- Hey, good morning everybody, and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible,
and I truly mean it 'cause I love you guys so much.
I am actually excited today because Perdida,
my girl over here that you guys love so much,
she's actually been in this enclosure,
literally since the day we opened up.
The grand opening, Perdida was in this enclosure,
and honestly, it's not too small for her right now.
She's not outgrown the enclosure,
but I kinda wanna give her an upgrade
because she's such a special animal,
and I think that I can get her into an enclosure
that is even more viewed, right?
And I think it's gonna also bring the fact
that so many people come back here when we're open
because of Perdida, because of Snazz,
because of all the other animals you can hold back here,
as well as feed the alligators,
that sometimes we get a lot of people here,
and there's not as much flow in the rest of the building.
So, I decided we're gonna actually move Perdida
to a new enclosure today, and I think it's gonna be perfect,
not only from a standpoint of displaying her
and being able to access her, but also for the fact
that people are gonna wanna go over to the other side
and spend time.
She's gonna look so amazing.
So let's go ahead, get Jessica,
and we're gonna go ahead, prep the cage,
and get her moved over.
(funky music)
So, I just got a package from Amazon,
and it's titled, well, Poophead, but not as nice as that.
So, I'm not sure exactly who this is or what it is,
but thank you for the nice letters
and stuff like that, that's awesome.
I can't wait to see what we actually have in here.
It's, (chuckling) oh my god.
(cameraman laughs)
Okay, that isn't going in the vlog. (chuckling)
I'll edit it. I'll edit it.
- [Cameraman] Yeah, I can blur it too.
- So I'm not really sure who this is from,
but it says, "It's all poops and giggles
until someone giggles and poops."
(cameraman laughs)
This'll go to Laurie, I suppose. Thank you.
(funky music)
There are just some times that I walk by
and you see something that is so cute in whatever enclosure.
Obviously, Ivy is just sitting over there.
And then look at Aries' head just poking up,
just kinda snuggling up.
I think that they're best mates. There's no doubt about it.
Let's hope that they decide
to have babies here coming up soon,
'cause we've seen some courtship, but still no breeding.
But absolutely wonderful, wonderful snakes.
All right, so Jessica has the enclosure all set
and ready to go.
So we're gonna take Perdida over there.
And I love this part.
This is one of my favorite things that I do
is when we upgrade an enclosure,
to just see how the animal actually reacts to it.
Again, Perdida's been in this enclosure now for 2 1/2 years.
So, for her to get a new giant enclosure
is gonna be amazing.
And I haven't seen it yet, so we're gonna see it together.
And I'm pretty excited about it,
'cause you know Jessica just crushes it.
So this is gonna be pretty awesome,
and Perdida, I think, is gonna love it.
So, let's go ahead, let her go,
and let's take a look at this beautiful enclosure.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Look at how beautiful that is. That is gonna be awesome.
I mean, again, with all of these branches,
Perdida loves to climb, so I'm assuming
she's gonna probably be up in the branches quite a bit.
As a matter of fact, I'm gonna release her
right onto one of these branches
to see if she wants to climb a little bit.
I'm gonna put her right like this
and let her just explore around.
Now I think the best thing to do,
(chuckling) oh my gosh, she looks so good in this.
- [Cameraman] She looks crazy in there, Brian.
- Oh my God. Look at this, man.
This is so cool,
so odd. - What a good idea.
- It is. This is gonna be awesome.
I mean, it's gonna be so much more room for her,
plus she's got all of this room to climb,
which she's gonna be so happy with.
So, yeah, so I'm just gonna sit back
and enjoy this for a minute because this is awesome.
(funky music)
For all you guys and gals out there,
you may realize that Valentine's Day is coming.
And sometimes, buying some flowers isn't a bad idea.
You know what I mean? It's a good gift and stuff like that.
But they're 30 bucks or something like that.
They're gonna die a little bit later.
You could buy some really cool plushies if you want.
That's fine too, but I have another option, an easy option.
Believe it or not,
we are making digital cards customized for you guys.
That's right. We have four choices.
We're gonna put a link in the description.
You can go there, you can customize 'em.
You can get the four choices.
Go ahead and pick which one you want. It's only $4.99.
You can go ahead and print them out.
