Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

A day is often never anything like what you think it’s going to be. The original plan was to stay home and not go anywhere and make up for yesterday but I ended up going to a reptile show. That decision was made the day before at work when I decided to look and see if there were any shows going on and there was the Pittsburgh one in Cheswick.

That was my best shot right then for springtails and other bugs for cleanup crew. Maybe a young areolata if the turtle guy still has the one he had last time or newer hatchlings. Or perhaps a hatchling Appalachicola King.

And there were also other possibilities. Good vivarium plants and maybe some dry goods or rolls of cork to start turning the support column by the window into a faux tree. I’ll probably pass on Abronia because I want to really do my homework and get a good setup up and running in advance for those. I will price some screen enclosures at the show and I really ought to measure the space over the frog tank for that. And some cork rolls for the support column I want to cover into Florida Room too.

As for the reptile show it was a petty decent one though the guy who had the areolata wood turtle last time didn’t have any this time around. Just a baby manni and an assortment of Asian and North American species including a duo of a baby Florida Box and what I presumed to be a baby Gulf Coast in the same deli container.

There were a couple Appalachicola King hatchlings—one a Blaze Phase but both were the high oval blotched morph. Only live goods I got were three containers of springtails—one of which I dumped in the vivarium in my bedroom. The others I used to seed my other frog tanks downstairs and I’m holding some back to make a master culture in case the seeding efforts don’t take or requires follow up inoculation.

Dry goods selection was excellent. Got two jars of cricket Quencher and a small Penn Plax filter for the Newt tank so I can Jerry rig the plastic cylinder I found that looks like the insert for a canister filter to make a trickle down bio filter that will be better than what I had before and the next best thing to the drip wall concept I may still do someday.

Never know who you will run into at a reptile show. Donald Trump and his wife Melania were there—as cutouts LOL—at the same table that had the baby Appalachicolas and had a Trump cutout up once before. Makes for some interesting humor. I seriously doubt you’ll ever see a cutout of Bernie Sanders or AOC or Hillary. Most herpers know that those people are hardly friends of the reptile hobby and would likely sign off on or would appoint people with radical environmentalist sentiments who would gleefully implement regulatory changes detrimental to their interests. The Green New Deal would impoverish us to the point that it would be difficult to keep out heads above water let alone divert resources to maintaining a reptile collection. Which would probably become illegal regardless.

Did not see the fellow from Serpa Designs I was hoping to maybe run into but did see the guy from Adam & Eve’s and the proprietor of Dendro Hollow—the source of my springtails and showed him my vivarium build pictures and he was pretty impressed. He also gave me a deal on the springtails—$15 instead of $20 for three starter colonies.

Checked out some decent glass cages with sliding doors that might be worth considering along with screen Chameleon enclosures for Abronia which will be my next Holy Grail herp.

Apparently a fair number of Chameleons are sourced from feral populations in South Florida which may be a good way to eliminate or control non indigenous species but there is probably a parasite issue which makes captive bred animals the more desirable option.

Got some decent pictures of different animals like blue & red phase Green Iguanas, a baby pancake tortoise (unusual to see as would be a CBT), Black Tree Skinks (similar to the green ones). And someone actually had Green Anoles which have largely been replaced in the trade by the exotic Cuban Brown Anole. Glass Frogs & Red-Eye Tree Frogs—two species that were once in my early Florida Room vivariums. Sunbeam Snakes were all the rage because multiple vendors had them.

I talked to a guy who had Pine Snakes—Northerns, Louisiana and Black Pines. The latter two are federally listed and were marked “PA Sales Only”. Told him about the Coahuilan box turtles offered by one of the vendors affiliated with the Turtle Room at the Hamburg Show in 2016 and asked why it was okay for them to bring them into PA from New Jersey with a permit to sell in interstate commerce yet I also had to have a permit to buy one? But apparently there is no such problem for me to buy an “In-Dayn-Jured” Pine Snake from him? He just shrugged it off that the laws make no sense—which they don’t when it comes to reptiles. And he’s right. The laws are crazy I’ve always said—which is definitely another thoughtcrime considering the outcry such often elicited from the killjoys and Quislings among us. Much like the notion that environmentalists and wildlife officials at the various levels of government are opposed to captive breeding because there is a vested interest in keeping these creatures on the endangered list hanging by a thread and therefore preserve their value as tools for regulating land use, blocking development projects they don’t like and a whole grab bag of other things dear to central planners.

Plus job security for unproductive officials and a general contempt of elite professional herpetologists for the deplorable armatures. And then you have this general contempt of the Left for the individual pursuit of happiness. Like the villain Ellsworth Monckton Toohey in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” said to his acolytes : “Man must not be allowed to be happy” on the ground that happy, contented people have no use for them and their ideological rubbish that leads to general misery and impoverishment. Those who want to shut down the reptile hobby and other similar pursuits are probably motivated by this more than genuine concern for the animals and their actual conservation.

Endangered species are more or less pawns to be prostituted as “victims” of the reckless unheeding progress and economic growth that is hallmark of the American way of life that environmentalists want to tear down. Sadly it’s often the animals that suffer as a result of the red tape that keeps dedicated people from working with them. And in some cases is a hindrance to scientific study and conservation of species other than the charismatic megafauna—mostly birds and mammals people generally think of when it comes to threatened and endangered species.

