Snakebytes Blog

The Zoo

One of my earliest memories was at the zoo here in Detroit. I was about three years old and I remember being so captivated with the animals. That’s where I saw my first Ball Python, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Now whenever I get the chance to go to any zoo I’m always super excited. Me and some of the crew are off to the Columbus zoo tomorrow morning at 5:30am to meet up with a friend and zoo keeper there at 9:00am. We’re going to be shooting one or two shows depending how cool the whole thing is about the zoo and of course Jack Hanna. In a perfect world I’d like to shoot one show about the zoo, the animals, and the keepers we get to meet. Then I’d like to shoot a show just on Jack Hanna, he’s a icon when it comes to exposure for animals and I hope we’ll get a chance to spend enough time with him to get a good show out of it. You just never really know with guys like Jack until you meet them how willing they are to work with you. I’ve tried to shoot film with a number of celebrities, some are the coolest people on the planet and will do anything you want and others have limits to what they are willing to give their time too. From everything I have heard about Jack from Shawn (keeper at the zoo) he’s an incredible guy that is normally willing to do anything. We’ll of course try to get some great info about him and his life but also try to have some fun too. We have a lot of ideas for shooting, and I’m sure on the 3 1/2 hour drive we’ll be brain storming a lot more, but until we get there and scope the situation out you never know what will happen. No matter how it turns out I know we’ll be able to produce one or two sweet shows and have an awesome time checking out one of the largest zoos in the country. Don’t be surprised if I steal a couple cool animals while I’m there, just kidding. I would hate a rumor to circulate around that I smuggled animals out of the zoo, there’s enough lies already circulating about me out there. Goes with the territory:)

Restraint

I wrote a blazing blog yesterday about some of my feelings on s373, then in all my experience I realized before publishing it I should give it a few hours and come back and read it. I calmed down a bit and decided that it was best to trash it, the last thing we need as a community is to be divided. There is a lot of crap being done or said or not done and not said that boils my blood. There are people that should be doing things that they aren’t and others using this for an agenda. My thoughts are that I don’t make money on the 9 species that are at the highest risk of making it on this proposed ban, I do not get a paid to protect the hobby, but I love the reptile community and I will fight for my life to protect those animals. Do I think there is a good chance that we’ll lose some of those animals in this battle, yes I truly believe that some of those animals will not survive this. With all my heart I am destroyed by the thoughts of not seeing some of these animals in the reptile trade in the future. Do I think that Ball Pythons are in jeopardy, no! Is it possible, yes, but nobody is looking for them to be on that list except for hsus. In none of this proposed bill does it mention the family Python, only the genus. I’m not really sure where the hype has come from about the 40 species of Python being on that list. Only hsus has lobby to add all of them, but no Senator has even shown any interest in amending the bill to add those animals, not even the USFW has ever asked for them family of Pythons to be added. Does that mean it can’t happen, of course not, but that’s not the agenda of this bill. The agenda of this bill is to ban Burms and Rocks and possible the other 7 species from the USGS survey. A lot of bad information is getting circulated around. Next week this goes to mark up and we’ll see what Senator Nelson amends this bill to look like. My guess is that there will be some of the giants on there and some of the other Pythons like Balls, Bloods and Angolans will fall off the bill. Now it’s more of a matter of what we can save and what we are willing to lose. I’m working on a vid that will have the truth and what we can do about it, but I will hold releasing it until it is important and we have all the facts. I don’t want to be one of the people spreading misinformation. I have no agenda other then to protect the hobby!

I hate waiting

I arrived in D.C. yesterday with no idea where I was going no reservations at a hotel. Not a great plan when traveling. Not to mention I got to the airport a little late for what I thought was a 10:10am flight, rushing through the airport just to realize that it was a 10:10pm flight??? Fortunately I was able to jump on a 10:10 am flight that had some seats available. After finding a hotel not too far away that was not $300 a night I was on my way.  I wanted to get into town to settle in and also meet for dinner with Adam Wysocki from NatPet. He’s started a new association that is for pet keepers across America and is very driven to fight the battle for all pet keepers. High on the list was to talk about s373 and being as he’s spent the last few weeks pounding on Senators doors I figured he’d have a pretty good take on where we were at with things. There are really three associations that are supporting the reptile community and they are PIJAC, USARK and now NatPet. All are great associations and we need to support them all if we want our hobby to survive the on-slot of bureaucracy that is happening now. There are powers to be out there like the hsus and others that are pushing everything they have at putting the reptile trade out of business. We have to put our fate in the hands of these three associations if we have any hope of surviving. I for one am optimistic, not that we will come out with everything the same as it was, but that we will survive on some level and possibly be a stronger hobby on the other side. A hobby that is willing to self regulate so that politicians that have no idea what our hobby is about aren’t making the decisions about our future. I wish I could go to the hearing today, but I’ll be in TV meetings this afternoon. From what I gather today’s meeting is not something that will change anything anyway. Kind of the very first step in a process that has many parts. I’ll be making a vid in the next week or two with the help of any of these three associations that are willing to be a part of putting the word out about what is going on and how they want to attack it. So stay tuned!

