Maeg’s View Book Review: World Wild Vet by Evan Antin

May 27, 2021 MaegLeave a comment

It has been awhile! I’m back with the 3rd book of Maeg’s View Book Review! I first randomly found Evan Antin on instagram because he’s a good looking vet but then I saw he was into exoic animals which I find interesting since my boyfriend has had many reptiles and more. I saw he was releasing a book and I was interested in his adventures!

“Millions follow Dr. Evan Antin and his wildlife adventures through social media and on his popular Animal Planet television show Evan Goes Wild. Now in his first book, World Wild Vet, Evan takes us to the deep blue seas, swimming with giant whale sharks with “puppy dog eyes,” to jungles filled with venomous snakes (who are more afraid of you than you are of them), to a race across the savannah and against the clock to save rhinos from the clutches of poachers–all in the name of adventure and a deep love for the wild around us.

Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and conservationist wake up call, World Wild Vet is an unforgettable exploration of the world we all call home and a love letter to the creatures we share it with.”

Questions:

What do you think motivated the author to share his or her story?
At the start of the book I think he just wanted to share his story as he has so many adventures but I think the whole goal was to raise awareness on all these different types of animals, their safety and how to treat them.

What did you learn from hearing this person’s story?
I learned a lot from this book about different things. I biggest one is that wild animals are wild and you can never forget that. I know a lot of people, even me, love animals so much that we forget it is an animal and they can hurt us. For example, on one of his adventures he ran into wild elephants on the middle of the road. The driver of the truck stopped and immediately started to drive in reverse as fast as he could while the elephant charged at the truck. They were in their way and they wanted them gone. He said he didn’t even think the elephant would do that because they’re sweet creatures in our minds.

How does the book’s title work in relation to the book’s contents?
I think the book’s title is absolutely perfect for this book. When you think of a vet you mostly think dogs and cats, but for Evan Antin he is more than that, he’s snakes, reptiles, rhinos, whales and more. If you read this book take a look at his Instagram as it’s amazing and educational.

What surprised you most about the book?
The thing that surprised me most was how young and crazy he was. When you see his Instagram he talks about these animal and showing them the respect they deserve, but in his book when he’s young he does some stupid things. Just shows that everyone learns stuff the hard way and everyone does things they shouldn’t even when educated.

Would you want to read another book by this author?
Absolutely! If you look at his Instagram he is constantly going on adventures to help animals all over the world and that comes with stories and education for people to read.

This is definately an easy read with some great stories (and photos) so take a look and answer the questions in the comments!

Thanks for reading,

Maeg.

Canadian Pet Expo!

April 7, 2015 MaegLeave a comment

This is the first thing I’m writing about for my 2015 list! Yay!

I actually forgot to put this on my list even though I knew about it for about half a year. I was at a reptile expo with my boyfriend when we got a card that told us about it, I was dying to go and begged my boyfriend. My boyfriend really just wanted to go for the reptiles but there wasn’t very much there, he still of course bought a frog.

Lets get started on my experience!

Well we started our morning off right with a shower, and Starbucks then headed our way there. The pet expo was held at the International Centre in Toronto, Ontario, it’s not a far drive from where we live so it was easy drive. We found parking no problem even though the place was packed since so many things were going on.

When we got out of the car there was a huge line up to get in but it was going extremely fast, and the best part is, you’re allowed to bring your own dog so you had so many animals to look at and pet! It was so much fun, there was actually so much going on. There is hundreds of vendors there, it was Canada’s largest cat show, Ultimate Air Dog show were dogs jump into a pool to get Nerf toys, Birds demonstrations and Reptilia was there. There was probably so much more that I missed you can’t even believe how big this was.

I love both cats and dogs (and of course reptiles) but the only thing I didn’t like was the cats. Their owners were old ladies who wouldn’t allow you to touch them and if you did they would walk away from you and lock the cat up in a crate. We didn’t spend a lot of time with the cats because of that and not to mention the cat show seems mean to me. The dogs on the other hand, owners let you pet the dog, some let you give them treats, they talk to you about their pets, they were fun.

The best part for me was petting the big Newfoundland dog that was there. I grew up with a Newfy Dog so I was in love! I didn’t take pictures unfortunatly but you can go online to look at them all at http://www.canadianpetexpo.ca/

Next year my boyfriend and I said we would go for two days instead of the one because we missed out on the pigs and ducks that I wanted to see!

