- Hey good morning everybody, and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is incredible.
There has been so many kind of,
iconic things that have been happening lately,
obviously with the expansion of the Reptarium,
Salt and Pepper, this is the day, guys,
I've been excited about this since we started,
really since I started kinda coming up with the idea
for the enclosure, building it out,
seeing how it ended up going, and guess what?
Today is that day, we are going to take Salt and Pepper
and they are about to go into here,
that's right, their new enclosure.
Of course the water will clear up,
it's going through a bacterial bloom.
It takes, you know, a good month or six weeks
before these things really start to look really good.
But I'm gonna get this cage kinda ready to go,
clean it up just a little tiny bit,
put Salt and Pepper in here,
see how they react, how they're gonna be here.
Remember Salt and Pepper really did live together
just til a few months ago, so,
they've been roommates for a long, long time.
But now they have a huge enclosure,
it's gonna be absolutely incredible.
Then we can start working with them on training
on a different level, I'm so excited.
What do you say we just go ahead and do that,
then I'll show you what we're gonna do with
Salt and Pepper's enclosures over at the old Reptarium.
Think what we're gonna do is actually move Pepper first
because Pepper's just a little bit more sketchy,
you know, obviously I think Salt'll do completely fine,
I think it's gonna take a little bit
of adjustment for Pepper,
so I figure I'll get him in there first,
just so that I'm not spooking Salt
when I put her in in a little bit.
And again, you can see, she's a monster, come on girl.
It's okay, sweetheart.
Look at how gorgeous that animal is, though.
I mean, it is beautiful,
I cannot wait to see it in a new environment,
and just see how they're gonna be able to grow.
Again, they'll be able to stay in here
for a couple years, you know?
And then, obviously, they might outgrow that,
we'll have to go, but like I've been mentioning before,
you know, this is Reptarium 2.0,
there is gonna be a Reptarium 3.0 coming up pretty soon,
so I'm trying to think what we're gonna do.
Let's go ahead and whoo, it's okay, Pepper,
calm girl, calm girl, oh, she's got some claws on her,
I can tell you that much.
It's okay girl, you're all right, whoa whoa whoa!
Relax, relax.
Gonna go ahead and open this, oh whoa whoa who.
Pepper, Pepper, I think I'm gonna put them on land
and let them decide where they wanna go,
if they wanna go in the water or not.
There you go Pepper, there you go.
Oh my gosh, is that insane or what?
Just take a look at that.
Oh my gosh, that is dope.
I mean, that is so incredible.
I'm gonna let her just stay right there if she wants to,
she'll go in the water when she's ready, I'm sure of it.
You know, it's interesting, I think that Pepper will spend
probably more time in the water,
'cause she doesn't get out of water very often,
whereas Salt spends a lot of time on land
even in the enclosure we have it in now, so,
it'll be interesting to see their temperament.
Again, basking area is back here,
so pretty much where Pepper is, all the way to the back,
and then the cooler side's over here.
So they can make the decision if they
wanna get out and bask, which I'm sure they're gonna do,
but that is incredible, guys, I mean that is,
it's beyond my wildest expectations, that is dope.
(bass techno music)
Guys, that was so cool,
I mean seeing Pepper in that enclosure is so insane,
and I cannot wait til Salty gets in there.
I mean, I don't know guys,
you know that I say this all the time,
but there's just, this makes me so happy,
I mean it's so unbelievable to see animals
that I love so much getting into habitats that I know
they're gonna be so happy in, and they're gonna explode.
I've seen it so many times when you put an animal
into an environment that stimulates them mentally,
how they kinda change, they become almost like a new animal,
and it's so cool to kinda continuously see it.
We saw it with the Reptarium when we opened next door,
now we're seeing it here, and it's so cool.
I mean just like Ivy, how Ivy is acting now,
I'm sure Salt and Pepper are gonna be so different
now in their new enclosure than they were
in the smaller enclosures and I can't wait
to see how they're gonna look.
Pepper is hanging out right on the basking spot,
right where I should go.
I don't know if I should put Salt in the water,
let's go ahead and put Salt on the land too,
just like we did here, we'll let her make the decision
of what she wants to do.
As a matter of fact, I think I'm gonna put her right up here
with Pepper, there you go girl.
Oh my gosh, look at these two together.
I mean, it's crazy how white Salt looks.
