(mellow music)
- Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible.
You know, I thought today
we were just gonna hang out a little bit.
I've got kind of a more heavy thing later in the vlog.
I'm gonna have myself and Laurie
talk to you about some stuff.
But in the meantime,
I want to start the vlog good, right?
And I thought how about do a tour?
It's been a while since I've given you guys
a tour of the place.
Obviously we've got my girl Ivy here just chilling,
having an absolutely amazing time.
And you guys know I love this enclosure.
Of course, (mumbles) is in here now too,
which is absolutely amazing.
And I want to give you the overall feel of The Reptarium.
It's just been a while.
Maybe you guys that haven't been following as long
or maybe even forgot,
just to get the idea of the layout here.
Of course, we have that enclosure over there,
then we have this wall of enclosures here.
Of course, right up here are my two little frilly dragons.
This is Big Mac and actually Chicken Nugget,
which is my pair of the frillies
that I produced last year.
I mean, look at Big Mac.
Hey buddy, what's going on, baby?
He just jumps out every single time.
What an awesome animal.
I love this little dude for sure.
And that's oftentimes how I'll start my tour
is by showing off Big Mac,
because of course he's just an absolutely amazing animal.
And that's the thing about the place
is it is always a little bit changing,
so I figured I'd let you guys see what it's all about.
Of course, the green basilisks are in here.
Then we have my guy Marshmallow.
Of course, the ivory Burmese python
that's about to shed literally any day.
Probably he'll shed out later on today.
Beautiful, beautiful animal.
Again, this would be a Super Fire Burmese python.
Just a little guy.
And it's really good to have that
for the kids who don't want to hold a big snake.
Sometimes starting them off smaller is the way to go,
so it really works out to my advantage
to be able to pull out an animal like Marshmallow,
get kids kind of used to it and stuff like that.
Of course, we have our amazing croc monitor.
And look at him, immediately he perks up
like, "What are you thinking?
"What are you thinking there?"
Of course, that's Baby Kush,
and he is just unbelievable.
I still pinch myself sometimes
just thinking we have that.
So thank you to Desiree and Steven
obviously for letting us have this animal,
because he is so incredibly amazing.
And he is really getting habituated,
which is really nice.
I think in the next five or six months
we'll be able to take him out and handle him.
Of course, Fish Spa.
You guys know what I love the Fish Spas.
I'll just give you guys the overall view here.
You just come up,
they just come rushing right to you
and start nailing on your hand.
It's so wild.
And I tell you what,
that's a great, great experience for people.
Cupcake, my big boa constrictor.
Of course, these are those double sided enclosures
where you can see straight through.
I think it's really cool.
Of course, we've got our two blood pythons
right next to each other.
Champ is a boy, Sweetie is a girl,
so with any luck we'll get some babies
maybe next year from these two.
Champ is obviously a T negative albino,
whereas Sweetie is a normal.
Al Machino, certainly one of the favorite snakes
over here at The Reptarium.
Unbelievable Machino reticulated python.
He's about 10, 11 foot, something in that line.
People love handling him.
He's just an all around cool animal.
And, of course, Salt and Pepper
on the end of this enclosure right here.
And of course, Salt is just absolutely amazing.
We love her to death.
She just continues to become a better and better animal.
And like I've mentioned so many times before
that we're gonna continue to habituate her
and socialize her where I can get in
and actually swim with her,
so eventually you guys can get in and swim with her
if you guys want to, which would be cool.
Then we've got my guy Jeffrey down here.
Of course, Jeffrey is the Hypo Granite Burmese python.
Unbelievable.
Again, one of the animals that people love handling
just because he's so chill.
This is like a bigger snake, but not too big a snake, right?
So again, for the people that don't want to hold
a big 60 pound python or something like that,
he is just an absolutely perfect example
and unbelievably tame.
Just beautiful.
And really, like I said, chill.
He's one of those animals you can just put on your shoulders
and just kind of not worry about it.
He'll just hang out with you for hours.
Definitely if I had a TV where I was gonna sit down
and watch some shows,
he'd be the guy that I would be checking out for sure,
'cause he would definitely chill out with you for hours.
Of course, we have our albino iguanas in here.
