Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Moose Attack - Balto, Togo, and the History of the Iditarod

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Mike is finally allowed to take charge of a main episode as some sort of sick and twisted birthday present, and he decides to cover the true story behind the legendery sled dog serum run of 1925. He then gets into the horrifying account of Bridgett Watkins and her encounter with a moose while training for the Iditarod. Wes does NOT want diptheria, and Jeff is hard to impress. Sources: You're Wrong About Podcast on Balto - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/balto-with-blair-braverman/id1380008439?i=1000648005142 Articles on the moose attack portion: https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/33404918/iditarod-rookie-bridgett-watkins-determined-race-following-moose-attack-injured-dogs https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/33684182/how-iditarod-rookie-bridgett-watkins-attacked-moose-survived-yet-another-disaster ~~ 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

Hello, listeners. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We got Wes Larson, our resident wildlife biologist. Hey. He's got a real diploma from a real university that really states this is really who he is. This, yeah, it doesn't say that. There's a tiny bit of possibility you could have made it all on a computer. Forged it.

I probably could have done that, but it definitely would have fooled you guys. Yeah. I could have just scribbled it on a note, and it would have fooled you probably. And then I'm his little brother. I'm Jeff. And, you know, I also have a degree, but not in wildlife biology, not a master's. So like, West is better than me. That's not true.

No, that's objectively true. We got Mike Smith. Mike Smith is like right in line with me under Wes, and he's our producer. And a master diver. Master diver. You got your master's in diving. Oh, yeah. I bench 200 pounds once.

So we're all even. We're all right. I just got back from Brazil like an hour ago. Still there? Not burnt down yet? It's bad. It's bad, huh? Whatever you guys have seen in the news and on social media about the fires in Brazil,

it's like worse than what you're imagining probably. It's bad. Yeah, I missed a flight. So I got back a day late. So this episode might come out late? I don't know. It's going to, it'll be on time, but usually our subscription or our Patreon people get early access and they're not going to get it this time.

And tomorrow is Bilbo's birthday, so we can't really have Mike or Bill Paxton working on the editing tomorrow. Yeah. Well, it's also Mike's birthday tomorrow too. Did you know that? Oh, shoot, really? Yeah, you guys share a birthday, you and old Bill's. I just remember Bilbo's.

Are you sure? I'm sure. That's how I remember Mike's birthday. Frodo's too. Also, the first day of fall, if anyone, the autumnal equinox, they call it. And even if you're a little bit late, Mike more than anyone I knows loves a birthday message. So you can find his Instagram through the tooth and claw one and just send him a birthday. Happy birthday, Mike.

Oh, you know what? I just figured out is sometimes like for whatever reason messages on Instagram sometimes are hidden. so I've just had like billions of messages. I just haven't known. And I feel really bad because like, well, it's not like I really check and respond to messages anyway. But those ones I feel extra bad about because I didn't even see them. I didn't know they existed.

Just so everyone out there knows all three of us aren't great at responding to messages. It's probably. A peek behind the curtain. Yeah. I get like I want to and I want to talk to people. Then I read like one message and I'm like, overstimulated or something. I don't know. You get overstimulated.

Wow. I get like overwhelmed. I don't know what it is. Overwhelmed is a good word. Stimulated and connotes something a little. Yeah. I have a bunch in that hidden folder that make me over stimulated. Yeah, that's for sure.

I've really been missing out. Well, yeah. I was thinking maybe before we get to the episode, Wes gave like a little peek under the curtain that we just have a lot of messages. And I kind of wanted just to like, give a little peek under the curtain, I was thinking. Okay.

Just of like tooth and claw. Tooth and claw, just so everyone knows, like, it's biweekly for main episodes with some extras. Then biweekly on subscription. Well, we do three episodes a month for the main episodes. Yeah. See, I don't know it. You don't know. Jeff's getting a peek behind the curtains, too.

The only way to go ad free is on Patreon, but you can also just for ease of use go on. Apple subscription and we do we read we capped our ads at like four ads an episode so we just like we were told to do more than that but we didn't want to like bog it down with ads but every once in while we have to add an extra ad or two I don't know I just want to give like a little like just for people who don't know you know sign up on Patreon it's all right it's fun no ads yeah it's all out on the table now you can see the wizard uh all right Mike has our episode today. Wes and me, we talked a lot for the last year or so, like, do we really trust Mike on the big, big stage main show to do a good episode? And you know what? We still don't really

trust him, but... Well, to be fair, I don't really trust. We're just going to see what happens. I don't really trust either of you. Yeah, Wes, if it is up to Wes, it'd just be him. I'm doing this purely out of necessity. This is not, like, don't get used to it as what we're saying. No, Mike has some of our favorite subscriber episodes for those of you who aren't subscribing, so this will be fun. And yeah, we're excited, Mike. We're excited to hear what you have for us. Well, I was thinking I just want to turn the time over to you, Jeff.