I’m grateful to The Libertarian Enterprise for publishing this and other things in the past pertaining to the reptile hobby. I doubt such would ever make it into a mainstream hobby oriented publication; not without major censoring because it would be deemed too controversial and offensive to left leaning and conservation oriented members of their audiences. The Wimp Factor—a term I picked up in NCO Leadership School in the Air Force plays a big part in their decision making much like it often does in many Republican campaigns.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was in many ways a great reprieve from the jaws of death for the reptile hobby and other personal liberties in general. It put asunder the prospect of a second Clinton Administration that would have for the most part signed off gleefully on any radical proposal to regulate or prohibit things—like the sunset emergency measure for an interstate ban on the transport of salamanders and newts that the Fish & Wildlife Service implemented during the Obama era and the Trump Administration let expire. And furthermore the administration is moving to do something about the Endangered Species Act—to hold the bureaucracy accountable for results on the way of getting species onto recovery mode and working with property owners rather than an adversarial relationship that often leads to “ shoot, shovel and shut up”. That ought to go over well with the deep ecology people.

The problem with the endangered species issue is that it has become part of the Crisis Industry Complex that drives government policy in general. There is a vested interest in not solving the problem because too many people have built their lives and phony baloney careers around management of the problem and they don’t want it to go away anytime soon. But I only have one lifetime to enjoy and would rather not sacrifice my own personal happiness and wellbeing just so someone else can have job security and a compelling reason to rule with an iron hand. A blank check which virtually anyone on the field running for the Democratic ticket will give the enemies of the reptile hobby—and quite a few on the other side of the isle too since they have no real backbone or are in favor of the same crap also. There are quite a few progressive republicans out there and it was their ilk who created the original conservation movement and the philosophy that wildlife belongs to everyone and must not be reduced to private ownership.

Anyone who argues this ought to read H. Beam Piper’s “A Slave is a Slave” where it is said that when anything is owned in common—it essentially becomes the property of those appointed to manage it. In this case the conservation and natural resource officials. A lot like the feudal system in which the lowly serf dare not touch the deer that belong to The lord or baron and ultimately the king. So much for social justice and equality.

Besides its reasoned that everyone—with the exception to those making and enforcing the rules ought to dedicate their lives to selfless servitude and lighting and heating a reptile room—even a single cage or vivarium is contributing non essential consumption of resources and a superfluous carbon footprint. Not to mention the billion or so dollar contribution of the reptile hobby to the general pet industry. Definitely a decadent bourgeoise luxury that many would like to see eliminated as they did with pet ownership in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. That resulted in the near extinction of the cute rolly poly Sharpei dogs that survived in Hong Kong and Taiwan and made a comeback in the 1990s. When I first read that bit of news back in the day I became enlightened to the real consequences if radical environmentalists and animal rights crusaders ever get their way. But again its all about power in the end—not conservation of endangered species or animal welfare.

Next year will be interesting. It may decide how soon the full onslaught against the hobby and our pursuit of excellence and happiness will commence. Then again there is always the incremental piecemeal assault by activists, bureaucrats and sympathetic politicians who like to grandstand and sponsor bills every time they find an escaped boa or alligator in Pittsburgh. They found a couple of the latter this summer. It’s not unlike the plea of necessity that follows in the wake of a mass shooting. Responsible reptile ownership is the same as responsible gun ownership and I’m all for that because its a personal responsibility issue. And likewise—opportunistic ideologues should not be allowed to get away with jining up mass hysteria to drive the passage of legislation. Every time the Plea of Necessity rears its ugly head like that—Liberty may get one step closer to becoming an endangered species.

At least those thoughts did not spoil my enjoyment of the show and what otherwise would have been the perfect day—if I were fully caught up on everything else. But I’m getting there. Hopefully in time to fully enjoy the fruits of my accomplishments before things do go south. There will be more to come.

Blue phase iguanas

Red phase iguanas.

Glass Frogs & Red-Eyed Tree Frogs.

Northern & Louisiana Pine Snakes.

Had a pair of Northern Pines once. They are very impressive and loud hissers like the Bull and Gopher Snakes of West America to which they are related—same genus: Pituophis.

Black Pines which are listed as “Threatened” or “Endangered” by the federal government are also very impressive creatures. I saw a full grown one once in the collection of a Maryland hobbyist and it was beyond impressive. Fearsome to say the least the way it hissed when I walked into the room. Not for the faint of heart. But all Pituophis are harmless as kittens if you call their bluff. They usually calm down right away when you pick them up and start handling them.

Herpers put a lot of creativity into their works. I’ll be focusing on that aspect of the Hobby in future installments.

The upgrades continue as I add on to the Florida Room

And the vivarium continues to improve—mostly on its own as the plants and moss take hold and establish themselves.

And the ”Squares” are getting more time in the Turtle Table setup.

They behave differently when I have them there. Incredibly shy like reptiles often do—even long term captives—when they are taken outdoors. The full spectrum LEDs probably contribute to the behavioral change. It’s the next best thing to natural sun which makes the turtles revert again to a wilder state that prompts them to want to hide or try to escape the enclosure. In time they will get used to it and come up to feed out of hand like most of the ones I keep outdoors do.