Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - America’s Gotta Water Her Garden State | Quick Question Ep. 334

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Soren returns from a rainy, kid-free trip to New Jersey with a suspiciously deep knowledge of the state bird, state flower, state animal, state dinosaur, and possibly every other official state object. Elsewhere, the guys discuss the futility of arguing politics on Nextdoor, the spiritual menace of squirrels, whether birds in your eaves count as tenants, skunks as pets and/or chemical weapons, raccoons with tiny hands, foxes versus coyotes, and the strange social behavior of people asking Googleable questions to their neighbors online. Thanks to Keeper for sponsoring this episode. Get 60% off personal and family plans at Keepersecurity.com/QQ. Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

question for you all right? I think you'll have a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? I think you'll have a great time here. That's right, Daniel.

I went to the city of New Jersey. Has anyone heard of this city, New Jersey? It's a, what do you consider it a city of? What do I consider it a city of? Like what state would it be in? What state owns it? The United States. Okay.

That group in. United States is one state and New Jersey is a city within it. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like a Pyrilvus, Unum, like out of many one. And there's one state out of all of those. And New Jersey is that is one of those cities that's on the, I want to say a coast.

No, I went to, I did a little trip. I did a trip to New Jersey. I stayed in a couple different little towns there. One's called Newark and one is called Asbury Park. You chose an interesting time to go to Newark. I don't know if you noticed, but there's a, we don't like to get political on this show. There's an ICE detention facility in Newark. And you came here during the early days of a hunger strike outside of that facility to protest.

I got to say. You know, all the things that you protest ice for. Obviously, the facility was the main draw. Once I knew that they had a good one, I was like, let me get over there and take a look. I didn't see any of that, by the way, when I was in Newark. Is that right by the airport? I don't know exactly.

I'm pretty sure it's not part of the tour. Okay. But I don't know exactly where the ice facility is. It feels new-ish. I don't know. It's not great. Yeah. Bummer.

I'm sorry that that's happening. I wish that it wasn't. It's real bad. It's a great, man. I know. We had a chef near my town. Like in my town, there's a chef at a restaurant a block away from us, and he got picked up by ice. They were looking for someone else, and they grabbed him.

And they took him to this facility in Newark, and he was. was there for about 40 days, even though he's a legal citizen and has been working here and paying taxes here for 18 years as a business owner and member of the community. They still, he doesn't, he's not officially a citizen because our courts are so backed up that he doesn't even get to be a citizen until 2028. But like, everything was in its proper order for him to do that. And they detained him because they were like explicitly looking for a different guy. And they saw him and they're like, you're not who we're looking for, but you are brown.

So we'll just take you. And like our mayor had to write a letter that was like, this is so clearly a misunderstanding. Can we just have our guy back? And it still took 40 days for them to just because everything returning our chef, our member of community, a father like us, doing that constitutes ICE making a mistake. It constitutes them saying, like, we grab the wrong guy because we're, we're dumb or we're human. And they don't want to do that. There's an unapologetic nature that stems from the top and trickles down to everyone in this administration where you don't admit to a mistake. You just, you just stand by it forever.

You dive down on it, yeah. And it was a real bummer of a situation. we're glad it's resolved now. And it was also like a, like, me dipping my toes into Nextdoor, my favorite app for lunatics. Yeah. What I shouldn't have done.

Next door is my Facebook where I see all my neighbors. And for some reason, because it's not Twitter or Blue Sky or Instagram or Reddit, because it's a place where it's supposed to be our neighbors and you've got your face and your name, I think I can reason with people. And I can't, because no matter what the social media platform is, it's still on the internet.

And someone posted, here's this stuff about this guy who was detained when he shouldn't have been. And someone replied, I mean, there were a lot of replies. And one of the guys was like, he is, ICE does not take anyone illegally on law. So if they got him, he's supposed to be there. And I thought this is a learning opportunity. And I'm not going to come out and say what I want to say. What I want to say is ice sucks, get fucked ice, you're an idiot. I'm not going to say any of those things.

We know that we separate. Everywhere the ice is. They've got their mandates and they are doing this over and over again where they're messing up and fucking up and getting the wrong person and then just keeping them. Right. But I saw a learning opportunity. And I thought this won't turn into like, do you think ice is good or bad? I see this guy who says,

ICE cannot take anyone that they're not allowed to take. And I said, actually, no matter how you feel about what kind of job ICE is doing, you should know they can legally take whomever they want. You don't have to agree with that. I don't personally, but they can. And you should know that that's within the bounds of their jurisdiction is they can anyone that they deem suspicious,

they can just take, including, sir, You. You. They could just take you right now and hold you in a facility. And you don't have to agree with that. I don't agree with it. But these are the facts. So I think that, combined with the fact that they were explicitly looking for a different guy, combined with the fact that this person is here legally and has been paying taxes and is doing everything he's supposed to do,

I think, I think this just all points to the same conclusion. that ICE made a mistake. I love, and I'm sure that this went. I'm sure that he turned around. He was like, you know what? Jesus Christ, you're absolutely right. I didn't know all this stuff. I just looked it up.

Thank you for your help. That's what happened, right? Not only did that not happen. Some people chimed in saying, you know, the thing that's in their heart, the thing that's in their heart, that, well, we just don't want them here. they are taking our jobs.

Just like it quickly devolved into just the, the, the undercurrent. I don't care. I don't care. I don't want them here. They are brown and I want them gone. And that's it. And ice is good. And I also cannot budge or admit a mistake.

I got a lot of that. I got a lot of those unreasonable people. And then I also got a woman who is on my side. But I think is, is, is, um, I think her job is most. yelling at people on next door. And so she saw my post skinned. I just can do whatever they want. I just can do whatever they want.

And she responded to me with something like completely ignorant. And that's why it's like, because I saw completely ignorant. And I thought that's, that doesn't quite match the tone of everything else I've been getting today. So let me see her other posts. And she's giving the racists completely ignorant. And I wanted to reach out to her and be like, hey, I'm on your team. I'm on your side.

But I couldn't because she doesn't accept messages. Here's what made me like my real realization about different camps on this type of thing is that they're exactly the same on both sides. They're both all. No. My biggest takeaway. And I think it made me even made a video about this. I cracked. But it was that.

you have the people at the forefront of any movement who are battling against the people who are opposed to that. They are the ones who know what they're talking about. They're the ones who understand the issue for the most part. And those are the people who are doing the majority of the fighting. Behind them, they have people within those camps who are burning down their own camp. Just have no idea what is happening. They've chosen aside and they're like, and usually like for moral, for moral reasons, whatever their priorities are in their life,

they've chosen their camp. And in the background, they are burning everything down. They don't understand the issue at all. They're fighting their own members. They're doing it all wrong. And so it's real easy if you're on the other side and you're watching that happen to just point at those people.

Those people with six followers on social media who clearly don't understand the issue at all. I'd be like, that side's fucked. Like, they don't know what they're doing. It's like, well, no, you're pointing at the wrong people. You can point people on the front lines because those are the ones who really understand the issue. And that's fine. You should be doing that. You should be holding them accountable.

Even your own team, right? You should be holding them accountable. But it's just, there's an inexhaustible group of people behind the ones who understand the issue that you could just keep pointing at. And that's all we do now. We're just like, that one. That one's fucking stupid. That one's wrong. And so it's really, it's a tough, tough situation to try.

try and get involved in anything politically online. Yeah. You can try to solve the problems otherwise. You can throw money at the issue. You can vote. You can call your representatives. But if you're trying to, you're trying to argue with anyone online, you're fucking done. Your side or the other.

You're done. I feel like online is where we should be able to, we could be able to get so much done. If we, especially if we come to the, the common ground of the internet with a shared understanding that your side's politicians lie and my side's politicians lie and the media is complicit in everything and it's terrible and you and I can just talk like neighbors about it's like we could all just say we could get together in a little huddle and be like man they not not immigrants they powerful people rich people they are fucking us can we agree that We were all being fucked by someone.

Great. Let's start there because that's the same page. But it's impossible when people on the internet sound like CNN or sound like Fox News or sound like someone in the Trump administration. Where it's just like you don't, do you even, do you like sounding like this? You're just repeating. Right. Like you're saying crooked media and Hillary's emails and Democrats. Do you think it?

sounds cool to sound like the fucking president? Was that ever cool in any generation? It's on both. I mean, and also you have people on your own, you hear people in your family. People might send a family who are like, only talk about him as the Cheeto and Chief. And I'm like,

God damn it. Give it. Come on. Fucking Randy rainbow ass bullshit. Get out of here. Doing you any good. It's not doing any good. It's really hard. Unfortunately,

the problem is that if online was a bar or whatever and you could actually talk to people about these issues and be like, hey, let's find her common ground. That conversation always devolves into, that's not true. Yeah. That's not true. It's a couple's fight, right? It's like,

that's not true. That's not true. That's not true. What you just said is not true. And when you, when it, when it will always come down to where do you get your news from, oh, you get it from this source, this source lies to you, then that, then no conversation is possible.

Right. It's, it's, you can't tell someone, hey, uh, the news that you're watching that you believe is the unbiased one. You've, you've, you've gone to the market. You've looked at all the news options and you found one and you're like, this one is telling the truth, the unvarnished truth. And I, and I believe that because sometimes it makes me feel uncomfortable and sometimes they agree with it, but not all the time. And so this one is the truth.

And I'm going to just like, lock. in and subscribe to this one, it's really hard to tell someone, hey, you've been fooled, you've been tricked. Nobody wants to hear that, especially because there's something in them that wanted that news to be true in the first place. And you certainly don't want to hear it from a stranger, a stranger who's going to then gloat if you were to say, let's say you did say, oh shit, you're fucking right. If they do a victory lap after that, you're like, well, then fuck you. I'm never admitting that again in my entire life. I would rather die with global warming that admit that you were right.

Yeah. So that was your first stop on your New Jersey tour. Okay, yeah. You turned a blind eye to the protests at the ICE attention facility. Didn't want to get involved. What else? Then I drove down the Jersey coast,

the shoreline, they called over there. And I went through a couple different towns. I went through Red Bank, stopped there. I met a few people at Red Bank. I have some friends in Jersey. and then went down to Asbury Park, which is where we stayed. And then the only other jaunt I made was up to,

I don't actually think you want us to say where I went. No, where I live? I think we can skip that. But I went to another place. I went to visit Daniel. I went to go see his baby. I really wanted to meet his son. That was very exciting for us.

I got to see Daniel's house as well, which was also very exciting. At some point I'm sure he'll make the trek to see my garage. It'll probably be grown up by then. Sure. Whatever. And it was really fun. It was so fun to just come up there. Hopefully your garage will still like all the gifts that I got it.

Here's something that I think all parents will understand. My wife and I like to get away sometimes. The opportunity arose where we were going to have grandparents who would take care of our children for a few days. And we were like, you feel as free as a bird. You're like, I could go anywhere. And I was like, I would like to go visit Daniel and see his child. And then I also just have a trip with my wife. And I'm saying every aspect of that is wonderful without kids.

The flight there was something I was looking forward to, even the flight back, because I knew I was going to just watch some movies that I wouldn't have ever watched in my life because I'm pinned there. I don't have other things I can be getting done. I get in house stuff done or anything like that. I'm stuck in that seat for five hours or whatever it is. And I get to watch terrible movies. Then we get to get to the hotel. I get to watch some HGTV there.

Like there's all the things that I would never conceive of allowing myself to do in my everyday life on a vacation like this. I just get to do. I believe that you love your children. I've seen you with them. You're an incredible dad. You're very involved in their lives. You came to New Jersey on a weekend that was almost top to bottom, rained out. There was no beach time.

There was a little bit of sun at the end of the trip, but not like not early enough to really enjoy it doing anything. It was by all accounts a rained out experience. I've never seen two people happier. We could not have your spirit stamped by anything. Everybody kept apologizing for the rain as though it was their fault. And we were like, stop. This is exactly what we came for. Oh, we can't do it.

all the things that we would have felt stressed about doing. We can't go into the city. We can't go to the beach. We can't make plans. Like, I loved it. I loved it. And also just getting away with your wife is so fun. Like, just remembering, remembering why you chose this person.

And you're like, I like your company. Like, you're good company. It's just fun. And when you do say everyone apologized to you about the weather, Soren, I was talking. in the group chat with my friends ahead of this weekend complaining about how I have to go back to work soon. And I wasn't looking forward to it. And I said, but at least this last weekend, I'm going fishing with my brother on Friday. And then Soren is coming to town for the weekend. So it'll be

a fun final weekend. And all of my friends were like, what do you mean Sorin's coming here and we're not going to see him? At first I was like, well, I don't know if I want that because he's coming to hang out with me and see the baby and the house and everything. But I suppose we could do something. And all of my friends were coming out of the woodwork to be like, I'm free son. I'm free too.

We can all go to this thing. Like, okay, that sounds good. And I will enjoy it because I like seeing my friends too. And my wife was like, does Soren want to do this? I don't think. I don't think it's up to him. I think we're all. I don't know. I really love your friends.

That was exciting when you told me because you basically helped make the plans for our trip because we didn't do that. We were just like, we'll see when Daniel's available. Like, we'll hang out with them when they can. They've got a baby. And before I got there, you're like, hey, we are going to meet at this bar at this time

and my friends are going to be there. And I was like, that, like, here we go. Like, that's great. Somebody else has made all the plans for me. This is wonderful. I love your friends. They're great guys.

They love you too. And I love my friends. And everyone's great. And I'm not. I'm not jealous. I'm not reading anything into the fact that there was so much eagerness this weekend to see Soren. And I'm also not going to read anything into the fact that we go to this brewery and we're all hanging out. And I'm bouncing my son and I'm carrying my son for a lot of this time to relax him and like walk him around, give my wife some time to eat her food.

I go to the bathroom. I change him multiple times. Yeah. At one point, Soren wants to hold the baby. I give Soren the baby. He's walking around with him. And a stranger comes up to Soren to start talking about my fucking kid.

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That's Keeperssecurity.com slash QQ for 60% off personal and family plans. Make sure you use our link so they know we sent you. Keepersecurity.com slash QQ. Get 60% off personal and family plans at Keepersecurity.com slash QQ. It's that, yeah. Just some guy was like Your turn, huh? And I was like, yeah.

And he's like, and then he wanted to know a bunch of questions. But it seemed that this man had accidentally believed that this was my child. Sure. And wanted to know a lot about the baby. Wanted to know how old he was and stuff. I did, I got real excited when I found out your friends were going to be there because it meant that I could start. Start just like put together some bits that I thought would be, would really like, confound them.

And so the first one was I was really dead set on any time somebody, I knew people would apologize for the weather. That's what you do when people come to town. It's raining. So my first thing, what I was going to do over and over again, would say, hey, America's got to water her garden state, right? And then shrug. And say that, but then say that so many times that it's, it becomes a problem. The problem is. It wasn't not a problem the first time you said it.

I think because I understand your rhythms enough that as soon as you said it, I was like, uh-oh, uh-oh. Yeah, you got to wait through the first seven or eight, and that gets pretty tedious. And then by nine or ten,

it becomes so ludicrous and insane that you have to laugh. And I was just like, waiting for that moment. The other thing that I did was I learned everything. There were all of your state animals, your flowers, your trees. your dinosaur, you guys have a dinosaur,

you have a shell. Like you've got so many weird things. So I learned all of those just to, I could slip it into conversation. And just so that I wanted to like the first few, people would not take the bait. But I think that you do it three times. And everyone's like,

what? Why do you know so much? Did you want to seem like an expert in New Jersey naturally? Or did you want, is the bit, I did a book? report on the state before I came here. This is what I do when I travel anywhere. What I wanted was that I was a person who would assume the only thing people in New Jersey talked about was New Jersey and these things that were specific to the state. And so it was

basically a guy with note cards being like, I'm ready to talk about the things you guys talk about, like how the horse is your state animal. I'm not from Hollywood. I'm just like you. I love the Eastern Goldfinch. Yeah, that I was creating conversation starters for a new species, basically. It went pretty well. It went pretty good. There were some people who really got fucked up by that. It's, it was funny experiencing it after the fact talking to my wife who was on the other far side of the table away from you

and was only getting bits and pieces of you dropping a lot of New Jersey lore. And we're just like, now you're like, you're locked in, you're having a conversation with the person next to you, but you, but there's a, for one reason or another, a conversation that's vastly more interesting on the other side of the table. And you're just getting little bits of it like someone just dropped that they've met an alien before. He's like, hold on. God, how can I, how can I engage while getting just a little bit closer? Because it sounds like he's talking about horses an awful lot. It was, what happened that was really wonderful was that as soon as horses came up. And I was like, state animal. And people were like, huh, okay. And then I think another thing had happened where I could bring up violets. And I know like easy transition to violets.

And I was like, stay flower. Everyone at that point was willing to engage in the game. They were like, oh, yeah, I learned all of these when I was young. What is our state bird? Oh, goldfitch. And like they start doing it except for maybe two of them who were like, hang on. Why does he know this? What does he know all of them?

Why does he know all of them? And then they'd be like, what is our tree? And I'd be like, right out immediately. Like, I'm on it. And they, and each time, like, their eyes got wider and like, what is, what, no, stop. What is he doing? What does he know all of these? And then they'd start testing me.

And that was, oh, nothing I like more than being tested. Yeah. When I know all of it. It is, I'm sure, I'm sure the, the local research game is fraught everywhere. I don't know if it's more fraught in New Jersey, but you do run a dangerous game. when we had my in-laws here, we took them to Asbury Park where you stayed, and they were like,

this place is great, and they wanted to know the history of it. And I said, I don't know, I'll have to look into it. I did know, but I didn't want to bring it up. But it was like, well, Asbury Park was an early,

like, shore stop for commuters, people who were living in New York, fell in love with it. And they built a train here, and they were so happy. And this guy, Bradley, segregated everything and separated the nice parts by the shore

and they have white people live there and then black people had to live across this street and they got none of the tax incentives and they got none of the jobs that came here and it's segregation at the beginning of Asbury Park that we are still dealing with today. It's not segregated anymore but the legacy of that original sin of racism

you will see signs of it everywhere. Yeah, it's not just signs. Anyone who goes to the Jersey shore has walked on a boardwalk knows there's a lot of homogene there. That is not a mixed bag

on the Jersey shore. And it's not just like, well, it's only that white people like the boardwalk. They're the ones who like Rita's water ice. Not true. It's a, I think everybody likes it. But that's an institution that has remained

past, I think, probably anybody saying specifically this is the rules. But it is a white crew out there on the boardwalk all along the Jersey Shore. Yeah. I wonder if there are any states that are completely, that don't have any, like, early original, apart from like taking the country away from Native Americans. I wonder if there are any states that have just always been ahead of the curve on the whole racism thing. Wait, wait, like they got on racism early? They got away from racism early.

Oh, okay. I thought you meant like they were the, they were like the spearhead of it. There's so many places all over the country. And I can never remember if it's Oregon or Washington where it's like so much of the geography of parts of those cities are, they were like designed with racism in mind. Designed with like, this is the white part and this is the black part. Right. I wonder if there's any state that I was just like no we were always nice from the beginning I mean it's a long dark adventure I think trying to figure that out because it's you're you're not

I think there aren't any I think it would be anywhere that is like any city that's thrown together without a lot of prior thought that would be your best bet it's the cities where like they just sort of sprung up because some industry appeared there and they're like we frantically had to get ready around it. But anywhere that was like a design city, racism was just the lifeblood of that. And it's so rough.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, it was a really fun trip. It was great to come there. It was wonderful to meet your son. And it was... Another my son. Equally great.

