Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Animal Attack News Roundup - Whale Gulps Man, Girl Pushes Bear, and More

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

The man who was swallowed by a whale, the California teen who pushed a bear off of her wall to protect her dogs, and a handful of other interesting stories Wes felt were important to share. ~~ 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

Hey everyone, welcome back to Tooth and Claw for another Animal Attack News Roundup. In this episode, we're going to be talking about some of the more interesting cases of recent animal attacks, such as the California teen who pushed that bear off of her wall and the guy that got swallowed by the whale, and a handful of other interesting stories that we found, many through your recommendations. So thanks for the help. We hope you guys are enjoying these episodes. It's been a lot of fun for us to make them. If you want to help us out in some other ways,

you can always leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts, which is something that helps new people discover our show. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to it so that you get alerted whenever we post something new. If you like our show, that is. Otherwise, don't. We'll never know. And there's always Patreon where you can find a bunch of bonus content

that we've recorded exclusively for those of you who subscribe to us there on the off chance that you want to hear even more from us. Thanks again. All right, that's enough talking. Let's get to the show. Hello, everyone. Hello. This is Tooth and Claw.

Jeff Wes and Mike, how are we doing? We're doing good. So I'm Wes Larson. I'm a wildlife biologist. I've mostly worked with bears for most of my career. A few other animals too. Pretty cool. Jeff, you want to introduce yourself?

Jeff Larson, I was Wes's field tech with a lot of the bear work, and now I just kind of do a lot of different jobs. You're also... I'm also... My little brother. Wes's little brother. There we go. Mike?

Why are you here? Good question. I've mostly worked with humans. Yeah. Up till this point. And computers. Robots. True. Up till this point. You never know.

He's working. Oh, I see. I'm kind of working with that. There's no real. I thought you were calling us animals. So, Jeff, this morning me and Mike were texting. Okay. We were talking about the podcast a little bit.

We're talking about maybe a diving trip at some point. Okay. And then I get a text from Mike and I'm going to read it to you. No, come on, dude. This is, his text says, This is not fair. His text says, mods are working.

Hold on. All right. Mods are working so hard to stop the boner ASCII. And it was just out of the blue. I don't know what that means. Neither did I. And so for like probably five minutes, I just let it marinate.

And I was like, all right. We'll see if that was for me or if it was for, someone else. And then he sends me a text. He's like, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to send that to you. This is an unbelievable betrayal of my trust in you. It cracks me up so hard. The funny thing with Mike for like the listeners is he does send us texts that are like way out of left field sometimes. Exactly. So like you couldn't, you're never sure if it was for you or for someone else. And it's just like it was like mods are working so hard to stop the bones. her askie.

Well, I can tell you this much. It's not for our audience. If it was... Oh, whatever. It was like super nerdy and super weird all at once. And I was just like, I have no idea what he's talking about. Yeah, well, I'm not going to explain it. If you know, you know.

No, he has like some of the funniest texts I've ever gotten. Yeah. But it's always like, it always takes me like a minute or two to like really understand what he's talking about. And so that's why I was like... I don't know if this is for me and if this is something I should understand. So I just let it sit. Because it just cracked me up anyway.

All right, cool. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. You're welcome. All right. So this week's episode is our new tradition, which is our kind of wrap up of all the different animal stories that happen in the news. Thanks so much to our listeners for sending us. Did anything even happen this month?

Yeah, a lot happened this month. Yeah. I feel like this spring is always a really active time for animal stories. But thanks to all our listeners for sending us stories. We do really appreciate that. It helps us with research. We end up using a lot of them. So feel free to keep sending them.

And yeah. So we are going to go into some news stories. We're going to talk about some different attacks that happened, some different just funny animal stories that happened. And I guess I will start. I'll start. I'll start. Yeah.

Okay. Assertive. So this 32-year-old man was driving with his mom, and he was driving in Provo, Utah. Okay. And he saw a blackbird dive bomb a jogger, just on like the side of a road on the running trail. Is this you? Yeah, it's me and mom. Oh, yeah.

And I just saw a jogger, and I saw a blackbird just dive out his head. Like a red-wing blackbird? I couldn't see any. Red Wings. Yeah. So I'm not sure. Cool. But yeah,

reminded me of the Crow episode we did. So yeah, that's my story. Yeah. So Wes, starting off strong. Could you answer this for me, Wes? Yeah.

So a popular Beatles song written by Paul McCarney, Blackbird. Yeah. What bird would that have been, do you think? Uh, it could have been a black bird.

Is that like a, I bet there's like a, just an English variant of like a black bird. It could have been a starling. There's like starlings that are black. Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of different black birds.

But there are, There's like a whole group of birds that are like blackbirds and that's their actual name. Okay. Like we have a red wing blackbird. We have, I'm sure, other kinds of blackbirds too. Yellow-headed blackbird. I thought I'd ask you since you're a beetle maniac. Yeah, they're actually, I am a beetle maniac.

Kind of like a Nick Cage in the Rock. Someone, yeah, he is a big beetle fan. Are you guys, do you guys prefer, someone asked us this? Do you guys prefer the Beatles or the Rolling Stones? Oh, Beatles. Beatles. Yes, I think we're all Beatles. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So I'm going to, I'm going to do a story that a lot of people. Yeah, sorry. I took you thunder on the first story. Yours was great. Been hanging out with mom a lot. Yeah.

Cool. We're friends. Yeah. Yeah. You should see her sometime. Yeah. Sure. All right.

So one story that got sent to us a lot this month. This was a story that really made the rounds and the news. A lot of people sent it to us. I'm pretty sure we posted the video on our story. but it's the girl pushing the bear off the fence. It's so crazy. Yeah. So pretty much what happened, if you've seen the videos,

you see all these dogs and they're barking. You don't really even realize it at first, but then there's a bear on this concrete wall. And it's swatting at these dogs, and they're kind of barking at it. And then, like, a couple of the dogs are fighting with the bear. And if you look closely, you see two little cubs, too, that the bear's protecting.

And then all of a sudden, one of the little dogs runs up, and the bear starts to, like, really get out. at it and like bite at it and swat at it and then this girl just runs out it looks like she's wearing like pajamas or something and she runs out and just full on like puts her hands on this bear and pushes off the wall it's on like a fence so it doesn't have like a lot of to balance right it's a pretty skinny wall that it's walking on her fence or whatever and she pushes it off and it falls it down it's insane so this girl's name was haley moriniko and she's only 17 years old no way yeah Because when I watched that, I was like, oh, this is like a lady.

Me too. But no, it's a 17-year-old girl. And she said that she heard the family dogs barking. And then she sees the bear. And at first she thought it was a big dog or something that they were barking at. And then she realized that it was a bear. And she saw the bear swiping at her mother's service dog. And then their three other dogs are like barking at it.