Thanks for reading,

Maeg.

ps. check out my 2015 List here: https://sheaint.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/the-2015-list/

New Puppy + Reptilia the Reptile Zoo

July 31, 2014December 9, 2014 MaegLeave a comment

I know I have been the worst blogger lately since I’ve been completely MIA for a month. Have no fear I come with something interesting to write about!

Last weekend my boyfriend had a fun weekend planned for us since we haven’t really seen each other due to work. The day started off with driving up to my dad’s house to see my new puppy! Yes I haven’t written about him so I’ll tell you now. One of my step-mum’s friends has two Bernese Mountain Dogs and they had puppies, one day she brought one home and said it was ours. Yea, I know.

Meet Sully. This is when I first found out about him, my dad picked me up with him. He’s honestly the cutest dog and funny.

This was about three weeks ago.

And this was last weekend. He is definitely getting big.

We spent some time at my dad’s house then around 2 pm my boyfriend and I left to go to Reptilia. My boyfriend has already been to this place but he wanted to take me to go see it. This place was pretty crazy because of how close to the animals you could get. Instead of having to look from far away like at the zoo, the animals were right next to the glass. You will see what I mean in the next couple of photos.

(Picture Above) Alright I know this doesn’t look like very much but there is a Green Anacondas head sticking out of the water. He was pretty cool but the main reason I’m posting this is because….

…this is the body that went with the head. He was massive and scary. The moment I saw him I just thought of getting crushed by his body. Truly scary.

Alright the next picture I’m going to show you will show you what I mean how close you are to the animals. I can’t remember what kind of snake these are but I thought they were pretty cute all curled up together.

They were right up to the glass and didn’t move except for their tongues. This place just gets better and better!

I’m not going to show you all my pictures since I took about 30 of them and I just want to make you guys go see this place if you can. This next picture is one of my favourite pictures and it also shows how close the animals are.

This guy was just chilling under the water sleeping, you could literally sit next to him and he wouldn’t do anything.

Alright, on to one of the best parts and the funniest part of my time being there. I read about this place before I actually went to go see it, I read that there are two gators/crocs that were boyfriend and girlfriend. They are pretty big but the story of when I was there was funny.

(Picture Above) There is a tank just off to the right of this picture that I was looking at then I turned and instantly saw this croc. This is the girlfriend of the two, she was amazing, sitting so still that she looked fake. As I was looking at her I was right up to the glass just looking not knowing there was a massive 14 feet croc right in front of me. I just happened to look down for some reason and saw a huge thick tail right in front of me. I yelled, “HOLY SHIT!” then turned around because I was just like woah. This is what was in front of me.

This guy is 14 feet long, he was longer at one point but before the girlfriend was in the tank there use to be a different croc. They apparently didn’t like each other and fought, in this fight he lost some of his tail. I couldn’t even get his whole body in the picture, I think this would scare anyone to see this randomly in front of them with out them knowing. While I yelled holy shit my boyfriend starts laughing his ass off and everyone starts looking at us, my boyfriend told them that I didn’t see him and it scared me once I did. It was pretty funny moment for my boyfriend and I. This was almost the end of the place but it goes into a store where you can buy/see more animals and much more.

I would totally suggest going this this place if you are somewhere near the area, I’ve lived in Brampton my whole life and didn’t know that this place was only 30-40 mins away from me. It’s only $15 dollars to get in so it’s going to kill your pockets.

If you want more information about Reptilia here’s the link to their website..

http://www.reptilia.org/

This was another this I’ve crossed off my 2014 List. Here’s the blog to check it out what else is on my list!

https://sheaint.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/2014-list/

Thank you for reading and sticking with me!

PS. I’m birthday is next week!

Meet Allen the Chameleon

May 2, 2014 MaegLeave a comment

If you’ve read my blog before you know that my boyfriend has a pet chameleon named Allen. Well my boyfriend’s family has been wanting to move for awhile now and they finally decided that they were actually going to do it. My boyfriend has a bunch of animals that he takes care of but the Realtor doesn’t want them in the house or at least where people can see them. He has the chameleon, a gecko, 6 big dart frogs, 13 baby dart frogs and 2 tiny dart frogs. The frogs are in tanks and they have heaters attached to them so they should be fine in the basement, the gecko is in a tank as well but it doesn’t have to top to it since she can’t climb. Her tank is half heated so if she gets too hot she can just go to the cold side. My boyfriend thinks they should be fine down there but he’s very worried about them, just in case he has a portable heater that he put down there to help them stay warm.

