Essential Field Herping Survival Tip # 4

Children on Herping Outings.  This is a long one.

If you’re thinking of bringing children on herping adventures…Don’t!

Easter Egg hunts are for kids, herping adventures are for adults.  On your trip, if all the noise, running around, complaints about who had the hand held first or who “touched me”, allows you to find anything at all, you may run into medically significant (dangerous) species.  Assume this will be followed by, in no particular order of importance:  I’m tired, I’m cold, I wanna go home, or my favorite, I have to go to the bathroom…AGAIN.  

Moving House!

A few months ago I moved house. Only a few miles into the town but it was a few miles enough to be stressful and even more stressful when you are renting a property and we had one day to move the whole house, including all our pets! I went in to recruitment overdrive and managed to rope in a couple of friends, one of which is a reptile keeper himself, to help with the move and the reptiles were the first priority.

My reptiles were kept in the old house, a few scattered around various rooms in display vivariums but most kept in the spare room at the back of the house. At the new house, the plan was to convert one of the brick out houses into a reptile house with plans to insulate and heat the room which measure about 3m x 3m. So we started loading the animals into bags and containers and lifting the vivariums and tanks into the two cars we were using to move the animals. On arrival at the new pad the shed planned as the new reptiles home had been left full of old tools, lawn mowers shelves on every wall containing everything you could possibly need to build and maintain your own second portable house. Admittedly my first thought was to cancel the reptile shed idea and to move the bed out of the spare room, but after some thought and a few cups of coffee we set about clearing the brick shed and making it hospitable for my animals.

Its been a long few months and we’ve had a few cold nights where the oil radiator has just kept the room up to temperature, the insulation hasn’t gone in yet, but apart from that the move actually went ok. All the animals are happy and its nice to have a space for them to live. There are still tweaks to be made to the reptile room such as the insulation to save heating money and some shelves to be installed but all in all I think its been a success, finally!

A Night in the Anza Borrego

Back to Basics

I have spent the time after returning from Las Vegas planning one of my own field herping adventures. I visited the Las Vegas Reptile Expo as you may know to cover it for this site. While my son Austin and I were inLas Vegas we had the opportunity to go out and do some field herping with a local and three other guests of the expo. To say it would turn out to be a night to remember is an understatement. For those close to me, they might find it unusual that I would attempt to go into the field in any capacity with more than two people. This is because it’s always been a long standing rule with me that I don’t go herping with more than two people at one time. Most times when herping with ‘large’ groups there are generally issues with who gets the capture not to mention the varying personalities have a tendency to clash. To avoid these potential encounters ‘gone south’ I would normally refuse to attend any field herping adventure that would include more than 3 people. Not just that, but I am a card carrying misanthrope as well.