And so they had a lot of dogs. And she said that she sees these dogs as children. And she said, in her head, it's an animal. and it's taking my child. And so she just instantly acted. She ran out and pushed the bear. And that was just like her first instinct was just to sprint out there and save her children. Which I kind of take...

People don't see doing quotes there. Yeah. He quoted children. Yeah. I put children in quotation marks. I kind of take umbrage with people saying like their dogs or their kids. Me too. But as someone who's dating someone who's like very, very, very bonded with their dog.

Yeah. I do think, like, for example, Jesse loves her dog probably about as much as she'll love kids. Or you? Yeah. Like, I kind of know I'm second place. And that's okay because they've been together a lot longer than we have. And I're like, he's a better kid's a different kind of love. She.

So that's how this girl felt. And she went out and pushed her dog. And I actually texted Jesse when this happened. I was like, would you done that for Bryce? And she's like, 100% no hesitation. Wow. And honestly, I probably would too. You would go push a bear.

I will say, so let me rewind a little bit. You shouldn't do that. Right. You shouldn't push a bear. So what I would have done first is like throw something at it, yell at it, do whatever I can to scare it. But if it started biting Bryce and they were like fighting and I tried all that, yeah, I would go and like push it. I just feel like she is insanely lucky. She is.

Because like bears are really aware of everything and their reaction time is. insanely fast. So, like, it should have, it should have at least hit her a little bit. But if you see in this video, when you watch it, when I watched it from the lens of a bear biologist, you see that the bear is really focused on that dog, that little dog.

And the two of them are really going at it when she sprints out. And she does surprise that bear. That bear didn't really see her coming. And by the time she has her hands on it, then it sees her. But had it seen her running up, you're right. It probably would have swole. And, like, easily could have changed its focus to her. Totally.

The thing that she did have going for was that it's a black bear. This bear wasn't going to mall her to death. But what might have happened is it might have swatted her. And getting swatted by a black bear or bit by a black bear can be pretty devastating. Like, it can be, like, a lot of stitches and some time in the hospital and a big hospital bill. So she got really lucky. Personally, I didn't ever see this as like a life and death situation for her. It might have been for her dogs.

Black bears don't cub defend at the level. that like a grizzly bear does, it just wanted to give its cubs time enough to escape, and then it was going to run away too. So it was fighting off those dogs just to give its cubs time to get away. When I say that I would have done that, it would have been my last resort. I would have thrown stuff at it. I would have yelled at it. If I had bear spray, I would have sprayed it.

If you threw stuff at it, then there's no way you could go push it. Why? Because it would be like paying attention to you. Yeah, but I mean, what I'm saying is that if it's a black bear and I've done all, of that and it's killing my dog, I'll go push it. I'll go punch it. Especially if it's on a wall like that where I do have a place for it to go. Yeah. I wouldn't. If there was like one cornered or something and it was doing that, I wouldn't. But like if I had something, if I was like out of options and it's my dog, I'm going to do whatever I can. I'm going to probably go to the pound and get a new

dog. Yeah. Fair enough. Anyway, it's a crazy video. The bear biologist part of me again is like, don't do that. Don't push them. The dog owner-lover part of me is like, yeah, of course you did that, you know. Like, it's dumb. Let's just say, like, it was stupid. Yeah. But if you're a dog lover, I guess you can, like, praise her still, you know?

It's not that I'm even praising her. I'm just saying I think there's a lot of dog people out there that would do the same thing. But that shouldn't be your plan A, you know? your plan A should be throwing stuff at it, yelling at it, doing whatever you can to intimidate it, or like getting your dogs corral. Yeah, getting your dog. Like that should be your plan A. But my plan like G is that I'm going to physically try and get that bear off my dog. I would just toss the dog over the balcony.

Yeah, the little one. Maybe the bear chases it out of the bear that way. Yeah. Anyway. So that's one that a lot of people said. to us. It was a very interesting video. There are a decent amount of black bears in LA County, especially in the foothills. We have family that lives in La Cagnada, which is right up against the foothills. And like that area, Pasadena, La Cunata, they constantly have black bears coming down

into those areas. One of my favorite bear videos on the internet. The cell phone guy. It's like, this guy's on the cell phone. And it's like an aerial camera. And he's walking around. He's like walking around or like alongside a wall. Yeah. And the black bear's walking alongside a wall. Right. And they both meet at the corner at like the exact same time. Uh-huh.

And they like both get scared of each other equally at the exact same time and like take back, take off back the way they came. Whenever I see that video, I always think of the scene in Mulholland Drive. Have you seen that movie? I've never seen it. The David Lynch movie. It walks around the corner. It's like a jump scare, but both of them were. There's another one that I think's from California where it's like this older couples leaving

their house and they have one of those ring cameras. Yeah. And as they're what, you see a bear that's just like sitting there and they just walk out and don't even notice it and walk it away. They walk like seven feet away from a bear and never saw it. Yeah. And never see it. It's pretty crazy.

But yeah, so that is a place where bears are getting much more comfortable on the fringes of human society and they are kind of. eking out this existence in one of the biggest cities in the world. Yeah. And it's really interesting. To me, I think it's really interesting that they're an animal black bears that have that kind of plasticity where they can switch from being this really wild animal that's out there,

you know, foraging all the time to really living in urban center. And me, like in my ideal world, that turns into a situation where there's this coexistence where, you know, that can have. happen. Unfortunately, a lot of times that's not the case and you have more encounters like this. Anyway, so that was my first story. Jeff, you've got a bit of a dozy for us as well, right? Yeah, you ready for me? Yeah. Let's get into it. All right. So we got sent this one a lot too. We've actually mentioned this kind of situation, I think in the Great White episode maybe. Yeah. But a guy got swallowed by a whale a few days ago.

I think it was in the hippo episode. Yeah, you might be right. Yeah. What kind of whale was it? A humpback way. Okay. So. This wasn't Jonah. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items. Then review your list and carefully choose each one.

Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes. So you can feel confident it's what you ordered. Fresh groceries, your way. With Ralph's delivery and pickup. Get free delivery during online deal days. plus $30 off your first online order. Ralph's Fresh for everyone. Mike.

Yeah. Your name's pretty common, right? You think a lot of people. Doxing. Stop West. What do you think about just going by Michael? I've considered it. Yeah?

I'm going to class it up a little bit. I know a couple people that, like, they prefer being called Michael. Right. Well, this guy's a Michael. Okay. There we got it. So there's a connection with our Mike and this guy's a Michael. Yeah.

