What's new at AAR

6/27/07: Well, I am back from some great trips. First off was a trip to Moab for some hiking, biking, and swimming. Arches Natl Park was amazing as usual, despite a bit of crazy weather. I guess rain is better than intense heat, so we enjoyed it all. Slickrock trail was pretty menacing and took me out early on while trying to show off for the young guys. Good ol' Shupe let the charge, while I napped on the slickrock. Overall, it was a great trip, and we had a blast. Shortly after the trip to Moab, I was headed off to Moab again for the beginning of a week long river trip down the Colorado river through Cataract canyon. After a delayed start, we headed down the river in the starlight, which was a cool experience. The Colorado was at a nice level, which made for some great rapids. That area is full of some of the coolest areas on earth, with amazing rock formations and plenty of Native American ruins. I am very interested in the Anasazi, better known as the Hisatsinom (meaning ancient ancestor), as my grandfather was adopted by the Hopi. I really identify with the Hopi way of life, and have visited them several times. We saw some great ruins as well as some amazing petroglyphs and pictographs. One of the pictographs was a bow with two dots to either side. We thought maybe the light would shine on the dots at certain times in the year, so we awoke early to see where the light would hit at first light. I felt a bit like Indiana Jones waiting for first light, but unfortunately the light didn't go where we hoped it would, but it was fun anyway. We took some amazing hikes and saw some amazing sites. I will be putting up pictures once I get them from my dad and Wayne. Ben was a great river guide and we all ate way too much food. It was an amazing trip! The day after I got back, Heidi and I headed out to California consult for a pharmaceutical company. They put us up in the Ritz Carlton right on Laguna beach, which was the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in, and we were in the lap of luxury for the weekend. It was awesome to spend a weekend alone with Heidi and we had a great time. I was really spoiled this month. Now it is time to get back to normal life.

Well, I came home to good news of bredli eggs! Ben counted around 25 total. A few have gone bad, but most look great. It is sure nice to have eggs from a new species. Bredli are some of the greatest pythons, and we are very excited to see heads poking out of those eggs. Wish I could have gotten pictures. The snakes are growing well and many of the PXP jungles have taken their first meals, so they should be ready to go soon. I will be taking individual pictures of the available snakes very soon. The Cape Yorks and childrens are doing well and should also be up for sale soon. The jags are developing nicely, and I am very excited to see how they turn out. The jungle jags are developing nicely, and most have taken their first, second, or third meal. They should be phenomenal, if their beginning is anything to go by. I made a new rack for medium snakes, mainly ball python yearlings, which is working out nicely, and I snapped a few shots of some of the snakes housed inside. Things are going very well this year and we have had some awesome firsts. Unfortunately, the jungle jag luck didn't pan out for the mojave clutches, and we only have 2 mojaves out of 12 eggs, so all luck balances out. Hope they are good looking females, but with our projects it seems to work out opposite. We will soon find out as soon as they emerge from the egg. We also got a nice clutch of pastels that hatched out with 5 pastels and 2 normals, but all the pastels but one were males. They are also off to a good start and we should have some nice pastels available very soon. All in all, the year is shaping out very well, and we are having a great time. As always, GET ADDICTED!


Nacho, our bumblebee looking nice!	Comparison of a couple '07 childrens	A nice Cape York hatchling looking good.	This ghost male is turning out really well	Het genetic stripe male enjoying the new rack	Aberant mojave female is a nice looking snake

6/11/07: We have a winner! Congratulations to Tim Osborne, the winner of an AAR jungle carpet python from our '07 Skunk and Deb clutch. He also gets his choice of one out of two jungle females because we aren't sure which one came out 7th. Pictures of the two (pre-shed) are shown below. Thanks to all who entered and gave us positive feedback. We wish we could give away more, and hopefully we can make this an annual event to show our appreciation for our customers, supporters, and friends.


Choice #1	Choice #2

We had our 50% het granite Irian Jayas hatch out this last week and they look great! I have pictures, which will be posted at a later time. Most of the childrens pythons and cape york spotteds have taken their first meal and are well on their way to being ready for the availability page. Another of the at-large cape york hatchlings was found cruising around last night, so I am glad to have one more back safe in a cage. This gives me hope that I will find the final missing baby before a spider gets it. I will be posting individual pictures of these little pythons when they are ready to go. The red morph jags and their siblings are eating very well and are ready to join your collection. It is fun to see them develop and change as they get bigger. We have some great looking jags, which are getting better with each shed. Well, hopefully I will get another update in soon. Hope you are all having a nice summer, and enjoying life. GET ADDICTED!

