Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Guess the Predator - The Deaths of Noah and Connor Barthe

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Wes concocts a little whodunit for this episode wherein he challenges us all to guess what got into the room where two young brothers lie sleeping. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our bear biologist, Wes Larson, with us. Grizz Kid on Instagram. He's a human biologist who specializes in bears. Correct. We don't want anyone getting confused. You weren't quite famous enough to go to the ditty parties when they were really big, right? No.

You know, it's one of my biggest regrets that I couldn't be at those parties. Well, now it turns out it's good. You never win. still regret it. I just kidding. I do not. Yeah, I never got the invite to those parties. You got famous a little too late.

I'm not famous enough still. If they were the equivalent to that, I still wouldn't get invited. And then I'm Jeff Larson, and we have Mike Smith, who's our best friend. And you guys also didn't go to those parties. All three of us are clear. None of us have gone to a ditty party. I will neither confirm nor deny. Oh.

Okay. Mike's keeping it mysterious. I like it. I mean, if you went to one, you'd be like one of the people getting used for stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Used for stuff. Yeah. That would be me.

That's one that I've actively avoided learning much about that because I'm just like, this is one thing. One more thing that I just can't have in my brain, you know? Like I know it was really bad and that was enough for me. Ditty's a bad guy. Good with just kind of knowing that and that he did really bad things to people. Yeah. There's just a lot of stuff. You got to keep a lot of things in your brain.

Keep track of, yeah. CEO of baby oil. He's pretty happy about those parties. Have you seen the clip of Ellen DeGeneres where it's just like a bunch of little kids and she's like, I have a surprise for you? And then P. Diddy walks out and he's just like dancing. No. In retrospect, it's just the worst video ever.

Yeah, that is bad. All right. You were talking about a. story you had in store? It actually does involve little kids and horrible things happening to them. Oh, man. Yeah. Unfortunately, that was a good segue to this story.

This is kind of a new episode format. I'm going to call this a who done it episode. And it was one where I purposely didn't tell you guys anything about the perpetrator of this attack today. And we're not going to put it in the title of the episode either. It's going to be titled like a who done it mystery. And I'm least it. This could be a human perpetrator or it could be animal.

So what we're going to do is I'm going to tell you guys where this took place, and then you guys are each going to give a guess of what species, be it human or animal, was involved. Oh, cool. Well, hold on. Let me put on my little Hercule Poirot mustache. All right. Suss this out. So this one takes place in New Brunswick, the province of New Brunswick,

which is essentially if you just keep going through Maine, it's like the hat that sits on top of Maine. That's New Brunswick. Is there a Brunswick? I don't know if there's an old Brunswick or just Brunswick, but this is New Brunswick. So again, think of Maine and you have a pretty similar kind of environment. I'm ready for a new Maine, if I'm being honest.

New Maine. We've got New Hampshire. Yeah, exactly. Old Hampshire. It was pissed. All right. What's your guess? New Brunswick.

What's our guess for what? For the, the perpetrator of this attack. Oh, like, what's it going to be? Stephen King. He lives up there, right? Any species of animal. He's got a weird guy.

Or a person. And if you're guessing person, you just say person. If you're guessing animal, you guess like what kind of animal. New Brunswick, Canada. I'm going to guess a black bear. Okay. Oh, man. Well, that was kind of what a lobster.

Okay, we got lobster and black bear. The two guesses. All right, well, let's get started on the story. So Noah and Connor Barth had a pretty perfect Sunday on August 4th, 2013. These boys are pretty young. One of them's four. That's Noah. Oh, yeah.

And Connor is six, almost seven. So when you guys were that age, like, we'll average their age. We'll say five. What is a perfect day for you look like as a five-year-old? I'd probably want to, like, finish it off watching WWE if Goldberg's wrestling. I have five. You were into it when you're five years old. I heard wrestling my dog.

All right. You watch TV when you're five. What do you like? Not wrestling. I watched like duck tails when I was five. Mine going to involve probably like a water park. My dad comes home early from work and we go to a water park. How about that?

I like that. You're right. Wrestling's for adults. So I'll say I like to go into the park, you know, peeing on all the structures there. Being outside, playing with your family. All right. Well, these brothers lived with their mom in the small city of Campbellton in northern New Brunswick.

And from what I can tell, she was a single mom raising her boys. She had a boyfriend, but she was raising them alone. And in like a lot of smaller towns with close-knit communities, she had a lot of support from her community. They were also helping her raise these kids. And one of the most supportive of her friends was this guy named Jean-Claude Savoy. And he owned a pet store and a farm nearby. and Noah and Connor loved visiting both of these places with their mom or other members of their family,

and they'd spent countless hours at this pet store and the farm, playing with and looking at a lot of the different animals that John Claude owned. And it helped that he also had a kid that was roughly their age, so they got along really well, and these two families played together often. So I don't know if that's like a big deal for kids anymore, but when I was growing up, having kids my age in my neighborhood was such a game changer to where there was just kind of always something to do. Like we would play street hockey in the cul-de-sac.

We would go like catch frogs and turtles at the pond. Yeah, there's just always like some little activity going on in our neighborhood. I know, Jeff, you had like not quite as close of neighborhood friends, but you still had some friends that live nearby that sometimes you would have like. I had friends to like seven and then. Yeah. Not until you're what, like 28, 29. So that's kind of how it was for these kids.

They had lots of neighborhood friends, pretty carefree life. And on August 4th, 2013, Noah was 4th. Connor was six, and they had spent that Sunday just having a perfect day on a sunny August day. They'd gone to the pool, Mike, kind of like what you said. He spent a long time swimming and splashing, just soaking in the last few weeks of summer. Then they went shopping for some treats, and they took those treats to Jean-Claude's farm. And at the farm, they both got to spend a lot of time around a variety of different animals. Hors?

From dogs and cats to llamas, goats, and horses. Oh, my gosh. They even got to ride and steer the farm tractor and play in the hayloft. Oh, that's cool. The horses did? No, the kids. So for these kids, like, this sounds like a perfect day. You wake up, you go to the pool, you go buy some treats, then you go to a farm and you, like, write a tractor and play with all these animals.

Yeah, riding a tractor is like a five-year-old. It's amazing. Yeah, and then they, both families went back to Jean-Claude's house, and it was attached to his pet store. They stayed up late, talking and playing, eating food that they had bought. and just having like a perfect end to their day. Then around midnight, Noon Conner's mom went home and John Claude went to bed. And the kids were having a sleep over. His kid was asleep in that kid's room.

And then the two brothers were fast asleep in the living room upstairs. This is truly a picture perfect summer day. The two boys got to experience this kind of carefree and just pure happiness that you really only feel when you're a kid. And that's something the family would do their best to focus on during the coming days, weeks, months, and even years, as they struggled to make sense of the unimaginable terror

and violent death that both Noah and Connor were about to endure that night. Shoot, I like the story better before that. Yeah, it was very nice up until that point. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points.