Yeah, feel a kinship. But yeah, Michael Packard, so he's a lobster fisherman and a lobster diver. And he was like, he dives for lobsters and like that's kind of how he makes a lot of his living. He's 45 feet deep. He's 56 years old. So he's 45 feet deep. And like he says that all of a sudden he just felt this huge bump and everything went black. At the very start, he thought he was inside of a shark.

And then he, like, said he felt around and there's, like, no teeth or anything. And he quickly realized that, okay, I'm inside of a whale. If you're ever inside of something and you're, like, feeling around for teeth, you're in a bad situation. Yeah. Regardless of whether or not there's teeth, you know, no matter what, you're in a place where you don't want to be. So he, I quote him when he says, I could sense I was moving and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles. in its mouth. Oh, it's so weird.

Isn't that weird? I didn't like, so weird. It's just weird to think like you could fit inside of an animal's mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Like completely and be alive. You see those videos where they like, you know, where they scare all the fish up to the surface and the whales are all closing their mouths like up in the air.

And you realize like they have massive mouths. Yeah. They're like a living fishing net. Yeah. They're just massive. And then he says, I was completely inside the whale. It was completely. black. I thought to myself, there's no way I'm getting out of here. I'm done. I'm dead. All I could

think about was my boys. They're 12 and 15 years old. I mean, I don't know what I would think. Yeah. But probably something pretty similar to that. Yeah. If you're inside of an animal. You probably still just wouldn't think about anything. Yeah, I'd be thrown in now. You'd be thinking about like a Simpsons episode or something. Yeah. He thinks he was in there about 30 to 40 seconds. Yeah. Luckily, like since he was a diver, he had like a handheld breathing apparatus. Are you sure that wasn't just his regulator? It could just be his regulator.

Because I think I heard a little bit about this and he was like having a hard time finding his regulator and putting it back in his mouth. So he says that he started shaking the whale's head. Okay. And then the whale didn't like that. Yeah. And surfaced and just spit him out. Yeah. So kind of like used his tongue and flung him out of his mouth.

Yeah. So Wes, do you think now that like this whale has swallowed someone once, it's going to want to keep swallowing people? Definitely not. I don't know, because like it's kind of fun to spit something out. Is it? I think it is. Yeah, like watermelon seeds.

Yeah, I guess. Or like just like when you swim and you like spit out a bunch of water. Yeah. Just spitting in general is kind of satisfied. Yeah, but whales can do that all. the time still. It doesn't have to be a human that's like shaking her mouth, which I don't get what that means. Yeah, I just don't understand. I think he's just moving around. Okay. But he says he is shaking its mouth. Yeah. So it says that his mate Josiah Mayo plucked him out of the water and Michael

thought he had broken both his legs, but he ended up just having a lot of bruises. His actually went to the hospital and like I remember so my freshman year of college I went to a paint dance yeah and it was like house paint and they just had it in cups and it was blue and white our school colors at Utah State and we just like threw it all over each other so I was just completely blue like Tobias and arrested development you blew yourself yeah pretty much and I broke my ankle and had to go to the hospital and I just showed up in like blue I remember that photo. And like everyone in the hospital had to come, like, ask me, like, what happened to you and stuff?

But I guess it was, like, a lot more than that with this. Yeah. He went to the hospital and was like, hey, I was swallowed by a whale and spit out. Yeah. And so then, like, all the nurses and doctors came to ask him about it and stuff. I wonder how many people were, like, really? Yeah. If they thought he was just super high or something.

So I have two questions from this. Yeah. So Jonah was in a whale for three days in the Bible. You think he had a breathing apparatus? No, I don't think so. I think that probably is a tall tail. It really seems from this guy's experience that without a breathing apparatus, if you're inside of a whale, you're not making it very long.

Yeah. If within 30 to 40 seconds he felt like both of his legs had been broken and like he's on the verge of death, then yeah, I have a hard time believing the Jonah story. This might be controversial, but I'm going to throw out the Jonah story. Okay. And I'm going to just say, I think this might be a world record for how long someone's been in a whale's mouth inside of a whale. That's a good point.

I think you're probably right. I haven't looked it up. I probably should have, but I'm just going to throw out potential world record right here. I think it might be. I think Michael might be a world record. Can I say a couple things about what probably happened? Oh, yeah, please. So,

humpback whales, they're baleen whales. So they're filter feeders. So, like, their two main types of food that they're going to be eating are krill and then also small fish. So they'll, like,

corral groups of small fish. And then they just go through them with their mouths. Sometimes they'll, like, go up to the surface with their mouths. And they use their baleen to, like, filter them all through into their mouth and into their stomach.

So what probably happened here was this guy was somewhere in the, water column and a whale was swimming through with its mouth open catching a bunch of fish and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and it swallowed him while it was so you don't think it saw him not and wanted to swallow there's no way and spit him out there's no way okay so this was definitely a mistake by the whale and then I think even had he not been shaking I'm doing the quotation marks again it would have spit him out shaking the whale's mouth it would have spit him out once it figured out like, hey, I've got something in here that I don't eat.

Because they don't eat. When you find dead whales and when people do like whale autopsies or whatever, they don't find sea lions and stuff inside of whales. They eat small fish and small krill and stuff. And that's it. They should evolve and start eating some bigger. They're pretty big, you know? They could eat some bigger stuff.

It's true. Yeah, they could. It's always weird to me that some of the biggest animals on the planet eat some of the smallest animals on the planet. All right. So Michael Packard actually did and asked me anything on Reddit today. And I thought some people asked them some really good questions. Let's hear them.

So I have probably the best question he got asked was, Are you disappointed you didn't get shot out of its blowhole like in the cartoons? And he said, that probably would have hurt a lot more. Another question from the ask me anything, what's the most interesting thing you've seen while under the surface diving for lobsters? So this is pretty crazy. Yeah. Michael says he's seen a dead body.

Interesting. Yeah. So then they ask, Damn, did you have to go through the process of reporting it to the authorities or anything like that? Yep. It was a missing person, an active case, stumbled upon it and got it found. This dude's had a pretty interesting life. So he found a missing person lobster died.

Like, he'd be a fun dude to talk to at a party. I like this question. Was it tongue smooth like a dog's or scratchy like a cat's? He says, I was in a dry suit, couldn't really tell. Also, the mouth was filled with water. Yeah. So he didn't really feel it's tough. Do whales have?

I guess they have tongues. They have tongues. It used its tongue to fit a mouth. They have tongues. Cool. Yeah. After the whale dislodged you, did you get to see it swim away, or was it too hectic? All I saw was white water crashing around me and the tail of it disappearing into the water.

You would be so confused. Yeah. I just can't stop thinking about it. And then the last one I took a grab of, a screen grab. Yeah. How did you get out? Were you able to see anything? What bad things could have happened inside, which didn't happen fortunately.

Eventually the whale managed to dislodge me by moving its head and tongue. I think. Nope, completely dark, so you couldn't see anything. Yeah, that's not a surprise. I could have suffocated or drowned if I didn't retrieve my regulator in time. Yeah. So then the follow up is, so you lost your regulator when it attempted to swallow you? I lost hold of it for a moment. But basically, yeah, he just says he lost hold of it.

Yeah. And so that's pretty crazy. He was inside of it. He didn't know where his regulator was for a bit. And like, that would have been so terrifying. But still, like, to be dealing with your suddenly in, like, pitch darkness, then you realize you're in an animal's mouth and then you also can't breathe. Yeah.

This dude's interesting. He also, like, crashed in the jungle a long time ago and survived. You're bringing this up. I'm starting to have some serious doubt. What evidence is there that this actually happened? I'm going to be, I'm the front runner on this one. He's making all this up. Okay.

Well, Mike, Mike's doubting it. Come on the podcast, dude. You think Jonah still has the record. Yeah. All right, so that's it for my story. Cool. Mike, did you collect some stories for us? Yeah, so I've got three different headlines.

I want to share with you guys. You guys, I want you to pick the one you want to hear more about. I have a feeling I know which one you're going to want, though. But I'm just going to read three headlines. And they're all about cows. So buckle up. I'm taking you down to Cowtown. Is that next to Flavor Town?

Yeah. Right. It's like five miles down there. That's nice. He can just get his stakes from the cow. That's where Guy Fieri gets all his patties. Okay, so headline number one, cow runs into hospital's waiting room and slams patients into wall in Columbia. All right. I like that. Headline two. K-9 bites cow.

Now pay attention. This one, it's a little tricky to follow. K-9 bites cow. S.C. Deputy Taze's K-9. Cow kicks deputy. You got a real triangle of pain going there. Right. And number three, study confirms that painting eyes on cow butts helps ward off predators. Okay.

So you guys, let me know. My favorite's the one where the cow kicks the cop. Okay. I was leaning a little towards the first one, just because I feel like the second one, I kind of know everything that happened. There's a couple of details. You might be interested in. Well, why don't you choose between the first and second?

Split our vote. I'm going to go with Wes, actually, because this is a pretty fun story. I'll just read, like, the first little chunk of text in the story and go from there. So, Georgetown County, South Carolina. A sheriff's deputy had to deploy a taser on his own canine officer after a bit of cow while on a burglary call, but the agitated cow ended up kicking the deputy. The original burglary call proved to be unfounded. So what ended up happening is the police responded to a burglary report.

There was a cow somehow close to the crime scene. Yeah. And the dog started getting into it with the cow. So in order to protect the cow, the police officer tased his dog so it would stop biting the cow's leg. But the cow got really worked up. And there's another added element into here. I don't know how this happened. Not only did the cow kick the police officer who was trying to protect it,

he also somehow kicked the guy who made the initial call to the police. So this is a mess, you know. And my favorite, I mean, it's all great stuff here. But my favorite detail is that the original call about the burglary was just completely unfounded in the first place. He just showed up and there was a cow there. And it just went sound real fast. You know, that cow and that dog are both lucky they didn't get shot. Yeah.

It sucks like for the cop because there's just no reason he even had to get in that situation and then it just all went wrong still somehow. Yeah. Yeah. Sucks more for the dog. Yeah, why he's tased. Yeah, exactly. I guess I don't know what else he should do though.

Just let it bite. I don't know. I mean, yeah, a cow can get away from my dog, right? Yeah, can take care of itself probably. Yeah. Maybe he didn't want his dog to get like kicked by the cow. I don't know. Who knows why cops do anything?

Maybe he accidentally got his taser instead of his gun. Yeah, I mean, it'd be the first time ever that they grabbed a taser instead of a gun. All right. So our next story is one that we, again, one that we shared on our story. It was a video of a ranger hazing a bear in Yellowstone. A lot of you comment on this story that the bear looks like it as a hurt paw. But essentially, it's this ranger and you see him pull up, and then you see this big male grizzly run out of the forest.

It charges at the ranger. he pulls out a gun that actually has like a hazing round in it. So it's either a beanbag or rubber bullet or something. Shoots the bear with that and the bear runs off and then he shoots a few more times in the air. But there's quite a bit of detail to the story. Apparently that bear and another bear were like mating in that area and a bunch of visitors. Nice. Yeah, nice.

A bunch of visitors were sitting there watching. Oh, dude. Those perverts. I've done that. Yeah. That's true. We have watched bears. mate.

But they're watching, they were too close. And so these bears were getting really aggravated. And they were also trying to cross the road, but all these people were blocking them. And so because of that... While mating? Well, they were... Bear mating involves, like, a lot of courtship and a lot of mating. Okay.

And so they'll, like, mate, and then they'll, like, walk around, and the male will, like, chase the female. And there's a... It takes a while. It's not just, like, they mate, and they're done. That's tough. It's hard on the females, especially. Yeah.

So the bear is, like, trying to cross the road. road or whatever and it gets really aggravated because there's all these people and it starts charging and luckily this ranger's there to respond to it he hazes the bear it runs off it obviously has a hurt paw from something else but um the the park superintendent actually said this ranger acted as well as he possibly could have and that he potentially even saved lives because there was all these visitors that could have gone charged it looked to me like a bluff charge is that accurate it's hard to say because he stopped it runs out of it i thought But he, it bluff charges him.

He doesn't have anything. Then he goes back to his truck, gets the gun, goes back and shoots it. Yeah, but what I'm saying is like, yeah, you're right. He doesn't stop the charge with the shot necessarily. But what he does do is he doesn't back down or anything when it charges him. So you're right. It is a bluff charge to begin with. But a lot of times bears will bluff charge before an actual charge.

So it definitely could have meant business. Like it doesn't necessarily mean that this bear wouldn't have charged. charged anyone. It probably wouldn't have. It's kind of like the hesitation move in the NBA. Yeah. Where you're driving and then you slow down, but you're still going to drive. Yeah.