The chameleon on the other hand cannot go into the basement, he asked me if I would take care of him so I said yes. (Yes this means I have him until they move or at least sell the house.) Yesterday my boyfriend brought him over since they are taking pictures of the house on Sunday and I won’t see him since he works. I just wanted to show you guys his set up and how cool these animals really are. I am not a pro with reptiles, I’ve just learnt all the things from my boyfriend. I have fed and held him at my boyfriends more then one time, I also wake up before my boyfriend so I’m the one who sprays him since he won’t drink from his dripper. So lets get started!

The Tank: We call it a tank because we are so use to calling the other animals tank but it’s more like a cage I guess you can say, tank also sounds a lot better. I don’t know the size of the tank but it takes up my whole desk and my mum was shocked how big it was for such a little guy. We have a real plant in there that he hides in sometimes, real and fake branches all around so he can climb on or just hang out, we have a fake plant in the top left back corner which he loves a lot and usually sleeps and finally we have a dripper in the front left corner that he isn’t sure about. The tank itself is screen so he can climb all around on that; switch he loves to do – we call it Allen’s Adventures. The most important thing that is apart of the thank that you see if the light that is on top. That is what keeps him warm, and gives him a sense of night and day. We have it set to a timer so we don’t have to worry about not being home to turn it off or on.

The Dripper/Spray Bottle: As I said he is scared of the dripper, it’s just two fake leaves and water drops off of them like they would in the wild. We see him looking at it all the time like he knows what it is but won’t drink off of it, we’ve also been mean and tried holding him up to it but he just runs up our arms to get away from it. So instead we spray all the leafs that he climbs around on and we make it seem like it’s raining on him. When we do this he either drinks the water off the leafs like he would in the wild or he drinks the water that’s falling off of him. It’s very cute to watch him drink when we make it rain. My boyfriend forgot to bring over the spray bottle from his house but not to worry we both work in rec centres so I just asked maintenance if I could have one they’ve never used and was empty, they gladly gave me one. The only problem with that was I had to find someone who knew my boyfriend since he use to work there. The guy I asked was confused until I told him I was watching his chameleon.

Crickets: Yup, if you do not like touching bugs then this pet is not for you. I hate touching the crickets but I will show you want I use so I don’t have to after. You can get crickets from any pets store in Canada, I don’t know about anywhere else but they all have them here. My boyfriend was nice enough to buy some so I didn’t have to go out and get any for now. You can get small or big ones, he eats both but small ones are easier to deal with if you had bugs. Allen is a picky eater, sometimes he doesn’t want to eat at all so we kind of feed him small piles at a time, if he seems like he wants to eat we will give him more.

Cricket Shaker: My boyfriend normally just picks up the bugs, puts them in a container, shakes the powder on them and feeds the guy but I hate bugs so I’m obviously not going to do that. My boyfriend was nice enough to buy me this thing called a Cricket Shaker. It’s pretty cool, you’re suppose to put the powder in there but he forgot it. You put the crickets in the container, and it comes with this pipe that they climb up and when it’s time to feed you can put the crickets into the cage or into a container and let him eat them out of there. That way you know for sure how much he eats. This thing was so dusty and he told the cashier that I was watching it and I’m such a girl for hating bugs. It’s true, bugs are not my thing at all so I’m glad I have this.

(There was dust all over it cause I’m pretty sure know one uses this!)

The Chameleon/Allen: I believe he is a veiled chameleon, I’m not sure though. He’s just a green little guy about the size of my hand not including his tail. He changes to the typically colours of black/brown, yellow, gets spots, and some colour designs depending how he feels. Not much you can say about him besides the fact that he can be a grumpy one, he’s a picky eater and likes to climb on top of my head.

Alright so he is the little guy that I love so much. He is still getting use to being here so hopefully he is enjoying it though. If you have any questions I will try to answer them as best as I can but remember I don’t really know that much other then what I’ve done with this guy with my boyfriend.

