Futility Closet - 209-Lost Off Newfoundland

Starting point is 00:00:00 We just wanted to give a little warning that this week's story contains some elements that are a bit on the grisly side, for anyone who is particularly squeamish. Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a pious stag to an electric moon. This is episode 209. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1883, fisherman Howard Blackburn was caught in a blizzard off the coast of Newfoundland. Facing bitter cold in an 18-foot boat, he passed through a series of harrowing adventures in a desperate struggle to stay alive and find help. In today's show, we'll follow Blackburn's dramatic story, which made him famous around the world. We'll also admire a runaway chicken

Starting point is 00:00:57 and puzzle over a growing circle of dust. of dust. By age 23, Howard Blackburn was already an experienced fisherman. He spent three and a half years sailing out of Gloucester, Massachusetts to fish the Grand Bank southeast of Newfoundland, some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. So he expected nothing unusual when he signed on to the Grace L. Fears, a halibut schooner, in January 1883. He and a younger man, Tom Welch, were assigned to work as dorymen, sharing an 18-foot flat-bottomed boat. Their job was to set up trawls, lines of baited fishhooks strung between buoys. They had just set their lines and returned to the ship when the captain said he feared a blizzard was coming and sent them back out to haul them in again.

Starting point is 00:01:39 The wind was blowing from the southeast, where they had just laid the trawls, so they rowed out to the farthest one so the storm could blow them back toward the ship as they worked. As they pulled in the last trawl, the wind reversed and began to blow from the northwest. That meant they'd have to fight it to get back to the ship. As the wind increased, it began to snow. Across the water, they could see the other dories heading for the schooner, and they started rowing for it themselves, but the wind was set dead against their progress, and as the blizzard intensified, the air filled with snow and fog, hiding the ship from them. They rowed until they thought they must be abreast of the ship, but they could hear no bell or other sound. Could they have passed it? Night would

Starting point is 00:02:13 be falling soon. Blackburn said, we'll have to anchor, and Welch agreed. It seemed wisest to hold their position until they could understand where they were. Shortly after dark, the snow stopped and they were able to see a light in the distance. The ship had raised a torch to guide them home. To their dismay, they saw that for all their effort, they hadn't gained an inch. They were practically in the same position as when they'd started rowing. The wind was still strong and the sea was rough, so they could make no progress that night. They set the anchor again and resolved to wait. But at dawn, the gale was still blowing and the temperature was dropping.

Starting point is 00:02:42 With the anchor holding the boat in place, it was shipping a lot of water. They decided to smash in the head of a keg and use that in place of an anchor. It would slow their progress through the water rather than stopping it entirely. In order to tie the keg to the painter, Blackburn took off his mittens and dropped them into the bottom of the boat. And Welch, who was bailing behind him without looking, scooped them up one after the other and dropped them into the ocean. There is no record of what Blackburn said to him. There was no alternative but to keep working, but both of them knew what the loss of the mittens would mean. After an hour of bailing, Blackburn's hands were numb and turning gray. Soon they would be entirely frozen. If he allowed them to freeze as they were, then he'd be unable

Starting point is 00:03:17 to row, which was their only means of controlling the boat to keep it from capsizing in the rough sea. So he did a remarkable thing. He picked up the oars, closed his fingers around the handles, and held them there. In twenty minutes they had frozen into claws, but they were claws that could still hold an oar and, with effort, do other tasks. He pulled the oars free, laid them in the bottom, and joined Welch clumsily in bailing out the boat and breaking off the ice that was constantly threatening to weigh it down. All the second day they took turns bailing and pounding ice, but the ice formed as quickly as they could knock it off. At one point, Blackburn took off one of his rubber boots, pulled off his sock, and tried to use that in place of a mitten.

Starting point is 00:03:53 But his hand was so misshapen that he couldn't thrust it past the heel. The foot of the sock was soon a ball of ice, and its weight kept pulling it off his hand. Eventually, he lost it overboard, which meant that his foot was now freezing as well. Just before nightfall on the second day, he had finished his turn at bailing and was about to lie down when a bad sea filled the boat with water. It was Welch's turn to bail, but he didn't move. Blackburn said, come, Tom, jump quick. Welch said, I cannot see. Blackburn knew that meant the end was near. He went back to bailing the dory, but presently he said, come, Tom, this won't do. You must do your part. Your hands are not frozen and beaten to pieces as mine are. And he showed him his right hand, whose little finger was now nearly severed after constantly pounding the ice.

Starting point is 00:04:32 Welch said, Howard, what is the use? We cannot last until morning. We might as well go first as last. Blackburn went back to bailing the dory and breaking the ice himself. He bailed almost the whole second night, stopping only to catch his breath. During breaks, he forced himself to shift his seat back and forth senselessly to keep from falling asleep. Welch kept groaning, possibly praying. Twice he called Blackburn by name, but when Blackburn responded, he couldn't understand what Welch was saying. The sea was too loud. At length, Welch went quiet, and Blackburn found he was dead. He carried the body aft and laid it in the stern, where it was soon covered with ice. He took off Welch's right mitten, but he couldn't fit it onto his distorted hand.

Starting point is 00:05:13 At the start of the third day, the storm began to break. He could no longer see the Grace L. Fears. The wind must have driven them from where she was anchored. So he decided to row for shore, which he guessed was about 40 miles away. They'd lost one pair of oars, only one pair remained. He hauled in the keg and, with difficulty, fit his frozen fingers over the oar handles and began to row. As he went, the boat slowly filled with water, since he couldn't bail and row single-handed. But the storm was lightening, and Welch's body in the bottom acted as a ballast. He wrote later, The friction of the oar handles had wore away so much flesh from the inside of my hands that I could hardly hold oars, and often my hands would slip off the ends of the oars. When I, forgetting that I could not open my hands, would make a grab for the oar handle, and when the backs of my fingers would strike the oar, it would sound just like so many

Starting point is 00:05:52 sticks. So to hold the oar, I had to put the outside of each hand upon the thick part of the oar, and by doing so, the oar handles would stick out between my forefingers and thumb two or three inches. When bending forward to take a stroke, I would keep one hand a little higher than the other, but sometimes I would forget and take a stroke as if my hands were all right. Then the end of the oar would strike the side of my hand and knock off a piece of flesh as big around as a 50-cent piece and fully three times as thick. The blood would just show and then seem to freeze. Just before dusk, he saw what appeared to be a rock covered with snow on the horizon. He rowed until dark, then, afraid of losing the oars in the night, he stopped and huddled in the bottom.

Starting point is 00:06:31 At dawn on the fourth day, he started again. The rock turned out to be an island. It looked uninhabited, so he passed it by. But after rowing all day, he finally spotted the coast late in the afternoon. The surface of the water was black, which told him it was fresh water on top of salt. He was at the mouth of a river. He knew the fishermen in this area went inland for the winter, so he rowed upstream and in the moonlight discovered a fisherman's hut next to a wharf. He climbed out of the boat on frozen feet and made his way to the hut, but found it was abandoned and decaying. The doors had rotted away and there were holes in the roof. The snow on the floor was up to his knees. The hut's only contents were a table and an old bedstead with a board laid across it. As he turned back to the door, he saw a schooner out at sea. It must have been making for a harbor nearby.

Starting point is 00:07:13 He decided to row back out to sea in the morning and explore to the east. He turned the board dry side up and lay down in the bedstead, using a fishnet for a pillow. But he knew that if he slept he would never wake, so he forced himself up and spent that night walking the boards and eating snow from the table. At daylight, he went back out to the dory and found it was full of water. Waves had knocked the plug out of the drain hole in the bottom, then pounded the boat against the rocks, opening a crack between two planks. He tried to haul Welch's body out of the boat, but slipped and dropped it, and it sank in about 12 feet of water. By pulling the painter with his teeth as each wave came in, he managed to get the dory far enough up the shore that he could pound

Starting point is 00:07:49 the plug back into place and bail out the boat, but he couldn't patch the crack in the bottom. As he was working, he heard a crack like a gunshot and thought a hunter might be nearby. He considered setting the hut afire. He'd found some flint and tinder in a closet, but he couldn't hold the flint, and the tinder was too damp to light anyway. So he gave up on the hunter, got into the dory, and set off downstream, leaning to starboard to keep the crack in the bottom out of the water. Once back at sea, he turned east and rode five or six miles until he rounded a cape and entered a cove. There was a house here, but it looked empty. He kept going and found two schooners at the opposite headland. He got close enough to see a man on deck, but before he could reach the ships, the wind rose, filled their sails, and carried them away from him around

