Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Alligator Attack - 2 Brothers 1 Gator

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Wayne and Joel Petteway were out checking on crab pots in Jacksonville, Florida when an alligator took exception to him being in its waters. (10:06) - timestamp if you want to skip Jeff's story about getting catfished! Watch here: Alligator Attack - 2 Brothers 1 Gator ~~ 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

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Register today at richfield, Utah.com. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our bear biologist and doesn't like dancing robots, but he likes dancing animals. Actually, no, you don't like dancing animals. I don't really like dancing animals either. I do like dancing robots, Jeff. I just don't need to own one. But I do like that. I'm Wes's brother, Jeff Larson, and we got Mike Smith. Hey, looking dapper with his turtleneck. Love it. Pretty much a brother.

I don't mean that as a dig. I'm being genuine. I like turtlenecks. You look good. Thank you. I feel good. I have a story I kind of wanted to lead with that, I mean, if it goes a little long, we could even just tell people skip ahead. But I don't think it'll go super long.

That's up to you. I had a listener catfish me on Instagram. Okay. Whoa. Let's hear about it. I saw this. It was just like sexy lady legs with the bubble, right? And they had like commented on.

Like their avatar picture was that? Yeah. There's like no faces. Just a skirt with like legs. That's all it takes. You know? Yeah. If you want to get Jeff's attention.

I read all of our comments on Instagram and like I'd seen that bubble. And then that same day they commented on something they were in my DMs messaging me. I look at their profile and I see that it started in September. So it'd only been around for six months or something. And that's weird because like they did have a few cute pictures or whatever. So they're like asking me all these questions I was answering. And I was like, so how come your Instagram's only like six? months old and they said oh i had a stalker who was a neighbor who like invited me a dinner and then

like stalked me really hard the police were involved i had to start it all over because of that and i was like all right sure whatever i i wasn't very invested so it's like i'm not going to question that they're sending me a few messages it's very just light and whatever and like i'll respond to any listeners who dm me and ask me things so then they like start showing me these cookies they made and they made these bear cookies that were really cool looking. I was like, oh, you got to send me cookies. And they're like, yeah, I'd love to you. And then they asked for my number and my address, and I gave it to them.

Oh, no. And then, man, they're just texting me so much. They send me this text of a Beanie Baby that's like Michigan State themed. Look at this Beanie Baby. I'm like, you know what? I think I'm done talking to this person. So I just, like, didn't respond a while later. They're like, do you want me to delete your night?

number and it's like we didn't text very much. I was like, why would you delete my number? And then they're like, oh, I just don't want to be bothering you. And then I'm like, I don't know. And then they like start telling me they're going through chemo. And I had a personal goal that some listeners had told me, all of us, but like it told me that tooth and claws really helped them with like cancer treatments or sicknesses. I always respond. And I'm very nice about it. But it was kind of like, you know, I could have done more and like checked in with those people and like tried a little harder to really them through something hard. So I was like, maybe I should just support this person because it's obvious that they

need some attention. So I started talking to him a bit again. But then I like send mic a text. It's like, dude, this person asks me if they should delete my number. I'm regretting not saying yes so much. But then that night, I'm like trying but not really responding that much. And that night on their Instagram story, I see a SpongeBob meme of going into 2025 expecting not to get my heartbroken immediately gets heartbroken because guy won't text her back.

And I was like, whoa. Like, that's insane. We're not even flirting or anything. So then, I don't know, it just seemed weird. But then the next day they start messaging me a bunch and I send them a screenshot of their story. I was like, was this about me? They're like, yeah, it is. And I was like, yeah, that's a problem because I'm like not going to be talking to you as much as I happen.

and you're like not liking how little I talk to you. And then they just go into this whole chemo thing. Oh, like, I'll just delete you. They block me on Instagram immediately unblock me so that I'm not following them anymore. But then keep just DMing me a ton. They started using stuff to try to get me to be like, oh, I'm sorry. It's my fault. I was like, listen, I think that you rightfully have a lot going on.

You just need some support. Can you like talk to friends and family? and they're like, no, they don't talk to me. If I died, no one will know. I'm just like, well, I talked to you like one day ago. I don't like, you're putting a lot on me here. Oh, man. They bring up chemo.

I'm like, that's so, I don't know, I can't imagine, but honestly, I can't be there for you the entire day. They say, well, you're ugly on the inside of an app. Whoa. And then they say by to me so many times, too. and I say, I wish you the best, goodbye. And then just so much more stuff. And it's just never going to end. So the next day, they called me like ugly and whatever.

And I just am thinking, there's something weird about this. So I go on their Instagram and I look in none of their pictures, even like pictures of them just being a cute girl, none of them have any comments. So I say, okay, this can't be real. So then I put one of the pictures that they just texted me, which was weird just to text me pictures of themselves. But I took a picture and I searched it on Google. Nothing came up.

So then I paid $10 for this like face search website that I randomly found on Reddit. And I found the actual person. So then I DM the actual person. I was like, this person's been trying to catfish me with your pictures. They've had your account up for a few months. And the person was like, yeah, they also used it on Hinge around here in Michigan. And like, I don't know who it is. So I was like, well, actually, I have their phone number.

So maybe you should check your contacts. And I sent them the phone number. And they're like, oh, it's not my contacts. And then I sent on Instagram, I sent the catfish. They sent me this huge rant after I had said goodbye again. They said, I'm never talking to you again. I'm like, okay, goodbye. That's probably a good idea.

Thank you. Yeah. And there's maybe the fifth time that they told me they're never talking to me And then the next day they're like, I just got to say, I wasn't looking to you for support. I just wanted to open myself up as a friend. I can't believe you would reject that. They're like in nursing school. So I told him once, I thought about nursing for a sec.

They're like, you would have made a terrible nurse because nurses need to be compassionate and you're not compassionate, but I'm a great nurse. And just this huge rant. So I replied with screenshots of the actual girls' photos that this fake girl had sent me. And I said, so who the f*** are you actually? And then they deleted everything, never talked to me again. And then right afterwards, the real girl message me again and said, oh, we looked up the phone number and the white pages. It's so and so.

Wow. And the person, there's a high chance they're listening right now and are just finding out I know their name. Well, the story could continue from there then. But yeah, they deleted the whole account. And, you know, I don't feel too embarrassed because I don't think I really got too deep into it. I think I was just kind of bored at the start. Sure. You know, I'll engage with people.

Like, especially you tell me you're going through chemo. Like, yeah, I'll talk to you. Especially if you got sexy legs in your after. Yeah, I don't know. It's just kind of crazy. It was funny, though, because, like, this person was giving me real anxiety. I was on, like, a walk, and I was just like, I'm so anxious that this person's going to text me. and like,

yeah, I just don't want to respond. So then once I figured it out, I had like so much relief and just, yeah, feeling really good about myself. I'm just, I'm just glad you're the one that got scammed for once and not me.

You know, it's nice to have someone else in the scam club. I don't feel scammed, though. You never do. You got scammed. They got your address and your phone number. I feel like I'm like one of those people who like get the scammers to give money. Sure.

Yeah. I don't know. If you're walking around feeling super. super anxious about communicating with this person and you gave them your number and your address feels like you got a little scammed at least emotionally scammed a little bit yeah but that's like well you i don't blame you that could have happened then i don't either yeah you know i don't think it's anything to be embarrassed about i'm just saying it feels good right not the only scammy the lesson i got out of it is like if you bother me to a certain point by just demanding me text

you all day you're going to make me get you it to a breaking point. That's what I learned about myself. I don't like texting. You know what the weirdest part of the story was to me? Was when she showed you a beanie baby and that was the moment you decided you were done? I would have guessed that that would have been the moment

you bought in even more because you love any. Yeah. I know. That was strange to me too. She also sent me a picture of like a rock that says Michigan State on it. And she's just like, I don't know what to tell you. It's wrong. Well, there are you ladies out there.

Learn your lessons. Don't send Jeff photos of rocks or beanie babies. Animal attack of the day is catfish, apparently. That's the big story of this episode. Apparently, we're halfway through already. Let's get into our actual story for the day. If you guys are ready, Jeff, I'm glad you didn't compromise yourself any further with this catfish and that you caught them. Good job catching that catfish.

Yeah, I feel good about it. You should make a show about catching catfish. I know. I think that's a great idea. Well, I hope you all brought your swamp accents today because we're, we're going to head to the swamp. Yes, sir. So the source. What is a swamp hat?

No, accent. Your swamp accent. Do you say accent? Yeah, accent. A hat wouldn't hurt, though. Bring your swamp hats, too. Big old swamp hats. Anyway, today's source is mostly from the show I Was Prey, which could watch on Animal Planet,

which is probably now Max. I don't know. I also read a number of news articles about this particular incident. It involves this man named Wayne Pedaway. Isn't an animal planet just Earth, you know? Yeah. It's not a planet with more animals than Earth. Not that we know of.

There's probably one out there, though. So like planet Earth and animal planets, pretty much the same title. Yeah. You should let Zazlov, whatever the guy that owns Max, let him know that. That's a dumb name. I don't know. He came up with Max instead of HBO. So I don't think he's.

great at naming things. Okay. So we're talking about Wayne today. He watched the social network when the part where he's like, lose the the on the Facebook. Yeah, he's like, that's what I need to do. Just get rid of HBO, this brand that people really love. So yeah, we're talking about a Wayne today, Wayne Petaway.

He grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina. And like a lot of people, family was always really important to him. As a kid, his brother, Joel, was quite a bit bigger and older than him, but it didn't stop them from playing together. They spent a lot of time doing lots of different things together, fishing, crabbing, all sorts of things. And Joel was really into boxing, the older brother, and he would pay Wayne a dollar to spar with him.

He would let Wayne be bare-fisted, and he would use boxing gloves, because he's, like, significantly older and bigger than Wayne at the time, and would just beat the shit out of Wayne. One dollar. Wait, when did you say this was taking place? This is, I'm not sure exactly the year. I would guess probably in like the 60s or 70s. Okay. So the dollars.

It's not bad. Not bad. I would have done that. Wayne, you know, Wayne still loves his brother. They got along really well. He did say once he got in a really good right. And then his brother was like, okay, we're not boxing anymore.

Anyway, after high school, he joined the Army National Guard, which he credits with making him a lot stronger, a lot tougher. He got married right after the National Guard. They had a son named Robert. Apparently Robert was a little chunky baby because when he popped out, the doctor saw him and said, this here's a Bubba. And they're like, no, his name's Robert. And he's like, no, this is Bubba. That's what the doctor said.

But they still named him Robert, which I think he's probably grateful for that. That is crazy. Yeah. The doctor's just telling him, no. Your name's wrong. Sorry, all fat children are named Bubba in this hospital. Wayne ended up getting divorced when Robert was still pretty young. and says that the divorce completely shattered him,

but he really wanted to be a good dad to his son. And on June 6, 2001, Wayne had been taking care of Robert, who's still really young. They were staying at Wayne's mom's house when he got a call from his brother, Joel. And Joel told him that he was at Town Point, which is on New River, and it's a spot that the two grew up going to

for fishing and crabbing. And to kind of explain this spot for you, imagine, like, you know, in the south when you get water that's clear but also kind of brownish-red, because it has a lot of tannins in it. That's what this river looks like. It's really big and brown but also clear water and has these really wide beaches

that are surrounded by like cypress trees and swamp. Really pretty little place to hang out. Anyway, his brother's hanging out there and he says, I got two crab pots in the water. You should come chill, come throw a frisbee with me and my wife. And Wayne's staying with his mom and his mom says, go have fun. I'll watch Robert.

Robert's taking a nap, so you can leave for a few hours. hours. So Wayne gets his stuff together and he heads towards town point. And to get there, once you get to the end of the pavement, you have to kind of walk through miles of bush to get to this spot. It's pretty isolated, but it's a spot that they both really love to hang out. Joel's wife, Gloria is there. She'd set up a tent. And when Wayne got there, the two just kind of drink some beers, they hang out. They're talking on the sandy beach. They haven't gotten in the water. They're just kind of chilling. And the time passes pretty quickly. You know, when you're having fun, time can fly.

You know, that's the truth. It is. Yeah, I should copyright that. That's crazy. Oh, man. Wow. So the time passes and Wayne's thinking, I should probably go back. Surely Robert's waking up from his nap by now.

I left him with our mom. It's probably time for me to get back home and spend some time with my son. And because he's got a shared custody thing, time with his son is really precious to him. So he really wants to get back. He tells Joel, hey, I need to go. But Joel says, wait, Before you leave, I got these two crab pots out in the water. Let's go pull them and check them before you leave.

And who can say no to that? You know? You guys can't say no to that. If you're crabbing, you can't turn down pulling a couple pots. No, you cannot. That's like the sirens and the Odyssey, you know? If you got crab pots in the water, you're not going away from those. Wayne does, you know, like those sailors in the Odyssey did.

When they heard the siren song, he goes. He says, all right, I'll go. And he has a bad feeling and something's telling him not to go in the water. And he's pretty hesitant. But then the other thing that you just can't say no to happens, his brother calls him a pussy. Oh, yeah. And if your brother calls you that, it's really hard to be like. Because he doesn't really want to go?

Yeah, he just kind of feels like he shouldn't go out in the water and he should go back home to his son. You can't overuse it though. Like maybe his brother hardly ever calls him that. Yeah. Because if he calls him it for like not running the red light and stuff, it's like, whatever. If you like always, it works every single time. He's like, I'll run this red light.

Yeah. I love how your example of something very casual is something that is actually kind of extreme, just running a red light. Yeah. It's kind of a big deal. Yeah. I was just saying like that's something he could call you a pussy for, you know, like as a joke, like run that red light, you pussy.

Which, you know, we shouldn't be calling people that anyways. It's just kind of an offensive thing to call anyone. He gives in this peer pressure. And I think peer pressure from brothers is a really specific, very effective type of peer pressure. I think we've all probably done some things that we didn't want to do because our brothers peer pressured us into it. Is that correct? Very.

I can think of a few. Yeah, me too. The water of the beach was about waist deep for 100 meters out, kind of this sandbar almost. And the crab pots were about 50. 50 meters out into that and then about 50 meters apart. And when these two were about halfway to the pots, they heard a big splash, but figured it might just be Gloria throwing something in the water to scare them, like throwing a log or something in the water. So they kept moving out. They got a few more meters out in the water when suddenly Gloria started screaming, alligator, alligator, alligator.

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live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. We're going to talk a little bit about alligator biology. It's been a minute since we've done an episode completely devoted to them. I think you did one last year about the guy who was collecting shark teeth and got attacked by an alligator. Yeah.

But prior to that, I think our last main-voodoo fossils on Instagram. I think our last main before that was Tommy Woodward, which was one of our first episodes. I did one on that news story. Mike brought it to the New Orleans. That's right. The flood when it came swam into that guy's backyard. That's crazy. Was that a subscription episode?

I think it was. So I'll just get blurred in there. Yeah. Anyway, let's start with some basic facts. So alligators are crocodilians, which means they're in the same order as crocodiles, Cayman, garrials, and Tomasthomas, or false garyles. So gharials, and I might be pronouncing that wrong, I'm sorry if I am, they're the crocodiles that have the really skinny snout that sticks way out with the big teeth

that are perfect for catching fish. Critically endangered animals, but they are members of the same order. I guess I'll stop liking them. There are two living say yourself a heartbreak. Yeah, exactly. When they inevitably die out. Introduce people to new animals that are going to die out the next year. Sad.

No. There's two living species of alligator. There's the American alligator and the Chinese alligator. The Chinese alligator likely split from the American alligator about 33 million years ago, made its way over the Bering Land Bridge and into China. What? They're much smaller alligator, and they are also critically endangered, with only a few hundred left in the wild. But as much as we'd like to, we're not here to talk.

about the Chinese alligator. We're going to talk about the American alligator. America. America. The bigger, more aggressive alligator, which, you know, adds up. America. The alligator isn't on the Chinese zodiac, is it? You would know, Jeff.

You did an episode on that. You remember? It's not. But they actually think that the inspiration for, like, the Chinese dragon may have come from the Chinese alligator. Oh, interesting. So in a way it could be kind of represented on. the zodiac. I don't know,

I don't see to me, alligators breathing fire. No, I don't think that was the inspiration, more just like the teeth than, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Don't see a lot of alligators hoarding gold. They do have teeth. Yeah.

