My Eastern Indigo Snake is growing so FAST!! | Tyler Nolan

Tyler: He’s like, “I’m sleepy. I’m a sleepy cobra.”

[inaudible 00:00:09] up people. I’m spitting everywhere. How the hell are you? I’m Tyler Nolan. Welcome to the freaking show.

Check this out. Redoing the snake room right now. Got this off of the good old Amazon, North American snakes. Get some sweet posters for the room. Put a poster over there, put a poster over there. I already got a flier over there Kayla got me, I’m just going to make the room look cool. I’m just making it more doper, is that a word? Whatever, I’m using it. Anyways, we’re getting there. I’m still waiting on a bunch of cages from Vision, and it’s going to take a minute. They got to put them into production, ship them out. It’s still going to probably be about month before I get those cages. In the meantime, I’m going to redo this stands. I already went over this with you guys, we’re getting there. Today I’m giving the Indigo snake a new cage. I put a video out, oh man, how long ago was it? Probably a year ago, right? I want to say a year ago.

Female speaker: When you got the indigo?

Tyler: Yes.

Female speaker: Probably about a year.

Tyler: Probably about a year ago, when I first got them. I’m pretty sure I’ve only done one video on Indigo so far. He’s been in many videos obviously, he’s a great snake, but he’s getting big. I’m going to go back and try to find some old footage for you guys of when I first got him. I haven’t even looked at it in forever, so it’ll be cool to see how big he’s gotten. Right now I have him in this three foot Vision. Before, I had him out when I first got him, I kept him out in my living room in the cage that Little Foot is in, my water monitor. So that was about a four foot long cage.

He did very well in there, and this is pretty much about the same size. This is a three foot Vision, but it’s deeper than those other cages. So it’s got the same amount of square feet pretty much, but today we’re moving. I got these new four foot Visions, this is model 422 of the Visions, sliding glass, awesome. These cages actually, these ones right here in particular, I bought them the other day from my buddy, Brian, who I used to work at Underground Reptiles with. He has had these cages since we worked at Underground 15 years ago. So these cages are over 15 years old.

Dude, this is what I love about Vision cages, they’re awesome. Check this out. These ones, they have a sunken in part right here. See right here, this is recessed down, it’s got a metal screen on the bottom, so you can just put a heat fixture inside of here. I’ve got my temperature right over here. I’ve got a thermometer so I can make sure that the basking area of this cage gets the ample temperature that they need. I have a big LED strip that goes along that back cage, or that back vent.

What I like about these cages and what I do not like about these cages. These cages, you see these vents in these CS cages, these vents suck. Those vents are barely open, and they don’t allow a lot of air flow. So I went on Amazon and I ordered these better vents that allow way more air flow. I’m going to put some vents on the sides of these cages, so that way these things are ventilated better. Because Vision cages are ventilated great. All these cages have wide strips and metal mesh along the top to make sure that there’s plenty of air flow for these guys.

So let’s get this cage set up, I’m going to take this glass off. Another thing about these cages, to remove the glass, it is super easy, you just lift up, just like this. Lift up, comes right out. Awesome. It makes it very easy to get in here and maintenance the tank. I’m going to spray this thing down with chloride X, clean it up. Then I’m actually going to switch him. Right now he’s on cocoa bark, I’m actually going switch this guy to, I think this is– What is this, pine, aspen?

I’ll switch this guy over to this, because he’s a nice, dark, jet black snake. Honestly I think he’s going to look really cool on a lighter substrate. That way you get that contrast. He’ll just have a nice light bottom, and then dark, dark snake on top of it. I feel like that’ll look great. So let’s get this cage cleaned up, and then we’ll just take this guy out. I actually think that he’s going to like this a lot better, because their burrow instincts, not going to say burrow instincts but they stay on the floor down here. There’s Texas Indigos, there’s a bunch of different kinds of Indigos.

This is an Eastern Indigo, has this dry mark on, couperi, that is the scientific. He’s a colubrid, and he has a crazy feeding response when he’s in his cage. Indigos are normally pretty chill snakes, but you can see this guy has a crazy feeding response. He just comes right out after me all the time, which is fun because he’s not a deadly snake. He’s non-venomous, he’s just a jerk. He likes to come charging out the cage, because he’s the boss of his cage. He’s awesome, very cool. He’s gotten a lot bigger. Come on, come out of here buddy, you’ve got a dirty cage, man.

Now Alex actually got bit by this snake. When I have people come over to do venomous training, this is the snake that I have him train with. Because this is the closet thing you can get to a cobra for the most part. When you’re doing venomous snake training, you want to get a mean colubrid. This is not a mean snake but I’m saying, to practice venomous, the best way is to get a mean colubrid, like an Indigo, or a Crebo, or a big ass mean rat snake, something like that. Practice taking them in and out of the cage, it’s great cobra training. As you can see, he’s super chill when he’s out of the cage. He’s gotten huge, look how big.

Female speaker: He really has gotten so much bigger.

Tyler: Look how big he is now. He was little when I first got him.

Female speaker: He wasn’t little [unintelligible 00:07:39] definitely smaller than that.

Tyler: He was a quarter of this size. Yes, he’s a bad ass snake. Maybe we can go outside with him real quick and get some shots outside. Because this is one of the snakes that I can bring outside. I can bring the rattle snakes outside, but any of my cobras or anything that is not native to Florida, it’s illegal for me to take them outside. It’s legal for me to take this guy outside, so let’s go in the backyard real quick.