I won't turn it to Wes. Ed Shearing just doing like everything on his own music, you know. Right. He does the little looper. Yeah, he plays all of us. I think you could be like your own like, uh, size. side commentary too if you just like loop yourself in and be like oh my god that's crazy pitch shift your voice a little bit no it wouldn't be nearly the bear ate his arm and burped

that's great we're all good at our stuff here can bears burp west what yeah sure sure they can well yeah you learn something new every day right everyone you see mudang oh love mu dang blows snot bubbles that's right that's good to know too hippos yeah can blow snot Stop bubbles, bears can burp. Guess what else is true? What? Here, I'm actually going to, how about this? I'm going to call an audible real quick.

I'm calling this category Mike's Jeff's animal fact of the day. Okay. Stealing, stealing your bit, Jeff. All right. But did you know that sled dogs can eat between 10 and 15,000 calories per day when training and competing? That's a lot. Yeah.

So just for comparison's sake, Joey Chestnut, when he ate 76 hot dogs, he's eaten more since, but this is just the figure I saw on a quick Google search. He ate 22,800 calories in 10 minutes. So the sled dogs have a little bit of a bit of ways to go. So he can out eat like a whole team of sled dogs in a hot dog contest? No, well, maybe. It's possible in a 10-minute window. How much do you eat?

He didn't really understand how competition works. He ate 76 in 10 minutes. 22,800 calories. In how many minutes? 10 minutes. Wow. It doesn't make sense. That's like what a grizzly bear eats in like a day during hyperphasia.

That's crazy. That's an insane amount of calories. Wait, so we're doing two dog episodes in a row? Yeah. Well, this is kind of a double dog because we're talking real dogs and hot dogs. All right. Not really. I guess we're a dog podcast now.

So that is a good question though. And it is kind of how I got to this topic. It's because we brought up heroic dogs. on our previous main episode that West led. And in the category of hero dogs, our favorite hero dogs, we called out Balto. Balto is like a very, very easy choice. It's probably like the number one heroic dog in pop culture.

Having like your own Disney movie helps build your lore a lot to you. It wasn't Disney though, right? Is Balto a Disney movie? Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. Okay. Okay, while you're Googling that. So that's how I got on.

clued into the story of Balto and kind of the history of the Iditarod and I promise I'm going somewhere, this is all interesting if I do say so myself but this is setting up for the animal attack which will come a little bit later since we are ostensibly an

animal attack podcast. I want to get a little bit of that action here but just for setting up the context of the story of the day I wanted to go over briefly the history of the Iditarod and of Balto and more importantly of I don't know if you guys kind of know like the truth behind the story of the serum run of Noam Alaska back in 1925, but there's a lot that the layman doesn't know went down that's really important and really, really cool.

Oh, I do know. I think I used to know. Because there's a to go movie too. Yeah. With Willem DeFoe. With Willem, yeah. Disney. That one's Disney.

I know that. This one's Universal. Balthos Universal. Okay. So 1925, Jeff, what's going on in? 1925. Oh, man. Lions are riding in motorcycles probably.

Let's see. Yeah. We got Moto Lions. We're post-World War I and we're pre-Great Depression. 25 is already World War I. 1918. Yeah, it was over in 1980. Cinderella man, that guy, boxing?

No, we're not there yet. Not quite yet. This is the Roaring 20s. Like, we're on a real role right now. We got all that money coming in from wars. You think they call it the roaring 20s because of all the lions and motorcycles? Probably. Dude, back in the 1920s in American football, there's like 10 people dying a year.

Yeah, back in the good old days. Their little leather caps. That reminds me of that one movie, The Last Boy Scout, where the guy just shoots people on the football field after scoring a touchdown or whatever. Now, that should be, that's against the rules. If it's not, it should be. I don't think it's in the rulebook. It's an air-bud celebration. We're really at the tip of the iceberg here, so I'm going to cruise to you.

This is why we need to stick to our roles on this show. Getting another little peek behind the curtains, everybody. This is what it's like when I lead an episode. So the story goes that in the winter of 1925, 20 teams of mushers and their sled dogs would face life-threatening conditions to deliver a serum to gnome Alaska during a diphtheria epidemic. So what diphtheria is, super contagious disease that basically makes it, it puts like a weird coat on your throat and in your nose. And it makes it hard to breathe.

So hard to breathe, in fact, that it went by another name at the time, the strangling angel of children, which is such a sweet nickname. Can you imagine if you got that nickname? And it started to spread among the small community of Nome, Alaska, slowly at first, but fatally. It's not a cool nickname. I was joking. It's terrible.

It's a terrible thing. It's cool, I guess, if you're like... Yeah. Like a horror movie villain or like a really bad guy. So anyway, so Wes, I'll give you a minute to think about this if you need it. So diphtheria, does this sound like something you do or you do not want? I do not want it. Okay.

You didn't have to take very long to answer that. It's funny, you know, while we're putting it all out on the table this episode for whatever reason, you always are like, oh, you know, we're having a hard time staying on track, but you're taking breaks to ask questions like, What do you think about diphtheria? I just want to set up the stage. It's a real bad situation. I wouldn't want it either if you were going to ask.

Yeah. Me neither. Yeah. Oh, for three, diphtheria on our podcast. So you know it's bad. So a quarantine was imposed. If I had it, I'd want medicine as soon as possible. Exactly.