6/4/07: We have decided to reward everyone who visits our site with a chance to win a jungle carpet python from Skunk and Deb's 2007 clutch, which is due to hatch this week. If you are interested in winning an AAR JCP, click on the following link to read through the rules and terms of the contest, which will then take you to the contest questions page. We will go through all of the entries, and all correct entries will be placed into a hat, and one winner will be drawn. This person will get the 7th jungle hatchling to emerge from the clutch, despite pattern aberancy, appearance, color, etc. The snake will be shipped via FedEx priority overnight (shipping to be paid for by the winner) once it has fed 3 times. You can only enter once. All entries must be submitted before Saturday, June 9th, at 8 pm MST, after which the winner will be selected from all entries received. You must be 18 or older to enter, but you may have a parent or guardian enter for you. We will also post pictures of the hatchlings as they emerge from the egg in order of emergence on this page as well as at the Morelia Pythons Community website. Good luck and GET ADDICTED!

6/1/07: Man, things have been hectic around here, and there is no sign of letting up. My wife and I are celebrating our 10th year anniversary this month! She is the best wife and sure puts up with a lot from me. We get along great and I will definitely keep her for the long haul. It seems to be more of a rarity to have marriages last, which makes me all the more thankful that I have such a great wife that I get along with so well! Here's to Heidi!

This month will be a busy one, with over 100 hatchlings due to hatch out! What a great time of year! The red morph jungle jaguars are turning out very nice after their first shed. We have put up individual pictures of all of them on the Jungle Jag available page, but we are only planning on selling a few females. The females for sale, however, will include some very nice red morph jungle jags, which will make a fine addition to any collection. From what I can tell, there is only one other jungle jag clutch cooking at Will Birds place, but most of these eggs have died. We will have some of the only US produced jungle jags, although many will be produced in Europe. We are very excited to see how these little ones will turn out! I also updated the red morph jaguar available page with pictures of the available siblings as well as some new pics of some of the jags. We also lowered our prices on jaguars as well after seeing how many are hatching out this year. Make sure to consider our red morph jags for your projects, which allows you to produce red siblings as well.

Our PXP jungle eggs have started to dent in a bit, and it won't be long before heads are poking out. It is always exciting to see the variability of a clutch. I also updated the jungle availability with new pictures of our available PXP and PXU jungles. They are turning out very nice, and it is hard to sell some of these guys. The Cape Yorks hatched out and look great, all except the best looking one, which had a spinal deformity. This little congenital aberrant had a perfect stripe and nice light coloration. The deformity was very severe and would preclude digestion and passage of a meal, which was cause for euthanasia of the snake.


I predicted this girl would turn out nice, and I wasn't wrong!	This female jaguar is amazing. I think we'll have to keep her for a while.	Our favorite male jungle jungle jag. He was one of the silvery ones.	A very nice red morph jungle jag female. Another keeper.

Our childrens python eggs have also hatched out, although there were a few mistakes made with that clutch as well, resulting the loss of many. I made the mistake of trying to fit too many eggs in one incubation box (what kind of cheap sucker couldn't spend a buck on another incubation container?!), and the ones on the bottom died just prior to hatching. Snake eggs are usually laid and piled up together, so I figured there would be no harm in piling some of the small eggs on top of the others. There were only two layers, but that was an error, which had some negative consequences. Live and learn, I guess, but I am kind of tired learning the hard way, especially when it comes to learning the same lessons that I have already learned in the past. Another negative event was putting the hatchling Cape York spotteds in containers with ventilation holes that were too large, and had 3 escape. One was found the next day, but I still have two on the loose. There is still some hope, but they are so dang small that it is a virtual needle in the haystack to find them. On the plus side, a few have taken their first meal, getting them closer to being ready to be put on the available page. I will be taking pictures of each of the spotteds as well as the childrens pythons, which will be on the site soon. We had some phenomenal red childrens hatch out that are very light red/pink.

