The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 417: Snarge

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Megan Denean, Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics include: How you can skip telling the story to all the nurses; representative, representative; a deer struck at 30,000 feet; snarge, the remains of bird on an aircraft; critter strikes in the air and DNA tests; twig eater, he who strips of bark; putting a human skull in a crock pot; cadavers making your mouth water; when old ladies are arrested for feeding cats as lure to trap and fix them; feeling corralled by train rails; when caribou migrations disrupts an airfield; the first registered human death by musk ox; the famous Hudson strike; the weird occupation of being a professional bird-shooer; snowy owls at your local airfield; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Phil, turn the machine on. i got a medical hot tip that i want to share go ahead it's already on it's on so years ago i had a very convoluted health problem that had like a lot of steps to it we were like well this happened and i ate that you know and then this happened and i got sick of telling when you go to the doctor how everybody wants you to tell what happened and then they don't talk and then another person comes in and you gotta tell the story again the other day i had to take my kids down it was a very convoluted story about who had strep when and what happened to them okay and then what happened after that and then what happened after that so the first person that comes in so like and i knew they weren't the person they're the person that weighs your kid

and she said so tell me what's going on and i said it, it's a long, complicated story. Can I just tell the next person? Yeah. So my whole life, I've been doing that, not knowing that you could just skip the part. You know what I'm saying? Like hitting zero, zero, zero. Yeah, it's like being like hitting zero with a person. Representative. Manager.

Yeah, because I'm like, there's no point in me telling you all this because I guarantee someone else is going to come in the door and they're not going to know. Yeah, that's smart. And you're not going to do anything about it. Why do I have to tell you? You don't. The person weighing your kid just has a fetish for the stories. Red. It's like, it doesn't go beyond that.

It's like, oh, I heard a good one today. 22 pounder. Can I tell a funny doctor visit story? Yeah, please. It's from our buddy Jake. Did he tell you this already? Nope, I know he's got the West Nile. West Nile.

Yeah, he's on the mend now. I think he's back hunting. But as they were trying- Where did he- Mississippi. Oh, I see. When you told me that, I figured he had to be somewhere

because it's like the wintertime here. Okay. Yeah. So he's going through the process, trying to figure it out, probably retelling his story over and over. Oh, yeah. Finally gets to the infectious disease doctor

and he sends me a text that says, probably retelling his story over and over. Oh, yeah. Finally gets to the infectious disease doctor, and he sends me a text that says, the infectious disease doctor just asked me if I've had contact with any wild animals over the past 30 days. I listed bobcats, mountain lions, elk, wild pigs, coyotes, ducks, and deer. Her response, you're weird. Had a very similar conversation with the Montana State Game Harvest Survey.

The volunteer lady who called me yesterday. Yep. She's like, upland birds. And I was like, well, yeah, but like, you want to be more specific? Because she's like, well, what region? I'm like, all of them. You know, and it's like, well, what region? I'm like, all of them. You know, and it's like, well, how many in eat? And then she's like, well, what do you do with this?

We had an equally long conversation about cooking various birds, what I do with them. And at the end, she's like, well, thank you so much. This has been great. Oh, awesome. Like, all right. Highlight of her day. Wildlife education. Because most people are like, didn't make it out. She been great. Oh, awesome. Like, all right. Highlight of her day. Wildlife education.

Because most people are like, didn't make it out. She's like, thanks, bye. Can I just piggyback on that? I got a lovely call from our local fish and game

office the other day doing like a post-season survey. And we had a lovely conversation and he was like, so thankful for taking time to answer his questions. And I asked him like if that was rare. And apparently a lot of people are really mean and hang up right in their faces. And yeah, so if you're-

He wasn't hitting on you? No, he wasn't hitting on me. But if your local Fish and Game calls to ask to act you know it's not like they're trying to find out uh they're setting up a sting operation most likely right like like secret stuff that you've done right exactly like it's not like they're not like if you didn't poach a creature like you've got nothing to hide like that individual's not trying to find out your hunting spot like they are just taking data and information and collating that and passing that along to you know i said thank you to my volunteer it's helpful to keep in mind too that when you buy a license you agree

legally that you would escort someone to the kill site if asked. I didn't, I didn't realize that. You like, you don't, you surrender your right to have it be a secret. What, so, uh, the, um, lady I was speaking to, she's like, well, you drew this antelope tag in this region. I'm like, yep. And she's like, were you successful? I said, yep.

She said, how many days? I said, well, I was probably out there six days. She's like, okay. And what region did you harvest the animal in? Oh, she was trying to catch you. I was like, the one on the tag? Yeah, they are playing a sting.

Joined today by Megan Baker. Born in Michigan. Yeah, so it's Megan Dineen. I just got married back in May. Oh, because you got married. Yeah, I just got married. Took his name off. Your email still says Megan Baker. I know, I know. What's your new last name? Dineen. I just got married back in May. Why the hell is that? Oh, because you got married. Yeah, I just got married. Took his name off. Your email still says Megan Baker.

I know, I know. What's your new last name? Dineen. Did you debate? I'm changing this right here. Did you debate maybe not taking his name? You know, I didn't think it would be that hard until now that I switched it. And I went from a really basic English name that nobody mispronounces to something that everybody mispronounces.

So it's definitely been a learning curve. How's it spelled? D-E-N-E-A-N. Oh, yeah. That's a messy one. Yeah. Do you think if you'd have said that you weren't going to change it, would he have called off the whole wedding?

No, because at first I was like, I just, I really don't know if I want to change it. And he's like, is this some weird feminist thing? I was like, no, don't know if I want to change it. He's like, is this some weird feminist thing? I was like, no, it just seems like a pain in the butt. Man, I've told it. That's what my wife did to me. She said that. The weird feminist thing? No, no, no.

No, she laid out the pain thing. She said, well, I'm going to change it when my passport expires. Because I got to renew it anyway, and I'll just change my name then. So I was like, oh, okay. So in eight years, when your passport expires,

then we'll, and then that happened and she still hasn't changed her damn name. Yeah. I should have taken her advice. Oh, so now like, I'll say, um,

I'll say the Ronellas are coming and Katie too. Cause yeah. Drives me nuts, man. Because there's no use dropping that. I mean, that's great. No, I keep that one right in my back pocket and I don't think it stings at all. You are,

you're the first airport biologist we've ever had on the show. Yeah, yeah. So as an airport biologist, my job is to reduce damaging wildlife strikes With aircraft That's pretty much all of it

Keep planes from hitting Critters We had a trivia question one day God I can't remember the answer And I can't remember if I got it right No I think I got it wrong I think it was like what It was the most common

It was animal. He didn't say bird. He said animal. What's the most common animal that a airplane runs into? Yeah, I think it was a morning dove. I think I got that right. And I think I put down like crows or Canada geese or something like that.

It's morning doves. Yeah. Yeah, they're just everywhere, I think. They're just across North America, so they're just pretty common do you do a lot of that um we're gonna dig way into your we gotta do some other stuff first but we're gonna dig way into your occupation but do you do um what do you call it like do you do any lethal control uh it's kind of last resort but it does happen does happen and then real quick what's the weirdest thing you've ever heard of a plane? Has a plane ever hit a turtle? I'm sure that has.

The weirdest strikes that we have are there was a deer that was struck, but at 30,000 feet. That's not true. Yeah. So that was a real stumper. So we work with a Smithsonian. And when they ran the DNA analysis on the strike, it was deer. And they called the pilot, and he's like, no, I heard it.

Like, I know it hit at 30,000 AGL. What's AGL? Above ground level. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. So someone's got, like, that's what the Chinese are doing with that balloon. Yeah, Janus.

They're dropping deer into plane paths. I can't believe you guys went there, because my mind is at right now that this fall, Mark will be like, where are you sitting? And I'll be like, I'm on the oak flat about 22 AGL. And if you're on the ground, you can be like, I saw it from six foot two AGL. Yeah, it happened around Christmas time. And so everyone kind of joked that Santa Claus was just doing his last rounds.

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. So then they took some more of the strike. We call it snarge. So snarges. That's such a good word. That's your word for the day. That's an acronym? No, it's a noun, I think. I don't know.

Oh, I'm looking that up right now. Yeah, so snarge. See, now I don't believe two things you told me. So, snarge is the remains of a bird on an aircraft, so that would be blood tissue and feathers. And so, when they collect the snarge off the aircraft, so imagine when you are driving and you hit a

bog and it splats on your windshield. When that's a bird on an airplane, that is snarge. You want a little history on that? Sure. In 1960, a Lockheed L-188 electric airplane nosedived into Boston Harbor, killing 62 people. As investigators sorted through the rubble, they kept finding globs of what appeared to be black feathers. Such material came to be known as snarge.

Oh, there you go. You know, we all do a fair amount of flying, and I'm definitely going to be talking to my seatmate about that. Hey! Wing's a little dirty out there. Think that's snarge? But yeah, to conclude that story, though,

they did more DNA analysis, took some other samples, and found out it was a vulture. So most likely a vulture had been eating maybe on a deer carcass and so then when it splatted they actually had picked up the dna from the stomach but how could that thing be that high how high 30 000 yeah so when birds migrate they they migrate really high and a lot of people don't realize that um so when you're migrating from north america south america europe to africa um they're not you know, where we can see them. They are flying as high as they can.

Just like how we, when we fly, you know, cross continents and stuff, we try to fly as high as we can to shorten the distance. And looking for the right air currents. Rupel's vulture is the bird that claims the highest airstrike ever recorded at 37,100 feet. AGL. Well, no. Because, no, she's down to one lie now. Because the other two lies weren't lies. She was off by how many feet?