So a quarantine was imposed and the whole town was shut down. And since there wasn't really a good way to get things to know them very quickly, authorities started brainstorming for how to get the needed serum up there as quickly as possible. 300,000 units of serum were located nearby in Anchorage, Alaska. And this initial batch could be delivered by train

to Nanana, but no farther. And Nanana is kind of more centrally, Alaska. Nome is about 700 miles to the west on the coast. So the serum still needed to be transported 700 miles further than the farthest that they could get it by train. At the time, governor of Alaska was a guy named Scott Bone. Nice.

Yeah. I like the name Bone, dude. I just like it. I wanted to take a pause. You paused. You did. We appreciate it. So he and his team deliberated on what would be the best course of action to get the

serum the rest of the way. So at the time, there just wasn't a good way to travel through the harsh lands of the Alaskan wilderness. Planes were a thing by then, but they were kind of still in their infancy. And it would get so cold, especially in cold weather, planes just were not effective. They would have to like literally light fires underneath the plane to kind of like defrost. They didn't have anti-freeze. It's just not a reliable way to get anything anywhere.

So they were like, well, what should we do then? There was one time tested technology, if you want to call it that, that they decided to go with. And that was with teams of sled dogs. So old governor bone, he decides to go with a slower but more tested plan with the sled dogs. And how it would work is that there would be a relay, each team going for about 20 to 50 miles, as fast as they could, and then they'd hand off the serum to a fresh team, who would take over and go as fast as they could to the next. Except for the second half of the relay,

which would be mostly done by one musher and one dog team, and that guy was Leonard DeSepela. Willem DeFoe. Willem DeFoe. He's kind of the Joey Chestnut of mushers, if you'll allow me to make that. Yeah. I would give it to the Brown Wizard and the Hobbit that uses Radagast.

Yeah, Radigast. That's true. He's going to get bird shit all over it, though. Yeah. And Leonard, this Leonard guy who's a real character who's kind of a goofball. Whenever he wasn't busy winning dog sled competitions, he was kind of like milling around town, making the kids laugh, crawling around. Just like, he's kind of a character.

And he always had his best friend Togo alongside him. Did you say crawling around? Yeah, he would go on like all fours and like just do like weird little things to make people laugh. You know, he was an entertainer. I just loved how you dropped that. Like, that's something normal that people do to make kids laugh. Just to make people laugh. Just crawling around.

You know, like the Babadook. For the sake of saving time, I'd strongly recommend listening to the podcast where I got most of this info from. And I should shout that out real quick. So this is from a podcast called Balto with Blair Braverman from the podcast, you're wrong about. It was really good. A lot of really cool, just genuinely heroic and legendary exploits undertaken by Sepula and Togo. I like that podcast.

Even before the serum run was undergone, like they were already legend status, you know? I mean, if you like them, though, just listen, Mike tell it. Yeah, just wait until you hear me tell it. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus Comane's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry And the best heavyweight in the world

Francis Ngano versus Felipe Lins Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano Live only on Netflix Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center Time 6 p.m. Pacific Time So because they were so good They won basically every competition they were ever put into.

They were entrusted with by far the hardest and by far the longest stretch of this serum run. And you'll, again, I want to impress upon you that this is Togo, not Baltho. Baltho's a good dog. We'll get to Baltho. Baltho's great.

So the serum arrives in Nanana. The relay begins and everyone's left to just hope for the best since there won't be any good ways to get updates while the teams are just out there riding in the wilderness. I have one question on the logistics. How do they like stagger them out? Like is they, are they like camping out there? They're like safe houses and checkpoints that people inhabit.

They're just not like townships per se. But there are people like permanent resists. kind of all along this trail out towards Nome and from what I understood. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm thinking I'm back to Lord of the Rings. I'm thinking when they like the towers. The towers are gone.

There's just like people wait. Like their whole job is just sit there to wait by this pile of wood all day. Yeah. Yeah. Just on top of a mountain. That's got to be. They probably get paid so much. What's the currency in Lord of the Rings?

Earth, Middle Earth? I don't know. I don't think they ever talk about it. Middle dollars? Sure. Okay, so meanwhile, oh, and just to note, I want to impress this as well is that none of these musher's would have chosen to go mush out in these conditions. Like, it was so bad that they were basically ensuring that they would undergo hypothermia, frostbite. The dogs would really struggle to get through this kind of weather.

It was just really terrible. So it was genuinely, again, a heroic effort that both these mushers and the dogs underwent. What are the stakes if they don't get the medicine to the town? Like, is it death or? Oh, there's going to be a lot of death. For adults, diphtheria typically isn't very fatal, but especially for the young, for the children. It was basically a death sentence.

And this seemed to be like... That's why it's that angel of strangling children or whatever. Yeah. Right. And this was kind of hot on the heels of, you'll remember, the 1918 flu, which was like really disastrous. The Spanish flu. Spanish flu.