We also had a clutch of pastel ball pythons hatch out, which were from a pastel male to a normal female, but it looks like poor odds with only a few pastels. I will also be photoing them when they shed out. Sorry I have been so bad at getting back with people interested in our snakes. I apologize if you have emailed or requested pictures and I haven't replied fast enough. I will try to be better about getting back with people. Well, sorry for the lack of pictures on this page, but I did get plenty of pictures for the available pages, so you can see some new photos there. Anyway, hope your herp season is going well. GET ADDICTED!

5/15/07: Got back from a much needed vacation and have been frantically trying to catch up. Ben took good care of the snakes while I was gone. My family and I went to southern California for a couple weeks and we had a blast. I got to herp a little bit, but mostly fun stuff for the kids and wife. As far as herp related news, we stopped in Saint George, UT for a little herping. I was hoping to show the kids some wild desert tortoises, but we got there around noon and they had all retreated to burrows. We did find a nice Chuckwalla, who was very wary of us. Joshua Tree national park was very cool and I also found a couple chuckwallas there, including a nice orange juvenile. I also got some great pictures of some bighorn sheep after getting quite close to two young males. Overall it was a great trip and we all had a blast. I have a great family and it is so nice to be able to spend some quality time with them.


With a black head and yellow body and tail, this male chuck was a cool find	This chuck was a little cool and we got nice and close	A juvie chuck in situ, spotted by my wife, Heidi	Here is the juvie again, notice the nice oranges	This male bighorn let me get pretty close for some pictures	These two were not too shy, which is one of the benefits of National parks

Soon after I got back, we had some sweet 50% red morph jungle jags hatching out. We are very excited for these, and can't wait to see how they turn out. I am sure several will be staying with us for a while at least. We hit some sweet odds with 7 out of 9 being jungle jaguars. There were a few red jungle jags as well as some really cool silvery axanthic looking ones. We will definitely be taking more pictures, especially once they have shed out, but here are a few to tide you over. This sure is the best time of year. Some of the jungle jags will be sold. I don't think there will be very many available, so if you are interested, let us know soon. Out of the two siblings, one was a red morph sib and the other a normal jungle jag sibling. Hopefully our ball python odds will follow suit.


These two have a real nice silver background	Here is a picture to illustrate how variable the clutch is	A nice shot of many hatchlings in hand	Here is the pile in the nesting box

First jag to venture out of the egg	A nice red jungle jag still in the egg	First one out is a jungle jag	Closer shot in hand of our first hatchling JJ

The Cape York spotteds or Blonde Macs are also hatching out, and they look sweet. 8 eggs made it through incubation. They have a very light blonde background color with some nice pattern elements. When I opened the container with the eggs, the babies came out of the eggs to investigate a bit. Normally when you open a container with hatching eggs, the babies will pull back inside the egg, but not these guys, who wanted to check everything out with their wildly flicking tongues. They are very nice babies as you can see. It is always fun to hatch out a new species. We also got our new female Cape York spotted in this last week, and she is very nice. We will be waiting until next year to try for eggs from her, but she should have a nice big clutch. Doug K raised her well and was unfortunate to have 2 females instead of a pair. Hopefully she will be successful with us.


First look at the world. Check out the egg tooth.	View of hatched out eggs and the babies that came out	A closer view of the hatchling pile of blondies	Very nice striped Cape York spotted python.

A few of the jaguars shed, so I figured I'd throw in a few pictures of them as well. It is hard to captureI also throw in a freshly shed jungle female (PXP06-2F) who was looking very nice. Hope you enjoy the pictures and GET ADDICTED!


This guy is looking very nice. Look at that red.	This red girl is looking awesome. Nothing like a fresh shed.	Our holdback red jag male is turning out very nice.	This is one fine jungle carpet female.

4/22/07: I noticed that some images were missing from the Jungle Care page, so I fixed the problem and inserted a couple more images. I also added more information. We are in our 6th year of jungle breeding, and have an idea of what it takes to properly maintain and breed jungle carpet pythons. I also added more information on maternal incubation, so I hope that is helpful to anyone considering that option. Jungles are such great animals, and they are definitely one of my favorites to work with. It is so great watching an ugly little hatchling turn into a breathtaking, impressive, adult jungle carpet. There are few snakes that rival a nice jungle in terms of wowing herpers and non-herpers alike. If you haven't had the pleasure of working with jungles, and watching them grow and change, then you are missing out on a great experience.

