Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Kay, the Bear Lady: North Carolina's Answer to Timothy Treadwell

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Now there are two of them (this is a reference to a Star Wars meme, which I am using to communicate the idea that Wes introduces us to a woman whom he likens to Timothy Treadwell, in that she grew a little too comfortable around bears for her own good)!? Watch here: https://youtu.be/3pNrnEvgbMo ~~ Quince: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince at https://quince.com/tooth for free shipping and 365-day returns, now available in Canada. Smalls: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to https://Smalls.com/TOOTH. LMNT: Receive a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order when you go to https://drinklmnt.com/tooth Ollie Pet Food: Go to https://ollie.com/tooth and use code TOOTH to get 60% off your first box! ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ 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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And with Everlites limited time 20% off deal, you'll be the hero of your home and your checkbook. Let's give your home some color with Everlights. Go to myeverlites.com to get a free quote today. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We're a podcast about bears, sharks, and snakes. And we have wildlife. Not wrong.

I guess we've done leopards once, huh? We've done big cats. We've done birds. Oh, boy, have we done a lot of stuff on this show. We got our wildlife biologist, Wes Larson. Holla, if you hear me. Hala. We got our sound guy, Mike Smith.

Hala, if you hear me. Hala. And I'm Jeff, Hala. Hala, Jeff. Wes's little brother. Jeff, can you put, does that shirt allow you to put that little bread through that mouth of that shark? Let's see. Yeah, it does.

Hey, look at that. That's great. I love that. Just wearing a shirt that has a shark on it and a piece of bread and you can push it through. Don't forget about the milk. And there's milk, too. Is the milk? Is that play withable?

The milk looks static to me, but. The milk is, no, you can't. You could, like, put actual milk on it. Yeah. Can I ask you guys a question about milk that got me in some trouble recently? I think after a, we're going to have some listeners that don't like this. I think that milk goes really well with certain things like a chocolate chip cookie or Oreos or a few other things.

But the one thing that I think is controversial that I really think milk is just great is a bowl of spaghetti. Like some cold milk after a bowl of spaghetti just hits so hard. Yeah. You meant like pour it over. No, no, no, no. No. No. Like after you eat some spaghetti, you drink some cold milk. I just feel like pasta in general, it like just kind of cuts through it really well.

I don't know. It goes well with the spaghetti. Yeah. Sure. Like a, yeah, a white sauce kind of is always paired, often paired with pasta. Yeah. I can kind of see the connection going on. Jesse hates that.

Like when she... Really? Yeah, she thinks like wine is the only pairing with spaghetti. And like we've gotten multiple fights about it. And now her sister's on board because she tried it. And she's like, it really hits. So I'm slowly. Nice.

It's one of my favorite times to have milk, honestly, is with spaghetti. All right. Mike, you should try it sometime. Not in the bowl like you do it. No, that's not what I mean at all. The worst use of milk is Brent with just like a piece of bread, like a soggy piece of bread. Yeah, that's the worst. That's great depression level meals.

Yeah. I like the idea of Jesse just pairing. all of everything she eats with spaghetti, not wine. This would go great with a nice spaghetti. She probably would love that. Anyway, she only drinks wine because of how much she loves spaghetti. Spaghetti. She does love spaghetti.

It's one of her favorite foods, for sure. You have a good skeddy too, Jeff. Yeah. Yeah, whenever dad's like, Jeff, you can have whatever you want. That's like comes to mind first. I think they're the perfect type of noodles for pasta. Mike had a good idea in our last subscriber episode, too, about spaghetti. What was that?

A two mile long noodle that you slurp up. That's right. Yeah. Oh, yeah, the eating contest. Instead of doing just like a big plateful of spaghetti eating contest, just make it one long one. You have to slurp it all the way down the boulevard. That'd be tough because you couldn't like,

bite it off and drink milk halfway through, you know. Oh, yeah. That's true. There's no breaks. Well, you could coil it up for two miles. You don't need to put it on the road. No. Yeah, you can get it to you however you want.

You're just like spinning the fork like Tom Hanks and Castaway trying to light a fire. Coil it up real quick. I actually got in a fight with, I thought I had made really good friends with Skyler when we were in Antarctica. And then we had a really big falling out because she said, I don't think she said bow ties were the superior pasta, but she was like, oh, they're top three. And I'm like, that's a bottom one pasta. Yeah, I like both. But I'm ready to be wrong.

Give me your top and your bottom pasta. For me, top is spaghetti. Bottom is angel hair. Wow, they're very similar. I hate angel hair. Oh, angel hair is so good. That might be my number one. Oh, wow.

I like Orzo. I like Penny. Penny's a good pick. That's number two for me. All right. of all of our subjects we've done, what was kind of the number one on my list, the biggest one that I,

you know, was always kind of... Timothy Treadwell. Timothy Treadwell, exactly. And today, we're going to talk about a female counterpart to Timothy Treadwell with Black Bears.

I thought you were going to do a retread. Yeah, we're just going to retread. Retread well. No, this is the not-so-mysterious, mysterious death of Bear Lady Kay. and I do just want to mention that my main source for this was an outside magazine article written by Brandon Sneed, but there were a lot of articles that I read, a few different things I watched and listened to, but that was a source that I used pretty extensively.

So, first of all, I think if you ever find that your name is preceded by like bear man or bear lady or bear child or whatever, and you're not a professional working with bears, It seems like there's probably a high likelihood that there's going to be some articles published about your death. Wes, moving the goalposts like he always does. Well, we're actually going to talk about that too. Griske. About like responsibility, ethical responsibility of professionals with bears. We're going to talk about that.

Okay, that's exactly the moniker, though, that Kay Grayson had earned by 2015. For the past 28 years, she'd been living in some. trailers off of a rough dirt road near alligator marina in Columbia, North Carolina, which is a tiny town of less than a thousand people and kind of considered the gateway to the outer banks. Jeff, you love outer banks. I don't like Pogs, though. Yeah, you hate Pokes. Pretty much all of those people knew Kay as the Bear Lady, and she'd definitely earned that

nickname, and that's because Kay Grayson was always surrounded by bears. She'd been feeding the local bears that called the surrounding 5,000 acres of swampy pine forest home. And then in the 90s, residents of Columbia would come to her homestead, which she had lovingly titled Bear Song. And they would watch as this tall, white-haired, kind of stately looking, 67-year-old woman, would walk out into a clearing and start singing. And it wouldn't take long before the sounds of crunching leaves, breaking twigs. They're going to be heard all around her. and then large black bears would come ambling out of the woods. These are some of the largest black bears that we have in the country in coastal North, North Carolina.

Like Hank the tanks? Yes, some Hank the tanks out there, but naturally even. Wow. So Kay had named all of these bears. She would call them by name. She'd make them stand. She'd feed them human food from her hands while her friends and, you know, visitors would watch just totally entranced. It was kind of like this famous show in town.

And it wasn't like an actual show that she performed, but when people would go there sometimes she would call her bears for them to see. She was known as somewhat of a recluse. She did have friends, and they did their best to take care of their kooky bear lady friend in the woods. And Kay, she often didn't take care of herself, especially toward the end of her life. In early January of 2015, one of her friends, Sharon Pledgeer, had stopped by her house and had left a meal at Kay's gate. several days later, Chiron came back with another drop-off,

and the original meal was still sitting there by the gate, untouched. Uh-oh. After looking around a little bit and not finding her on the property, he contacted authorities to report that Kay was missing, and on January 27, 2015, two Tirel County sheriff deputies went to Kay's house with an emergency management coordinator, a canine handler, and a search dog.

They probably ate the food, right, those dogs? The dog was like, wait, I got to eat this meal first. I'm ready to work, but I need to do one thing. Do we know what the meal was? Because maybe it just wasn't very appetizing, and that's why she... Dog food. You see? Yeah.