So they were kind of front of mind, they were thinking probably just, a couple years ago, it was really bad, and we want to avert that disaster as that all possible. First, it's Spaniards, now it's Angels. Exactly. Just can't catch a bit. Really escalating on the... Are you more

afraid of Spaniards or Angels? Angels. I would normally think an angel would be good. I normally think of them as good. Have you seen, like, those, the recreations of biblically accurate angels, where they're just like weird, giant, too, like eyes

with tentacles and stuff? Yeah. I also feel like if an angel's showing up to me, my life's getting worse, you know. Either I'm going to have to do something for God now or like something, or I'm doing something really bad. Like one of the two things is happening. Right. So I don't. That's a good call.

I'd rather not. Okay. So diphtheria is spreading and the story captures the hearts and the minds of the rest of the country and everyone's just sitting at home hoping for the best, helpless to do anything but wait for the next update. one of the last musher's to go is a guy named Gunnar Kassan, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, who's slated to take over for the second to last leg of the relay using some of Sepulah's remaining dogs. So Sepah's like the guy who underwent the longest hardest part of this path.

Willem. And Seppela said that had anybody, if anyone was going to use his dogs, that they need to use fox as the lead dog. And in the community, it's kind of like an ironclad rule. Like if someone tells you something about their dogs or to do something in regards to their dogs, you follow those instructions. You know, they know their dogs best. But Gunnar wasn't really one to follow either directions or rules, it turns out. And he decides instead to use Balto as a co-lead dog alongside Fox,

which is who Sepulah would have wanted at the helm. So it kind of half used his advice. Kind of, yeah. Fox is like a co- Yeah. Right. So Fox is still up there. And Sepulah would later go on to denounce this decision, even though like DeCiram Run was a success, spoiler alert.

because Balto, he was like, he wasn't regarded as a very good sled dog and especially he was very inexperienced as a lead dog. So it's kind of... It's because he's always off doing little adventures with like little polar bear cubs and stuff, you know, and like fighting... Iceicles. Yeah, like slipping through ice caves and stuff. Right.

But so Gunnar, for whatever reason, it might have been because Balto is kind of like stockier and more built to, you know, push through harsh conditions. Gunnar put him at the front alongside Fox. And there's also speculation that Gunnar, well, we'll get to that in just a second. So Gunnar reaches the next safe house where he's supposed to hand off the serum to the final runner who would eventually take it the rest of the way. But according to accounts, not just Gunnar's, I think it's kind of understood that he got there, all the lights were off and the next musher was asleep.

So Gunar, he was like, I'm just going to take it the rest of the way. We're really close. I think we're doing really well. and people speculate that also in his mind, whoever was going to be the person to cross that finish line with the serum would be the one to get the lion's share of the glory. Yeah. He was going to be the most celebrated of...

He didn't try very hard to wake this guy. Right. Yeah. I just imagine him like tiptoeing slowly by the shed and then like going again. But like in reality, he was just like... And it's how it happened. Right. So, Guar goes...

We don't even know this last guy's name. It's something like no, no money. knowing something. Does he deny it? He's like, I was awake. But the guy was just like, I don't, he kind of denies it, but he's also just like, I would have been able to get my dogs ready in like two minutes. So like, I don't understand.

But Gunnar, he goes rogue, goes the last 20 miles, which are pretty smooth. The wind is behind them. And Balto is leading the way alongside Fox. They arrive in Nome. The serum is thought out and distributed and the worst of the dip theory epidemic is averted. And by this point, the whole country had been full. following this story. All of the mushers and all the dogs got some praise and got their glory, but particularly Kossin and Balto, who basically became celebrities at that point.

And you'll read about the movie deals that Balto got and he has a statue in Central Park, all that kind of stuff that goes along with celebrities, you know. Fox kind of guy. And Fox, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. In all of the sources I read through, I didn't really understand what like the Fox dismissal was all about. Probably just bad branding, you know?

If you're like, both of Fox and people are like, wait, a Fox did it? You know, they get confused. It's like when Durant joined Curry's team and won the two finals MVP's and it's just like this Curry's team. I don't know what I do with me. Well, Togo also got screwed because Togo did most of this. Togo did, which is why SEPA, he wasn't super stoked about how all of this went down. Because in his mind, he wasn't really interested in the glory for himself, but in his

mind, Togo had done what everybody seemed to think that Balto had done. And Balto is great. Don't get me wrong. Like, I've seen some weird communities online that are like, Balto, Stolen Valor, like, he sucks. And he's like, he's a good dog. He's a great dog. That's how I feel right now. Right. Our patrons feel that way. Some of them do. I really had to scramble when I posted a message on Patreon about how our episode was going to be a little bit late for them and just kind of casually threw out the idea that I was going to be talking a little bit about sled dogs maybe and if they had any strong feelings about it and everyone yeah you justice for togo you were like how do you guys feel about balto and they're all like

frat balto yeah right see that's where I'm at but I like fox fox is my dog I will say when I watched the togo movie I was like I really liked togo a lot I felt like togo was a great dog. So we got a Fox fan, a Togo fan, and a Bato fan. I'm a Bato fan and a defender. I like all these. Because one dog is great doesn't mean the others can't be. All these dogs are good dogs.

Good dogs. Young Buck stuck up or stepped up when it called upon, you know? Yeah, well that's the thing too. It's like Baltho like was heroic as well. He took the lead kind of for the first time and he made it. He made the final stretch. So good job, Baltho.