Starting point is 00:08:28 the cape. He didn't know how much farther east he'd have to go to find people, and it was late in the day. He decided to head back to the river, spend the night there, and try again in the morning. He wrote, I had hardly started on my return journey when I sensed the fact that as I rode, portions of my hands and fingers were being ground off on the oar handles. It is surprising how fast dead flesh disintegrates when rubbed hard. In a short space of time, it seemed as though I was holding the oars with bones and muscles only. Soon the handles became too small for my finger bones to encircle, and I had to use one hand to clamp the fingers of the other down so I could work the blades. He finally got back to the river, and this time he followed its opposite bank and sighted a cove

Starting point is 00:09:05 somewhat farther upstream with a few cabins on the shore. By the moonlight, he couldn't see any signs of life there, but he hoped there might be a brook where he could get some fresh water. It took him three hours to zigzag upstream, pausing periodically to bail out the leaking boat. When he finally approached the cove, he found it was frozen solid, but there were people there. Some men crossed the ice and helped him out of the boat. When they saw his hands, they urged him to go to a house at once, but he told them at first some of them must go with him down the river to retrieve Welch's body. They sent him onto a house and told him that they'd get the body themselves. Altogether, he'd passed five days and three nights at sea in the Little Dory in zero temperature and one night on land. He'd rowed and

Starting point is 00:09:42 drifted more than 200 miles in the little boat. He was in a little river, a fishing settlement. They took him to the largest of the cabins, the home of Frank Lishman and his family. They had seen many cases of exposure and frostbite, but nothing like this. They cut away his clothing and boots with a knife. Lishman's wife fetched a tub made of half a flour barrel and placed it before the fire, and they filled it with cold water. Then she stirred in some salt and had him sit on a bench beside it. She wrapped him in a coverlet and told him to dip his hands and feet into the brine. He wrote later, in a few minutes I was wishing myself in Welch's place. I will say no more about the agony I was compelled to undergo while the frost was being slowly drawn out. I asked them how long I would have to keep my hands and feet in the brine. They said, your poor hands and feet

Starting point is 00:10:22 are so badly frostburned that you must keep them in the water for about one hour. I still think that was the longest hour I ever spent. All the time that I sat there, they fed me on bread and hot spruce tea, and although I had not tasted food of any kind for 114 hours, the bread and tea did not taste good, and when I would ask for water, they would only say, we don't want to kill you, poor man. At last, what they called an hour was up. They wrapped his hands and feet in a poultice and fixed up a pallet for him to lie you, poor man. At last what they called an hour was up. They wrapped his hands and feet in a poultice and fixed up a pallet for him to lie on, but the pain was so bad he couldn't sleep much. In the morning they bathed him with warm water and homemade soap. He wrote, then they lifted me out of the bed and sat me on the bench, and when they took the wrappings off the right

Starting point is 00:10:57 hand, the little finger dropped off. The skin on all the other fingers split open on the backs and tops and hung down, and the finger and thumbnail still hung to the flesh, which made my hands look as if I had eight fingers and two thumbs on each hand. And when Mrs. Lishman took the scissors and cut the skin and flesh away, I said, for God's sake, don't cut my fingers off. She said, I am not cutting your fingers off, and she picked up one of them with a nail still on it. In other words, he had no fingers, only the blasted remains of them. She said that all the flesh that had frozen would have to be cut away. Nine days would pass before his hands and feet began to heal. Four days after Blackburn's arrival, some men sailed along the coast to Burgio

Starting point is 00:11:32 and went to the Reverend John Cunningham, who telegraphed the American consul at St. John's, who told him to send the sick fishermen everything he needed. The boat returned to Little River with enough provisions to last one man for six months, but Blackburn shared it with everyone and it lasted only a few days. The whole camp was starving. Dry gangrene attacked Blackburn's fingers and toes. Every now and then one dropped off. He kept a tally. After his right little finger dropped off, 51 days passed until he lost the last, the right thumb at the first joint. Altogether he lost all the fingers from both hands, half of each thumb, two toes from his left foot, and three toes in the heel from his right. The bones of his dead fingers retained the curve of the oar handles

Starting point is 00:12:08 until the end. But in five weeks, his hands were nearly covered with new flesh. As spring came, a thaw began, and they were able to stock up again. In April, he insisted on going to Burgio. As they said goodbye, Mrs. Lishman handed him a small wooden box shaped like a casket. She said it was the custom of her people to save amputated parts to be buried in time with their owner. When they got to Burgio, he had it buried with Welch, who had been interred there 10 days earlier. There was no hospital in Burgio, but the doctor said he could do nothing more than the Lichmans had done already. Blackburn stayed with a family there and, in time, began to limp about. He got a free passage on a steamer and arrived at St. Pierre on May 23rd and passed

