Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Coyote Attack - The Cape Breton Coyotes and the Folk Music Singer

Episode Date: October 2, 2021

Hear the tragic attack that took place up in Canada involving Taylor Mitchell, the unfortunate victim of a very rare, possibly even singular encounter with a pack of coyotes. ~~ To advertise on the sh...ow, 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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Starting point is 00:00:00 If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw. Sorry this one's a little bit late.
Starting point is 00:00:40 Wes, as many of you have heard, was out in the middle of nowhere doing, I don't know, whatever he does with bears out in the wilderness, up in Yellowstone. So he was a little bit late in getting back, and we recorded a little bit less than 24 hours ago, and we are kind of crunching to get this one out. But we don't apologize for this episode.
Starting point is 00:01:02 Because I think, we think, Well, I don't know. I don't want to put words in Wes and Jeff's mouth. I think this episode's really good. We're talking about a coyote attack, which many of you probably could infer are not very common. This is a tragic story, but also one worth hearing and learning a little bit more about from Wes. All right, that's enough talking. Let's get to the episode. Well, we're here. We're here. We're a tooth and claw podcast. We're here to stay. Hey, guys, happy anniversary. That's our intro?
Starting point is 00:01:39 Yeah, it's been a year. That's crazy. Oh, right. Yeah, almost exactly a year since we launched. I thought it's been over a year. No, it's been over a year since we started recording, but it's been a year since we launched. Almost exactly.
Starting point is 00:01:54 What do you think our listeners are going to do to celebrate? I hopefully just stop listening to us. That's what you hope. Yeah, I think we're, We're done. We're done, right? Well, after today, we're all out of animals, I think. Didn't we? Yeah, this is our last animal that's ever attacked anyone. And just for any new listeners, you got Jeff, Wes, and Mike here.
Starting point is 00:02:17 Yeah. Tooth and claw. You've had us all year, and this is it. Well, not if they're new. The last episode. Yeah. A little bit about us. I'm a wildlife biologist.
Starting point is 00:02:28 I've mostly worked with bears for most of my career. currently working in Yellowstone with mostly grizzly bears. Yeah. You guys want to introduce yourselves? I thought I did already. Okay. Yeah, she said your names. All right.
Starting point is 00:02:43 Yeah, that works for me. All right. So when you say you work with bears, I always picture you in kind of a mundane little office space with a bear sitting in the cubicle next to you. Like crunching numbers and filling out TPS reports. Yeah, with a spreadsheet about. Do you think the bear's like a boss or a co-work?
Starting point is 00:03:01 Probably a coworker. Probably an annoying one that steals people's honey from their lunches in the office fridge. Wes has to do all of its work so it doesn't get in trouble. You want to hear something really sad in my life? Yeah, that you got a hernia? Oh yeah, I do have a hernia. I'm getting surgery in a week, but I'll be fine. But no, not that. So four years ago, I started a fantasy football league with my roommates. from college and it's like a fun way for us all to keep in touch but like gradually each year we
Starting point is 00:03:38 lost members so we started with 12 and then it went to 10 and then last year we only had 8 which is like pretty small for fantasy football and then this year two more people were like oh yeah we don't want to play so then this was the year everyone was like okay we're done with the roommate fantasy football league and I still wanted to do it, so I just let the computer auto draft all their players and chose all
Starting point is 00:04:09 of mine. Oh, no. And I'm just playing like the robot versions of all of my old roommates. We would have done it with you if we knew that was the case, or at least I would have.
Starting point is 00:04:25 Mike probably wouldn't have. I asked both of you. You asked if we wanted to join your league. And when you said league, I guess that there was like a leak, not just you. Well, there was like six of us that wanted to, but that wasn't really enough. When you say six of us, do you mean you and five robots? Well, now there's me and seven robots. Nice.
Starting point is 00:04:46 And I lost last week. I was going to ask if you're winning, but. Oh, man. Yeah. That's pretty sad. You win. You win the sad sweepstakes. Everyone send comforting messages to Jeff on it.
Starting point is 00:05:01 It's rough. Everyone say something nice to Jeff. You can see it. We're looking at Jeff. He looks haggard right now. He does. Yeah. I'm a mess.
Starting point is 00:05:10 Yeah. I'm a mess. What was I going to say? Oh, man, you're losing it. You really threw me off with that. You're losing your marbles, dude. Speaking of marbles, you see Squid Game on Netflix? No, is that ain't good?
Starting point is 00:05:25 Yeah, I liked it a lot. But the Marble episode will get you. I'll watch it. Sure. I usually I like the same stuff as you I'm gonna be honest since it's almost October I'm already I've already launched myself into my horror movie phase where I only really watch horror movies for a month and that started a little early this year it's weird it's not like I even try and do it it just naturally like I start just
Starting point is 00:05:49 watching horror and I don't really even realize it and then all of a sudden it gets a little cold at night yeah all of a sudden I realize like I'm only watching horror stuff and then like through October, that's truly all I want to watch. Like, I don't care about anything else. You don't care about your girlfriend or, like, anything? No, dude, nothing. Just horror movies. So are you watching good ones or boring ones?
Starting point is 00:06:12 Both. Okay. That's the one thing we aren't, like, in agreement on. Like, you just said we normally like the same stuff. We don't really... Yeah. I mean, some more movies, but... You get more scared by slasher's than I like more, like, monster movies and stuff.
Starting point is 00:06:25 And, like, ghosts. I like it all, though. I really do. I just love horror movies. Anyway, you know, we've been talking for a little while, and I forget why we're here. We're talking. Let's quickly, since we did introductions, let's quickly remind people what this podcast is all about. Here at Tooth and Claw, our main purpose is to teach people about animals.
Starting point is 00:06:45 We want to tell these great stories about animal attacks. They're really interesting. I think people really gravitate toward them because they are so fascinating. But our goal is to not only tell those stories, but to also teach people how they can avoid getting in those kind of situations and what they should do if they are in a situation where they have an encounter with an animal that could potentially hurt them. So we're really here to educate. Will you shut up about that stuff and tell us about some coyotes?
Starting point is 00:07:12 Sure, I'd love to. Today we're going to talk about coyotes. I thought he'd never stop. Yeah, we've gone on way too long already. All right, so we're going to talk about coyotes. And we've been wanting to talk about coyotes for a bit. Jeff actually has a segment in our news episode. Jeff, what's that segment called?
Starting point is 00:07:32 Oh, you mean the new one? Coyotes be Wyland. Yeah, Coyotes be Wyland. Which we're probably going to use that segment for Jeff to, like, update us on some of the Vancouver stuff. We're going to talk about the coyotes that have been attacking people in Stanley Park. I've got a little bit I can talk about with that too. So if you guys are here to hear about the Stanley Park coyotes,
Starting point is 00:07:53 you're going to have to wait for our next episode. we're actually going to talk today about a coyote attack that happened in 2009. And I don't want to spoil it, but there's something that really sets this apart. And it's pretty tragic, actually. We'll get into it. We're talking about coyotes. I'm glad we all say coyote instead of coyote. Yeah, I'm glad that all three of us seem to agree on the pronunciation.
