,
those stick bugs are ridiculous.
- Oh my gosh. - But this thing is so dope.
But this isn't the only bug we added.
We actually added a couple of other crazy ones too.
And take a look at these.
I mean, these are, what, leaf bugs?
- Yeah, these are actually another phasmid like stick bugs,
but just another different one, leaf bugs like you said.
- Oh my gosh. - These are actually
from Southeast Asia.
- Southeast Asia, and they look like a leaf.
Oop.
What do you call it, look at that.
I mean, talk about nature
in its finest camouflage right there.
That is incredible.
And this is a full-grown adult, or they get bigger?
- So this is actually an adult, yeah.
This is a full grown adult.
They don't get much bigger than this,
but, man, they are beautiful.
They're not only green,
but they actually do have that brown edging,
like a dead leaf.
- Yeah, like a dead leaf. - which is the most
coolest thing to me because it's just like, wow,
the millions of years of evolution right there
just in making it.
It's so cool that this thing is developed
that way. - That is so cool.
And if you notice when they move,
you know, both of them, when they move,
they kinda shake a little bit
and that's their way of, like, looking like wind, right?
So again, these things would camouflage.
I mean, if you were in a forest and you saw it,
there's no way you would think this was a bug.
Looks just like a leaf.
So got a couple of new educational animals
here at The Reptarium that are gonna be really cool.
I know kids are gonna love 'em.
We certainly learned a whole lot about Aldabra tortoises
and Galapagos tortoises on this trip, especially from Sam,
from Iguana and Tortoise down there in Florida.
I mean, what a wealth of knowledge.
And now I feel like I have a lot better idea
of what we need to do with Matilda in the future
so that she's happy and healthy and continues to grow
and that she doesn't have any problems with her legs.
You know, he talked about how the legs can kinda bow out
if she doesn't have the right nutrition.
So we talked a lot about nutrition.
We talked a lot about the new enclosure,
what she needs and stuff like that.
So Matilda's amazing.
And I tell you what.
I am so happy we got a chance to meet with someone
so knowledgeable about these animals.
He lives and breathes nothing but tortoises and iguanas.
And I tell you what.
Matilda is amazing.
And we found out too that the hay that we switched to,
we used to do Timothy hay, but I was so allergic to it.
I was having massive allergic reactions.
And we switched to a more type of hay
which, ironically enough, is better for them.
So they love to eat the hay
and it's actually really good for them
from the roughage standpoint.
So now I know a lot more about Matilda.
I'm pretty excited about the future, for sure.
Can't wait to build her new enclosure with the expansion.
Oh, the time has come, Jessica,
our last geckos of the year hatching.
So what did we get?
- So we've got pretty,
nothing spectacular, actually.
We've got a normal and it looks like
they're probably both head eclipse
'cause I know the mom is an eclipse.
So yeah, they're cute. - So these are the last,
the last two leopard geckos of the year, hatched out.
No more eggs are there.
These are all the eggs.
Well, these aren't all the eggs,
but there's a lot of eggs.
And ope, they're on the run.
- That one. - Woop.
Run, run, be free!
Okay, we're gonna let the last gecko loose of the year,
so that's awesome.
So like I said, we had a good year.
Good job.
You happy that they're down
in brumation? - Yes, I am happy.
And then we didn't produce as many this year either,
so it's been a lot easier. - Yeah, that's awesome.
A lot easier, that's sure, but that's it.
All done with leopard geckos, but we have tons.
We had some really cool stuff.
Definitely had some bangers produce this here,
so good job and good luck next year.
- Awesome.
- You guys are always spoiling us on Christmas.
We have our, let's see, we have a gift.
"The Reptarium Family,
I've been watching your videos for about a year
and saw this ornament.
It reminds me of RJ.
Lori, can you find a spot in the tree for this one?"
Let's take a look and see what it is.
- [RJ] Oh my goodness.
And this is from Anna Taylor from Illinois.
- We know Anna.
I know her.
- [Brian] Do you?
- Yeah, she sent us the alligator ornament.
- I don't know if it's an alligator
or anything, but- - Well, it reminded of RJ, so.
- Let's see.
Oh, I like it.
Look at that.
- Wait, we actually have this. - We actually have this
already.
- We have two. - We have two of these.
- Now we have three. - That's good.
Well, I can do a whole tree of these,
to be honest with you. - Yes, you can.
- 'Cause listen, there's another one.
We might have four now.
- No! (Lori laughs)
Oh my God.
It's the same thing. - It is.
- We got, hey,
that's awesome! - We got four.
- [Brian] Let's do a whole tree of these.
- Yeah, we definitely can. - What?
I love it.
Thank you so much.
So yeah, we'll definitely get these
on the tree here.
So thank you.
That was awesome.
- Can someone send us 100 of these so that we can have
a full tree? - Yeah, a whole tree.
Okay, this one is, let's see...
Well, this is a our buddy, O'Malley.
This is awesome.
- Oh, Jonathan. - So check that,
yeah, it's awesome.
Check this out, O'Malley's Morphs.
- That's sick. - That's a nice hoodie, man.
Thank you so much.
I think that- - Stickers.
- And some stickers.
So thank you, bro.
Look at the back, check that out.
Represent. - Whoa!
Nice, thank you so much, dude.
I appreciate you so much.
I'll link in the description all his stuff.
He's an amazing dude.
So good to be back at The Reptarium.
I hope that you guys enjoyed the journey.
If you did, let me know in the comments
what you liked the most.
But it is nice to be back here,
and for the holidays, it's gonna be amazing.
If you enjoyed this video, do me a favor.
Right there is a playlist.
You could watch one or two other videos.
It'd mean the world to me.
You know what else would mean the world to me?
Right here, hit that subscription button.
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Have an absolutely wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to someone and I promise,
I'll see in the next one.