All right. So like a lot of the animals we've talked about, especially ones that live in water, there are some unverified claims of absolutely massive alligators much longer than 15 feet. And there are enough of these claims that there's a study titled a critical analysis for historical size record for the American alligator.

So pretty much these authors were looking at some of these crazy claims of just alligators that were much bigger than any that we have on record. And specifically, they're looking at one from the late 1800s that said a 27-foot, 783-pound alligator had been caught in Louisiana. So those two numbers don't match up very well is the thing. A 27 foot, 783 pound alligator. 783 pounds isn't that big for an alligator. 27 feet is huge.

So this would be the skinniest alligator ever. It'd be like a snake. It'd be like wimby. Who's wimbi? Wembyama, Wimbonyama. NBA main prospect in San Antonio, but he's like super tall and skinny. Yeah, it'd be like him. Anyway, they kind of put together this model that shows how weight should increase as size

increases and they showed that it's impossible that a 27 foot alligator would weigh that much. So they kind of made this claim seem like it was BS. And as far as the record goes, the biggest one ever that was caught on record, I think was about 15 feet long and weighed a bit over a thousand pounds. So really, they don't get to these huge lengths that you sometimes hear reported in the news. And averages for me. It's like two cars back to back. Yeah, 15 feet. Is that right? How long is a car?

A bit longer than that. A bit longer. A car and a quarter. A car and a quarter? One car and then a quarter of a car. Yeah. Or like two fiats maybe. I feel like 15 feet was a really good bus reference and you just skipped cars for some reason. But sure. A small bus. Okay. So averages for mature males is more in the 8 to 10 foot range, weights of like 200 to 300 pounds. and averages on females tend to be more like six to eight feet long and about 100 to 200 pounds. But they can get much bigger and much heavier than that.

And it's hard to get a good average because they are so widespread. And they get a lot bigger or smaller depending on the area they live in and the habitat they live in. And overall, body size for them tends to get smaller as you move further north in their habitat. So we're going to play a quick game. Kind of the same with Americans. As you move north? If you go south, they get big. Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of true. The obesity stats do bear that out. There's a scientific principle, too, and I forget what it's called. In mammals, as you move further north and south, they tend to get more compact but also heavier. I don't know if that really applies to reptiles or not. Okay, so we're going to play quick game. Each of you are going to name a state where alligators can currently be found, and you'll get a point for naming a correct state.

You'll also get a bonus point if you name the state that's still on the board. that has the highest population of alligators. Whoever has the most points at the end of this will get a $20 mystery gift that I'm going to send to your house. How many states are there? Do you want to say? Yes. There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten states.

Okay. And if you miss it, like if you get the stay wrong, it's going to go to the other person. Okay? Got it. Sure. Let's see. Randomly, I'm going to pick who's going first. Mike.

Whoa. So you're trying to guess the state that has him and the state that has the most. I'm going to go with Florida is my first number one overall pick. You got one point. You did not get the state that has it. No, dang it.

I'll go with Louisiana. Correct. Two points for Jeff. That's what I was. Whatever. I don't even care. So Louisiana and Florida have both been named. That would have been my first overall pick, by the way, too.

Because I felt like he's trying to trick us. Yeah, no, I'm having fun, though, still. This is great. Florida is number two for population. So, you know, it's off the board. I think I remember you even have told us that before. I'm a real goofball here. I'm still having fun, though.

We did something similar. Just having game time with my friends. Okay, you're up. I'll go with South Carolina. Correct, it is a state. It is not the state that has the next most highest population. No, I forgot that that was still in the two points. Name in state.

No, we're not. We're not. We're still trying to get the highest population that's still on the board. I'll go with Georgia. Correct. You have a state. It's not the highest that's on the board. The next highest is still on the board.

Texas? Correct. So now it is four to three. Who's winning? Well, Mike is winning, but he did go first. Yeah. Right. So just so you know, it goes Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Georgia.

Those have all been named. Oh, and then the number. next one has also been named two. South Carolina is the next state that has the most. So Jeff, can you guess what's next that has the most? Give me Bama. Alabama. We want Bama. That's two points. You got five. Mike, you still have four. The next four states are still on the board as far as the population size. Mississippi? Correct. You have six points. Jeff, you have five points. Can you Say the next one. I want to go with Arkansas.

Got it. Oh, wow. Seven points. Mike? North Carolina? Good job. Eight points. Jeff, to win it all?

Uh-oh. Last state. Oh, man, I need a map. What else down in there? You've named all the states in the deep south already. And like all the ones where they have ocean. Mm-hmm. Well.

In the deep south. Yes. Ocean and alligators aren't really connected. Is there alligators in Virginia? There used to be, but there aren't anymore. Every one small one wanders in, but that's not the last state. Mike? Tennessee?

No. Missouri. What is it? No. Just keep naming states. Whoever gets that's good in. Mississippi? Yeah.

Kentucky. We already said Mississippi. Nope, not Kentucky. Oklahoma? There it is. Yeah. Mike. Yeah. All right. So the states are Louisiana with the most and Florida, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Oklahoma with about 100 alligators. Wow. So those are the states where they can be found. They do occasionally wander into other states like Virginia and Tennessee, but those are the ones with existing populations. They make some pretty cool noises. There's some of the more vocal reptiles and they make a number of different vocalizations throughout their lives.

When they're newborn, they make a really unique noise. It kind of sounds like a chirp or a weird laser gun. Which I'm going to play for both of you right now. Wait, do it yourself first. Pium, boom, boom, boom, boom. So that is the sound of baby. It sounds like throwing a rock on ice. On ice.

It really does. Or at one of those water towers. Have you ever done that? He probably shouldn't do that. That's what it sounds like. I mean, it'd be a good idea if there's a fire. Just break the water. Water Tower.

Okay. They make that noise to tell their mom to dig them out of the nest. That's when they first make it. And then they continue it in their early life as a way to communicate

with their mother and as a distress call. One of the other more interesting noises that adult alligators make is what's called a bellow. Bellowing is more common or at least more noticeable in males. Both sexes actually can do it.

And they bellow in order to communicate, to attract mates, and to kind of assert their dominance over other alligators. And when male alligators bellow, they raise their head and their tail out of the water. They force air into their lungs. And when they expel that air, it makes a really low frequency roaring sound. And that constitutes a bellow.

They also make this subaudible vibration through an infrasonic signal. Big opera singers, they kind of got screwed over a bit, I feel like. Why? Like a big old hefty opera singer. Because like they can bellow. They're like pretty big. Any other animal, that'd be like their number one mating partner. I'm sure they still get girls, but I'm just saying.

Who would John Crosinski just one sexiest man in the world? I don't think he could bellow nearly as good as those guys. Yeah, you're probably right. Bellowing isn't like a sign of fitness in humans, but in Alligators it is. Yeah. So if there's any big opera singers out there, big fat opera singers that need someone to talk to, Jeff understands your struggle. Just hit them up in the DMs with an avatar of sexy, like serious. He'll respond to you immediately.

So males also make a subaudible vibration through an infrasonic signal that causes the water to vibrate and dance above their back. And a somewhat recent study showed that the resonance frequency of an alphersonic signal. Alligators bellow is a near perfect indicator of their overall size. So the hypothesis behind this study is that through bellowing, alligators can pretty much say, hey, I'm this big, so you should mate with me or you should stay away from me. Cool. It's kind of just a way for them to tell other alligators how big they are by their bellow.

It's like when I like benching 200 pounds. Like that's how big I am. Sure. That's how much you can bench. Yeah. They're incredibly opportunistic predators. They eat a wide variety of food, including fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, crustaceans, invertebrates, and even fruit.

There's a study that shows they help propagate certain fruit trees by eating fruit. I like that. I always like that when they're part of the environment, like the animals you wouldn't expect. Yeah. And like when meat eaters eat fruit, I always kind of like, dude. They're actually ecosystem engineers, too. They create little pools that bring in a lot of water. and they are really important animals for where they're found.