Starting point is 00:08:16 Every once in a while, coyote slips in for me. Every once in a while you'll hear a coyote from me. Maybe not today. But it does happen sometimes. Yeah. But I'm glad too, Mike. Anytime we're all three on the same page. How do you pronounce a coyote howl?
Starting point is 00:08:30 How do you, can you do that? Howl? Like, how do I say, how do you do it? Yeah, do it. Oh, pooh, hip, hip, hip, hip, oh. Yeah, that's how I do it too. That's pretty good. Yeah, we're all on the same page.
Starting point is 00:08:43 They actually, so something I learned about coyotes, they have one of the widest range of vocalizations of any mammal. So they do like the yips and the howls and barks and all sorts of crazy noises. you hear him, me and Jeff when we worked in Bryce, we'd hear him all the time. They have some really cool noises. So that's just one of you. They're pretty smart little guys, aren't they? One of many. Yeah. Okay. Let's go ahead and get into our story. Let's talk a little bit about coyotes. We're going to talk about an attack that happened in 2009. And I do, you know, sometimes we shy away from the word attack a little bit. I think for this story, it's pretty
Starting point is 00:09:19 appropriate. I do think this was a true coyote attack. Coyote is not really, attack people though. Well, that's what I'm saying is that in this case, I think we can say that they did attack this person. Well, let's see. So, yeah, I guess you guys can be the judge of that. All right. So in October of 2009, Taylor Mitchell was a bit of a Canadian country music star on the rise. So she had independently produced and released an album and that album featured guest performances from a number of different famous Canadian country singers. She'd played in the Winnipeg Folk Festival, which I guess is like a pretty big Canadian country and folk music festival.
Starting point is 00:10:04 So she's like this star on the rise. I couldn't find a ton about her like personal life and her family, but everything I read seems like this girl was really sweet and nice and a really great person. So Taylor had put a lot of work into making her dream come true, playing country music and folk music and all this stuff. She'd studied music in school. She'd been playing and writing music pretty much her whole life.
Starting point is 00:10:28 And her hard work is starting to pay some dividends in the fall of 2009. She's able to schedule her first tour. And in that tour, she was going to be playing mostly these Atlantic parts of Canada. So she's going to go to like Nova Scotia and kind of throughout Atlantic Canada. Give us another. I can't think of anything else. Thanks for calling me on that. Anyway, this was a big tour for her.
Starting point is 00:10:56 Like, if everything went to plan on this tour, it was going to really hopefully launch her into the next stage of her career. So she's really just kind of starting to build this music career. She'd been featured in a few different magazines. Oh. I think it was kind of at that point, you know, where it's like make or break for her. So her tour began in late October,
Starting point is 00:11:15 and she played a show just outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, this show on October 25th would be the last. show that Taylor Mitchell would ever play. Taylor's next show was scheduled in the smaller town of Sydney, which is on Cape Breton Island. So Cape Breton Island makes up part of Nova Scotia. It's an island that has like, like when you picture Northern Scotland with all the coastline and everything and like the low shrub and like really beautiful fall colors and whatnot, that's kind of what Cape Breton looks like. And it has like really beautiful wooded areas that get amazing fall foliage. It's really beautiful, actually. I didn't know much about Cape Breton, and after I read
Starting point is 00:11:57 this story, I looked it up, and it made me want to visit. Like, it looks like a really cool place. Yeah, that sounds right up my alley. Yeah, like beautiful coastline, really vibrant local culture, just a cool place. So Taylor did consider herself somewhat of an environmentalist, and when she had chances, she would go out and explore like national parks and wilderness, whether she was at home in Toronto or traveling, she did her best to get outdoors. And before this show in Cape Breton, she had a few extra days. So on October 27, 2009, she decided that she was going to go hike around the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
Starting point is 00:12:35 It's a 367 square mile park, and it's home to large areas of wilderness, and then there is some wildlife there, too, including coyotes. But she doesn't need to worry about coyotes. That's what you typically think. That's probably what we think every time we go out. And we are going to, let's talk a little bit about coyotes just to like kind of get an idea of if you should have to worry about coyotes or not. Adult coyotes weigh about 20 to 40 pounds on average. They're kind of just like the size of a medium sized dog.
Starting point is 00:13:09 So I think a good, a good comparison would be like. Tire on a bus. Let's, uh, yeah, a lot, a lot less than that actually. a tire on a bus probably weighs like 60 pounds. Anyway, they're probably like the size of like an Australian Shepherd or like a mid-sized dog. So their size can really differ on where they live and the subspecies. There's actually 19 recognized subspecies of coyotes. The largest coyote on record was killed in Wyoming. It weighed about 75 pounds. It was almost five feet long. So even like a big coyote the biggest ever isn't that big.
Starting point is 00:13:49 And that's like a really like young wolf, right? Exactly. That'd be like a smaller wolf. Females are typically a bit smaller than males. Do you guys remember where that's called when there's like a difference between the two sexes and size? No. Sexual dimorphism.
Starting point is 00:14:05 Isn't that most animals? It can go either way. Yeah, there are some animals where they're pretty much the same size. But like humans, for example, are sexually dimorphic, generally males. are a bit bigger than females. Spiders are really sexually dimorphic. Like the females are much bigger than the males. So there's all these different.
Starting point is 00:14:24 Okay. Anyway, typically coyotes have grayish, brownish or reddish coats. They are kind of on the bottom of the ladder for larger North American predators. So they could be prey for wolves, bears, cougars. Even eagles will sometimes kill coyotes. And alligators will sometimes kill coyotes. Yeah. So as far as like the larger predators in North America, they're kind of like the lowest.
Starting point is 00:14:50 I feel like they don't even quite fit the category of a large predator. Yeah, they're probably like, there's this group of predators called meso carnivores and they're probably more in that area. Like a Wolverine and stuff like that. Yeah, like Wolverines, badgers, foxes, coyotes, all those animals. They're doing good in that group. Yeah, if they're technically meso carnivores, then they're doing great. They're at the top of that crew. Although a Wolverine would probably take a coyote.
Starting point is 00:15:22 This summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup and Kraft singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly milty cheese and thick, rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and craft. Okay, so they do sometimes a cute fact about coyotes. They sometimes socialize with badgers and they'll hunt together. I think you guys have probably. seen there's a viral video of a badger and a coyote walking through a culvert together and they're playing with each other yeah they kind of like form this is a bit anthropomorphic but they kind of form
Starting point is 00:15:58 like friendships almost oh i like that um yeah disney needs to make that a movie a coyote badger movie yeah no it could really that would be a cute movie so they have a huge range they range all the way from eastern alaska over to eastern canada and then down all the way to panama so pretty much all of North and Central America. They don't have them in South America? No. They end in Panama. I was going to ask when you mentioned that sometimes even alligators get them.
Starting point is 00:16:26 I just, I don't think of coyotes as being in that same area at all. But yeah, that's really cool. They are for sure. So it's really interesting kind of learning a bit about how they spread. If you guys ever get the chance there's this book called Coyote America. It's by this guy, Dan Flores. I just heard about that. It's so good.
Starting point is 00:16:45 It's a great book, and he talks about their, like, expansion and all these things we tried to do to get rid of them and how, like, adaptable and great they are. And it's really... They're, like, super resilient, right? Yeah, it makes you just love coyotes. And so, like, basically, though, the main idea is that really coyotes used to just live in, like, the prairies and the desert southwest. But because these predator control programs in, like, the 1800s and 1900s, they wiped out so many bears and war. wolves and cougars and everything, that coyotes, like, suddenly all these predators that were keeping their numbers down were gone.
Starting point is 00:17:23 And so coyotes just expanded. And then we also cut down a lot of forest. And forest isn't actually, like, their preferred habitat. It's more like prairie and farmland and stuff. So we created a lot of habitat for coyotes. Wow. Yeah. So we actually, like, they're one animal where we've actually, like, really helped kind of increase
Starting point is 00:17:43 their ability to survive. Good for us. Yeah. Finally. Yeah. We killed all those other predators and cut down all the forests. They're extremely adaptable. And a really interesting fact is that every major city in the U.S.
Starting point is 00:17:59 has coyotes. Oh, yeah. That is interesting. In the city, living like in urban areas. Whoa. Like you can find them in Central Park. You can find them in like downtown Chicago. It's pretty crazy where coyotes pop up.
Starting point is 00:18:11 And they're only in North America? North and Central America. They're not in like Europe or anything. Nope. Hopefully they know to stay out of the bad parts of town. Yeah, they probably. That's probably where like, they thrive on like rodents and stray cats and all these things that are really common in cities.
Starting point is 00:18:30 So that's why they do tend to do pretty well in cities. And it probably kind of helps the city then. Yeah, they are good for pest control. Yeah. They're feral cats down and they get they probably get away with it pretty easily since a lot of people when they see a coyote just run. the street probably just mistake it for a dog yeah they exactly and like they are just so resilient and they're so good at surviving and breeding and having lots of pups and stuff that they just manage to thrive pretty much everywhere they show up um they're also really arrogant the way they walk
Starting point is 00:19:03 really you think so they're just like always on their tip toes almost their little so they do actually walk on their toes um which is like a an a neat fact is that arrogant i don't think so i think it's Kind of, I like it. Like, I'm not saying it's a bad arrogant. I think it's just like they always seem like, or maybe they always just seem like they're sneaking. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I seem like.
Starting point is 00:19:28 Bouncy and sneaky to me, but not so much arrogant. Yeah. When I see a human tiptoeing, I'm not like, oh, look at that guy thinks he's the coolest. Oh, I do. Another thing that's given them the ability to be so resilient and like to thrive in, you know, the face of human. expansion is that they really eat everything. Anything like as big as deer and elk to like birds, frogs, snakes, berries, carcasses.
Starting point is 00:19:56 A pack of coyotes could technically take down an elk. Yeah. Rodents and small mammals do tend to make up the bulk of their diet, especially for like wild coyotes that are living in rural places. But they do really do good kind of on the fringe of society and eating, like we mentioned, like rats and feral cats. and anthropogenic food, so human food. They do sometimes hunt in packs.
Starting point is 00:20:21 They have like family groups or family structures. They're not quite as like of a pack animal as wolves are, but they do tend to travel in packs. They can also be solitary. They mate for life, so they're monogamous. And quick pop quiz for you guys. Who's faster? A roadrunner or a coyote?
Starting point is 00:20:40 Oh, this sounds like a trick. Yeah, coyote. It is the coyote. Roadrunners run at about 15 miles per hour. Coyotes can get up to 40 miles per hour. So they're significantly faster than roadrunners. So we've been lied to our whole entire lives. So he didn't have to paint the like murals on the walls of like a road or something.
Starting point is 00:21:03 He could have run that run that roadrunner down in like a light jock. All right. So they are really prominent in Native American folklore. They're often depicted as like a trickster, like a really intelligent trickster. That's a common theme throughout a lot of different tribes in their folklore. Kind of arrogant. I don't think there's so much depicted as arrogant, but maybe.
Starting point is 00:21:27 One thing that you guys might hear sometimes about coyotes is this, have you ever heard of a coy wolf? No. Sometimes, like, it's come up a lot more recently. It's kind of almost become a fad almost for, I think, for people to say something's a coy wolf when they see like a big coyote. But essentially that's a hybrid. between a wolf and a coyote.
Starting point is 00:21:47 And apparently they can be somewhat common in the east where coyotes used to mix with wolves. They don't really have many wolves out there anymore. And that doesn't really happen anymore. So it'd be like back in history they did that. And because of that, eastern coyotes do tend to be a little bit bigger. But coy wolves aren't actually a recognized subspecies of coyotes. And they're also not found east of Ohio. I have a question.
Starting point is 00:22:13 So you said that they're monogynobes. They say that right. So do animals like cheat on their spouses ever if they're monogamous? That's a good question. Maybe, probably, but I don't know. We'll have to look into that. We should get like Chris Hansen on that, like a date line special for coyotes cheating. I think it'd be more of like they're just like polyamorous than I don't think we can call that cheating.
Starting point is 00:22:42 I don't think there's like a bond and a comming. commitment between the two. But maybe who knows, who knows what's going on with animals? I don't. It's still cheating. It's just they don't feel bad about it. Okay, we don't need to get into this. All right.
Starting point is 00:23:01 So a little bit about coyote attacks. They are somewhat common, especially in urban areas like Los Angeles County. But attacks are generally just like a bite. And they're often the result of a coyote being food condition. So really quickly, like, food condition is when you're feeding an animal food that it's not necessarily supposed to have, or even if you're feeding it natural food, but it starts to associate humans with getting a reward and they become conditioned to that relationship of like, hey, if I approach this thing, I'm going to get food from it. Habituated animal is just one that's like used to human presence. A food condition one is one that's actually like getting a reward. So that's like the worst case scenario for almost every animal is when they become food conditions.
Starting point is 00:23:48 I can think of worse conditions than that. Yeah. Like getting caught in like a tornado or something would be worse. Yeah, I'm saying for wild animals, it's a bad, it's a bad thing for them to become food conditions. It's like the cassowary guy that kept feeding that one apples. Yeah. The dude that just had like 20 apples in his pockets. All right, I know I'm telling you guys lots about.
Starting point is 00:24:13 coyotes, but they really are so fascinating to me. So I just got a tiny bit more. So generally, like, when people just get bit, it's because it's a coyote that's like so used to running up to someone and being like, oh, this thing gives me food. And then it either gets frustrated because it's not getting food, so it bites them, or it's just kind of confused that whole relationship and ends up biting the person. I mean, it sounds like we've done enough for them. They shouldn't expect much more. We've, like, killed all their predators and we're giving them food and then they get mad. We're going to talk about some of the bad stuff we've done to Cahote. There was a house cat that attacked me once.