Well, that was just a different instance. That was the record. That was the record. So zero lies. That is wild, man. Yeah, they also have fish strikes too. So a lot of times like your osprey, bald eagle, stuff like that, either they'll get struck and same thing, the DNA will be picked up by the fish

or they'll just drop a fish because they're scared of the aircraft and splat a fish on your windshield. Man. Does every strike get a DNA test? So basically when your aircraft lands, maintenance crews are checking out the aircraft. If they see a snarge, they do collect it. We work with... So snarge is...

It can't be singular. There can't be a snarge. There can probably be a smear of snarge. Yeah, I can probably be like a smear of snarge. Yeah, I see that. Like a smear of snarge. That's my favorite Dr. Seuss book. Yeah. A smear of snarge.

Snarge. Yeah. So when we collect all that information, we have a partnership with Smithsonian Feather Lab. Oh, okay. And when we send in all this material, they can use their archives of all of the carcasses and stuff they have. So they'll do feather IDs. They can actually compare if there's like a feather, compare with the feather that's in the archive. Then they can do DNA analysis. And then they also do microscopic analysis as well.

We've got to cover a couple things, but my next question when we come back is going to be this. I'm not trying to be i'm not trying to be like uh like a smart ass but after a strike has occurred it brings up the question of i don't want to say who cares but you know what i mean why like if a strike occurs why is it important to know what yeah So as an airport biologist, that information is really crucial for us because it'll tell us what do we need to manage for. So if we're hitting a lot of waterfowl, then we know that they,

we look at the habitat and we'll go, Oh, there's a lot, maybe there's a lot of water on an airfield or near the airfield. And can we manage that? Can we change that habitat or modify it to keep these waterfowl out? So we, knowing what we hit is going to help us manage the airfield better.

Like you see a spike in some type of strike and you got to be like, okay, what are these things doing? Why are they hanging out here so bad? You're not going anywhere. Can you alter your flight paths though? Like can that be a solution versus like altering a wetland? Like certain times a year, right? You have different migratory species moving in.

They fly at certain altitudes or certain times of the day typically. And you can suggest that the 737s go. Yeah. So that fun word, AGL again. So 70% of our bird strikes will happen below 700 AGL. And so that is within that airfield. That is your takeoff and landing areas. So it's really hard to say, okay, well, just don't take off this direction

because if that's just where the runway is, you can't really change the direction. So, yeah, when you get a little farther out, we can say, you know, we'll let tower know. And pilots will talk to each other too. Like, hey, I see a group of ducks over here. There's a flock of geese flying. Yeah, yeah, they'll talk to each other. And sometimes I'll even let them know I'll call tower and. Like, hey, I see a group of ducks over here. There's a flock of geese flying. Yeah, yeah. They'll talk to each other. And sometimes I'll even let them know. I'll call tower and be like, hey, I'm five miles out.

I see a flock of geese flying over. And they'll let their pilots know. No kidding. Hang tight. You're going to tell us a moose story later. Yes. We were talking about the other day. I was saying, I was reading a book.

These are my primary. You know, we're going to start a book club? Spencer's working on it. Alright. People have been asking for that for a long time. We're going to start a monthly book club. Cool. I think we're going to do the book club, we'll drop the book club on this feed. Can we call it

Oprah's Book Club? Yeah, that's a great idea. But better. That's a great idea. So, tell me how it's going to work. Well, we're working out the details. I think if you become like a book club member, we'll probably just mail you the books. But I guess how does it become part of the podcast feed? Well, because then everybody reads the book.

I've never been in a book club in my whole life. Oh, so all of us would just come back in after we read said book, discuss it. We would say for this week's book, we're going to do, maybe we'd make it both the memoir of Hugh Monroe, Hugh Monroe, who lived with with the black feet starting around 1810 and then uh then there's a so his book was called a rising wolf or something like that then there's another book called my life as an indian which is charles willard shoals who live with the black feet kind of like right after he did and then these books are collected together so it's just this portrait of these it's this like basically amateur ethnography by two individuals who live in hunter with the black feet we would read that everybody would read it so you're at home you're in the book you're in the book circle you read the book and

then after some amount of time we have a discussion we have a one-hour discussion of the book and then after some amount of time, we have a discussion. We have a one hour discussion of the book where you'd be like, I like that part where, right? And that's the book club. And then we have like little titillating facts about the book that you might not know. We can maybe even have some authors join us. We talked about that. It would be great that the book club would end with well these people i just mentioned are dead but yes that would be the ideal situation you do living authors like

let's say we did coming into the country and we somehow managed to get john mcphee to come in oh bud i'd read that one um again i think he might be like way up there maybe not alive there used to be a radio station that did a show called dead or alive i think he's i think they name a name yeah and then you have to guess whether they're dead or alive he's dead i think he's alive he should be yeah he might be different way i mean i don't mean i don't mean macabre this is great content for the eventual podcast we should cut we should stop doing this right now he's 91 91 years old being so yeah point being point being i my new favorite book is this is human rose story as told to the shoals character um in it he names the he names the black feet word for moose as he understood it to be six-so-so.

I'm not pronouncing it right. When he later learned the language, and he learned it very well, their word for moose was, they didn't have many of them, they're out on the plains, so they're east of the Rockies. Their word for moose was black didn't have many of them they're out on the plains so they're east of the rockies their word for moose was black going out of sight and i mentioned this on the podcast a couple episodes ago and then i said i wonder if our word means anything like our word like what does our word for moose mean a guy wrote in and he says our word for moose is derived from the Eastern Abenaki word, MOS, however that's pronounced. Or there's a Narragansett word that's M-O-O-S or M-O-O-S-U, variously translated.

It's a long buildup, isn't it, Phil? Phil, he's messing with the knobs and stuff. He's so lost. That's his job, bro. Guess what moose means. When you say moose, hey, I saw a moose. Guess what you're saying? I saw a twig eater.

I saw he who strips off leaves and bark. Well, I mean, the word moose exists in German, right? Like moose is elk, like deer. No, really? Yeah. So I find it very interesting that we're like, oh, it had to come from the Native Americans, even though there were a bunch of Europeans

running around out here. I find it very maybe wrong. You sure about that? Yeah. Yeah. Damn it. Did you check. You sure about that? Yeah. Yeah. Damn it. Did you check into that, Corinne? Nope.

Yeah. I also. Cut that part out, Phil. Well, Phil, I want you to research it, and if it makes me look bad, cut it out. I got duped. I want to believe that in these Blackfoot camps with these dudes that the entire time that they were present, the Blackfeet were like, no, remember, that guy's media,

so be careful what you say around him. Yeah, it is. It's like I was trying to explain to someone, I was talking to Clay Newcomb about reading, you get into, so you're reading journals of Euro-Americans who spent time with tribes. Invariably, they were not understanding. They were misunderstanding. People were not telling them things.

Sometimes just messing with them. Yeah, having fun with them, not telling them things that they didn't want them to know. Whatever. Like you're with someone, you're very suspicious of them. You're suspicious of their motives. Right. However, each of these chroniclers, each of these individuals that spent time with indigenous Americans and like a pre-con or in early contact times,

every one of them had biases. No doubt. Every one of them was getting some sort of incomplete picture. However, taken as a whole, it still is a window into, it's like a snapshot of a culture and a life, right? Like, you know that it's not all wrong, right? Absolutely, yeah yeah but i'm a sucker for those books but i always read those books with some level of skepticism being um when someone you have someone over for dinner and you portray to them how shit goes in your family and everything and then they walk on and be like, here's how shit is in that household.

Right? They make a big meal. They put out cheese and crackers. Every time. Yeah. And you're like, no, we actually never done that. That was the only time we've ever done that,

you know, because you were coming over. Yeah. I heard you like cheese and crackers. I don't know. I hate that shit. Whatever. So, but anyways, they're great books. Oh, it gets way more complicated too.

Cause like think of like the true things that had to have seemed so like fancifully drawn up. Like the number of bison on the plane, right? Like people coming back and saying like, yeah, this is how it is. People had to have a real level of skepticism. I'm still a defender of the books. Oh, I think they're super cool. I haven't read those ones. You'd like, because it's your stomping grounds, dude. Every place he talks about in those books,

you'd be like, oh, I've been there. I've been there. I've been there. I'm in. I'll read them. Sign me up for the book club. They get to a creek and they get to a drainage and I found the drainage on my map. We don't call it what they called it. They get to a drainage and i found the drainage on my map we don't call it what they

called it they get to a drainage that flows into the missouri and they said that that creek is called it crushed them because some people were gathering clay below a high cut bank and the cut bank collapsed and killed them and that cut that creek's name is It Crushed Them. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like Dickens Creek. Old man Dickens. Got crushed by some clay.

Yeah. He lived there. Yeah. Man, a lot of feedback on cadavers. When we had Jonathan Reisman, Dr. Jonathan Reisman on The Lung King, which was a little inside joke about the liver king. No, it was an outside joke about the liver king. He had a lot to say about

cadavers, and my goodness. Makes you seem like everybody that listens has cadaver experiences. These emails especially are wild. This person was saying, someone wrote in, in regards to a recent show where the Meat Eater crew was surprised

about mobile labs on our roads carrying bodies, I worked in a certain government agency's forensic laboratory. I was surprised to find out that we would receive human body parts via UPS and FedEx. He worked with a woman that was in charge of examining human heads involved in homicide.

And she would put the heads in a crock pot to get the skin and muscle off to check the skulls for injuries. She went into. You better mark that crock pot. She went into... You better mark that crockpot. She went into Walmart. Listen, are you ready for this? She went into Walmart and put her head into various crockpots

to find the one that was going to work best for her application. Think about that. It's a very normal site at Walmart. I don't think anyone... Imagine, dude. Someone's putting their head in the crock pot again. Have a co-worker taking profile pictures

to make sure your chin's in there? We used to joke about going to a Walmart and buying everything you'd ever need if you just murdered somebody. Like latex gloves, plastic sheeting duct tape like whatever like at what point would someone yeah what point would someone go hold on a minute hold on a minute here what's going on yeah and then the last thing is a crock pot that you've been going like to see if it fits your head or not i like how nicholas uh puts in their second

to last sentences uh not sure you wanted this information but there it is nicholas you don't know steve very well keep sending that stuff in here's another really interesting one about the cadaver business i was asking dr reisman if he because he spent a lot of time with his cadaver in medical school and i said what did you wind up knowing about the person now when i had cadaver bone in my jaw i asked if i what i could find out about whose bone it was and they said they can't tell you whose bone it is so i was spitting out little hunks of some guy for two weeks no idea who he was he's all over this studio. I mean, I sat right here many days. As the little bone hunks would come up out of that hole in my jaw. He says this.

This is very interesting. University of Oklahoma. You were given, so this is medical school anatomy, okay? You were given a seat assignment in the lecture hall in what appeared to be a random name on a sticker. About six to eight other classmates had the same sticker with the same name. We soon found out the name on the sticker was the person we would be dissecting in anatomy lab in a few weeks.

160 students, 20 different names on the stickers. Later that week, we were all bused to a ballroom, you'll appreciate this Cal, at the Cowboy Hall of Fame to sit with the family of the person whose name was on your sticker. This was called the donor lunch and was a way to show the person you were dissecting was really a person. I sat with the son and daughter-in-law of my cadaver. There were pictures of her on the table and they brought photo albums to show us her through the years. They discussed injuries she had sustained through her life, which we correlated with later in anatomy lab. Broken leg here, scar there, new hip here. The only rules, we could not contact the families later

with any information about what we found in the lab. All the remains were cremated and scattered on school grounds. Unreal. Yeah. Right? Unreal. Unreal. Yeah, right. Unreal. I mean, yeah, it'd be an interesting lunch to sit down to, obviously.

Yeah, if you sit there and ask yourself why you listen to this show, that's why right there. Wow. You think you're getting that on Maury Povich? No. Not even This American Life right there. That's good stuff. No, that causes you to think a little bit.

Yeah. I wish they would have gone a little bit deeper and said exactly why. Obviously he says just so you know that it's a real person. So you're not cracking jokes, man. It's referenced everywhere, but like the...

Gianni didn't say anything, but he expressed facially that he doesn't think that that's why. There might be one little bitty reason why. The, uh, you know, the origins of like, uh, the medical, uh, educational system right of like body theft stealing bodies in order to be able to research because there are so many taboos around like dissecting a human uh it's amazing to think that that existed within the same profession that now you can sit down with a family of people that donated a body. That's wild. Real weird. Um, I was going to say something that I probably shouldn't say. Here's another one.

I'm, I was going to talk about like a thing I just realized about a good grave robbing strategy that I learned reading a book that I was just reading, but you shouldn't be doing that. No, but it does, does make us wonder if our guest, Megan used to be Baker, Deneen, will ever get some snarge off a vulture

that had dined on a human. So it could be a human strike at 30-some AGL. Superman. You ever have that happen? I think if that happens, it's usually because the person who collected the stars didn't use gloves. So they got their DNA all over everything. Yeah. Hey, folks.

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I am, here's more on this same subject. Not me. When I say I am, I'm the listener. This is the listener talking. I am a student working on my doctor of chiropractic degree. Is that an actual... Is that an actual doctor?

Either way. It doesn't matter. I trust the person who's in the program and studying and writing into this lovely show. Yeah, he uppercased D. As such, I have dissected close to half a dozen human cadavers from head to toe in the last

year. In my experience, the vast majority of cadavers are just as Dr. Reisman was saying, out of shape and full of large fat deposits. That being said, oh, is this get any better?

Yes. That being said, he encourages everybody to donate their body. Remember, Spencer was like, I'm sure that the only people who donate their bodies are young and vain and want their eight pack to be shown

off when they're dead lying there. I remember him thinking that. This is a poke at Spencer. He's like, I'm so good looking. in vain and want their eight pack to be shown off when they're dead yeah i'm there yeah i remember him thinking that this is a poke yeah where he's like i'm so good looking i hope they dissect my body and find out just how good looking i am that was spencer's thought this this art this this letter does get great for someone who's fascinated by the inner workings of the human machine as i am human cadavers are a gift now the here's where it gets good the unsettling part for me i say this at risk of sounding like a psychopath is the hunger that comes along with dissecting. I, as well as many of my classmates, have all experienced this same phenomenon. After about a half hour of dissecting skeletal muscle,

one tends to get hit with a severe hunger. At first, I thought and hoped that it was a chemical reaction with the formaldehyde and other preservatives that causes this to happen. But after asking several of my professors and the lab managers themselves, I have learned that it is an instinctual response to seeing meat.

Yeah, next time you're at the old chiropractor, I'm not saying who this guy is, so I just want you to know he might be sitting there being like, ooh, bloins. That is interesting. Eventually it's just meat. The blade roast. When he's back there.

Yeah, but have you ever felt this phenomenon when you're skidding and breaking down an elk in the field? Oh, yeah. No, yeah. Like some things, like deer, mule deer, elk, stuff like that. I'm like, it's like when I'm cutting it up, it's very appetizing. But I don't find myself like insatiably hungry 30 minutes later. That is different than a severe hunger.

Yeah, no, no. I don't find myself insatiably hungry 30 minutes later. He might be a psychopath. Yeah, because I feel like we've gutted a lot of stuff together, butchered a lot of stuff in the field together. Cal, you too. I can't remember any time we're like 30 minutes in, either of you are like, my God, am I

hungry all of a sudden? I hadn't thought of that. No. Yeah, because I think we got stuff to do, right? Like, clock's ticking, typically. But he's describing it as this... Maybe it's human on human. Maybe it's describing it as... Maybe it's human on human. No, I think it's like psychopathic.

The federal B.I. may want to pay attention to this one. You know, when I'm collecting snarge, I instantly have a craving for chicken wings. No, you don't. No, I'm joking. Oh, you are joking. Okay. Well, there's one more about this Oh

This is something that Cal needs to know about Just in case This is a strange behavior This has nothing to do with cadavers This guy's an electrical lineman For a local public power district. They install and repair electrical poles and utility structures. His crew will often work in areas far from restrooms.

And especially after storms, it isn't uncommon for him to work 24 hours straight to repair damage to electrical poles. Because of this, they often pack several meals worth of food and haul around drinking water in those large orange igloo drink coolers. They also will haul a green drink cooler for the purpose of housing their number two. Since they are often far from a restroom, but still too close to houses to do their business. When they're done with the cooler, they toss it into the trash. This is a note for Cal. It's a little wasteful. It is, right?

When Cal's doing all of his dumpster diving, this guy's saying, watch out for the green coolers. That's good info. It is. They should find something else. Why don't they just go in a contractor bag? Right, I was just going to say that is pretty,

that's pretty weird. Trying to keep it warm? We already covered the whole thing. They sell those fancy five gallon buckets that you could just take the bag out of. And why are they wanting to keep it warm? Well, I think it's, right, it's, you're not going to have a ruptured bag

as you're jostling around stuff in the truck. Yeah, why does it need to be an insulated container? Are you trying to keep it warm? Are you trying to keep it closed? No, I think you're goingostling around stuff in the truck. Yeah, why does it need to be an insulated container? Are you trying to keep it warm? Are you trying to keep it closed? No, I think you're going to trap in the smell, but you're also not going to have liquids escaping, you know, because it's a fortified vessel.

So Cal sympathizes with them. Well, I understand for sure, but I'd rather, I'd be more for linemen just doing, being able to have carte blanche to do their deed on the side of the road. Yeah, dig a little cat hole or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Speaking of cat holes, see that? Good one, good one.

This is another one that the cow will appreciate. Some women, this is a strange story. Two women in Alabama gotten all kinds, they got, according to them, they actually got roughed up by the police, which I don't know

if this is true or not. This is the kind of thing Corinne should have called them and talked to them. Well, their lawyers put out statements and there's some video footage out there.

Show them get roughed up. I mean, roughed up is the, bruises on their wrists. That's all kind of like up to interpretation. They were feeding cats in their neighborhood in Watumpka, Watumpka, Alabama. And the guy points out, um, in the regional Native American language, rumbling water, Alabama.

They'd been feeding lots of house cats which is illegal feeding stray house cats but they would feed them to lure them in and catch them and then fix them so it's like letter of the law, spirit of the law. Not supposed to feed stray cats, but they're catching them and fixing them. And they've been warned and warned and they felt that they had the moral high ground. And then they got cuffed and stuffed. It's an 85-year-old and a 61 year old should point out that um we don't want our bunch of people writing in being like oh it's not illegal to feed stray kids this is probably like a municipal or county uh ordinance that they're violating um

yeah people over 60 years of age, like you're, you're not going to fix those people either. They're going to do whatever they want. Um, but it is never a good idea to feed a bunch of stray cats. What if you're fixing them? Um,

trying to solve the stray cat problem. As the old outfitter used to say, Stephen, the, uh, the kitties aren't, uh, having sex with birds to death. They're eating them.

So... So you're not... Yeah, no, I'm with you. He can be as fixed as you want, but he's still going to go kill, like, three birds a day. I was talking about, we were talking recently about a bobcat getting hit by a train.

