Central Islip native Erik the Reptile Guy returns to Long Island to shoot episodes of his PBS show

Behold the humble horseshoe crab.

On the first day of June, with a full moon fading into the deep blue of the morning sky, and ankle-deep waves lapping the sand on West Meadow Beach in Stony Brook, that is precisely what Erik the Reptile Guy is about to do.

About 10-or-so crabs have been stranded in a tidal pool 20 yards from the water's edge. Reptile Guy — or, more properly, public TV host Erik Callender, born in Central Islip, currently a citizen of the world — is elated by the spectacle.

Not just "elated" in the way you or I might be "elated" over the prospect of ice cream or the perfect slice of pizza, but in the way that someone who truly loves horseshoe crabs with an unbridled passion might be elated. There aren't many such people on the planet but Reptile Guy is one of them:

"HOO BOY WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT!! LOOK LOOK LOOK!!!, he says to no one in particular, but at volume.

Firmly if precariously attached to a dinner-plate-sized female crab is a tea-saucer-sized male crab, while behind him are four or five others in a row, each holding on for dear life. Callender explains that this conga line of copulation is all part of the natural order of things. If the lead crab drops off, another will assume his place, and so forth.

TMI for you and me, perhaps, but soon this female will lay nearly 100,000 eggs, which are an important food source for the thousands of migratory birds on their way north, not to mention the continuation of this ancient species.

Of less importance but certainly noteworthy, these crabs will have a starring role in the third season of Callender's kids' show, "Menghayati!," which will stream on PBS.org this fall, and air on various system stations, including WNET/13.

Callender says that "menghayati" — pronounced meng-Heidi — is a Malaysian word that means to "have a deep connection with other living things, which also includes...internalizing [that connection], and making it a part of [your] life." (He picked the term up on a field trip to Borneo years ago).

Referring to the scrum in the tidal pool, he says "This is something that I've never seen before. It's rare you see this many crabs trapped like this, and at 9:30 in the morning. I'm thrilled, absolutely thrilled."

One might say Callender is having a "menghayati" moment with these crabs too.

He squats on his haunches, then pokes a camera mounted on a long selfie stick into the water. The crabs shuffle back and forth, apparently too preoccupied to notice. Callender will collect hours of footage for a sequence that'll last only a few minutes in a future Long Island-specific episode. Over the next few days and weeks, he'll make dozens of other trips around Suffolk and Nassau, home to about 18 native amphibian species and another 20 native reptile ones. All old friends, he hopes to pay a visit with each of them.

A kids host with a difference

Callender, 49, and "Menghayati!" are part of a venerable tradition in kids' programming that dates from the early days of TV, beginning with a show called "Zoo Parade," hosted by Marlin Perkins who would go on to host the granddaddy of nature series, "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." There have been many since, like "The Crocodile Hunter," and "Wild America," while "Zoboomafoo" and "Wild Kratts" are more recent entries.

Format and styles may vary but the general idea remains the same — get a tight shot of an animal in the wild, then marvel at the ways of nature. "Menghayati!" has two key differences, beginning with Callender himself — a dervish of passion and joy whose catch phrase is "let's go!!!," and whose sartorial signature is a wide-brimmed safari hat.

Besides exotic wildlife from around the world, the show's other distinction are the kids. In the first episode from the debut season in 2022, Callender went to Madagascar where he spent as much time talking to Malagasy children as he did rubbernecking chameleons.

Carl Safina, a world-renowned ecologist, author ("Song for the Blue Ocean") and Stony Brook professor, says "I don't think there's anything else like it on TV and what makes it distinctive is his personality, and the fact that he includes all these different kinds of people. That lets different kinds of viewers envision themselves there because if you don't see anyone that looks like you [on TV] you won't imagine that this is for you. Any kid watching can imagine themselves in those situations."

Plus, he adds, Callender's "a ridiculous amount of fun."

Growing up in Central Islip, Callender watched all those early nature shows, but his obsession really began at the end of his street, where he found frogs, snakes and salamanders. As a teen he began to collect reptiles and amphibians, and in one dramatic flourish, bought a small alligator named Wally. Even while he was an undergraduate at Stony Brook, he kept most of them hidden under his bed. When his parents found out, they said either they go or he goes. They all went. 

