Monthly Archives: March 2021

Episode 37: The Epic Toad Episode with Robert Villa



Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Seven!   I hope you all remain safe and healthy and hopefully many of you are getting your vaccine doses.  Spring is here where I live and I managed to get the intros and outros recorded for this episode despite a trio of chainsaws working on a tree in the neighbor’s yard.  Tricky timing but done.

PATREONERS!  Here’s a shout-out to new supporter Tom Eles from Ontario!  Tom took the PayPal option and thank you so much good sir.  Hopefully we will meet again this year.  To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email).

This week’s guest is Robert Villa from Tucson, Arizona. Robert and I have corresponded over the years, and have never met, so I looked forward to having a nice chat with him, and sure did. Robert is interested in all kinds of different subjects and that makes him interesting as well. We talked about so many different things that it is hard to characterize this show, but at the root of it all is the toad, more specifically the Sonoran Desert Toad, and everything else we discussed is related in some way.

During our conversation, Robert and I talked about spotted box turtles (Terrapene nelsoni), and folks, he wrote a great article about them for Medium entitled “Tortuga de la Sierra Madre – My encounter with a cryptic and elusive turtle” and I urge you to check that out.  Robert is also the current president of the Tucson Herpetological Society, and it just so happens that the guest speaker for March will be Gary Nabhan, and the topic will be “Traditional Knowledge and Conservation of Reptiles with the Seri People” which is related to some of the things Robert and I talked about, and that’s a Monday March 22nd Zoom meeting, so check it out!   And finally, for more information and discussion on possible border species between Mexico and the United States’ check out the thread entitled “Possible Country Records for the US” which was created by Don Cascabel on the old Field Herp Forum.

Thanks Robert!   Such a fun talk.

And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, Yaqui origin stories, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike

 


Episode 36: Snoring Thunder



Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Six!  I hope everyone remains happy and healthy as we move into spring here in the northern hemisphere. It is a wild and wooly day out today here in central Illinois, with high winds and freezing rain, but spring will not be denied.

PATREONERS!  Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode:  Jeremiah Easter and Richard Legere!   Thank you Jeremiah, and thank you Richard, and thanks so much to all of my Patreoners for supporting the show! I really appreciate it. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email).

For this week’s episode, I packed up my recording gear and headed to southern Illinois, to participate in another Snoring Thunder adventure.  After a late Thursday night out chasing frogs in the middle of heavy rains, on Friday afternoon I sat down with Justin Michels and Jeremy Schumacher to discuss Snoring Thunder, crawfish frogs, Illinois chorus frogs, and a few other things.  That night we went out again and found a few more crawfish frogs before Justin and I made the long, late night drive back to our homes.

Many thanks to Jeremy and Justin for sitting down with me and having a fun chat.

And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, your best frog calls, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike


Episode 35: HerpMX with Jason Jones



Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Thirty Five!  Apologies for the delay, thanks for your patience, and much warmth and good wishes to everyone.

PATREONERS!  Here’s a shout-out to new Patreon contributors to the show since the last episode:  William Bone!  Thank you William!   And thanks so much to all of my Patreoners for supporting the show! I really appreciate it. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. And thanks in advance!  One More Important Thing:  If you haven’t done so already, please take a moment and rate the show on your podcast platform – it really helps folks to find the show.

Our guest this week is Jason Jones, one of the cofounders of the HerpMX project.  I’m so grateful to Jason for coming on the show, as HerpMX is a favorite thing of mine, and for many other people as well.  It’s hard to find anyone out there in the herp community who hasn’t heard of Herp MX, and indeed this group has a tremendous following on social media, and for good reason. And if you go to the project’s website, which is simply herpmx, you can dive deep into herp adventure, species quests, scientific knowledge, and herp conservation in Mexico. If I sound like a fanboy it’s because I am one. I love back story – I love the deep details behind amphibians and reptiles, and Jason Jones and the rest of the HerpMX crew do a great job of providing depth and detail.  You can follow HerpMX on Facebook, and the project is also on Instagram and Twitter.

Thank you Jason, and thanks to the entire HerpMX crew for all of the great work!

And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike