Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - A Grizzly Encounter in Yellowstone - A Roundup of Recent Animal Encounter News Including a Violent Bear Attack in Yellowstone, an Elephant Pants-ing a Tourist, Big Cats in Thailand, and More

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

The guys each bring a handful of recent animal attack stories to the table to discuss with each other, and then get into the rarest bird Wes has ever een, Jeff's escape room escapades, and how much they like September. Ariean's GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-ariean-fabrizio-colton-recover-after-bear-attack ~~ Rocket Money: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to http://rocketmoney.com/claw today. Goodr: Go to http://goodr.com/TOOTH and use code TOOTH for free shipping. Cornbread Hemp: Get 30% off at http://cornbreadhemp.com/tooth and use code TOOTH Graza Olive Oil: Take your food to the next level with Graza Olive Oil. Visit https://graza.co/TOOTH and use promo code TOOTH today for 10% off your first order!  LMNT: Get a free 8-count Sample Pack with any purchase at ⁠http://drinklmnt.com/tooth⁠ ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get ready to ride. The Rocky Mountain Jamboree returns to Richfield, Utah, September 14th through the 18th, 2026. Join hundreds of OHV enthusiasts for five days of guided rides through Utah's legendary Paiute, Gooseberry, and Great Western Trail Systems. Enjoy daily breakfast. Prize raffles, a light parade, and a closing dinner with fellow riders. Experience Utah's trail country at the Rocky Mountain Jamboree.

Register today at Richfield, Utah.com. Hello, everybody. Hey. Hi, Dr. Nick. That's what you're doing. This is Tooth and Claw podcast, and I'm our main host, Jeff Larson, and then I have my two helpers. Side Kings. Wes Larson and Mike Smith.

It's a podcast where we kind of just talk about anything and everything. That's not true. Well, it kind of is, I guess. This is a podcast where we talk about animal attacks and what people can learn from them and how these animals are often demonized in the news, which we'll be talking about today on our news episode. That's a better job describing it. Thanks for helping Jeff out. We are his helpers after all.

We are. Yeah, I guess is what it turns out we are. You're the tech guy. I'm the science guy. There's probably a better way to explain our dynamic too. You're just shooting from the hip there. Can't blame you too much. Jeff, did you do an escape room last night?

Yeah. Did you get out? It wasn't that good. I was wondering what they count as successful. Because the lady at the end, when we weren't going to make it, just kind of started walking us through everything. So technically we made it out with like a minute left. But it's like a lot of help. It's kind of one where they assumed you just like know things.

And it's like, if you don't, you just are stuck forever. Yeah. Like, there's like music notes and none of us knew how to read music notes. And you had to be able to read the music note. Yeah, that kind of throws you off, doesn't it? Yeah. You got to know, what's the acronym? Every good boy deserves chocolate or whatever.

Like, the notes ascending up the... There's some acronym for it. It's a very creepy acronym. I know. That's like a guy rolling down his window and saying that to some kids on this street. like not even true because bad boys like chocolate too or is it every good boy deserves chocolate i don't know yeah i think bad boys deserve a little chocolate i think so too i think i think i need to start going like regularly to escape rooms though yeah because like 30 minutes in i started getting

a really bad headache and i was like man i must not be thinking enough in general it's just like whoa too much ever so i got sunglasses on right now I'm yeah I'm feeling it still there's there's other ways when you work out for the first time and forever that's how my brain is right now it's just like laying in a heap on the floor breathing hard oh my god what did you do to me that would be kind of funny if you just decided the only way you can train your brain is by going to escape rooms and there's like literature and puzzles and all sorts of fun things so smart He would have been doing E equals MC squared instead of that other guy.

Yeah, that old guy. Einstein. Well, I'm glad you made it out, Jeff. This wouldn't be the same without you. Our main host. We need our main host here. Anything else you guys want to report before we get into our news stories for the week? No.

I'm tired. I'm tired of banter. I got nothing. I had to feed some pigs this morning because Jesse's gone, which was the one thing I said I'd never do, but I did it. You have pigs. That's right. We knew you had pigs. We haven't killed them yet is what's surprising.

I said I would never help with them because I didn't want to do anything with the pigs, but I also enjoy some time alone from, you know, from time to time. And Jesse said she would leave for a couple days, but that I would have to take care of the pigs. So smart move, Jesse. Yeah. That's a good exchange, sounds like. Yeah. And they didn't eat me.

They didn't kill me. I didn't trip and fall and they didn't kill me. So day one. That would have been, yeah, that would have been bad for, yeah. It would have helped with one story. That's true. We would have had like one episode's worth a story, but we would have lost a lot of credibility. Would it have been a banger?

We could have turned that into a two-parter at least. Give the background of him. Yeah. The whole life story. I would hope that you guys would make a two-parter regardless of how I die by animal. Yeah. Sure. Bring Tom Smith on, be like, hey, Tom, tell us about Wes.

Maybe bring your mom on. Yeah. She's just shouting out listeners the whole time. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about them news stories, eh? Let's do it. So for any new listeners, this is a news episode where we just cover recent attacks that have happened throughout the world.

And you know what? Summer months tend to be the productive. Most attacks that we can find. They're not always attacks too. Sometimes we do some just interesting animal news stories too, but mostly attacks. Oh, that's a good point. Mostly attacks. That's a good point.

Yeah, just wanted to make sure, you know, I kept on your toes. Well, and we like to call them encounters too, so that's on me, too. That's a good point. Yeah. All right. So what's our first encounter? Well, I'm going to do one that kind of hits close to home. And when I started working at Yellowstone,

I'm going to be honest with you guys and just to say something that maybe I might get a little flack for. Part of me really wanted there to be a mauling while I was working with bear management at Yellowstone. And it's because I have worked in bear conflict for so long and I've learned so much about all these stories, but I've never been like the first one on the scene or someone that's like responded to a bear that mauled someone. And that was just an experience I wanted to have. Be careful what you wish for a type of situation. Maybe, maybe. Maybe.

But I will say, like, my colleagues that have done it, they always kind of talk about it in hushed tones, but you could always kind of tell it was like a highlight for them and something they, it was like a story they liked telling, you know? You guys are sickos. Oh, my gosh. These are the people in charge of keeping us safe out there? I don't know.

Well, you know, Mike, I'm not out there anymore. So, thank goodness. Yeah. Anyway, Yellowstone had averaged about one malling per year for the last few decades. But then when I started, there weren't any mallings for a few years. And then I left Yellowstone to focus on the podcast. We need to get you back out there. No, quit the podcast, get out there.

You're better used in the field. No, the drought would start up again. Yeah, true. That's, yeah, I guess that is a good thing. Anyway, the drought is over. On Friday, September 16th, a 29-year-old hiker was attacked by a bear while walking the turbid lake trail near Mary Bay in Yellowstone National Park. This hiker had been hiking alone on this trail when he apparently surprised the bear, and he tried to use his bear spray, but the bear made contact with him first, and then I think he was able to successfully deploy some of his spray, so he sustained significant but not life-threatening injuries to his chest and his left arm. So basically this bear made contact, mauled him a bit.

He managed to get some spray off. It ended the encounter. Then he was able to call for help. And medical personnel responded, walked him out of the trail, and got him to the hospital. You're right. That does sound fun. Yeah. Well, I mean, it would be more interesting to like investigate a fatality or something.

I'm just giving you a good. I don't want anyone to die. Yeah. But the more fun part of it for the manager, And I shouldn't say fun, but the interesting part, a thing that is interesting in these things, is then responding to the situation afterward. Like, what do you do with this bear? If it is kind of something that seems like a, you know, behavior that's not normal, then you do have to do something. This seemed like very normal behavior.

They actually found a carcass nearby, lots of tracks. He thought it was a black bear, but this is like, if I were to tell someone one place to go in the park to see grizzly bears, I would tell them to go right where this guy was high. So it's almost certainly a grizzly bear. They found lots of grizzly tracks in the area. And there was a carcass near this trail. So almost certainly a grizzly. This is like a pretty dangerous part of the park to be hiking around in. I probably wouldn't do it, especially alone.

It's just prime, prime, prime grizzly bear habitat. He was flew into a hospital. He was released this last Wednesday. And I'm just really happy he had bear spray because he avoided a more serious outcome. and I got to avoid some more FOMO for not being there when a fatality happened, you know? Oh, shit. Good job. Good job on that guy's part.

Thanks for sparing me. I don't know. I'm not sure anymore. I think the last fatality was 2015, and we'll talk about that one at some point. But Yellowstone's on a good little streak with their conflict prevention. And I think a lot of that is due to some of the work that they do with bears, like hazing. Yeah, some of the stuff I did. there, not me personally, but the bear management team. And then a lot of it is good education, too.

There's a lot of signs and pamphlets and stuff telling people about the, you know, the risks of hiking and recreating in bear country. So are bears, good job, Yellowstone. Still the leading source of fatal encounters in Yellowstone? No, not even close. Not even close. What is that? So in the, in the whole history of the park, there's been eight fatalities from bears. There have been hundreds of drownings. I think that's number one. No, falls. I think falls are number one than drowning.

But as far as animals are concerned. As far as animals, I would guess it's bison. Oh, I bet bison have killed a fair number more than bears. Bears are probably second, though. Yeah, I don't think mosquitoes have killed anyone in Yellowstone. Elk? Bears are probably second after. Elk probably have, but I guess grizzlies are number two after bison.

would be my guess. But like dozens of people have fallen into hot springs and died there. I mean, bears aren't even the top 10, I would guess, when it comes to fatalities in the park. Imagine when the super volcano explodes, bears, their stats not going to look impressive at all. No, not at all. Versus 8 billion or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, stay safe out there, guys. It is, it's fall. Bears aren't hyperphagious, so they're trying to put on as much weight as possible before they den. So this is a high-risk time if you're in grizzly country especially.

So just make sure you have bear spray. Make sure you're making plenty of noise. Because this was a surprise encounter, that bear didn't do anything unnatural. They're not trying to do anything to this bear. They're just going to leave it. This was very much natural behavior for this bear. Gotcha.

Yeah. All right. Well, I have a grizzly bear one as well, so I'll just go. I was put on to this one from a list of, named Scotty and it's a friend's sister-in-law this happened to out in um canai is that how you kenai alaska yeah this is where tom has his cabin oh really tom's death west's uh mentor and professor spent a fair amount of time in keeney myself sure master yeah you guys basically just dogged tom to all those bears listening out there i'm the egor to his dracula or no is eager a

guy or is that a Frankenstein guy? Frankenstein. That's Frankenstein. What was Dracula's little? A Renfield. I'm the Renfield to his Dracula. Yeah. The worm tongue to his sauron.

Sauramon. Sauramon. Sauramon is kind of the worm tongue to Sauron. It's a weird little daisy chain. And Sauron's kind of the worm tongue to Morgoth. Exactly. Oh, wow. So who's tough?

How deep does this go? Tom Soran is Stephen Herrero Well Scotty put me on to this story because there is an active GoFundMe so it is Aryan Fabrizio Colton is the GoFundMe

Is that really Aryan? It does look like Aryan A-R-I-E-A-N Okay So the Colton family They just moved out to Alaska. I've thought about moving out to Alaska. I know Tom loves his little spot he has out there, Wes. And it just seems like a really exciting time in this family's life. We had to go back a little

there. So I don't know if I said this. She's a mother of three. She's married. They're happily married. They're starting their family. Or like, they're starting another chapter in their family's life out in Alaska now. It just probably had an incredible summer since that's the main reason you go to Alaska. The winters are probably a little rough to get through. Miss Colton, she enjoyed running in the mornings. And Wes, what's the worst time for a bear encounter? Early mornings or late evenings. So she liked to run early morning. Yeah, I would say those. Yeah, not the worst time, but that's like the highest probability time. So why wouldn't you say it's the worst time? Yeah. You said what's the worst time for a bear encounter?

And I just feel like any time's a bad time for a bear encounter. But your highest probability time of running into a bear is like early morninger. Semantics. You poned you, dude. Linguistic. I was, you know? You got me. It was a riddle.

She starts her morning run almost 6 a.m. Still very early. And makes it only about 50 yards from her house. when a brown bear that was on the neighbor's property just ran straight over to her and mauled her. And it was mulling her on the property. She got the wind knocked out of her, so wasn't like yelling actively.

But the neighbor heard barking and wolfing sounds of a bear. So Wes, you're really good at the wolfing sounds. Yeah, so he hears a bear out there. He thinks like maybe it got a dog in the neighborhood or maybe it has something. Didn't think too much of it. But then he kept hearing more and more so he goes out and walks out and sees his female neighbor just like in the woods on his property and immediately calls for help.

But they're an hour and a half from a hospital. So it takes her a really long time to get out to like actual hospital. But she's a loving wife, mother three, nurse, known. for like being adventurous, being like a love of nature. And we just want to shout out her GoFundMe. So she sustained multiple broken ribs, a scalpela fracture, a hand fracture, and went through surgery, but she's going to require more. She's unable to see out of her left eye right now.

Oh, man. And we'll continue extensive outpatient physical therapy. So that's air. Arian Fabrizzo Colton's GoFund me if you want to go help out. Tooth and Claw donated some money to it. Go donate some money to it if you are able. Do you know what really sucks about it? I mean, unironically, this sucks, you know, no matter what a bear encounter is going to be rough.

But I hate the idea of like getting up early and going out to do something healthy. And then just the least healthy possible thing happens to me. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like, now you got to go through physical therapy. forever just to be able to like try to be healthy again. Right.

I was just like out on a run. That's all I was trying to do. At least like she didn't have to run for that long. That's true. That sucks. I hate run. Oh my gosh. Now more people than ever can bring in their bill for a better deal at Verizon.

Got AT&T or T-Mobile? We got you. Xfinity or Spectrum? You too. So tell your friends, your family, your quirky neighbor Jeff. Grab your megaphone and yell it from the rooftop. a better deal at Verizon. Because chances are anyone in shouting distance is included.

Bring in your AT&T, T-Mobile, Xfinity, or Spectrum bill, and we'll give you a better deal on the best network network. Come by Verizon today. Best Network based on Ritmetrics, best overall mobile network performance U.S. second half, 2025. All rights reserved. Must provide recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's

like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards.

Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. Seasite for details. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice.

Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our scene. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Is fitness uniquely a human endeavor?

Are there any animals that work out? Like purposely try to get more fit? I don't think so. I think they naturally. Wolves have like a lot of energy and kind of like run around a lot. I think a lot of animals have that. But like I don't think they're like purposely thinking, man, I'm not feeling that great. I need to like get stronger.

Like doing push-ups. Pump and there's no way. Yeah. There's no way for us to know that. But I doubt it. I really doubt it. Because usually, so usually in like the in the animal kingdom, what we think is most animals are doing their best to conserve energy whenever they can. You know, it's like their constant struggle is trying to get energy by way of food and conserve energy to survive.

So it doesn't really make sense for many animals to, like, be wasting energy. I think the argument I would pose, though, is that males especially need to get pretty big for mating purposes a lot of the time. Like the strongest, biggest males get the most mating opportunities. So maybe they're, like, seeking ways to get, like, big. bigger and stronger. Yeah, I don't, yeah, I think, I don't think they understand. No, I was just going to say, I don't think that's like a conscious thing. Yeah, but I don't think they know like the relationship between like physical activity and putting on.

Eating protein powder. Right. Or like, or like working out, you know, I just don't. Right. I think that's kind of more of a genetics thing than anything. So. Well, I got a story if you guys don't mind. It's not a grizzly bear, but it's kind of like a grizzly bear.

So this is a story about an elephant. This happened August 13th, 2025. I'm titling this one, The Many Mistakes of R. Basavaraju. Why is it kind of like a grizzly pet? I don't know.

Kind of. So I'm going to have you guys, as I read through this story, as I recount this story, just call out any mistakes you hear this guy make, Basavaraju, because he makes a hand. The incident began when Basaveraju, he was walking in a restricted forest area in Kamataka, state of Southwest.

There's a mistake. Mistake, right? Even maybe even a criminal in front. Karnatica. Yeah. Yeah. Restricted forest? Kamataka.

Yeah. Oh, is that R.N? Karnataka. Yeah. It's in India, right? Yep. It's a, yeah, southwestern India. So he came...

As he was wandering around, he came upon an elephant who was just munching on some carrots by the side of the road. And the Savaraju, he's like, hey, this is a pretty good photo opportunity. It's distracted by these carrots. Let's just get one in real quick. So he got as close as he dared, pulled out his camera,

and then he turned his back to take a selfie with the elephant. That's not good. Mistake number two, probably, right? Okay. I wouldn't say so yet. Not yet, okay. According to one of the bystanders.

I mean, it's distracted by the carrots. That's true. You got to give them the benefit of that doubt. So Daniel Osorio was on the scene, witnessing this whole thing go down. The elephant was provoked by the camera flash, is what Daniel is saying. And it immediately just rushed directly, started charging right at Basava Raju. Basava Raju. That's a mistake.

I think so too, right? When you're taking a selfie, if you want something in the background, you don't use flash. Yeah. And it was like middle of the day. The sun was out. Not really. Well, I'm not a photographer. Maybe there is a use for flash in that scenario.

But that's what seemed to trigger the elephant. So, the Savaraju started running away. When he lost his footing, he was, he ran kind of on the ditch by the side of the road. And as it went back up onto the tarmac, he slipped and face planted just right in the middle of a busy road. Oh, no. The elephant just immediately was on top of him, trampling him. And thankfully missed most of his upper body and like the vitals, his head and stuff. But it did trample his legs pretty good.

And now he's in the middle of the road getting trampled. and there's just a ton of people all around filming this event take place. I think I saw this video. The tough thing, well, I mean, it's tough. But add a little bit of insult to injury, the elephant ended up ripping his pants in his underwear completely off. So he's just like face down in the middle of the road without pants on. And people are just taking pictures and filming this happen.

So a mistake four, I'm going to say, is not having a better belt. So he got stepped on pretty good, though. Thankfully, fortunately, he didn't die, but he did get rough. to the hospital with like some pretty severe injuries. That's pretty crazy to get trampled by an elephant and not die. I know. Yeah. It like got pretty lucky.

Like against a road. Yeah. When you see the video, you can see the elephant's feet just passing like centimeters away from his head and stuff. I feel like you're giving them a lot of gruff. So I'm going to say like props to him for not die. Sure. Yeah.

Good for it. No, it's great that he didn't die. He did get fined though, which I think. think is like another like oh man that sucks it's like it was about three hundred dollar US dollars worth of fines for trespassing and provoking wildlife which is like it's not the worst but like after all of that plus you owe money it's just like oh my gosh this is the worst you know um like it's kind of like yeah he kind of got punished pretty good for what he did they're probably trying yeah they're probably trying to set an example though because this does

Even though it doesn't maybe seem like it, this puts other people at danger too, because elephants do kind of enter. And we've seen this in some of our other stories. Like, if they get mad enough, they can kind of go in on a rampage. And then a lot of other people can get hurt that are also around. So it sucks that this guy got hurt so badly, but also he was endangering other people's lives and this elephant's life by approaching it. Yeah. So some of the details in the video after it just very briefly and get. with the man, ripped his pants off, and then left. But it started, like, mounting up on trucks and, like, kind of getting, it got really close to a lot of other people. And it looked like it was maybe trying to push some cars around and stuff. It was a pretty agitated elephant. And it's caused a little bit of community uproar because there's been a growing sentiment that tourists taking these kinds of pictures engaging this kind of behavior, they need to be facing harsher penalties, like even criminal offenses if they do this kind of thing.

because I guess up to this point, that's not really been as big a legal issue as it is just kind of like a park infringement or something. But I know, tried to get a selfie, but now he's viral for a little bit of a different piece of content, I guess. He got pantsed. Got pants by the elephant. Yeah. Huh. All right. Well, I've got another one that is pretty tragic, but also kind of, you know, these ones are always hard because it's kind of like the trophy hunter from last month.

I don't want to say like the person should have seen this coming, but also it's like you're doing something where you're obviously accepting some very high risks. And this was, I titled this Tiger Prince killed by his trained Tiger. So we all remember the Tiger King. This is kind of the Tiger Prince, and I'll explain why. On September 20th, just a few days ago, 37-year-old Ryan Easley was finishing up a performance for a group of people with his pet cat when something went terribly wrong

because this wasn't just any cat. It was a full-grown tiger and for whatever reason on that particular day this tiger had had enough. Toward the end of the routine Ryan and the tigers had probably done this routine hundreds of times before this tiger broke off from its training

and it bit Ryan on his shoulder and neck briefly shook him violently and he just thought to have died pretty much instantly from this bite. Oh man. Whoa. His wife and daughter were unfortunately watching the show. When the tiger,

yeah, when the tiger backed away from Ryan's body, his wife managed to guide the tiger into a safe enclosure, and he was pronounced dead thereafter, soon thereafter. So basically,

just like a quick aside, what I think probably happened here, like, I think about Toad, my cat this morning, I was like petting him with a brush and he got so kind of

overstimulated that he bit me quickly. And sometimes when I'm playing with Toad, there'll just be like this singular moment of frustration where he lashes out and like bites or scratches. And I think everyone that has ever owned a cat has experienced that before. And the same thing can happen with the tiger. I don't think this tiger was trying to eat Ryan or even trying to kill him. I think it just had a moment of frustration and lashed out. And when it's a tiger doing that, it can be fatal. All it takes is one bite. And that's all this was. And I don't think the tiger

even knew what it was doing when it killed Ryan. But apparently, Ryan and Joe Exotic, who we all know as the Tiger King, have a bit of history. Ryan had procured a number of his tigers from the Tiger King, as well as Doc Hentel, who was also in that documentary. And Joe was quick to make a statement from jail where he is, Joe Exotic. I think he's in jail for 20-something years, constantly asking Trump for a pardon and constantly not getting it. Off a shot. Yeah, but he, in his statement, he pretty much immediately attacked PETA. And it was really interesting. We've had a few people that pronounce PETA really weird

like Tanya Haddix and Joe Exotic in his statement he capitalized the P and the T and the A but the E was lowercase and I don't know why. What's the acronym? It's people for the ethical treatment of animals

so it's not like the E is a smaller yeah anyway. Maybe he's taken a little bit of a subliminal shot there. It was a really bad tweet because it's one where he could have just said, listen, I know Ryan, I really like the guy, he had a wonderful family, all of that. But basically he just used it as a way to talk about himself and attack PETA. He said, working with adult tigers takes guts and skill. So many people do things different when working with tigers. I choose never to make my tigers perform or even my camel

because it takes losing that love bond between you and that animal. I sold tigers to Ringling Brothers and worked with just about everyone in the business, and you don't get a tiger to jump through a hoop at fire because they love you. When I knew Ryan in the early years, he wanted to be the one with the most tigers in the ring at one time. Myself and John Rinky both said, when he was at our place with his tigers, that he was going to get killed because some of his cats were crazy in the head,

but it was about having the most performing at one time at all cost. Not the best statement from his buddy in jail. You know, just kind of saying like, well, he was asking for it. I called it. I called it. Yeah, exactly. I still sold him the tigers, but I called it. LeBron is like, I knew he'd get killed by the tiger.

He saw that comment 10 years ago. This Pita also did a statement where they're also just kind of trying to score points for their side. It all feels kind of gross to me because the Big Cat Act was passed already. Like, this is a dying industry where many of these people won't. ever be able to have cats anymore. It seems like that victory's already happened, so, like, we don't need to be trying to, like, score points off of something this tragic. But this is from PETA. They said, Ryan Easley, an associate of Joe Exotic, was killed yesterday by a tiger he owned at his roadside zoo. Easley had acquired tigers from Joe Exotic and fellow Tiger King, Doc Antle, for his

business, show me tigers. And for years, he hauled them around the country, forced them to perform in cruel circuses and kept them trap in cages for hours when they weren't performing. In 2017, he was caught violently whipping tigers during training sessions, one of whom was reportedly struck 31 times. When Joe Exotic was operating as Oklahoma Roadside Zoo, easily boarded his tigers in cramped cages at the roadside zoo during the winter. It's kind of just like, they're just beating a dead horse at this point with Joe Exotic, not with Ryan, but it's like, it would suck to be this guy's family and see these two

warring entities still like trying to just kind of get at each other using his death. Yeah. So anyway, I do think like if you're if you're training tigers, especially to perform and you're touching them and stuff, it's hard to feel like this is unexpected. But, you know, his family's still definitely suffering. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I do feel like the public narrative to has changed so much. Yeah. that PETA doesn't really need to explain all of that to us. It's like, yeah, we know tigers in those shows are like not fairly treated anymore. It's not just like some crazy beast that wants to kill. It's like, no, like we kind of get this guy was asking for it. We all saw the documentary.

Yeah. Have a statement the day after about how bad of a guy. Totally. Like wait a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I will just say to our. listeners, as far as like these kind of shows and roadside zoos are concerned, just remember that

any place like this, they all are going to say in their, like, their messaging that they're good for conservation, that they're sanctuaries, that they've rescued these cats from, from worse situations. Every single one of these roadside zoos is going to have that same message, all of them. But, like, just kind of a rule that you can use to know if you're at a bad place or not, if there's any kind of human interaction with these cats, if they're touching them, or if they're making them perform to do tricks or anything, that is not a true sanctuary. It is not a true rescue.

It is a for-profit roadside zoo where there's a very good chance the animals aren't being treated the way they deserve to be treated. So just stay away from those places. But this is obviously unfortunately. I have a question on that. Yeah. So like at the Hogo Zoo with the sea lion, they like have them do tricks for fish. What's the difference? That is an animal that responds very well to training.

That's more enrichment for them. And the people aren't like at the- More want to be trained than have to be forced to be trained. Exactly. It's like bird training and stuff too. And also, like, at the Hogo Zoo when they do that, they're not, like, hugging the sea lions and seals and stuff, too. You know, there's not, like, a pay to play. And it's not like that's their business.

It's not like people like, yeah, okay. There are animals, like, in these accredited zoos and rescues and stuff, there are animals that through decades or longer of, like, research and having them in captivity, we've learned do like enrichment where there's a human element involved. But like big cats are too dangerous to do that with. They just like, it's just not an animal where you can do that and not have some serious risks. Especially like a traveling show is just never going to be a good environment. Well, I have a follow up. I did just real quick. I wanted to point out the logo for PETA has the lowercase E in there.

So maybe that's what you're seeing people do with. Yeah, that's probably it. So he's actually being very, he went above and beyond. Get it right. Shout out Joe Exotic. Yeah. Dotts all of his teas and crosses his eyes. You said this place was steps from the water.

We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now.

Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd, but too often, life gets busy,

or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com.

Actual prices may vary. Limited time offer. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates

who check all your boxes. Listeners of this shell will get a $75-a-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Well, Wes, I want you to take on this one because I was kind of wondering about

this situation. So this is a lion attack that happened in Bangkok, September 10th. And it was in Asia's largest open air zoo. How do you feel about like a safari? Park. Yeah. So like, I know San Diego Zoo has something like that, right? And it's like one of those zoos, I think, where you kind of go on safari inside of a zoo. You're in a vehicle, but then there's no, you're in the enclosures. There's no fence between you and the animals. Yeah. So how do you feel about that? I think it can be done really responsibly and well, but then there's ones that aren't, you know, like,

I think if you're going in there and you're able to feed these animals or interact with them, then it's probably not that ethical. But if it's like the one in San Diego at the safari park, it's really well done and it's a really cool experience for people. Or Alex, who just went on our Brazil trip, works for one in the Palm Desert, where they have a safari element and that one's a great one too. So this one, you pay $37 per person to go to the lion and tiger feeding trips, which I don't know if that's too problematic if you're like staying in the vehicles and they got to feed the

cats anyways, right? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. I'd have to look into it. But so yeah, on September 10th, an employee who had been working there for over 30 years, he got out of the vehicle to like get some food to throw to them, which was like very much against policy and the rules of their employees. They're never supposed to get out of their vehicles. And then for whatever reason, a doctor who was on the trip as like a guest, uh, Tavocci, She Kanachirin said that he stood there alone for three minutes outside of the vehicle, which they found very concerning and weird. Oh.

That the employee was just like standing there and didn't get back in the car. So then a lion walked up to him and just grabbed his leg and pulled him away from the car. Wow. And then six other lions came up and they all started killing him as people are watching. and they said he like never screamed or anything which is I don't know it's yeah it's it's an interesting situation for sure very tragic and the park's getting a lot of heat about just like making sure the lions were even licensed to be there because in Thailand in Thailand uh I guess it's legal to have lions okay so I think there's a lot of licensing like behind the scenes

of stuff going on where people don't go through the right paperwork and like the policies that they want them to to get lions a lot of the time and there's a lot of breeding going on there and lions are just like a big issue in Thailand. Okay. Yeah. So that's really that's yeah. I don't mean to make light of the situation, but it almost seems like a possession or something came over him.

Like he just wasn't reacting at all. That's really spooky to me. It's weird that he didn't make noise once the lions started. Yeah, right. Maybe it was that, that happens in that movie The Happening. Maybe has anyone looked at the plants? It could have been the plants. That's a good point.

Someone better check that out. Where's Mark? Where is Mark? I guess there's like 500 zoos in Thailand with licensed lions. And then there's just a bunch of breeding farms. And like, yeah, it's a real. thing out there. So also, if you're going to Thailand, just be careful about what lions you go to visit. Yep, do your research, especially in other countries. In the U.S., it's pretty easy just to kind of

look up the accredited institutions, but in other countries, you have to do a little bit more research. And this one was, this one's Safari World Bangkok. Actually, I'd have to really dig in, but to me, it didn't seem too problematic where it's the biggest open air zoo in Asia. Like, at least the animals have space. It sounded like they do have licensing for their animals. So it just was an unfortunate situation where an employee either got careless or just, I don't know. I don't want to speculate too much on what happened. Yeah.

Could you find the video anywhere? Uh-uh. Yeah. Were lions ever living in Thailand? Indigenously or whatever the word is? I'm pretty sure. I'm looking for. Yeah.

Natively. Natively. Yeah. Indemically. I'm pretty sure they were. Okay, yeah. Asiatic lions, I think, were pretty widespread back in the day. But now you can only find them in one little portion of India.

Where they just poned the tigers there. Yeah. Tigers are so scared of the lions in India. Yeah. Let's relitigate that real quick. Let's not. Okay, I've got, I actually do have a bear story this time. This is a follow-up in a way to a story we covered last time in our news episode.

about the bear safety drill video that we showed. A little humorous, but it was performed in the wake of some pretty serious bear encounters and fatalities even. So this happened near the end of August of this year, reported by the Independent, but several other sources I got information from as well. So, Dysen, this is the northern Akita prefecture. And West, you'll know Akita, because that's where a recent poll was taken. No.

This is where the prettiest women of Japan live, it turns out, according to the... to a vote. Interesting. Don't pretend you didn't know that less. Oh. Yeah. Shocking. Whoa.

Anyway, so the police sent out a bear attack warning after, and it depends on what source you're getting information from, but he was either 91 or 93 years old from what I found. So Fuji Yoshi Shindo's wife called the police when he found her husband, collapsed and bleeding on the floor with huge gaping gash wounds across his body. And like we reported in that last news episode, Japan's been saying pretty recently They've always had a good amount of bear encounters going on But especially recently

A lot of fatalities a lot of unnaturally High amount of bearer Is the bear training the police did not working then Must not be enough Or that song That song they created a few years ago Yeah So just last year

A record amount of people 219 people were attacked by bears And there were six deaths That's a lot Which is a lot. It seems like to me, you know. I think, and I think the majority of them are Asiatic Black Bears, but there are a number of brown bear attacks too, especially in Hokkaido.

Yeah, up in the northern parts, which is kind of where we're dealing. So Akita is like the northwestern right before you get to Hokkaido. Oh, I know where it is. Yeah, you do. I've heard that so many times in it, I still just like always kind of forget that Japan has brown bears. That's cool, like shout out Japan. Yeah, really cool.

We got robots, they got. sushi conveyor belts. They got brown bears. They got a lot of cool stuff. Pretty women in that one part. Sumo wrestlers. They got sumo wrestlers. Oh my gosh.

So a bear alert was issued by the community of Dysen. People started freaking out because again, it's been a hot topic recently. And just a quick rundown of some events that have happened just this past few months. But in July, a newspaper delivery man was killed by a brown bear just in a residential neighborhood, which is a curious event to have taken place in this area. In June, an airport in Yamagata canceled 10 flights after a bear broke through the perimeter fence and was patrolling across the runway.

And an interesting one to me, this did happen in Hokkaido, in Sapporo. A bear was found running through the streets, just of the city, and they canceled school. That just seems like an unusual thing for school to be canceled because of bear. I think for being a country that has this amount of conflict, they still don't have like a great response for it, which is interesting.

Like usually when there is that much conflict, you start having some really good management kind of, you know, techniques put in place. And I feel like Japan is still lacking that. And I don't totally understand why. Yeah. It is curious to me because you guys, you grew up in bear, grizzly bear country, even up in Missoula.

Like, ostensibly there are bears in the area. But was there ever stories about them like breaching into like the city center? Sure. Yeah. Every week there's like bears in Missoula, especially in one little neighborhood of town. But like because they have such a good response system in place, you don't really hear about it because it doesn't cause like widespread chaos, you know? Because we did that other story not long ago about the one getting into the grocery store. There's like a full SWAT team standoff with this bear, you know?

Yeah. And it just seems, I don't know, I need to look into it, but it just seems like they don't really have people. that know what they're doing when it comes to bear management. Mike, that video where, like, all the wildlife people and police put a trampoline under a bear that's in a tree. Oh, yeah. And then they, like, dart it and it falls on the trampoline and bounces, like, even higher than it was in the tree and it falls on the ground.

Yeah. That was in Missoula. Yeah. Oh, it was Missoula. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was, like, in the middle of the city. Oh, man. That video, that just makes me sad when I saw that.

I want to alter what I just said and say I don't yes I they definitely have some people there that know what they're doing when it comes to this sort of thing but it feels like they don't have enough okay in Japan bring Wes out there yeah I'd love to go manage some bears in Japan he accepts payment in ramen noodle package Japan is listening

DM us yeah okay well so there's a bit of a twist of the story so authorities arrived on the scene again 93 year old maybe 91 year old Fujiosi dead on the ground big seemingly at least according to his wife it looked like wounds sustained from a bear attack yeah uh in the aftermath of the investigation

the police actually found the wounds to be more consistent with knife uh like a knife attack and prime prime suspect number one is their son who was living with them who's 51 is Fujioki Fujioki Fujiyoki Shindo or Shindo Fuji Yuki Fuji Yuki I'm getting that backwards one of those ways.

Anyway, they confiscated all the knives in the household. They're still trying to determine what exactly the weapon was that was used. Fujiyoshi or Fujiuki's defense is that there's no motive as far as has been reported so far. That's probably what I would say. Maybe a bear had a knife. Yeah. But it is interesting because it's not the first time in

recent memory that a bear has been blamed for a crime that it obviously did not commit. So it's an interesting little alibi people are trying to skate by on not that I think Fuji Yoshi I don't know it's not like he planted Incepted the idea that it was a bear to his mom, but just kind of a weird coincidence I thought Yeah, interesting. Yeah, well, we'll wait to hear what happens out there Hopefully they got their their top dogs on that case. Yeah, Prime Minister. Let us know I've he got stabbed their prime minister did that once shot something happened to me

Yeah, I thought he was stabbed, but maybe you're shot. Yeah, I can't I can't remember. All right. So I'm going to do a quick two-parter on two stories that we've done and like kind of some follow-ups. One is a direct follow-up. One is more of a tangential one. And that one is Jeff's recent episode about a man in Australia who was attacked by a saltwater crocodile and used his dog to try and escape the jaws of that beast. His dog, Dig-Dig. So this one I called Justice for Dig-Dig because it's a story from the U.S. where it was a very opposite reaction. So when Danny Wright moved... Dog used the human as a weapon. Danny Wright is a Massachusetts resident who moved to Florida 20 years ago. Seems to be a pretty tough woman. And when she moved there, she knew that she might have to deal with alligators at some

point, but she never imagined it would be in the way that she had to the other week. And this is what she said to NBC10 in Boston was, I was like, punch, punch, elbow elbow kick. So that was her quote. It's a good five-hit combo. Yeah. But pretty much what happened is she was walking her dog Dax, who is a four-month-old Shih Tzu along a creek when an alligator suddenly exploded from the creek and

snatched her dog. And she heard the dog squealing and barking. And then she was pulled toward the creek because the dog was on a leash. And she said, I wasn't going to listen to my dog getting Eden and to see it and to hear it. I'd end up in a psych ward if I went through that. So they're now all three in the water struggling. And the alligator had actually grabbed the dog Dax by his air tag.

So by his little like GPS air tag on his collar. So she won't be able to find him if he gets away. Yeah. So he better not get away or else it's going to be a whole other problem. But she was able to pull the dog away. And as she was doing this, the gator latched onto her arm. And this is when she was like punch punch, elbow kick. Which, like, shout out to her, but that is, like, why you don't in this situation, why it would be acceptable to not save your dog is there's a good chance it will change its attention to you. And now you're in big danger.

I'm not saying she did the wrong thing. I'm just saying, like, you are putting yourself at risk if you try to save your dog. I'm trying to say, like, shout out to her for putting herself at this risk because that's scary. Right. Yeah. So she was bit by the gator. but she credits her upbringing in Boston, Massachusetts for ability to bar fights and stuff. I know why I'm doing a country accent all of a sudden.

But to fight off this wicked gaita. I don't know. Jeff, how do you do your Boston accent? Yeah. You just don't do the ars. Shock. Okay. Shaka.

Gaeta. All right, Baya. Eventually, this alligator did let go of her arm. It took a bit of a pounding and then it decided to let go. The dog wasn't her at all, but she did have some pretty big lacerations on her. arm and I had to go to the hospital and get treated for those. But she did manage to save her dog. So good for her and good for Dax. And then the other one I had. Do you know what they should call if a dog, if a dog gets wounded? Call them lassie erations is what I would call them. Lassie

variations. I do like that. Introducing the new best skin ever ultra slim precision concealer from Sephora Collection. It's full coverage with a matte finish and perfect for any look, whether you're building it up for a full glam moment or targeting correction for a more natural vibe. At only $12, it's great for affordable touch-ups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at saffora.com today. This episode is brought to you by Tidy Cats.

Here to level up your litter game with their new Performance Plus. lineup. Your home is your happy place. Your cats, VIPs. So when it comes to the litter box, excellence isn't optional. Choose from products that specialize in max power clumping, low tracking, or odor fighting so

advanced, stink won't see it coming. Tidy Cats Performance Plus. Mission Mighty, keep it tidy. Shop now at Tidycats.com. These days, you've got two choices. Buying a new car or making the one you've got,

run like new. We know which one we'd choose. That's why at Firestone complete auto care, we have thousands of ASE certified technicians nationwide trained to spot an issue with your car before it becomes a problem, no matter the make or model. Get more out of your car. Firestone complete auto care. Call or go online at firestone auto.com to book today. All right. So this one, a few years ago we reported on this story in a news episode. And it was a woman who tried to take her kids' life by throwing it into a bare enclosure in Uzbekistan. And unfortunately, so when that happened, this woman was put in a psych ward. She was under psychiatric observation for years and had been receiving treatment.

And then just recently, on the 2nd of August 2025, she was discharged from the psychiatric clinic with a recommendation for outpatient monitoring. And this daughter that she had tried to kill in the bare enclosure, she ended up stabbing the death. Oh my gosh. Yeah, pretty crazy. And yeah, it goes to show if someone tries to throw their daughter into a bear enclosure to kill them,

maybe they need longer behind bars. Maybe the daughter shouldn't be allowed to go back to that person. That's probably not someone that should ever have custody of their kids again. Exactly. It's really sad. Yeah. All right, those are my two follow-ups. I got more stories, but I'll wait for my turn.

All right. Well, I'm going to get all of my stuff out right now. Okay. Do it. So I just like being in Austria, you know? Something about Austria draws me to it. I think the Austrian Alps, when I see pictures of it, and I'm not saying, I'm saying mentally, I like being in Austrian Alps.

Yeah. They're like screensavers that show Austrian Alps. I think it would be cool. to hike there and a retired couple. Good sausages. From Vienna. There it is. They also felt that way.

And they brought their dog out there. And the 85-year-old hiker was just walking around in the Alps with his wife, just enjoying life. They walk up on a herd of nine cows. What would your panic meter be at, Wes? Panic meter would be like a one. Mike. I don't know. Isn't that the nine cows?

That was actually a good sign when, Joseph in the Technicolor dream coat saw the cows. That was like a good dream. It was like the season of plenty was coming for Egypt. So I'd be pretty stoked. You'd be like a negative. Wes, what is the most dangerous animal in the Austrian out? Like wild animal or animal in general?

Either. I mean, animals in general, I'd probably say cows. Really? Is there no grislies or any like predators really out in Austria? I don't, if there are grislies, they're really just like passing through. think they have like a real population there. They probably have some wolves, but I think it's mostly like domestics that... The cows are the only things that would really square up with a human. I think so. Yeah. Well, that's why this story really stuck out to me is just like a lot of

our people who have encounters when you put yourself in their shoes, it's like, it's really sad that happened, but this person should have put themselves in a better situation. And like, there's things you could do to avoid it. And this one, it's just like, man, like, that would have for sure happened to me, too, you know? Yeah. So they see these nine cows, which three of the cows are calves, and the cows just decided to. Does that change your panic rating at all with? A little, it makes it a little higher.

Yeah, honestly. The cows decide to charge them. They knock them over and they start trampling them. So there's some local people, they're called huts. There's some local people in huts that hear the commotion. They see it happening. They immediately go, start assisting them in the best way they can and then get emergency services there. They are taking to a hospital and the man died from his injuries before he could even get to emergency surgery.

Wow. So I was just like, wow, a cow killing you in the Alps seems one in a million, right? Well, maybe, I guess, because there's nice. It's more than that because there's nine million people there that visit the mountains. But in 2024, a woman with two small dogs was also hiking in the Salzburg region and was killed by a herd of cows that charged her. So they're telling people to be really careful when you're walking with dogs, which is something tooth and claws told people as well. Keep them on a short leash and they think maybe the dogs kind of provoked some attacks. but that's not, I'm not reporting that that's what happened.

That wasn't reported. But they did say, like, make sure if you have dogs, keep them on a short leash because that can provoke a attack. And I just think it's interesting that if you're in the Alps, you got to watch out for their, because they do have free-ranging cows. And, like, I think it's a little different than our cows where our cows are just so, so controlled and, like, so their lives.

These ones are just like out in the mountains. And it's like, you know, it is a big animal that used to be a wild animal until we completely domesticated them. So I just feel like you do have to be careful of any big animals you see no matter how familiar you are with them. Especially in like a out in the open type of setting. Yeah. And then I just want to give my honorable mentions real quick too. there's two fathers that recently have died from crocodiles. Someone was killed in South Africa and someone was killed in Indonesia.

So the South Africa one would be a Nile crocodile, not a saltwater crocodile. Okay. I said Crocodone. Oh, I thought you said saltwater crocodiles. I'm good. Cut that, Bill. No, I wanted you to say what type it was, so don't cut it, Bill. Okay.

But, yeah, so one was probably a Nile and one was. was probably saltwater, right? Indonesia was salt water and South Africa was Nile. Yeah, for sure, those two species. And then the South African one sounded a lot like the story I did too where he was kind of slowly dragged in but just wasn't, didn't have the mangroves to hold on to or a dog to hit it with or something. And a bunch of people were there and saw it, which is pretty terrible.

And then also a bachelor party in South Africa. someone went into his tent after like partying on night and they like left a little crack in the top and two hyenas jumped in through the top of the tent and there's like a big female that bit his legs and then a littler one that bit him on the face and that's kind of just an interesting story. I was thinking about that one like imagine just going really hard

at your buddy's bachelor party and you're like maybe not in a total, you know, sober state of mind in your bed and suddenly two hyenas show up, it would be so weird. Especially if they were laughing. If they were laughing, I'd be like, wait, this is a prank. This is my buddy's fault in a prank. All right, that's what I got.

Great. A little weird to frame those as your honorable mentions to me somehow, but I get what, I see where you're trying to get out there. Notable, notable headlines. Notable. Yeah. Notable stories. Thank you for it.

No, I'm glad you called that at. I didn't want to be Mr. Podantic, but that's just kind of who I am. Very honorable of that man to be attacked by those hyenas. Right. Okay, I've got just a quick one, then I'll pass it off for you to finish whatever else you've got West. So this is a story kind of developing.

We don't have a whole lot of information. More or less, the headline will give it away. but recently in the ivory coast, a hippo capsized a boat. It was a pretty narrow canoe-like boat. There were 11 people on it, including some children and at least one infant. Yeah?

Well, sorry, I read this one too. But it said that 11 people went missing and three people survived. So I think there's 14 people on it. Okay, so 14 people total then. Three survivors. But it is curious, though, that 11 people are just gone.

I wouldn't expect that on just like a river. I don't know what kind of river it was. It doesn't sound like it was intense whitewater rafting or anything, but the fact that 11 people are not able to be found makes me think that there's something a little more at work than just drowning. But I could be wrong. I'm just, that's total speculation on my part. I read it too, and I couldn't find any updated articles.

I looked through like 30 that just said 11 people missing, but then like some spokespeople said like, we condolences to the family and like their speech was very much as if they think these 11 people are dead. Yeah, right. I think, I mean, I know that like some of these people may have been children and stuff too. I think it's very likely that it was mostly drowning that happened. Because I do think, you know, if a hippo, if a hippo capsizes your boat in the middle of a river, there's a lot of chaos. There's a lot of splashing and boat flipping or maybe hitting people.

who knows. So my guess would be it's probably mostly drowning that happened to these people. I don't think it was the hippo or other animals. Yeah. I wasn't trying to insinuate anything more than just like that is a high number of people on that fatality list for. Yeah. It's tough.

It sucks. A lot of people for one hippo. It could be some crocodiles too. Yeah. Yeah. Over to you, Wes. Pretty sad. I have a quick kind of funny one that is a bit of a climatic.

media update for koalas. Oh, nice. So as we've talked about a lot on this show, koalas are sick little bastards and they're constantly giving each other chlamydia. And that's mostly through sexual intercourse, but sometimes it's also through the mom. White elephant gift exchanges. The mom like feeds her, her babies the stuff called pap, which is kind of a like a fecal thing. Yeah, but they can get it from that as well.

Oh. But essentially, there's parts of Australia where, like, up to 90% of the koalas in those populations have chlamydia, and it does really affect them. It does kill a lot of koalas. It's a huge problem. So a regulator has approved a world-first vaccine to try and protect koalas from chlamydia infections. This would be a one, a single-dose vaccine that a koala would receive once and would

make it so these symptoms of chlamydia didn't have any effect on them, it would decrease mortality from the disease in wild populations by up to 65%, or at least 65%. So really, the idea here is there's like probably somewhere around 100,000 wild koalas out in Australia. There would probably be teams that would go out and just vaccinate wild koalas, or if like a koala got hurt or something and ended up in a veterinary hospital, they would just make sure to give this vaccine. scene to any and all koalas that they ever get their hands on. It's been a really big undertaking. A lot of money's been sunk into doing this.

There are some people that are kind of poking holes in this. Deborah Tabert, who is the chair of the Conservation Charity Australian Chihuahala Foundation, says that these resources would have been much better spent on saving koala habitat. And she says, at the risk of sounding flippant, how can anyone be so delusional as to think you can vaccinate 100,000 animals. That's ridiculous. I accept that chlamydia is an issue for koalas, but I also want people to understand that they're sick because they haven't got any habitat. And we've talked about this a lot recently in the podcast, but when animal populations become fragmented and when you have these populations where

there's no animals coming in or out of those subpopulations, they often do get all the same diseases. And in this case, a lot of that habitat now is butted up against agriculture. And we do think that the koalas are getting chlamydia as a result of being so close to agriculture and to livestock and whatnot. So I do think she's right. But if they open up like a line of to get to other koalas, then won't they spread their chlamydia to all those other populations that don't have it as much? They all have it. There's no population in Australia that doesn't have at least some chlamydia now. If I ever get it, you know what happened.