So this is actually something I was thinking about all week with our rattlesnake episode is that we talked in a rattlesnake episode about how, oh, it's so cool that they're this animal that gives us this warning that tells us, you know, like, hey, I'm going to strike you if you get too close. Yeah. And the more I thought about that, the more I thought, wait, every single animal, does that. They just do it in different ways. Almost every single animal out there, and I think this is a really important lesson for our listeners, has something that they're going to do before they attack you

when they're just pissed at you. This isn't, we're not talking about like a predatory attack. This is like a defensive attack, like with the rattlesnake. They're going to do something first to tell you, hey, I'm pissed at you before it actually attacks you. And with bears, one of those things is a bluff charge. it'll bluff charge you and then if you still don't get out of there it might full on charge you and actually mall you so that's something that you guys should realize is like rattlesnakes aren't the only animal that does that almost every single animal before it actually decides to bite you or attack you or do whatever it's going to have some way that it's going to tell you that it's pissed off whether that's like hissing or charging or you know like a mountain lion it like turns its

body towards you there's a lot of things they do This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. Well, I hope you get to shoot some bears with beanbags at your new Yellowstone job. There's a good chance of it. Speaking of Yellowstone, the day that me and Jeff went to Yellowstone, a man was attacked in Yellowstone.

It's their first bear injury of. the season. He was in the mammoth area. He was doing like a little five mile loop trail there. And he came upon two grizzly bears. One bear made contact with him and mauled him pretty badly. He was able to hike out, but he was taken to the hospital. And apparently he was in pretty bad condition. Oh, wow. That's the only information I learned. So he definitely didn't die. If he died, we would have heard more about it. But someone did get malped. Bad ouches. Yeah, he had some outches. Okay, so we have another bear story. A man in Alaska was, he survived a horrific bear attack after being bitten in the head.

So it was this guy, Alan Minish. That's one of the last places I'd want it to bite you. Yeah, you don't want to get bitten the head. Yeah. He was like a surveyor for a real estate company. And I guess he was out surveying land for real estate. I don't totally understand what that means. But he saw a bear, which he guessed was a pretty big grizzly bear.

It charged at him. He tried to get behind some little spruce trees or something, and that didn't do anything. It just went right through him. It knocked him down, and then it lunged on top of him, and he said he grabbed his lower jaw to try and pull him away. And he said that's what you do with a dog, so he tried it with this bear. So he got a whole punch through his hand. But he said, yeah, the bear couldn't close his mouth, and it scratched his hand with his upper jaw. And then it twisted his head with his hand.

And then it lunged forward and grabbed his head, took a bite, relaxed, took a second bite, and then, like, cracked a bunch of the bones and stuff in his head. So he said that he had this thought that when the bear put its mouth over his skull, his thought was, holy shit, this is a big bear. Yeah. That's when he finally realized it. And he said that, so it was really quick. Like, all of this happened in a matter of seconds. And he said when the bear finally let go, he then put his face on the ground and put his hands over his head. which is something you should do if you don't have bear spray

and you're being mulled by a grizzly. You should just go into the fetal position, cover your head, cover your neck, do whatever you can to protect your vitals. If it rolls you over onto your back and your stomach's open for it to attack, roll back over onto your stomach. So just protect whatever is soft

and also protect your neck and your face. Does that count as being inside of a bear? I don't think so. Like the whale... Like the whale, he is just inside of its mouth. And this guy is like completely inside of the bear's mouth. His head is. Yeah.

I don't, but his whole body is it. So pretty much though, after he did this, after he like stopped fighting back, which again, with Grizzlies, you're not really supposed to fight back. So when he stopped, it left him alone. And then he said he realized he was in pretty bad shape. Why didn't he just push it off a wall? Yeah, that's a black bear. It's a different kind of animal.

He realized he's in bad shape because there's blood everywhere. So he called 911. wine. I like how all of these stories, they always have to include the detail that this person realized how much trouble they were in after. It's like, we know. You're like in the bear's head. Your head was literally cracking.

You don't have to, you know, it's really, I'm not trying to take anything away from these guys, because this is terrible, but. It would be funny. Let's make a pact if any, if this happens to any of us, we'll just like mess with people with all of our quotes and be like, you know, I still felt pretty good, even though my face was inside the bear's mouth. At that point, I still wasn't sure what was happening. Yeah.

I felt some cracking, but, you know, I just thought my neck was popping a little over. Glass was half full still at that point. No, so anyway, I really like this guy because at the end of the article, he had an extremely nihilistic quote, which he said, in all honesty, it wouldn't have mattered either way. You know if it killed me, it killed me. I had a good life. I'm moving on. It didn't kill me.

So now let's move on to the other direction of trying to stay alive. That's pretty funny. I just love that he said, in all honesty, it wouldn't have mattered either. It's like, all right, dude. It kind of matters. Maybe you should go talk to someone. Like, does he have children? What do they think?

I don't know. Like, yeah. Like, if that doesn't matter, it's kind of not. because that means nothing matters to him. Well, usually in these stories, it's like, I have a newfound appreciation for life, and I have a great, I love my wife and my children. He's like, yeah.

And this guy's just like, whatever. I guess there's just some more bullshit. Same old life. Okay, so we got a couple more. We've got pretty long on these, so I'm not going to do a few of these. One, though, that I wanted to bring up, there was another guy in Utah

that got followed by a mountain lion. Kind of like the one last year that was super viral with the kid followed. Yeah. But a guy got followed by a mountain lion. I'm going to play you a quick clip from this one. I'm not going to bite you. Bug you. I promise, I'm just going away.

I'm going away. I promise I'm not going to bug you. I'm going away. Anyway, so this guy is hiking in big Cottonwood Canyon, not far from where. We go there all the time. Yeah, we had like our great grandparents built a cabin. up there. With their bare hands.

Yeah, exactly. So this guy had kind of the same experience as the last guy that we talked about before where he's hiking. Cougar suddenly appears and then it follows him for a while. And it's doing this whole thing where it's following him and then kind of charging him and following him and charging him. And of course, again, all the news articles are like, man, stocked by Cougar in Big Cottonwood Canyon, which is not what was happening here.

Again, I want to reiterate this. if you're stalked by a cougar, it doesn't want you to see it. It's trying to be as quiet and as stealthy as possible until it pounces on you. Kind of like our cougar stories that they see it that last minute and it jumps on them. You know, they're not like watching it for a long time and it's following them like this. Cougars are very good at being stealthy. And so if you have one in a trail following you like this, it means that you probably surprised a mother with kittens or something. and she's just trying to escort you out of that area.

And that totally is what was happening here. This guy did do pretty much everything right. He's making noise. He's acting calm. He's backing away. The things that he could have done better is acting maybe like a little bit more aggressively throwing stuff at the cougar, trying to like discourage it from being totally in control of this situation.

But he wasn't attacked by it. He wasn't, you know, it didn't make contact with him. So it ended up being okay. Anyway, so that was one that someone sent us. And then I also, on my Instagram, I had someone write me and say, like, hey, what do we do about all these cougars that are following people in Utah? And honestly, it's not their fault. They belong out in the woods. If anything, we're the problem that, like, so many more people are starting to recreate in the woods, which is great.

