(water flowing) (yawning)
- Wake up.
Wake up.
Hey, wake up.
(upbeat music begins)
How about a little change of the guard.
So this is actually the new rig
that we'll be using to actually film the vlog.
This is my old rig here.
To give you an idea, this is what it used to look like
and now this is what it looks like now.
It's a little bit wider.
Jake is actually into Sony.
This is A73, and I was always a Canon guy.
So this is the old Canon right here,
but the truth is it wasn't quite as wide.
Much, much heavier.
Now the color profiles also will fix
with not only my camera but his camera, Noah's camera,
everyone's camera, which are now Sony.
Feels a little bit sad to be letting Canon go,
and we'll still use it on some shots but this is a new rig.
I can tell you one thing, it's a lot lighter
and I definitely like the wider shot.
Let me know what you guys think.
I think we're gonna get some banging stuff
with this added to the vlog.
So it is gonna be cool to see this kind of perspective,
walking down the aisles, totally different.
I can get a little closer if you guys want,
or I can say a little further away.
It's gonna be absolutely epic.
Oh my gosh!
Take a look at that shot with the racks in the back.
Definitely loving it.
And you guys may not know this,
but one of the things about daily vlogging
is you beat your camera's up a lot.
I typically go through one to three cameras per year,
just because they got beat up, they get dropped.
So what the truth is is that Canon ESR
actually lasted me for over a year.
So it was due, was starting to get beat up,
starting to give us a little problems,
and Jake convinced me to switch over to the Sony,
and so far I'm absolutely loving it.
Let me know what you guys think.
I really don't spend enough time looking at the snakes here,
at BHB on the vlog when it comes to babies.
A lot of times I'm showing our raise ups
or our breeders and stuff,
but the truth is we have some smoking babies.
This particular animal,
is actually a Scaleless Tessera Sarah Corn Snake.
I mean, look at the color and pattern on that animal,
absolute rippers.
And these are all animals that are up on the website,
which is pretty darn awesome, I mean, that is cool.
And again, all the scaleless stuff we produced this year
was ridiculous,
but now that's just giving a little bit of size to them,
wow, they're looking amazing.
And you guys may have remembered that tiger scale
is stuff that we're producing.
This is actually an anerythristic
tiger scaleless corn snake.
So it's got all three mutations in it.
And man, I tell you what, I love the anery scaleless stuff.
And then that tiger stuff,
it really looks better probably in normals,
to be honest with you.
'Cause it looks more like a Siberian tiger,
or something like that, but it still passes on
and makes an interesting pattern in the anery.
Wow, I tell you what, like I said,
there's a big difference between a baby corn snake,
and one that's now had 12, 15 meals
and getting a little bit more size.
I mean the colors just start popping like crazy.
What do we have at the end of this aisle?
There's a dinosaur.
Okay, I won't mess with you.
It's okay.
I always feel so bad when that happens.
I want him to walk up to him and let him stay up here.
You know how hard he worked with me,
he doesn't have an arm, he works so hard to get up on here
and he loves hanging out up here.
Sorry RJ, I love you to death.
Now he's coming over to be mad at me.
I'm sorry bud, are you okay?
He's such an awesome animal.
I tell you what, I keep saying this, but man,
when he gets over to the rep terrarium,
like people can actually interact with this thing,
it's just mind numbing how awesome he is.
How's my buddy Grits doing?
Oh my gosh, this white throat monitor
is absolutely incredible.
And I talked about earlier,
that we want to make the vlog more genuine,
we wanna make it fun too.
I want to definitely keep it a positive thing
because that's what we do.
And that's how I feel about life.
But at the same time,
be more genuine with you guys about things
and have fun with the family and all that type of stuff.
Continue to reiterate, it's gonna be a hell of a vlog.
I'm an animal guy.
And that's one of the things
that I haven't talked about much lately.
I know I get messages from you guys,
so many people are dealing with anxiety, depression,
during this crazy time in life that we're in.
And it's totally understandable.
And you guys know that I've certainly have dealt with it.
And these animals have helped me through it so much.
Look at Chunky Monkey, what an absolutely adorable face.
And when I get messages from you guys that tell me,
"Brian, I start my day out with you.
And it helps me get out of bed," and stuff like that.
it means so much to me, I mean, it really does.
And I wanted to talk a little bit
about how I got out of bed.
I mean, again, I'm doing so much better.
Most days, my anxiety is really, really good,
but that hasn't come easy.
That's been a lot of work, a lot of therapy.