That's where his most important patron enters the story. Patricia Chapple Wright, who established Stony Brook's Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments, is one of the world's leading primatologists (in 1986 she discovered Madagascar's golden bamboo lemur, thought extinct.) Wright was teaching a class in primate conservation at the time when she met her most unusual student.

"He was just one of those students who was involved in everything and wanted to know every aspect because he was so interested in animals and conservation," she recalled. "One day he was working in my lab on a separate project, and said his mother was kicking him out of the house and could we keep his animals? I thought that just meant a few, but he had a lot — snakes, hissing cockroaches, a panther chameleon from Madagascar. We took care of them."

Wright also says she told Callender that "'you are an incredible teacher and mentor, so why don't you start using your animals to your advantage?' And so he started to bring them to birthday parties and my class" where her students typically ranked him their favorite guest speaker.

Enter Erik the Reptile Guy

Erik the Reptile Guy was born. He took his pets — some 60 of them — to parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, and schools around Long Island. Reptile Guy and his menagerie became a familiar sight here — a veritable zoo on wheels that traveled from one end of the Island to the other, for a total of 500 events a year at its peak, he now estimates.

Erik's Reptile Adventures was launched in 2006, but after about 10 years he'd had enough. "I loved doing the [traveling] shows but I felt that the animals should be free," he says. "I decided I'm going to bring all my animals back to the wild, and not just 'let them go,' but bring them to sanctuaries."

In 2017, he returned Wally to a sanctuary in Florida, while filming the momentous scene. After using that as part of his ongoing school lectures, another idea began to take shape — why not a full-scale TV series featuring the Wallys of the world, or all the other reptiles, amphibians or (in the case of horseshoe crabs) arthropods in need of a champion?

The money chase began. Callender got paying fellowships, including one with the Safina Center in Setauket. He doubled down on an already-frugal lifestyle, he says, in part by moving to Costa Rica, where he could live cheaply (on about $250 a month) and collect footage for his new show. Costa Rica is considered a "herpetofauna" paradise, with some 478 species of reptiles and amphibians. He got lots of footage.

Safina, who produced his own series for PBS, "Saving the Oceans," in 2011, says "I've made a lot of editorial suggestions [for 'Menghayati!'] along the way, and I've told him many times that 'the product is you.' Erik has a very strong sense of what he wants to do, so my questions are mostly with trying to help him get better and more stable funding for a more permanent role on PBS."

Producing shows like this "is really quite exhausting, and he runs on fumes. That's my main concern."

Return to Madagascar

For the first episode, Wright brought Callender back to Madagascar where she had helped to create Ranomafana National Park in 1991, and where he'd traveled frequently before. Wright now says he became "a real ambassador for this incredible island with so many unique species that nobody knows about, and so many on the brink of extinction."

That very first edition from 2022 set the template for all the episodes to follow, with the host saying, "do you want to travel the world, meet amazing animals, meet amazing people, and help our planet? If that sounds like something you want to do then...we're right here on the island of Madagascar!" Spreading his arms wide: "Let's go!!!"

The next 26 minutes was sheer bravado, featuring the exuberant man from Central Islip who made no effort to curb his passion for Madagascar ground boas, Sifaka lemurs, red-eyed frogs, and belted chameleons; Marlin Perkins this was not.

Since then, he's produced 22 other episodes from around the world, while the spirit has remained the same. He's now working on another 12 for this third season.

"He never stops," says Wright, "and devotes all his concentration to saving animals and educating other people to appreciate and preserve them for the future. He sincerely believes all those kids [in his audience] need to understand how precarious many of these species are, and how wonderful they are."

Back on West Meadow Beach, 8,000 miles away from Madagascar, the sun has climbed high overhead, and the tide is coming in. The crabs look spent.

Erik the Reptile Guy — that champion of chameleons and lizards, of snakes and horseshoe crabs — then sums up his show and philosophy with this: "When you see wildlife and our connection to wildlife, you realize there's not a separation but connection. And when you have a connection with everything, you realize how special every single place is too. "

We're about to head over to another one of those special places, West Meadow Creek, about 50 yards away, where he hopes to meet up with some diamondback terrapins. Erik the Reptile Guy couldn't seem happier. "Let's go!" he says.