Never fly during a Scorpio fly. move. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. As these two boys slept, they definitely felt safe. They're inside. They're in a trusted friend's house. They're in a part of the world where young children really don't have too much to worry about as far as the natural world is considered. It's not like these kids are in a rural village in India in the early 1900s where a leopard might kill them in their house, you know? This is like, they're feeling pretty safe.

Probably for like the just social world too. Probably like a pretty safe area. People don't need to leave the car running on a cold day type of neighborhood, you know. It is. It's like small town New Brunswick, exactly. And I think they're feeling especially safe because they're sleeping together, the two brothers together. But that illusion of safety was shattered when suddenly, in the middle of the night, a 12-foot

53 pound African rock python broke through the ceiling and fell into the room with the boys. What? I didn't know they had those there. They don't. They had at least one, it sounds like. They did have at least one. So a little biology. Snake on a plane.

African rock pythons. One snake on a plane. No, it would be snakes in Africa to me. Snakes in the main. Is that what we call it? Kind of, yeah. So African rock pythons are the biggest snake in Africa. They're likely the fourth longest snake in the world, with reliable lengths up to 20 feet being reported for the species and verified weights up to 200 pounds.

They have thick bodies covered in lots of dark colored irregular splotches that sometimes joined together to form a broad stripe down the body of the snake. They're darkest on their back and those markings kind of fade to a white underside. So I think if you were to picture just a python, this is the snake that you're picturing. This is a very classic looking python with like the dark splotches, kind of an overall brown coloration, a very classic looking python. They have long triangular shaped heads and like all pythons, their jaws are lined with lots of thin, sharp, fish hook-like teeth that point backward. And those teeth are primarily used for gripping prey while the coils are used for killing. So the benefit to having that type of teeth is that you can like latch into something. and because they're backward facing,

it's really hard for the prey to pull away. So they kind of use that just to secure something while they wrap around it. How many teeth do they have? I'm not sure, but it's a lot. It's more than, because I always just imagine like the two, kind of the two big teeth from snakes. They don't have a bunch.

These are like lots of teeth. These aren't venomous snakes. So what the heck? They have lots of long tubular sharp teeth. Yeah. That's so, I'm for the first time envisioning a snake's mouth full of teeth. I've just never had that in my brain.

That's crazy. That's crazy. Well, but worse. Wasn't paying attention. Because Steveo let a python bite them once and then he got tattooed in it. It's just two dots. He maybe just had like two bites, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Here, let's see if I can share Mike and I'll show you. Oh, I'm looking at pictures right now on Google. This is crazy. Good. I'm glad you're looking at some. So yeah, that's what Python teeth. look like they're great at grabbing and holding and they can do a lot of damage. Things bleed a lot when you get bit by python. They have sensitive heat pits near their lips that are used to detect

warm-blooded prey and they kill by constriction. And we've talked about this a bit with other pythons that we've mentioned on the podcast. But often that actual death comes from the blood pressure being so elevated that the heart stops beating or, you know, heart vessels actually explode, or they die from brain hemorrhage because the brain vessels explode from this increased pressure. So I think we have the tendency to imagine constriction is always being death

by exphyxiation, but sometimes it's actually cardiac arrest or brain hemorrhage that will kill whatever a python is squeezing. And what they do is as they squeeze as the prey exhales as they're breathing, the python will tighten its grip on each exhale. So it just gets tighter and tighter and tighter.

Yeah. So that's kind of how it works. And it's a very effective way of killing things. I mean, it's what they've evolved to do. They kill a wide variety of prey in Africa. They've been documented killing and eating everything from rats to impalas. In 2017, one was even documented eating an adult spotted hyena, which had never been seen before. So they kill a lot of stuff.

They'll kill like baby lions, baby leopards, baby cheetahs. They'll kill goats. There's quite a few things. that these snakes can take when they're big adults. There have been other attacks on humans, but not many. I think I'm going to save those for another kind of more dedicated rock python episode, like one that's actually in its natural habitat. But an interesting tidbit I wanted to add, this is going to be a shortened biology lesson.

But unlike many of the other snakes, many of the other snakes in sub-Saharan Africa, where they're found, the python is actually held, often held in high regard, and even as a sacred animal in a number of different cultures throughout their range. So there's a lot of these different indigenous cultures that see the python as like a deity almost, whereas lots of other snakes are seen as evil or sorcerers. Pythons in different cultures, not just like one culture throughout sub-Saharan Africa, are seen as being kind of separated from all the other snakes in a beneficial way. Interesting. Yeah, that's cool.

Okay, so we're going to get back to the story. Honestly, in my top five for like a snake, I would choose to worship. What would be your number one? For a snake, I'm going to worship. Yeah. Maybe like that blue metallic colored one. Yeah. You know, that like shiny blue, like a rainbow boa type of.

Oh, yeah. They're like an iridescent one. But that's still a constrictor, you know? You're still talking about constrictors. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know anacondas. I'm not saying constrictors.

Like a lot of the indigenous people throughout the Amazon basin see anacondas. is like a very important god too. Yeah, I guess these are good at killing you. I feel like I would want like my gods to be able to kill me, you know. Yeah. Outside of venomous snakes, this is one of the only snakes in the world that's capable of killing a human being. Yeah, that's kind of, you know what? I'll take it back.

This one could be a god. So you're more like, you're more a fan of Old Testament God than New Testament probably. Or he's just dashing kids on rocks and stuff. Like, I mean, I just don't. I don't think it's a god if it's not killing people, you know? True. Fair enough. Yeah.

All right. So I purposely am keeping this episode a little on the shorter side as far as the biology goes. It's an animal I want to dig into more in future episodes, but that's some basic biology about African rock pythons. Okay. Yeah. Stivo's tattoo had four spots, too.

Okay. I have a correction corner, right? All right. Back to the story. It's hard to say exactly what happened next, but I've read as much as I can about this story and I've read a decent amount about African rock pythons and there's been a lot of opinions thrown out about what might have happened and I'm just going to kind of go with my own opinion and piece it together as best I can. But just so everyone knows, this is kind of my interpretation

of a few things that could have happened in that living room. First of all, just to kind of backtrack a little, the pet store that was owned by Jean-Claude and didn't tell you guys this off the bat because I didn't want you to get a big hint was focused on reptiles. It was called Reptile Ocean. He owned a wide variety of reptiles, everything from lizards to adult American alligators. And this rock python was kept in an enclosure upstairs on the same floors where the boys were sleeping. That's obstruction of justice, Wes. You can't withhold evidence from the jury. We got to know that kind of stuff.

We're playing with new formats. All right. And what had happened is that the snake had crawled into a duct on the wall that had a cover that had been popped off and had been off for a while. and it had managed to fit itself into this really tight air duct and then crawl into the wall and up into the ceiling over the boys. And this cover had actually fallen off a while ago. It had fallen off multiple times. Sean Claude had seen it,

but he just assumed this snake would not be able to fit. It had tried to crawl in before and had backed out and there was like a right angle not far in and he just thought there's no way the snake's going to be able to get in there. So he didn't really worry about it. And that night the snake proved him wrong. Yeah. Do you think it could like smell that there was kids in there?

I do. Like wanted to get to what it could sense. Part of it too is these kids have been playing with farm animals all day. And I wouldn't be surprised if they still had a lot of those like scent particles on them. And I think there was something about those kids that really made this Python curious because it really had to force itself into that duct to get to them. Yeah. Bruce Wilson, die hard. Yeah, right. As it navigated through these small vents and ducts, its weight became too much for it, and for the brittle ceiling tiles to hold, it fell, and the ducting fell through the ceiling and into the living room. My guess is that things happened pretty quickly after that. I'm guessing the boys probably woke up to the sound of the snake crashing down into the room, and they probably were scrambling to get away. And I don't know if he was feeding the snake live prey or not, but if it was eating live prey, it probably was pretty keyed into.

movement as far as striking, and this could have triggered a predatory strike on either of these boys, or it could have triggered a defensive strike, and then once it latched on, it decided to go ahead and coil up. Either way, it definitely struck out at one of the boys first. Who do you think was, like, more confused, the boys or the snake? Probably the boys. The snake is probably just like, I love a weird fucking life. I live in this cage, and people come by all the time.

I think the boys were probably pretty scared. Falling through the ceiling, if you're not expecting it to happen. And that's a real. That's a rude awakening. Yeah. But like I'm thinking about the Lil John music video that turned down for what? Where everyone in the room that someone crashes down into is more surprised than the person crashing down into it. Yeah.

You know? I'm thinking of a tweet I saw of like if dogs go in an elevator, they're just like time to go in the world changer. Yeah. Because it's just like changes the world completely for him. Yeah. Maybe that's how the snake was. Yeah. All right. Anyways, we're at the good part.

My bad. Well, it's not the good part. It's the bad part on this one. The climax, I should say. So I think the snake, in my, like, this is again, just total conjecture, I think it's likely that it probably struck at the bigger boy first. And I think their deaths were probably very quick. They ended up both being the coroner that looked at their body said it was death by

exfixiation. So the snake wrapped around their necks and compressed the musculature of their necks cause hemorrhages and stuff. So they probably passed out really quickly. Like, you know, if you squeeze your neck, like if you've done the passout thing before, Jeff knows all about that. Yeah. It's honestly, well, I was just watching UFC and someone just got choked out.

But it's like, it's about blood. It's not about oxygen. It's like the main misconception. I think you just said that earlier. But like, yeah. Cutting off blood to the. the brain makes you think it's not like a how long can you hold your breath situation right yep so with them it it probably cut off that blood to the brain and then they passed out and then it continued strangling

so they died of exfixiation of you know oxygen loss i'm just really confused how this is a who done it well because you you guys were guessing what it was and up until i told you was the snake we didn't know and as a who done it no no no no no can we still get like tell you no now you i was like you know what i think it's a bite. So it's hard to tell like exactly what happened. It could have killed both boys at the same time. It's possible there's snake experts that said, really,

this snake was long enough that it could have constricted both of them at the same time. I guess that makes sense because one might have been able to escape if it was just focused on the other. And like scream or get out of there. Or it's possible that like it was quiet when it crashed in the room and it killed one of them silently and then killed the other one, it's really impossible to say, man, can you imagine waking up or whatever, whenever the parents or the adults walked in on the scene? Yeah. That's, yeah, we'll get to that. I also, I do think it was probably predatory and I think it,

that's probably why I killed both boys. And that's why I tend to think it maybe killed the bigger boy first, because I think it maybe killed him and then realized it wasn't able to swallow him. so then it moved on to the other boy. I don't know though. Again, all conjecture, but it seems odd that it would kill both boys. It doesn't seem normal. This isn't not normal behavior for a snake in any way.

To attack and try and kill a person, I guess, like that's happened a few times with the species of python, but it's not typical. And to kill two boys in one night and not consume either of them is really, really weird. Yeah, well, like a lot of times with pet stores, Like, we used to go to one that would put huge pythons on our shoulders, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And those... A lot of times those snakes are, like, used to people, too. Those are usually Burmese pythons, and they're a much more mellow species of python compared to this one. This is a spicier species of python. This is one that strikes a bit that... And Burmese pythons, they think of killed people, too. Mm.

So it's impossible to say for sure. I think a lot of snake experts were also stumped by it. But the one thing that is for sure true about that... this is it was an unbelievable tragedy, one that devastated the family and the entire community. Just like really, really, people are still talking about this to this day. And when John Claude got up in the morning, one of the first things he did was open the door to the living room to check on the boys. And the room was dark, but he immediately noticed the hole in the ceiling. He followed that down to the broken tiles and the mess on the floor. Then he turned on the light and he's horrified

to see blood everywhere and the two dead bodies of the boys. He searched the room. He found the snake curled up under something. He managed to pin it down and put it back in its enclosure. And then he ran to Noah and Connor's mom's house, which was nearby, woke her and her boyfriend up and told him, told them what had happened to the boys. The boyfriend ran back to the house, checked on the boys, but when he got there, their bodies were like blue. They weren't breathing. They knew they were dead. Man. There was a police investigation immediately. Responding officers said the snake was acting very aggressively even inside of its enclosure of striking the glass. They euthanized it and the body was sent to experts to analyze.

And all of the other exotic reptiles that required a permit were taken away from John Claude and rehomed in different places. So his alligators, some of his other big snakes. Like he didn't have permits for him? He did. But they weren't going to let him keep him anymore. I see. Almost immediately there was a bit of suspicion on him, both for a potential

homicide and then secondary for general negligence, like criminal negligence. When he first talked to the boy's mom and the police in the morning, he did have quite a bit of blood on him, on his hands especially. But it's pretty reasonable to think that he would just get blood on him when he was trying to revive these boys or when he was dealing with the snake. So that wasn't like a smoking gun by any means. But I think just a lot of people that knew anything about pythons. But he was caught red-handed.

He was caught red-handed, yes. That's a good point. I mean, if you're going to give your analogy, you can't forget that one. The jury, they don't like it when your hands are red. No. Anyone that knew anything about snakes, though, thought this was weird. So there immediately was some suspicion on him because it seemed too crazy to think that one rock python would kill two boys at night, not feed on either then.

Yeah. But then a preliminary autopsy found that the boys had died from neck strangulation, expixiation, and that their wounds were consistent with snake bite from a large python. So pretty quickly the suspicion of homicide was dismissed, but this negligence case would go on for a while. Because I think even if you're like, I think even a really bad murderer wouldn't try and use a python to kill two boys. This guy knew a lot.

There's that one guy in India. Yeah, but he was using like Russell's Vipers and cobras and stuff. This guy knew a lot about snakes. He'd been handling snakes his whole life. I don't think he ever would have suspected that his rock python would kill two boys in one night. Also, like, I watch some serial killer stuff and, like, listen to podcasts or whatever, but it's like,

it's not like an adult would have some huge grudge or, like, real motive to kill two young boys. The only motive would be just, like, he enjoys killing. He wants to kill. So then, like, why would you have the snake do it, you know? That's an interesting point. Like, there's not even really, like, motive for him to have killed two boys with a snake. I feel like. Totally.

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Best Network based on Route Metrics, Best Overall Mobile Network Performing U.S. Second Half 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill, the name of the person who gave me the deal, additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin,

saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. the dream. Okay, so we talked about how this preliminary autopsy clear John Claude of the homicide suspicion, but it didn't clear him of the criminal negligence thoughts. And initially, the provincial government of New Brunswick and the Royal Canadian Mountain Police declined to press charges against John Claude. Yeah, the Mounties. They rode in on their mooses and we're just like, no, we're not doing this. They declined to press charges against John Claude because they thought, even though that

he owned this snake and the enclosure escaped from. This was just a terrible accident that was awful for everyone involved, and they didn't see how pressing charges would fix or make anything better. It didn't seem like anyone wanted there to be charges against Jean-Claught. However, the Crown got involved, which I think is kind of in a way akin to their federal government, and investigators from the Crown poured over this case and all the evidence for like seven months, and they finally decided two press charges against Jean-Claude for criminal negligence, and he was arrested in February of 2015.

The main piece of evidence that led them, which kind of sucks, that's like a year and a half after this happened, you kind of think you're like in the clear, and then suddenly this new investigator is like, nah, I'm going to press charges. And the main piece of evidence they had to support this was the fact that the duct in the snake's enclosure wasn't covered. They had testimony from witnesses that had seen the snake trucees. try to enter this ducting before, but the snake would get stuck and back itself out. The duct had a cover, but the snake was repeatedly knocking it loose, and John Clawed had stopped

replacing it. So basically, their whole case is he could have easily secured this duct cover and prevented the snake from escaping, and the boys died as a result of him not properly securing this enclosure. So off of that, what do you guys think? Do you think that's a good enough reason to take this guy to trial? I actually do. I do.

It seems like, I guess I can't know, but it seems like... an easy thing to fix. And obviously I don't want my snake going into places, even potentially, if there's a tiny, tiny chance of it getting to somewhere, I won't be able to retrieve it very easily. I think even just as a responsible pet owner or animal owner, you got to fix that problem. Yeah, I don't know. I think he's guilty of being negligent, but I don't think he deserves to go to jail because I think... He's paid the price already. Yeah, and I do still think like it didn't seem possible to him, you know. It was like he, in his mind, it just wasn't a possibility type of thing.

Yeah, I'm somewhere in between you two. I think, like for me, I'm more, I think I side a little bit more with Jeff. You're kind of like maybe cut off one of his fingers. No, I don't think that. I don't know about punishment. But I think I agree with Mike that like he needed to fix that ducting. And in my opinion, it's like, fine. He's seen the snake try and crawl in there.

He knows that that's a possibility that the snake could maybe get through there. So fine if you want to leave that. But if you're going to have little kids, like four-year-old kids sleeping over at your house, then that's where it crosses into negligence for me. Yeah. If you're just risking your own safety or your pets, like your dog or your cat safety or whatever, then fine. But if you're having like your friend's kids sleeping your living room,

when there's a tiny, a 1% chance. Right. your African rock python that's 12 feet long might get out. I do think there is a case there. Yeah. In my opinion, it's not unlike, there's certain key differences, of course, but involuntary manslaughter is a thing for a reason, you know. Like a lot of times people die not because of malice,

but just because of negligence or even honest mistakes that have been made. And I think there is wisdom in enforcing the law in those cases just to make sure that people, other people can learn from that example and know that like, take care of your stuff. Make sure there's not even a chance that someone can get harmed or potentially killed from your inaction, you know? Like you think if this guy had some sort of source of carbon monoxide and he didn't have a carbon monoxide alarm and those kids died from, you know, carbon monoxide poisoning, then I would say it's negligent.

And it's like he has a snake that can kill kids and he didn't fully secure it. So it's kind of, I don't know. Anyway. Yeah. I mean, I agree that he's guilty. Yeah. But I just, I just feel like we put people in jail too much as it is. Yeah.

Sure. So he was put in jail in February of 2015. And it took a while for this case to go to trial. Did he tattoo a map of the whole jail on his back, like the blueprints? So then he could get out. His brother also got arrested. And when he showed up, he had the entire jail's blueprints tattooed on his body. But then like one really bad guy finds out about it too.

Oh boy. And then he's like, if you're getting out, I'm getting out. And that's a whole moral dilemma of like, I don't want this like murderer to get out. Yeah. Yeah, it really goes for a weird ride.

And they based popular TV show off of this. It happens a lot. Yeah. So no, the case was sent to trial and he was in jail for a while. The trial started on Halloween of 2016. It lasted for eight days, during which time there's testimony from snake experts,

the family, coroners, many others. One of the more interesting testimonies was from a forensic pathologist that said he found 13 different bite marks on Conner's face and neck, each of those bite marks consisting of four lines of puncture wounds, so consistent with the snake. It's a snake bit him a lot.

That's a lot of bite marks from the snake. And that does kind of go with my theory that I think the snake was maybe just readjusting over and over again to try and swallow him and it just couldn't do it. He found hemorrhages in their neck muscles that were consistent with strangulation. Noah had similar wounds, and he agreed with the initial autopsy that the death was caused by exfixiation from constriction. And the main argument of the defense, the people defending Jean-Claude, was that the crown had to prove three things in order to establish criminal negligence. And those three things were the following, as the only adult present, John Claude had the legal duty to provide care and protect the brothers from harm,

and he failed in that duty, that he had showed wanton and reckless disregard for the safety of others in his actions, and that in failing his duty, he contributed significantly to the deaths of the brothers. And they said that if they couldn't prove those three things, they would have to find him not guilty, because that was kind of the definition of criminal negligence. Yeah, wanton disregard is a little, if they could prove that, I'd be real curious about, what's happening. Kangaroo court a little bit. So you're right.

Python court. Ultimately, the jury of 11 would find that John Claude was not guilty. Oh, good. And after the not guilty verdict was established, the Crown decided not to appeal. John Claude cried openly in court. He, from everything I've read, this guy felt nothing but pain at this, this terrible, terrible thing that had happened. And the mom didn't want him to go to jail.