Original Python Pete female breeder (hatched by Pete in 1998)

I pulled some pictures out of the archives that you might appreciate. I will post them here. It was fun to rememeber my first jungles and see pictures of them again. If you don't know, my original jungle breeders that I bought directly from Python Pete in '98 died in an accidental overheating of the herp room back in 2001. I also lost another pair of unrelated, unknown lineage jungles as well that were the parents to my PXU-producing breeder male. My original Python Pete female was very nice (pictured above), and it is too bad she is not around any more. I had a few ugly ducklings from their first year production hatchlings, and they turned out to be amazing, and are our current Python Pete line breeders. It's amazing how fast time goes by, and I can still remember the outdoor photo shoot of my original female in the tree with a film camera in the backyard of a house that we lived in 3 houses ago. Good memories of great snakes. Well, I better stop reminiscing and rambling. Here are the pictures. Unfortunately, the original size is a bit small, but you get the picture. GET ADDICTED!


My original Python Pete Jungle Carpet Python Pair	Original Unknown line of jungle carpets	Lilly as a hatchling; where's the color?	Here she is again at 6 months and is gaining yellow fast.	JB as a hatchling. He was also pretty brown.	He started coloring up, but still had some brown in his stripe.

4/18/07: We got a clutch of eggs from our Het Granite Irian Jaya/West Papuan Carpet python bred to a unique normal female, so we should have some 50% possible het granites hatching out in a couple of months. I am very excited for these eggs, and hope they cook well. It is an exciting project, and the granite should be valuable for many years because the trait is passed on in a recessive manner. The granite is a beutiful morph, and we are hoping that our male het granite, Kip, who is one of the nicest IJ/WPs I have seen, will pass his beautiful colors onto any granite offspring down the road. I have heard through the grapevine of a couple clutches of het to het granites, but many of the eggs have gone bad. It will be interesting to see how many people hatch granites out this year. They should be a stable investment for a long time to come.

Eggs are cooking, and red jags are growing. All but two of the jags are feeding ravenously. The two holdouts should give in soon. They are shaping up nicely. We are excited to see how they will turn out. The clutches in the incubator are going strong. I have lost a few eggs from the Cape York spotted clutch, but still have around 10 left. Hopefully they will all make it. I guess a few infertiles are to be expected when eggs are received from a first time breeding pair. We aquired a second adult female Cape York Spotted Python who is twice as big as our current female, and I am excited to have her arrive. Bad weather has kept her safe and warm at home, but she will be here soon.

I am messing around with a few website modifications. I hope they aren't too obnoxious. The front page now has a couple animated gifs, one Australian herps and the other African herps. I think it turned out alright. Hopefully it doesn't bog down the page too much. Web design is fun, and I enjoy the simple format that allows me to update frequently and keep the site fresh. Hopefully you agree. Anyway, hope your season is going as great as ours is. GET ADDICTED!

4/12/07: Well, our '07 red morph jaguars and their clutch mates are up for sale. Click here to see individual pictures of animals for sale. These are some great looking jaguars and you can read about our red morph jaguar coastal breeder and his background on the Jaguar Coastal Carpet page. Get a nice red morph jag while they last! GET ADDICTED!

4/10/07: Lilly laid her eggs today! A very nice clutch of 20 eggs. One looks to be infertile, but the rest look great. I felt so bad taking her off of the eggs, and she did not want to go willingly. She made some hefty attempts at striking at me in the process. I really need to get a setup for allowing the females to incubate their own eggs, so they can do what they were intended to do. She was very nicely coiled around the clutch, and would have done very well. Below are some snapshots of her in a nice beehive as well as a bit defensive showing her eggs off. I also included a snap of one of the red siblings to the jags as well as Nacho in the process of shedding.


Perfect beehive of eggs by Lilly	A bit defensive in protection of her eggs	Post-shed red morph jag sib	Nacho, Caught in the act of shedding	Post-shed PXP06-1, looking good.

I updated all of the collection pages with a bit of a new format. I think it adds a nice touch with a bit of contrast as seen above in the snapshots. It is fun messing around with the website. I have added a few new pictures to the Bumblebee, Jungle, Tiger Coastal, and Woma pages, so check them out. I am going to add a new form to the page to allow for some input from whoever cares to put input in. Also, I am going to put up a Hall of Fame page, so if you have pictures of your herp that you got from us and want to show them off and get them on the hall of fame page, get a good picture and send it in.

