(techno music)
- Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
You know, it is incredible to be able to be around
such majestic animals like Bowser,
the alligator snapping turtle.
The fish seem to be doing fine in here.
And by the way, I hope the start of your day
is as good as it possibly can be.
We've got a lot of work to do today,
which is always good for me.
Keeping my mind kinda occupied on things is amazing.
Ben and Jerry are doing absolutely incredible.
We actually feed them tomorrow.
Obviously, we fed a bunch o' stuff yesterday,
so things are movin' along here.
I'd love for you guys to push your problems aside
for the next 15 minutes or so,
and just let's have a good time together.
My girl, Perdida, is saying hi.
So what do you say we just jump into this crazy day of work?
(upbeat music)
So take a look, guys.
It looks like Ivy is under the water,
and she's starting to break the shed on her head.
And it's really interesting what she's doing.
She's kinda rubbing her head on the rock
like you would expect when you're out of the water,
but then she's going and submerging herself.
I've never seen anything like this,
it's just really bizarre.
I'm assuming this is how anacondas would shed in the wild,
but this is just really cool to see.
And now the question is, will she shed 100% this way,
or will she eventually crawl onto land to shed?
That is yet to be determined.
Looks like today is the day of sheds.
My girl, Daisy, of course shed out.
She kinda shed all over her cage.
It doesn't look to me like she has much stuck shed,
maybe any stuck shed on her.
Maybe just a couple little pieces.
But obviously, I had to do some maintenance.
She has a little poop over here.
I gotta clean this cage up.
So what I think I'm gonna do
is rather than putting her in soak today,
I might just take her out, let her kinda crawl around
while I'm cleaning her cage.
Let her get a little exercise and stuff like that.
So let's go ahead get her out and we'll clean this cage up.
And she definitely does have a little bit
o' stuck shed on her.
So I'm gonna let her wander around for a little bit,
but I'll also get her in soak today too,
just so that she gets looking good
'cause she's definitely got some shed on her.
So okay girl, you're gonna get some exercise,
and get a chance to run around a little bit, okay?
There you go.
She is such a beautiful animal.
And after she sheds out, woo dog, yeah, I tell you what,
that is one gorgeous snake right there.
Look at that, oh my gosh, she is so good.
So again, I'm gonna have to put out some rabbits for her.
Lucy's in shed right now, of course, Ivy.
So all right, let's just go ahead and jump in
and get this cage cleaned up.
(upbeat music)
Gave Daisy a little bit o' free time.
Now I'm gonna just give her a little bit of a soak.
I've said this before, she doesn't like the water like Lucy,
so it's usually a little bit of a battle to get her in,
to be honest with ya.
But she has enough skin on her
that I wanna make sure she gets a good soak in right now,
just so that she can get all of this dry skin off,
and stuff like that.
Oh, she's giving me a hard time here.
Come on, little monkey.
She's like, no dad, I'm not gonna go in!
Come on, sweetheart.
There's nothing like a 18 foot piece of muscle
struggling with trying to figure out.
Come on, sweetheart.
Let's go, let's go,
inside, inside, there we go.
(splash)
She's starting to cooperate a little bit more now.
Okay, baby, I know.
I don't know why some retics love water and others don't,
but Daisy is definitely one that doesn't.
So cage all cleaned up.
We'll soak her for maybe a half hour or so,
then we'll let her back in her cage.
This is super cool, guys.
I know everyone always asks me how scaleless snakes shed.
And of course, this is Joker,
the scaleless Texas Rat right here.
And you can kinda see,
I'm just gonna slowly get this out of this cage right here.
Pull this away and then we can actually take a look at it.
And you can see right here.
So obviously, it has the ventral scales right there.
But on this side, you can see these swatches of like,
it just almost looks like skin if you had a sunburn
or something like that.
And then just the remnant scales.
So that is what a scaleless snake's
looks like when it sheds.
And like you see, they really shed perfectly,
just like any other corn snake,
but it definitely looks interesting.
That was super cool to get something like this.
And it's perfect timing because some of the crew
are gonna get together and make some jewelry tonight
with snake shed so couldn't be a better time
to get maybe a scaleless snake shed in a piece of jewelry.
How cool is that?
Literally see an entire head piece is loose now on Ivy.
So bizarre.
Again, I'm not sure what she's doing.
Just the last couple hours, she's just been sitting there
kinda working on her head.
Now that she has that off,
I wonder if she'll start working rest of her body.