Maybe Jordan Peterson should incorporate some fruit into that. I heard he's on the carnivore diet where he literally only eats meat. I'm just going to say eat an apple every once in a while, Jordan. But what do I know? When you see, not to attack any specific diet or anything, but when you see those influencers that are really into like the carnivore diets or like the liver king and all those people, they look like there's just something simmering in them

like they're about to like explode They always look like red And glistening exactly It's like you can see the cholesterol dripping off of them One other thing about alligators They have one of the highest bite forces in the animal kingdom Which means they can bite through hard substances Like turtle shell or mammal bone

But they kind of have a kryptonite Dude what are your turtle shells even good for All these animals are biting through. It's true. Good for break dancing. Yeah, they are good for break dancing. But that hard bite force comes with kind of a kryptonite. Do you guys know what it is?

They've got those really good muscles for closing their mouth. It's hard to open them, right? Yeah, they got really weak. But does that really get them in trouble with anything but humans? Not really. No, and that's probably why they evolved that way. Yeah, we figured out. huge alligator and I can just

I can hold its mouth pinch its mouth closed their teeth are designed for gripping rather than chewing or tearing so they'll often either swallow their prey whole or they'll stash larger prey allowing it time to kind of rot and soften and then they'll tear off smaller pieces

that they can swallow whole attacks on humans are really rare especially considering that we have somewhere around 5 million alligators in the south and most attacks are a result of people either harassed harassing or feeding alligators. Unprovoked attacks do happen sometimes, and they generally happen when someone is swimming,

and the alligator approaches that person with its head above the water. And there's a reason for that, and I think it's really interesting. If an alligator's head is above the water, its eyes are completely above the water. So they're not seeing anything below the water. And if you're swimming and say you have just your head above the water or your shoulders above the water, you don't look that big to an alligator. You look like something that it can probably pretty easily attack and subdue because it's not seeing the majority of your body.

So often when they do attack people in the water, the thought is that it's kind of mistaken identity where they think they're biting something that they can easily handle and they realize afterwards that they can't, but often then they're like already engaged and kind of in that predator mode. That's like pretty much exactly how it happened to William when he's glucking the teeth. Yeah, exactly. Weird Al would be safe if he were swimming around. It always seems like he has just a huge head to me when I see pictures of him.

The bigger the head, the better. That's all I'm saying. That's true. Fluff your hair out, you know? Bigger brain, probably. You should be cautious about swimming in freshwater where alligators live because you can trigger that kind of predatory response. Donovan Mitchell, Jeff, he'd be safe.

His head is normal. I got a big head for my body especially. Your head is huge. It's crazy, actually. All right. So attacks on humans. I could find data on 41 fatalities from alligators since 1957. During that time frame, there were also a few hundred injuries.

Each source I found was reporting different numbers. So I do think there was somewhere between 300 and 400 injuries since 1957 to the present. It's important to note that a lot of those injuries. injuries are from alligators that had been fed or provoked. So while they do attack and kill the occasional person, it's nowhere near the number that crocodiles do. I remember when we, I was little, and things have probably changed, maybe, I don't know, I don't want to say for sure, but when I was little, we were living in Georgia and my dad

heard about this good spot to see alligators up in South Carolina. So we just drove up there and it was a totally unregulated thing. There was like a hole in a fence that people could just like sneak down a little. little slope to and people were just like throwing stuff into the water like children unsupervised is really really crazy to see and there's alligators didn't yeah there's tons of alligators just they weren't throwing children into the water though children were throwing things into the water that i didn't see any children being thrown but okay you have to imagine accidentally every once in a while yeah i mean this isn't it a hard animal to see if you want to see aligators in the wild

just go to the Everglades and you will see alligators in the wild I can almost 100% guarantee it there's a couple places you can stop where you will see them and we're lucky for that.

What are the cases they wouldn't see them you think? If you just drove the main road and never stopped it like any water sources then yeah you might not see them but if you're a hard of seeing but if you do the tiniest bit

of yeah of research you can find places where you have almost a guaranteed chance of seeing alligators Maybe if you're like a baby, you wouldn't really see him. Or you might not just register. Jim Arbile would. Who's that?

Harbaugh? The Chargers coach who said he remembers like the day he was born and driving home from the hospital. Oh yeah, he would remember it. I believe that. And he'd know what it is. Yeah. All right. So Wayne and Joel, his brother, are waist deep in the water.

He'd probably remember the doctor trying to name him something else that his parents didn't want. John? That's not a John. That's a. That's a baba. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish.

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and Joel's wife, Gloria, is screaming that she sees an alligator in the water. Wayne looks around and at first he doesn't see anything, but then he sees a large 10 and a half foot reptile speeding toward him in the water, and it was moving so fast he could see it leaving a wake behind it. He started running through the waste deep water, trying to get to shore, but that's really slow going. If you've ever tried to run through waste steep water, it's not very fast. I feel like those type of waterways get a lot of mud on the bottom.

Yeah, it's not like he's running over rocks. He's trudging through mud. And he sees that the alligator is quickly closing in on them. He looks at his brother, one of the people he loves most in the world, and he makes the decision that he would rather the alligator come after him than after his brother. So we start splashing aggressively in the world. in the water trying to draw the alligator toward him. Wow.

It works. The alligator starts coming toward him, but then as it goes towards Wayne, Joel starts doing the same thing. He starts splashing and the alligator turns back toward him again. Oh, they're making it dizzy. Yeah, both brothers don't want the alligator to get their brother and they're taking turns splashing and drawing the alligator back and forth. And this actually kind of seems to be working.

It's kind of confusing the alligator. They're about 10 meters from shore, and suddenly the alligator kind of realizes what's going on, and it focuses in on Wayne, and it lunges forward toward the water. The alligator lunge. It was out to get me. Wayne puts his arm out to try and push off the alligator,

but it turns, opens his mouth, and Wayne suddenly sees, in slow motion as he describes it, these jaws full of teeth clamping down on his arm and he remembers in detail the feeling of these teeth puncturing through his flesh on his arm and the sensation of his arm bones

crunching and snapping under the pressure of the jaws geez stiff arm's a good move too that's too bad that the alligator at its mouth open it was hissing as it bit into his arm

and then he over the hiss heard a loud snap as his arm completely broke, and he saw the water turn red around the head of the alligator as his blood started gushing out. With his time in the National Guard and countless hours out in the outdoors, he'd always felt really strong and incapable and thought that he could kind of take on anything, but he remembers feeling completely helpless and out of control with his arm in this alligator's mouth, and that feeling intensified when this alligator started rolling.

So you guys remember what a death roll is, right? Oh, yeah. So do you remember kind of the purposes of a death roll for an alligator? I know that they're like trying to drown a person and also like you said, they don't really chew. They need to swallow things so that that's how they rip off chunks of what they're eating. Right. So my thought, and again, I'm not an alligator expert, a biologist, but I do know a fair amount about them. I've trapped them in the wild.

I've tagged them. I've done a few things with alligators. my thought is that this alligator was probably realizing that this was like a bigger prey item than it had thought. And it's now just trying to rip his arm off because that is like enough for it to kind of leave with and be happy with, you know. So I do think at this point it's just trying to separate his arm from his body. That is an interesting thought because you did, you brought up the fact that they see us as a lot smaller than we really are. And then it's probably a big surprise to them when we're just a massive. massive thing and all of a sudden they're contending with something that's pretty

equally sized to them so I'm sure they're afraid too. It seems to the, that wasn't like its intention until the person stuck his arm out as it was like lunching, you know? Yeah, I, and we'll talk about this a little later. I kind of think that this might have been a defensive kind of territorial attack to start, but then once it had his arm in his mouth, it was like, okay, you know, I'm going to try and rip this off and eat it. Right. Anyway, Wayne felt himself get lifted off his feet. He was violently rolled through the water. And then suddenly the alligator stopped and simply held him underwater. And he looked up through the water, through his own blood, and he could see the trees on the shore of the river. And he could even see the faint shapes of his brother, Joel, and his wife, Gloria, running around trying to figure out how to help him. He tried his best to hold his breath, but it was really hard. And that makes a lot of sense to me. It's hard to hold your breath.

anyway and if you're being held under the water by an alligator that's got to be insanely difficult that like just made you do like a whole flip in the air yeah i always think about that when the when we have these stories of people that have to hold their breath like yeah if you are really focusing and whatnot you can probably hold your breath for a couple minutes but when someone pushes your hand under water you feel like you need air immediately you know it's this like Or it's like, go run like a 100-yard sprint and then try to hold your breath. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so it is a lot trickier than just holding your breath. But he realized he might die if he didn't fight back. So he starts punching the alligator, but he said it felt like hitting a tank. And his hand is just bouncing off of these osteoderms on the alligator's back. He was a Navy SEAL, right? Yeah, no, he wasn't. You would know it's like punching a tank. Army National Army.