The kind of questions you got to ask. The dog was given some of Kay's clothing to pick up her scent, and then they followed this dog down the swampy, wet road, and it didn't take them long to start finding evidence of Kay. They found a maroon coat, a black turtle neck. and a bag of unopened purchases like some batteries, some socks, cigarettes, and Tylenol. As they looked around, they spotted more clothing across a ditch and further into the forest, and as they began to search around this area more closely, they started to find human bones. All of them picked completely clean, and then a piece of human flesh with long white hair attached to it. and then on a small knoll that had been formed by the roots of a fallen cypress tree

they found a human skull with all of the skin peeled off and the brains inside had started to rot and the smell was so bad that it made these searchers gag they had found the last remains of k grayson the bear lady all right jeff freeze her brain real quick in case in the future we can bring her back bring her back if it's rotten no she might there might be problems It's probably too far gone. Too far gone. But if any of us die, listeners, freeze our brains. Please put them on ice.

We've got some brain rot going on too. I don't think we're going to be much better off. I know. I need to freeze my brain. Yeah, let's just get you taking care of now, Jeff. Eat a bunch of ice cream. It's funny. That's a good call.

Drink a slurpy too fast. When I went to Antarctica, I had someone named Jared come watch my dog shanks. Oh, not subway, Jared, right? No. Hopefully not. And there's like a guy. Otherwise we need to talk to shanks.

At my apartment who I had met whose name is Darren. And then when I got back, I was like, I saw Darren and we were hanging out. He's like, hey, I actually met your dog. He was with like someone else though. I forget the guy's name. I was like, oh yeah, that is Darren. And he's like, no, I'm Darren. And then did you kind of just like?

group for a second and reboot Yeah. That's amazing. Jeff, don't ever let Subway Jared come to your house. I was all proud that I remember the guy who watched my dog's name and I was just saying the guy who I'd like hung out with four times

name. All right. Jeff, gas is pretty expensive right now. Depends what type? Helium? Have you feel? All of. Sure. Just. Noble? Petroleum.

gasoline. Have you fueled up our time machine lately, though? It doesn't run on gas. Okay. It's nuclear. Nuclear. All right. Is that different from nuclear?

Yes. Well, that's great, because we're going to need it to learn a bit more about Kay Grayson. We're actually going to have to go back a little bit further than you might think, because Kay Grayson wasn't actually telling people her real age or her real name. She wasn't 67 at the time of her death. She was actually 73, and she's born in 1941. And personally, I can't think of anything more important to do in 1941 with our time machine than to visit middle-class home of Karen Gray, a tiny newborn baby that would one day be Kay Grayson, the Bear Lady.

That's a good call. We're going to go back to 1941. We're going to ignore everything else. All right. We don't know a lot about little Karen's family because both of her. parents were dead at the time of the article, and her brother was estranged from her at the time of her death. But we do know that in high school, she was already pretty rebellious and just kind of already the free spirit that she would remain her whole life. She would cut class. She aggressively

pursued guys that she liked. And when she moved out and she was on her own, she seemed to kind of live her life one relationship at a time, kind of like Dom Torretto lives his life a quarter mile at a time. Oh, yeah. This is, yeah. One relationship at a time. Yeah. Monogamous. Yeah, that's crazy.

So basically, no, she would, she would form a new relationship in a new city that she moved to. And then when that relationship ended, she would move to get a fresh start and she would go into another relationship. Oh, she's like, I got to get out of here. Yeah. She just kept moving. Okay. She was really pretty, and she ended up spending most of her 20s in Vegas. How pretty one to 10?

I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do it. She said she was a show. girl for that era of her life, but many of her friends do think that she was maybe a high-end call girl. And whatever she was doing, she seemed to me making decent money, and she spent a lot of time hanging out with much older, very wealthy men, and she traveled all over North America with them. So a little bit of evidence toward the high-end call girl thing. Yeah, exactly. She got married to a wealthy businessman in 1965, but about six months into the marriage, she woke up and

thought to herself, is this it? And she realized it wasn't it. And she abandoned her new husband. In the 70s, she dated the operator of a dude ranch near San Diego, helped him run it. And then toward the end of the 70s, she moved to D.C. and trained attack dogs for a few years. Is it Blink 182's dude ranch? They're from San Diego. Don't think so.

But that is a good, that is a good pull. She's like a reverse Decapria. Dating older guys. She only dates older guys Who are rich Yeah Yeah Leah only dates younger women

Who are poorer than it Yeah I guess I'm not gonna Yeah I'm not gonna weigh in on that All right So in the 80s

Karen now probably going by K So we're gonna stick with K For Malon Moved to South Florida And she started selling boats And organizing Semi Professional sailing races And living on a boat

With a yacht broker She even got really good at sailing and won an 800-mile race from Daytona Beach to Bermuda. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Nice. So basically by 85 she'd been like a Vegas showgirl, a dude ranch operator, trained attack dogs, was a professional sailor and sold yachts for a living. So really, by 85 she'd packed more excitement and adventure into her 40-something years than most people would do in a lifetime. But she still hadn't started her journey.

Probably more sex. too. Probably. I would say most likely. More sex than like 10 people do in her lifetime. Certainly so. Yeah. Like 10 of me, sure. Yeah. Like a thousand of you, Mike. Oh. So she still hadn't started her journey though that would make her famous or infamous, however you choose to look at it.

But that would all change with a phone call in the summer of 1985. It's that time of the year where I find myself rethinking what's in my closet. I'm trying to keep fewer things, but better ones. Pieces that are well made and easy to wear all the time. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Speaking of, I think I just bought my favorite pair of pants that I've ever owned from Quince. It was on sale.

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so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash tooth for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash tooth for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash tooth. Albert Brick, who is a lawyer from D.C., called Kay to tell her about a piece of property that he owned just inland from the outer banks in North Carolina. It was roughly 2,000 acres, a beautiful pine and oak

forest, and he wanted Kay to help him either sell or develop this land. In 1986, she takes a trip out to North Carolina, and this piece of land was just as beautiful as Brick had described it, and Kay immediately signed a contract to help develop the land for a percentage of the profits. She leaves the yacht broker, she moves to North Carolina. Initially, she's living on a houseboat on the little alligator, a river on the northern edge of the land that Brick had purchased. And then he buys another chunk of land that has an old logging road that's pretty much impassable. It's called the South Shore Road.

And Kay moves close to that road. She has like some old trailers that she lives in. And she has this road rebuilt well enough that they could have better access to the land and start selling some small sections for logging or developments. Smelling would be cool too. Just smell some of that land, you know. That'd be hard to make a living off of. Yeah.

Hey, come smell my land. It's kind of like a Somalié, but instead of for wine, it's just land, I guess. Yeah. It's land. Good vintage. That's a big part of Somalia. This rock is 4.5 billion years old. You got to kind of stick your nose in that cup and look all stupid.

All right. I wasn't going to say that. I'm sorry. That's been a point of, like, I've been watching cooking videos lately, and every single one of them, they, like, don't show their faces until they, they pour a little wine in there and then they have to do the cup and be like it's like come come out of here you have to spit out the first sip you can't for some you can't swallow the first sip yeah I hate it that's a 10 yeah I love ice cream simoliers I make them pour out my first glass of wine just because yeah the first glass tastes too much like the cup yeah I need I need them to

pour me a cup and get that wine taste in the glass pour it out and then use that remnant still. Yeah, that's so good. I love that. You'd love smelling this land. Anyway, so it wasn't long before Kay meets a local resident that would change her life forever. One night, not long after moving to North Carolina, she comes home to a large black bear on her bed eating a pastry.

Bearclaw? Yeah, who knows? I think it was a sweet bun, actually. She screams, runs away, and so does this bear. and as it runs away, Kay notices that it's limping pretty heavily as it ran. And she goes inside to look for damage, but all she found were big, muddy paw prints on her mirror. Paw prints that she reportedly never cleaned off because she was so enamored by this bear. The bear comes back the next day, and Kay could see that it was in really bad shape.

It was skinny, it had a bullet hole in its hip, and it seemed to also have a dislocated hip. she immediately feels really sorry for this bear and she feeds it and then she continues to feed it every day after a while she decided to name this bear highway 64 because they were really close to highway 64 and she thought maybe it had gotten hit by a car and it wasn't long before yeah i know like to name the bullet hole yeah makes me think uh whatever yeah i guess both could have happened she names it like remington or something uh 30 yacht six Okay. Rolls off the tongue.

But it wasn't long before other bears start showing up, and she names this land, Bear Song. She becomes really obsessed with these bears. She would drive to the closest library regularly to check out any books on black bears and learn as much as she could. And she also starts visiting local grocers and store owners to give her any of their older stuff

that they were going to throw away. And she would leave town with her pickup bed full of bread, pies, rolls, peanuts, dog food, just anything that she could find that she could potentially feed to these bears. As soon as people in Kay's orbit caught wind of what she was doing, they told her to stop. Her friends would tell her that sooner or later if the bears got hungry enough, they would eat her, and wildlife and law enforcement officials told her to stop what she was doing, and that it was illegal to feed the wildlife.

But for whatever reason, it seems like they kind of stopped short of actually finding her or punishing her in a formal way. and to be honest, it seems like a pretty big fumble on the part of these agencies. Like, this is someone you need to come down on pretty hard. But that's like something people say to like make you stop having fun. Like, it's not like they're really going to eat or ever. No, they will eat people. So, yeah.

What is the standard sentencing for like a first time offender or even like a repeat offender if they do it once, get caught and then do it again? Is it jail time they would be facing or is it just fines? It really depends on the severity and the place. Like if you got caught feeding a bear in Yellowstone, you could be looking at some jail time and a pretty hefty fine because there's like so much literature, so many warnings, everyone that enters that park has been warned

in multiple different like formats on how like you shouldn't feed or harassed wildlife. But I think if you were like living in a forest in North Carolina in a really rural area and you fed a bear, you're probably just going to get a warning first, and then you're going to get fined afterward. But you never know. It depends on, like, the officer that responds and all of that. Crazy. There's not a set standard.

We've got people in jail for feeding bears, and no one from the Epstein list is in jail yet. I know. I know. We need to trick them all into feeding bears, so they'll finally go to prison. Let's briefly talk about black bear feeding. And this is where I want to talk about kind of where the line is drawn, I think when it comes to what bear professionals should be able to do with bears too.

And I want to compare Kay to someone who's pretty controversial in the bear biology world, and that person is Lynn Rogers. At some point, I'll probably do a whole subscriber episode on Lynn's work and the controversy around it, but today we're just going to get a real surface level comparison. And I'm just letting all you know that that's going to be for subscribers, and it's, you know, putting that out there. Okay. Dr. Lynn Rogers.

You hate everyone listening. I don't. I love all of our listeners. Cread. Shut up. That's not true. Oh, man. Okay.

That whale being named Grizz kid went to your head, dude, hubris. Pride cometh before the fall is all I'll say. Okay. Dr. Lynn Rogers is a bear biologist in Minnesota, who early on in his career, decided that American black bears were mischaracterized and actually highly adaptable to human presence. And he started the North American Bear Center and a lifelong research project where he would habituate and food-conditioned bears to a high level and then spend time in close contact with them to learn more about their behaviors, their tolerances, and their

natural life history. So this guy, like, got bears super used to him, so much so that he was able to collar them without any sedation or drugs. Like he can walk up to his bears and put a collar around their necks. He goes on hikes with them. He feeds them by hand. He is a bear biologist doing all of this. His research, I've been in multiple conferences where he spoke or where there was talks from people in his research group.

They've pulled some really fascinating insights about black bears, about their tolerances around humans, but he also really heavily food conditions. into a lot of bears, and some of those bears would go to the nearest towns and whatnot, and they get into trouble because they're already used to getting handouts from people. And if you're used to that and you're a bear professional, it's not that scary. But if you're not and a bear shows up in your yard begging for something, it can be kind of intimidating. Yeah.

This happened so much that the state wildlife agency in Minnesota decided to suspend his permit in 2014, and he was still allowed to kind of work with the bears that were grandfathered into his study and do more of his work, but he was no longer allowed to formally conduct his research with state approval. And honestly, I have really conflicting feelings about Dr. Rogers and his work, but mostly I don't agree with what he's doing. I don't think that, like, bear biologists should be able to kind of do this. Like, I can do this thing, but you can't, you know? And I know that I'm guilty of that and that I, like, have gone into bear dents and stuff, but that I'm still leaving those animals wild. I'm still, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not

changing their natural behavior. And the main reason I want to bring up this comparison. And you always encourage everyone to go into Bairden. I definitely don't encourage anyone to ever go into a Baird. The comparison is that even with the formal research background, a PhD and the necessary permits, there was a lot of controversy surrounding Rogers. And I think he pushed it too far. I think he kind of got a little bit lost in this really intoxicating feeling.

of having a big potentially dangerous animal that trusts you. I think that can like really pull people into this weird kind of black hole of just like of feeling special, you know? Sure. And feeding these animals, this kind of food conditioning, if forever alters a bear's behavior, it's kind of like Jeff with McRibs, you know? If there's a McRib around, he's going to do whatever he needs to do to get it. Even though he knows it's risky and puts him at danger, he'll get that nickrip, you know.

It's more dangerous for the McDonald's workers. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, if they're like, we ran out. You'll go full Karen if they ran out. Yeah. Full K. Oh, I'll get one. I know you have some.

Deep into a K hole, a Karen hole. That's a weird way to say that, Wes. All right. The thing, though, the other thing aside from that, aside from, making these animals potentially more dangerous and less risk averse, the thing that really impacts me is it makes them less wild and less special. Like, we don't need to turn these animals into pets. Like, we want them to be wild. We want them to be different, you know? And I think even though there are, there's interesting lessons that can be learned from conditioning these animals like that,

like with Kay, it was just being done to essentially create pets out of these bears. And in that case, I see it as being really selfish, and it always comes with some really huge consequences for the bears, and typically the humans too. Kay would brag like, oh, bears are much better than dogs. You should get a bear, not a dog, you know? And it's just for me, I've said that before. Yeah, it would be really fun. Like, I've dreamt about having a pet bear.

Yeah, a tripod bear would be sick. But it does, like, it changes them. And I don't think it's fair to do that to a wild animal. All right. The 90s were really the golden years for Kay and for Bear Song, and she has a lot of home videos of her playing with the bears, feeding them, even getting really close to their cubs. She would even sleep with the bears sometimes and let them inside of her trailer and whatnot. There's a story about how the bears were having a hard time passing some new guardrails that were put on Highway 64 to get to Bear Song. And she went and taught them how to climb over them. I don't know if I, fully believe that one because I think they would have figured that out. Yeah, you don't need like a person to teach a bear how to climb. It's also a dumb thing to teach a bear to do. Like, hey, here's how you get on to this highway, you know?

Like, it's not very smart. But during this time, she really reminds me of a certain kind of Mickey Mouse voiced Alaska bear fanatic that we've talked about, Timothy Treadwell. So I just want to play a quick clip from one of her videos. just so you guys can kind of get a sense of what she sounded like. Welcome to Bear Song. Bear Song is about bears. This is my sixth year with these animals.

The animals may leave where they can stay. If they choose to stay, we protect them against the poachers in the area that would kill them. any time of the year, day or night. These animals have been hunted, slaughtered for fun. We're losing our American black bear because of them. You guys can see she kind of has that same like sing-songy, dreamy quality that Timothy Treadwell had when he was talking to his bears. And there's just a lot of comparisons between them.

And another comparison is that she gave them names. Highway 64, Munchka, Travis, Rusty, Angel, Judson, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of names for these bears. And two of them were et cetera? That's interesting. You did that. We did name our bears. Our bears, though, were only named for our kind of our ease of knowing who we were talking

about within my papers. They were just given numbers. You let me name one bear. and I named after a girl who like would not communicate with me. Yeah, that's why I only let you name one. All right. They would have all been named after her. How did I let you name them all?

So while Kay's learning about black bears, she learns a little bit about their history in the state of North Carolina and how like lots of populations of black bears around the country, they hit a low point during the predator control programs, Predator control programs of the early and mid-1900s. But due to their adaptable nature, they did really bounce back quickly in North Carolina. And by the time Kay was running Bear Song,

there was thought to be around 10,000 black bears all along coastal North Carolina, which is a lot. North Carolina. Pedy Pablo's got to get involved in this story, right? Sure. Yeah, he'll be in there. Why not? Take his shirt off and spin around his head like, Alicococcaper probably. So really just in the eastern third of the state, they had about 10,000 bears.

And one day in the early 90s, when little pre-pubescent Wes Larson joined most of the country in theaters to see a science fiction prehistoric masterpiece that Steven Spielberg had just released, K was feeding the 20 bears regularly and was taking a little hike with one of them. This little bear was named Mikey, and it was spelled the way that a Mormon millennial mom might spell Mikey, M-Y-K-E, when some gunshots rang out distantly in the forest. And in her own words, she looked at little Mikey, and she said, the look in his eyes asked me if the guns we heard on the land nearby were shooting at him or me. And I told him, they're shooting at both of us.

But we are going to change that. And this is where this story gets a little bit more interesting. Because bear hunting was really big business in coastal North Carolina. The season only lasted a few weeks in the last little bit of November and the first part of December, but during that time, hunters would flock from all over the country to the forested parts of the state, like the forest where Kay had established Bear Song, and they would shoot a lot of bears. For example, in 2023, 2,696 total bears were killed in the Coastal Bear Management Unit of North Carolina, which comprises 37 counties and pretty much the eastern third of the state.

There's thought to be now about 12,000 total bears in that unit, so they killed over 20% of the total population, which is a pretty big number. They kill a lot of bears every year because they're big bears, they're pretty easy to find. So bear hunting is big business in this area. There's a whole discussion to be had about hunting as a management tool and a way to fund conservation.

Personally, I could never shoot a bear, But we all know people that are black bear hunters that are really passionate wildlife professionals. So there are plenty of people that also do it for the wrong reasons. But you could shoot a person? It depends on the person. Right. What's the penalty for that in Yellowstone? But you could.

Yeah, I could shoot a bear too. I just don't want to ever. Yeah, but I would much rather shoot a bad person than a bad bear. Right. So you do care about bears more than people. That's not true. I just think bad people are a lot worse than bad bears. That's a good thing.

Yeah. So there are people that hunt bears unethically, and they do it for the wrong reasons. And Kay was about to meet a group of those people, and they would become her main enemies for the rest of her life. She called them the BKB, or the bear-killing bunch, and she suspected that this little group of good old boys was breaking up. the rules and taking more than the allowed one bear per season per permit. Their suspicions were probably correct. Some of these men were charged but never convicted of killing bears out of season or killing multiple bears during the hunting season, so they were poachers.

And this is really the big difference between Kay and Timothy Treadwell and that her bears actually were at risk of being poached. But I think what she refused to accept is that her food conditioning these bears and getting them highly habituated to human presence in a place around towns and highways and stuff was the worst possible thing she could do in an area where they could be hunted. If you're food conditioning bears that might be hunted, you're really putting them at higher risk of being shot because they're losing a lot of that natural fear of people. So it's a bad thing to do to these bears.

And this is the lesson she would end up being taught the hard way. And we're going to get to that in a bit. It's pretty sad. It's sad, Mike. All right. I just spent pretty much 24 hours of my car with my cat on a big road trip, and I love him more than ever. He's just the best travel buddy. He's so calm in the car, and I just want to do everything possible to make him happy. And that's why I really love Smalls. Smalls fresh cat food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free, 100-per-human-grade ingredients

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is a man we're going to call Cooter because his real name wasn't given in the articles I read so we're calling him Cooter you're just like this lady Yeah, naming people, weird stuff. Should I spell it weird?

Making everything. Yeah. Naming bears. That's true. I am pretty much K, the Bear Lady. He's 6'1. He's almost 300 pounds with thick shoulders, scruffy facial hair,

and hands like catchers' mitts. That's exactly Jeff's measurements. 6-1, 300 pounds. Big old hands. Everyone comments about how strong and tough my hands are all the time. Handsome, right. He is really good at killing bears.

Is that what they mean by handsome? Just big hands. He's really good at killing bears. It's like his favorite thing to do in the world. He gets his bear every single year. And a lot of people, including some of the other members of the BKB, suspected him of killing a lot more than his legal. bear. He's like addicted to bear hunting. And he's persona non grata to K. She hates Cooter.

He's well known to law enforcement too because he had once spent 14 months in prison for shooting someone right in front of a sheriff's deputy. I have to imagine that person survived and that's why he didn't go to prison for longer. Still. Yeah. That's not long enough in my opinion. Yeah. Maybe there's had to been some extenuating. Maybe you did that one in season. He had a tag. Yeah, he had a tag. All right.

Okay, so once Kay learned about Cooter, she had decided all of the bears at Bear's song were probably so keen to hang out with her because they wanted a refuge from Cooter and his bear dogs. And this is another thing that these people who feed and think they're protecting wildlife always convince themselves of. They think that these animals are coming to them because they're a safe place. and not just because they're giving them reliable food. They start to kind of build this own narrative, and it's really just like they're giving them food. That's what they want, and they're coming back for it repeatedly. The true conflict starts when Kay learns that Cooter and the BKB were using the South Shore Road,

the road that she and Brick had restored and been using for logging, to access the forest and access the bears. She immediately puts up a big sign that says private property, no hunting, and the men continue to use this road and take their dogs and their illegal bear bait into the woods. So this is kind of a big clash between two people that are doing illegal things with bears in very different ways. And the bears are kind of caught in between

and they're being harmed by both sides of this equation. Kay would call the police or wildlife officials when the BKB would show up, but she would have to travel to the alligator river Marina to use the phone. And if the officials responded, the men were almost always gone by the time they got there. She spoke with a lawyer who said he couldn't do anything, but he suggested that Kay buy a gun to defend herself,

and she wrote in her journal, Living on the land alone, I now realized my life could be in serious danger. So what she decides to do is try and get the public opinion on her side. So she starts selling videos and newsletters to the public about her bears, and she's thinking this public pressure on the hunters might make them stop. She even jokes in her newsletter about how they should shoot and kill the hunters instead. She does TV and print interviews, but all of this was in vain.

These hunters are not about to stop hunting just because some of the general public that already didn't like bear hunting is just going to like him, you know, dislike it more. That's not going to be enough to stop them. Meanwhile, this relationship with Brick, the owner of this land, has turned really sour. He's a terrible businessman. He's messed up a lot of these development offers. they had gotten. He's constantly changing his mind on what was best to do with the land, and he actually terminated the contract with K in 1991

and left her with nothing. She sues him for $2 million, and the 18 acres surrounding her trailer on the South Shore Road, and then he dies in June of 1993, which I have to assume is a heart attack from seeing brachiosaurus on the screen for the first time. and his estate continues to battle K in the lawsuit. She would go on to win $20,000 and $937 acres,

which included the South Shore Road. But this change does nothing to slow down the BKB. So she starts putting locks on the gate of the South Shore Road, which the hunters would just cut. Then she starts dragging trees into the road, which they would move. Inches. They would cut her locks, huh? they'd cut her locks.

And then finally, you can't do that. No. Finally in 2003, Cooter and the other hunters take K to court. And the reason they do this is because they had learned that Brick, the Brick family, had actually failed to include the South Shore Road in the land that had been awarded to K. And meanwhile, two of Cooter's friends had purchased the road. So they now own the road. and they're suing Kay saying that she can't put locks on it,

she can't stop them from using this road, and that she's preventing them from accessing their property. And this judge, kind of seeing what had happened, rules that they have to share access of the road because she lives there, she owns all the surrounding property, and she's pissed. So she leaves this ruling and immediately puts another lock on the gate, and the judge sentences her to 30 days in jail for contempt of court.

And this is where things get pretty bad for Kay. She does her 30 days, and as soon as she gets out, she goes to the Alligator River Marina to use the phone. And these hunters knew that this was kind of a base of operations for Kay, and while she was in jail, they'd done a little redecorating. You see, one of the things that Kay failed to realize she was doing to these bears was creating really predictable routines for the bears. They would continuously use the same routes to access their property and to get fed. And the hunters knew this too, and they'd just been waiting for the opportunity to take advantage of it, and Kay being in jail was the perfect opportunity. So as Kay entered the alligator marina, all over the walls were pictures of hunters with dead bears,

grinning and mocking Kay. She's staring in shocked horror at all of these photos, and she was, realized a lot of the bears were ones that she recognized that she had named, and among them was the bear with the limp, Highway 64, the very first bear that she'd befriended. She starts screaming and just pain and rage, and she continues screaming until the deputies actually had to come to the marina and escort her back to her trailer. So this is a real changing point for her. she becomes despondent Her overall grip on reality

starts to slip away She starts to tell her friends About really far out there Conspiracy theories That the government was coming to get her That a few bears Yeah I know you do That they're conspiring with the hunters

To kill her and her bears Her living conditions start to get really bad Like really bad Her trailer just looks totally squalid She's hoarding She's spending more and more time alone at Bear Song, she loses all of her teeth and refuses to put dentures in because she doesn't want the bears to think that she's like being aggressive with her teeth. Just some

kind of wild stuff. She also buys a machete and she would swing it at people that came down the road, everything from wildlife officials to bird watchers to the BKB. And some of these wildlife officials actually take a lot of pity on her. And they also knew that Cooter is out there poaching bears. And they also wanted to do something about it. it. So in the 2000s, a team of wildlife officers and the ATF, they launch an investigation into Cooter. Mike, you've launched some investigations into Cooter before, haven't you? Not many, Wes. Not many. All right.

It's funny because you made that name up. I did. And I looked it up because I was like, Cooter means something, doesn't. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to stick with it. I just thought it was a type of turtle at first. And then I realized that it's also something else. All right. You're thinking of box turtle, which is another euphemism for it.

Cooter is also a type of turtle. Okay. During these investigations, they find dozens of illegally killed bear skeletons on the land directly north of Bear Song. They arrest Cooter, they charge him with poaching bears, with killing bears over bait, and illegal possession of a firearm because he was a felon and he wasn't allowed to have a gun. Some of the BKB even gives testimony against Cooter, and while they couldn't get these hunting charges to stick, they do get him, sorry, such a dumb name, I should have picked a better name, and Cletus.

They couldn't get these hunting charges to stick. they do get him with the ATF and the firearm charges. And in 2008, he's convicted and would go on to spend 6.5 years in federal prison. So they do get him on the gun charges, which is a big win. And for Kay, this essentially ends the battle with the hunters. But she continues to deteriorate mentally, physically. She becomes increasingly aggressive and volatile with their friends. There's this little anecdote.

There's outdoor magazine, right? What did they call the guy? Outside magazine. They called him, what did they call him? Like, shouldn't it be public record if he went to jail for six years? I think, like, I kind of wonder if they just didn't want to, like, get on this dude's bad side. Crocket. They called him Crocket. I like Cooter better. Me too.

All right. So there's this anecdote about her being in the car with one of her friends and her friend's dog, and the dog was barking really loud. And this friend remembers Kay saying, shut him up or I'll slit his throat. Like she's getting very aggressive. She would also continually ask her friends and her niece Susan for money. And when they finally refused to give her any money, she would just stop talking to them. That's like me with our unpaid listeners, right? She would also go long periods without eating and she wouldn't see any doctors for health problems.

people that saw her would generally just see her in this long white nightgown, often talking to herself or to her bears, but she even seemed to be more volatile with the bears as well. She was less patient with their antics and just kind of yelled at them a lot more. So she's distancing herself from her community, and because of that she had less and less food to give to these bears. Certain people, though, are still very compassionate to Kay, including Sharon Pledgeur,

who would often drop off meals for Kay on his travels to and from town. And the meals were always gone when he would pass by the next time, until January of 2015, when that meal was still sitting outside the gate several days later. We're going to go over two scenarios of what might have happened to Kay, and then we can kind of discuss at the end which one we think is most likely. The first one is kind of the official scenario that's put forward by the officials and investigators following the investigators. into her death. They think that Kay may have died from a health condition or possibly even hypothermia

because it had been a really cold winter and her single wide trailer has broken windows and holes in the flooring and was really drafty and cold. And they think maybe after her death, the bears dragged her body into the woods and consumed it. They don't think she was killed by the bears because her bones didn't show signs of trauma and there wasn't an obvious kill site with the big pool of blood. A couple problems I have with that really quickly. These bears are very comfortable eating around her trailer in this area. So I don't see why a bear that had been doing something that had normally done a million times there would feel uncomfortable just eating there.

I do think it would feel uncomfortable killing in that spot. I think that would feel very unique and different to it. So the other scenario that could have happened, in my opinion, is that while Kay was at home and the bears who are used to like, they're not used to a cold, difficult winter too. They're also getting restless. And previously she had fed them all these sweet rolls and peanuts and bread. Now they're just getting dog food.

They're also dealing with someone who's becoming increasingly aggressive with them. And one evening, one of the bears in the yard, just has enough of these meager feedings, only getting dog food when it's used to a lot better stuff, and it snaps. It reaches out a paw, it slaps K, easily tearing its claws into her paper-thin skin. She turns to scramble away from this bear,

and this triggers a new response in this large predator. It jumps on the woman in her early 70s, shakes her, knocks her unconscious, or possibly even kills her from the shaking. There's other bears around, so rather than try and kill and eat then and there, it drags her outside down the road and into the woods. The force of this dragging removes her clothes as it goes.

That's why they find these clothes in the road and in the bushes. And then with other bears around, we've talked about how bears don't always do like a killing bite to kill something, but if they feel like they have to kill something quickly, they can do it. So bears sometimes will go for the throat or something if they feel like they have limited time. So with other bears around, it might have opted to quickly bite her throat to kill her

and further remove the chances of, like, losing this prize to other bears. Wouldn't that be, like, couldn't you find a blood spot of that then, though, if it bit a throat? You definitely could, but it's not like a given to me. Like, I, if I'm an investigator on a bear attack,

I don't necessarily expect to just find one spot where the bear kills and eats everything. they might drag them around a fair amount, especially if there's a lot of other bears around and they have to keep moving to kind of get to a secluded spot. Sure, but I'm saying like if it does go for the throat to kill someone, I feel like that is something you could normally find. Yeah, it's possible.

Just because there's a lot of blood in your throat. Yeah. Out in the woods, it could stop and feed occasionally, though, and then just continue dragging this body deeper and deeper into the bush. This bear would tear the skin and the full. flesh from her scalp and her face, and ultimately it left the skull of Kay Grayson on a tiny mound made by these old Cypress roots. So I agree, Jeff, it could be either of these scenarios. It could also be that Cooter, who had just gotten out of jail, killed Kay and left her body for the

bears. Oh, he had just gotten out of Jeff? I think so. Like, I did the math. What I can say, though, is they found a lot of human bones in a lot of bear scat. So those bears definitely eighter. Like they ate K. Also, these investigators, I can almost guarantee you that they had never looked into a bear fatality before and I think it's highly likely that

they missed some of the signs that would have been present had a bear killed her. They can look like a lot of different things. So they kind of they ruled it out but I personally think the bears probably killed her. That's my opinion. Oh wow.

It's another possibility because she was just in like kind of a trailer. I'm sure she spent a lot of time outside. Like she could have like died outside of her trailer. It's totally possible. Yeah. There's a lot of things that could have happened. But looking at the story.

The thing that's interesting to me about like her dying in the trailer is the guy that left the food that the bears didn't eat that. Yeah. I mean it was just a bag of dog food though. Oh, you mean the meal like by the gate? Yeah. Yeah. But like for me Oh, that's by the gate.

Yeah, it's not like a place they're normally going for food. And just because a bear kills and eats, someone doesn't mean there wasn't any other food source around. I think what probably happened, in my opinion, is her deteriorating like that, especially mentally. I think she had kind of lost her edge on how to respond to these bears, and she'd probably pissed one off. And then when, like when they kind of enter into

that mode, we've talked about this before, it's kind of hard to turn it off. It's like a light switch gets flipped. And if she pissed it off and then she like ran from it or anything when it reacted to her, I could totally see it just switching into predator mode and killing her and eating her. I just think if you find a bunch of human bones in Bear Scat, there's a pretty good chance that those bears killed and ate that person. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Like they could have been on cocaine. They could have been on cocaine? You never know. Yeah. Not ozimic.