But the thing is, we're responsible for dealing with them in, like, the way that we need to be educated. we need to be out there with bear spray. We need to be taking the steps to be prepared for a cougar encounter. And that way, if this sort of thing happens, you can just deal with it. You can get away without having a bad experience. And that way we don't really need to see them as like an enemy. Let's wait until they like attack someone before we get too worked up too, you know? Right.

Like if there was a tax every week, then it's like, okay, we got a cougar problem. There was one in a high school yesterday. Yeah, running around. Yeah, they're around. But I go into class. I'm glad that cougars are thriving. I'm glad they're doing great. I think we should be adjusting to them.

We shouldn't be forcing them to adjust to us personally. Okay, so a really good one that was sent to us by I think our mom actually is about two British women that were attacked. Go mom! Yeah. A crocodile attacked a British woman three or four times before it was fought off by her twin sister in Mexico. So they were part of a group that were swimming in the.

Mania Telpec Lagoon in Oaxaca. And I guess this is like a really famous lagoon. There's bioluminescence. It's really beautiful. I don't think though they were swimming at night. I think it was during the day. So you can't really see it. Yeah.

And so they were swimming in like a part of the lake and then they suddenly saw movement. They thought it was a log and it was actually a crocodile. Some of the group earned to swim for safety. And Melissa, one of these twins, was suddenly dragged underwater and she started thrashing. And this crocodile kept coming back and attacking her like three or four times. times. So she's popping up and then it's grabbing her again. And so finally her twin sister Georgia, like swam over and started punching it in the face. And she like just keeps punching it. Underwater punches? No, I think it's on the surface at this point. Because that's a big difference.

Yeah, that is a big difference. You don't have nearly as much. Yeah. Yeah. And so it like ends up letting her sister go and she drags her safely away by her hair, which was kind of cool too. Like her sister seems like she's kind of a badass. Anyway, like I guess there's nothing they could do. They're like throwing stuff at it and everything to try and get it to stop. And then the sister went to the hospital. She ended up getting sepsis in her wounds and like having quite a battle to get better. But a really interesting part of this story is that this lagoon has mangroves and that's where the crocodiles hang out. And the tour guides are supposed to have someone kind of on crocodile duty to make sure that no one's swimming in the mangroves and to keep an eye on the crocodiles.

But apparently they had just kind of hired a guide that wasn't qualified to be a guide. It was just some guy that was like, hey, I'll take you to the lagoon. Yeah, you just didn't care. Yeah, and they thought he was qualified. And he had told them that they're like, wasn't crocodiles and that they totally find to swim in the mangroves. And so when this all happened, they... He was like, oops.

Yeah, this dude, like, disappeared. Oh, really? Yeah. And he, like, fled the scene and, like, disappeared and the authorities had to chase him down, and now he's in custody. What a jerk. Yeah. So pretty crazy. I thought that was a pretty crazy one.

Were they identical twins? No. I don't think so. Because I was going to say that one sister would have to get chomped now so they could still be identical. Okay, so I got one more quick story. This is an alligator story, so very similar. It's about this guy, Jeffrey Heim, who he was diving in a room. river in Florida and he was looking for ancient like prehistoric shark teeth specifically for

megaladon teeth I guess and there are places in Florida where you just find tons of prehistoric fossilized shark teeth and he sells them he has like a whole store and everything but anyway he has all this diving experience and he's swimming in this river where he knows there's alligators and he usually looks for him but apparently in May it was gator mating season and he hadn't seen any in the immediate area. He's diving on May 31st. He's swimming around and suddenly he just feels an alligator come out of nowhere and hit him on the head. It like bites him on the head. And he thought he had been hit by a propeller of a boat. So he knew something and happened. He thought a boat had gone over and hit him with a propeller. And then he says it knocked his mask off. It hits his GoPro off. And then he

looks up and he just sees a big gator there looking at him. And he understands like, okay, this isn't a boat. He realizes that? Yeah, he realized it. It's kind of like the guy in the mouth of the pair like, oh, I'm in trouble. And then he says, like, feels his head and he feels his hairs like in places where his hair usually wasn't. So he's either like going through puberty or, you know, he like realizes he's been kind

of scalped by this gator. And he sees like blood floating in the water. And then the gator comes at him again and he moves away and the gator keeps coming and then he swims away fast and he climbs out on the bank. So really, this dude only got hit once by this gator as it bit him in the head. He ends up getting 34 staples in his head from one bite from an alligator. So I think that really shows how powerful they are, how powerful what? A bite is?

Yeah, like a single bite from a gator. And I think sometimes people think, okay, I can get away with swimming around gaiters. I can get away with this because I'm like, I'm from Florida. I know what I'm doing. It just takes one second to completely alter your life with all of these animals that we've talked about today. So you want to take every single precaution you can. It sounds like this guy was pretty well trained.

It sounds like this was just a really unlucky thing that happened. This gator was probably just being defensive. It probably wasn't trying to eat him. But this can happen. And when it does, it can be absolutely devastating. So anyway, I had a bunch of other ones, but I think that's probably, enough stories. Did you guys have any others you wanted to bring up? Nope.

I mean, I could talk some more about cows if you want. No, it's okay. Talk about that bird again. Yeah. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be

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So Jeff, do you have some listener questions we can do? I do. Okay. So this one's from Andrew 900. In your opinion, what is the saddest animal death in a book or movie? Oh, why don't someone else go first? Because I need to think. I mean, I'm going to just go Mufasa probably.

Okay. Because Simba, like, is kind of his fault for getting tricked by Scar. Yeah. So then, like, I don't know, though. There might, brother bear was rough, too. Just brothers in general. Yeah, but it wasn't an animal that died in that one. It was his brother.

But it wasn't a human brother? Oh, you're right. Yeah. Yeah, so I'll stay with Mufus. So I brought. I already brought up the never-ending story horse, which haunts me to this day. I am shocked, though, that it's a horse for you. I know.

I haven't come to terms in many ways with that. So since I already brought that up, I'm going to go with another one, Fox and the Hound, which is just devastating. That is a devastating one. I mean, it's almost like a ride of passage that you watch that and you're like, oh my gosh, this world is a hard, cold, dark and sad place. That is like, hey, time to grow up movie. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to say old yeller.

Yeah. I'm going to change mine. Do you want to explain yours, though? Sure. Old Yeller was hard. For me, it's dogs. Whenever it's a dog movie, it's the saddest because I just, we make special connections with dogs that you don't really with other animals.