Okay. That's right. Army don't punch tanks. Navy seals do you. If you'll remember though, alligators have osteoderms, which are essentially like bony plates right under their skin.

They have this built-in armor. And when I've caught them, they really do feel so much harder than you ever would imagine. You gotta go for gut bones on their back. Yeah. For what punches? Gut punches.

Yeah. And even their liver shot. They're like ventral scales are really tough too. They're just, they're really well-built, Tannibal. They're hard to hurt. But in the response to this struggle, the alligator pushes Wayne a little deeper in the water

and actually holds him down against the river bottom. And Wayne looks out into the water and he gets a good look at his mangled left arm. And he remembers being able to see tendons, bone, and strips of flesh just kind of floating and splayed out in the water. And he realized his arm is so ripped up that he could hardly believe it was his own arm. Wait, how do you get out of the water? He's not. He's underwater looking at his heart. Oh, I see.

In the water. Yeah. And then the alligator starts rolling again. The pain starts setting in, and Wayne feels his strength leaving, and he starts realizing that this is how he's going to die. And when he's about to let go, the face of his son starts flashing through his head. And he knows that if he dies... Bubba.

Yeah. Little Bubba Robert. His son would grow up without a dad. So the alligator's carrying Wayne further out in the river, and... And he starts choking on the water, but in that moment when things were looking as bad as they possibly could be, he suddenly feels an overwhelming sense of peace, and he swears that he hears a voice telling him to stay completely still. So he does it. He goes completely still.

And the alligator, maybe thinking that it had finally killed its prey, brought Wayne up to the surface where he took a huge rasping breath. Wow. The alligator then starts pushing Wayne toward the shore, and Wayne knew a bit about alligators. and he thought maybe the alligator thought he was dead and was searching for a log or somewhere to stash and cache his body. So it was probably looking for a place to cash him and Wayne realized that

and as he was heading toward the shore with the alligator he turned his head again toward his arm which was still in its mouth and he saw that it was now so shredded that not much was keeping his forearm attached to the rest of his arm and that he might actually lose it to the alligator. He's going to go 127 hours. hours on it.

Yeah, just pulls out his pocket knife and cuts it off. Drinks his own pee and uses the alligator cut off the arm. He didn't do that. Wayne really didn't want to lose his left arm. Dr. He tried to leave his pee, maybe. Yeah, he wouldn't, I don't think he would have the problem with water. That's good.

He tries to pull his left arm out of the alligator's mouth with his right arm. And in a flash, the alligator changes its grip, open and closes its mouth. down now on his right arm and forearm as well. And he hears the bones snap in that arm as well. So both arms are in its mouth? Both arms. He has two broken arms now and they're both in the alligator's mouth. Oh no.

And he's realizing that any minute this gator might start rolling again and it could try and drown him again. So he's bracing himself for the worst when suddenly he feels Joel's arms wrap around him and his brother's trying to pull him out of the water and away from the alligator. Wow. That's like the ultimate Chinese finger trap. You know those little things where both your fingers get stuck.

And you've got to push them together. Yeah. Jeff gave those to our little, our nephew and nieces, and they sure had a time with them. They just shredded them. Rip him. Fingers were stuck and he just couldn't come out and he was like getting mad at me for giving it to him. Well, and Ellie just tore it apart immediately.

She's like, I figured it out. Ellie is smart. Yeah. Anyway, so Joel is inadvertently he started this game of Tugawar over Wayne with this alligator, and he's pulling on Wayne, he's punching the alligator. It's really not having much effect. But he is able to gain some ground and pull Wayne and the alligator in closer to shore where Gloria was waiting. And guess what Gloria had. That's right. She had a big old stick. You're ready to hit this alligator at the stick. The old Teddy Roosevelt. Yep. She started clubbing the alligator with the stick and then pushed one end of the stick into its eye and just shove down with all of her force. Oh, nice. And that, yeah, that was finally enough to get the skater to release its grip.

And Wayne and Joel didn't waste any time scrambling away from the alligator and up on shore. Joel had a second to catch his breath and then he looked over at his brother Wayne's arm and lost his breath again. on his left arm both of the bones were clearly visible sticking out of his forearm his radius and his ulna they're broken in several places and they were just sticking out of this ragged flesh and tendons and then his right forearm was also torn open and at least one bone was broken and visible there as well it kind of looked like he'd put both of his forearms into an industrial meat grinder there were seven and a half miles from the nearest main road and wayne was thinking he might still bleed out and Joel agreed with him.

It was kind of funny because he said, like I was thinking I was going to die and Joel was telling me I was going to die. I feel like usually the person helping is like, it's going to be okay, don't worry. And it sounds like Joel was like, oh, you're going to die. That's like good reverse psychology for someone dying though.

Because I do feel like, no, I'm not. Don't worry, you're going to make it. The person's kind of like, I don't think I'm going to make it. But if you're like, you're about to die, the person might be like, F you, dude, I know I'm not. Especially with your brother.

You're like, no, you what? Shut up, dude, you don't know. That's smart. It is. Speaking of smart, they knew they were going to need a tourniquet, and they looked around for a good thing that could serve as a tourniquet, and Gloria took off her bikini top, and they used it as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Wow. So maybe this was just the most elaborate plan ever for Wayne to finally see us. sister-in-law Toplis. Who knows? It actually, I do know if that's not what it was. Definitely not. Who knows? Crazy joke.

Yeah. But I liked it. And remember, the tourniquet, tight it, keep it tight, and don't loosen it at all. Just don't loosen it for any reason. Bra probably is pretty good thing to make a tourniquet out. Yeah, it was kind of elasticy, so it worked really well. What's that movement called for you the nipple? Do you the nipple or something?

I don't know. They had some coolers with beers, so they had a lot of ice, and they packed his arm in ice. Joel reached for his cell phone. This is 2001, so not too many people have cell phones, but Joel did have one. He reached for it and realized it had been in his pocket during this entire water recipe.

Nokia might be all right. Both brothers were sure it wasn't going to work, but he managed to get a single call in to 911, and then the phone died. Yeah, it died after that. wouldn't work again. Oh, wow. But he did get one call out.

That's so lucky. The ambulance they got a hold of was going to take a long time to get to them. They knew that after talking to 911. But there had been some Marines training in the area, and they had actually heard the emergency distress call over the scanner. So not the call to 911, but I think the resulting calls of them trying to contact paramedics and stuff, the Marines had picked up that chatter, and they went to where Wayne had been attacked.

They showed up. They helped stabilize him. And then they helped him get him to the nearest pavement where a marine ambulance showed up and drove him to the nearest hospital. Oh, wow. Yeah. That'd be crazy if you're them, like, you're just waiting for the ambulance and then a bunch of Marines pop out of the trains.

Yeah. Yeah. Those Marines wouldn't have a problem punching a tank, I bet. No. They could have, yeah, they would just punch that alligator into Bolivian. Anyway, the doctors and nurses said his arms were way worse than anything they had ever seen. They were almost certain that they were going to have to amputate his left arm. Wayne ended up staying in the hospital for 17 days,

and during that recovery he had over a dozen surgeries. But doctors were able to save his arms, and they did his skin graft to try and make it look a little bit better from his leg. They took some skin. But he actually says the skin graft was maybe the most painful thing he experienced. Oh, weird. I have a photo of it. It's pretty gnarly.

Mike, are you prepared to see it? Yeah, those always looks so bad when it, like, first happens, but then I think it ends up looking okay. But at the start, it's like that. That doesn't work. What are we doing? People got mad at me once for making Mike see Timothy Treadwell's photos. I didn't want to see it, dude. Are you prepared to see?

I can send. Okay. You consent to see it. Thank you. All right. So you can see. They took like, it's like a lawnmower patch of a inch and a half wide and probably nine inch patch of skin just from the top of his leg. And in this photo, it just looks like it's like red and raw.

And that's crazy. It's not bandaged. Yeah. Yeah. That looks awfully. His arm too, just to describe it, it's like his wrist and his elbow look normal size, but then the middle is just missing a good deal of the mass. And to this day, that's what his arm looks like. It kind of just looks like an hourglass.