Starting point is 00:24:48 I was just on a walk and ran from the porch to my feet and just started doing like the little figure eight thing they do between your legs and rubbing its head on me. And I let it do it for like 30 seconds. And then I started to walk again and it bit me on like my heel. And it's just like so it's mad at me because like I wasn't going to stand there anymore. How do you, Jeff? And I just feel like that's the coyotes. Even if you feed them, maybe they'd get mad at you for like not having more or something. You really should have saved that story.
Starting point is 00:25:23 We should have covered that on the podcast next week. Its own episode. Yeah, I mean, who knows if that's their mindset. I'm just saying like... Food conditioning's... Animals get mad for no reason. They can be real friendly and switch to really mad fast. I think frustrated is a better word.
Starting point is 00:25:44 They get, they're upset that they're not getting the reward that they're expecting. And so they like turn to aggression and frustration. Yeah. It's kind of like how you get hangary sometimes, Jeff, because you sure do. Yeah, that builds up. All right. But everyone's small. There are actual what seem to be predatory attacks by coyotes on humans.
Starting point is 00:26:05 And it's almost always a kid. And the coyote's attacking like a, and they're usually like really small kids, like two, three-year-old kids that are getting attacked by coyotes. Sometimes they do attack pets too, and it's really, really, really rare that a predatory attack on an adult happens, but unfortunately that is what happened to Taylor Mitchell in 2009. So we're going to get back to our story. Taylor had decided to hike what's known as the Skyline Trail. It's a roughly 4.5 mile trail that overlooks the coast and this whole like rugged Cape Breton shore that everyone goes to Cape Breton to see. So at the trailhead she actually passes an American couple who's getting ready to hike and she quickly
Starting point is 00:26:48 says hi to them and sets out on the trail. The American couple sets out on this trail not long after and as they're walking they quickly encounter a pair of coyotes and they're pretty shocked to see how calm and bold these coyotes seem to be. The coyotes don't mind at all that this couple's there. they pass right by them. I guess the man managed to take a couple photos of the coyotes, and they just really didn't care at all that these people were there. And they also noted that the male in this pair of coyotes seemed to be like pretty large for a coyote. They hardly noticed this American couple, and they just headed down the trail. Roughly about six minutes into the hike for this American couple, they heard what they thought was a woman screaming really high
Starting point is 00:27:33 pitch down the trail. So they actually head back to the trailhead parking lot and there's a telephone box there and they call for help. You said coyotes have really big vocal ranges. Yeah. So it could be a coyote. So in the story, like in the narrative of the story, they actually didn't know if they were hearing animal sounds or screaming.
Starting point is 00:27:56 But actually it did end up being screaming. So they also, when they went back to call for help, they encountered a European and an Australian hiker and those two actually set out to investigate the source of the screams. So those two are heading up the trail and as they head up the trail they start to find belongings of tailors scattered around in the trail. They find a knife, they find some keys and then a bit further down the trail they find bathrooms there and it has like a big blood smear across the face of the door. Wow. Yeah so then they look down and they see a lot more blood on the ground and some tattered clothing and they realized like okay something's obviously gone really wrong here so looking
Starting point is 00:28:38 around and they they noticed some commotion in the nearby woods and they go to investigate and there they find a really badly injured taylor and she has bites all over her body and the two coyotes are still attacking her at this point oh man so later they some investigators went back and they kind of pieced out what probably happened to taylor and what they think happened is that she was like on the on the trail and she decided to like maybe double back and go back to the parking lot rather than doing the full length of the trail and she confronted these two coyotes that the American couple had seen and the drop knife and keys and everything on the ground were probably an indication that she had actually been trying to defend herself and
Starting point is 00:29:24 fight off the animals and then she ran toward the safety of this bathroom but as she got to the bathroom, the coyotes attacked her and drug her away from the bathroom. And that's why there was the blood dragged all over the door and stuff. So she was like probably just about able to get to safety, but they grabbed her and pulled her out. So pretty tragic. And that of course is just, that's what investigators piece together. Who knows what actually happened? No one was there to see it. But that's what they think happened. So these guys, they throw some rocks at the coyote. They managed to scare the coyotes off of Mitchell. And she, She's actually still conscious enough to be able to talk to them for a second.
Starting point is 00:30:04 And as they're talking to her, a royal Canadian-mounted police officer shows up. And the male coyote is still hanging out and trying to get back in and attack Taylor. So this guy shoots his shotgun at it. He's not sure if he hits it and off, but the coyote yelps and runs off. So he's pretty sure he did. Taylor's taken to a nearby clinic. And then she's flown to a much larger hospital in Halifax, where doctors, like, are scrambling to save her life.
Starting point is 00:30:29 but because she had lost so much blood at this point, she actually ends up succumbing to her injuries the next morning and she dies. Yeah, so really tragic. And then she has this really kind of unfortunate distinction of being the only adult on the record to have ever been killed by coyotes. So she's the only one. Anywhere? Anywhere in the world?
Starting point is 00:30:48 Anywhere. Well, they're only in North America. Yeah. Is that in the world, Jeff? So there was a kid killed by coyotes. I think, I'm not totally sure when that was, but she's the only adult that's ever been killed. She was 19 years old, so she does qualify.
Starting point is 00:31:10 I told mom we were going to talk about coyotes. Yeah. And she was like, yeah, someone died waiting for the bus when I was growing up in L.A., but West doesn't believe me. I don't. Not if it was an adult especially. Unless it was a kid. Oh, that could be true then.
Starting point is 00:31:32 Okay. I don't know. Yeah. I was going to look it up, but I forgot. That could be the other. So there's one other attack that's like verified someone was killed by a coyote. And that very well could be that. Because I know it was in Southern California and it was in the 80s.
Starting point is 00:31:50 It was a three-year-old girl. So it could be. Well, she wouldn't be waiting for it. It was a different time back then. My mom might just be like a little bit confused about that. Yeah, she didn't seem very confident. Okay. All right.
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Starting point is 00:32:32 Ralph's, fresh for everyone. Anyway, after these coyotes killed Taylor, they decided, you know, the authorities obviously knew that they had to respond to the attack. So they went back to the scene of the attack. They found a female coyote that was there, you know, where Taylor had been killed. they immediately shot and killed that coyote. And then they put out some leg traps and they caught four other coyotes, which they also killed that were all within a kilometer of where she was attacked.
Starting point is 00:33:02 And then a few days later, they saw a large male coyote. They caught him and they found some shotgun pellets in him. So that was another coyote that they ended up killing. So after they had killed all these coyotes, they did examinations on them. And they found that it was likely that there was actually four coyotes involved in this attack on Taylor, not just the two that the Americans had seen. So she might have had coyotes, like, come in on both sides and kind of pin her in and attack her.
Starting point is 00:33:29 Yeah, that would be scary. Like, two coyotes, I feel like I'd still feel, like, pretty safe. But once you get to, like, if you're, like, pretty close to, like, three of them, you're like, I wonder if they're getting any ideas yet. It's kind of like that question, how many, like, five-year-olds do you think you could fight? Yeah. And for me, I think it's like, if they're coming one at a time, it's pretty endless. Like, I think I could just fight them off until I'm, I could probably just kill like
Starting point is 00:33:58 105-year-olds until I'm too exhausted to kill anymore. But, like, if they're all attacking me at the same time, it's probably only going to take like 15 of them. Wow, we'll test that later. Yeah. Anyway. Five-year-olds are, like, right in the ball range, too, you know? Yeah, they can say.
Starting point is 00:34:17 range? Are we talking about you kicking them in the balls? No, if they're like punching at you, like, their height, they're going to get you right in the balls. Right. All right. Okay. I was just confused at what a ball range was, but I think you painted a good picture. Yeah, ball zone. Now we have it on record of Jeff saying five-year-olds are right in the ball range.
Starting point is 00:34:40 Okay. So there are, again, on a more serious note, this is a really truels. tragic story. It's a really awful, you know, way to die. And this was like someone's family member and all the, you know, all the, you just don't expect to be attacked and killed by coyotes. That's just not something that anyone would ever expect. And so there are a lot of different theories about why this could have happened to Taylor. The most likely is this, this was a group of coyotes that for whatever reason probably wasn't having an easy time finding like their typical food sources. And Taylor was pretty small. She was petite.
Starting point is 00:35:17 From what I read, she was like only about five feet tall, somewhere around 100 pounds. So she kind of is in their range of animals that they knew. The group of coyotes knew they could take down. So it is like almost unheard of that there's these stories of coyotes hunting humans. So we don't really know, we'll probably never know, the circumstances that led to this and why this group of coyotes decided to attack an adult human being. But it could be a lot of things. It could be their food conditioned.
Starting point is 00:35:46 it could be that they just decided, hey, this is something we can kill and we're going to do it. One thing I did want to bring up is, and this isn't like pointing fingers or anything, but if you're ever in an area where you suspect someone might be being attacked by coyotes, go and intervene. The American couple that turned around to go call the police. Like could have maybe saved her. I don't blame them for doing that, but they would have for sure saved her. There's no doubt in my mind that had they ran to where they heard those screams, they would have pushed the coyotes off of her and she probably wouldn't have died.
Starting point is 00:36:25 The thing, the hard part is just knowing, I wouldn't ever think it was coyotes. I'd be like, oh shoot, like Mike Myers just got that girl ahead of me on the trail or something, you know. Right. I think they kind of suspected coyotes though because they had just seen those coyotes run in her direction. So I think. And again, like, I don't want to point fingers and I don't want to say like this is, because it's such a tragic thing like someone died. But I'm just saying if you do ever find yourself in that situation and you suspect it's coyotes, you definitely should try and intervene. I don't think it could have been Mike Myers.
Starting point is 00:37:03 He would have needed a passport to get into Canada and he would never take that mask off for a picture. If we're talking about Mike Myers from Austin Powers, he's Canadian. So he can go. Yeah. Anyway, we're going to get a bit more into what you're actually supposed to do when you're confronted by a coyote later. But I will just say that as a last note, like, do intervene if you ever see that happening because coyotes don't like groups of people and they will almost invariable, like they're going to stop their attack if you intervene. Okay. Yeah. So that's the story.
Starting point is 00:37:39 It's a really tragic one. I really debated between just telling a bunch of the Stanley Park attacks or telling this. story. But I do think this story stands out because it's the only adult ever killed by coyotes. Yeah. And I think that bodes well for people's perception of coyotes that like they're not ruthless. They're not terrible killing machines. You know, they hardly, they've only killed one person ever that we know of. So that's pretty good record for them, considering they're like essentially a small wolf. Okay. Let's go into our categories. Are you guys ready? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ready. got any questions about the story. No, I was wondering, have you listened to any of Taylor's music by any chance?
Starting point is 00:38:18 I haven't. I was going to listen to it. I'll be honest. Like, sometimes when I do the research for these stories, I get a little wrapped up in those people, and it gets really sad when they die. And I don't necessarily, like, I think it would have really bummed me out to listen to her music. And I know that's, like, kind of stupid but no i get uh it just kind of yeah sometimes after like hours of trying to learn as much about these people as i can i don't necessarily like want to hear like what their life could have been you know yeah if that makes sense i have like a little mini story i wanted to share okay i looked on wikipedia coyote attacks and there's just like a hundred of them yeah and that's not exaggerating.
Starting point is 00:39:09 So I just chose a random one here that I was going to read. Okay. So in November 2013, a 15-year-old girl in Johns Creek, Georgia was jogging in her neighborhood with her black Labrador mix when a coyote chased her. She hit the coyote with her cellular phone, but fled while the dogs fought against each other. The teenage girl knocked on her neighbor's door and called her father when she got inside the neighbor's home. I just thought it's funny she threw her cell phone at it. But there's just like
Starting point is 00:39:44 hundreds of like little stories of people getting attacked. They're all just like little one or two sentence stories. Yeah. And a lot of them are just that. It's like a coyote approaches someone. They maybe get bit or their dog gets bit or something and that's it. Like that's generally what a coyote attack looks like. This one on Taylor Mitchell was a big aberration. It's not typically what you see in a coyote at right Mike okay Mike try not to laugh at this one you can't set on on April 15th 2011 a coyote bit a two-year-old girl on the neck at a regional playground in Cave Creek Arizona I'm not parents took her to the hospital for
Starting point is 00:40:27 rabies treatment afterwards that's not what's funny about it's not funny you can't set me up literally no part of that I told you not to laugh. It's not funny. That was my fault. Okay. That's why it's like, don't laugh.
Starting point is 00:40:42 To listen to an hour of Jeff reading these one-line coyote attacks. Okay. Let's go into our categories. Favorite coyote in pop culture of all time? I was thinking about this a bit. If any of us say it's not Wiley Coyote, I think we're all lying as our number one. Yeah. So I'm just going to say like Wiley Coyote is my favorite.
Starting point is 00:41:04 So I knew you would choose that. So I came up with a backup. Okay. So mine's Homer's Spirit Guide when he eats the hot chili. The hot, yeah. It's a space coyote and is voiced by Johnny Cash. Yeah, I didn't know that was Johnny Cash. Yeah, that's sweet.
Starting point is 00:41:24 There's a good episode. What's the Pepper called? And then my backups were the Spurs mascot, and then there's like a coyote that crosses the street in the movie collateral and I think that's like a pretty good movie. Oh yeah. Yeah. That was those four good coyotes you talked about right there Jeff. Oh they're Guatemalan insanity peppers. That's what they're called that he eats. Okay. Mike what's your favorite coyote? So I was like 10 or so when the movie Coyote Ugly came out. You ever see that movie? Yeah. Yeah. I saw that. I never saw it. But if you go
Starting point is 00:42:00 go look at the cover of that movie, you could probably tell why a 12 year old Mikey would be really excited about it. Yeah, it's like a bunch of women standing on the, like, yeah, I know. I remember the trailer for it pretty much. And they're all sexy and stuff. I've seen the bar in Vegas. Oh, I didn't even know. It was a real place. I really wanted to go in. Yeah, I was like, oh man, I got to get in there. Did that bar, was it created after the movie or before the movie? Yeah, someone look it up for us out there. All right. That's a good answer. Is there, was there one in particular or just all of it? With coyotes. Here, let me look.
