intro: this is abtv. animalbytes televisionfor animal lovers by animal lovers. meghan: i'm meghan kelley and i love greenanacondas. brian: most twenty- year old california girlswould rather be hanging out with their friends or maybe going to the beach, but not meghanshe'd rather spend her time with anacondas. my name is brian barczyk. i'm no zoologist,just a guy with a passion for animals and
snakes for sale on craigslist, that passion often takes me on animal adventuresaround the world. where sometimes i meet some pretty interesting people. this week, i'llmeet meghan kelley, an anaconda lover. you're watching snakebytes! i'm here with meghan kelley, fast becoming thevoice of green anacondas, in particular, and an internet sensation at that. meghan thankyou so much for having us out. i just love
your passion not only for reptiles, but inparticular probably one of the most villainized reptiles out there the green anaconda.meghan: i have always been into reptiles, i had a ball python when i was a little kidand it just kind of grew from there. i found a green anaconda on craigslist and i justfell in love with it. her name is puppy, one of my friends named her, she is super nice.brian: exactly, you guys always know that i always say puppy dog tame. so already ilike puppy a tremendous amount. meghan: this is the one that i bring to allthe shows. brian: gosh let's pull her out. what a beautiful animal. so tell me about puppy. how old is she? meghan: she is about 7-8. i' m not sure.brian: you had her for how long?
meghan: i have had her about 4 years and sheis the one that i bought off craigslist. she was only about 4 feet when we got her andshe was about 4 years old. brian: what an amazing animal! yeah, and itell you right off the bat. they have a really different feel to them. like they're really strong animals.i mean that is a tremendous amount of muscle. and when i think of green anaconda again thekind of rap the get is kind of mean and nasty. meghan: um, the first day it bit my brother,but that was probably because it was never feed. they just have a bad stereotype becauseof like the movie everyone anyone who doesn't know anything about reptiles sees a big snakeand they call it a green anaconda or an anaconda. and so i do not like that they have that stereotypebecause they are not they are nice. every
green anaconda that i have dealt with hasbeen pretty nice. a lot of people are surprise when they find out that i have green anacondasand how big they get. brian: how cool it that, man ! it's not often thatyou can have your face this close to a green anaconda and feel completely comfortable,but i have seen so many pictures of you doing that exact same thing.meghan: i post a lot of silly pictures just for fun cause my anacondas are always in it.cause they are always like right here and i'll make a stupid face. i didn't mean to become the face for anacondas. i was just posting picturesof my pets that i'm eventually going to breed. i just started getting shared a lot and itjust kind of happened. i don't really let the bad comments bother me at all. everyonehas their opinion and the anacondas have that
stereotype to begin with so everyone is kindof basing off that and i rather like change their opinion towards that than fight themon it. brian: these aren't just animals in a cagefor you, you've like put a lot of time into them, right?meghan: i try and take each one of them out everyday just because i like holding themand i like spending time with them so i try and handle them every day, each one. so, iform bonds with them and i know their personalities. i know when they are irritated and when theyare not. brian: handling anacondas isn't all fun andgames. meghan certainly has plenty of stories. meghan: yeah, i was a few shows actually and i had my big anaconda i bring. and she is has peed and
pooped on me numerous times at shows and onetime it went all the way down my back. and it was gross and i didn't have a change ofclothes so i had to stay with it all day and it happened within the first ten minutes ofthe show opened. so that wasn’t fun. brian: so how about snake bites?meghan: i did get bit by my 11 footer one time. i was on a news thing and someone (they werein bags) put a different snake next to it inside of a tub and the other snake peed init didn't like the smell and when i picked it up it bit me. so i was just irritated,but other than that i don't get bit by them. they are all super nice.brian: what does meghan's family think of her obsession with anacondas?meghan: all my cousins, my older cousins and
like my aunt and uncles are think that i amweird. they don't like snakes at all. my mom never liked snakes, but now we just keep startedbringing them home. we still have them and she has gotten used to them. i get her tohold them once and awhile. so that is cool. they're not viscous or man eaters. they havejust been visualized badly by the media and everything like that.brian: how does she feel about shows that demonized anacondas most recently the discoveryshow eaten alive? meghan: i watched it and i didn't think thatit was good at all. they could have done a lot better. if they had not done the eatenalive part and it would have been a lot like more interesting because they are searchingfor a big anaconda which is cool people will
get interested just to see things and justgo out and find something which is awesome. all they did was hold its head to get it towrap them. and i can do that just by doing that. and like the people who didn’t watchit and probably still going to think it ate him because they didn't actually see it.brian: you are doing a great job of kind of reinforcing that fact that these animals arereally special. meghan: yeah, i try to really give them areally good image. i want everyone to think that just as nice. i want them to think likei do. that they are just like normal pets who want love.brian: do you think the rest of your life you are going to have green anacondas?meghan: hopefully, the rest of my life i will
have green anacondas. i mean, i love themthat much. it's just like my dog i wanna keep him forever.brian: so what is her message? meghan: my message that i am trying to getacross is that they are nice they are not man eaters they can be really tame. i meanhere is a baby and babies are more bitey than everything else. so you can do anything toit and it's gonna just sit there. brian: meghan's passion for animals is infectiousand there is no doubt her love of these creatures will continue to change people's perspectivesof a commonly misunderstood animal. meghan: i hope you understand why i love anacondasnow. i'm meghan kelley and you've been watching snakebytes. brian: you can follow meghan kelley on instagram at
meghan_kelley or on facebook at megacondaand as always you can follow snakebytes on
facebook and twitter at snakebytestv and untilnext week you've been watching snakebytes. meghan: okay, it's peeing. awesome!! peter byrnes: hi, i am peter byrnes. an aussie bloke who loves wild life. my respect fornature started when i was a young boy. since then it has exploded into an obsession. newepisodes only on animalbytestv.