Like a Frankenstein arm kind of. Pretty rough, but he is really happy not to have lost his arm, obviously. He does credit Joel and Gloria was saving his life. He also thinks learning how to take a punch and be tough as a kid, helped him be tough enough to survive this attack. And Joel actually broke his thumb hitting the alligator. His brother, when he was punching it, trying to get it to release. He did break his thumb.

How long did he stay in the hump? hospital. I don't know. Do you think he just kept saying like, well, Wayne, it wasn't just you. Yeah. I also did break my thumb. And you embarrassed my wife. Wayne wasn't strong enough to hold his son right after the surgeries. And he let that really motivate him to go really hard on his physical therapy because he really wanted to be able to hold and pick up his son again. And two broken arms and plus all this like skin grafting and stuff, that's rough. That'd be really hard to recover. from. Yeah. I like how big a part his newborn son played in this story. Just his face appearing in

his brain when he was under the water. It's really cool. I like that. Wayne's, he's a really good guy. I really, as you're watching his interview, as I was watching his interview, I could just feel some people, you just get that sense of like kindness emanating from them. And I could feel that with him. You can tell he's like a good person. He really cared about being a good dad. And he actually, the alligator was killed and the beach was close to swimming. But he did say that he didn't blame this alligator at all. They think it might have been a female alligator defending a nest. And Wayne just kind of said, you know, they're animals. Like they do what comes naturally to them. And I was in its habitat. So I did really like Wayne.

Did they even catching crabs? I don't know if they got any crabs. Yeah, it's a good question. It's kind of like life. We choose what orders we go in. I won't choose to go at town point no more. I choose to go to the pool. They hate no alligators in the pool. All right, guys. Well, before we go on to our categories, let's talk about our ouchies.

What do you guys think? Yeah, we probably should. Should we do like a refresher that I feel like I always need to say this just because I give numbers that people are like, that's insane. But this is just based off of like the worst animal attacks ever. So all, every number is like pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah, for me, a 10 is someone, the standard is Cynthia Dussel Bacon, who got both her arms chewed off by a black bear.

He had to deal with a lifetime of trauma after that. So, hours and hours of suffering through an attack and then everything that comes with that afterwards. You know what the, I think I'm going to give this one a nine. Yeah, it's a pretty good one. I think, like, for someone to, like, live after an animal attack, he's got a lot of damage to have to have to. deal with the rest of his life from this one. Yeah. I'm going to go with an eight, I think.

I don't know. Nine sounds maybe right. Eight and a half. Do we do half points? Yeah, I don't know if there's any rules. Mine was an eight when it just had the one arm, but then once it got both arms. You know what? The thing that pushes it up to a nine for me maybe is the picture of his leg.

That looked just so bad. Just a strip of his leg is gone. The doctors are just like, you know what? Let's fuck up his leg too. The doctor's like, here, bite this stick. We're going to take some skin off your leg. It just feels like he wasn't on pain med so you didn't have bandages. Yeah, it was a little rough.

I'm going to go eight. I think it was really bad. And I think the trauma of it all being held underwater by an alligator having both arms broken. But for me, for me a nine is like someone that can't walk away from their attack. Yeah, maybe you're right. A 10 is like either someone that's just horrific. horrifically mauled or killed. So this is an eight for me.

But yeah, yeah. I'll go with eight too. You got me. You got me with. To me, the survivors are worse than people who die for like how much it hurt. Yeah, it depends on how long it takes for them to die and stuff. But I agree. I think the mental trauma should be put into that too.

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So the first one I asked you guys is a favorite brother rescue scene from media, from movies or TV. A favorite scene where brothers are rescuing each other. I'm going to go with It's a Wonderful Life, the opening scene where George Bailey jumps in the frozen pond to save his brother. Just the start of a beautiful brother ship, if that's a word. That's the new Mario and Luigi game. Brother ship? That's not a word.

Yeah, I don't think so. Brotherhood? Brotherhood, I guess. Yeah, probably. But I also, I can't not shout out when Pollux jumps in in the fight in the prison. and face off to help castor he gets involved i always really like that part i kind of forget because he's always treated as the kid brother who can't do anything for himself he even gets his his shoes tied for him by castor so when it when he jumps in that fight i'm always like yeah

pollux can do it he can fight for himself too i love when he can't tie his shoes but he could like yeah right i love when two brothers are evil too like they're both just like yeah we're both going to be crazy criminals. Terrible criminals. Yeah. That one doesn't count, though, because it wasn't actually castor. That's true. It was John Chavolta.

Jeff, what's your answer? I had Scar and Mufasa if you watch it in reverse. Then scars you save in Mufasa. Okay. But also I had from Friday Night Lights the TV show when the Riggins brothers, they have like their auto show. shop. Yeah.

And then the older brother is, people are stealing cars and he's break them down for parts. Yeah. And then the cops come. Chop shop. And he's, and Tim Riggins, he doesn't know. He's just happy. He's like happy for the first time ever. But then the cops come and he's like, you know what, brother?

You're about to have your son. I'll go to jail for you. And his brother's like, I love you, man. I love you so much. God. Dex is forever. I'm going to pick Legends of the Fall. Just rewatched it.

One of my favorite directors, Edswick. Well, they don't really save the brother. No, but he tries. And there's a little Samuel is caught in the barbed wire and the Germans really slowly are setting up their machine gun to mow him down. And Brad Pitt sees it, charges out, jumps the barrier, shoots the Germans dead, but they still manage to shoot Samuel first. But then he gets to his brother as he's dying and gets to say goodbye. And otherwise he wouldn't have been able to say goodbye.

So at least he gets to do that. And then, yeah, he gets revenge. Scalps them all. Of our family, I'm the youngest and Wes is the middle. So he would be Brad Pitt. And I'd be the one dying in the barbed wire. And Tristan's also obsessed with grizzly bears, you know. So there you go.

But Samuel was everyone's favorite. and you're everyone's favorite, Jeff. So it all adds up. All right, next category. Favorite thing to do with your brothers? Samuel wasn't even his girlfriend's favorite. Yeah, but she was, but she didn't realize it yet. She just got seduced by Tristan.

She had that little scene with Tristan before he died. He seduced her, though. He's a bad brother. Yeah. All right. What was the question? Favorite thing to do with your brothers. We all got brothers.

Me and Jeff only have brothers. Me and Wes will have the same answer. Yeah, I do think we will. But you can say it. Say it. Fly fishing. Yeah, it is my favorite thing. I think it's like where we're all the most equals too.

We all are like pretty decent at dry fly fishing, especially like we have favorite spots. All of us kind of have our own unique styles, but we're all like pretty capable of catching some fish. And it's just nice being in the Montana wilderness. Three brothers catching some fish. Yeah. I think you're a little bit better than me, but I do think we're all pretty close. You're like a pro.

People hire you to go do it with them. I guided, but it was like a very different type of fly fishing. Like dry fly fishing, I wouldn't say I'm any better than what. Mike, what's your answer? I'm going to go, so I'm actually going to split it up

because me and my two brothers each have our own things that we do with each other. So my brother Nate and I, most recently we've been doing some mooie tie, some working out in a gym. That's been really, really fun, super, super hard. But we also just love going out, especially for sushi, just finding a place to go out and eat some lunch together. And then my brother Garrett, the oldest brother, we started a new annual tradition of watching

all the Matrix movies together because we're the only two people in the world that like the sequels as much as each other. So that's been a really fun thing to connect over it. And we like, as we're doing it, we'll talk about the philosophy and we'll do a bunch of like pre-gaming and watch some, just a bunch of like YouTube videos exploring the deeper themes that are incorporated into the story and stuff. It's just really fun. That's been a really great exercise. Are you about to do that? And that's why you're wearing a black turtleneck.

Yeah. I do kind of look like I'm ready to go. FIFA diamond or something. You know, I agree with Jeff. Like fly fishing is my number one. I really like just playing card games with my brothers too. Like we really like that as a family, but when both Jeff and Cyrus are there,

it's just really funny and fun. And I just feel like I can do it for hours without getting tired of it. Just because it's fun to kind of make fun of each other in a lighthearted way like that. So I really, that's really fun for me. It's fun wrestling too. It's just kind of like a big hugging match. Yeah, that's how we hug. All right.