Wish me luck with the TV side later today, I’m looking forward to getting over there and hoping to rally some support for the future of our project. It’s a tough business and they don’t hand TV shows out like candy on Halloween:) Maybe I should dress up in a really nice costume and scream “trick or treat”?? No, I think I’ll save that for another time.lol Be back home tomorrow! 

SnakeBytesTV-Clone Wars!

Is it really possible for an animal to reproduce itself?? Kind of like cloning itself without a father??? The answer is yes! It’s called parthenogenesis and it’s a crazy thing that really does happens in nature. We’ll have to bring in the great Dr. Chewy to help us get to the bottom of this one. Of course it wouldn’t be SnakeBytesTV if we didn’t try it out on the crew. I hope you’ll enjoy the outcome! As always thank you for watching an supporting the show! I’m off to D.C. this morning for some TV stuff. Wish me luck! Brian(Sbtv) and the crew

Off to D.C. in the morning

Hardly unpacked from the trip to New York and I’m off again tomorrow to D.C. this time I’ll be flying:) I’m really looking forward to this trip, not only do a get a chance to meet up with my friend Adam Wysoki from NATPET, but I get to meet the two owners of the TV production company I’m signed with, Abby Greenfielder and Sean Gallagher. These two are big wigs in the TV business and both had huge rolls in a lot of the series that we all watch now on Discovery and TLC. I’ve had the chance to talk with them on the phone a bunch, but this will be our first face to face meeting. The TV business is a tough business, it’s a lot about momentum, when things are looking good they seem to look real good and when things slow down they really slow down:) It’s important to have people that really believe in your project and have some pull to get you back going when you hit those slow periods. Hoping for a good meeting with some good news, also Sean and Matt (their head of new development) are taking me out to a Washington Capitals game Thursday night before heading back home Friday morning. Talking with Sean and Matt in the past I’m sure we’ll have a great time. It’s just cool to hear the stories about how projects got started and now are such huge TV shows. Sean and Abby were a huge part of shows like American Chopper and Deadliest Catch, pretty cool to be in the same room with them not to mention signed to a production contract with them. I’ll be sure to share what I can with everyone when I get back from my trip. In the mean time I have to get all the orders out today from Black Friday, it’s the most one day shipping our company has ever done. It’ll be a fun day packing all those snakes. Even though I’m so grateful for the business, I’ll feel a bit sad packing some if the animals up. I can honestly say I’ll miss a lot of them. What can you do???

Home again, not for long

It seems like Thanksgiving was weeks ago, after leaving the day after with the Black Friday sale on the way and us off to New York for the White Plains show. It’s hard to believe that everything happens just in the last few days. We got to the city late Friday night in time to get a very late dinner and settle in for a nights rest after an almost 700 mile drive answering the phone the whole way with people interested in placing orders to save some money on a cool animal. The sale went off great and there might be another in our future at some point, no promises though:) The hotel was the same one we stay in every time we come to this show and I often wonder what they think when they see us bringing in load after load of animal boxes. I’m always expecting the manager to come over as we pull our carts through a rather nice lobby towards the elevators, but every time they just give us that strange stare and let us go right pass. After getting what I would consider a terrible nights sleep we got up and our friend Steve and New York tour guide ( love you)  picked us up and we headed into the center of the universe, Manhattan. We hit the Natural History Museum first, very cool but after a couple of hours Noah was getting pretty bored, so we packed up and headed on. Next stop was to hit some sweet car dealership, I know you’re saying, but you’re from Detroit. In Detroit you don’t see a lot of Lamborghini’s:) Then is was off to Rockefeller center and Time Square. This being the first time that Noah had been to New York his eyes lit up with all the lights and the incredible stores like M&M’s, Toy r Us and Hershey’s where he bought a candy bar larger then his head.lol By this time it was getting late and we headed back to the hotel for some shut eye, an early morning to get ready for the reptile show. Up before 5am and off to the show. With Lori with me the set up was pretty much me doing nothing and her doing most of the work. We were ready a good half hour before the show was open, so the stress level was pretty low. The crowd was awesome and had obviously not spent all their money of gift on Black Friday. Sales were good and we had a chance to meet a lot of new people as well as hang out with people we see at every show. It was humbling when a several people said they traveled a up to 4 hours just to meet us. One guy didn’t even keep reptiles, he was just a fan of the show. That can really make you realize how many people you’re reaching and also gives me even more energy to keep pushing forward. The show finally finished up and with some prodding from Lori to get me to stop talking to everyone, Lori, Cliff ( a friend that really helped a ton at the show) got things packed up and we were off on our ten plus hour journey back home. The drive was long, but I had a lot of things to think about, so when Lori and Noah slept the last few hours it was nice just to let me mind go over all the things that I needed to think about. I’ll be heading to D.C. for s few meetings this week, the most important one is about our TV stuff. I needed to make sure I had my mind wrapped around everything that needs to be done this week as well as for our trip to the Columbus Zoo next Monday to shoot film at the zoo as well as with Jack Hanna. Pulling up at after 4:00am wasn’t how I would have wanted to end the weekend, but it was nice to be home. Got a few hours of sleep and then back to work. Another short week for me, so I better make every hour efficient. Shipping out all our sales from Black Friday tomorrow, then off to the airport first thing Wednesday morning, so it’ll be an insane few days:)