No one really wanted him to go to jail. It was just a terrible accident that could have been prevented, but most accidents could have been. You know, that's like the case for most things. You can't send the python to jail because it kind of was already in the jail. Yeah, they sent it to hell is where they sent it. You think? I think all snakes go to Evan personally. What was, was there any kind of penalty inflicted upon him?

He lost all his animals for, I mean, for that reptile place. So basically his career is. Most of them. And how much time did he do in jail? He was unclear, but he was arrested in February of 2015, and the trial didn't start until Halloween of 2016. So I don't know if he was in jail that whole time or if he was on bail or what.

But he spent a lot of time worrying about being in jail for a long time. Sure. I think they should have cut like his pinky finger. Sure. Yakuza style. I think he would be happier than. too like he'd be like oh yeah I shouldn't do like I should have

covered that vent but like I did get my pinky cut off so yeah what's what's the maximum number of fingers you would lose to not have to do a five year jail sentence oh all of them dude 10 really I feel like you love jail Mike

you could just like sit in a cell and read it does say kind of nice like if I'm negotiating with them yeah if they were like you're going to jail for five years or you can cut off this many fingers. What's the the most that you would cut off? Yeah. Man, maybe like three. Yeah. I think three

was what my brain went to as well. That's about where I am too. Yeah. Five years is a long time. It's a long time. Well, I'm glad it wasn't I mean, again, I know I kind of came to the side of like he did need to be punished, but I'm glad it wasn't overly severe because it was a mistake and he felt bad and paid a price. Sometimes just a trial in front of the whole world is punishment enough, you know?

I kind of feel the same way. Especially like where the mom who's anyone should want him in jail, it's her and she doesn't want him in jail, it's like. Yeah. I mean, ultimately the two kids were the victims in the story. It's a terrible story. There's one that I heard about about a year ago, and it's kind of been on my mind ever since. So I'm glad that I can kind of exercise it. Yeah.

Hanging out with my nieces and nephews recently, it's just like if anything happened to those kids, like let alone the parents, I would be just absolutely devastated and wish I were dead. Especially something this senseless and violent and just like something that you would never in a million years think would happen. Yeah. Two Good & Coffey Creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk, and contain three grams of sugar per serving. That's 40% less than the five grams per serving and leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich, delicious experience. Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, cold, bold, or frothy. Two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one.

Two good coffee creamers. Real goodness in every sip. Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle. All right, let's get to our categories. Wait, I had a couple of questions. Yeah, let's hear them. So for, I don't want to get too morbid here, but for a snake this size with a prey item, this size, how, a python, how long do you think it's going to take for that death to occur? Death?

Not very long. Not long at all. Okay. I would say like a matter of minutes. I would, it's going to take it a long time to eat. They really, like they have kind of elastic jaws almost and they're just slowly kind of moving it down. And, but luckily that's not what happened with these boys. Luckily, this guy didn't have to like slice open the snake and pull their bodies out.

But, um, yeah. It is, it's fascinating. Like I saw a photo of the actual snake and some of these snakes in the wild. And then the fact that they can kill like a ghost. or an impala or something like that. There's a crazy video recently that someone posted of one trying to eat an impala and then it realizes it wasn't able to

so it starts backing off and the horns go through the snake as it's backing off and both of the animals died. That is pretty wild. Yeah, it was hard to watch actually. What else you got? What was Jean-Claude's last name?

Savoy, I think. S-A-V-O-I-E. I was thinking maybe if it was Van Dam he would punch that snake He could just grab it then, yeah. Jean-Claude, do you think so, like, for his pet store, he probably didn't even think the rock python was, like, his most dangerous animal. Or do you think he did?

I doubt it, because he had a dull alligators. I think he had a green anaconda. But people that own these snakes know that they're an aggressive species of python. Like, I think reticulated pythons even more so. But this is probably the next most aggressive large. Pythons that people own in captivity. So they're not a very popular pet snake just because they are, like I said earlier, like a little spicier than some of the other big pythons.

Do you think when these pythons are trying to get into autoerotic asphyxiation, they just constrict themselves, or do they use a belt like the rest of us? I don't know. Yeah. Well, what do you think? I actually have that pinned for the next African-Raw-Python episode. Okay. We'll save that then.

Yeah. Yeah, because like you wouldn't really want another snake to do it, right? Well, maybe. No, then it's, then it's kind of weird. But then it's not auto. More of a sex thing, yeah. Yeah. That's something you want to do in the privacy of your own closet.

So wait, they, like, they, like, sent the snake to someone to, like, do an autopsy on it. Yeah. That guy's like, yeah? She's a snake. This is a snake. All right. They didn't swallow them. They matched it to, like, because.

again, there was some suspicion of homicide. So they had to match the snake's bite pattern to the bites and stuff. Because what this guy could have, I mean, if this guy was just a child killer, he could have killed these kids and then blamed the snake. But, you know, which is a possibility even. But I don't think that that's what happened at all. But like that's why they had to do. Like the boxes they were checking.

We'll move on to our categories. The first one, I was just thinking that if I were a kid and I had heard the story, I probably would develop an irrational fear of like a python breaking through my ceiling in the middle of the night, just because that's kind of how my brain worked. Even though I love snakes, I could see this kind of doing a number on me. So I'm curious for you guys, what's the most irrational fear you remember having as a kid? And then if you have one as an adult, too, go ahead and share that as well. You should go first, maybe, Jeff.

I have a bad answer. I was just really afraid my brothers would come in my room and kill me. That's not true. It's not true. All right. I was afraid of you killing me when you were a little baby because of the vampire story I read. No, I don't know. The most scared I ever got was I, like you, Cyrus, mom and dad were watching scream, the first scream on the upstairs TV.

And I was too young, so they sent me to bed. And then I like hid behind the wall and watched for like another half hour. and then they caught me and, like, made me go to bed. So then I didn't get to, like, see him die. Yeah. And then I was, like, sprinting to my room at night every night. That's not really irrational, though. I feel like that's a very rational.

No, that's a good answer. Well, it's a little irrational to think that the ghost face is in your basement. Yeah. Okay. Sure. So, you never, you never knew. I've never had, like, a one that's, like, a dumb one. Like, something that can't.

actually hurt me. I've never been afraid of anything like that. Mike, we'll save yours for last because yours seems pretty dumb from... You didn't know Skeed Ulrich was the killer, Jeff? Mm-hmm. I mean, that doesn't make it less scary. Lil John wrote a song about that guy, right? Skee? To see the guy die, then I'd be like, okay, I don't need a worry about it.

No, I agree. That's how Gremlins was for me. Like, I was so terrified of Gremlins because I'd only seen the trailers, and I didn't realize how easy it was to kill gremlins, you know? Yeah. But I just thought they were like these unbeatable little goblin monsters. Anyway, but that's not mine. I'm going to pick, there was once when mom and dad went on a date and we had a babysitter

and we watched some movie. I can't remember what the movie was, but before there was a trailer for the movie Leprocon. And in that trailer, I can still remember it. The Leprecon, and maybe I've told this story already, but the lepricon like shoots its arm out of a crate and grabs a guy. and the crate had like a four-leaf clover on it or something that the guy took off. And that night when I went to bed, we had bought a new computer and the computer box was in my room. And it looked like a big crate.

And I was terrified of that computer box. And I refused to walk by it for like weeks because it just was in that room for weeks. And for a while I was terrified of any big box because I was sure the leprechaun was in there and was going to shoot its arm out and grab. me. So that was a pretty irrational fear of boxes that had lepricons inside of them. I think Jeff's just as, that's equally irrational. Yeah. Yeah.

This one, you guys are going to think this one's scary, though. So I had, it's an arrest. I would say mine's more rational than less. Like someone with a knife. Like that's more possible. And I was afraid of the box. Yeah. All right.

Anyway, so I always had the concern when I went to pee when I was little that I would pee too much and overflow the toy. It lasted. Did you ever do it? Good long while. Never even came close, believe it. Yeah, that's what's crazy. I'd be so proud of myself.

It just doesn't even come close. And let's look you're at like some urinal, public urinal, sometimes when those like stop flushing or something, you're like, oh man, this is really a guy. All right. So rational, irrational? I don't know. It's irrational, but I like it. Okay.

You know what? I mean, this one's rational, but I, I've always been afraid of ice skating ever since Wes's finger got all messed up when I was a kid. Me too. That was bad. All right. The next category, what's the hardest thing you've ever had this? But it's either that or jail for you, right?

You have to get your finger almost cut off. Yeah, my hand almost sliced open. Or my hand was sliced open. All right. What's the hardest thing you've ever had to swallow? So Jeff and I is good friend at his wedding. Nick's wedding, I had a little rice bowl. I forget exactly why we were eating rice

it, I don't know, it was just the reception. And for the first time in a few months, a girl that I really liked. And it'd kind of been like on and off, again, off again relationship, Emily. I don't know if you remember her, Jeff, the piano player. She was awesome.

She was really cool. And right as she was coming up to talk to me for the first time in a long time, and I still liked her, I inhaled a piece of rice, and I could not stop coughing for like a half an hour. And I was like, this is the absolute worst.

And it was like really embarrassed. I started coughing so hard. I started like sweating and hyperventilating. And she was just standing there waiting for me to like figure it out. Because she was like she was cool and, you know, it wasn't like we were on bad terms or anything. But we were just, she probably just wanted to talk and catch up. And I was just hacking up a piece of rice that wouldn't come out for like probably more realistically more like five minutes.

It was insane. Yeah. That's really good. That's pretty funny. No, I kind of had a zag on this one too. where it's just like more of a thought I had because like I just thought of some of like the really big pills I've had to swallow. Yeah. But somehow it's like the tiny pills that are the hardest to swallow.

I'll have to drink so much drinks and then it'll still be like stuck to my tongue and like dissolving into the most disgusting taste ever. And I'm just like, go down already. The worst is really, taste so bad. What the heck is that? The worst is when you think you can dry swallow a pill and you immediately like, oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. You start running for water. Yeah.

Mine's a bit of a zag too because the thing that I swallowed was actually really easy. But when I was in college, me and my friend Grant, and this is kind of, this isn't the nicest thing to do to a goldfish. And I regret doing this. But we were like, oh, let's swallow a goldfish and then see if you can puke it back up and it'll still be alive. because I think we'd seen it on jackass or something. Yeah. And I did it. I swallowed a goldfish and then made myself throw up.

And the goldfish was still alive. And it was, swallowing goldfish is actually like surprisingly really easy, but puking them back up is really hard. Do you think the snake was more confused falling into the room or the goldfish was more confused going into your stomach and then coming back out? What happened? Well, that gold, goldfish didn't remember after like five seconds.

No, I feel more, I feel more bad for the ones we swallowed and just swallowed. But anyway, you know, those days behind me. Oh, you kept some down? Yeah. You just kept it. Oh, yeah. It wasn't on the first try that it worked. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, I've swallowed a lot of goldfish. Me too, but like the cracker kind. Maybe they're still alive in there. It might be. You drink a lot of water. You drink a lot of water. a loud stomach all the time. Okay.

Next one is a question for you, or a quiz kind of. So I said that this was the fourth longest snake in the world. For every snake you guys can name that's longer, I'm going to bring you a special treat on the flight that we're about to have together. So this is a collaborative thing. Here's how we're going to do it, though. As soon as you get a wrong guess, you're done. Okay.

Great. So there's three snakes that are long. longer than the African rock python. There's a bit of debate. Okay. Anaconda, that's one. Down there in the Amazon. Green Anaconda.

I'm going to give it to it. It's green and a conga. I was going to say green and. Okay. That is my first pick. I'll go to the Burmese Python. Burmese Python. Number two.

You can get number three, too. We've talked about it. Is it the reticulated? This isn't my answer. Maticulated. Three for three. I'm proud of you guys. We did it, Jeff.

We did it. Three treats. Yeah. Okay, good job. All right, cage match. Haven't done a cage match in a while. You'll probably bake. I treat yourself on some tiny ass cookie sheet.

Hey, you guys. I promised I'd never bring it up again, and I've held to it. You did. You did. Yeah. All right. Cage match. We haven't done this in a bit, but if you were to put this animal in a cage match,

hypothetically, with all of our other animals that we talked about, which animals is this winning a game? And I think I kind of want to draw a line where I think if you take a coyote and everything smaller than it, I think this beats most of those animals. So pretty much everything we've talked about that's smaller than coyote. I was going to say like the fight I would be most curious is a mountain lion. Yeah. And I, you know, mountain lions are pretty close to leopards.

And from what I read, an adult leopard can kill a rock python. Okay. But I do think there's probably times that goes the other one. way. If the python's quick enough to get around the leopard and whatnot. So I think that's a good fight. I do. I think the wolf is a good fight.

I think our leopard, our mountain lion are good fights. I think anything bigger than them is killing this animal. And anything smaller, like really small, like the spiders and whatnot are obviously very easy for this to kill. Do you think for snakes it comes in just with its size? Like it's the fourth best snake in a cage match? There are a lot of snakes that don't, that Venom doesn't. doesn't affect them. I don't know if this is one of them. Because they do eat snakes sometimes. So I don't know. I don't know if this is one that's immune to some of the venoms of other snakes. If it is, then yeah, I think it's like a pretty formidable snake in our list. But I'm not sure. That's a good word. Formidabble. In French, that means it's like, it's cool. It's actually pretty awesome. But formidable is also a good word. Nice double entendre kind of thing you did there with.

It's perfect. Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to do. It's formidable. Let's do a couple listener questions. Should we do how much we like it? Yeah, we will. We'll get there. Okay, so this one's from Brittany. Brittany.

They say, my question is, have any of you seen the snow leopard cubs at the Hogo Zoo? Also, have you checked out the Wild Utah expansion? And what is your favorite animal at the Hogle Zoo? Mine is either the polar bears or the cuckers. So yes, we have seen the snow leopard cubs at the Hogo Zoo. You've seen the cubs? Yeah, I went there.

I saw them. They were sleeping, though. Oh, yeah, that's right. As far as my favorite, and the Utah expansion, which I really liked a lot. My favorite animals there are the three grizzly bears that were from the Soda Butte Creek attack in Montana. Those are my favorite animals at the Hogo Zoo because I got to, I actually got to go to like a special meet and greet when those bears got sent there and meet them before the public did.

And I just think they're cool grizzlies. They have a cool backstory. So they're my favorite animals at the zoo. Zoo. Jeff, what are your favorites? Was that the second part? What's your favorite part of the Hogo Zoo? Yeah, because you've seen the other stuff. Yeah, I've seen the Snow Leopard probably like, the Cubs probably like seven times. I go to Hogo Zoo a lot.

Yeah, we love the Hogo Zoo. The Hogo Zoo polar bear enclosure is my favorite zoo exhibit I've ever seen of any zoo. It's cool. Yeah, it's really cool. Mike, what's your favorite there? That's close to mine, actually. I could sit down and watch those seals. Or is it sea lions?

I don't even know. They have seals and sea lions. Both. I could watch them swim around in that tank for probably forever. All right. You should try it. All right. Until they kick me out or I pass away.

This one's from Glacier Worm, Fay. This one's for me. What was the most challenging, unexpected part while studying to become a bear biologist? What kind of data do you collect in the field and analyze? And did you ever have to learn the program R to analyze data? So I'll answer these quickly. I did have to learn R. I'm really bad at coding and with statistical programs.

So I really struggled with R. I needed a lot of help when I did my papers from other students. The data I collected was wide-ranging, mostly movement data. And kind of with the polar bears, it was video data and we're looking at disturbances. And then the most challenging unexpected part for me, I think it was the stats. Like I didn't realize how math intensive and stats intensive wildlife biology would be and that was really, really hard for me and I definitely struggled with it. Okay. This one, you can code.

I can, I used to be able to code. I doubt I could anymore. Can you hack? I can't hack. I'm not a hacker. Like into like a different government or something? No. Unless they like had very, very lax security.

Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't tell it. Yeah, I wouldn't. So you're just going to have to guess whether or not I get a hack. Okay, this one's from Yash for all three of us. I'm turning 16 in March. Happy birthday. I wanted to know what were the stupidest things you three did when you were 16. I knew this one was coming, so I had mine ready to go. When I was 16, me and a friend up the road decided it was winter and we were really bored. And we took some tennis balls and we were dipping them in gasoline. We had. had like a bowl of gasoline each of us and we'd light it on fire and we'd play catch with it and because it was coated in gasoline it'd be this flaming ball but you could handle it for a second

before it would burn you so we were just out on the road like playing with this flaming ball of gasoline but then after a while when you caught the ball the gasoline would splash on your chest so after a while you would have enough gas on your chest that sometimes it would catch fire too and then we would just run and jump in the snow to put out that fire. And it was really dumb. And that was incredibly dumb. But probably the dumbest part of this whole thing is that when I went home, I just stank of gasoline. And I really wanted to get the smell off of my hands because I didn't want to have to tell my parents about my dumb new game. And my dad had shown me before how you can use paint thinner to get gas or to get smells off your hand or get paint off your hand or whatever.

and I accidentally grabbed paint stripper instead of paint thinner, which is essentially acid. And I coated my hands in this paint stripper and got like second degree burns from the paint stripper. And my hands still stink like gasoline. So it was really stupid. All together is stupid story. Yeah, it's a good one. I don't, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if this happened exactly in my 16th year.

But I remember I still had my learner's permit. So I wasn't allowed to drive a car yet. unless my parents or whatever the rule is, they have to be in the passenger side. But I was like, you know what, I'm pretty good at driving. So I took my dad's car and we were going to go see the Simpsons movie up like 45 minutes north. And the only theater kind of north of where we live that was running it. And just going like probably 50 miles over the speed limit. And really was stupid.

And I felt dumb in the moment and even stupider now. But like going way too fast in a car that wasn't mine. We did make the showtime, though, never got pulled over. So I guess wasn't that stupid, right? Yeah. No, it was really dumb. It was really dangerous and it's something I think about a lot and really regret doing. I worked a construction job doing like cement pours and we just listened to like country nonstop every single day in the summer.

And so then once they let me drive to lunch and I put on the band Something Corporate. Yeah. And there's like a song that's like, I am a butterfly. And it's just like these construction workers are just like, what the hell are you listening to, Jeff? I love that. I still think about that sometimes. That's great. That's great.

All right. I think that's it for our subscriber questions. Jeff, do you want to do any listener ones? Sure. Jedd Nietzsche asked what's the best ass in Africa. We're finishing up the ass themed. Okay. Hmm.

Yeah. There's like, you know what, I like a good tale, so I'm going to go with a colobus monkey. Okay. I need to commune with Leia and Anastasia. They had a whole, like, little book they wrote down scores of her animals butt that we saw over there. For me, it's probably giraffes. Like a big old long ass and they got like pretty muscular asses. True.

Yeah. We did see a rhino in the safari, like that park outside of. Rinkly. Yeah. And that was pretty fun. I like that sturdy, real sturdy thick butt. You have a child bear an ass. Yeah, exactly.

Wide hips, sturdy. That's where babies come from. The bum? The ass. Yeah, person's name. Chody Taint. Okay. Ass if I can poop out of both the holes in my ass.

And nope, just the normal one still. The other one doesn't do poop. Depends on what you consider poop. There's definitely stuff coming out of them. Right. It is a drainage hole. Yeah. All right.

Let's see. Oh, yeah. Mike. You should say they asked instead of asked for these ones. That would have been funny, Jeff. We can re-record this whole episode. Like, a few listeners asked, asked. Thank you.

If we're boobs or butt. You were getting really into this when we traveled last. Why is Mike the only one allowed to? Because he kept bringing up, like, ass. Okay, I'm answering too, though. Did I? I don't remember her. Oh, yeah, dude.

No, I think you're trying to make me look better. I think I should be able to guess for both of you and you tell me if you're right. Go for it, Les. Mike, you're a boob guy. Yeah, but only the left one. Okay. Jeff, you're an ass guy. Well, can I, does personality count?