Check this out, it’s like a totally different animal outside. You can see the iridescent color all along his body. It’s not a very cylindrical body either. If you notice, he has a triangular shaped body, it’s more pyramided. It’s not so much of a round snake. [unintelligible 00:08:35] outside, he’s getting warmed up. Dude, they are fast as shit, like look at him in the grass, it’s such a cool snake. There’s some Shiba poop right there, I got to stay away from that. Let’s go over here, such a dope snake. That iridescence on them, hopefully you can see that on the camera, purples and blues.

It’s almost like a chrome color on those scales. Now, you can see how smooth these scales are, it is a totally different feel than any of my other snakes. A lot of the vipers that I have are keeled scale snakes. So they have a ridge going down the middle of their scale, so it feels like it looks. Keeled, K-E-E-L-E-D, keeled scaled snakes. That is a tongue twister, they feel different. It’s like a rough, like sand papery, got a weird feeling to it. These snakes are super smooth. It’s like silk, it’s so smooth. Very cool animal. [unintelligible 00:09:50] behind us. I think there’s mangoes falling from the tree that’s what’s making that noise. Eastern indigo snake, this is a red face, see that red on his head. I actually just emailed the breeder that I got this snake from, lives in Arizona. I want to get a all-black one next, because Eastern Indigo’s down here. We do have red faces in the wild. Red faces they’re easier to come by. Black face, probably three out of every 10 that are born are all black. Black faces are really cool. That’s what’s next, just a jet-black one. So cool. Drymarchon is Greek, translates for lord of the forest. That said, these are also snake-eaters like Ophiophagus hannah which is the King Cobra. Ophiophagus hannah in Latin means snake-eater. These guys Drymarchon is Greek, means lord of the forest. These guys are also snake-eaters. Non-venomous snake-eater.

Funny thing about this guy being non-venomous is they eat rattlesnakes in the wild. They live in gopher tortoise holes with the rattlesnakes, and are known to eat them. How crazy is that? A rattlesnake eater. They do not inject a venom to kill their prey. They don’t constrict to kill their prey either though. These guys are overpowering animals. What they are known for is they grab their prey. They’re [unintelligible 00:11:23] to push them and to force them into another object. That’s how they suffocate them and kill them. They overpower their prey. Which is pretty cool.

Which is also why this guy’s beautiful, because I feed him dead prey items. In the wild, they’re obviously eating live prey items and killing them savagely. In the wild indigo snakes, when you find them they’re honestly pretty messed up. When you find them in the wild they’re pretty ugly. They got scars all over them. They look like they’ve been through battle, because they do. They’re crazy snakes, so cool though. Look at that, these guys are one of my favorites. One of the reasons, honestly why I got so into snakes is when I was a kid, there’s a Nature Center called Gumbo Limbo in Boca. Gumbo Limbo my whole childhood had a huge, all-black indigo snakes there for the longest time.

When we were kids, we’d go on field trips there at school, and they would take out the Indigo snake. They would actually let all the kids hold them, and dude, I just remember being a little kid holding an Indigo snake at Gumbo Limbo. Just the coolest thing ever. Pictures and videos don’t do this animal justice, in person is just such a awesome, awesome snake. That red throat, they puff it up. You can see he’s puffing it up a little bit. It’s one of the defense mechanisms they use. They rattle their tails, a lot of colubrids do the tail rattle. They puff their throats. This guy puffs his throat, and he’s known to hiss. He’s not much of a hisser though.

You saw he’s got a crazy eating response. That’s it for outside. I love having these guys outside, it’s just a totally different look than inside my snake room. I’m going to do a video soon of the Eastern Diamondbacks, because I could take those out. I got the one big albino. He’s in shed right now, and then my little Eastern, the normal face. He’s in shed right now too, but when those guys shed out we’ll take them here outside. That way you can see the purple albino rattlesnakes outside in the sunlight. Crazy animal.

They’re almost see through outsides, nuts. Dope. You’re awesome, look at that head, man. Look at those eyes, big black eyeballs. Such a cobra-looking head, like look at that. That’s cobra head all day. Just such a sick animal. Look how large those scales are by his jaw. Such a cool freaking animal. Look at the head of that thing. Look at the iridescent glow on that. Such a cool snake. Let’s go put this guy in his new cage. Back in the snake room, look at this. It’s just like, doesn’t do it any justice in this room. It’s like oh yeah, a black snake, cool. Let’s put him in his new cage. I got to take his old water bowl out. Look at that, look how awesome that snake looks against that light aspen.

Super cool. We’re going to give him fresh bowl water. There we go. [unintelligible 00:14:56] Throw a couple of little decorations in there. We got, what is this? A deer spine [unintelligible 00:15:01] Just some little things to make him feel more at home. Put a good size hide box on there. Now these hide boxes, you can actually get these on Amazon. I got a subscription to them, so I have a million of them. I don’t have their subscription anymore, I canceled it. They were sending me one a month. Until I figured that out. So [inaudible 00:15:27] put him like that. That’s it. Simple enough. He’s checking out his new cage. Seeing how he likes it.

He’s going to be able to go underneath this and hangout.

I feel like he’s going to love this. Looks great. Got him in a four-foot Vision. He’ll be good to go forever in this cage now. Maybe one day if he gets massive I’ll move him to a six-footer, but a four-footer will probably do. Next video we’re just going to keep going into different snakes. We’re going to keep transforming this room into something awesome, it’s getting there, it’s already so much better. I want to have this to the place where I can have everybody come down and do videos here.

I want to have Brian Barczyk here, I want to have Kevin McCurley here. I want to have Kenan come over, I want to have a bunch of homies come over. Come do some videos, check out the collection but I got to get it on point. Stay tuned. Make sure you like, comment, subscribe. Tell me what you guys want to see next down below. You guys have any questions about indigo snakes or anything else in my room, comment that down below. I’ll try to get to them the best that I can, stay safe out there. Come over. See you guys later.