Super Bowl Weekend!

February 4, 2014February 4, 2014 MaegLeave a comment

My life has be kind of almost extremely busy the last couple of days, so let me tell you all about it.

Thursday: Pretty much my whole week was crazy because a bunch of things at work started and I covered for people so it just seemed crazy. But Thursday was one of my actual shift and when I was there I thought it would be an easy going type of day, I thought wrong! It started out okay, everyone was on time and things were going well. I told all my staff I wasn’t going into the water unless it was really important because my face was burning so much from the day before. On Wednesday I was craving for a slushy so bad but the snack bar wasn’t open, Thursday it was and I was so happy I was just waiting for the crowd to go down. While I was waiting I was trying to figure out why half the stuff in my office wasn’t working, I did figure out that the plugs under the table were broken. I told maintenance that they weren’t working and it wasn’t a rush to come fix it, when they did finally come in, they walked a pretty stupid walk to tell me to hit the reset button like on your blow dryer. You have to know that at this rec centre nothing works, something is always breaking and it’s always something big, how was I suppose to know that it was that? I finally went to the snack bar to find out that her till wasn’t working, and she asked me to come behind the counter to try to make it work. First of all the damn money drawer wouldn’t open, so I go it to open finally but it wouldn’t close and pop open when someone pays. Before I got it open this pour girl had the money on the floor, she was happy I came. I told the front desk to go help her which they did. Now I got to go home to wait til 7 am for my boyfriend to finish work!

Friday: 7 am finally came, my boyfriend picked me up, as I open the car door I smacked myself in the face. I hit pretty much my cheek bone but under my eye, my boyfriend thought for sure I was going to get a black eye but I didn’t. This day we pretty much did nothing but sleep the whole day, this is what happens when you don’t have a lot of sleep and your boyfriend works midnights.

Saturday: Saturday morning was like anymore and the whole day was pretty much like any day. I woke up before my boyfriend, went pee, turned the frog lights on, watered our chameleon then sat in bed waiting for snore man to wake up. Honestly I can’t remember what we did this day, i think we sat around, got high and ate. We did however watch the leafs kick ass! Kessel got a hat trick and they won, it was amazing. I went to bed early because we were going to the reptile expo!

Sunday: Sunday morning was not like any other day, my boyfriends alarm went off at I don’t know what time but it felt early. He turned it off and went back to sleep, where as I was wide awake and couldn’t fall back asleep. I turn over to ask him if we were going to the expo because of course living in Canada it snowed a lot. He said yes, we got up and got dressed and were on our way to the bank. The reptile expo was in downsview park this time which was kinda of cool, it mostly had frogs, and snakes. There was one giant spider that scared the shit out of me because I wasn’t expecting it to be that big! We walked around the whole place to see what was there then decided on what my boyfriend wanted. I didn’t get anything for my boyfriend’s birthday and he asked me if I would buy him a frog, we went to the place called Dart Frog Inc. They had the ones he wanted which are really cute, so we pulled out our money and went for it – we ended up getting two as a pair.

This is a close up picture but they are really small, about a little bit bigger then your finger nail. I cannot for the life of me remember what they are actually called but I will get back to you on that, if anyone really wants to know. I can’t even remember what we named them but I know we named them after football players since we got them on the super bowl day.

We came home to people at the house, things were starting to get ready for the party. There was a banner made that said “Go Broncos, Fuck the Seahawks.” Which was made by the biggest douche bag fan of the Broncos, I’ll get into that a little bit later. Now I don’t even get football really, I know the point and you know the basics but other then that I have no idea. All the other people that were at this party new everything and I mean everything about football. At the start there was a paper that you had to fill out for a draw. I pretty much straight up guessed because I had no idea, at the end someone gets the money whoever go the most correct. The questions were like, “Is the coin toss going to be heads or tails?”, “Will Bruno Mars be wearing a hat?” and so on. At one point I was actually beating my boyfriend which I was so happy about. While the game was on it was so loud but was so much fun, everyone was yelling, laughing, drinking and having a great time except for one guy.