And as a matter of fact, my therapist, one time, told me
that most of her patients that she deals with,
literally that have any kind of anxiety like I had,
could barely function.
And yet I still woke up every day.
I vlogged every day.
I continued to grow our businesses.
I added new adventures.
And it's not like I'm some super hero
by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm just a normal guy, just like every one of you guys.
The only difference was is that,
I'm doing something that I'm super passionate about.
And that passion made me get out of bed every single day.
Just like every day for the next several months,
I'm gonna be down here, switching males into females cages.
But it's so exciting because as we're switching males,
we're obviously checking other females that are being bred.
And today was a good day of breeding.
We have about 12 or 15 males locked up,
a few males that had never bred before,
actually are breeding today,
which is really great, 'cause once they start breeding,
then they're on to go.
That's those young males that I always am like,
please breed for me.
And thankfully we have three or four new males
for the first time ever breeding.
Now they're off to the races.
So the season has started off really well.
We'll probably do an ultrasound here in the next week or two
and really get a gauge
for how things are starting to progress.
But it looks like it's gonna be a banger of a year.
It's always interesting how Chameleons shed.
When they're in that stage of shed,
they don't last a couple of days.
They look so ratty, right?
They look like, oh man, it's so weird.
I wish they would shed quicker, like a snake,
or sometimes monitors do that too.
But monitors take forever.
Chameleons only happened for a day or two.
They get that shed off, and so I like that.
But there were so many days guys that I woke up
and I didn't want to come to work.
I didn't want to get out of bed.
I just wanted to stick a pillow over my head
and just go back to bed because, so much pain.
The anxiety was so painful.
I knew that staying in bed
wasn't gonna help that anxiety.
It was gonna go the other way.
It was gonna just, you start swimming in it, right?
You start thinking about it.
So the best thing you can really do
is to do things that don't feel comfortable, right?
So if it doesn't feel comfortable to come to work,
go to work, if it doesn't feel comfortable to go to a store,
go to a store.
The more you do it, the more it gets off your mind.
And I always talk about swimming in that emotion.
Try not to swim in the emotion.
If you can keep your mind occupied,
sometimes every now and then you'll forget about it, right?
I was anxious, literally 24/7, every single day,
for over a year.
I mean, terribly bad.
And yet, I would sometimes get to work.
And if I got into the vlog or I got into work with animals
or something like that, for just moments,
it would take my mind off it,
like, oh, wait a second.
I don't feel anxious for a second.
And then my anxiety would come back.
And something like that.
But my point is that, get out of bed, do something,
because if you swim in it,
that's when it's just gonna continue to fester,
and you need to get past it.
Get that nervous system calm back down,
and make yourself feel more normal.
And the only way to do that is to go forward,
not to stay backwards.
It's so important to have purpose.
And that purpose doesn't have to be something astronomical.
I mean, you don't have to be like,
saving the world or making rockets or something like that.
Sometimes the purpose can just be,
taking care of your pets, maybe your pet snakes,
your pet reptiles, or even your pet dog
or something like that.
Or whatever the case is.
I'm fortunate that my purpose is two-fold.
Number one, it certainly is taking care of animals, right?
And it's also you guys,
you guys give me purpose every day,
to come here and do my work and share my life.
And so there's a reason.
On those dark days, when I didn't want to do anything,
it was really inspirational to know
that you guys were relying on me.
All those messages of people saying,
"I start my day with you, Brian.
I don't know what I would do without you,"
type of thing, that got me out of bed.
Thank you guys for that.
But I want to do the same thing for you guys.
Again, I'm not gonna continue to reiterate
and talk about this all the time, but on occasion,
I want to take you guys on the genuine story
of what's happening.
Like I said, most days I'm doing much, much better.
I'll be honest with you.
But I still have times, I mean, about a month ago,
I had about a week, week and a half period
where I thought I was sliding back really bad.
I was like, oh my goodness, I am not feeling good at all.
And I was anxious every single day, all day, every day.
And I was really scared because I had made so much progress.
And all of a sudden I did this regression.
And regression's okay, everyone has regression.
And like I said, thankfully, I'm on the other side.
And things have been going really well
as far as my anxiety lately.
But I want to continue to encourage you guys.
So enough about that.
I just wanted to get that off my mind,
because again, I want to be genuine this year.
It's one of my resolutions to you guys.
So I hope you don't mind.
And it's pretty amazing that we're gonna look
at some pretty cool animals this year, too.
Like Neal. Holy moly.
Is she getting incredible?
Look at Chopsticks and Willy, all weird.
And they're getting so big.