This is the last thing megan a bobcat getting hit by a train and i was talking about how why you know how does that happen um and a guy from the railroad uh he calls himself a train track station biologist no no that that was my little oh that topic title you're saying yeah oh no it's just like as a transition into talking about that's great that's good good transition here's what they find happens stuff gets between the tracks between the rails and for whatever reason it's impulse when the train comes its impulses to like the bob a bobcat for instance its impulse will be to turn from the train not jump the rails but just go down he's like he's like consciously. Staying within the line. Yeah.

Like, like he's, he's, they, they, they feel corralled by the corralled by the rails. And so they just take off. Yeah. And something like it just doesn't click. It doesn't click to go. Yeah. That's wild. Um, the oral, he says this about them they then tend to stretch out and try to jump the rail

once the locomotives are on top of them so they'll get overtaken and then they try to bail out from under the thing their only saving grace seems to be if they come upon a grade crossing at that point they will veer off to the side. He says, I've seen this in everything from raccoons to cattle. Oh, this is sad. Possums get up on the rail and run down the rail. That's terrible, man. That's sad.

I think it's a natural instinct for animals to follow lines so when we i've trapped like you know ducks and stuff and we have confusion traps where it's like a funnel that they go into these traps and then they're going to hit the edge of the cage and it'll funnel around and they'll just keep following that line and they'll never actually just like the opening is wide open but because they follow that line and same thing when we're managing moose up in alaska we can get them up on a fence line and they'll follow that line it's something about following the lines so your trap they could get out like the duck one but they just keep walking yeah but most of them will just keep doing this figure eight because they just follow the line really that makes for inexpensive

trapping materials right there you get a rope so uh what was how did you get into your how did you get into your business into your line of work yeah so i went to michigan tech university up in michigan's upper peninsula i've got a degree in wildlife management. Like every other person, I wanted to work for the state and went to a conference and somebody was giving a talk on wildlife damage management from wildlife services. And I was like, wow, that sounds fascinating. He happened to be the state director out of Michigan. So I went to his office a few weeks later and he said, I was in his office and he's like, oh, there was a seasonal position that just opened in Alaska. He printed it off and said, here you go. And I'm from the cornfields of Michigan. I never have left Michigan before that moment.

And I was like, I'm never moving to Alaska. It's so far away from home. Well, you were damn close to leaving by the time you got to Michigan Tech. No, because they had that big ass lake. You'd have had to walk across the ice. My parents said it was the farthest I could get away from home with still paying state college. So, you know, naturally, six months later, I was in Alaska. So the day after I graduated, I ended up doing a seasonal position up in Kotzebue, Alaska for wildlife services.

Part of being an airport biologist is a lot of surveys and creating management plans. So my position was working in Kotzebue, Alaska. And I was up there for six months just doing surveys on wildlife. But related to an airport or not related? Yep. Yep. So I was on the airport. So you were in the airport. You started right out in the airport business. Yep. I got you. So just doing surveys, you know, just trying to see where animals are moving,

their behaviors, stuff like that. And it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Just the cultural experiences, just getting to live in that native village. You know, it's way up, it's remote. It's like, I think the closest road system is like 500 miles away. And it was a really, really great experience. And then the wildlife up there was really interesting. So some of like the weird things that can happen up there on an airport are musk ox. So you guys might be familiar with a musk ox defense circle. So imagine you have a group of musk ox and they get on your airfield and you try to harass them off and they just stop. And they create that defense circle and they're on your runway and it is really difficult to get them off. So then you've got to cancel flights.

Yeah, exactly. So it'll definitely delay some stuff. I know my airfields, like right after I left, they actually had a caribou migration go through and it like disrupted the airfield because just thousands of caribou were walking across. And you can't, they don't fence the airfield there. Some do. So it's just part of that management plan. Some airfields, you know, they'll have eight foot fences because white-tailed deer can't jump over eight feet. Sometimes they don't have them. It could be a funding issue. It could just be, they might not think it's important until, you know, they get a strike with a caribou or something. They'll learn pretty quick. And with those muskox,

that's going to be, you know, you know, we didn't, what we had, we were going to talk about, but it just, we keep not talking about it. And it got so long ago. Was it, they just, Alaska had their first, um, it was the first person ever killed by muskox right reported of course apparently first reported person a trooper was he a state trooper let me pull that back up i actually did not hear about this this is shocking well someone wrote in they had just they were trying to get some kind of atf permit or something i think he just someone wrote in like They were trying to get some kind of ATF permit or something. I think he just, someone wrote in like, yeah, man, that guy, I was with the guy an hour before. He was doing some kind of filling out some form or checking my ID for a form. The guy went home.

There was a musk ox harassing his dogs. Maybe he had sled dogs. And they gored him. Yep. Officer with Alaska State Troopers killed by musk ox while trying to scare away a pack of wild animals outside his house. Stomped him and gored him to death. Whoa. He was trying to scare away a group of musk ox from near a dog kennel at his home when one of the animals attacked him. He was declared dead at the scene.

Horrible. That's very rare. I thought I remember seeing that it was the first known. I'm sure it's happened. Right. But in terms of these days. First reported case or whatever. But with muskox on the air, if you got a bunch of muskox or a bunch of caribou out there i mean there's got to be a little bit of an

element of uh sort of public perception like you don't just you can't just run out and start shooting at them probably no on top of you wouldn't want to shoot something like that because they're also a large animal because now you're delaying time trying to get that animal off too so now you've created more problems yeah exactly so you're just trying to get that animal off too. Oh, now you've created more problems. Yeah, exactly. So you're just trying to harass them off, get them off there. Why was that a temporary position? So that was just temporary. So a wildlife hazard management plan only has to be renewed every couple years. So I was just doing surveys for this plan.

So it was just a written up plan and it's just recommendations. So we do these surveys and then we'll be able to be like, hey, you know, this particular part of your airfield is a hot spot. Maybe you might want to change something around that area. And then what have you heard of getting run over by planes up there? Oh, gosh, just about everything. I mean, like you're talking Kotzebue or just in Alaska in general? Yeah, like Kotzebue, for instance. What's a typical strike up there?

It's not a morning dove. So you have ptarmigan up there, and I remember they had ptarmigan issues. Honestly, it was pretty low strikes up there because, I mean, there's just not a whole lot that – I know they had to remove a seal off the runway after I left as well. Really? Yeah. A seal on the runway. Was that in your management plan? Actually, no.

So they're like, we flew this person up here, did a whole management plan. She leaves and then here's a seal. No mention of that in the management plan. Yeah, yeah. I know. It was an oversight. You had a blind spot. They're really easy to deal with, though.

You just take a red ball and you bounce it down the runway and they follow it right off. You know, do you remember, I think that the most, this has to be the most famous bird strike is the miracle on the Hudson. Captain Sully. Yep.

They hit what? They hit a flock of Canada geese. How many? I don't know the exact flock size, but I know it took out some of their

engines and that's why they couldn't, couldn't get back to the airfield in time. Like a bunch of geese? Yeah, it was a flock, yeah. So imagine that flying V going across.

That's what I'm curious about, because movies make it seem like a bird at any time can take down a giant plane. How fragile are the planes? Like, what's like a concerning bird strike? What has to happen? I think it's just like any, you know, when you hit something with your car as well, like something that could just splatter off, some things that could actually cause damage. It depends on how it got hit. But I know, you know, with technology and stuff, they're testing more and more on how to like, you know, toughen up these aircraft. So I know a lot of agencies that are, you know, building engines.

They use like frozen turkeys and frozen chickens. They'll toss them into an engine to see how well they handle the impact. You know what they ought to do? You ought to tell them this. Thaw it out. I bet they do, Steve. Well, then it wouldn't be frozen. She just said that they buy frozen ones.

You said buy frozen? I mean, you can ask the engineers. Because if you throw a frozen turkey in there, man, that's going to do some damage. That plane's coming down.

Yeah, you might as well throw a rock in there. Yeah. Yeah. What about honing the wing tip to a razor's edge?

Just slice them. So you're just slicing through the sky. Well, that's like if you run into them at that, at an angle where they're sliceable, you know. Yeah.

Because they may, yeah. Well, I would assume all angles. They may hit elsewhere. What if it's not the wing that they're hitting? Well, I don't think the geese are the runway, the plane actually needs to turn back around? A lot of strikes, the pilots won't even realize it happened. Okay. So that's a lot of times.

That's why a lot of times they don't realize it happened until they're doing their maintenance checks. They're like, oh, hey. Obviously, if it goes through an engine, you know, they might feel it. They may smell it. I know pilots say they can smell when a bird gets ingested. They'll get, like, a burnt bird smell. So, yeah, it just kind of depends on severity. The one guy that rode in, he'd be hungry as all get out.

He'd probably smell that, man. But, like, you know, like, JFK, LaGuardia, places like that, like, I would imagine, would imagine lots of pigeon strikes. And that's a light bird. It's not going to bring down a plane, right? Yeah. If there's one thing I learned from my travels is every airfield, they got a runway. They got taxiways.

There's things that are very standard in an airfield. But when it comes to managing the wildlife itself, it is vastly different because you can have cultural things, environmental things, the type of wildlife that's there, the regulations on what you can do to that wildlife is going to change on every airfield. It's really fun. How often do planes hit, like if a bit, give me just a, like what's a normal jet? I don't know, like a normal jet that's flying

nowadays. 747. 47? 37. Oh, there's both? I don't know. Like a normal jet that's flying nowadays. 747. 47? 37. Oh, there's both? I think both, yeah. Okay, 737 is coming down the land and there's a white-tailed deer. Is it just, bam, deer flies out of the way or can that screw the plane up?