Starting point is 00:12:45 on through Halifax and Boston to Gloucester, where he arrived on June 4th and instantly became a legend. His friends took up a collection for him, and every fisherman in port wanted to hear the story from his own lips. I expected to say that Howard Blackburn lived a quiet life after that, but he didn't. Whether it's because he wanted to prove that his survival hadn't been a fluke, or because he was a remarkable man to begin with, he filled the rest of his life with an astonishing list of accomplishments. In 1889, he bought a waterfront property and opened a saloon that became famous among fishermen from Newfoundland to New York. All the Canadian silver he received he would throw into a box, and each year he would buy a special order of clothing and food to send to the Lishmans in

Starting point is 00:13:20 Little River to express his gratitude. In 1897, he read about the Gold Rush and organized the first group of New Englanders to travel around Cape Horn to the Klondike. He commanded the expedition schooner himself and discovered both that he loved being back at sea and that he could still pull his weight aboard a ship. Accordingly, in 1899, he set out to sail alone across the Atlantic, something only five men in history had done before him, and he would have to do all the cooking, navigation, repairs, and maintenance without fingers. He commissioned a 30-foot sloop, the Great Western, and after some practice in the harbor, he found he could manage both the rigging and the sails, and he could use his body weight and his teeth to manage what his hands could not.

Starting point is 00:13:55 In the end, he sailed from Gloucester, Massachusetts to Gloucester, England in 62 days. In 1901, he followed that up by sailing alone from Gloucester to Lisbon, Portugal in 39 days, the fastest non-stop single-handed passage across the Atlantic ever sailed and a record that would stand for decades. In 1902, he circumnavigated the eastern United States, something I didn't even realize you could do. He went down to New York, up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal, through the Great Lakes to Chicago, down the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and all the way down to New Orleans, then out through the Gulf of Mexico and up the eastern seaboard. Immediately after that, he commissioned a 17-foot dory, the America, to sail to France and back.

Starting point is 00:14:31 That's one foot shorter than the dory he'd lost his hands in. When one of his friends protested that this was too dangerous, he said, Fred, I don't much care if I come back or not. I'll put my trust in God, for I'd as soon be buried with old father Neptune as a shore. But this time the weather was against him, and after bouncing up the coast, he had to sell the boat and come home by rail. He lived out his final years in Gloucester, but his mind and his heart were always on the ocean. Once, when he wanted his wife to open the curtains so he could see the world outside, he told her to reef the mainsail. He died on November 4, 1932, at age 73. Today, two of his

Starting point is 00:15:04 boats, the Great Western and the America, are on display in the Cape Ann Museum in Massachusetts, where he's remembered in the Blackburn Challenge, an annual 20-mile open-water race that circumnavigates the Cape. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us, and is supported primarily by our Thank you. If you would like to join Dave and all the other wonderful supporters of our show, you can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. And if you become a patron, you'll get access to bonus content, such as extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on what Sasha, our trusty show mascot, has been getting up to lately. Again, that's at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the Support Us section of our website. And thanks so much to everyone who helps make Futility Closet possible.

Starting point is 00:16:19 We've discussed mudlarking a few times on the show, and the most recent time, in episode 205, Greg and I were wondering what it was about the Thames that allowed for objects from centuries ago to continually be washed up onto the foreshore of the river. James Exploding Rats Nichols wrote, and if you don't know why he's calling himself that, you can check out episode 101. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to take part in an archaeological walk on the shores of the River Thames in central London. According to the guide, the reason that relics are constantly turning up on the mud banks is the Victoria and Albert

Starting point is 00:16:57 embankments that were constructed in the 19th century. The North Sea has powerful tides, and when these rush up the river, they're tightly constrained between the embankments and rip up the riverbed, churning up a new crop of items for mudlarkers and archaeologists to discover. We were allowed to pick up and take away any items on the surface of the mud, but we weren't allowed to do any digging, as this requires a mudlarker's license. I ended up finding a number of clay pipe stems, some Roman tile, and vast quantities of 19th century ship's nails, but one person found a small fragment of exquisitely detailed ancient Greek pottery. The guide said that pieces of it had been turning up