So kind of in a sad development, Balto and the rest of his dogs, they were carted around the country. A promoter like bought the team and turned them into kind of a cheap tourist attraction where they'd charge a dime for people to go in and just look at them, I guess. They didn't really do anything, at least as far as I could tell. And those dogs just want to mush. Right. That's what they're like bred to do. That's what makes them happy. Yeah.

Thankfully someone did find them and paid $20,000 to buy them back and take them back to better living conditions for like a half. happier life. But in the end, Togo, he made out, because like, Togo, if we're being honest with ourselves, he doesn't care about the glory, he doesn't care about his statue. He just wants to be hanging out with Sepula mushing. And that's what he did for the rest of his life. So, Togo had a good life. Baltho, we should all, we consider all these dogs, all these musher's heroes, but Baltho just, by circumstances, got most of the glory. That's the thing, though. And then Balto had to live that celebrity lifestyle, which was kind of a curse. And Togo just got athletes do when they're like past their prime though they go to autograph signings yeah have

statutes right yeah that's true great so all that was a preamble to the story of the day so on togo oh well i mean we just went over the story of togo so i don't really know what togo did that was better than balto or fox okay let me tell the story again no no god no all right okay so on march You're the attack. On March 18th, Bridget Watkins found herself stranded in a blizzard near the Topcock blowhole with no cell phone service and in winds that were blowing... What year is this? This year?

2012. Okay. Yeah. Top cock blowhole, Jeff, with no cell phone service and in winds that were blowing 750 pounds snowmobiles around like tumbleweeds. Now, you might be asking yourself, what strange confluence of events could have led Bridget to getting stuck on top cock's blowhole? Wes.

We've all been stuck here before. Friday night. Feed too many drinks. Who hasn't been there. Exactly. But for Bridget, those events happened to be the Iditarod. She was competing in the Iditarod. And she was so close to the end that just another day or two would have seen her cross the finish line in Nome, Alaska for the first time in her professional mushing career.

But any hope that she would make it quickly dissolved when she considered her condition and what those final miles near the edge of the barrens, seawood and her husband Scotty had lived in Nome when they'd first gotten married and so she knew just how dangerous that stretch of land could be not meant for humans as they put it a local meteorologist in Nome was quoted as saying that when the wind kicks up in that stretch it can be like quote dropping yourself into a giant snow globe on steroids you can't tell right from left north from south you can't stop once you do it's over we've had stories of people out in the tundra literally freezing to death 10 feet away from a cabin or a house. That's how bad it can get.

I don't think anything happens to a snow globe if you give it steroids. I was going to ask. I think it just has steroids in it then. You like inject it into the like, I don't know. We'll investigate that later maybe. Conditions got so bad that Bridget and another competitor that she had made friends with along the way knew that they could no longer make any meaningful progress on the trail. So they dug a snow cave as deep as they could and piled all of their dogs in to share

their warmth with each other. Wow. Meanwhile, Bridget's husband, Scotty, was back at home, pacing around nervously. Each time a remote tracker showed her stop moving, he had to fight off a new wave of anxiety. Instinct told him that this time he should hop

on his snowmobile and go and get her, but he knew that if he did that, she'd be disqualified, and he didn't want to be the one to ruin her dream of finishing the race. Turn into a tumbleweed, according to you. That's true. You know, how dangerous that would be? Yeah, it sounds crazy.

It sounds unbelievable. I don't believe it, but I also think it sounds pretty crazy. Tornado could do it. Did you guys know that about Alaska? That in Alaska, they call snowmobile snow machines. Snow machines. And if you call one a snowmobile there, they're like, snow machine. Yeah.

Sorry, Alaskans. I worked there for a long time, and whenever I slipped, someone would correct me. That's one thing they do not let slide. Yeah. I actually had to transpose every instance of snow machine. I just changed a snowmobile. Yeah. Because the rest of the world says it that way.

Snow machines more vague. Snowmobile, you know exactly what it is. Yeah. Right. Finally, though, she hit the SOS button, disqualifying herself from the race. After four hours, with many of the rescuers turning back

because of how bad it was on the trail, Scotty and his cousin pulled up on their snowmobiles where Bridget had been stranded. She was standing by her sled with a broken collarbone and messed up shoulder from getting blown over and barrel rolled by all the wind in the snow. Wow. This cemented it.

That is tumbo-e dish. Yeah. I don't think she weighs 750 pounds. The pictures didn't make me think that she weighed that much. There are people that weighed that much, though. Right. There's a show about them. You're saying we should put them up there and see if they can.

Yeah. They should send those people in. So this cemented it. Bridget was maybe the unluckiest participant in the 50-year history of the Iditarod. Unless you can name another one, Wes. I can't. I knew it. You never, you don't know anything about the Iditarod or its history.