Oh, if it hits a deer, yeah, that would probably cause a lot of damage. So that doesn't happen? It doesn't happen very often. Oh, wow. So I looked up some numbers and I believe it's about, you know, 0.08% chance of hitting a bird. And that's just to hit a bird, but to actually cause damage is going to be like a 0.0035%. So the chances of hitting birds are really low, but when they do hit and it does cause damage it causes on average like 208 million dollars a year wow so do you have in the united states do you have a number uh so if the chances are low though do you have a number of how many strikes maybe happen

on average yeah on average this is looking through numbers between 1990 to 2021. So there are growing more because as we fly more, we're going to be hitting more birds and stuff like that. But it's on average like 155 strikes a week or so. But there's also 175,000 flights in a week too. Right, sure, sure. Oh, it makes it seem like you guys are doing a good job of mitigating bird crashes. We do our best. What's the best airport in terms of wildlife habitat?

I mean, are they actively trying to make it not good wildlife habitat? Yeah, so that's part of the steps of being an airport biologist. So one of the first things we do is, you know, observing wildlife and surveying wildlife. We look at the habitat. So we'll look at the airfield as a whole and the surrounding areas, and we go, okay, we're looking for food, water, and shelter. Which of those three components are on the airfield or near the airfield that are attracting wildlife? And can we change that? Can we modify them? Can we remove the forest, the type of grasses that are on an airfield? You know, can we change change that can we make it a grass that geese don't like um it's just changing you know just the habitat to make it less desirable for wildlife to be around so you'd be like that food plot that runs down the length of the air runway has to go

yeah the corn feeder can't be there anymore exactly yep what but what ones have great habitat? I mean, but it's a weird occupation to have to interrupt habitat. Yeah, I don't know. I know a lot of airfields that were built 50, 100 years ago, a lot of times they were just looking for land that was wide and open. It's like, ah, look at wetlands. Nobody likes these. So they would build on those.

But obviously conservation efforts and stuff have ramped up a lot in the last hundred years. And now we're going, ah, these are actually really great habitats. And so it, you know, we kind of have to balance this of like, okay, we need to make sure the airfield itself doesn't have great habitat, but also conserving what we have on the outside of the airfield as well, just outside of our flight path. Yeah, because I imagine the mandate becomes a little bit different. You can picture in the old days, it'd be, listen, kill anything that might possibly come near an airplane. And now there's a lot, you know, we try to be a little more surgical and delicate. Yeah, just a lot more surgical and delicate. Yeah. It's just a lot more research and stuff too. I mean, just the technology and the research and technology that we've had throughout

the years as well as just also increase in our understanding of why wildlife is on the airfields and what we can do. Like, you know, you can sit there and try to shoot every duck that comes on, but why not just remove that pond of water? And now you just removed all of those future ducks from coming in. Do you ever have to get involved in the, like, how do you guys do if you get where you just get like a deer infestation in some area?

How has it ever decided that you're going to have to mechanically remove deer? So it kind of depends on where it's at. You know, what is the fencing situation? So that's another step that we often take is just, you know, creating exclusion, creating barriers to make it harder for wildlife to get on. So, you know, you remove all that habitat, you remove those forests and stuff off the airfield, you're adding fences up. And when deer are on there, like they are a risk and they are a hazard. So oftentimes we will remove those individuals. And I know at my particular base, when we remove them, we actually donate all the meat and stuff so they're not wasted when you have to remove a deer is it like

is it a thing you're just sort of working away at or is it oh my god right now there's a deer that's presenting risk we need to go get the deer so yeah if it's like right there right on the runway right within that strike zone like it's if if an airplane takes off, that thing is going to be hit. We often will try to remove those. Yeah. How is that done? Oh, we just use firearms. Yeah.

Huh. Does every airport, I'm a little confused. We just need to straighten this out for me. You have like a home base airport, but you're also traveling around reviewing other airports. Does every airport have a biologist? Do some airports have full-time biologists that are constantly working,

constantly watching the skies? And that way when they see the flock, they radio in? Yeah, yeah. So we cover 813 airfields across the United States. As an agency. As an agency, as USDA Wildlife Services. And so there's some airfields that'll have full-time people like me, like your larger airfields will have multiple wildlife techs and wildlife biologists. And then some might even just be wildlife services going in and teaching our airfield operations, like, hey, this is kind of what you need to do

if you see a bird or see some wildlife, and giving those recommendations so that they can handle themselves if they're a smaller airfield. But, yeah, any FAA-regulated airfield will have some sort of wildlife management plan. Well, during a normal day of work, you're not just sitting there watching the skies and watching the runway. No, so we'll do patrols. We'll do, like, observations. And like I said,

if I see a flock of geese flying over, I will call tower and let them know. But, you know, we're doing a lot of those other steps of harassment.

So part of harassment is, you know, scaring birds. We're, like, professional. So I think there was, like, a joke. It was, like, you know, describe your profession badly. And it was, like, I'm a professional bird shooter. So I shoot there was like a joke. It was like, you know, describe your profession badly.

And it was like, I'm a professional bird shooter. So I shoot birds off the airfield, shoot, you know, go away birds and using pyrotechnics. So glorify, we shoot like glorified bottle rockets at birds. So if you have flocks of birds, flocks of geese and stuff on the airfield, we'll just harass them off. We use bird cannons. How's your accuracy? I mean, you got to do it enough to where you can refine a glorified bottle rocket, right? Yeah. So like our pyrotechnics, the ones that we use, they're like a revolver.

And so it's just, you know, you're not shooting it at the birds. You're just shooting them in the proximity to make it uncomfortable for them to be there and they'll take off. My old man had a big gallon size Ziploc when I was a kid probably wasn't even ziploc he had a giant plastic bag someone had given him you shoot him off a 12 gauge shotgun oh yeah oh yeah we use some airfields we use those um we use them up in alaska because a lot of the birds that we're working with up there you know they're so you have lake hood out there which is the world's largest float plane lake and so you'll have ducks and stuff that are way out in the middle of the lake. And so you can't really reach them. So we had to use those.

It was a break action that we did. Oh, and you guys get involved in that? What was that? They get involved in scaring them off lakes for float planes? Yeah. So that's part of Anchorage International Airport. That's their float plane lake. So it's part of the airport.

I've been out there a million times. You guys will scare birds off that? Yeah. It's still a hazard. Here's one thing I don't get about this though. Running around an airport with a shotgun. Well, if... That's concerning to me. The TSA guys are like, that don't look good.

I'm like, everybody knows I'm out here, right? And I'm on the same team. Just triple checking today. Okay, a plane's hauling ass. And Bert, at what foot? At what? What's that acronym? AGL. AGL.

The plane takes off. But he's left the airport and his wheels are still right? Like scraping the ground. how many miles out is the plane by the time it hits a thousand agl i'd have to look that up i'm not sure way ass out there so how does does your jurisdiction extent like let's say this let's say i live a mile from the airport and I say man I'm gonna start plant and waterfowl food I'm gonna do all kinds of habitat improvement I'm gonna make the duck hangout of all duck hangouts

yeah so part of the job we do is also do what so we'll put out recommendations be like hey like this is what's going on we do have like safety zones outside of airfields as well. So you hold some jurisdiction. The airfield does, not wildlife services, but the airfield can. So you can go bang on the guy's door and be like, you got to cool it on the docks. The airport. Maybe the airport, but again, we'll just give recommendations. And oftentimes if you explain to someone like, hey, what you're doing what could happen often they're you know okay i can understand that do you

ever need to go have those conversations uh not at my current base now yeah and you're assigned out like uh you're assigned all over the place to go do airport assessments my uh like my profession or like my career has just taken me all over the place. So I've worked in seven airfields in five different countries. Yeah, you and Yanni were talking about hanging out in Latvia. Yeah, yeah. So I'm currently at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, which is just outside Detroit, Michigan. And our sister base is in Leovarde, Latvia.

And so I've had the opportunity to go out there twice. And then my counterpart has been able to come to Michigan as well. Are there any major differences, like any safety things that are concerns in Europe versus and not concerns in the U.S. or vice versa? Where like in the U.S. they'd be like, oh, make sure there's no geese here. And then Europeans are like, oh, who cares about geese? Anything like that? I mean, everything is going to be a hazard if it's on the airfield. So maybe not so much as they don't consider it a concern, but they just have different concerns. So in Latvia, you have the white storks, which are a really large bird. They really like the airfield. They're really protected as well.

So, you know, just trying to keep them off the airfield. And they just aren't, they don't scare very easy. They're completely non-lethal over there. So it's not something that, you know, we can lethally remove. So it's just, you know, learning the behavior of the bird and when we harass it or chase it down, like what it's going to do and trying to get it out of there. very different perspectives people have about in some areas they kind of got like a kill them all let god sort them out attitude and in some areas they're very concerned about not harming anything or not scaring anything um so that like cultural aspects are definitely a part of you know air management so when you have you know if you're in a country that has sacred animals, you got to be very conscious of that. Like, hey, I'm in this country and a white pigeon is a sacred animal. Like, let's not do anything to those guys.

But it's just, you know, being cognizant of where you are and what you're doing. But, you know, everything we do is, you know, we can justify. So when I'm doing, you know, starling removal on my airfield and people are like, Oh, what are you doing with those? And it's like, well, those are an invasive species and they compete with 27 of our native species. Nobody argues like, and then, you know, it is a safety aspect. So when you say this, you know, these birds or this wildlife could cause, you know, a strike or it can cause damage to an aircraft and you know in the very very rare cases a fatal crash you know when the name of safety not many people argue with it

how do you get rid of a bunch of starlings uh so we have different traps and stuff that we can use um so we have it's a starling trap which is it's just a large cage with a funnel on top and we put in uh different feed and stuff that when they get inside of it they again they can't figure out how to get back out you know just set it out so you're like catching handfuls of them at a time yeah and then as well as uh the other thing that we like to trap are raptors so hawk owls and falcons so we have live traps for those are modified specific for raptors and this is something i get to do a lot in Michigan. And so when we catch these birds, we catch them alive.