Starting point is 00:42:38 We can move on to the next one while I look. All right. So our next question, we're going to do. What would Mike and Jeff do if you were attacked by coyotes? Let's say a group of at least two coyotes attacks you. What are you guys doing? Man, I'm just going to try to stay on my feet and kick out him a bunch. Okay.
Starting point is 00:43:01 Mike? So there's one of the girls looks kind of like Tyra Banks. She's in the top left poster. That's my favorite one. It is Tyra Banks, by the way. Is that Tyra? Okay, cool. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:14 So what I would do, I actually heard Tell from a good friend, he was a real ranch hand type, that donkeys are really, really good at preventing coyotes from like coming in and getting at their livestock or whatever they're trying to do. That's true. Yeah. So I guess probably just a donkey kick. I give him a donkey kick. Yeah. Or have a donkey. I don't know, one of those two.
Starting point is 00:43:36 Yeah. Yeah, surround yourself with donkeys. Yeah. That's where I thought you were going. Donkeys are cool. They are. They're loud, but I do. Jesse loves a donkey.
Starting point is 00:43:44 It's like your favorite animal. I just think about that one, the wild one we saw in Mexico. Yeah, it was beautiful. The burro? Boro. How do you say that? Burro. Burro.
Starting point is 00:43:57 I've never heard a donkey be described as beautiful. It was. It was beautiful. I'd like to see it. I don't doubt it. All right. little bit about what you're actually supposed to do if you're confronted by a coyote. So it's very similar to like what you would do with a wolf or a mountain lion or a lot of these other animals
Starting point is 00:44:16 that aren't bears. Actually somewhat similar to what you do with the black bear too. The number one thing is don't run. If you do run from a coyote, again, you might trigger that predatory response in it. It's the same thing that can happen with like a mountain lion, a wolf, any of those animals. The second you run, it's like, okay, it's deciding. It's doing kind of this mental calculus of like if you're big enough to eat, if you're prey, whatever. The second you run, it's like, okay, that was prey. So I'm going to chase it. So don't run. When I was reading through the Wikipedia stories, there's a coyote that attacked two five-year-olds. And when it came up to him, one of them ran. And that's the only kid that got bit. Totally. So you don't want to run. What you
Starting point is 00:45:01 want to do is make yourself look really big. You want to throw stuff at it. Pretty much what Jeff said, stay tall, throw stuff at it, kick rocks at it, yell at it, do whatever you can to convince it that you're not prey and that you're not afraid of it. That's how you stop them from coming in and biting you or whatever. If the coyote does still decide to attack, to bite or to do something like that, then you just really have to fight it off as hard as you can. There are stories out there of people like, they're literally like holding the coyote down until someone comes to help them so you just need to do whatever you can it's not that big of an animal you could overpower that animal if you're an adult human being the only thing they can like really do damage with is their teeth right
Starting point is 00:45:45 yeah it's just their teeth i mean they might scratch at you and stuff no their tail's not going to hurt you um you'll probably get bit up and stuff but you need to do whatever you can to stop it from I don't know. Attacking you. You ever gotten whipped in the eyeball by a cat tail or something like that? I may be. I guess. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:04 That's what I was thinking. That's not what they're trying to do. Okay. So really, it's just being dominant, overpowering the animal if it does attack you, kicking it, just convincing it that you're not prey. Okay. Mike, we've lost Mike. I'm sorry. It's just not even that funny.
Starting point is 00:46:26 It's really not, but I do love when you think that stuff is that funny. Possibly the dumbest joke we've ever told on our podcast, and Mike can hardly breathe these laughing so hard. Okay, let's get into our Animal Olympics, which we haven't done for a minute, and I thought would be an interesting one for this. We all have that dream trip. We've been wishing we could go on,
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Starting point is 00:47:50 So what do you guys think? What event would coyotes be best at in an animal Olympics? Is there like something with their voices you could come up with? Some event just making noises. Like yodeling or something. Yeah, the vocal range, right? Yeah, they'd be good at the yodeling event. Oh, the equestrian with the horses where they dance.
Starting point is 00:48:12 Uh-huh. Because they're always prancing around on their toes. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. I thought of like of hurdles because they're so bouncy. And like when you see them like hunt mice and stuff under the snow and they do that like leap. I thought they'd be good because they're a fast animal. They can run up to 40 miles per hour. And then they're also super bouncy.
Starting point is 00:48:33 So my answer was hurdles, but I don't have a great answer, to be honest. Mike, you got anything? No, I just want to see a coyote put on a show now. Like, what's the alien's name in Fifth Element? Bet coyotes could do that scene really well. Wait, what's the... When the aliens doing the opera and she goes from like super high to low? Oh, I get...
Starting point is 00:48:55 That's such a weird train of... thought, but okay. Yeah, so yodeling. We'll say yodeling. We're giving them yodeling an opera. Okay. All right. So should we do our cage match? Let's do cage match. What the hell? Cage match. Mike, you want to tell us a little bit about what the cage match is? Yeah, sure. So basically what we're going to do here is we're going to pair off the coyote in hypothetical cage match fighting situations with every other animal that we've talked about so far on the podcast. A year's worth of animals at this point. So I guess if we want to pair it down into weight class, it's basically anything 40 pounds and below.
Starting point is 00:49:36 50 pounds or maybe 100 pounds. I don't know. The dragon. Let's say 50 in below. Okay. What do animals are you going to put it between? So I'm putting it in between our Nile monitor and our mountain lion. Do you think of beaver?
Starting point is 00:49:54 Because I did beaver on the Patreon. I think coyotes would kill beavers. You think so? Beavers get bigger. Not bigger than coyotes, though. They got to like 70 pounds as like the biggest beavers. I guess coyotes get to 70 too. And coyotes are bit like they're like higher up.
Starting point is 00:50:12 They have a higher center of gravity. I just feel like. Going back to like the tail in the eye, the beaver would hurt way worse. That's true. Yeah. If we're talking about tails and eyes, I think you're right. That's not a thing though. Okay, so you're saying coyote gets the beaver.
Starting point is 00:50:29 I think the coyote kills the beaver. Okay. Now you guys start saying coyote. We said coyote, I know. Cheetah. Cheetah kills the coyote. So coyotes are like essentially, in North America, they're essentially the equivalent of like a jackal in Africa.
Starting point is 00:50:43 They occupy the same niche. They're about the same size. They kind of the same things. Cheetahs can definitely kill jackals. So it would definitely be the cheetah. I would put it between. the Nile Monitor and the Mountain Lion, mountain line beats it almost every single time.
Starting point is 00:51:02 It probably would kill the Nile Monitor, but not for sure. I think that's a good fight, Coyotes and Nile monitors. Spider? Coyote kills the spider. You always ask about the spider. One of these days, the spider will take someone out. Pretty sure the chimpanzee kills the coyote too.
