Hello everyone and welcome to the show!  Mike Pingleton here, and I am your host for these proceedings.  And here we go with Episode Eighty Three, and I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there.  It’s early June here at the So Much Pingle world headquarters, and my flower garden is starting to POP!  It’s a great time if you’re into that sort of thing.

Well I’ve been kind of busy over the last few weeks, helping out with a couple of different herp surveys, and there’s a podcast episode coming out of one of those, which I hope to put out next month if time permits.  I say time permits because I’m leaving for Thailand next week and I won’t get back until July 4th.  I’m happy to get this show out before I leave because the last 4-5 days at home before a trip I am running around like a madman trying to get everything ready, and getting the lawn mowed one more time, stuff like that.  Good problem to have.

So Much Pingle Patrons! As always, I want to thank everyone who keeps the show rolling along. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three bucks a month – less than a fancy cup of coffee! You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to [email protected]).

Our guests for this episode are Sky Stevens and Sheri Monk, which I recorded months ago in Peru. Why did it take so long you say?  Well, I had some technical issues – let’s call them what they really are, operator error on my part.  When I record in the field, I use a Zoom HN4 recorder, with two Shure microphones cabled in. It’s a lovely rig and I get good results, but on this occasion, I neglected to turn off the Zoom’s built-in omnidirectional microphone and just run the two Shures as per usual.  The result was a lot of static and wind noise, and I had to spend some time learning how to clean that up using Adobe Audition. I’m not an audio engineer and every time I have to dig deeper into audio engineering, I feel like my brain forgets a dozen scientific names to make room.

Thank goodness I didn’t have to ask Sky and Sheri to re-record this episode, because it is a gem.  There are still a few moments of static, notably around the 2 minute, 39 minute, and 1 hour 14 minute marks, my apologies, but the rest of the recording is quite clear.  You may notice some other artifacts – the omnidirectional microphone picks up EVERY buzzing insect, and the birds are a lit louder too, although I’m told some folks enjoy that.  Maybe turn down the volume if you listen with headphones.

Thank you Sky and Sheri!  So much fun talking with you. And thanks for listening everyone! 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 [email protected], and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, methods for picking up water snakes, tips for herping better, etc.

-Mike