How do you catch them? So we, I guess the most popular one is our goshawk trap. So the best way to explain it is we'll use like a pigeon and we put it in a cage. And then on the top of it, we put this trap that is, the doors are open with springs and there's a trip pole that hold it open so when this raptor is flying around and sees that pigeon it'll come down it'll hit that uh pole close and so pigeons in the bottom he's totally fine maybe a little traumatized because then he's got oh he's definitely got to go to a therapist yeah yeah so then when we catch these raptors we put a federal band on them and then we work with our states to find suitable habitat for these guys.

So I'll drive them out an hour, hour and a half away from the airfield and release them, and hopefully that they don't come back. Do you very often just catch the same bird? On occasion. I think it's less than a 10% recapture rate. So it's effective. Just moving them how far? I usually drive like an hour, hour and a half.

Still doesn't seem that far. That doesn't seem like it'd throw, it seems like he'd be back before you got back. It just depends on the bird. So is it, if it's like an adult bird that this has been their territory for years, chances are those guys are going to come back. Where a lot of birds, you know, if they're young, especially, they're going to fly back. And when they see that airfield, they're like, hmm, I remember what happened there last time. You can dissuade them from wanting to hang out there. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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So it's like a souped-up little cat, like spotted like a jaguar. I don't know if you're familiar with with ocelots. So it's like a souped up little cat, like spotted like a jaguar, if you're familiar with the ocelots. So they use, they'll put, they put the traps out and they put two roosters. They'll set two traps with a rooster and each trap has bait. And they get to, they get to talking to each other.

So it's making a lot of racket. And then the ocelot gets caught, but he's got a little, little cage that separates the rooster from the ocelot and then that rooster has to hang out there for however long with that cat and i was like that's got to be like a fatal level of fear but he he said, man, I got, I got roosters have caught multiple cats. But just imagine. When we, uh, I got to run around with that biologist in California trapping mountain lions

years ago now. Um, they had a live quail that they would use for, you know, luring in a mountain lion into these big cage traps that they had to use. That works. I just, I thought it was hilarious because I was like, there's no way this works because in California, like the amount of signage that they

had to have up saying like, this quail is being very well cared for. Please don't release it. Don't worry about this quail. Yeah. Yeah. It's very heavy. It's like, this doesn't seem like it's

worth the effort. A cat has to figure this out. You ever had to get rid of a cat? Bobcat or lion off of an airfield? Or a ditch cougar? No, not any of the places I've worked, no. Feral cats. There's got to be a lot of feral cats around airports. Yeah, I mean,

I see them on occasion, but they're not enough for me to be like, ah, these guys are going to be causing a strike. You mentioned that porcupines can cause a lot of stir. Yeah, up in Anchorage, Alaska, porcupines is probably like one of my favorite things to catch. So I'm sure Tower probably loves watching Wildlife services employees so when you see a porcupine you take a tub with a lid and you run with it usually above your head and you're chasing this porcupine down and eventually you'll catch up to it you drop the tub on it you grab the lid and you slide it under you flip it and that's how you could catch a porcupine and but these guys yeah if they're up on like the

runways and stuff they can actually pop tires. Like they're that strong. Really? What? What do you do with the porcupines? We'll just relocate them. Huh. How many, how far away? And the way a porcupine is, he's probably like, whatever. You know, it's like they're so. They just keep slowly moving.

They're so like, I don't want to call them oblivious, but they're just easy going, man. Easy going animals. What, back to like the social acceptance thing, what is the, have you ever witnessed something that, like straight out of like the movie Airplane or National Lampoons in regards to an animal strike on the runway? I've never seen either of those. I don't know. Oh, God.

Are we that old? Jeez. You ever seen Apocalypse Now? Don't worry about it. Like, there's never been, like, a strike on the runway where folks are, you know, sitting there ready to take off. And it's, like, grape jelly across all the windows at one point or something like that. Yeah, I'm sure that could. I mean, yeah, when the bird gets hit, it's just like, again, if you hit like a bug with your car, like they splat and that's the snarge.

Oh, you know what you didn't do? Tell us the moose story. Oh yeah. So when I, so after I left Kotzebue, I went and worked in South Africa for a little bit volunteering and then came back to Anchorage and when I was in Anchorage I got to do more of the hands on direct control and one day mixing it up with porcupines and I got a call that there was a moose fight going on and they

were damaging airfield property and I was like what? and it was the middle of rut and I show up and sure enough there were two huge bulls fighting. But they were fighting on each side of a chain link fence. It was an airfield fence. So one got on the inside and one got on the out.

And they were just hitting each other so hard. And every time they'd hit that fence, it was just ping, ping, ping, ping, just coming off, like all the wires and stuff. And I couldn't get them to pull apart. I mean, they were just raging testosterone bowls and so it was kind of the fence through the fence and um so it just kind of turned into just getting people to stay back and because people were wanting to get pictures they were trying to get closer and it's like ah these guys are not safe well one of them as they were you know going at it got his antler caught up in barbed wire.

And the barbed wire ended up, you know, from every move back and forth, it kept getting tangled and tangled. So we ended up having to call the Alaska State game to come in and tranquilize this moose. Because, I mean, it was, he was just covered in this barbed wire after an hour. And this was, I was 22. So I was just bright eyed, bushy tailed, fresh into the wildlife field. And moose are my favorite animal by far. And so I was just like, can I help? And they're like, yeah, here's the clippers. You can clip off the wire. And I was so excited. And so we get the moose down. I run up just kind of run your fingers through the fur. Make sure there's no large gashes. And the best way I can explain this is that in Jurassic Park, when the couple go to the park for the first time. Never seen it. Cal's movies I'm very familiar with. So they see that Triceratops and it's on the ground.

And the guy gives it a big hug and it takes that deep breath. I did that with a moose and it was the greatest day of my life. Really? Yeah. And so we were able to get the barbed wire off of it. You know, we were able to put the reversal in and he was able to get up and walk away. That's cool. Wild.

Oh, I backtrack a little bit. So when this moose was covered in barbed wire, he eventually stopped fighting the other moose because he was just more concerned with this barbed wire. He knows when he's been licked, right? Yes. I mean, he's just shaking his head. He's trying to get it off. And like I said, there's a lot of people all spectating. And he was rubbing up against a bush trying to get this barbed wire off. And there was this car parked next to this bush.

And he walks right up to this car. And this lady has her phone out. She's just taking pictures. And he just rubs himself across the side of her car. And I was like, that insurance claim is going to be great. Like, what happened? Really? Oh, this moose tried to rub barbed wire off on my car.

Yeah. Yeah. You imagine the skepticism, right? Yeah. Wow. No kidding. You know, I i had a thing i put it on instagram but i don't think we talked about on the show is uh this guy sent it in ohio three perfectly fine deer like a really nice buck a nice buck and a doe dead in a pile and it had there it was a downed power line oh and these two bucks must been duking it out and there was a dough there and one of them hit that power line with uh its antler and just in a pile wow well and they said that they got to the fire department got the skulls

and got them cleaned for to decorate the fire barn and a dude down the fire department got the skulls and got them cleaned to decorate the fire barn. A dude down the road took all the meat, which leads me to my next question. I'm not going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you this. You have a job and you want to keep your job. No doubt there's certain things you just don't talk about. I'm going to tell you a story before I ask the question. A friend of mine, i can't name him used

to do fish surveys um for this well for our home state used to fish surveys in michigan and they would have to do net surveys just to count what was in the lake right but they were not allowed to utilize the resource because they felt that it was a conflict of interest so they would go and do these net surveys and then he would go out and they had a spot out in the woods where they would have to dump it all so he would come home get his own vehicle get his cooler full of ice and promptly zip back out there and get all the whitefish and northerns and perch and get them all filleted up and give them out to everybody. Question being, if I asked you if you ever eat the stuff that you control, would you be able to answer honestly or would you probably not answer honestly? Yeah, no, honestly uh we don't so

a lot of things that we control well no no so like when we like when we shoot deer we donate all that meat so it actually goes to food for hunger that's awesome yeah so we donate the meat so do you have to do all the field dressing so yeah we have to um field dress it but then the butcher will do all the processing so you gotta go got to go out and field dress it. Well, let me ask you this. So you drag the gut pile off to the side of the runway. Bunch of big ass vultures land on there. Old Sully comes in and hits a vulture. You ever think about that?

Well, I wouldn't dress it right next. So you did think about that. Yeah, you don't want to put anything like attractive next to your runway. So yeah, no, we buried it all. So it's not just lying with gut piles when you take about that. Yeah, you don't want to put anything like attractive next to your runway. So yeah, no, we So it's not just lying with gut piles when you take it off. Yeah, I got you. Would you describe the white storks in Latvia as a tender meat? That would have been

a better way to do it. Yeah, yeah. Which region were you in? So do you like the deer meat that you take? No, so you guys will be responsible for getting it dressed. Yep. And bring it to a butcher. Yep.

So then it gets donated. And then it just depends, again, it's all regionally. So when I was in Alaska, even all the ducks and stuff that we caught, we would dress them and then they would get donated to the elders of the community. You're kidding me. Huh. That's a lot of extra work. That's cool.

It's worth it though. It's better than just tossing them all the time. Let me tell you another story about my same friend that I can't mention his name. He later in life had a job as a surveyor and they were surveying a place one time and it was full of, he found someone's little weed plantation.