To see your house. I really like seeing where you guys... You got really into the house store. Yeah, I love it. I'm also, I find that when I go on house tour, I am, I lose all context of like etiquette. I'm just like, I want to know things and I want to know where everything is and I want to know like where pipes go and stuff like that. And so I'm not, I find myself on tours like that not saying the things that I really like, but only just like looking around at stuff.

Like I'm a detective. You were very complimentary about the house and I really appreciated it. You're just, you're, you're so rough. You were really pounding on my furnace. And like, you couldn't point at it. You were just, like, touching it. And I was like, what's this part do? And the furnace is the newest thing in the house because it broke when we moved in.

But it's still like. Yeah. Physically rough. Yeah. Yeah. I'm tough with the things. Just, just be careful. Gentle, sorry.

Gentle. I was squeezing rubber pipes and stuff like that. Yeah, we have so many tubes and pipes and wires throughout the house that I don't understand and will never understand. I pried a rock out of a tube and shove my finger in it, and you did not care for that. It was very happy that you exposed another hole in my house that I didn't realize was there. Just put your finger in a hole and you were like, it's wet. And you're like, oh, no, it shouldn't be. It's just drainage of something.

sort. At least it's going outside. Sorry. Yeah, I was my wife, I've noticed that. So I worked retail in my life. And in retail, you're pretty gentle with the items. And also you want them in a particular order. Like I worked at a Patagonia store at one point.

And it was important that on all the jackets, all the sleeves were folded in the same direction. And so you have people come through the stores and they're like, they want to touch stuff. They want to feel it. And they want to take stuff off hangers and put it back on. there are some people who are just brutal in a clothing store, people who come through and like, they don't just want to touch it.

They want to like pull it and stuff. And they want to like, they're like pushing stuff out of the way. And they have no consideration for how it was organized before that point. And when that's exclusively your job, boy, do you notice it. So my wife, when we go into clothing stores, I will occasionally be like, could you just, could you just look at the, at the jackets and don't not pull on them?

I'm just like, why do you care? Like, I just care for me. It hurts me when you do it. Anyway, that's how I treated your house. I was, I was aggressive. I kicked it. You kicked the tires on the house. Yeah.

And it still stands. I know, it's a nice house. I was thinking about your birds. You have some birds that are nesting in one of your eaves or like where the flashing has kind of been pulled away. I was thinking, what's the harm in that? I don't know. because you're not getting rodents through there.

They're not getting into my precious attic and living in there or anything. They don't want to live in the attic and they can't get there from there anyway as far as I know. I, there's a territorial part of me. That is like, hey, that's my house. There's another part that doesn't understand how houses work that like if the nest gets bigger when the babies are born, will it be a weight problem? that does further damage to those eaves. And if the answer is no and it's just going to be like a tiny bird's nest for a season, I think I'm mostly okay with that.

I'm more okay with that than I am about like renting a big ladder and doing a whole thing. Yeah. Because you know that that's an area where animals can get into your house, obviously, because they're doing it. But of all the animals that can be getting into your house, bird feels the most innocuous. And if a bird's already there, then you're not going to have rats or mice or anything else that is like, hey, this looks like a pretty sweet spot. Or a dreaded squirrel,

which is... The squirrels, which is a rat that has convinced people it's more cosmopolitan. I hate squirrels are my goodness. I hate squirrels so fucking much. We've had a lot of squirrel problems of our house, too. I think the squirrels have been antagonizing

me. You personally, it's a personal attack. Yeah. What makes you think that? What are they doing to you? What are you, my wife? Because I antagonize them. What are you talking about?

Because I started it. Okay. And you think they're insulted and now they're attacking you. Okay. Yeah. I will from time to time find the plastic rings that come from like Coke cans, Pepsi cans, dropped into my front lawn. And I don't, we don't have anything that has rings like that.

I don't even know that anyone still sells those rings. But I know that I chase squirrels away a lot. I have once, one time, singular, blasted a squirrel in my tree with the hose. Hell yeah. And before anyone jumps down my throat, he took it and smiled. He didn't budge. So it's not like I heard him.