I don't know what's gonna happen but it's pretty awesome.
I've never seen anything quite like it.
(techno music)
(slide whistle)
Aba Suki was jus' doin' a little soak right now,
we try to give our animals a little bit o' soak time,
at least once a week, if not more often.
They seem to really love the water, right Bruce?
- Oh yeah, especially her too,
'cause she honestly just sits in her bowl all day long,
so this is a big part of how I actually even got connected
with her, was like, she started havin' a ball
at a bad shed, so I had no choice
but to pull her out, and soak her,
and it was a big part of why we, you and I,
started workin' with her and doin' more stuff.
- Yeah, lookit, she's just absolutely loving it,
which is interesting 'cause not all monitors,
are, like, water monitors, they aren't known
for spending a ton o' time in the water,
but Aba Suki definitely seems to love it,
and she looks pretty amazing for sure.
You guys certainly don't know this,
but a week ago today, Lori lost her phone.
We were here, we did the podcast,
and then she called from her office down the street
to order some food, and then when we got home,
she thought, oh I just left my phone at the office,
and she lost it.
We couldn't find it, we tore the house apart,
we tore the building apart, couldn't find it.
And I told her, she's gonna find that phone eventually,
ended up just getting a new phone yesterday.
So she didn't have a phone for a week.
I hear she may have just found it.
Lori?
(door slamming)
(laughter)
Lori?
- Hey.
Guess I'm not losing--
- So I told you you would--
where was it at?
- You're not gonna believe it.
- Where was it?
- So I took Phoebe for a walk,
and when I took the pouch that I use,
with the treats and the dog poop bags,
listen, no, I didn't even mentally realize what I was doing,
I took it off, and I put it down,
I turned around and I was talking to Beth,
and I look down, and my phone was in my hand.
So--
- So it was in the bag.
- It was in, there's a pocket that I put--
But wait a second, what, I didn't walk Phoebe
that night, so--
- But you did have a couple glasses of wine, so maybe--
(laughs)
- So I don't know, that's what she said,
maybe I tucked it in there thinking it was my purse,
I have no idea, but yeah.
- So now we have a phone, so that's awesome.
- It is awesome, but I hope I find my ring too.
- Oh yeah.
She also lost her wedding ring, so fingers crossed
that shows up.
Oh my.
(whoosh)
(techno music)
It finally happened!
My girl Ivy shed!
Oh my god, she looks so absolutely incredible,
and what's cool is, again, we have time lapse looking,
and look at this, right over here.
So remember how I was saying is she gonna shed in the water,
or is she gonna shed on land?
The thing that's interesting is she kinda did both.
She literally seemed to be going back and forth,
and rubbing on the rocks underwater
to get her shed going, but then she ended up shedding
on land, now the interesting thing is that the tail
is way back over here, and of course the head
is way down here, and it looks like literally,
one amazing piece of shed right here.
I'm just gonna continue to kinda pull this out.
Wow, this is insane.
So literally what happened,
when she was running through the water,
back and forth, definitely rubbing on that,
getting the shed started, getting the shed off,
and this is amazing!
And then she must've somehow crawled up here,
started to actually peel off, and then crawled back
into the water over here,
and that is one incredible shed right there.
Looks like basically one big piece.
Just the entire process was absolutely amazing.
I was so unsure what she was gonna do,
and it was wild, again, she was actually using this piece
right here, under water, and going back and actually using
that to kind of push the shed, push the shed,
push the shed, and then ultimately at some point,
we didn't get it on time, but she actually crawled out,
crawled over here, crawled all the way over here,
crawled out of her shed this way,
and then ultimately back into the water over there.
That was absolutely incredible.
I wish we would've had time laps on the whole cage.
Maybe next time I'll do it, but nevertheless,
that's the way, I guess, anacondas would shed in the wild,
because this is kind of a simulation of that.
Oh and by the way, she did leave me a little present.
Often times, when snakes shed, it's not uncommon,
because they're moving so much, they poop.
So I'm gonna have to get in the water
to actually clear this out.
But how awesome is that?
Ivy looks absolutely incredible.
- Actually I think that you had it backwards.
Because the headpiece of the shed was in the water,
I think she started climbing out of the water,
because think about it, it peels off backwards, right?
- You're 100%, it peels off backwards.
Lori is right!
She must've started to climb out here,
'cause her head's gonna be here.
And then when she leaves, her tail's gonna be there.