Starting point is 00:17:36 for several weeks. Apparently, there was a vase somewhere on the riverbed slowly being smashed to fragments with each tide. Hope that answers your question. And thank you, James, that really does. That makes a lot of sense and would explain it. Yeah, I wonder if that's unique or if there are other rivers that are set up in the same way. It seems unusual. To have such strong tides, you mean? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:02 Well, as he's saying, the embankments kind of enhance the effects of the tide, but... That's what I mean. It seems like it's unusual in that way. And sort of more disposed to sort of turning up things like this. I did try to do a little bit of a quick search to find out if the tides in the Thames were stronger than in other rivers, but I wasn't able to quite find that out. So I suppose if anybody knows, they could let us know. Sophia Hauk de Oliveira wrote,

Starting point is 00:18:23 Hello, Sasha and friends. I was glad to hear mudlarking came up again in your podcast as it reminded me I have some news to share. My family all listened to Futility Closet, and as typography fans, we enjoyed the episode 168 about the Dove's Type. As I now live in London, my father had the idea to go look for some in the river ourselves. We purchased Thames foreshore permits, read all the paperwork, put on our wellies, waterproof boots, and picked a weekend with

Starting point is 00:18:49 low tides. In early March, some of the lowest tides of the year happened on Saturday and Sunday mornings, which was perfect for us. Besides many car keys, e-cigarettes, and nails of every possible size, we did manage to find one letter. It's a little battered, but it seems to be a lowercase f. I've attached a few photos in case you're curious. Thank you for adding a bright spot in everyone's Mondays. So I guess we can't know for sure that they managed to find a letter from the Doves type, but it seemed pretty amazing to me that they found any type at all. Yeah, I can't remember now whether I mentioned that in that episode, but apparently the Doves type is not the only type that's been dumped into the Thames. There are other

Starting point is 00:19:29 foundries that have dumped their type in there, so people occasionally turn up letters from other presses. Right, but it does seem like a pretty big coincidence if you set up specifically to find type and you manage to find it. Yeah. Because I don't think that's a really common thing to be finding. No. And a few of our alert listeners let us know about a related news item from Amsterdam, which represents, as listener Peter Quinn called it, mudlarking at an industrial scale. During construction of a new metro line, archaeologists in Amsterdam were able to access part of the riverbed of the Amstel River, and their extensive excavations there turned up 700,000 objects dating as far back as 3,000 to 4,000 BCE. Over 11,000 photographs of these objects are shown on a website called Below the Surface. The site notes that the Amstel was once a central transportation artery for Amsterdam,

Starting point is 00:20:24 Wright notes that the Amstel was once a central transportation artery for Amsterdam, and being able to excavate part of its riverbed represented a truly magnificent opportunity for archaeologists. The Amstel is a slow-moving river with a nice soft bed of sand and peat into which objects would sink without being washed away. So now, thanks to the new metro construction and the miracle of the internet, You can browse through objects representing millennia of Amsterdam's history and see things such as a flint bilateral retouched blade from 4200 to 2000 BCE, a spear point from 993 to 813 BCE, a table knife from 1475 to 1550 CE, and a Mega Man Flippo disc from 2005. It was interesting to scan through the items which are presented on the site in reverse chronological order. In the really oldest layers, there seemed to be mostly animal bones and shells, with some arrowheads and stone tools and some

Starting point is 00:21:19 pottery fragments. And after that, there were a lot of nails and boat hooks, plus some buckles and buttons and knives. Overall, in scanning through the items, I saw a lot of coins and keys and small toys. And in the most recent layers, there were a surprising number of cards, like credit cards, ID cards, and membership cards, as well as quite a number of cell phones. I kept wondering how many of these items had been deliberately thrown in the river versus the owners had accidentally dropped them there. Or maybe they're unusually durable. I had never thought about that, but I guess plastic lasts a long time compared to something older and made of steel. I suppose, but I'm still just wondering, I mean, how do you end up with so many credit cards and ID cards? I don't know. You can imagine like criminal activity where you'd want to throw them in or dispose of them. You just wonder how many people would accidentally drop a credit card?