I mean, it almost looks leucistic, it is white,
and then, guys, they look bigger in this enclosure.
I thought they would look tiny in this closure,
but they look huge, and literally,
Salt right now, doesn't even look real.
I mean, it looks like a plastic alligator.
It is unbelievable, and again,
I know Salt is gonna love hanging out on the land,
I'm gonna just take some time guys,
enjoy this, watch them for a while,
I'm gonna be back at this enclosure
probably 100 times today just kinda marveling at it,
but there it is guys, Salt and Pepper,
their new habitat, I'm sure there'll be a few adjustments
here and there, but for the most part,
I just wanna see how happy
they're gonna be and what we're gonna do.
And then we have to start figuring out,
we've got two entrances, here and there.
For feeding we'll probably bring them up here,
but maybe we'll bring them onto land,
I'm not really sure how, I think we might do that.
Maybe we'll get them onto land to station in order to feed.
Hard to say, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do yet,
lots to think about, but, wow.
They look unbelievably stunning in here, ridiculous.
(synth techno music)
I'm pretty excited about this, guys, look at this.
It's the first birthday party
here at the Reptarium expansion.
We just decided hey, you know,
we have actually two birthday parties today,
why not put the room to use and let it kinda happen?
It's interesting, I'm not really sure how it's gonna go,
but I know it's pretty cool that we don't have to
pull these chairs and tables up
and set them up and tear them down.
They're in here forever, so it's gonna be cool.
The kids should be arriving any minute,
and we'll just have to see how it goes.
I think it's gonna be pretty awesome.
(bass techno music)
You wanna grab a big one now?
(kids cheering)
(bass techno music)
Elvis, what are you doing, man?
Literally, I let this guy out for a minute
and as soon as I put Salt over there
he decided he was gonna take Salt's cage.
- I can't even believe that, that's crazy.
- That's how smart he is.
- I'm gonna hold a snake Todd, gonna hold it.
- [Brian] I will be right here with you, okay?
I'll keep the head away, and we're gonna go just like that.
- I'm amazed.
- [ Brian] See, it's cool right?
You did so good!
- Very cool.
- That's awesome, way to go.
Super cool, right? - I'm in shock.
Thank you! - Well I am so proud of you.
Anyone else? - Thank you.
(synth techno music)
(bass techno music)
I tell you, that was super cool, it was a lot of fun.
It's so interesting how the whole flow is different
when you got the whole extra space, right?
And we don't even have all the animals in yet,
so when we have all the animals in here too
it's gonna be pretty awesome, but that was fun,
I mean, the first real kind of tour of the place,
a birthday party with the place, and it was a blast.
Got a bucket of cool things going in.
Obviously now that Salt and Pepper are free,
what we're gonna do is take the little alligators
that we've been training up,
and we're gonna put them in Salt's enclosure.
Obviously these will eventually go into the big enclosure
when the big ones go back,
I know I keep saying I'm gonna send them back,
I just fall in love with them,
it's so hard for me to pack them up and send them back.
We'll probably keep these guys out here for a few weeks,
then they'll go over here.
Two headed turtles are gonna come in here,
we've got some other ideas,
so let's just go ahead, release these little buggers,
and I cannot believe how big they're getting,
I mean look at how cute they are.
Go ahead guys (laughs)
it's gonna be so cute to see these guys.
So now, people when they come in,
they can hold the smaller ones,
they can also feed these ones as well as the bigger ones,
because you know sometimes for kids
the bigger ones get a little intimidating,
'cause they're so crazy, so now we've got a different size
for them, and I think that's really, really cool.
I mean take a look at this.
Like I said, it's amazing how big they've been getting,
oh look at how cute they look curling around.
They get up on a basking spot now.
This is awesome, man, this is so awesome, so cool.
So just a little bit of a change up,
again, a lot of things, some things going next door,
some things coming back over here,
things getting moved around, I love this.
This is super cool, as a matter of fact,
I wouldn't mind having two enclosures with alligators now,
but, all right, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Fact is, they need to go over to the other cage,
and these ones need go back to Gatorland soon.
But these look absolutely adorable in here.
(bass techno music)
So these guys have settled in for the last several hours,
seems like they finally have gotten it.
Salt's been hanging out on top here,
she's been in the water a couple of times.
Pepper seems to love it in the water.