We've got Frenches, which is this girl right over here,
and then we got Heinz over there in the corner.
You can see tails have grown back, they look amazing.
Super fat, super good.
We've got Chip and Dale of course,
the red footed tortoises over here.
They're just amazing.
I love this enclosure.
We've been working on the socialization
with the albino iguanas as well.
Gonna take some time for them to get used to it,
plus they're young.
Usually the first year or so
iguanas get a little bit freaked out,
then they kind of chill out after that.
Of course, I've got to show you guys these two monkeys here
because they're absolutely amazing.
Hey bud.
What's going on, guys?
You guys gonna come out and see me?
Come on out, come on out.
Hey baby.
Hi.
Of course we've got Diddy over here
and we've Dixie over there.
What are you guys doing you sillies?
What are you guys doing?
Hi.
You come out and say hi to me?
Hi.
I tell you what, these guys are, it's crazy.
I couldn't imagine having lizards
who just open up the cage
and they come running out and jumping out to you.
These guys are absolutely wonderful.
I always say these are my puppy dogs of The Reptarium
because they are like dogs for sure.
Absolutely love these guys.
Okay, go back.
(mellow music)
Then you guys know that we have the turtle pond
that just basically connects the new Reptarium
with the old Reptarium.
We just have a bunch of sliders,
a couple map turtles, stuff like that.
I want to talk to you guys a little bit
about my anxiety struggles here.
Look at this little monkey here.
Of course, this is a leucistic cobra right here
and she is definitely fired up.
My point is is that sometimes when I'm living in the moment,
right now all I can think about to stay safe
is to make sure that I'm in the moment.
I'm reading this animal,
everything that she's doing I need to understand,
because I tell you what, if I make one mistake
I may get bitten, and who knows what's gonna happen.
So all the anxiety, all the things that bother me go away
because I'm just living in this very moment.
And I've talked about that.
You can be stressed out, you can be upset,
you can be everything,
but if you were to get into a car accident
all you're thinking about is survival, right?
Well, that's what happens
when I'm dealing with venomous snakes
like this beautiful leucistic cobra right here.
And the fact is is that my journey of anxiety
is trying to get to the point
where I'm always living in this moment.
Where I'm living in a moment
where I'm not thinking about the future.
I'm not thinking about the past,
I'm just thinking about this very moment.
And this snake, and snakes like this,
really are amazing opportunities for me
to kind of hone that in, right?
I tell you what guys,
there's just something really special about this.
Some people jump out of airplanes,
some people go fast in cars.
I always feel the most alive
when I'm on the edge of a beautiful snake like this
that, quite frankly, could be deadly.
But I tell you what, she's acting very nice right now.
You can see she's a little bit going into shed,
and she's a little bit cranky.
But I absolutely love her.
But the truth is that that journey
is gonna continue on until I get to a point
where that anxiety totally goes away
and all I ever think about is times like right now
where nothing else matters but this very moment.
And then, of course, the old Reptarium.
You guys kind of have been around
and seen this for a long time,
but I'm gonna still go through.
Of course, we have Nova and Lilith in here,
the frilled dragons.
Of course, Lilith's baby's are due to hatch anytime.
And, of course, she's now due to have another clutch.
Very similar to what happened last year.
It was the beginning of September
that we produced Big Mac.
It's probably gonna be more like
the end of August this year.
She's gonna have one more clutch.
It looks like she's gonna be producing two clutches a year.
Sometimes frilled dragons can have up to
four to five clutches per year.
I was kinda hoping that was gonna happen,
but unfortunately it didn't.
Of course, we've got Ben and Jerry,
the crazy two headed snake still doing well.
Ben is over here on this side, Jerry is on this side.
Look at this.
Holy moly.
Night Fury is up in his trees and branches
and just crawling around.
That looks amazing.
That's something that you don't see too often,
I'm not gonna lie to you.
We've got an emerald tree boa over here.
On the other side we actually had the Amazon basin
that I didn't show you guys.
Mango is in here.
We've got some alligators over here.
Look at Pickles.
Look at how great she is.
Again, Jessica redid this enclosure
and we moved her over here about a month and a half ago
and Pickles is doing so well.