This is pre when everybody loved weed, like when a lot of people still hated weed, like the cops. He finds a giant where a guy's growing a giant thing of weed and they're surveying it. And then he keeps an eye on this area and pretty soon they go to, they clear it. Dozers come in to clear the lot. So just like he did with those fish,

he then snuck back out there at night and got all the weed that the bulldozers had. Got all the buds that the bulldozers had cleared off into the back end of the debris pile and brought all that home. Think about that. That's a good gig. No, this guy's very...

A lot of perks at the job. Yeah. I'll tell you one more thing he told me. They would go into the UP, where you're familiar with, surveying. And sometimes they'd be surveying in the wintertime, and they're out in all that cedar swamp, you know. And they'd cut a line way through the woods. And the deer would be, you know, deer have a hard go of it in those winters up there.

And those deer would know know they would come to a sound of a chainsaw and you'd clear a big line to shoot a line so you'd like clear it all through the swamp and you get your two things those little looking holes in there that you look through to line them up when you're surveying and the deer would flood in so much of the sound of the chainsaw that you couldn't shoot the even though you chainsaw that you couldn't shoot the, even though you cleared the line, you couldn't shoot the line because so many deer would be in that thing. And they'd have to have a person such as yourself trying to clear the deer out to be able to survey

the thing. That's amazing. It's an amazing story. You like that story, Phil? Loved it. Mm-hmm. I just have a question about any stats that you have of like yearly or over the course of a number of years, like the cost to airlines of damage. Yeah. So the average right now is about 208 million.

It has gone up. So this is like, again, this is like an average between the last 30 years. So it's, you know, it's going up a little bit more, but it's just, I mean, our airplanes are getting faster. We're flying a lot more. Again, there's 175,000 flights in a week. And that's just in the United States. That's not across the world. And we've been hitting birds birds forever so the first documented bird strike was orville right in 1905 we got right to it yeah he wrote in his diary that he hit a red-winged blackbird so this is not anything new it's just our aircraft are getting faster we're in the air more we're sharing this these skies like it's just gonna happen when did he refer to it as snarge i think he did no when uh When did, I guess, airport biology become formalized as a job within USDA to even have this be a position? Yeah, I think it was in the early 90s. And it was that strike that happened in Alaska. That was that fatal strike.

And that fatal strike was, it was a military aircraft and it was brought, the whole aircraft was brought down by a flock of geese. Oh, no. Wow. And it killed everybody on board. There was like over 30 souls. And so that was kind of the big jump

of like, okay, we need to do something about this so this doesn't happen again. That's when they recognized it as. Yeah. Even though, that's so funny that, what was his name?

Was it Wilbur or Orville? Orville. What was Wilbur? Who the hell? Oh no, those two brothers. They're the brothers. Yeah,

okay, yeah, the two brothers. Which one of the brothers had a Red Wing Blackbird? Orville. And I think he did his first flight in 1903.

Yeah. It's amazing. It was like, he identified it. Did he write about it as, have you ever read his journal? Did he write about it as, oh ever read his journal did he write about it as oh hey if we get into this flying thing this is gonna be something to keep in mind i think it

was just a really brief mention about the fact that he hit a red wing blackbird out in when he was in i think date in ohio yeah yeah if you if someone ever if someone comes to you and says man i want to get a job as an airport biologist do do you say, good luck? Or are you like, oh, you just got to do X, Y, and Z and you'll get the job? Yeah. So it's definitely a growing field. So it's just, again, as we're recognizing more and more need for it, you know, we have technicians, we have biologists. I mean, we cover all the airfield or most of the airfields in the state, or sorry, gosh, most of the airfields in the country. And so it's definitely growing. And a lot of people just don't know that we exist. So, I mean, like wildlife tech positions, they are open quite often. And if you're ever interested

in getting into this field, as long as you're willing to move around, it's like how I moved right to Alaska. Once you're that foot is in the door, like you can pretty much, you can live anywhere in the country really, because every airfield needs somebody like us. Yeah. And then it's a federal salary deal. Yep. So good health care. Yeah.

Then you've got to worry about when the government shuts down. Nope, because we are considered emergency personnel. Oh, nice. You don't need to worry about that. That's great, man. So when that happens coming up here, you'll still be out there cranking away. Oh, yeah, because don't need to worry about that. That's great, man. So when that happens coming up here, you'll still be out there cranking away. Oh, yeah, because they're still flying.

Yeah, I got you. Does every airport have to use the federal agencies? Like, why doesn't O'Hare Airport or some giant-ass airport like that, they don't do in-house? Like, you guys do that work there are some private agencies that do it as well just with the federal we get the federal expertise and we are wildlife professionals and you know we don't have inherent authority like we don't we're not a regulated service so we do work closely with u.s fish and wildlife service

we work with the state agencies to get permits and stuff um so we have the ability to you know trap and relocate raptors and working with all the migratory birds and stuff yeah do you you know what else i want to ask you about is do you are you familiar with a thing called avitrol like a avian uh like an avian poison yeah i've like i have heard of it. But that's not something that you guys use or are allowed to use. I hear people use it for street pigeons. Yeah, we don't use it in my airfields, no.

No. But what is it? I don't know. Because I hear people refer it like rat poison for pigeons. You don't have any exposure to that? I don't personally have any experience using it. You guys can't get

medieval like that with poisons. Not for me personally, no. I just don't have the experience. Do you guys have issues with iguanas? I was going to say... I can't say we have iguanas? I was going to say. I can't say we have iguanas in Michigan.

No, not in Michigan. No, but I guess what are the top, maybe other than birds, the top disruptive critters that we maybe wouldn't think about nationally? So I know white-tailed deer and coyote are going to be our two highest mammal strikes. Coyotes? Yeah. Really? Yeah, they love airfields.

Why does this picture of them being a little, I don't know, spooked or something? No, like a little sly, you know, like, oh, they're going to get off the air.

Because there's a bunch of mice out there that are hunting. Yeah, they're hunting and all their prey sources are right on that airfield. Really? Mm-hmm. Short grass, voles, mice, stuff like that. All their prey sources are right on that airfield. Really? Mm-hmm.

Short grass, voles, mice, stuff like that. Yep, exactly. What do you do to get rid of them? I usually trapping. How do you catch them? Footholds. Oh, you do? Yeah.

Seriously? So you go and make a little dirt hole set alongside the runway? Not exactly alongside the runway, but yeah. I mean, because you're not focusing just on that runway. I mean, you're using the entirety of the airfield properties. And so it's, you know, finding their habitat and stuff. So you get to do a little coyote trapping too. No kidding.

What else do you got to catch like that? Using like old school stuff? Foxes? Yeah, some airfields probably, yeah, we'll catch foxes and stuff too. It's just, again, every airfield is different. So it's really just whatever is prevalent at your airfield and running around your airfield. So let's say you caught a bobcat, you're probably going to move them somewhere. I think bobcats are pretty sly, like you just said about coyotes.

I've never heard of any bobcats causing issues on an airfield. But again, I've never been in a region that had bobcat issues like that coyotes and deer deer i could definitely picture snowy owls yeah snowy owls are probably one of the big things this time of year so that's the other thing is just every time of year seasonally you're going to have different things that you're after so this time of year in you know in mich Michigan and a lot of these, like the northern lower states, all the snowy owls will come from the Arctic and they migrate down. And when they come down here, they're trying to find something that is as close to their habitat as possible. What's the closest thing to the Arctic? They want something wide open and flat. So when I tell people, when people are like, I really want to see a snowy owl, I'm like,

go to your local airfield because they love it there. And then when they're down there or when they come down here, they love the airfield. Maybe if there's not a whole lot of snow, they're going to want to sit on something white. And a lot of runway lines are white. What? And so they'll hang out. They'll just sit on the runway. They'll use the signs.

And it's great. There's just tons of like voles and mice. And it's like a buffet out there for them. How do you catch one of those? Using those raptor traps. What do you bait it with? Pigeons. Do you ever get a snowy owl that you've banded in Alaska that shows up on an airfield in the lower 48?

Not necessarily out of Alaska, but there are times that we will ban something, relocate them, and then they'll get picked up at another airfield because, again, it's just they love that wide open flat area, so they just airfield hop. Are sandhill cranes an issue? Yeah, so I have them on occasion, but I have heard in other states that they can, you know, they'll come

across in large flocks and stuff. I can picture that taking a plane down. Yeah. Snarge would come off one of those things. Big long bones and stuff coming out of there. Oh. Oh, so when you're doing your foothold traps, I mean, airfields are pretty busy places just from, you know, my point of view of landing on

them and taking off and stuff. There's like folks walking around. So do you kind of have to, like, I imagine there's a lot of communication, right? Like, oh, there's foothold traps out here. So don't go walking out on this area to have lunch or something like that. Or is there just a huge amount of ground that nobody ever walks on in an airfield? So, yeah, most of the time it's just a huge amount of ground that people are just not around. But you put the signs out, you know, this is what's going on.

On my base, you know, we work with security forces and let them know, you know, we'll let if there's an airfield that's got canine units and stuff, we always, you know, we try to be cognizant of who may be coming around here, who may be attracted to the lures and stuff we're using. So yeah, it is, you know, you're working with your airfield, you're working with your airfield operations, your airfield managers, you know, there's, it's a whole team of people that are doing this. So, you know, we are the experts in doing the airfield managed wildlife management, but with airfield, we have then actual airfield management who are out there all the time. So they probably observe just as much as we do. So we do a lot of education and outreach with people across our base, people across the airfield.