Starting point is 00:22:09 Maybe. On a rather different topic, Melissa Smith wrote, greetings, futilitarians. A friend of mine turned me on to your podcast when I mentioned to him how difficult it has been for me to find stuff to listen to while I'm building spreadsheets at work. I am thoroughly pleased with his recommendation and enjoy the work you do. I cannot imagine the time and effort it must have taken to get all this research and all these subjects in one little show. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. I just completed your episode 43 on Benjamin Franklin's Guide to Living. Greg mentioned an attempt to use the guide about 15 years ago and said he got as far as memorizing the list and expounded upon the difficulty Ben Franklin must have had with his little notebook. It struck me how simple it would be to develop an app for such a thing, and sure

Starting point is 00:22:54 enough, when I searched for it in the Google Play Store, it was already there. As far as I can tell, its only function is to tell you what you should be working on for the week and calculate your mistakes. It is as basic an app as I have ever seen. The app was released on December 27, Melissa, and I'm hoping that you will eventually get to this episode and learn that we read your email. I found this app in the Google Play Store, and it has even been updated recently. So someone is putting some time into this with its 100 plus downloads. And for those who haven't listened to or who don't remember episode 43, Benjamin Franklin made a list of 13 virtues that he intended to master as part of a plan for attaining moral perfection with virtues such as frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, and humility. The app's developer says, Franklin allotted himself one week to acquire each new virtue, and in order to see his progress,

Starting point is 00:23:57 he made a record book and gave himself a black mark each time he failed to exhibit a virtue on which he was working. This app will serve as a record book for your marks. And it seems like a nice idea for self-improvement, although giving yourself one week to acquire a whole virtue seemed like a little bit ambitious or maybe optimistic to me. Well, he would cycle through them. He'd just go over. Right, yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:18 I was looking back over our notes for the episode to remind myself, but it seemed like you had one week to sort of get it down. Yeah. And then you're right. He would cycle back one week to sort of get it down. Yeah. And then you're right, he would cycle back through them to sort of brush up on it. From what I remember though, because I think like this app might be useful

Starting point is 00:24:32 because from what I remember, the whole point was that you tend to, I mean, everyone knows abstractly that these things are virtues. Sure. But everyone forgets it, you know, in the business of life, just getting through the day.

Starting point is 00:24:43 So the whole point of it was just to keep it sort of uppermost in your mind. To remind yourself what you're working on. Yeah, and I think that would be really effective if you had to give yourself a black mark every time. It's like, oops, didn't do that. Which is exactly what he did. And he was sort of humbled and, I think, almost ashamed

Starting point is 00:24:57 to see how much worse he was actually doing than how he thought he was doing. So it sounds like a really good idea. As Melissa noted, the app is very basic, but there are at least two other apps with the same idea called Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues and one called Simply 13 Virtues, and both of those have 500 plus downloads. So if anyone does try one of these apps and you manage to attain moral perfection, please do let us know. I guess you'd have to remember to use the app. That's true too. I guess that would be the same with a notebook or an app. Yeah, that'd be the true of anything, I guess. And Ruth Cassidy wrote with a bear-inspired story that wasn't actually about a bear, but does, as she said, continue the theme of animals in highly improbable places.

Starting point is 00:25:44 I'm from Brooklyn, New York, and I grew up next to one of the biggest and busiest intersections in the entire city. So you can imagine my surprise when, as a teenager, my mom pulled me out of bed one morning and dragged me onto the sidewalk outside our house to look at the runaway chicken. it had escaped from the halal deli across the street from our apartment and how one stray chicken managed to cross four lanes of traffic without being hit by a car or causing an accident is a mystery to this day. A lot of the other tenants in our building had also seen the chicken, who we named Fred, and were outside laughing at it. After a little while, the owner of the deli Fred had escaped from did find him and came over to get him. And afterwards, my sister refused to eat any chicken for a month because she didn't want to eat Fred. The podcast is amazing. Keep up the good work. That is kind of a sad story or heroic if you're a chicken. Yeah, Fred could be an inspiration to all the chickens out there.

Starting point is 00:26:40 And we have not just one but two bear-related chicken stories today. And how often do you get to say that sentence, right? Chloe wrote, not only do you have to worry about bears, but now chickens. And sent a link to a story with a video of a hen in Italy managing to open a lever-handled door by itself. Basically by flying up to and then landing on the lever. So that now makes bears, velociraptors, and chickens that can all possibly get into your home if you choose to go with that style of door handle. Consider yourself warned. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We are always sorry that we can't read everyone's email on the show as we get a lot of interesting email. I do need to give a quick shout out though to Zia, Carla Vecchia's 21-year-old tabby who

Starting point is 00:27:31 recently wrote into us. So purrs to you, Zia, and here's hoping you are an inspiration for our getting a little bit older feline mascot. For anyone else, furry or otherwise, who has something they would like to say, please send us an email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to work out what's actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener James Coulter. I worked for a packaging company, and in the front office was arranged a set of file cabinets in the shape of a large square. I noticed that in the center of the square, there was a circle of dust,

Starting point is 00:28:13 and over time, this circle grew. Why? Okay, I'm trying to understand this. So there's file cabinets. Are they all pointing out from the square? Yeah. Okay, but there's. Are they all pointing out from the square? Yeah. Okay. But there's an empty space in the middle of the square. Of the top. No, no, no. You can think of it, I think you can think of it as sort of a big table, a big flat surface.

