Oh, hey, it's a 13-year-old poodle and a baby Bjorn.

Allie Ward, congratulations.

You're here.

Let's bust some flim flam with the world's biggest fan and advocate for rattlesnakes.

They grew up living around the country in a Navy family, and they've seen so many types of ecology,

but they got their Ph.D. from Arizona State University.

They're now a professor in the Biological Sciences

at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, the director of the physical ecology of reptiles lab. They run the

Central Coast Snake Services, which helps relocate rattlesnakes so people don't kill them. Also,

an author of so many papers on rattlesnakes and the books,

California Snakes and How to Find Them, and California Lizards and How to Find Them. They're a co-founder

of this year's inaugural Snake Week from July 13th through 19th. And you can find out more at

snakeweek.org. They have a bunch of events and webinars. They also head up Project

Rattlecam, which brings you live feeds of rattlesnakes in their natural habitat. It's a joy. I

suggest you go check out Project Rattlecam. I had them on a list of mine for years, and I finally met up

with them in a hotel where we were both in L.A. Walking into a hotel lobby to talk about rattlesnakes

on a Tuesday, normal stuff. I see a snake dress. Hi, I'm Ali. Emily,? Thank you. I wasn't chill about it. But before I even

got there, I had taken a quick survey that this rattlesnake expert uses to determine perception of the

snakes. And then I took one after. So if you feel like contributing your own data before and after,

we'll link the survey in the show notes and on our website. So we got to the hotel. We sunk into a couch to talk about all things rattlesnake.

Now, their genus crotelus means rattle in Greek. And the timber rattlesnake, I just found this out.

They got a raw deal. They're named crotilus horridus, which means rattling, terrible, as if it's taxonomy, we're a Yelp review.

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