And I yell at them a lot. And I spend a lot of time puttering in my front lawn. If you're a squirrel with a dumb little squirrel brain and you know very little about what humans do, you know two things about me that I don't like squirrels. And I appear to love my front lawn because I spend a lot of time on my knees. Touching it. Talking to it and touching, touching it in a manner that seems. seems very romantic and gentle. So if you were a squirrel operating under this limited amount of information, you would,

to punish me, drop garbage on my favorite thing. And so you think they're doing that? And they're not only just dropping garbage. They're cutting the garbage up into smaller pieces so it's tougher for you to collect. They're finding garbage. They're finding garbage from somewhere away and then bringing it to my lawn and dropping it. And someone in the comments is going to tell me that's much more like, likely to be bird behavior, that birds are the ones that collect garbage from far away and

travel with it to build nests with the garbage that they find. I squirrels do that too, by the way. Well, good, because I was going to tell those people to shut up. Here's the problem. That's, in fact, the main problem I have with squirrels is that they come into my backyard. We've got some patio furniture, and we have to take the cushions off the patio furniture, because if we don't, they will tear into it and take the stuffing from those and go put it in a nest. We had a chair that was hung from the ceiling of the porch.

It was just one of those spinny, nice chairs. They cut it up with their little teeth. They destroyed this chair because they were like, if I can't be on this, then you can't either. They will, I just recently discovered on our second floor porch, there's a wiffle ball out there that's been torn to shreds. I don't even know what they were getting out of that. They just wanted to destroy something nice.

They want to see the world burn. They, a lot of, we don't have, they haven't destroyed our cushions yet, which is nice. But they have, they will dig up my lawn. And I, I spend so much time trying to get a nice lawn. It's, it's, what before the baby is basically all I did was work on the, on raising the lawn. And they will just dig holes because they, they think they buried something somewhere at some point. And they're fucking idiots and they can't remember what they did. So they just dig a bunch of random holes.

And they go through our garden too. Sometimes because they want to, for the same reason, to find whatever they buried last time. And sometimes because they can see a lot of love and time has been put into this garden. And they want to dig up our shit and steal it and eat it. And I have planted six crops of garlic and they have destroyed four out of six of six of them because squirrels lack patience. They're just like, oh, something seems to be growing here. We better get it. What if it's squirrel food?

Oh, it's garlic. Now, let me try this other one. Yeah. And our garden is an act of patience and love and diligence that they destroy so quickly with their stupid squirrel brains and their horrible, horrible squirrel fingers. We had a problem with them early on when we first moved into our house. My son was interested in them because we had a baby squirrel in our yard. Yeah, and it was playing. It was like running around and like jumping and doing like some like it was practicing its ninja moves basically is what it looked like and it was so adorable.

We were watching to the window. My son was like eager to get close to this thing. He was probably four or five. So I was like, well, I know how to bait a chipmunk or a squirrel. It's very easy. You give them, you put us a little bit of nuts or something like that and you just get them closer and closer to you until they feel safe. That was the dumbest thing I could have ever done and I did not foresee how dumb this would be. But we were trying to get him close to the porch so that my son, maybe he would even eat out of my son's hand.

We were like, look at this disease-ridden thing that might touch my child. And it started trusting us and it started getting close. And then after that, felt very at home all over the house and was trying to get in our door, trying to get in our glass door. And to the point where I had to start scaring it again to make it realize that I am a threat. That was a big mistake. That one is dead now. That one is long gone because... By your hands?

No, we've gotten a cat. I think maybe I told this story on the podcast where we had a cat who was indiscriminate about the things that she would kill. And we would do our best to try and keep her from stuff. She was finding skinks everywhere. I don't know where she's getting all these skinks from. Skinks are like a long lizard. Yeah, it's a long lizard that looks kind of like a snake but has little tiny legs. Do they have blue tails?

Sometimes, yeah. Yeah. And she was finding, so she's killed lots of stuff. And we were always like, most of the time it was butterflies. It was lizards. It wasn't huge things until I started smelling something in the kitchen. And I was like, there's something rotting here. And I couldn't figure it out.

And I thought maybe it was under the oven because as I got closer to the floorboards, I was smelling it more. Realized it was under the house. Got under the house in my crawl space. A thing I famously loved doing. I got down in there and found a horrifying killing ground. There was, it looked like ritualistic. There was a indentation in the ground. There was butterfly wings surrounding the whole thing.

And then in the middle were her prizes, which were the things that she had killed and loved the most. And one of them was a squirrel. And it was that squirrel from our backyard. It's long dead. Right. We recently learned that our across the street neighbors a year or so ago had a family of critters living inside its walls. do you want to know what the critter was it shocked me it was it was a it was critter behavior that I didn't expect from this animal and it was living in the wall so it wasn't a raccoon and it wasn't a possum because those are always in your walls uh was it a porcupine it was a skunk yeah skunk's a family of skunks I didn't know that I thought yeah I don't I don't encounter a lot of skunks in my in my life that's the kind of thing that's like if it wanders into someone's backyard, it's like news.