I sure don't. Or participants. So before I make that case, that case that she's the unluckiest, I want to go back real quick to Bridget's childhood. Bridget was born in Arkansas but moved up to Fairbanks, Alaska, when she was just five years old with her parents. She didn't just go by herself. Not long after the move, the family got its first sled dog,

a red Siberian husky that they decided to call Grizz, which I think is kind of a funny name for a dog. It's kind of like you, Wes. You call yourself it is. Yeah. One dog soon turned into Slibert, several, and once they had enough to pull a sled, Bridget was entering in and winning junior sled dog races. Years later, when Bridget moved back to Arkansas for a while after her parents

divorced, she and an old friend from her T-ball days reconnected, and Bridget and Scotty dated for six years before getting married. They were happy, but Bridget always felt the call to return to Alaska, and so when she received a two-year contract offer from a hospital in Nome that included paying off her student loans, they packed up and moved sight unseen to the remote town off the Bering Sea. While up there, Bridget began once again having dreams of returning to her life as a musher and running in the Iditarod. Now, anyone who's even semi-serious about competing in the Iditarod knows how dangerous it can be, and Bridget was keenly aware that the weather was just one of many variables to be concerned about. One story about one of her favorite mushers in particular would probably have been floating somewhere in the back of Bridget's mind.

In 1985, four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher became something of an Alaskan folk legend when an anchor Moose ran into her team, kicking and stomping at her dogs. Susan held off the moose with nothing but an axe in her parka, until another musher was able to come along with a gun who shot and killed the moose. I mean, nothing but an axe? In a parca. That's kind of a lot, still. Well, I mean, it's not like a gun.

It's a moose, though. Fanned off a moose don't have an axe. That's true. But that's, like, I wouldn't feel comfortable if a moose is charging me and all I have is an axe. I'm feeling pretty vulnerable. Okay. But I'm just saying, like, nothing but an axe. You want to critique this Susan Butcher, four-time champion of the Ididadod anymore, Jeff?

I'm good with that. I'm not any more negative Nelly comments? I'm not trying to be naked. It's impressive. I'm just saying an axe is a good weapon. Like, I'd rather have a gun. Yeah, but not versus a moose. It's not.

Anyway, she became to everybody in the world except Jeff. She became an Alaskan folk legend. Did he hit the moose with the axe? That sounds like it. I mean, she had to fight it off somehow until someone came along with a gun and shot it. Okay. But those kinds of encounters were basically unheard of, right? Nothing to worry about, right?

Jeff. Right. My first time hearing about that. Could never happen again. Right? I'll bet anything. It won't happen again. What do you want to bet?

But it doesn't happen. $100,000 billion. Okay. $100,000 middle dollars. Middle bucks. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second

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Bridget was busy making final preparations for the big race. It was five degrees below zero and overcast, perfect mushing weather, and the dog's ready to go out on a training run over a 52-mile-long trail. Which makes me think, I might be a sled dog in another life, since that's my favorite weather, too. Too cold to go outside? Overcast? Although I don't really like running. You'd have to, like, go run with a bunch of other dogs. You'd hate that.

I'd be like half, half husky, half human kind of thing. All was going perfectly to plan, and the team spent a beautiful day out on the snow together. And a lot of mushers, they described that sensation of when you're out in the middle of the wilderness with your dog team. It's, like, very meditative, extremely peaceful. But at about the halfway point, Bridget hit the brakes, and her 10 sled dogs came to a stop. Jen Nelson, her dog handler, was behind on a snowmobile with six more huskies, on a line as a backup squad. And she had, she actually had earphones on blasting Metallica.

So she was kind of like unaware, didn't understand why Bridget was stopping at first. Jen had not yet seen. Probably not meditating as much either. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Not quite as meditated. So Jen, she hadn't yet seen the moose. Bridget later said that initially she wasn't very scared since all of her experience

told her that with a little yelling in commotion, a moose will usually leave peacefully enough. But this one kept popping up on the truce. And when Bridget started to think that it was getting a little too close, she reached into her pocket and grabbed her, I think, how do you say? It's like 380.380.380, caliber? Yeah, caliber pistol. 38. Jeff, you're our gun guy. What do you? Yeah, that's a 38.

How do you think she's feeling facing down a potentially angry moose with a pistol like that? Probably not super confident, but it's better than an axe. It's better than like a 22. That's a pretty good pistol. 38. Okay. I would say, yeah. Did you say only a 38?

I don't know. Well, so. Because that's pretty good. It's better than nothing, again. But you'll understand why. The gun is a lot better. I'll tell you why I say it that way in just a moment. But Jeff, just keep on poking holes in the story, please.

Thankfully, the moose wandered off and out of sight again, and Bridget got off of her sled and walked to the front of the team to make sure that it was totally gone before continuing. but then she spotted it again, this time maybe 150 yards away, and it didn't take long to realize that it was charging right at her sled at full speed. That's fast. Just a quick round of Moose Facts to illustrate just how much trouble Bridget and her dogs possibly were in. So Moose, largest member of the deer family, and adult males can weigh up to 1,500 pounds.

Just for comparison's sake, sled dogs typically weigh around 50 pounds. So one, what is that? That's 30. One millionth of the size, I think. Yeah. I think they're like... 30 sled dogs for them big moose. The first or second heaviest land mammal in the Americas.

Is that true? I think it goes like bison, then moose. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like an adult male polar bear where they can weigh up to 1,500 pounds. Yeah. Yeah, you might be right. I'm not sure.

Well, they're big. Yeah. Bison are definitely number one. Uh, moose hooves are. are five inches in diameter, and they're super sharp and they're super dense. So five inches, Jeff, what you compare that to? What, like the decal in the middle of the bus? Right on from that. Oh, yeah. Good. So moose antlers, they can weigh between 45 and 75 pounds. That's just their antlers, with the average weight of a mature bull moose antler in interior

Alaska being about 50 pounds. For people that don't know what a moose looks like, I think most people do. Like their antlers are palmated, so they have like these big bowls in them. They're much more dense and they have a lot more surface area than like elk or deer. But yeah, their antlers are a lot. Well, the word for moose in Scandinavia is elk. So like there's parts of the world where they call moose. I think in Spanish too, they call them the same thing. Maybe it's like Cervo or something.

Yeah. But when you're talking about the hooves too, we did another episode on Moose and there was a victim in that episode who essentially got cut in half because she got trampled by a moose. I think it was in Scandinavia. They can do some serious damage with their hooves. That's their main weapon. You'd think it would be the antlers,

but it's actually the hoops that you have to be really worried about. And like for anyone who doesn't understand 75 pounds, it's like about one third of what a pretty strong guy can bench. Yeah, that's good frame of reference. Here's one last fact that I don't know if it probably does contribute you to how dangerous they can be, but I just thought it was really interesting. But moose, they can actually move each ear and each eyeball independently.

So they're kind of, you can't really sneak away from them probably very easily because they got their eyes going in all kinds of directions. So back to the story. Bridget threw off her glove, and I'm just imagining, you know how like in movies they like bite their glove and toss it off and like get the gun ready to shoot. She pointed the gun at the moose, waiting for it to get close enough to feel confident that she would hit it. When it was about five yards away, she braced herself and squeezed the trigger.

Wow. She waited so long. She did wait kind of a long time. But I kind of understand. She's waiting for like the whites of their eyes, but moose don't, you can't really see that with a moose. That's probably what she's thinking. But I can kind of understand because I'm not a good shot at all. So like when you have a limited amount of bullets, you want to make sure that they count, you know.

But all three shots that she pulled the trigger for, they hit her target. but the moose barely registered them and continued running directly toward her. Oh, geez. She pulled the trigger again only to realize that her gun was jammed, and as she was fumbling around to fix it, she thought to herself that there was no way

that she was going to survive this. But when she looked back up, she saw that the moose had gotten tangled up in the leashes holding the dog team together, which not ideal, obviously, but it gave her a moment to make her next move. She sprinted over to Jen Snowmobile, and she sliced her,

she actually sliced her thumb on the slide of the pistol when she was trying to fix the jam. And as she's bleeding, she fires three more rounds at the moose, which turns its attention toward her again in charges, skidding to a stop right in front of her snowmobile. But now she's out of bullets,

and she's panicking because that was her last line of defense. She has nothing else. She doesn't have an axe? No ax. No parca. She's probably got a parca. I don't know why she didn't take that off and start doing like the, I don't know,

what do you call them, the bullfighter move with the parka? Matt Addo. Off a cliff. Yeah. So now she's facing an angry moose with nothing to protect yourself or her dogs with. And I just put myself in that position and can't imagine how scared and how helpless you are. Because like even the most kind of like impulsive instinct to run out and save your dogs or to fight.

Like what are you going to do? Just run at a moose and like punch it. I can't do anything. Like I've been in that situation a couple times, not that exact one because I wouldn't shoot. it a few times first and piss it off. But like with an angry moose where I had nothing to defend myself and you feel completely

helpless. Like you know that if it wants to kill you, it'll kill you. Yeah. Well and I mean, we all heard Wes's last episode. Like people just love their dogs. Our listener love their dogs. But I feel like it's even like next level

with these snows. Oh yeah. Or the like mushers. Yeah. It's like legitimately like this is like her family members this moose is tangled up with right now you know i did feel that way about my dog though too of course yeah i mean we're all dogs i'm just saying if anyone loves their dogs i would it's true i would choose these people first you know these musher's they're depending on these dogs in a lot of ways like not just professionally or socially it's a different kind of relationship it is it's a different bond like yeah not saying anyone's feelings are invalidated or

lesser. Yeah, I didn't need to say it. No, no, no, no. I just, I just think of Jesse and I don't know anyone that has a stronger bond with the dog than Jesse. Sure. Anyway, continue. Yeah, sorry. So the moose once again turned its attention. This lady might, though. You know who's got a strong bond with some dogs? Joey Chestnut. That guy bonds with those dogs. He got that dog in them. All right. So once again, the moose turns its attention towards the dogs, which, you know, Bridget's probably, like, very conflicted about because she's not being attacked, but these dogs who are probably in her mind just as important, if not more important than her own life, are all of a sudden just getting stomped on. And for the next hour, she just had to sit there helplessly and watch as this dog team, any of the dogs that so much has made a sound or a move,

the moose would turn its attention and start stomping. Is there a video for an hour? No, for the, yeah, for an hour. Yeah, and it wasn't like a constant, but like every once in a while a dog would like try to make a move. And they were still kind of riled up at first and ready to fight. But pretty soon the moose just kind of had complete... Was the moose... Like, couldn't get out of how tangled up it was or something?