Starting point is 00:51:22 So we're pretty low. Coyote is pretty low But I'm glad we've got it in the mix now Because it'll be an interesting one for some of our other animals Okay Listener questions Yeah let's do some listener questions All right
Starting point is 00:51:35 I'm just going to get the ball rolling here Get it rolling This is from a late So I realized Like you know that Key and Piel Sketch where he's like reading the names As the Substitute Teacher and he's like A Ron
Starting point is 00:51:50 Yeah That's like me trying to read these like people names. Yeah, we know. Okay. Yeah. Eleni Kennedy. So she is asking, do bears eat all the spiky bits and leaves when they eat berries off of bushes? Yeah, it's a great question. They have surprisingly dexterous lips and tongues. So they're really good at just stripping the berries off of those branches and plants. So typically they're not eating a lot of like the sticks and spiky stuff. But like the little tiny sticks that connect berries to like a bigger branch and stick, a lot of times they are going to be eating those. It's not like they're perfectly pulling the berries
Starting point is 00:52:35 off. They're eating those little tiny sticks. And sometimes they're going to eat some leaves and sticks and branches stuff and stuff too. But mostly they're just getting berries and the little sticks. It does really depend on like what kind of berries we're talking about too. So it's kind of a hard question to answer, but they are surprisingly good at separating berries from plants. They could tie a knot with the cherry stem with their tongue? Probably. Probably. Mike, you can do that.
Starting point is 00:53:04 Yeah. They sound like great kissers. Yeah. They'd probably win that Olympic event. Yeah. I think bears maybe could win that event. Okay. So, this listener wants to remain nameless.
Starting point is 00:53:20 Okay. She embarrassingly bear sprayed a mouse and subsequently myself and a few other people in the process. Although they were sleeping and did not wake up, just coughed uncontrollably in their sleep, which is incredible. My question is, do you think the mouse died? It's been over a year since this happened, but I feel pretty guilty about it. I'm wondering if it's bear spray and not like that. pepper spray because bear spray they would all wake up in the tent it was in a tent yeah so it has to be like mace right she just did the smallest little squirt of bear spray then maybe they could still sleep i don't
Starting point is 00:54:06 know i like the one time that i've discharged my bear spray i walked through the cloud like where the cloud was maybe 10 minutes later and i was coughing uncontrollably like i felt like i couldn't breathe and that was minutes after it had like dissipated. It's nasty, nasty stuff. Would a mouse die if you spray it? I want to know so much more about this story. Why is she spraying a mouse? We need a part two. Yeah. I doubt the mouse died. There's nothing in there that like kills animals necessarily. I bet the mouse was fine. Mice are like surprisingly resilient little animals. So I'm probably I bet the mouse was fine. It probably had a really uncomfortable. comfortable few hours. Hey, don't spray mice with bear spray anyone. It's a bad idea.
Starting point is 00:54:58 Don't spray, you don't need to spray them with bear spray. And then another bear spray question from Larsi Pan 22. So she wants to know if there's any cases of a bear continuing to attack after being sprayed with bear spray. Yeah, for sure, there are. Um, usually it's like the, there's enough momentum to the attack that when the person sprays, like maybe they're a little late in spraying the bear. And so it still makes contact with them. And then once it's in contact with them, it might just continue that attack.
Starting point is 00:55:32 Um, there's a couple times where it just simply the, the bears like whatever triggered the attack, whether, you know, it was defending a carcass or cubs or whatever, it's so angry that it just kind of pushes through the pain of the bear spray. that has happened. It's very rare, though. Usually if you get a good spray on the bear and it goes through that cloud of bear spray, usually it's going to stop it. But there definitely are examples where it has continued even though they sprayed it.
Starting point is 00:56:02 Okay, from Tyson Fisher, if you buy a bigger mattress, do you have more bedroom or less bedroom? Do one of you guys want to answer that one? Mike. Tyson, I'd say more. On a technicality, you would have more bed. I'd say you have less bedroom.
Starting point is 00:56:23 Less bedroom. But if you're talking like the semantics of the English language, you got more room on your bed. Okay. I don't think, yeah, I don't think that's like what bedroom means, but sure. Well, it means two different things. Well, did he separate the words bedroom? No, he did it like a room. you have less bedroom
Starting point is 00:56:45 I think you have the same amount of bedroom regardless of what bed Oh yeah I think that's the answer That's why year the lead of the podcast Wes Hey just trying to think this stuff through From Catherine Quinn 18
Starting point is 00:57:00 Favorite stage of a frog I like when they're frogs Full on frogs I kind of always got a little creeped out By like when they have legs And a tail and like a tadpole head. It's weird. Yeah. They look kind of weird.
Starting point is 00:57:17 It looks, yeah. And tadpoles are just too much like fish to me. Yeah, tadpoles are just kind of... But it's really cool that they like turn into frogs. Oh yeah, that whole metamorphosis is neat, but I like just, I just really like frogs. Okay. And then we also have three Patreon questions. Okay. Oh, Patreon. We love our patrons. Hell yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:42 And Marie, hi friends, I have a question for each of you. Jeff, what steps did you take to become a field tech? Wes, do you have any recommendations for beginning a career in wildlife? And then, Mike, have you seen the anime Hunter X Hunter? I just finished the series and my life feels like a puddle now. So I'll start. So basically to become a field tech, Wes offered me the position and I was really excited. And there was nowhere else I wanted to be than working with Bears and Bryce.
Starting point is 00:58:18 So I just had to be a student at the same school as West. As far as my question, like what you should do to prepare for a career in wildlife, there's a lot. My best advice would be get started as early as possible. So if you're like an undergrad and you know you want to work in wildlife biology, try and get a degree in wildlife biology. go out and volunteer as much as possible. And then if like it really does help to have a graduate degree.
Starting point is 00:58:48 So try and find a professor that's doing the kind of work you'd like to do. And then just be really persistent with them and and do your best to get into their program. Like there isn't really like a silver bullet for it. But really just like it's like anything else, the more experience you can get as early as possible. Even if it's not like with the animal you necessarily want to be working with, that doesn't really matter. like just go out and get experience in wildlife.
Starting point is 00:59:15 And that's like really the best advice that I can give you. I guess I'll address my part of the question now. So I have seen Hunter, Hunter. It's amazing and I love it. Kiloa is the greatest. I guess what I would suggest for as like a coping mechanism is maybe just move on to Tagashi's other series, Yuyahakasho, which some people like even more than Hunter Hunter.
Starting point is 00:59:37 I am not one of those people, but I still think it's awesome. Or, you know, you can just join me and Jeff on the One Piece crew, and that'll take up a good chunk of your time. Yeah, just go ahead and set aside two years to catch up with them. Because I tried, and I couldn't do it. You watched the Netflix ones, right? I watched like 100-something episodes, and that was enough for me. Maybe someday I'll watch more. From Isabel, what is everyone's favorite Merrill Street movie?