Week Wrap

This was a crazy week because we only had three days to get all our work done as well as getting ready for the White Plains reptile show this Sunday not to mention get ready for the Black Friday Sale. What that meant is that by Wednesday we needed to be ready for both our sale and the show as well as have all our work caught up and ready for us to be gone for the long weekend. Getting the snake work done wasn’t all the bad and even getting packed and ready for the show didn’t kill us, what was a surprise was how much time it took to get the site ready for yesterdays Black Friday Sale. Me and Lori were still working on adding things and making discounts at about 10pm Thanksgiving night, just a few hours before the sale. In the end we did get the site updated and the sale went fantastic, I can’t thank everyone enough that ordered from us and even the people that helped spread the word or even just visited our site. Being that this was the first time we ever did anything like this I really had no idea how it would go, I was also concerned about crashing the website like we have in the past with high traffic. We upped our bandwidth to a dedicated server to try to handle the extra traffic and judging by the numbers that visited the site yesterday I’m really glad that we did. And guess what?? We had an awesome sale and didn’t crash the market like some people predicted. I think in the end the people that bought got a good deal on their purchase without us killing the market. Today prices are back to normal and the reptile market is still there?? Go figure?? We were traveling to New York for the show all day yesterday and had the phone forwarded to our cells and it was nuts how many phone calls we got on the way here. Made the trip a little hectic, but fun in a lot of ways. Now that we’re here we’re heading into the city with our friend Steve and going to check out the Museum of Natural History and then just hit the city for the rest of the day. Hopefully get back to get a few hours of shut eye and then set up for the White Plains show in the morning. Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow and then the long 10 drive home tomorrow night. I love traveling, but it’s always nice to get back home too.  

Black Friday

We’re off to New York this morning. Heading out for the White Plains show on Sunday. We’ll get there tonight and spend tomorrow having some fun in the city and then hit the show the next day and head back home to get back to work on Monday. Should be a great time all around! Except for the 10 hour drive each way.lol

Don’t forget to check out and spread the word about our Black Friday sale over at www.bhbreptiles.comWe’ve put a lot of work into making sure that there are some great saving, but that we don’t destroy the market at the same time. I know there have been some detractors about the idea of us having a sale, even some people that have suggested the sale was a going out of business sale. The truth is it’s just a way to move some of our inventory and also hopefully save you a few bucks in the meanwhile. It’s only one day, so if you need something this is your chance to save a few greenbacks. Hope you’ll enjoy the efforts we put into it. Thanks for all the support!

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing anyone from the US a Happy Thanksgiving. For me this is a holiday that is about family and friends. The thing I love about this holiday is that you don’t need to give anyone gifts to show them how much you care. All you need to do is be there for them. I’m fortunate to have a fantastic family and a ton of great friends. There will be an empty spot at the table to today for my Dad, being the first holidays without him will be hard, but I’m thankful that I had a long life with him being so supportive of everything I did. My mom moved in with us about six months ago and I’m so grateful that she’s still here with us. Although this has been a tough year and there have been so many things that have not worked out the way that I wanted them too, I’m still thankful to just still be here and doing what I love to do and to have a crew of workers that are second to none. Finally I’m am so thankful for all the people that are so supportive of us here at BHB and SnakeBytesTV, without you guys we would be nothing! For anyone that is a member of our social network www.snakebytestv.ning.com try to post a blog about what you’re thankful for or maybe just post a picture of something. It’s a special day, I hope you all enjoy it as much I will!

Remember tomorrow the big Black Friday sale at www.bhbreptiles.com and we’ll be off in the morning heading to the white Plains reptile show this Sunday!