She's come out a couple times,
but for the most part she's spending
time in the water, which is cool.
So now I can really start working on it.
The thing that was cool is a couple of times
I've been able to take Salt out today,
just to see how she would react,
very calm, I mean, doesn't seem to be excited,
when I open the door to go to grab her she doesn't run away,
when I put her down she doesn't run away,
so that's really good.
Now I can start working on some training with Pepper here
in the next few days once they get settled in,
about like, coming here and staging,
maybe getting up on the land and staging,
doing a bunch of really cool things.
So although Pepper isn't a handling animal, per se,
we can still have a lot of fun
with the training side of things.
So these guys look amazing in this enclosure,
it is beyond my wildest dreams.
So this was definitely a huge, huge win.
So obviously I'm trying to figure out
how to build the stand for the seat, you know,
for the bench for the fish spas here.
A lot of challenges because you've got, you know,
hoses and tubes, so I can't just like,
build something and drop it in place,
so I'm going to have to build around
and figure out how to do it,
and also have enough support that, you know,
when there's two decent sized people,
we're not gonna have it fall in, you know?
So definitely some challenges,
but I'm working it out in my mind right now.
(techno music)
(bass techno music)
(drill whirring)
(bass techno music)
(saw buzzing)
(nail gun firing)
(bass techno music)
Lot of customization to get this thing to work.
I hope it's gonna work out, 'cause it's insane.
(synth music)
So this was a bear, I'm not gonna lie to you,
but this is basically what it's gonna look like.
Obviously there will be a cushion,
we're gonna, you know, finish it out,
and rock it out and stuff like that,
there will be a little back cushion here for to sit on,
but what do you think, Lori, it's not bad, right?
- It's coming together, it's coming together.
I'm excited to get the pieces and actually upholster them.
'Cause I think that's gonna look really cool.
- So one step closer, fish come in in just like three days.
Guys I couldn't be more excited about this
Bell's Lace monitor, I mean it's so curious,
and so absolutely beautiful, it's always on the go.
I'm gonna see if I can get it to take a little bit
of meat off of my forceps here.
Hey bud, you want some food,
oh look at it get a big yawn.
It's so crazy, hey you want some food?
You want some food?
I mean look at how beautiful that animal is right there.
So curious.
I don't know if it wants to eat, though.
It's okay (laughs)
it's so wild, I mean, it actually took food off of forceps
for Jessica the other day,
and it might just be a little bit full
to be totally honest with you.
But it's so curious, right?
It's not afraid, it literally comes over to investigate
like, what is this?
And that's what makes these guys so amazing, I mean,
again, I love water monitors, I love Nile monitors,
you know obviously we're gonna be working
with the croc monitors which is
a completely different animal as well,
but these Lace monitors, they are next level crazy.
I mean just look at this animal, so interested,
and investigating what the deal is.
I mean, I don't know,
I've never seen anything quite like it before.
And I think there is a cricket in there
that it's kind of, really interested in.
Let's see if I can get him to climb up on me.
Come on bud, it's okay, you wanna climb up?
Wanna climb up?
It's all right.
And again, little threads, you know, we don't wanna push it,
so if it doesn't wanna come over,
backing off is exactly what you should do, right?
If you were to push it on it,
it would have a negative experience.
This way it knows, I tried to go close to it,
it kinda backed away, now the next time,
maybe I'll be able to touch it, so on like that.
It's a really docile animal,
I could go in there and just grab her right now,
but again, I'm trying to build a bond,
you know, a relationship, and so I'm gonna take it slow.
It might take us a week or two
before we start taking this out all the time,
but just take a look at this thing, man, ridiculous.
It's like a puppy, it's like just investigating,
it's just like investigating, like what's this smell?
Who's this person?
I'm so happy, I mean, this is a dream come true.
Look at it.
And these baby gators in this enclosure
are so absolutely adorable, I love them.
You guys know I do have to just muster it up
and get these guys back to Gatorland,
they're getting too big back there.
These need to go into that enclosure.
But I love it, now I'm thinking,
"Maybe I should get a bunch more gators for here".
But regardless, a good day, a good day moving things around,
worked out really well, so that was awesome.
I hoped that you enjoyed it,
thank you as always for joining me,
you guys mean the world to me.
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Have a wonderful day, remember to be kind to someone,
and I promise, I'll see you guys tomorrow.