And I love the way she looks here.
We've got Beetlejuice way up at the top over here.
He's just chilling out.
Beetlejuice is another,
obviously a Bell's phase lace monitor,
another one that we're working on a lot
to habituate, get settled in.
He's gonna be a great animal
when he gets a little bit bigger.
We're spending lots, and lots, and lots of time.
Looks like Perdida's in shed too.
These guys get fed quite a bit.
Every Tuesday that we're not open these guys get fed,
so they definitely are growing
and Perdida is looking amazing.
It's crazy.
I've seen pictures of her recently of just six months ago.
I cannot believe how many more black dots she's got
just in the last six months.
I mean, how crazy?
She is getting so cool.
Of course, big old chunky monkey over here.
And then, of course, we have Joker,
the scaleless rat snake.
Take a look at this dude right here.
He's just starting to shed,
so he's gonna shed out probably today
so I won't mess with him too much.
But just another animal that people love to handle
because they're like, "Oh my God, that's so wild.
"So Interesting."
Flamin' Hot Cheeto is up here chilling out.
We've got the leucistic Texas rat snake right here.
We've gold Gerald, the Dumeril's boa.
This one, again, is that kind of cool size to handle.
Super chill.
And the arachnid wall.
Just a Brazilian black, red knee, rose hair, curly hair,
all that type of stuff.
And we're retooling this arachnid wall as well,
so that should be pretty cool.
And like I talked about with Diddy and Dixie being my dog,
no doubt that Bella is my cat.
She decides when she wants to come down
and say, "Hey dad, I don't know if I'm ready or not."
Of course, we've got Elvis
just always chilling out, hanging out.
He's just amazing.
He gets, like I mention all the time,
he gets at least an hour a day to walk around the zoo,
do his own thing, stuff like that.
Everybody loves Potato.
Of course, he's the Centralian blue-tongued skink.
It's definitely, especially kids and kid' parties,
when I bring out Potato they absolutely love him
mostly just because he really does look like a potato.
These are our little red Ackie monitors.
They're always underneath the bowls right there.
These guys are so cute.
They're so amazing.
Again, if you want a monitor lizard
but you don't want a giant lizard,
definitely Ackies and some of the other dwarf monitors
are the way to go.
They're really just as intelligent as the big ones,
but of course in a pint size, which is good.
Abasuku is just chilling in the water.
Of course, this is the one that we hope
we can get Chicken Strip to breed,
because again, she's the only black Nile monitor
and he's the only albino Nile monitor,
so to produce double hets would be absolutely ridiculous.
Then, of course, we have a handful of dart frogs.
These are the Azureus,
those blue unbelievably gorgeous animals.
I love these guys.
Just cool looking animals, right?
Daisy, my big girl.
Of course, Lucy's sister's hanging out here, Butterscotch.
You can see her popping her head up right there,
hanging out going, "Hey, when are you gonna get fed?"
We always feed every weekend.
It's always a lot of fun.
And then we've got Karma 2.0,
the Nosy Be panther chameleon.
Absolutely love this guy.
Such an absolute ripper.
I tell you what, this thing is so cool.
Hopefully we're gonna get a female for him pretty soon
'cause I just really would love
to try to breed these guys.
I think it would be really amazing.
After we hatched those Jackson's chameleons
it's just kind of been exciting,
like oh my gosh.
And speaking of Jackson's chameleons,
these are the adults right here, but they hide.
You never hardly ever see 'em.
The male is poking it's head out right here.
Just shedding.
Looks beautiful after that shed.
That rainbow Jackson's is really something else.
Of course, we got Sunrise, my beautiful girl.
Who doesn't love her?
She's amazing.
Looks like Casper is ready to eat too.
It's chilling out up at the glass going,
"Hey dad, what's going on?"
These guys, it's almost feeding day
so they're definitely all geared up and ready to go.
And this kind of gave you an idea of the tour of the place.
I hope you're enjoying it.
Of course, my girl Lucy, the giant.
She is such a big snake.
And everyone always says when they come here
that she's so much bigger in person than she is ...
So it's pretty cool.
Bowser's tank, of course, right here.
Bowser is just hanging out.