I wanted to do what would Mike and Jeff do? So let's say your brother is out there in the water, getting tacked by a gator. You really want to pull your crab pots, but you haven't been able to pull them yet. What are you doing? I have something that I think might actually not be completely stupid this time. All right. All right. I feel like alligators, especially once they get pretty big, really have two weaknesses.

They're eyeballs and also one that you brought up, Wes, that they can't really over. open their mouth very well if you're holding their mouth. So I was thinking, like, where he stuck his arm out to try to, like, stiff arm the alligator, it made it, like, pretty easy, it seems like, for the alligator to just bite his arm. Yeah. And, like, there's a moment of panic. You don't know what to do. But I think I have seen videos where people can, like, pull their arm out before the alligator

actually bites it. So if you time it just right, you could pull your arm back and then close its mouth and just, and just hold it to mouth closed. Yeah. I think if you were really, really good with alligators, you can do that. They are incredibly fast at how quickly they can turn and clamp their mouth down. So I would never say that should be your strategy. But you should try to make sure it never opens its mouth to begin with.

But if, yeah, if you can get its mouth closed. I don't know. By not being in the water with it. I'll get into that. But Mike, why don't you do your, what would Mike and Jeff do? I was thinking maybe there was a moment where I know this came up. I don't know exactly how, but the alligator thought he might have been dead, but he wasn't really quite yet.

So I would just pretend to be dead immediately. After five seconds, just go completely limp. And then maybe it'll loosen its jaws a little bit. And I could do what Jeff's thinking, pull the arm out real quick and hug the jaws closed. That's not a terrible answer either. So really, I mean, this is one of those animals where the main things you should do come before you actually get in the interaction with the animal.

So really, if you're swimming in freshwater in places where alligators live, you really have to be super careful. You have to pay attention. You want to scan to make sure there aren't any alligators in the area. But really avoiding swimming in really alligator dense places is the key. You just shouldn't swim in habitat for alligators because the splashing can draw them in. And there's a decent chance. Like if you're swimming in freshwater in Florida or Louisiana, it's a decent chance there's

alligators around. So avoiding it in the first place is the main thing. Don't ever feed them. Don't ever harass them. And then if you do find yourself in the water face to face with an alligator and say it does bite on to you, you can go limp and try and roll with it. You can do a few things to try and discourage it. But at that point, you're just hoping that it does release its script enough for you to get away.

and there's a good chance it won't. So you need to just try and avoid it in the first place is the main thing. You can't go for the eyes. Like where they were just trying to go in a little bit to get some crap traps? Yeah. What if they had like a big 10 foot pole? That would honestly probably really help just to push it away with the pole or whatever. Yeah.

Just like with sharks. Like something in between you and it can really help. So yeah, that's another great thing to add to that. You know what might be a good solution is for, maybe like a government-funded program where they just dump a bunch of TikTok clocks into the water so you can hear them when they're coming at you just yeah exactly feed every alligator a clock exactly what if you wear like a suit of armor that would that would probably help too unless it crunched that arm all of its teeth would just

shatter when it break it'd be hard to swim in that but it would be I want to have my friend Chris his at is Gator Boys Chris but he has millions of followers he works with Alligators every day. He runs a rescue in Florida where he has some alligators. He knows more about alligators than probably anyone I've ever met. And I'd love to have him on to talk a little bit more about safety. But Jeff, to your point, sometimes when he's working with multiple alligators, he'll have a stick that he kind of uses to direct them away from him. And it works really well. So a stick is a good idea. All right. This is a new category I saw in our new categories older. The good roommate scale. So on a scale of one to ten, how good of a roommate this animal be?

The animal? I think mostly pretty great. I'm going to go pretty high here. I'm going to say nine, because it's mostly just going to sit there silently, completely silent. And that's what I'm looking for most in a roommate. For reptiles, they are the most vocal reptiles. But they do mostly. It's going to be pretty silent. I'll bump it down to it. An eight then. Yeah, I'm with you. I think an eight. Because you could just set up one room in your apartment with an ultraviolent light and

some water. And that alligator's never going to leave that room ever again. Right. And I think it would eat a lot of your food when you're not around. Yeah. It probably would eat your food, especially if you have like chicken and stuff. That's true. I'm still giving an egg for an animal.

Like your whole pizza before you've got a pizza. Like you're waiting for it to cool down and it. just eats it all in one bite. Yeah, right. I think a 10 would be like a jumping spider or something. So an alligator is definitely not as good as that. All right. Yeah.

Chimpanzee, be a 10 for me. Oh, man. That's like a 1 for me. Yeah, that's as low as we can go. The alligator would be nice too because they, like, they attack very few people a year. I wouldn't be too worried about that. I'm more worried about a human. honest. A human roommate? I think they're more likely to attack me. Ask you questions and stuff.

Yeah. Oh, you're eating some macaroni for lunch? Yeah. Yeah. What kind of shake do you have? What kind of shake do you have? Super interesting line of conversation. Thanks for asking. And then you'd go on to talk about shake flavors of the next five minutes. Oh, man. You got me. You got me. You set me off. Jeff, what's your number for an alligator as a roommate? One to 10. I'm gonna go seven. I think he's gonna eat all my food. I think he'll never be dressed. Yeah, always be naked. Is that a positive or a negative? That's 100% why Jeff wants a chimpanzee is a 10 because you can just put it in different clothes. You could dress an alligator. Guerrilla might be better than chimpanzee. Alligators are all in on that free the nipple movement. I've never seen him wear any kind of covering. I hate a roommate where it's like I ask them something and they don't talk back at all, you know? All right. So before we get into listener questions, I'm just going to say, we had a question once for our Mount Rushmore of American animals. Like if we could put four animals on Mount Rushmore to represent America, what would it be?

And I think I said American alligator and you guys didn't. And I just want to argue that I think this is my probably number one animal that I would say is like an American animal. because they are only found in the U.S. There's like a tiny, tiny, tiny little portion of Mexico that butts up against Texas where they're found. But this is really only an animal that's found in the United States and they're found in a good chunk of it. They're a conservation success story.

This is like probably my number one American animal. This is just a funny way to give a top for it. We're not going to steal the Native Americans mountain. We'll put it on some place known. cares about. Yeah, Mount Rushmore is like a hypothetical. Yeah, right. I think, yeah, American Alligator is hard to leave off.

I think it has to be on it. Sure. I just wanted to argue that really quick. I'm all for it. What were you four? I can't remember, but I think I would do American Black Bear, American alligator, bison and bald eagle would probably be my four. Are elk pretty American?

No, no, they're not. They're in Mexico. They're in Canada. I think there's like red deer in Europe. that are very elk-like. What president would it be? What position would it be on Mount Rushmore? Would it be like the George?

Or would it be an alligator? Abe. It's George Washington for me. It's like the number one pick overall. Cool. A couple listener questions. It'd be cool to redo Mount Rushmore with four animals. It would be.

I would visit. All right. This one's from Cade. Cade says, You are Noah and the people building your arc forgot about some animals and don't build it big enough. What animal are you leaving off? Like sharks?

Sharks are going to be fine. You don't have to put sharks on your arc. I think land animals is what we're talking. That's a good answer, though. Yeah, you could leave off crocodiles and alligators. They'll probably be fine. He's saying just like what animals we have now would you be okay with not have? Yeah, what are you picking to not be on your arc exactly?

Because I don't think you can really do bugs and stuff. That's cheating. Yeah. I'd probably, honestly, I'd probably pick one of the wild buffalo or cow species. Because I just, they're so close to, like, our cows already that they just don't really do much for me. That's that probably what I'd pick. Okay. Not bison.

I really like bison. But maybe, like, water buffalo. Oh, man. Garrison for my trip's going to be so mad. He's going to be so pissed at me. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

The big five. And now I'm kicking them off the planet. Sure. I'm going to pick an animal that. doesn't seem very motivated to live in the first place. So maybe like a panda. Like, if you're not going to, you know. Yeah.

If you're going to eat something that doesn't give you any nutritional value. Yeah. I love pandas, but come on. I get it, but it hurts. Sorry, China. I'm having a really hard time. I mean, there's only eight types of bears. I feel like that's crazy to take out a bear.

Mm. What's an animal that has like a ton of different species? Snake. You know what, I'm going to take a rhino out. What's the rhino that's almost extinct? Like a jovan, right? Or, I mean, is a joven rhino? No, I like the Asian rhinos.