Yeah. You got it from a koala? I don't know what happened. That'd be so far down the list of guesses of where you got it. I would hope it's very far down the list. Anyway, so I kind of find myself in the middle of these two camps. I agree with this woman, like, yeah, you know, the best money that could be spent on koalas is protecting habitat. But I also think it's really cool that they have a vaccine for this now for koalas.

Feels like it would be one of the easier animals to vaccinate too. Yeah. As far as like they're not too good at escaping things. Do you think there's going to be a big culture war now in koala society about like whether or not they're vaxed? Like when koal is die, are they going to be like vaxed? Was that vaxed? Right. What?

So how was a koala's behavior going to? change once it no longer has chlamydia? Is it just going to be more energetic or what? I think it affects them in a lot of different ways. I don't know fully how, but I do know that one thing they've tried to do is give them antibiotics to deal with it when they do find

sick koalas. But those antibiotics make it so they can't digest eucalyptus anymore. So it really affects their digestion. So there's not like an easy fix for it. And the disease itself does have like some pretty pronounced symptoms in them. So it's a big problem for them.

This isn't like a small problem. Yeah. They just, you know, they just got to be a little safer. These little rapid converts. Yeah, exactly. All right. Save it till they're married, maybe. Yeah, save it for marriage.

I forgot one thing before we go to categories. I just want to do like, because these ones can get a little depressing, I feel like just how many people get attacked. So I want to do an uplifting conservation thing. I don't think we've ever talked about it. I'm sorry if we have, but the Iberian links. I don't think so. Yeah.

So they live in Spain and Portugal. And in 2001, there were only 62 mature individuals in the wild. So they were like critically endangered and at the point of almost being extinct. And then they put a ton of effort into preserving them. So in 2022, they got. got their population up to 648. And then in 2024, there's estimated to be over 2,000. Wow.

And a lot of that was they also put a lot of conservation into the endangered European rabbit. And that was like a big food source for the links. So having the rabbit go endangered made it. So the links went endangered. So they got a lot more rabbits. Now they're getting a lot more links. and it's just a really great success story that I wanted to shout out. Cool.

Thanks. Nice. Good job, Iberian links. Is that it? You got any more stuff less? No, I'm done. I'm good. Sounds like Jeff and I are done too, so categories it is, right?

Yeah. Let's go. You put them together today. I did put them together. Wes gave me the enviable task. It's always so fun, just thinking of questions to ask you guys, you know? Yeah. You went out of the box with it this week.

You're always the best at it. I tried to make it more interesting than like, what's your, you like bears, right? That's my category. You like bears. What's your favorite bear that wears a hat in pop culture? Okay. That's a good one, Paddington for sure. Well, we've done.

I mean, everyone knows that. We don't need it to deliberate. Okay, so this is something that's been kind of weirdly top of mind for me. Because September always occurs to me is to be, is like being such a tweener month. It's like, yeah, not really something. summer anymore, but it's not really quite fall either. So I'm wondering if you guys have September in your top half or your bottom half of favorite months out of the year. Top. Yeah. Why? So I'm going to tell you my cons for September before I tell you my pros. My number one con is that

in Montana, at least the nights get cold enough that the water starts getting really cold. So you can't really like swim or spend as much time in water as you were able to before. Like in August, it's just so nice going down to the river and swimming and stuff. But outside of that, I love September. I feel like it cools off a little bit. It's generally when our wildfire smoke starts to clear out. It's when our leaves really start to change a lot here. I just think it's like such a beautiful, nice transition month.

And I really, I used to hate the fall, but I think a big part of that was because I hated because school started. And I've slowly gotten away from that. And now between like October being one of my favorite months because of how Halloween and just the fall in general. September's definitely top, top half month for me. Okay. I think it's my favorite month.

Wow. Really? I think it's my number one. It's between that and October, but I think I'd give the edge to September. But you're a huge 9-11 fan, and that's why you like it so much. Yeah. Building seven, I don't know what happened with that. You got to open your eyes, sheeple.

But anyways, yeah, I mean, the fishing's still pretty good. The colors change. It's like warm, but not like too hot. And the summer drains me a lot. And I kind of start getting the wind under my sails a lot more in September. Yeah. Football's back. It's your, it's your birthday month.

It is. Yeah. I forgot. Happy birthday, by the way. Wait, can I say, sorry, Mike, I don't want to like steal your thing right now. but is Mike's birthday last time we recorded, and me and West didn't know. And then I was just scrolling Reddit,

and on the tooth and claw Reddit, someone said, like, I think it might be Mike's birthday today. And it's like, if so, happy birthday, Mike. And I went to Google, and I googled Bilbo Baggins' birthday,

and it's September 22nd, because that's how I remember Mike. Then I was like, Mike, happy birthday. But that's the best present is to leave you alone on your birthday. It was the best birthday, yeah. I celebrated it with my family the day before, so we got all that out of the way. So the actual day itself was just me and a bunch of leftover cake.

Dude, it was so sweet. See, that Reddit user, that was me, actually. It was like, oh, no wonder about I got it. I need to prompt them. Yeah. No, not really. I don't, it didn't bother me at all. And I hope you guys know that.

It's either six or seven for me. I can't decide on which side of the line it falls. Because I definitely like October, November, December more. And I think I like April, May, and June more as well. But April and May is a little forgettable too for me. So I don't know. What's the month that it's like either six or seven with? May, probably.

Oh, May. You like April more than May. I don't really think not a whole lot's going on in May for me. I don't know. May is when it starts to get really green and pretty. So May is one of my favorites. Yeah. And there's that joke.

always where it's like it's gonna be May. That's fun to see. I forget about it and then I'm like, oh, that's good. Insync. Not backslip. I think I like May, June, July, October, and December more than September. But then I think that September's next. So it's what?

It's six for me. The fall colors right now are so good. How are going to be even better in like two weeks? I don't know. They're pretty peak right now. This is kind of peak. Okay. I feel like.

Well, yeah. Anyway. That's a great question. Good to get that out of the way. Okay. Yeah. Now we know how we all feel about September. The people were asking.

Wake me up when September ends. Exactly. We know how Billy Joe feels about it. Doesn't even want to be awake for it. It's just sleep. Okay. So Fat Bear Week just started. I think yesterday voting began.

I was wondering if you guys were competing what your strategy is going to be. Like what food are you going to eat? How are you going to go about gaining the most weight for the winter season? Am I a bear? mind myself. You're yourself. I did it as a bear. And my answer is just eating a bunch of salmon.

Oh, that's a good strategy. It's worked in the past for bears. As a person, I would say, for me, like my, the thing I can just eat and eat and eat without ever, like, feeling like I don't want more is cookies. So I would just eat as many cookies as possible. I would make those, like, Hershey Kiss peanut butter cookies. I would eat a ton of those. I would have just packs of Oreos on hand

and I would just go real hard on cookies. And I think that would be my quickest way to gain the weight. Peanut butter is a good one. That stuff has so many calories somehow. I don't understand nuts how that works. I do find that after Christmas is always when I'm like my beefiest and it's mostly because of cookies. I'll stick with my thread but give a better human answer too.

One of the foods I can just keep eating forever is sushi. So maybe I'll just get like a bunch of salmon sushi. Oh, that could work with some rice for the carbs. Cream cheese in there. Get some cream cheese. I think I'm on board with the Oreo idea, West. But I will say the most or the least healthy I've ever been was when I was working the night shift. And I've come to learn some science that like sleeping at night is actually incredibly important for regulating like hormones and insulin.

and stuff, and I think that really did a number on me. So whatever I'm eating, it's going to be through the night. I'd rupture my patella tendon again, sign. Can't move. That worked. I used to be thin. You'll probably do that regardless. All right.

With all your surgeries. Next one. Oh, yeah. So we brought up, Jeff was in an escape room if we keep that part in the intro. So what is the most dangerous animal? You feel like you could have completed that escape room if it were in the same room with you guys at the same time that we think we actually could have completed it though yeah like you're confident you're gonna complete it still it was me and daniel and she's smart it's like two brains

but i was like three-fourths of a brain and she doesn't have a headache one and one-fourth of a brain you know and we couldn't get through so i feel like i'd need a really smart animal so i think like coyotes are pretty good at getting out of stuff like i can't like you're putting it in as far as like what could I escape from? Right. But like I'm going to need this animal's help to get out. So I'm thinking like the coyote or dolphin or something like that. I think the most dangerous animal I could have in there and still make it out would be like a black mamba.