Yeah. This is the bayou kind of. Why do you say that? Why they're eating? Yeah, that's true. What do you guys think? What do you think is most likely? The official, like, kind of report or that she was killed by these bears?

If I, if you hadn't weighed in as a professional yourself, the thing that seems more likely to me just as the lay person on this show, I don't know much about bear behavior compared to you guys. That first explanation made a little more. logical sense to me. How many times have there been bear fatalities in North Carolina? I don't know. Probably single digits. Like, it's probably very rare, right? At least in recorded history. I think, but I think their stats kind of just are similar to Black Bear stats throughout their range. You know, you're going to have the occasional bear that gets into trouble. But we've, we've learned this on the show.

Food conditioning greatly increases your chances of having a dangerous bear. And this was food conditioning to a high degree. For sure. I like what they decided because that kind of protects the bears a bit more. Like if they had decided the bears killed her, then people might want more bears killed. So I kind of like their narrative, but I think it's a little bit hard to say the bears didn't kill her. You know, like it's like you can't prove they didn't kill her. Like you can prove they did eater.

Yeah. And I kind of like, to be honest, I kind of disagree with that being the better narrative. Because in my opinion, I think if you feel like she died because she ended up feeding these bears and they killed her because of it, it kind of tells people like, oh, I can't get away with feeding bears, you know? And yeah, for like a few of the specific bears that might have been implicated, sure, that could have been worse for them had they said these bears killed anator. I don't think they would have tracked down those bears in this case. I think they would have been like she was asking for it. You've always been BKB too. I'm not BKB at all.

A bunch of what is it? Bear killing bunch. Yep. But I do think overall, the number one lesson that we should take home from this story is that wild animals deserve to be wild. And if you do feed bears especially a big potentially dangerous animal, there is almost always going to be a disastrous outcome, both for the animals and for the people.

And there definitely was in both cases on this. A lot of these bears were shot because she had food conditioned them. Just like how Timothy tried well, you know, some of those bears that he loved ended up getting killed because of his actions. So that's, it's a cautionary tale for all of you. It's a bear bear, bear world out there. It's a bear, a bearie K world out there. I think that's what's happening with Shanks right now, Jeff.

He's starting to munch you a little bit, right? He's keep feeding him. He was biting the hell out of me yesterday. Uh-huh. And then some guy walked by and he, like, bit the guy's hand. Darren? Was it Darren? Oh, no. It was a random guy.

He nipped the guy's hand. Oh, that's not good. And the guy was, like, giving me a death stare. Yeah. I felt really bad, but then I just convinced myself that guy was a really bad person. And Shanks is a hero. Was it Jared from Subway? But then that kind of means I'm a bad person, too.

Yeah. If Sally bites bad people. That's true. Oh, because he bites you. A catch 22 there. Huh. Maybe we'll do an episode on it sometime. Get him to bite someone bad enough.

We can do an episode on him. We're running out of stuff. Yeah, we've got so few stories left to cover. Now we've got a lot left. In my opinion, the best thing you can have on a hot, sunny day is a cold car. The issue with that is most cold carbonated drinks aren't good for you. But that's why I love element sparkling so much. I'm going to actually crack one open right now into the mic.

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I know you saw this maybe fairly recently, right, Wes? I love that movie. Big overpowering kind of guy uses religion as a means to kind of infiltrate this innocent family's house and terrorize these two children. Completely brainwashes an amazing movie. It's really, really good. But he's just relentless. He gets, you know, they escape from him. But he's always finding a way to manage to come back into the picture and haunt these little kids to.

He's super scary. Oh, he's so scary. And he's so, like, just intimidating and big when they're, like, in the same frame. Amazing movie, amazing actor, and he's hunting. He's hunting them kids. Jared. Like Jared from Subway. All right.

I'll go since Jeff needed to kind of prepare this one a little bit. Let me look up the guy's name real quick. I picked Percival C. McLeach, who is the hunter from rescuers down under, portrayed by George C. Scott. Oh, man. Just like one of the best cartoon movie villains ever, in my opinion. And him and like the combo of Joe, the Goanna. So good. Like he is a scary villain.

And I miss those days where Disney movies and stuff just had villains that were outright evil. Like there was no kind of redemption arc or like, you know, we didn't have to see into their motives or anything. It was just like, no, this is just like a force of evil that's bad, you know. And he definitely felt like that to me. I'm not sure I knew that that was George C. Scott until right now. I don't think I ever known that. Yeah. Good portrayal.

Yeah, it brings a whole lot of baggage to that character. No, I mean, I don't know much about George C. Scott personally, but just the characters he plays. And I know a little bit of his personal life involved a lot of alcohol. Just thinking about the guy that's in like hardcore or Patton all the sudden playing like this weird outback hunter. Yeah. It's amazing. Just like totally sadistic. hunter yeah

Jeff what you got a book and a movie that I enjoyed both of them the running man so like the newest running man with Glenn Powell is more true to the book than the Schwarzenegger one the Schwarzenegger one's a little

more fun but I like them both but the concept of just like a game show where you're like hunting someone down and then the hunters just seem to love hunting people and killing them. Yeah. Kind of just bad guys, the hunters.

Okay. Next category. The guy's name was Lee Pace. He plays the elf and Lord of the Rings. I love Lee Pace. Yeah, familiar with Lee. He's the hunter, I think. I think he's like the hottest male actor, up at least.

Top five. Okay. So Kay put something into her life that ended up being really bad for her, which was feeding bears. So I wanted to ask you guys, what's something you've inserted in your own life that definitely not good for you. Yeah, I had a few, a COVID vaccine. Okay. The Little Caesar's app, and then a three-legged dog that pees on his own foot and then

doesn't let me wash his feet and bites you. And also my new couch, but I got one that's like four inches too small to lay down all the way. So then I have to like bend my knees. And it's like sometimes I have to put my legs up. I'm like, I should have just got a little bit bigger couch, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Those are all good picks. Yeah, I might actually go with the couch if I were to pick just one of those. For Jeff? Yeah. I'm going to go with a double-sided waffle iron. Like just having one iron to make one waffle is probably was good. But now that I have one that can make two at the same time, it's like, well, I might as well just like make two.

and now I'm eating like instead of whatever 600 calories it's the double how much is that Wes 1200 calories jeez are you just putting egos in it yeah and it's squish them out flatten them all the way out they're kind of like tortillas at the end all right uh mine mine's you guys both had better answers than mine mine's twitter i just feel like my or axe you know i feel like my life would be so much better if I didn't have that app because... If you didn't know what was going on in the world? I feel like I'm too into it now. You know, I want to know what's going on in the world,

but I could have gotten that from other spot, like just from Instagram or just from like somewhere else. Twitter's too much. Like it's bringing down my quality of living. I will say to like, now that I'm kind of dove into some conspiracy theories on Twitter especially. Yeah. Like for conversations, it's really hard for me to just like have like standard conversations anymore. I'm one of those people who's just like, oh, this pizza is good. I was like, well, you know where pizza started. Have you heard of Pizza Gate? You know about Pizza Gate.

Yeah, that's weird. I hadn't noticed that about you, Jeff. Yeah, serious. There's, I do think there's this thin line between like being informed in a really turbulent world. And like, like, knowing what's going on and being an advocate for people and like things that need it but then also like like doom scrolling and just getting like into a black pit of despair and lately that's been what's happening to me so i really feel like i need a a disconnection from from my phone in general go look at the ocean dude i did go look at the ocean i went the other day went to dsnieland which made me feel great you need to dig into dsneyland i know there's all sort everything is bad. I'm sure Disneyland has terrible and Disney in general. You know, I have a fun time there.

I'm not a Disney adult, but I do enjoy going. Okay. You love Mickey Mouse. I don't love Mickey Mouse. I did finally ride that Mickey Mouse ride that you guys loved. And I like that ride. Yeah, it's charming. Yeah, we probably oversold it by now. A little bit. For sure. But I liked it. I liked it. It's like one worth going to. For sure. Okay. Next category. And I think we may have done a version of this before, but when I first went to North Carolina, I was amazed by it. Like the outer banks, the smoky mountains, just the whole vibe there, I just really connected with it. It ended up being the state that surprised me the most when I went to all 50 states.