You're right Lori, I think you're 100%.
I was completely opposite.
They don't shed tail first, they shed head first.
So yeah, she must've, y'know, broke her shed over here,
came up here, started to climb out,
and that's how she was able to get out,
she got over there, and then back in the water,
so I stand corrected.
(whoosh)
And I'm definitely gonna kinda lay this shed out,
because this is really cool, I mean,
that is a long shed right there.
So I'll lay it out on the ground,
the back part's already dry, but I'm just gonna
try to lay this front part out the best I can,
just so that we'll have a really good shed in the future.
And you can kinda see how these sheds are,
and remember, I've taught you guys before
about the fact that you don't measure your sheds, okay?
Because the sheds are longer than the actual snake,
usually by about thirty percent or so.
So obviously this shed is probably
fifteen, sixteen foot long.
Doesn't mean that Ivy is fifteen, sixteen foot long.
She's probably about eleven to twelve foot.
But the shed, of course, will stretch out.
It's elastic a little bit, not to mention the fact
that it's sat this way means it's gonna go more that way.
So regardless, I'm just gonna lay this out,
let this dry out, this should be pretty cool
to just have around out, we'll use it
at some point for somethin'.
(whoosh)
'Course the only way to go get that poop
is to actually go in the cage itself,
and get in the water with Ivy.
And I'm gonna try my best not to make a mess.
Last time I kinda stirred up a lotta stuff,
and you can see the water is definitely clearing up
in here, and it's actually very warm.
So I don't have to worry about that.
So I'm gonna just try to really gently
get in here, get the poop without making a big mess,
and let the filtration do the rest.
(whoosh)
(techno music)
You can see Ivy right here is actually pokin' her head up,
she's wondering what's goin' on,
she's like what're you doin' in here dad?
(laughs)
So she's definitely kinda fun.
There's just a little sediment down here,
I dunno if I can get it or not,
but I'm gonna just kinda scoop a little bit.
So that looks good.
Looks like we got stuff out,
Ivy is doing amazing, we'll thaw some food out
for her to maybe feed tomorrow.
All-in-all it went very well.
I'm super excited, that was a cool experience.
Now we know what Ivy does.
And like I said, that's probably a pretty good indication
of how they do it in the wild as well.
They probably stay in the water,
rub up against the bottom o' the rocks,
or whatever the case is, and then ultimately maybe
climb onto the banks of the Amazon,
when they're actually gonna shed out.
So, or whatever body o' water they're actually in.
So all right, also it is pretty nice in here,
I'm not gonna lie to you guys, but I'm gonna get out
and get back to work.
(whoosh)
Just wrapping up a virtual tour
with an awesome family from Scotland.
How are you guys doin'?
- [All] Hi!
- It's awesome.
It's so good, thank you for joining me,
and I hope you guys had a good time.
Did you?
- Thank you so much!
- All right, you guys come see me soon, all right?
(whoosh)
Daisy looks incredible.
Just gave her a quick half hour, forty-five-minute soak,
and oh my gosh, this is a beautiful snake.
And I've said it before, that the lavender albino retics
when they first came around, it blew everyone's mind,
Bob Clark imported a male, I've told this story before,
he came in with a broken back,
didn't even know if it could breed, he ended up
getting it to breed, and the rest is history.
But this was a game changer when it came.
The colors, particularly with reticulated pythons,
unbelievable, and I'm still in awe, all these years later.
(whoosh)
(techno music)
All right, they came up with some really good stuff here,
you can see that Snowflake, Bella, Snaz, Sunrise,
a bunch o' really cool stuff.
So Lori, eventually are these gonna be on the website,
or are they just--
- That's so close to my face.
Yes, so we've got different things
to be bracelets, necklaces, and such.
But you have to be patient, because good things take time.
(laughs)
- All right, well they look good.
You guys did an awesome job.
That's right, my girl Ivy definitely looks amazing.
Let me know in the comments how you feel about that.
I thought it was really cool.
As a matter o' fact, right over here,
you can see the video when I got Ivy
if you wanna take a look at that,
and then maybe roll through a playlist if ya don't mind.
You can also check out my podcast called Checking In.
You can subscribe to that right over here.
We do at least a couple times a week.
Join us live, it's a lot o' fun.
Subscribe to the podcast channel over on this side.
Turn the post notifications on if you don't mind,
have a wonderful day, or the best you possibly can,
stay positive, be kind to people,
and I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.