And I didn't know that they were a thing that like went to two houses and made nests in the homes. We had them in our garage when I was a little kid. The way that my dad got rid of them was he dipped tennis balls in ammonia and then put it wherever the skunks lived. And the skunks hated that. They hated it and they went away. But yeah, we had our garage with some.

to like skunk all the time. It's not just because they naturally stink, but every time we were in there, they're like, fuck, fuck, they're spraying everywhere. Yeah, skunks apparently also very affectionate animals. If you were to remove the stink sacks from a skunk, they are

apparently incredible pets. They make these cute little noises. Yeah, they're really adorable, aside from that weird thing that they do out of the back end. They move more reptilian than I'd anticipated. Times that I've seen skunks actually move.

They, they, they slither a bit as ferrets do. Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. They have, they have that as like elongated bodies because the tail is twice the length of the rest of their body. And they do kind of like that slippery movement. Yeah, I want them to be kind of like hoppy and fun like a fox or something. But they're, they're, they're serpentine. Yes. I've been, there was a ton of skunks in L.A.

I got sprayed by a skunk when I was in college. I think I told you about this. Yeah. Just trying to study outside while there was a party goal. going on in my dorm and I trying to be a good boy and got rewarded with being sprayed by skunk and it was not allowed, locked out of my dorm after everyone discovered that I had been sprayed. How? So spraying has never come up in my life. I've only observed it from pop culture, an episode of Rugrats where someone got sprayed with a skunk and the smell wouldn't go away.

and it was you had to like soak in a gazpacho or tomato sauce to get the skunk smell out. It's one of those core memories for me. It's like, well, when you grow up, you have to just be aware that be worried about quicksand, lava, and skunks. These are the things that pop culture has told you are the real threats. And if you get skunked, now you know, yeah, a whole lot of tomato soup to sit in. how realistically how disastrous is getting sprayed with a skunk. Is it a multi-day affair? Great question.

Yes, it is. I didn't know how to get rid of the smell. And so I was showering a ton. Showering a ton does end up working. I had to throw away my clothes. I had been sitting in what was called a Crazy Creek chair, which is like a little camping chair. That was done.

I had to throw that away. The book I was reading had to be thrown away because I tried to leave them out on this patio for a long period of time thinking, well, it'll just, it'll go away. And every time we went out there, my roommates were like, you got to do something about this. It can't stay out there. It still stinks.

And I couldn't go back into class with this book or anything. So that all had to be tossed. But as for my body itself, it felt like it's stuck in my hair the longest. You can get it off your skin with a, not just one shower. You need a few, it takes a few before you're fully done with it. But it felt like it's stuck in my hair for a very long time. Now, when your dog gets sprayed or something like that, I think you are supposed to put them in a bath of tomato juice.

I think that's the only way to get it out of that fur and everything. But my cat got sprayed once, the same killer cat that sprayed once. Probably trying to kill a skunk. And we were like, oh, no, this is going to be for a long time, and we can't bathe a cat because it'll kill you. And so we were really worried about that. Within two days, she smelled fine. And it's because cats, I guess, are so,

hate it so much and love being clean so much that they just religiously bade themselves over and over again until the smell is gone. Yeah. I imagine animals have a greater natural ability to shed that smell. Just like that makes sense evolutionarily to me that animals would have to adapt

to learn how to get rid of the smell because if you didn't, you'd never be able to sneak up on prey and everyone would know where you are all the time and you must have figured something out pretty quickly. I think the smell is sort of ancillary too. I think the real thing that skunks are trying to do is spray you in the face

so that your eyes water and your throat closes and everything and it's just a very unpleasant experience so you don't do that again. But then you get this thing that just sticks to you for a very long time. In my opinion, if we were to redo skunks, I would have them be like bees where they get one spray and then they die and that's it. I think that that's fair.

They should also suffer for their spray. That is a world with a lot of dead skunks on the ground, brother. You're tripping over corpses all the time. Well, that sucks that they have that living in their house. That's rain, just things getting into my house that shouldn't be there. water in particular, and then secondary to that is animals. I'm always on the lookout for places on my house where I need to close up something because otherwise animals get in there.

And that's, there's just no getting rid of them. Even birds will, you know, they migrate or they end their season. However they do that, freeze a death. I don't know. But then the next season, they're young, come right back to that spot. And they're like, this is our home. This is our summer house. I'm more worried about bugs all the time

I think if an animal had started living in my attic as long as it didn't stink up the house as long as it didn't do damage that is going to like collapse the roof I think I'm all right with it I'm the only one in the world who has been in my attic and if I got up there one day and I saw

a family of possums I'd be like you guys this must be the night crew That's so great to see you. Thanks for training the AC. That's really helpful. I don't spend a lot of time up here. It would be awesome if you guys could just keep an eye on things.

It would be really nice. It's great to have you here. Great to have you on board. We're actually traveling this summer if you guys want to be in Main House for most of that time. And water the plants. That would be really terrific for us. It would be really helpful. We also have raccoons here.