4/9/07: We also joined the Easter egg club and got two clutches of Childrens python eggs, totaling 28 eggs! They both laid at the same time in one big pile, but the younger female laid around 16 or 17 of the eggs. I did get there just in time to see the older female laying her last few eggs, and it was the first time I have watched a female python lay an egg. I have always just seen them afterwards wrapped around the eggs, so this was nice to see one laid finally. I have included some pictures below of the females on their eggs and one in the process of laying. Well, in a couple months we should have some great VPI line childrens pythons crawling around. These should be nice and red like the hatchlings from previous years. Childrens pythons are great, and have a big python attitude in a small package. Many claim that their childrens are agressive, but all of the ones we have had have been relatively calm. I have been bitten on a couple occasions, but one was when I unpacked them after receiving them at the airport from the Barkers, and again again once while holding them at some random time. Both times, the bites were fairly deliberate, but didn't seem agressive and they released very soon after biting. The nice thing is, if you do happen to get a bite from a childrens it really doesn't hurt, especially in comparison to a bite from a retic or a scrub. There is just something about the childrens that makes them very interesting to watch and keep. They are also hardy captives and easy to breed.

I also threw in a couple jag pics. The first one pictured has such a nice wide stripe. The other two are the twins that have recently fed, but have still not shed. At least they are eating on their own, and should catch up to the others in no time. The jags are looking great and are coming along nicely. We will be getting ready to post them soon and will be offering some very nice jags that will give you a jumpstart on producing your own jags. Let us know if you are interested and we can get you a nice deal. GET ADDICTED!


Our two breeder childrens pythons sitting on their Easter eggs.	A female childrens python is in the process of laying an egg	Here are most of the eggs. 7 more were laid after the picture was taken.	Nice wide stripe on the back of this jaguar carpet python	One of the red jaguar carpet python twins with a nice meal in the belly	The second twin red jaguar carpet python that is also doing well.

4/3/07: Well, more good news! I caught a pair of our centralian pythons busy, and hopefully something will come of the breeding! Can't wait to have baby bredli running around! What a great time of year. I did take the Cape York eggs away, as the cage just wasn't cutting it for maternal incubation, so now they are cooking nicely in the incubator. I really hope they are alright and will make it. We also got our first clutch of ball python eggs for the year from pastel to normal ball. Last year, the pastels we hatched out were very nice, so I am excited to see how they turn out this year. The incubator should fill up quickly. It does look like we will be getting a clutch or two of possible het granite Irian Jayas/West paupans, so that will be nice to get that project rolling along. I am very excited to hatch out some granites down the line, and seeing pictures of them makes me itch to produce my own. I am taking to the IJ/WPs pretty well, and that after I thought I was a true light-sider. I guess that is the nature of the hobby; a balance between the light side and the dark side. Speaking of light side, our stripe-lined female jungle just shed out and is looking very nice. I managed to get a few pictures of her in my new light tent setup. They turned out pretty well, considering how hard it is to get good pictures of her. Her yellow always seems to overexpose whenever I try to get some good shots of her. The light tent is a bit off with white background, but I will get it figured out sometime soon, I hope. Digital cameras are nice and I can take a ton of pictures and one or two will turn out nice. Photography is fun. It's all about the lighting, so if you can get some good lighting, then the pictures usually turn out pretty nice. I'll post a few of some of the pictures taken in the light tent.


Hopefully a good sign of good things to come. It will be nice to hatch out some striped bredli	This girl is turning out nice. It is always hard to get her true colors to come out.	Another pic of the striped jungle. This was taken in my new light tent setup.	Another light tent experiment. This jag is really light and has some nice red.

I got a great new book out of Germany called Rautenpythons, which is Deutsch for carpet pythons, written by Marc Mense. It has some great photos and some awesome information with some great locality shots of carpet python habitats. The reading is going well and is helping me remember my German. I am not clear on some of the words, but most I can remember. I lived in Berlin for a couple years and got pretty good at speaking, but it is fading a bit as there are not a lot of oportunities to speak German in Utah. It is cool to read about some of the lesser talked about pythons, such as the southwesterns and inlands and to read about their habitats and characteristics. Makes me wish they were readily available. I really need to visit Australia to see these awesome animals in nature. I couldn't imagine pulling such a magnificent creature out of their environment, and would definately be happy with just pictures. GA!