Starting point is 01:00:09 Oh, mine's the River Wild. That's mine, too. Is this like any movie she's in or that she is like a major character? Okay, well, then Deer Hunter. Okay, that's a great answer. But I think my favorite of her roles is probably, I don't know, favorite. It's hard to say, but I really like her in the Devil Wears Prada. She's really good in it.
Starting point is 01:00:32 All right, and then from Jack Donahoo, what are each of your favorite reptile species? Love the podcast. Oh, thanks, Jack. We appreciate it. I'm going to have to think about this a second. Do you guys have something off top of your head? I'll probably just say chameleon right now, like a veiled chameleon. Mike?
Starting point is 01:00:53 This is really like a fourth grade answer, but Komodo dragon, probably. I love Komoto dragons. It's a good answer. I honestly, there's so, I love reptiles so much. This is a really hard one. I think recently I've been really into cobras. So I'm just going to say a spectacled cobra from India. But like, I can't, I don't, I can't answer that.
Starting point is 01:01:21 I love too many. There's, I love reptiles. Mike, I thought you would have said crocodile or alligator. Yeah. All right. It's close. All right. Sorry, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:01:30 That's a hard one. Questions? No, you did fine. Thanks for the questions, everyone. We love you. Yeah, thanks, guys. We sure do. All right. So wrapping up a little bit, let's go into how are we messing things up for them.
Starting point is 01:01:45 So we mentioned that we're not really messing things up for coyotes. We've actually created a lot of habitat for them. We've eliminated a lot of their competition. So on the grand scale, we've actually given coyotes a lot of room to grow and to expand. They're considered a species of least concern. there are millions of coyotes. But there is a really big sentiment of like hate. People don't like coyotes.
Starting point is 01:02:15 Wolves have kind of recently been re-kind of revitalized and rebranded. And people see wolves as this like really iconic, beautiful animal. And that kind of re, that like, what's the word I'm looking for here, Mike? Them kind of rebranding. It's not what, what am I trying to say? Anyway, they haven't been revitalized the same way that wolves have been. They haven't been, like, shown to be this wonderful, beautiful animal. And so people do tend to kind of feel like coyotes are trash animals.
Starting point is 01:02:48 Like, they think that they're just sneaky and mean and, like, an animal that you should avoid and that they're not that beautiful. And, like, our mom's this way because she grew up in Southern California. Yeah, she doesn't like them. She hates coyotes. A lot of people really don't like them. them and they're such a cool animal and they have such a cool history and they're so adaptable and we have tried to wipe them out with predator control programs uh in utah they had like a bounty on
Starting point is 01:03:18 coyotes up until like a couple years ago where if you shot a coyote you'd get $50 for killing it and so like hundreds of thousands of coyotes were probably killed in that bounty and they still thrived like it did nothing to stop them coyotes are like incredibly adaptable so really like when it comes down to how are we messing things up for them we're not but i do really wish that people had a better opinion of coyotes they're a cool animal read the book coyote america they're like the first predator i had like a interaction with i was only like seven and i was at yellowstone and I saw one like 20 feet away from me. And it was really cool.
Starting point is 01:04:04 We like shared a little moment. Now that you tell me that they'll like eat or like bite little kids though is probably just sizing me up. Yeah, it could have been for sure. Lots of people have stories like that though. Coyotes are cool. And when you see one, you get excited. And sometimes they look a little scraggly like when they don't have full winter coats. And sometimes they can look a little, you know, like they're this.
Starting point is 01:04:28 like throwaway animal but they're not they're really cool and we should have a better perception of them so really that's my pitch for coyotes i don't know why i'm trying so hard it's not like we're talking to the anti- coyote yeah yeah they do get hit by cars a lot they are hunted those are really their main threats after that pitch you guys probably don't have to guess whether or not i like this animal so really quick let's give it our animal rankings on a scale of one to ten claws and Jeff of course will also give it a random. I'm giving them, I'm giving them seven claws.
Starting point is 01:05:09 I think of like the canid species. They're definitely not my favorites. I like wolves more probably, but they're up there. I like them a lot more than a lot of animals. They are a predator. I love my predators. So I'm going to give them seven and a half claws.
Starting point is 01:05:24 I'm going to give them seven and I'm going to rate them. him 97th overall. Wow. Top 100. Seems like that should be higher than a 7 then. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 01:05:36 There's a method to the madness. I'm giving him a 7-2. I think, yeah, coyotes are cool. They're like, you know how there's regular M&Ms? You guys know it, M&Ms, right? Yeah. So there's regular M&Ms, which I would say is like a wolf. And then M&M's minis, which are like just as good.
Starting point is 01:05:56 I actually think I like minis more than regular M&Ms. So you like coyotes more than wolves? I think I might. I don't really get the M&Ms thing. I get why you might like coyotes. Well, it's just like a mini wolf, you know? Yeah. They probably taste harder.
Starting point is 01:06:11 They called them like prairie wolves when Western like settlers first showed up. They thought they were just like smaller wolves. Anyway, I do really like coyotes. I think they're a really cool animal. I'm glad that we all like them. Yeah, me too. They're Brent's favorite animal I saw one last week
Starting point is 01:06:29 In the park and it was really cool And let me take a few photos of it That's nice of it Yeah All right well I think that's it Thanks so much for being here guys Welcome It's a late we're recording on a late night
Starting point is 01:06:42 Tooth and Claw after dark I think we're all ready for some sleep No way dude Night is young Jeff's gonna stay up and watch Let's stay up and watch a horror movie You guys want to watch a horror movie Sure.
Starting point is 01:06:56 Okay. Not paranormal activity. Oh, man. Kill me now. That movie actually really scared me. Oh, man. It scares me thinking about it just because I don't know if I could make it through it again. Well, we don't need to go down this hole.
Starting point is 01:07:13 All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you soon. Yep, thanks. Bye. Bye. Good job, Wes. Thanks, dude.
Starting point is 01:07:24 All right, it's that time. We've got a bunch of new Patreon subscribers to shout out. Congratulations on making it this far. We really stumbled across the finish line there. And for, I don't know, maybe the five of you who made it through that, here's just a little bit of an outro for you all. Thanks again for listening. And a big thank you, a super special, huge shout-out thank you,
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Starting point is 01:08:28 Continuing on, thank you again. Thanks. I don't know. How many thank you's is too many? It's probably annoying at this point. Yeah, next we have Jace, Jessica, Carly, Amy, Cassie, Jacqueline, Cassie again. It's probably a different, it is a different Cassie. So Cassie, I don't know, Cassie 2, I guess we'll call you, unless one of you wants to be one.
Starting point is 01:08:52 or the other. Cassie one and two. Both subscribe now. Thank you. We've got Nick, Tanner, Jessica, Beth, Lauren, Dylan, Dakota, and Emily. Great one to close out on Emily. You're great. You're all great. Thank you so much. We appreciate all that you do for us and I hope that you're enjoying the benefits of being subscribed to us on Patreon. We love talking to all of you there and we look forward to many more funny and interesting and smart comments and DMs that you all send our way. And we look forward to catching you in the next one. See you guys.

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