Snakebytes Blog

Great day

When I get time to enjoy myself away from the animals I do everything I can to cram as much as I can into every moment. What I’m saying is that I’m not the kind of person that just sits around and chats with family as the day goes by. We started out with a game of football, then moved on to playing catch with my son to practice his baseball. After that it was a few games of bochi ball, I never played before, but I have to admit it was pretty fun. Then it was off to the horse shoe pit for a couple of games. Finishing the day I hit about a thousand softballs to my cousins, my back is killing me this morning.lol I remember thinking I was going to totally cheat on my diet yesterday and eat like a pig, well I was so busy I hardly ate anything:) Then the time I wait for for an entire year, fireworks time! Just before dark I spent about a half an hour sorting them out in order that I’d set them off. I had a lot of fireworks, so I was pretty excited about it. Dark hit and the show was on. We always do the 4th at my father in laws and about 40-50 people show up for the day. I’d say the show lasted for about an hour or maybe a little longer, but it was by far the best one we’d ever put on. You guys know that every year I have to out do the year before.lol Now it’s time to start to think about next years party! Only 364 days to go!  Who knows by then maybe I’ll have an open invitation to anyone that wants to hang out with us and just make it a huge bash!  

Happy 4th of July!

I couldn’t help myself about 10:30pm last night I had to go out in front of my house and start to blow off some fireworks! My neighbors love me:) I might want to get professional help when it comes to that?? Not sure what it is, maybe I’m a closet pyro?? I’ll be honest I’ve  looked into taking classes to become a pyrotechnician recently. Not because I want to do it for a living, but I want to make my own fireworks.lol I’m happy to tell you that Lori stopped that idea pretty quick realizing that only bodily harm could come from a decision like that. I know what you’re thinking, I have a slight problem with over doing things???lol Okay, there is no doubt that I’m one of those people that can’t just do something a little bit. That’s why you’ll notice that I keep my interest to a small number of things. I would love to get into a lot of different hobbies, but I know myself and I can’t do anything small. As soon as I start I’m hooked and I’ll stay awake at night thinking about it. Just like last night I could hardly sleep waiting for tonight when I get to blow off all the sweet fireworks that I bought over the last year. Yeah, I did say over the last year. This is what I do, every time I do a reptile show in a state where there is a fireworks store I try to go there and buy a few things. This does two things, by the 4th of July I have a lot of stuff to blow up and second it never feels like I’m spending all that much because it’s a $100 here and $200 there:) I told you I need help! Have a great holiday everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope I’m not typing my blog tomorrow missing a finger or maybe a hand????lol

The holiday weekend

First off I think it’s really bizarre to have just me Lori and Kel at the shop today. Feels like a ghost town at work:) So this brought me to thinking about why everyone is taking off work all around the country today. I guess the real question is when a holiday falls on a weekend does everyone deserve to get a day off before or after that weekend?? I understand that if you think you should get a day off for every holiday and then it falls on a weekend maybe you feel ripped off?? As a business owner maybe you feel lucky that it fell on a weekend?? I’m not sure where I stand with this one. For us this time it didn’t matter too much, we already decided we weren’t going to get a live rodent shipment this week because it would mean that Saturday would be a long work day and everyone wanted to enjoy the 4th. But for a lot of companies in this failing economy I wonder how they feel about losing a day of productivity and in a lot of cases still having to pay their employees. Just looking at it from a business owners perspective and not as a worker. Or am I just out of wack with my thinking?? I guess if I just worked at some factory I would want the day off too, but then again with the shape that most businesses are in now a days maybe everyone should think about wanting to keep their job as much as getting a free day off?? What do you guys think??