3/29/07: More eggs are here again. These next couple weeks should be full of eggy goodness, which coincides well with the easter season. Last night, our Cape York/Blonde mac female laid her eggs! It is a lot larger than I anticipated, and I wonder how she packed them all in there. I am going to let her keep her eggs for now. I got out the pencil and started marking the top of the eggs getting them ready to put in the old incubator, but then had a change of heart. Didn't get a count, but there are at least 10. She was very interested in her eggs, and I think she will do well with them. I will be monitoring temps of the eggs and her body for the next few weeks to make sure she is keeping them in a good area. After all of the recent discussion on maternal incubation over at Moreliapythons.com, I have really been thinking a lot about letting females incubate their eggs. We'll see how it goes, but I think there are not many better sights in this hobby than baby pythons emerging from their mothers coils. I am very excited to see that again, and will hopefully have some really cool shots in a couple months. The female childrens pythons should lay any day now. They are huge, probably the biggest I have seen them get, so there may be a bounty of nice red Barker line childrens pythons available in the next few months. I think I am going to let them incubate their clutches as well. We shall see when they are laid. Anyways, here are some pics of the Cape York girl and a couple other random shots.


Blond mac/Cape York female on eggs	First clutch of blonde macs at AAR!	Beautiful coiled tiger coastal female	My kids, Jake and Kate, have a pair of rosys	One of our angolan python pairs	I just can't resist taking pics of Nacho	Deb is getting very close to laying a nice big clutch	Skunk is the proud papa of Debs eggs; nice genes!

The red jag clutch hatchlings are doing well, and I have individual pictures of all of them. I will be putting together an available page with prices and such over the next few days, so let me know if your are interested, and I can send you a preview link before we list them to the public. The jaguar morph is very exciting. With unlimited potential in what can be produced, and refined jaguar projects underway, I know that they will be popular for many years to come. The array of different appearances of normal coastal jag projects is staggering, not to mention the various subspecies or type crosses that have occurred, and I am sure there will be some very interesting developments occuring over the next few years. We may even see a leucistic carpet that survives. Breeding jag to jag not only produces leucistics, but also very nice jaguars, that are a step above the parental stock. We will be holding back a few for our future projects, and are looking forward to producing some crazy stuff down the road. It really is living art!

I will also be making a lot of changes to the species pages over the next little while, and bringing in some cool pictures and information regarding some of our breeders. Stay tuned for those changes. We have also been considering selling many of our ball morphs to focus more on the Australian pythons. Of course we will be keeping Nacho, our pied male, and a bunch of morph females, as well as a few of our other cool ball pythons, but we feel there are so many more Australian reptile projects we want to pursue and we just have too many balls. If you are looking for a cool ball project that will be ready to rock and roll, let us know where your interest lies and we can talk about setting you up. GA!

3/25/07: It was a warm day outside today, so I thought I would take some outdoor shots of some of our snakes. They turned out nice, but a bit overexposed. The lighting was a little bright. I'll have to take some more on an overcast day. The bredli always look better in outdoor light. It really brings out their true colors. I guess that is the trick with most reptiles; to get a good representation of how they look to the eye. These guys are spectacular. I have always wanted to take a nice centralian down to Southern Utah for some pictures on the slickrock. I did let one of my females climb around in the apple tree, and they do very well in the trees, even as large as they are. Well, here are some bredli shots.


Uluru, one of our female bredli	Uluru climbing in my apple tree	Nice tongue shot while Uluru explores	Simpson, our striped male bredli after a recent shed	His head is really faded reddish orange	Green brings out the nice reds in Simpson

Here are some of the other random shots I took outside. A trampoline makes for a nice background and is a uniform dark color and brings out a nice contrast in the snake. I thought these turned out alright. I also threw in an indoor shot of JB, one of our breeder male jungles, in shed. I just thought he looked pretty cool with blue eyes. Anyway, enjoy and GET ADDICTED!


Tiger coastal male outside	Another showing off his blue tongue	One of our '05 pastel females	Our ghost, poss het albino male	JB, in shed with wicked blue eyes