The one guy at the party was so upset that the Broncos were losing and my boyfriend was on his ass about it that he cried twice! This guy was talking shit for days and even at the party was talking so much shit, that everyone didn’t really care until he started to cry. He was getting so mad at my boyfriend but that’s just the way he is, I wouldn’t date my boyfriend if I could hack it that’s for sure. This guy was also very drunk that we needed to cut him off, at the end of the party he wouldn’t say bye to me because of who I’m dating. After though he tried to say goodbye and I said no to him and that he should leave.

The rest of the night went well though, I played beer pong with my boyfriend and his friends. We beat them and I got the winning ball, was so happy about that since I don’t really play beer pong, I’ve always gone to bars and not house parties.

Yes my boyfriend and I are wearing Miami Dolphin jerseys, he loves them and we wanted to wear something football.

As the game ended and people left it was getting quiet but my head was killing me from everyone being so loud, it didn’t help I was on the main couch and my boyfriend is the loudest guy I know. It was maybe about 11pm and I said that I was going to go upstairs to lay down for a bit, I needed darkness and peace and quiet. I did go upstairs, got naked, turned off the lights, and slept…or attempted too. It took me a couple hours to fall asleep or until my boyfriend came to bed. Can never sleep without that man.

Anyways, the night was amazing and I can’t wait until next year but hopefully by then I will know the game like I know baseball.

Go Seahawks Go!

R.I.P

November 24, 2013 MaegLeave a comment

Remember how I wrote about how my boyfriend and I had a sick chameleon? Well we took her to the vet and they gave her some medicine and told her that she has to lay eggs that were not fertile. She pretty much got her period but since she didn’t lay them before she got sick from them and had no energy to lay them. The other day, I believe it was the 21st she died in the morning.

R.I.P Pumpkin.

Sick Chameleon

November 19, 2013 MaegLeave a comment

Today was a bad day, my friend noticed that our new chameleon – that I posted before – has gotten sick. Her eyes are sunken in, she’s having trouble breathing, disoriented, and has zero strength. She kept falling in her cage then today she went all white, we sprayed her a lot but she wouldn’t drink, we looked online and it said to shower her. As my boyfriend went to turn onto the shower, she started to fall and I just caught her in time. When she was in the shower she seemed like she was doing a lot better, she was moving around, and it seemed like she was drinking the water.

We looked online and it said that she may have a respiratory problem and she needs to go to the doctor asap, we called every reptile vet around our area and none of them were in until the morning. Now my boyfriend is going to go into the morning before work. We think the shower thing helped, he told me that her eyes are sunken in anymore but she still is just chilling on the floor.

I will keep you updated!

Chameleon!

October 20, 2013 MaegLeave a comment

Well Hello, I know I haven’t been around in awhile but I’ve been busying and I’m pretty sure I say that every time I write a new post. LOL. The reasons why I’ve been so busy is that my boyfriend, my sister and I were suppose to go to the aquarium but he got sick so we postponed it. Instead we went to go get another chameleon! He already has one named Allen, which I love and I won’t let him get rid of.

This small green one is Allen. I love this little guy, he gets so angry and annoyed really easy but he is a cutie. He loves to crawl on me and just chill on top of my head; he’s just a little guy.

Now this morning my boyfriend couldn’t sleep so he woke my ass up and drove all the way to Markham to get this new one. We got there and he went in and came out with this little cute orange, red girl!

She’s fat compared to Allen but that’s because she is going to get a lot bigger then him as well. We have a big tank set up at his house which she seems to be getting comfy in! On the way home since it was a long drive I took her out of the container, she just sat on my knuckles the whole way home, she seemed pretty comfy there. When we were maybe 5 mins away from home she decided that she wanted to go for a run. She ran up my arm and down my back and I only got her off because we hit a red light and my boyfriend quickly grabbed her and gave her back to me. She kept doing it because she wanted to be high up so I raised my arm, she stopped but then the next problem was that she wanted to climb on the roof of the car. I made sure she didn’t then when we got her home we put her in his tank to get use to it.

My boyfriend said this one is mine apparently and I had to name her but I didn’t know. So since she has orange and gets really orange when she’s happy we named her Pumpkin. I think it’s cute and goes with my personality and plus my mum called me pumpkin when I was little; which she’s only 4 months old.

I will keep posting pictures as she gets bigger, I’m hoping she will get like really big but we will see!

Thanks for reading!

Maeg's View

The life of a 29 year old and more…

Tag: Reptiles