Okay. Because I feel like there's some real danger there, you know, but I could probably avoid it and still get through the room. But like I would, I think there's snakes that would be a lot easier to avoid, but then they're not nearly as dangerous. So I think that's like right at that line where it's super dangerous, but I could probably still do it. Yeah. So I actually, I did take the liberty of texting Danielle to ask her this question. And she said, great. I don't think I could have escaped the room without clues from the guide.

And I hated it so much. I wish something really dangerous was in there. So it would kill me and just put me out of my misery. That was her answer. She was getting real frustrated. Sounds like a great time for Daniel. Yeah. It made me feel so justified because I, I've,

I've been telling Jeff that I would hate it. I've never done it, but I am confident that I would hate it. And after last night's events, I'm like, I'm really glad you didn't come because we were pressuring you. But, like, the first one we did was so cool and it was really fun because, like, yeah, we like communicate a little bit, but you also just kind of work on your own thing and there's like a really cool room. And then this one is like so dark you couldn't like read the clues.

And it's just sounds miserable. Not great. I think you'd like it, Mike. Like if we got a good one. Sure. I don't know. Immediately dismissed. That was Jeff's category.

We're going to West. I was wondering, would you give a harder note if I invited you to play frisbee golf or go to an escape room? Oh, I'd go to an escape room a thousand times out of a thousand. I truly despise Frisbee golf. I think it's beyond a normal hatred. It's such a stupid, simple little thing to like hate that. It seems like something Mike would love too. Hate.

I don't agree with that. Hate. Love is too strong. I'm like AI and I have no mouth and I must scream when he gives the monologue. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Okay, Wes, this is your category. Yeah. Birding, you're a big birder.

It's kind of like collecting. And I equated that to, The one collection I ever really got started down when I was younger, Pokemon cards. So I want you to create a Pokemon card out of the rarest bird you've ever seen. Just what's going to be like it's stats, what's on the card, what's it look like, etc. Yeah. So I had a hard time thinking of what's the rarest bird I've ever seen. And that's because I'm not someone who really like keeps a list or it's hard for me to go back and like really think on it.

But I did pick one that I know is like relatively rare, especially in parts of its range, that I think for being a rare bird I had like such an incredible experience with. And that's the Andean condor. It's one of the largest flying birds in the world. So that would be one of its stats. Its wingspan gets up to 10.5 feet. Probably has a lot of HP. Yeah, a lot of HP when it comes to flying especially. And I think its special power would be its ability to soar on thermals.

Okay. For me, the coolest thing, the reason I picked this bird is there's a lot, there's places in South America where you can see them, but it's usually like you see a little soaring bird and you're like, oh, that's an Indian condor, you know? But I, in Chile, I went to this place where I hiked up a mountain and there was a roost and I had Andean condors flying in front of me at eye level at like 20 feet away. And it was just such an incredible experience with a really rare bird. And yeah, so for me, like what other things are on Pokemon cards? I'm not a big Pokemon player. That's a good question. What else should I do assigning?

Is it going to be holographic? Is it going to be all shiny and stuff? It would be holographic. They have this really cool crest on their head, the males especially. They have a white collar that's really beautiful. Hilary Henke, who was on our Makai episode, our friend that does bird training. She's in the middle of training in Andy and Condor. It's been really fun following her.

Instagram and seeing her progress with this just monster of a bird. How much damage could it take? That's the other thing is I think they could take a lot of damage because it's a really big bird. Like 120 damage points? High HP. Is that high? Yeah.

Yeah. Would it evolve into a bigger condor ever? That's a good question. That's, no, this would be its final stage revolution. This is a final stage. Because this is a big, big assper. What about that one we saw in the Himalayas with like? like red feet.

That was a bearded vulture. Yeah. The one in the river with the red, yeah. Wasn't that one super rare? That was, um, what was that bird or something? It wasn't a plover.

Piping plover. It was. It wasn't a plover. Red-footed piping plover. That's not what it was. I can't remember what it was, but that's not it. But yeah,

that was a rare bird. That bird's more just that it was migratory, and we were kind of right at the end of it, I think. So we were lucky to see it. But yeah, I honestly was trying real hard to think on like the rarest bird I've seen and I really don't know. But Andy and Conderors are definitely rare. Thermal soar sounds like a Pokemon move. Like, oh, he's using thermal soar.

I'm dead now. It's cool because you'll see them just soaring and they're not flapping their wings or anything. They're just like riding these thermals and they can do them for a really long time. It's really cool. Yeah. How much would you buy that card for? I'd buy it for like $20,000. Oh, that's pretty good.

Yeah. But Jake Paul spent $2 million on a Charzard. But like that's not, that's abnormal. Yeah, Logan, that's right. I got my Pauls mixed up. Listen, make fun of the Pauls all you want. I will. And I normally won't clap back at all.

But I think the Charzard necklace is cool. It's sweet. And it's like, cool. Is it $2 million cool? Well, that's the whole point of wearing like a blinged out necklace in the first place to show your wealth, right? So he's kind of just like, I don't think it's cool at all, though.

Oh, yeah. You're the odd one out then, West. Okay, I'm going to do, so I gave myself a category because I've embarked on a pretty, like a couple month-long project at this point now. So I went back and I re-listened to all of Taylor Swift's album.

And I'm going to do my report just real quick, five things off the top of my brain. Which album, the new one? No, I, so we did the list. All of it. Listener songs. Yeah, we did the listener song bracket to great success. People seem to really enjoy that.

I was still a little hung up on the Taylor Swift. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do my homework. If I'm ever going to criticize her again, I'll at least be able to say I did the work. So I went back. I've listened to every single, I think I've listened to every single thing that she has released studio-wise. I haven't gotten into the live releases. Did you, like, read about her dating history to, like, know the stories of the songs? while you were listening to it.

I tried to do as much work as I could, but at a certain point, stuff started just bouncing off my brain. I mean, it adds context to it. That's my personal. Go ahead. So, yeah, that's a level 10 escape room for us. So I should have trusted my instincts.

So 1989, still my favorite album. I think despite having my least favorite song on it, it's my favorite out, yeah, not ever of all time by anyone. It's my favorite Taylor Swift. album emerged from this like a hardcore swifty. Yeah. So my favorite song, again, I should have just known, but it was all you had to do was stay.

I think it's a perfectly constructed pop song. Blank Space is, of course, great. Bad Blood, I think is my least favorite song that she's ever put out. I think it's like stripped down to the molecule to just be radio friendly as possible. But anyway, still love the album. I like it more than her re-release. I like the original version of 1989 more than her version. but I do like her version of Red

much more than the studio release originally. So take that for whatever that means. Evermore, better album I gave it credit for initially. Not amazing, but a lot better than I was giving her credit for. Midnights is my least favorite album, which has Jeff's favorite song on it, I think. The Vigilani, whatever that's a terrible song, Jeff. I'm sorry.

It's a good seller. Tortured Poet Society, I think is what it's called. Still a boring album. I apologize. And my last observation is that Travis Kelsey is washed baby get him out of the league he sucks the chiefs oh man suck my dick's always mad now he's been yelling at the coaches i know i know there's like not catch the ball how about before you start yelling Travis too big for his britches yeah so wait did you come out of it liking her any more than

when you started not really or any less kind of solidify probably a little more honestly and i've never said that she's bad i just personally don't care for her music uh at least recently. But she is working with Max Martin again for this newest album, the life of a show, whatever the album's going to be called. So I'm excited for that because it turns out all of my favorite stuff was produced in tandem with Max Martin by her side. So that's exciting to me. Great. All right. I think that's it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks everyone for recommending stories for us. Yeah. We appreciate it. It is helpful. Thank you to our intern Brin for categorizing them for us.

It's really helpful. That's also very helpful. Thank you, Bill, for helping us. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, India. Anyone get that reference? For sure, India. Well, thank you, everyone's a little problematic.

Sure, not everyone, but yeah. All right, I'll see you guys later. Love you. Love you guys. See ya. Bye.