And so that one was just one I watched when I was a kid and that dog was like such a fun, amazing, like a dream dog for those kids and then they have to kill it. It's just really tragic. So I'm going to switch mine to a dog And it's where the red fern grows Yeah that's a good one too Where like the dog dies saving the kid from a mountain lion And then the other dog just gets so sad that it dies

Yeah And I think that's where George Lucas got that idea for Padman That she just is so sad that she dies Yeah So yeah but that one I remember reading And I was like wow Yeah I'm sad about this

Like, I was more sad reading that than hearing when our dog died, I feel like. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Let's lighten it up a little. So this one's from Kayla Hochmire. Okay. So we're going to take flying out of this because that's going to be everyone's answer.

But if you could have an animal's unique ability, what would you have? Examples, sonar, venom. Okay. We just did the rattlesnake episode. I'm going to say flying. The heat vision was pretty cool that like ral snakes have the predator heat vision. Yeah. So I'll go with that.

You weren't flying? Yeah. Okay. That's a good one. No, I'm going to say, I'm going to say I want to be able to breathe underwater. Oh, yeah. Like I want gills. Oh, you're better.

That one is better. Or maybe just like a whale where you can be underwater for like half hour. I kind of want like an alligator tail to swim super fast. You just want an alligator tail? To swim fast? Hit home runs. There's a call back. Go check out our.

So mine, I mean, mine would be underwater stuff too. But second place, maybe camouflage. I think that'd be kind of a, like a chameleon. That'd be a cool party trick, yeah. Change colors. Yeah. All right. So this one's from Wes's co-worker, really cool guy.

Jesse L. Watson over at Hawkwatch. Yeah. So I'm going to need your help. You told me how to say this word and I forgot. Yeah. But would you rather have. a platypus or an echidna? Or an echidna omelet.

Right. So for those of you who don't really understand that question, platypus and echidnas are two of the, they're the only two mammals, I think they're the only two, that lay eggs. So they actually lay like actual eggs, that hatch and everything. I don't know, mom doesn't lay eggs. So his question is if you could, you know, eat either of their eggs, I, I'm guessing in like a perfect world where you could do that. Which would you have?

Would you like rather have? Yeah. I'd probably rather have a platypus egg. Me too because I can't even say the other one. Akina. I'd pick Akidna. Okay. Akidna.

So Knuckles for those who don't know. From Sonic. Yeah. Knuckles isn't Akina. Oh, cool. The kidneys are really cool. They look like a hedgehog that has like a long nose. Yeah.

And they walk a little like more upright. But they're really neat. But I'd probably pick platypus. I think platypus are so cool. Yeah, I'd go platypus. I don't like comments, though. Yeah, that helped sway me a little. That you said Knuckles is in a kidnap?

Yeah, well, I just didn't. You had no idea. Knuckles is cool. Yeah. Okay, fair enough. All right, so this is from Reborn on Mars. Which animal would you like to hug right now? So I'm saying you're not going to get hurt.

Panda bear. Panda bear's a good choice. That's where my mind first went. Although, for anyone that saw my octopus teacher, Yeah. It looked really oddly pleasant to have an octopus kind of suction onto your chest and hang out with you. Oh, that's a good choice. There's a whole footage.

I might rather go giant squid, though. Okay. But I like where your head's at. I'm going to go walrus. Interesting. Just like some big flippers around me. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure I like my choice.

All right. I'm sticking with panda. Yeah. So this one is from Ruben W. 73. Would you rather fight? a cow-sized gecko or a thousand gecko-sized cows? I'm fighting the thousand gecko-sized cows. Yeah.

You just stomp them. Like, if a thousand geckos came at me, I wouldn't be worried. That's a lot. Yeah, but I still wouldn't. I mean, what are they going to do? Are they coordinated? Yeah, I mean, I would choose that, too. Yeah.

So what's the gecko's defense mechanism? Defense mechanism? I mean, they're not coordinated, but they're all coming at you at the same time. Yeah. But still, geckos are pretty small. Not a thousand of them Yeah but they're all small in themselves Like if you kill like if you step down on a bunch of geckos all at once

You could kill like 30 You know Or maybe not 30 but a bunch But like what are you doing against a cow-sized gecko Yeah they're gonna get you What would you're strapped? It's pretty much just a dinosaur You just do a stomp Yeah I'm just like I'm just like stomping them

I'd maybe do the gator roll Yeah, gator all overall But like what there's nothing they could Like elbow each individual Even if they all beat you. Full Nelson. If a gecko bites you, like, and yeah, this is a cow that's gecko-sized, it's not going to do anything, you know. It's just going to, like, kind of be, like, a little snap, but it's not going to be, like, a big deal.

I'm definitely picking the little cows. I think enough cows are killed every year. The meat industry has it out for cows. I don't think this is, like, an ethical question. But you're going to kill, so you're going to kill one gecko, you're saying, instead of the thousand cows more. It's a lot more eco-friendly. But it's going to kill you probably. You think?

A cow-sized gecko. Yeah. Well, so I asked, what do, what's a gecko do when it's fighting me? It's just going to eat you. I'm going to bite you. They have teeth? Yeah. Really?

And like they eat like big moths and other animals, like insects that are bigger than them. Yeah, but not like a human. But they're not as big as a human. It could eat you because you're smaller than it. I mean, if it's cow-sized. Okay. No, I'm trusting you guys. But I think that warrants more thought.

I don't think so. It would be like bigger than a Komodo dragon. It would be as big as a cow. Right. But like I'm just putting it like, think of a Komodo dragon biting you. And then think of something like 10 times bigger than that. Well, think of a cow. I think about cows a lot.

And then think of it being a gecko. Okay. Like a lizard that wants to eat you. I'm seeing where you guys are kind of. I'm just asking questions. All right. Okay. I agree with you guys. I'm sorry I'm getting so angry.

Let's move on to the next one. Yeah. So I'm going to guess this is pronounced doadder. Does anyone else think Wes looks like Andy from Toy Story 3? I don't think I can answer this one. What do you guys think? I see it a little bit. Maybe more of a slayed.

I haven't. Well, he wasn't in Toy Story 3, was he? No, I'm just messing with you. I'm going to look it up really quick. So I haven't seen it. You've never seen Toy Story 3? I never have. That's a sad one.

Yeah, that's, I don't, I'm not into sad stuff. Oh, man. I don't need to be made more sad than I am. Show us. He just looks like a, like a full-sized baby. Yeah. I kind of see it a little bit. I don't know.

If you had some scruff, yeah. Yeah, I guess. I'll do a Photoshop and we can, we can put it on the Instagram. Fair enough. I'll do a side-by-side. Okay. So I guess kind of. All right.

So this one's from Ryan Brown. Better Companion, Bill the Pony, or shadow facts. Stupid question, shadow facts. Oh, I think it's Bill. Really? You think it's shadow facts? Yeah.