Raining

Of course when we need the weather to be good to get my new roof put on it rains everyday for a week. We still have the roof tarped now and it’s by no means sealed up. There’s a constant leak in several places and it just kind of sucks that we spend a lot of our day cleaning up puddles. Trying not complain, but it’s starting to get old real quick. Everyday they tell me that tomorrow they’ll do the roof as long as the rain stops and I wake up to nothing but rain. Do we live in Seattle or London??? This time of the year we hardly ever get rain??? Okay, I’m done complaining:)

We’re getting to that spot in the breeding season where we’re about 90% done on first clutches of colubrids ( and we got a lot of eggs!), although I’m still maybe 50% on Ball Pythons ( I’m so late!). I pulled 20 clutches of Ball Pythons on Tuesday alone and I’m getting clutches everyday and I still have a bunch of females that are ramping up for ovulation. Anyway, the good news is that I get a little breather to catch up on all the things that I have had to put off for the last month while I was pulling eggs eight hours a day:) The bad news is that I have two trips out of town in the next ten days. I guess I just can’t ever get caught up.lol There’s no doubt that the best way to describe my life is a controlled kaos???? Or maybe not so controlled???

SnakeBytesTV-My Passion For Reptiles

I take you on the journey of how I got my interest in reptiles and where it went from there. The SnakeBusters team also goes out to find a deadly snake in the local woods. We had a blast filming this and trust me it was a lot harder then it looked. We got drenched with a down pouring of rain at the end of the shoot. We had no choice but to get the shot done, so we just went with it.lol I hope you guys will enjoy the show and as always we really appreciate it. After coming off our best week ever in views I can only hope this one does as well. Please help the show grow by spreading the word:) Thanks again, Brian(Sbtv) and the crew

This is too funny!

The countdown

When you’re in full egg production mode time flys by, you’re getting tons of eggs, feeding, cleaning and breeding as much as you can. Before you know it you have tens of thousands of eggs and then it hits you. We have three weeks until they all start to hatch. Things like how are we going to find the time to set all these babies up, we need to find enough pinkys to feed them, can we sell all these?? All these things hit you like a panic, it’s not specific to this season. It’s pretty much every season, there just comes that day when you finally realize that the next step is only a few weeks off and you’ve been so bogged down in the egg production process that you haven’t even started to think about the next phase. This morning was that epiphany for me, my heart started to pound a bit faster and I felt a little light headed. I’m still trying to problem solve my way through what we’ll do to make it a smooth hatch. I have to be honest, you’d think after 23 years this would be like old hat, but the truth is I have no idea yet how we’re going to find the man hours to get this done?? We have the caging, we’ll be able to get the food and I have no doubt that we’ll sell the babies over time. The biggest part is how are we going to find the time to set up 30,000 babies over a four week window??? With 1,000 plus babies hatching everyday, it’s a battle that you seem to never win. Just when you’re done setting the ones from yesterday up, you have another huge stack to set up again. Then the biggest issue, when lori or whoever is so bogged down with setting up babies, who starts to feed them?? And who feeds the snakes that she had been caring for before the hatch??? I’m sure we will figure it out, but for today I need to just not think about it or I’ll start to freak out.lol Deep breaths, deep breaths:)

800 blog post today

Holy cow I just realized that I have 800 blog post! Wow, I remember just starting my blog and myspace page about the same time. I had no clue if I would keep it current or even keep it going. I guess 800 post later it seems to have stuck a bit.lol There are so many ways to blog, I follow some great ones that have nothing to do with reptiles. There’s the super creative blogs, that just have a pic or two with a witty comment to go along with, there’s the short clips of something funny that seems to express what is on that persons mind at the moment, there’s the blog that act as announcements for a company or a persons personal business and then there’s the rambling of thoughts. I’d guess my blog fits into that last for sure. I remember reading when I first started blogging that the one thing you want to do is be consistent and blog often. I think if nothing else, anyone that reads my blog knows what they’re going to get. A re-cap of what’s going on in my life. Sometimes it’s reptiles, sometimes it’s just me pouring out random thoughts. The one thing you’ll always get is the real me, not hiding anything or trying to be anything that I’m not. I have no doubt that if I wanted to take more time and be more creative that I’d get a larger following then I already have on this blog, although I’m still stoked at how many people read it. The truth is I want it to be an expression of who I am, I want anyone that reads for any length of time to feel like they know who I am. When you come up to me at a reptile show and meet me for the first time I want you to feel like we’ve been friends forever. I guess that’s what most of my projects are about?? Opening my life good or bad and sharing my passions with anyone that cares to be a part of it. So here’s to the first 800 post, hoping there’s be tons more to come!