This last year, I just started a, I'm calling it the snow spot. So I put out flyers and was like, hey, who's the first person to see a snowy owl? Now this might, you know, a lot of people are just birders and they're just excited to see a snowy. But for me, it's like, this is great because the second a snowy owl shows up on my base, I'm going to be notified about it, and I can start managing for them. So just getting people involved is actually... So a lot of times people are like, oh, you're trying to be hush-hush. It's like, for me, no.

I love telling people what we do and educating people what we do, because in turn, it'll help us do our job. Cool. If you go to do an interview like this, you probably just can't do it on your own, right? You got to go get permission. Yeah, pretty much. Is it hard to get permission? No, because we're not ashamed or we're not hiding anything that we're doing. And so getting to do stuff like this is a really great opportunity to, for people to know what we do. Cause a lot of times it's a thankless job. I remember when I was in Anchorage, there was, there was a a group of ducks in a ditch along one of the

runways. I shot one of my pyrotechnics at them. They flew away. Airplane landed. I happened to look up and it was one of my friends flying. I texted him and I'm like, I just saved your life. So, I mean, people don't realize that we're out there and what we're doing. And it's hard to be like, oh, yes, because of us, we prevented amount of strikes it's it's a preventative thing you know we're just trying to reduce the amount of wildlife strikes we can't say we're never going to have a wildlife strike but we're hoping is you know those damaging ones will go down because you know that's money for the airfield that's money you know our government money and stuff too with new military aircraft and then it's people's lives i mean if you have even like a small cessna hit a large bird

like that can bring it down yeah uh like a great proof of a great job is that there's no news yeah yeah i'd try to think of some way to brag it up but it'd be hard it'd be like people that point out with tsa like i don't know does it really work i'm like i mean has that happened since have we had that happen since tsa became a thing see like it seems like something's working yeah because if you look statistically strike numbers have like gone up exponentially but it's because of that outreach and education that we're doing it's hey guys like if you see something even if you like, I don't know if this is a bug or a bird snarge, collect it anyway because we can decide that for ourselves

if this is just a bug and we can ditch it. But if it is a bird, it's, you know, using that information and then we can get that information to then, you know, return and, you know, manage for it. Who actually collects that snarge and sends it to you? Right, like when your plane lands, you know, there's like a cleanup crew that comes into the airplane.

Is there like a snarge specimen collecting crew on the outside of the aircraft? Not specifically, but there are the crews that are checking to make sure, you know, mechanics are working right and stuff. And so they're the ones that usually are going to collect them. So I work with, you know, on my base, I'll work with our maintainers and stuff on making sure they have the kits collecting appropriately. You know, don't wear, you know, wear gloves. Don't try to touch things bare hand and just getting that information we can. And then if we do get like a whole bird and stuff, we can just if we can identify it like, yep, that was an eastern metal arc. We'll just throw them in a freezer and send it to the Smithsonian, some pictures.

They're like, yep, it is. then we can ditch the carcass. Does it throw off a plane's whole schedule when that happens? If that flight has to leave in 40 minutes to go somewhere else, is it, oh, too bad, we've got to take care of this strike? Snarge is usually pretty, depending on if it's just a little snarge splatter, it's pretty quick just to clear up. If it's a damaging strike, that could probably slow down the aircraft itself. But they're actually doing a lot of studies right now

on the economic impact of a strike. So if you have, you know, a civilian in real busy O'Hare or something, and you have one, an aircraft take off, hit some birds, they call in tower like, hey, I just hit some birds, I got to turn around, I'm not sure like if that caused damage. And so they turn around, now all the aircraft that were about to take off will all pause because they'll have your wildlife professionals run out there and make sure there's nothing that they can handle and take care of and get out of the way. And then now that aircraft just got delayed. The one behind that one got delayed. And next thing you notice is domino effect, not only for those airplanes that are trying to take off, but now all those passengers on that aircraft now they have to rebook their

flights so there's actually a pretty un i mean they're working on it right now i mean there's been some studies coming out you know trying to see what the economic impact is you know we can say damaging is 208 million but like what about all those ripple effect costs? Right. I wanted to do one of those analyses around Air Force One. Because during Obama's two terms, I got seriously, seriously screwed when they decided to land the plane. I mean, it has nothing to do with who it was as president, but it happened to be then.

It happens for anybody. I'm like, hey, where did they get off? I mean, close the airport down. And one time I learned, they closed the airport down. Listen. Listen to this. They closed an airport. This is how audacious I think this program is. Someone should look into this.

He lands in the big plane. Okay. And he's going to make a stump speech for someone running for Congress. They shut the entire airport down for the plane to land, get in a helicopter, take the helicopter to give a stump speech, a campaign speech. Stays closed. Comes back. Helicopter lands.

Speech is over. Gets on Air Force One. Air Force One leaves. The airport can resume flying. Wow, okay. Now, it traced the economic impact. And I was particularly incensed because I didn't feel like it was of national significance. It was a speech.

Well, I guess you could have like a plane that would be otherwise taking off or landing that would try to crash into the plane. Oh, the security thing is not an issue. Right. Like I think, but that's, that's why I think, right. I felt as though if it was, I felt as though you can't do that to people to go give a speech for a guy okay got it I got over the anger but I was like particularly angry for a while and I said some things that probably would have put me on the the um no fly list or like the secret service whatever you know I was like I was pretty mad man I was pretty bad out of shape about

it yeah like if the guy's going to fly someplace to diffuse some international situation or make something better for everyone. Yeah, I'd be like, no, I can wait. That's great, man. You're going to

diffuse tensions with North Korea. You know, I can wait. I can wait. You're going to go give a speech for some Yahoo running for office?

Yep. So we can lock up some sector in Iowa or. Yeah, come on, man. People got a place to go. They got things to do. Got it. You seem incredulous.

No, I just, I'm amused. Oh. Megan, you're going to play trivia? Yes. Oh, I got no, I had one last question for you though. Did you grow up hunting? Yes. Okay.

Yes, I do. I did grow up my my i have an older brother that just wasn't into the hunting fish well he does fish but he was just not into the outdoorsy thing and so when i came around my dad's like it's gonna be you oh really he took me out hunting when i was real little and you know just gave me some hostess you know cupcakes and stuff we're like just sit here quietly so your brother wasn't into it and your dad was cool. Your dad like took you on. Yep. Do you, looking back on it, do you think that, let's say your brother had been into it, would you have gotten the same opportunity or would your dad have been, oh no, this, I got my boy and that's my hunting buddy and you'd have got left in the dust?

Or do you think he would have either way of giving you the opportunities? Oh, I'm pretty bullheaded. and you'd have got left in the dust? Or do you think he would have either way of given you the opportunities? Oh, I'm pretty bullheaded. So I probably would have still tried to join because it was an interest to me, right? So it was just something that interested me and my dad capitalized on it. And it wasn't just the hunting and fishing aspect, but when I went out to,

I was like eight or nine years old, we did this big road trip out to Yellowstone, hit all the national parks. And my mom had me and my brother- Hunting all the way through. Yeah. But just like, you know, being out in nature, getting to see all these like the megafauna and stuff.

And my mom had me and my brother write essays about our trip. And I wrote in there how I wanted to like work in the wildlife sector like that. Was that right? Yeah. I said like, I think I wanted to be a national park ranger, but like I didn't, you know, to me at eight year old, like that was all the same. Anybody that was in the wildlife field. So like, I've known what I wanted to do since national park ranger, but like I didn't, you know, to me at eight year old, like that was all the same. Anybody that was in the wildlife field. So like,

I've known what I wanted to do since I was a kid. Were you big into independence day celebrations too? Fireworks? Yeah. Really spoke to me. Yeah. So yeah. When you filled out your application,

you'd be like, I love doing shooting off fireworks. I like shooting guns. Firemaniac. Yeah. Did they, uh, when you applied,

did you weigh in how you'd had, like, did they care that you'd had hunting experience or did that, was that inconsequential to them? Yeah. So with the work that we do in wildlife services, having those backgrounds definitely help because you just want people to be comfortable with it. You don't want to give a firearm to somebody who has never touched one before, maybe be, you know, really scared to hold one and not even just to shoot stuff. So having those backgrounds are definitely beneficial. Great. Not necessary, but it definitely

helps. Now back to trivia. Have you ever heard the trivia show? Yeah. My husband and I have played trivia every week since it came out. Oh, whoa. And? How do you do? Do you beat the Shelby index? Do you beat like, do you beat the Shelby Index? Do you beat like Corinne? Do you beat Cal? Everybody beats Corinne. I usually am right there with the Shelby Index. But disclaimer, I also pause it and think about it. So actually being in person real time, I have no idea how I'll do.

It's stressful. Yeah. So you don't know how, you don't think you're going to tear it up? You're going to hold your own? I'm going to survive. And then, have you coordinated with Spencer about what bone he's going to throw you when he gives you

a bonus question? I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet. So how does he do this? He just takes their line of work into account. Yeah, we talked about her. He looked at the podcast notes. Dude, I'm going to laugh if he's like, what's snarge? Yeah, when we record the trivia show in a minute,

I'm going to be like, well, how do you know? Well, I know yesterday. That's happened once before. Because Spencer's not always a part Of the podcast we do Before trivia And we've Things would come up On that podcast

That were the bone That Spencer eventually Threw to the guest It happened once or twice I've noticed Yesterday the bone he threw Was He just

The person was from Texas So you had a Texas Reservoir question But I'm curious I'm gonna dig in with him A little bit About how he's determining what to throw your way. Yeah. Could be a host of good questions.

You're going to stick around? Yes. We're going to eat some lunch or something. Yeah. And then we're going to have trivia. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Thank you.

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