And raccoons are. are like bigger than dogs. For raccoons are so big. And they do this thing. We have gates on the fronts of our house on both sides that are wood. The raccoons love going over them, but they're not good at it because they're fat fucks. And they will, I think you can jump high enough to get their little ambidextrous paws on the top. But then their feet just scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

And so we've got those handprints, those tiny little handprints all over our gate and then claw marks all over it, too. And I just want to talk to them. And I'd be like, well, how can we work this out? What do you want? Yeah. What is in the backyard, first of all, that you're interested in? Maybe I could bring it out for you. And if it's just the backyard itself, let's come up with a new system.

Yeah. We get, we haven't had them in our house. I don't think we've had them in our yard. Probably have. Foxes are all along the Jersey Shore. Oh, cool. I think so, too. And I bet people will tell me that foxes cause more damage than squirrels or

that foxes have disease or that they will kill my dog. And I just want you to know that you can sit on this one, spin on that one. For listeners who are not watching YouTube video, I did my left middle finger. Did he just took his dick out? Both of them. I don't care. I think foxes are cool. I think they're beautiful.

I love watching them run around. I think they're really fun. I kind of have that relationship with coyotes. for people who don't know that that killer cat that I had was from dust to dust, return to the earth, return to the cycle of things when it was eaten by a coyote. Coyotes people in L.A. are terrified of. That's the only thing that, and next door, we get the crazies. But then the most common things that you see on next door are, hey, was that gunshots

when it was just fireworks? And everybody look out, put your teenagers away because there's coyotes out. Like, people think that coyotes are wolves. They're going to be eaten by that. I think coyotes are scary. I think coyotes probably have eaten quite a few small dogs in Los Angeles. Yes, of course. They eat a lot of pets.

The coyotes are fascinating when you see them, though. I go on runs at night, and occasionally what I usually see is a bunch of rabbits on my runs. And if I don't see the rabbits, then I know that there's something around. And generally, it's a coyote. And I will see a coyote or two coyotes together. And it's always really impressive when I see them. Like, I get excited when I see them. Uh, they're not for me.

But foxes are. Wait, are foxes doing all the same damage? Probably. I bet foxes would eat Jackson if given the chance. But I think they're just neat. I like them. I'm hung up on next door now because the fireworks thing. Does your next door, do they also ask you two things?

do they ask what are the police doing at XYZ location because my next door will like anytime they see any cops anywhere that was like why are their cops

are the 7-11 on 35 I was just like I just what do you care what is it what is it cop stuff and they'll also like do

they'll ask incredibly Googlable questions and not things like does anyone have a roofer that they're true that they trust. But things like,

is this, is this store closed down? And she was like, I went to Dale and Dallup on Maine, and there was a sign out that said closed. Are they closed?

Does anyone know? People, people do not treat kindly the person who asks a Googledable question on next door. Good.

The person should be shamed. Yeah. Leave the lines clear for the more important things. Like, hey, I just moved into the neighborhood and I'm looking for some friends, which I also see on here all the time. That one I feel has to be a scam. I see that people looking for friends and I see no one taking the bait in a real way. And they're like, hey, I just moved here. I'm this age and I love friends.

People are like, hey, welcome to the neighborhood. That's great. Yeah. This is a bar you can go to. It's never like, I will be your friend. It's always like there are options for you. Yeah, because I'm full up. I've lived here for a very long time.

I have all the friends I need. Yeah. Or it's just like, I don't know if they're hoping that somebody else says, I also just moved here. Let's start a run club or whatever they're going to do. But that one's the most baffling to me on there. When somebody says, hey, or even more crazy is when somebody is like, Hey everyone

My daughter-in-law recently divorced Has moved into the neighborhood And would like somebody to hang out with And you're like, this has to be a scam This has, it's so leading in terms of like Setting up that this is a woman looking for friends. Yeah.

And I don't understand the end game at all. But it's like, this has to be a scam. There's no way a woman is being like, Hey, my daughter is here. And she's single. And she's shy. Right. Because the median age on next door is,

72. We are the youngest people on Next Door. Feels great. Oh, all right. Well, we've been talking for 50 minutes and I can hear my baby crying in the next room. So it's time to go. Time to wrap up. Thank you, everybody, for listening to this podcast about Skunks and Next Door.

As we planned it, right from the start. This has been a lot of fun. If you liked our theme song, that's by Me Rex. If you like the video version of this podcast, you can watch that on YouTube. If you like this podcast so much, you just need more of it. a bigger fix. We also do Patreon exclusive versions of it.

You can listen to those if you're a Patreon member. And then if you like this podcast as a whole and you're like, who put this together? It was so clean and polished.

Well, that's thanks to us because we are great talkers, Daniel and I. But I guess also a little bit was game harder. Yeah. And you could hire him if you could find him.

And we're going to see if you can clean up that particular bit of audio because with my mouth, I made a boom sound. I was feet from the microphone and into the microphone,

I snapped my fingers. So we're going to see what that actually sounds like for the listener. I'm curious. It's exciting. All right, bye. Bye.

I've got a quick, quick question for you. I've got a quick, quick question for you. I've got a quick question for you, all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? How did you get?

When do I be in a bro? Yes, random comedy, rocks. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.