You can send them to someone digitally.
Do whatever you want.
As a matter of fact,
we're even doing black and white versions,
so if you want to color 'em yourself.
So, again, it's a great way
to send a Valentine out to somebody
for a relatively cheap amount and super easy.
So again, link in the description.
Go ahead and make someone your Valentine.
The work continues on.
We're actually gonna do a makeover on Geoffrey's cage.
You can see it's a really cool rocky-type cage.
Love this enclosure,
but the fact is, is there's no foliage whatsoever.
So Jessica picked out a bunch of foliage over here,
and she's gonna work on this,
make this look absolutely beautiful for my boy, Geoffrey.
(funky music)
All right, time to put Geoffrey back in his new enclosure,
which looks absolutely amazing, by the way.
Again, just little pops of green, on the ledges over here.
I mean, it feels like it's something you would actually see
if you came across this in the wild.
And that's what Jessica has been doing a great job
of just using her creativity, making the place look better.
And again, because of his color,
and that kinda neutral tones over here,
didn't make him pop as much.
Now we have this green, and the yellow of his color,
and the peach in this,
and this just all makes it all come together,
makes this whole thing pop.
Habitat looks so much nicer, obviously,
but I think also, he looks better as an animal,
and I think he's gonna enjoy it,
and get a little bit of enrichment from it too.
That's one of the things we might do from time to time
is actually switch cages up,
so that we can actually get that enrichment.
He's gonna go around and sniff all these plants,
and he's gonna really kinda have his mind working, right?
So, Jessica did a great job and I couldn't be more happy.
You guys know that we feed mainly frozen thawed
here at the Reptarium and over at BHP,
and we take our feeders very, very seriously.
We want to make sure we're dealing with a company
that only keeps very nutritious rodents,
but also humanely treats them, right?
And I can't say enough about Cold Blooded Cafe.
Cold Blooded Cafe has some of the highest-quality rodents
I've ever seen.
They're very cleanly packed, very organized.
The sizes are exactly what you're supposed to get.
And they're delivered to you in a flash
in an unbelievable way.
I couldn't suggest more dealing with a company
like Cold Blooded Cafe for all of your rodent needs
when it comes to reptiles.
And honestly, guys, I've been dealing with them
for a long time.
So I'm gonna put a link in the description
to all their stuff, if you want to get some frozen rodents,
and it's a lot cheaper than getting them from the pet shop,
definitely go give them some love because they're great.
They've been taking care of us for years,
and I really do think you guys will love it.
I love all the improvements that we're doing, again.
I definitely have to work on the anaconda cage
here pretty quick because we did some foliage in there,
and then they just destroyed it.
So we have to learn how to do foliage in here
where it works, and it still pops.
So that's gonna be on the list too.
And that's the whole thing, right?
It's easy to get complacent when things are looking good.
You look around and you're like,
"Oh, this looks great, that looks great."
And you kinda, you just kinda settle for it.
But you always want to continue to improve.
Take for instance, Matilda's enclosure here.
Obviously, for a year and a half, we had a wall.
It worked. We had to step over the wall.
We had to lift her up, stuff like that.
And then we tried to build a new door.
The door failed miserably.
(chuckling) And then I actually had to get some friends
to come out and help me build.
But now, Matilda can come out, and it's absolutely amazing.
So those little improvements that at the time,
I was even kinda like, "Should I even do it?"
But now that I've done it,
it's made such a world of difference.
And that's kinda the way I feel about all of the Reptarium.
It's just to continue to improve.
Even if something looks decent, we can make it look better.
Not only will that be better
for us and the visual of the place,
but also better for the animal.
And that means a lot to me.
And I take so much pride in this place.
And so we have to continue to improve everything, right?
The care of the animals, the husbandry,
the enrichment, the experience level,
the way it looks, everything like that,
because if you stay complacent,
then you never really reach a better place, right?
And speaking of a better place,
I'm down in the dungeon, obviously, at BHB,
and RJ is just hanging out over here.
Hi RJ. What's going on, buddy?
Better place is this.
I tell you what, there's not a day that goes by
that I don't dream about what this place is gonna look like
here in another six months, eight months,
whenever we do the expansion, obviously.
This will be gone. RJ will definitely be down here.