So I'm curious if you guys have like a big surprise state that you want to shout out. New Mexico was a big one for me recently. Shout out, Hobby and E.J. I went down and visited a couple of friends of the show. And just immediately upon crossing the border, I could just sense there was like something different happening. And the people are really nice. I know they're everywhere. There's going to be weird, rude people.

But I just found on average the people were nice. The food was very like idiosyncratic. I don't know. That caveat. Where you're like, I know not every single person there's nice. But that thing is like I ran in only. nice people. Every single person I met, they're like, hey man, how you doing? They all talk kind of like Mickey Mouse. It's because you're famous. You should read about that killer and truth or

consequences. He's a bad guy. He's probably nice to people though when he met her. Zazobra dude, that little demon that they burn every year in Santa Fe. You don't think if you bumped into Mike at a gas station, he'd be nice to him. That killer. Maybe. I bet you would. Shout out Albuquerque's gay parade. I showed up just randomly on the weekend that that was happening is lit. Yeah. Damn. They shut down like a whole

city for it and I was not getting involved in that way but I got kind of involved in like on the in the background. Yeah. I can't believe you dude. I shouted out the gays that I respect them and now you're just like

getting in on my corner. I'm usurping your throne. Yes. I picked Minnesota. Minnesota. Minnesota. That was too much. I went too far too hard.

Yeah. Overreached. Yeah. It's just like, it woke up the Balrog. I shouldn't have been surprised because it's, whole advertisement is 10,000 lakes or whatever.

Yeah. And I went there and it's just like a lake every where you look. And it was crazy. There's just so many lakes. I couldn't believe it. There was once that Mike said he wanted to move to like Wisconsin or Minnesota. I don't remember which. And I gave you a hard time for it.

And I think you were right. I think everyone that lives out there love. it's still on the table either of those states right let's move there okay let's go they got wolves yeah okay i want each of you to assign a moll had a wolf that's true hey close to l a yeah you could move there i want each of you to assign a moniker to the other like Jeff the blank man it's eye thing yeah no that's a monocle a moniker like k the bear lady so it's gonna be like henut is that his Yeah. It is his name, huh?

Yeah. What the heck? Yeah. That's a little on the nose, right? On the nut. It is a little on the nose. On the nut. All right.

Do you guys understand the rules? Like Jeff the blank man or Mike the blank man. Okay. Sure. If you feel like doing one for me, you can. Mr. Peanut. That's not. That's a pretty good one for me.

It has to follow my format. Mike the blank man. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be Mike the peanut butter pretzel man. Okay. That's a good one. He does love those. Jeff, the honest man.

Yeah, to a fault. I think a little bit too a fault sometimes, but I'd rather you be that way than the other. That's true. I agree with that. The blunt man. That's like a double-on- Because you can be straightforward,

but also you like lighten up, dude. You like sparking, bo-bo-boop, pass it. He never does. He hogs the whole thing for himself. Blunt man, that's Jeff. Jeff, the blunt hog man. Yeah. You wouldn't want, like, dream,

rotation, I'm the worst choice. Right. There's no rotation. You just eat it. All right. Once it's like going out at the very end, I'll be like, here, hit this. Something you recommend this month. I think friends of the show know that I'm a big fan of Survivor.

I watched it when it first came out, stopped for a long time, and then during the pandemic got like really into it again and so did all my friends. Australian Survivor is my recommendation for you. I've done it before. do. But man, this current season is really good. And their show is just so much better than the U.S. version. So if you have access to it, if you can figure out how to get it. That's a thing. I've had listeners be like, Wes keeps saying Australian Survivor and I can't watch it. I think you can get it on like Paramount Plus, but honestly, you might just have to

torrent it, you know, just torrent it. Just ask Wes. He'll give it to you. I can't give it to you. But you can find these things if you're willing to look for them. How do you get yours? I get mine through a service called Plex. Who got you on there? Someone does the torrenting for you on there. Who got you on the place?

You got me on there. But the person that we get Plex from no longer is signing up new people. So you got to find your own Plex person. Is this something that's like of the day or is this just anything that we recommend someone do this month? Just something you recommend this month. Anything. You can go whichever direction you want.

I'm ready. Jeff, you go. Put me in. You're in. So Jared, who watched my dog and his friend Max, invited me to this show last night, and it was like walking distance from me. So I was like, you know what? I'll go.

And it's called red leather. So it's this guy who wears like a cowboy hat, and it's all these strings all over covering his face, and then he has a ski mask. Nobody knows what he looks like. Like, no one knows what he looks like. And he put on a great show. Is that Orville Peck?

Are you just talking about Orville Peck? Huh? Orville Peck does that. Who red leather is? Yeah, no one knows who he is. Okay. This is a real Banksy situation. Except for we just reasonably learned.

There's another guy that does that. Look him up. He does the same thing. Orville Peck. With red leather? Are you down? Sorry, continue. This is red leather.

Okay. He's different. He almost killed himself. Different, okay. Red leather did because he's addicted to drugs and alcohol. He's like a thousand, five hundred days sober now. And he sings about Tahoe. And you know what?

It's really fun. He put on a good show. His last song, he went to a crowd and just like moshed people while he's singing. I like that. And I think it's cool that no one knows what he looks like. And I think his gimmick works. And it's like half the show he comes out as black leather. And that's like his demon self.

They almost killed himself. And he'll like get real negative and stuff. And then he kills black leather, his red leather. It's cool. Yeah. Wow. You got to listen to him, Wes, today. I love some showmanship like that.

I'll listen to him. Today? That sounds fun. Yeah, I'll listen to him today. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough.

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Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Price Line. Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Who's your favorite musician or artist in general who no one really knows what they look like. Do you have one of those, Wes? Like it was the gorillas for a long time.

That's a good one. But now I think the monkey's out of the bag there. Do you have one? That's a funny joke, Wes. Yeah. Probably Daft Punk. Of course, we always end up figuring out what these people look like eventually

and it always dispels the myth a bit. But daf punk, like their helmets and the way they light up is just the coolest thing in the world. You don't want to know who my least favorite, like, artist was in that was Banksy. Banksy. Never got into Banksy. Stupid, in my opinion.

He's just, I'm really getting into him either. Yeah, I just thought it was like pop art, boring. All right. Well, that's what's really fun about red leather, too, is like they're not that big still. Uh-huh. So, like, it's still in that beginning phase of, like, no one knows. Like, I feel like he's getting famous enough, too, that he could, like, use the celebrity to his advantage, but then it's like, he can't.

So it's kind of funny and like, I don't know. That is fun. Mike, you got your recommendation? Yeah, I guess if we need to do something of, that's more recent, like, of this month, there are two metal albums that came out that I was really into, one by Neurosis and one by Converge, Converge Long. Well, if you guys know, you know, the awesome albums, though, that I found to be a great gym-going music.

But if it's something more general, I highly recommend. recommend writing a handwritten letter to somebody. If you really want to round out the experience, light a little candle, turn on some classical music, and just bang one out, draft up a nice letter and send it to someone. I just found it to be like a really pleasant experience. I hadn't done that in so long. And now my wrist is sore, my forearm. Holy cow.

I thought I'd been working that out enough. I have not. Your wrist is sore from writing a candle and banging one out. Banging one out. You know what I did on my most recent letter that I sent out that was fun was I stamped a panda stamp on there. Dude, that's my new mark. You should get the wax stamp, like the seal with the panda. Daniel does that.

It's cool. I actually just ordered a custom one for myself, so I'm going to start wax stamp and closed envelopes. That's another, the PBS count of Monte Cristo. or I think it was PBS, Count of Moni Cristo's series with Sam Clayflin. I just watched it. It's so good.

I love any Count of Monte Cristo stuff you give me, I'm going to watch. Yeah. I still like the Guy Pearce. That one's the most satisfying, I think. But this one really nails kind of the conundrum. I'll take them all that. Ethical.

It's a really good anime adaptation of the story too. I forget what exactly it's called. But it's really, It's really good. It's really interesting. I probably read the book. Artistic direction too. Oh, yeah.