I think I'll just take a white rhino out. Black rhinos and white rhinos are close enough to me that I only need one of them. Oh, man. They're so cool, but I get it. I respect your decision. These are hard decisions. Like, I feel like rhinos, I just need one type of rhino. You know?

Yeah. The obvious choice for me is horse. but I think they've proven themselves to be useful enough that it would be a pretty different world we're living in today without them. Pandas, dude, come on. It's like a lack of gratitude how little they want to property in their own species.

You had the chance to take out horses and you chose pandas. That's insane. Yeah, there's like three pandas and they're like, no, I think I won't have sex today. It's like, oh, really? The one primal fundamental driving force behind all living species, you're just not going to do it.

Dude, that's just like you hating yourself. You don't have sex. You just like sit there all day and eat plants. Are you like, like you're referring specifically to me? Yeah. You're pretty off base on a few of those things. But I kind of see where you're coming from. Okay.

This one's from T-R-E-S. They say, in my opinion, Black Bear. is a bad name because most I agree with you on this because most black bears are brown and it can be confusing. I would disagree with that. Most of them are still black, but a lot of them can be brown. If you could pick another name for them, we're talking American black bear here, which would each of you pick?

I was thinking, honey bear. It's a great. Yeah, I would actually pick honey bear for like a sun bear or a sloth bear because they actually eat a lot of honey. Sloth bear I would rename honey bear. We kind of need to like rename every type. A type of bear, except for like a polar bear. I think I would name Black bears.

Bears got bad names. Yeah, pandas got a good name. Spectacled. I don't like the giant part. I like Spectacold or Andy and Bear, too. I don't like that pandas are giant pandas. I think it should just be Panda Bear. I would name Black Bear's forest bears.

Oh, that's what I was going to pick. Dang it. Yeah. I wasn't clever enough to think of anything else. Well, that's all right. We can both pick forest bears. Yeah. They like berries.

Berry bear? That'd be kind of fun. Berry bear. It's hard to say, but it is fun. I'm going to say tree bears. Okay. What about brown bears? What would I name them?

They're a bad name too, right? Yeah. I kind of like brown bear, actually. Really? Yeah. I think it's a good name for them. I guess it's just grizzlies. That's what I would.

I think it'd be better. Yeah, you could just name them all grisly. Okay. This one is from Jordan. Jordan says when we are in Lamar Valley in Yellowstone, we were watching a pack of wolves traveling through. and there was a grizzly walking alongside of them. We watched them disappear into the trees.

The bears went with them too. They all seem to be okay with each other. Is this normal? This isn't normal, but it's not by any means, like, unprecedented. It didn't blow your brains at. No, it does happen occasionally. It's often like a sub-adult bear that realizes wolves kill a lot of animals, and if it simply follows a wolf pack, it will eat really well.

And they often, like, the wolves will kill something. The bear will go in, push them off the kill, eat its fill, and then the wolves come in and eat afterward. So it's got to be pretty annoying for the wolves. But this does happen. Like every few years, there's video from Yellowstone, especially where you see a bear that's just following a wolf pack. And the wolves just kind of tolerate bear and the bear tolerates the wolves. Bad roommate. Oh, go bad.

And it is always grizzly bears. Black bears don't do this, but grizzly bears will do it. Dude, alligators as a roommate, just hiding their food stash in your room, it gets so smelly. Yeah, it would get pretty nasty. I did have an alligator roommate for a while, though, I guess. And I liked him. All right, let's do one more from Patreon. This one's from Matt.

Matt says, in Dungeons and Dragons, a Brown Bear has a challenge rating of one. That means a group of level one adventurers should be a match for one brown bear. Could the three of you, with chain melon swords, take on? on a brown bear in a cage match. Yeah, what do you guys think? We could. Chain mail and swords. I don't.

I don't think I'm going to use the chain mill. Yeah. I would. Interesting. I'd want the chain mail for sure. You said they can break a bowling ball with their team? Yeah. I'm not going to be happy with it, but it's better than nothing.

But like you wouldn't be able to really move. I feel like I'll have a chance to stab it if I don't have chain mill. Well, isn't chain mail. Chain mail is not that heavy, though. Pretty heavy. If Aragorn's going to wear it, then I'm going to wear it. That's how I think about chain mail. Yeah.

I don't know. I never fought in chain mail before. I would want it. If you're about to put me in a cage with the grizzly bear and you say, hey, you can either have chain mail or not have chain mail, I would say, yeah, give me the chain mail. Yeah. But I think the bear's winning against the three of us. I do that move where, like, I drop my sword fighting it, you know, and then it knocks me over and it's about to kill me. And then I turn around with my sword.

and it runs into it. Or yeah, go behind you into the bear. Oh, that's a good move. Yeah. Yeah. Do we have a helmet? Because I'd put it on the ground and then the bear would kick it and break its toe. Probably.

Like in that one movie. It wasn't even acting. That was like, it's a real expression. Yeah. A quick conservation corner. This is an animal that in the 50s, we thought there was probably only about 100,000 of them left, which really isn't that many for reptile. So they were actually on the way to extinction.

And that was from a lot of different things, from pollution, like DDT, from overhunting, from habitat loss. And they were one of the first species added to the endangered species list. They received a lot of protections. Before that, Florida outlawed hunting. And they really rebounded quickly. This is an animal that reproduces pretty quickly. They can have a lot of hatchlings. And they rebounded.

And in just like, I think it was 20 years after the Endangered Species Act, they were removed. Now in a lot of these states, they can be legally harvested. And like we mentioned, there's about 5 million of them now in the U.S. So they're doing really well. And they are a really important conservation success story. It shows that when we do focus on these kind of issues, we can bring an animal back from the brink of extinction, which I think is wonderful. Yeah. It's neat to have those animals.

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. It's great to know. Quick claw rating. I'm going to give them nine claws. This is a nine claw animal for me. I love alligators. Get excited every time I see one.

You like saltwater crocodiles, the most of crocodilian, though, right? I don't know. I have a hard time deciding that. It's probably between alligators and cayman, though, like a yakoree Cayman. But I think alligators are my, they might be my favorite because I've worked with them quite a bit. I had a pet alligator for a bit, which I regret now. but at the time I didn't think was wrong. Yeah, I don't know.

I really like alligators. Well, I mean, Utah's a good spot to have pet alligator. It's not. No, you shouldn't have pet alligators. I was a dumb kid. I think I got to give them an eight just because I do really love them, but I think I just like other crocodilians more. I like saltwater crocs more.

I probably like Cayman more if you were going to kill me to make me decide. Yeah, I won't do that. So alligators are probably around like my third or fourth favorite crocodile. I'd wait till after you decided to kill you. But yeah, yeah. I'm going to give them a 10. This is a rare 10 animal, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10,000 for me. From Mike.

Yeah. I just think they made such, I am printed, or they imprinted on me. One or the other when I was little. I just think they're the coolest, some of the coolest looking, sexiest looking animals. They're just so sleek and dangerous, but also kind of just viving. They're a really cool combination of, like, a lot of different things. things I like in an animal. And I just think they're one of the coolest out there.

I'm glad we have them. Amazing. Me too. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. I wanted to, real quick, to plug our Patreon. That's what I was about to do.

You do it inside. Yeah, I'll do it. How about that? Watch this. I'll have both of you do it and then compare. No, but I just did an episode that I liked a lot. Did you guys like it? Amazing.

Yeah. It was great. is about these two different men who like get bit by black mambas, inland Taipan, some of cobras, some of the most venomous snakes, but they've envenomated themselves throughout their life so they can take bites from these snakes and it's really fascinating. And also, I think I'll share just like a thread on Patreon about my whole cat fishing incident if people want to see like some of the messages and ask more questions because I know I went long but like I made that story as short as I could.

Yeah, I will say like we've been talking amongst the three of us a lot just about how to make our Patreon and our subscription channels as good as possible because that really is one of our main priorities is taking care of our subscribers. So while we're always going to continue to have free episodes, we really have a lot of fun with our subscription episodes. I think they're really fun and we, I don't know, our Patreon community, they're the ones we can interact with the most. It's just been really fun to get to know people on there.

So, yeah. All right. Okay. All right. Thanks, Wes. Good episode. Thanks, guys. Love you, everyone.

Love you. See ya.