He might even be in the same spot,
but there's gonna be different stuff.
I've talked about the fact that this is about 12 foot long
and about eight or nine foot wide over here.
Oh, RJ, you almost fell down, buddy.
You okay, you need a hand? You need a hand?
Come on, bud. Up you go.
There you go. There you go, baby boy.
And of course, he's gonna have an area
where he can kinda climb up a natural slope,
where we can hopefully get him
to where people can throw food into his mouth.
So, RJ will be down here, but then all along this area,
I've talked about, these will be aquatic.
And there's so many things going through my mind,
like how tall should it be?
How, should it be glass? Should it be rock-looking?
All these things.
And again, what I talked about is having a place for RJ,
having a place for Salt and Pepper,
probably a big snake, like an anaconda-type exhibit.
Not Ivy, but maybe another one
that we can potentially get in and swim with.
And then lastly, a stingray exhibit,
where you could swim with stingrays, feed stingrays,
pet stingrays, stuff like that.
Not to mention, over on this side,
we want to do a bunch of touch tanks and stuff like this.
So, a lot down here is gonna be aquatic.
Again, all this row is gonna be aquatic.
Over here, we're gonna have some touch tanks
with, again, starfish, urchins,
the little cleaning lobsters, stuff like that,
as well as maybe just a whole bunch of other things.
The point is, is that, yeah, I could sit back
and just kinda enjoy the Reptarium 1.0, 2.0,
but I think that 3.0 is gonna be kinda the crown jewel
of the Reptarium, if you know what I mean.
Because we'll have down here,
which unfortunately, a lot is going on in my head, right?
Listen, the ceiling's only seven foot tall.
I really can't do it with a seven-foot-tall ceiling
because you're not gonna put all that money and energy
and then have it kinda feel cramped.
So I have to break out this floor.
This floor has to come out.
It has to go two, maybe even three feet down,
so we have a nine, maybe even 10-foot ceiling in here,
so that it feels like an expansive place.
We've gotta put two stairways in
so you have an egress on both sides of the place.
There's a lot to think of,
but the fact is, is I could sit back and just kinda say,
"Hey, listen, let's just enjoy life the way it is."
And don't get me wrong, I want to do that,
but I just feel like, once we get done with Reptarium 3.0,
downstairs and upstairs,
with a bunch of new animals upstairs,
it's gonna be pretty phenomenal.
And that's where I feel like I'm gonna feel
at least like I'm a little bit more in my comfort zone,
where I've achieved the end goal
of what I wanted to achieve.
That doesn't mean we're not gonna continue to improve.
It just means that I will have achieved
what I wanted to when I set out.
And then, who knows, maybe we end up going up after that.
I don't know, but right now, I can only think about 3.0.
But, again, always better yourself. That's what's important.
You guys remembered how we kinda moved things around here,
again, just little improvements.
Definitely really cool
now that we've been open a couple days,
where kids can see the frogs,
and can see the scaleless corn, Midnight,
all that type stuff.
Not to mention, we have Karma over here,
we have Fruit Loop here,
and then we just moved this guy over here.
This is actually a Nosy Valiha,
which is a little bit of a different locality.
Has some blue, but has more red than, say the Nosy Be.
So, now we have kind of a rainbow effect here of chameleons.
We have the female Nosy Be up here.
We have these guys here. So it's kinda cool.
Again, it just makes this kinda corner kinda pop with color.
Just tons of color, tons of cool chameleons.
And again, because now we have
four panther chameleons in a row,
we can kinda rotate out who holds them,
because we typically take the panther chameleons out
when people want to hold 'em.
So, that way it's not all on Karma,
or all on Karma and Fruit Loop.
Now we have two other ones we can do too.
So, again, I'm really happy
with the improvements we've been making.
We still have a long way to go,
but still, I think it's actually turning out really well.
And it kinda gives you a sense of accomplishment.
And again, I love the fact
that we can continue to move forward
and kinda continue to do things.
I hope that it inspires you guys
to get out of your rut if you're in it, and do something,
because little progress can add, because little bits of,
because little bits of progress adds up to big progress.
And, again, we're making big progress here.
And we have a lot more to come.
It's gonna be an exciting year. I can assure you of that.
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