Of course. That book is in, I love like a prison escape. As he was saying. Shawshank, Kanamani, the thing that's great about, Canamani Christo is like he was so wronged. He was in prison for a really long time in a terrible prison.

And then he gets like all the most resources in the world. And it's just like, oh, let's go. Now we're talking. Let's kill him. Boy, does he ever go. All right. Okay, let's do a quick, you know, let's spread the love a little bit. Let's do a content creator, shout out.

Shout out a content creator that you've lately been enjoying their content. Okay, I have Luigi Primo. He's a small-time wrestler, and he's Italian, and his thing is to spin pizza dough and then throw it at his opponents. And, you know, you would think he would think, you can only go so far with that one, but he's been pretty innovative and he's been

adding new elements to it. So he's the only professional wrestler I follow on Instagram right now. Hi, Honor. He'll be happy to hear that. I'm sure he's listening. Mike, who's your content creator?

When we go with a YouTube channel I found recently called storied, all caps, storied, it's a channel that covers the history of some of the most significant events and skaters and skateboarding's past. And just as a kid of the 90s, it's almost inescapable that at some point we were all really, really into skateboarding. And it comes and goes and waves for me. But right now I'm on, I'm really riding it. And having a great time watching just like Chris Jocelyn, just 360 flipped the El Toro stairs. And that was like a big

lifelong quest that he's been on. And it's just like all these different little videos, very digestible chunks and it's fun to watch people do really cool crazy stuff. All right, mine is an Instagram account. It's M-X-R-I-U-M-Mixrium. It's a Palestinian cook that I've been following for like five years and finally bought her cookbook that just came out. It's on the New York Times bestseller list. And I feel like a lot of people that I've followed that do like cooking channels on Instagram or whatever, when I cook their stuff, it just does. doesn't turn out the way I want it to or it's like not very good. And I've cooked a few of her recipes and they are so good.

Like her brownies I made and they were just like the best brownies I've ever had and a few other things. So highly recommend her account and her cookbook. She definitely doesn't need the love because she has like a million and a half followers. But I really like the stuff that she makes. Nice. And the cookbook is great. I bought it. All right.

Let's do a couple listener questions real quick. We got one from Kelly. Kelly says, Jeff, are you interested in creating a fanfic of your dog Shanks and the whale named Griskid? Shanks the dog pirate gets a leg bitten off by the whale gris kid. Maybe they become pirate friends and the whale helps find the lost treasure of the dog piece. Would you do that fan fiction, Jeff? I'd like where her head's at. I don't know about, yeah.

We might have to workshop it a little bit. Yeah. Okay. All right. But I do like where it. So maybe. We'll put a pin in it. Yeah.

Mike, this one's from Michelle. Mike, can we get a reading update? Maybe your favorite books from the last year or a favorite so far this year? Why don't you do a favorite so far this year? I read the Tainted Cup after you mentioned it and loved it. I also added rainbow troops to my list. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Favorite so far this year, I doubled up on. a book called Roadside Picnic by the Strogatsky Brothers, and that was famously adapted by Tarkovsky into his maybe most celebrated film stalker. So that's like a fun double feature if you're looking for some hard sci-fi that gets adapted into more philosophical space in the film. And I would consider it essential reading if you're really looking to get deeper into science fiction. It's a pretty seminal touchstone of the genre. It can be a little inscrutable at times, but just really an amazing ahead of its time piece of literature that I think y'all should check out. All right.

This one's from Elijah. Elijah says, What's going on, Mike, Wes, and Jeff? I asked this question about a year ago and wanted to leave some time before asking it again. Who would win between a Siberian tiger and an inland brown bear? My stepbrother and I have been debating this for some time, and I'm coming you to seek all your opinions. Love the podcast.

This is actually one that you don't have to debate about because inland brown bears actually are a prey item for Siberian tigers. They find them in their scat somewhat regularly. Oh, no, R. R. Yeah. Like, there are. Well, there's a thing. I don't know.

Pyrenean tiger? You were thinking of saber-toe tiger. Yeah. Now, this is Siberian tiger or a moor tiger. They are prey for them. Those brown bears that you find in inland Russia are very similar to our inland brown bears and Siberian tigers do occasionally kill and eat them. And the opposite is true.

A saber tooth tiger would also make pretty easy work of an inland brown bear, I think. So, yeah. All right. One more. This is from Eric C. Lee. New subscribers, so forgive me if this has already been covered. I've heard the theory that everyone has a certain size of body water, certain size body of water, in which they would be comfortable swimming, knowing that there's a dead body.

in the water with them. For me, I think it would have to be a decent-sized lake. My wife says it would have to be the ocean. My kids say they would be comfortable if it were a large swimming pool. Got to get new kids, Eric. Those ones are rotten. For me, I think it would have to be a decent-sized lake. Oh, yes, sorry. What about you three? What is the smallest-sized body of water you'd swim in if you knew there was a dead body? Bath tub. That's interesting. Because like when you're in the ocean. And not only comfortable, aroused. You can't swim in a bathroom. What?

Are you kidding me right now? I do flip turns in my bathtub. Especially if there's a dead body in there with you. We barely like in water when I have it. When I have that body in there, there's like eight molecules of water between me and him or her. Now whenever I'm in the ocean, I'm going to have to think like, there's a dead body. There's dead bodies in there. That's the thing.

Like probably most big lakes you're in have a dead body in there too. Well, I guess what counts as a dead body too? Yeah, like a skeleton. Right. I take a bath with a skeleton. I would say like, if it were a smaller lake, I'd be comfortable. Especially if it was really cold water, I feel like that makes it better. Like if it was really like warm and pondy and swampy, it would feel grosser to me.

But if it's cold water, I'm feeling pretty comfortable. So, yeah. It's lucky that President Taft didn't die. in that one tub he got stuck in. I like that there's a president. The only thing we know about him is that he was like... He got stuck in a bathtub

because he was a little too big for it. I'm sure... He might have been good. He might have been terrible. I don't know anything about him other than that. Maybe like... If it's like the body is floating on the surface, I don't want to be able to see the body.

Yeah, that's true. I just want to know that it's under the water. Like if I see a body floating in the water, I'm not swimming. Okay. Good rule of thumb. The second they fish them out of there. I'm getting it.

All right. Okay. That's it for listener questions. Those are all from some Patreon subscribers. Thank you, everyone. All right. A quick conservation corner. I did look at harvest data for the last 10 years in North Carolina,

coastal North Carolina for Black Bears. And those numbers did increase year after year. So they're getting like... I'm glad you asked, Jeff. I think he was about to just not tell us. They tick up every year, and that either means that bear numbers are going up, so they're issuing more tags and hunters are having more successful hunts, or it could mean that they're simply trying to reduce the population.

I know in a lot of these counties they do have like a zero population growth target, which is understandable. If you have enough bears to where they're starting to cause problems or getting into like issues, you don't want to taint the, uh, the perception of that species as a whole. So you do have to kind of make those decisions sometimes. I think it points toward black bear populations in North Carolina being pretty robust. I hope they're managing them well.

I hope they're taking into account the fact that there are natural controls for those levels too. But as far as, you know, we've learned in other black bear episodes. They're very adaptable animals. Population-wide, they're doing great, much better than any other bear species. in the entire world. There's, you know, 800,000 plus black bears, American black bears.

So we don't have to worry about them. I'd like to see how much those numbers spiked up when the Cooter was in prison. Yeah. Or spiked down? Well, when the population went on. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So anyway, you don't need to protect black bears. You don't need to make it your personal mission to like to feed them and protect them. they're doing great. That is a load off my mind. Yeah. All right. All right.

And that's all I got. A couple quick announcements. We do have some new trips that are going to be coming up soon. We're doing another trip to India that's going to be culture and wildlife with Trova trip. And then soon we'll probably be doing announcing a Uganda trip as well with serpentine. You got to come on that one with us, Jeff. You got to sign up quick. All right.

We do generally offer those first to our Patreon and then if there are extra spots. We always do. Yeah, we always do. So that is, I'm not, we're not getting into this. It's not because of me. We can't throw me under the bus for that. That was a group decision. Anyway, so that'll be, those will be coming up soon.

and we love you all, all of you, and we'll see you soon. Love you. See you. Bye. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop.

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