Starting point is 00:28:35 He writes, the top surface was used for papers to be filed, newspapers, magazines, food samples, and even birthday cakes for occasions with fellow minions. So there's not an empty space in the middle of it. Oh, oh, oh. It's just a big- They're forming like a flat surface yeah okay on the top of them and then there's a circle of dust in the middle of that flat surface because nobody could reach the middle uh well why was it growing though because i'm kind of the way i'm kind of picturing it, like maybe people can't reach the middle to dust it or put anything down. And so you'd be putting papers and things kind of on the edges of the square, but not in the middle of the square.

Starting point is 00:29:15 Is that partly right? Well, assume the surface, as I understand it, is just generally normally kept totally empty. There's nothing on it. Oh, okay. I thought you just said he said there were papers and birthday cakes and stuff on it. Used for papers to be filed. Apparently they'd use it intermittently, but generally I think it was kept clear. Okay. And there's a circle of dust, specifically a circle? Yes. Still, is it because somebody is dusting it with kind of short arm or they're a shortish person or

Starting point is 00:29:44 they have shortish arms and so they can only dust it sort of around this circle, but that wouldn't explain why it was growing. You're on the right track. The person was getting shorter. They were dusting it. Are they dusting it with a feather duster that's progressively getting shorter? Okay. Does this have something to do with the person whose job it would be to dust the office? Yes. Okay. Does this have something to do with the person whose job it would be to dust the office? Yes. Okay. And something the person who dusts the office is or isn't doing? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:14 Something to do with the equipment that they're using? No. Something to do with the method that the person is using for dusting? No. No. Yes. Does this have... Okay. And the person always uses the same method? Yes. Does this have anything to do with anything else that I need to try to figure out?

Starting point is 00:30:50 I'll say no. No. Okay. So there isn't any other environmental factor, you would say, or situation. Does it have anything to do with, I don't know, the time of the year? So it's getting progressively darker and the person can't see the dust. They come through at like six o'clock at night and it's a little darker every night. I'm trying to be creative here. No, that's not it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:12 So it's something, does it matter what the gender is of the person that dusts? Yes. Is it a male? No. It's a female that's dusting. Yes. And it matters that it's a female. Yes.

Starting point is 00:31:23 Is there anything else about the identity of the person who's doing the dusting that i should work out not about her identity i wouldn't say she used to wear high heels and now she's wearing flat shoes i keep thinking she's getting shorter somehow no no this is you're headed in the right direction okay so there's nothing there's nothing but there's nothing else like demographically or special characteristics or traits of the person other than that she's female? No, I wouldn't say that. There is something else about the person that's relevant. Yes.

Starting point is 00:31:51 Her age? No. Something about her specific identity, like who she is? No, no, no. Something about what her exact occupation is? No. But something about her? Something that you would see if you looked at her?

Starting point is 00:32:06 Yes. A condition. She's got some health condition, or would you call it a disability? No, I wouldn't call it that. Would you call it a health condition? I guess I would call it that. A man couldn't have this condition. She's pregnant, and she's getting... okay, so she's not getting progressively shorter.

Starting point is 00:32:28 She's getting progressively stouter. James writes, the cleaning lady became pregnant and her reach diminished. He has probably too easy, but at least amusing. It took me a month to figure it out, though. But in my defense, it was observational and I did not think about it until I saw the answer. So thanks, James, for sending it. Thank you. That was actually a very cute puzzle.

Starting point is 00:32:45 And we didn't not only killed anybody, but we're adding a new life. Yes. If anybody else has a puzzle that they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you like our podcast and want to help support it so that we can keep making it, please consider joining our Patreon campaign. You can learn more on our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of our website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also check out Greg's collection of over 10,000 quirky curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store,

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Futility Closet - 209-Lost Off Newfoundland

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