Remember when we got Chopstick, it was like this big,
now it's getting so big, It's almost like an adult turtle.
And I love the little caramel snow too.
He's absolutely cool.
Voldemort is an awesome little turtle too.
Like I've been mentioning,
I can't wait until we do the expansion
and be able to do more turtle stuff.
I'd become a turtle maniac.
I wanna have at least three, four, five,
different enclosures that are dedicated
just at different types of turtles.
Maybe even more than that, to be honest with you.
But I just had to show up with Chopsticks
because I just love the way it's sitting right now.
It looks so awesome.
Look at how good Bugatti, the Boelen's Python is looking.
I love it when it's just perched
on the whole branch like that, looks absolutely amazing.
What's up you little monkey?
You okay?
Oh my God, that thing is so cool.
Again, the iridescence shining down and stuff like that.
It's always amazing.
There's never a day that I don't walk around
the rep terrarium, or BHB for that matter.
But the rep terrarium,
obviously the animals are easier to see and stuff like that.
And just in amazement about how incredibly beautiful
mother nature is.
Like I had talked about earlier, about being genuine
about the anxiety and everything else.
I also told you that one of the other things we're gonna do
is start doing some more family adventure.
So the family's actually gearing up and headed out
to the west side of Michigan, where my daughter lives.
And I hear they have like 14 inches of snow.
So who knows,
maybe we'll do some sledding or something like that.
So what do you say we hit the road,
and go just have some fun?
So this is actually our place
out on the west side of Michigan.
It's actually on a lake and Laurie is testing out
if it's frozen or not.
Now we're supposed to have like 12 or 14 inches of snow
out here, per my daughter.
'Cause she lives pretty close.
But the hill, there's no snow on the hill Laurie.
- No, there's no snow, but it's still a hill.
I think we can still slide down it.
- So we're gonna still go down.
Look at Zeus is running around and he's like,
wait a second, this is supposed to be water.
Now he's eating the snow.
Look at him.
What are you doing, you silly monkey?
The dogs are definitely loving it.
Noah, what do you think?
- I think it's a bad idea.
- [Brian] You think it's a bad idea?
I mean, it's solid.
We're gonna go down here.
'Cause this is a little, you got a rock here and a gap here,
you're gonna run into.
- Just gotta go straight.
- No you go through the little cat tail.
- It is cold out here too.
It's like 12 degrees out, but hey,
we might as well have a little fun.
- Come on, I don't wanna do that.
- Please?
- No, you wear it.
- No, come on, please? - Why?
- [Brian] Because just for one thing.
You're going first.
- Then you go first and wear it.
- I don't want it to go first, I'm scared.
- Well, I don't wanna wear that.
All I want to do is sled, I don't need any of this crap.
This is so dumb, I don't want this.
It's just gonna fly off, I can already feel it.
- [Noah] You're gonna go there.
- [Laurie] What's the worst things that's gonna happen?
- [Noah] You run into the dock.
Or you running into the...
- I think she's got it. I think she's got it.
- [Noah] Use your brain a little bit.
Look at that little gap you have for success.
- [Brian] Oh my God.
- [Noah] See?
So silly.
That's what I'm saying, there's no such thing as straight.
You can't go straight on a sled.
- [Brian] She did good, she bailed out at the right time.
- Where are the gloves?
- [Laurie] Are you gonna try at all?
- Yeah.
- [Noah] Not down that way though.
'Cause I have a little bit of common sense.
He goes through the ice.
That's Scary. - [Brian] That was awesome.
- I don't think going through the cat field is that fun.
- That was absolutely epic by the way.
Got all the way onto the ice.
This is so much fun.
I was thinking about this hill ever since we got this place.
This is our first winter here.
So when we get some good snow, it's gonna be amazing.
- Got some speed on that one. (Brian laughing)
- Holy cow, it does get a little rough.
- It a good hill.
- [Brian] It's a good hill, right?
- Its a good hill. (Brian laughing)
- [Noah] The grass hurts so bad.
- [Laurie] I told you. (Brian laughing)
I'm pretty sure I got some road rash.
I think the pups are you having a good time.
You got it Noah, just swing left, now right.
(laughing)
So that was some family fun.
You guys enjoy yourself?
- Yeah, that was good time.
- If the hill had snow on it, It would be better.
So we're gonna revisit this.
If you enjoyed the vlog, do me a favor...
I can barely talk.
- Your face is broken. (laughing)
Hit that playlist right over here.
I was like, you can hit the subscription button.
It's so hard, God.
Have a wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to somebody.
And I promise, I'll see you tomorrow.