His mouth is open saying, "Hey, feed me."
And he's super cool.
And then, of course,
my tortoises are over here in the corner.
We got Franklin over here, Big Momma here,
we've got Steve over here,
Matilda's hiding over in the corner right there.
So I just wanted to give you guys the tour of the place
before we get into a heavy topic
that I really wanted to share with you guys,
because to me it's very important
with the journey that I've been on over the last few months,
so I want to share that with you now.
I wanted to give you guys some good snake content.
I don't want to make these vlogs about negative stuff
and so on like that,
but I also always want to keep you guys updated
on where I'm at with my journey and anxiety.
I thought that maybe it'd be good to have Laurie
to talk about it as well too,
because quite frankly I've been doing a lot better
this last couple weeks,
and even earlier today I was doing really good.
Right now I'm feeling a little bit cloudier
than I had the rest of the day.
I'm hoping that that calms down.
This journey isn't one that's just one person, you know?
Whether it's friends, or in this case family,
Laurie has went through this journey with me of anxiety
just as much as I have.
I know it's difficult for you,
and I thought maybe you could talk to the people
that maybe are dealing with similar things
where maybe their spouse, or loved one, or child
is dealing with it.
And your role is maybe even harder than my role
in the sense that I may be feeling all the pain
but you have to still support me through it,
and it's got to be really difficult.
- I would say it's no different
than if say your loved one or significant other
maybe has cancer or something like that.
Actually, in some ways it's a little bit harder
because at least with that
you have a physical sickness diagnosis,
whereas mental health obviously from the outside
a lot of people don't even know what's going on
because there's not that type of thing.
But it's truly just as hard as that.
Like I said, almost harder,
because you don't have something physical
to maybe fight or rally against.
It's all internal.
- And you don't have doctors that are telling you,
"This is your X-ray says this,"
or, "This is the course of treatment."
- Yeah, so it definitely makes it hard.
It's hard any time your loved one
or person that you care for is struggling
to see them do that,
and much like with anything else you can't take it away.
There really isn't anything
that you can physically do to help,
and that makes it hard.
The only thing you can do is continue to support.
But a lot of times that still feels like
you're doing nothing, or not the right thing too.
It's hard.
- The thing for me is that I just need ...
Sometimes I know it seems silly,
but especially when you're in a down time
or when things are really tough,
sometimes you need the people around you,
whether it's your significant other with me with Laurie,
or with Noah, my son, or even the people around me,
sometimes I just need people to give me a hug
and tell me it's gonna be okay even ...
'Cause a lot of times
it doesn't feel like it's gonna be okay,
and it sucks, you know?
It sucks that I can't be what I think I should be to you.
And I know that there's a lot of people out there
that feel like me that feel like
not only does it feel like such a bad feeling,
but then it makes you feel even worse
that you're not supposed to be that way.
- Sure, it all compounds.
I think that's how it is whether you're a guy or a girl.
I think everyone who struggles with that
probably feels the same way.
- I'm not saying it's any easier for a woman.
- No, I know.
- Just for me personally,
I feel like I'm supposed to be the strong one,
and I've been a shell of what I am
for the last three and a half months.
I think I'm getting better.
I would have told you a half hour ago
I was getting a lot better.
Hopefully later today when we do the podcast
I'll be feeling better too.
Anyway, I just wanted to end the video this way
as an update for you guys to encourage you,
and maybe for the people that have loved ones
that are dealing with things like I'm dealing with
you can hear ...
You heard from Laurie how her take is,
and how important her role is in this for me, my healing.
Even though it's on me,
I need her strength and her encouragement.
Again, I don't want her to fix me,
I just want her to encourage me
and to tell me it's gonna be okay.
And also to know that I can rely on her,
which I have been.
So we're gonna end the video.
I love you guys so much.
Thank you for all your prayers, and your thoughts,
and all the great things.
You guys have meant so much for me here in this time
and we will get through this.
I'm hoping that this continued conversation
will help others,
because that's what's important to me
is not only for me to get better
but for other people to get better too
and know you're not alone in this journey.
Okay.
That's it.
I love you guys and I'll see you tomorrow.
(tender instrumental music)