Can we do personality? No, we're keeping that out of that. We're all three personality guys. I'm going to do. personality is an option two and I'll go with ass. Okay. I don't. I'm an ass guy.

I don't care. Yeah. It doesn't. It's just a funny question. For all three of us, we don't actually care about this at all. Yeah. It is like, but it's not. We bring it up just because we think it's like the dumbest.

It's a dumb concept. Yeah. We like to just. We like to, we like to Josh. We like to play around on this podcast. We have fun sometimes. Someone, oh yeah, someone asked if fish have butts. Oh, yeah.

Like, it's so subjective what a butt is in the animal world, you know? Asks, yeah. They have, like, their cloacal, like, folds that kind of go into their tail, and you could probably say that's a butt. But, like, do they have cheeks at all? Doesn't seem like it. It's more, like, lips than cheeks. So, I don't know. I don't think so.

Like they have a rectum. I would say that they don't have butts. If someone held a gun to my head and said, do fish have butts? I would say no. And I would just lose they don't pull the trigger. Okay. Yale set. All right, that's all I got.

Thanks for elucidating, West. That's an important one. Good word. Okay, quick conservation corner. African rock pythons, there's two species. There's a central African rock python and the southern African rock python. We're just going to kind of treat them as one for ease of talking about it. They're considered near threatened by the IUCN.

Oh. The main threats to the snake are habitat loss, killing by... Well, I'm almost concerned for him. Fair enough. Killings by people that view them as a threat. So sometimes they just get killed because people are scared of them. And poaching for the international pet trade and bush meat. Oh, really?

Yeah. They have seen decreases throughout their range, but they are very adaptable animals. They have a wide range of prey that they can eat. So I'm not too worried about them either. You know who's adaptable as Nicholas K. Do you ever see adaptation? Now that is a fine film. He is an adaptable actor.

What did I watch with him the other day? Snake Eyes. Oh, right. Let's go, baby. Great. I'm ready. The movie faceoff, he's the bad guy, but then in the middle of the movie, he's the good guy.

And then he pulls it off. Yeah, he has to like play polar opposites. Well, the thing for me, too, is that when I watch that as he do it, I feel like he's also playing John Travolta's character. Like, John Travolta is playing Nick Cage, and Nick Cage is still playing Nick Cage. All right. Which is a funny way of saying John Travolta is actually better in that movie than Nick Cage. Fair enough. I don't know.

I agree. I agree. It's like, whew. Yeah. I know. Captivating, breathtaking performer. A small populous. population of African rock pythons in the wild in Florida in a small section of Miami-Dade County.

So when you hear about the python problem in Florida, it's Burmese pythons, but there are some rock pythons there as well, but there's an active hunting program to try and get rid of them. All right, and then we'll do our claws. Claw rating for the African rock python. Wait, I feel like I had to, oh yeah, if you were going to like visit Africa to find one, where would be the best place to go? I would guess like southern Africa, probably South Africa or Namibia, that part. But I'm not sure. I know they have them in the Serengeti. They have them in Nigeria.

They have them in quite a few countries. But I'm not sure where the best place to see him is. Botswana is probably a really good place for him too. All right. So our claw rating, 1 to 10 claws or 0 to 10 claws. And Jeff, you'll have your overall rating, African Rock Python. I'm going to give them a six. Wow.

I don't know. I think green anacondas are my favorite, like, huge snakes. And then I don't like that one killed these two kids, so that knocks them down our point. Fair. But, yeah, I don't know. I just like other snakes more. And over I'm going 675. I like these quite a bit.

I think I'm going to go with an eight. The camouflage pattern kind of look they have is just iconic. to me. This is kind of what I think about when I think about a snake, like that kind of the splotchy design you were talking about. Design maybe isn't the right word, but yeah, makes me feel like I could maybe pull off a camo look, but every time I try, I fail. Yeah. It rarely does anyone pull it off. Seeing these snakes, you're like, I should buy camo outfit. I should bring more camo.

This might be surprising to people. I'm also going to go with the six. I don't really I think they probably don't crack my top hundred snakes And then when I was in when I was working on that pangolin project I was at a vet hospital and they brought in an African rock python while I was there And I helped them handle this snake which is a wild snake and snakes do this musking thing sometimes where they like spray musk or they squirt They like exude musk and it's like this white kind of liquid and it's like It smells awful.

And the worst musk I've ever got from a snake was this African rock python. I smelled so bad and it was so hard to wash off. And I just kind of think of them now when I think of that musk when I think of them. So they're six. But that's hard for me to give a snake a six because I love snakes. I'm going to call your bluff. Do you name a hundred snakes you like more. I can't do that right now.

He couldn't even name one. There's probably like four species. There's at least four or five species of python that I like more than this python. Yeah, all right. Now we're moving the goalpost. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it might be a seven. I don't know.

My favorite snakes are python. Your favorite one? Oh, green tree python. Green tree python, yeah. Yeah. But I was going to ask, so like penguins, I mean, I've been really impressed recently learning that like when they curl up in a ball. Like nothing. They're impenetrable.

Like even lions don't really like eat them if they're in their ball. Yeah. Could a rock python like crush it? I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah. It's a good cage match just to see like how long the pangolin could just be in a ball. They're probably animals that come into contact a decent amount because they're both burrowing animals.

So yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. I'll actually, I'll ask one of my panglin researcher friends and see what they say because I'm pretty curious about that. Yeah, next episode, we should, we can, I'll try and give it a good answer. We can do a Wes's animal fact and you can just give that. Sure. All right.

Well, thanks, guys. I know that's kind of, any story involving kids is always a little depressing, hard to hear. Obviously, our hearts go out to this family. I'm sure they're still really suffering and feeling a lot of grief. So we can't imagine what that's like and we feel terrible. Yeah. Obviously.

I think it should go without saying, but sometimes it does feel like the right move to just say that we feel the pain in the only way we know how to. And then also just a quick plug, as always for our subscriber episodes. We just recorded a really fun one with Danielle from National Park After Dark. It's all about the animal bracket that Jeff created this year for March Madness, baby. I had a great time. Danielle had a crazy thing. happened to her this morning right before recording. So do you want to hear about that?

Really, just like an insane animal to win that bracket too. Like, I don't know how that happened. I'm pretty excited about it. Mainly, I'm also pretty responsible. It's like 100% my fault. Well, we could, we could, like, block your route. I stamped it twice, though. I mean, I protected it pretty well.

And also, just a reminder. West already said it, but if you're going to sign up on Patreon, please do, but don't use Apple iOS because they're charging extra now. So just use a web browser and then you can still download it on Apple iOS. But if you put your payment on through the web browser, it's going to save you 30% that would just go to Apple. And you know what? Apple probably really needs that money, but they're struggling. All right. Okay, love you guys.

Love you. See ya.