Bill bleeps the whole company. No, they kick Bill out. Right. Because he's not good enough. No. The monster kills Bill. No, he doesn't. Yeah, he does.

The Watcher. Sam meets back up with Bill at the very end. They send Bill off. Oh, yeah. The Watcher kills a different horse. Yeah. They send Bill off. Bill's a better companion. Because they're like, Bill's not going to make it.

Shadowfax is just like... Shadow Fax would have gone through the mind. But Shadow Fax is just like doing his thing and Gandalf has to like bow down to him. He's like a member of the team almost, Shadow Fax. He can take care of himself. Bill's like, listen, we're watching these hobbits that can't do anything and we can't even take this pony because he's so worthless. You're making some good points. I think Shadow Fax though is like more useful to the fellowship.

But I think Bill is a better companion. Like, just, okay. Like, Sam really needed Bill for, like, emotional support. And Sam was, like, Bill is the best companion. Yeah, but Sam's kind of like that with Frodo, too. Yeah, but Sam's, like, potentially the most important player in the entire fellowship. Yeah. And without Bill, he might have not made it through that part.

What I'm saying is, like, it's more Sam's companionship that he bonds with things really easily. Okay. Then, like, Bill is actually some great pony. Shadowfax is an amazing horse. All right. I've been curious because Bill's previous owner, the jerk. Sorry I called it a stupid question.

Sorry to interrupt you. You're like, you're slowly convincing me. So when they first meet Bill, he's owned by Bill. The jerk, right? Yeah. Why?

So did Bill named him Bill? Or did they name him after Bill? Like the fellowships? That's a good question. What happened? They hit him in the face with the apple in the books, right? Yeah, the bad. Bill, the owner in the face with an apple.

Apple. Either way, someone made a bad choice because either Bill named his own horse Bill or the fellowship named the horse after a dick. Yeah. Okay. I guess it's shadow facts. Like, I'll agree with you that Sam probably loves Bill. Well, I don't know. Gandalf really likes Shadowfax. Yeah, but like... Sam might love Bill more, but that's just because that's Sam's personality.

I feel like Shadow Fax was more of like a tool and Bill was more of... But I don't know. You made some good points. All right. So last question. We could debate that all night. That crazy dog groomer. Is it a myth that menstruation attracts wild animals?

And I want to just put it on the record. I thought this was crazy, but I heard it first in Parks and Rec. There was like an episode where some old, they were hiking in the woods and some old dude was like, I don't want to be near you because I'm going to get attacked by a bear because you're probably, probably on your period to Leslie, nope. And I was just like, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Yeah. So, Wes, you want to get into that?

Yeah, so that's a question I've gotten a lot. Really? Yeah, by like a number of women who are legitimately concerned that that's a threat. Uh-huh. And it's not. If you're menstruating, you don't need to worry about being at, like, a higher risk of being attacked by bears. My advisor, Tom Smith, actually did a study where they put out a bunch of different items

to see in a place that had to be. ton of grizzly bears to see which items attracted them the most and they used like some used menstrual products and then some unused ones and the unused ones actually were more attractive to the bears than the used ones. They spent more time investigating the unused products than the used ones. So you being on your period doesn't necessarily matter. Maybe if you're like prepared for it and you have the unused stuff on you though. Well they were like yeah but these ones were really like opened and like exposed. Yeah. And they were in like a very

bear heavy area. So you don't need to worry about it at all. It almost sounds like you're more safe. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that you need to realize with any kind of bear, especially if you're in grizzly country, they are just really curious animals. They're attracted

to things that may be food to them. So any kind of different smells that you present for a bear gives it something else that it might want to investigate. So just Do your best to eliminate smells. Like whether that's toothpaste or like your deodorant or food, especially food. You want to do your best to cut down on smells, but you don't need to take it to that level.

Mestration isn't, it's not putting out a really strong smell to a bear. It's just not a big deal. So don't worry about it. Yeah. That's my answer. What about like in shark-infested waters? I don't know. You might be a higher risk of shark attack.

All right. So that was it for listener questions. Do you want to do our new category? Yeah. So we have a new category. What this category is, is Mike and Jeff, one of them comes up with the true animal fact, and one of them comes up with something that's completely made up. And I have to tell them which is true and which is false. Is that right? Yep. Okay. So it's a new category we're going to try out tonight. You guys can decide who goes first. Okay. So we'll both give our animal fact, and you got to. guess which one's true. Yep. Okay, I'll go first.

Okay. So, snails are unique because their hearts are right next to their butts. Okay. That's my fact. Okay. Mike? My fact is modern cows, the entire species, is descended from a small pocket of only 81 ancestors that all lived in Anatolia. Huh.

Okay. I'm going to go with Jeff's being true. No. Shoot, yes. Oh, one zero. So you guys already stumped me. I'll be honest, you picked animals that I know very little about. I know next to nothing about snails, and I'm just incredibly bored by cows.

Oh, come on. I'll be honest. I was too lazy to make sure that their hearts aren't right next to their butts, but I'm guessing they're not. Because I made it up. Snows are really small, so relatively everything's close to their butts. So relatively, you got to go by this snail's size. Well, relative to humans. Okay.

We should probably make this more interesting. And once one of us gets to 10, the other person has to do. You're minus one right now. Yeah. It's one zero. You guys have one point. I have zero. Wes is trying to blame us for not being interesting enough.

First to 10, we'll decide. Or maybe we'll let the listeners decide what you'll happen is when someone gets 10 points. Okay. So I think we're done. Thanks guys for listening. Thanks for tuning in, as always. You're welcome. Yeah, not you guys so much.

But anyways, like a couple quick things, a couple quick business things. If you're enjoying the show, something that really truly does help us out is if you leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, if you're an Apple Podcasts listener, their whole algorithm is based around that. And we would love to see continual growth for the show. That's really kind of what keeps us running. And the other thing that keeps us running that's very important is our Patreon. It's the only way that we're making any money on the show.

And we do have some costs. We're trying to make really cool merch for you guys. We have some technology costs. We have a, you know, it's actually like ended up being fairly expensive to run a podcast. So that's the only way we can really keep going. So if you're enjoying the show, subscribe to our Patreon. We'll make it worth your while, both with like bonus episodes, with more content, with like, a lot of different little perks. So our Patreon link is in our in our Instagram bio or you can just go to

www.w.com slash tooth and a claw podcast. There you go. Thanks, Mike. Yeah. And if you own like a successful business, we'll read an ad for you. Yeah, totally. Or even in a sense of money. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, guys. We truly appreciate it. And we love you. We do. Yeah. I like you a lot. See you. See you.