No. So people are kind of speculating that this moose was so angry and so, like, riled up because it was maybe thinking that this team of dogs were wolves, and that's a predator of moose. So I was thinking, like, it'd have to neutralize the threat before getting out of there kind of thing. Fight to the death type of thing. They just get locked in, too. And they don't necessarily retreat when they get that way.

And if the dogs aren't retreating, then it kind of just turns into these stalemates. If this one wasn't recorded, there are videos of these kind of interactions online. Like I've seen a few different times where people, their dogs get stomped by moose, sled dogs. And it is always pretty terrible. It's horrific. It's the worst. I didn't see any footage of this one. I don't think they had any cameras rolling.

But so again, Jen and Bridget are just sitting. there with nothing to protect themselves or their dogs with. So they start just calling up everyone they can. They just barely have enough connection to send texts and a couple of calls here and there. And they're like, anybody that can come help us, please bring a gun. A moose is killing us, basically. Jen ended up being able to call a guy named Chris Jones, who was a retired pipeline worker who lived in a cabin about 10 miles away from where the moose had attacked them. And the first time his phone rings, he actually doesn't answer. But when the phone immediately rings again, he felt that something was wrong and that he needed to pick up. Through all the barking and the

screaming, all he could hear were three words. Dogs, gun, moose. So once he was clear on where he should go and what he should do, he grabbed some supplies, hopped on his snowmobile and took off as fast as he could, still about 30 minutes away from the scene. In the meantime, the moose diverted its attention, thankfully away from both Bridget and the dogs just momentarily and instead decided to go after Bridget's sled. She later found a pair of her cross-country ski poles that had been smashed into

more than 30 pieces, she said. Those are expensive. They're expensive. And I like you kind of have to be like accurate to break those things into 30 distinct pieces, you know? So this moose was like really like finally. He's really liked how it felt

when it crunched those. He's like breaking his spaghetti noodle before it's Oh, yeah, that's nice. It's probably like that. I'd struggle to think of anything I've broke into 30 pieces, maybe like one of those like Valley, nature valley granola bars. So she didn't do a great job with these six bullets she had in a 38. That's a big animal.

I would want a bigger caliber. I mean, all six of them hit the moose. Yeah. Did they? Yeah, all six of them struck true. Yeah. Moose just like didn't care. She, like, that's the thing.

You need more than that size gun, more than an ass. probably even. A bazook. It seemed like the axe worked. Well, I didn't cover that detail of that story, but two of the dogs on Susan's team actually did die from that 1985 attack. Okay. Okay.

So Chris finally he arrives. He sees a pile of dogs tangled up in a knot getting stomped on by the moose again. So he steps off his snowmobile and raises his gun. He's about 75 yards away on the phone with state troopers who gave him permission to shoot the moose, which apparently. that's a thing that you need to do. It makes me wonder how long he would have waited had he not gotten confirmation. Yeah, I think you can shoot and then like kind of ask questions later, you know,

in that sort of circumstance. But yeah. So Chris stands motionless for a moment and Bridget and Jen were probably like, why isn't he shooting? What's going on? He actually calls up Bridget and he's like, you're in my line of sight, get out of the way. I don't have like a clear shot at him.

So they take off, they leap over a mound of snow, cover their heads. One shot, and Watkins Bridget's phone rings again. It's down, Jones tells her. Miraculously, only four of her dogs were seriously injured during the attack. Flash Bill, Bronze, and Hefe. Oh, that's my Instagram name. That's you, dude. It could have been you.

It could easily have been you. I thought Hefe meant Jeff in Spanish when I chose that in Spanish. And then I found out it means the boss. Good. So when they got home from the emergency vet, they slept all the four dogs that were seriously hurt. They slept in kennels in the living room, and Bridget spent every moment that she could with them while they recovered. Flash in particular was in a bad way, but day by day, his strength returned to him until he was fully alert, eating and gingerly walking around on his own power. Can I push back on something just a tiny bit?

Go for it. I don't think this could have been Jeff. No, you don't. I think easily it could have been him on that dog team. I don't think so I don't think Jeff could be a dog I don't got that dog in me No you don't get down on all fours and run around

Could have been Joey Crawl around Make it some You could have been Joey in another life I'll meet you in the middle there Wes Yeah sure I'll accept that Okay so Bridget was filled with Just an immense sense of gratitude

That none of the dogs had died But one thing that she did have to deal with now Following that incident Was whether she was going to participate in the I didder rod or not. And that was like just weeks away at this point. She was having nightmares of the moose bursting through her wall and the stress was causing her chest pains to the point

where even just the thought of racing again made her nauseous. But deep down she knew that she owed it to herself and to her dogs to compete in the I diderod. And so she did. Now we're going back in time. I did a little Tarantino thing. We're going back forward in time. Right, back to the future.

Yeah. Right. Back to Topcock blowhole. Right. Back to the top cock. Okay, so March 18th. When Scotty finally got to Bridget, she was delirious and badly injured, but all she could talk about was saving the dogs. Again, thankfully none of them were seriously hurt,

and a bunch of volunteers and vets helped to wrangle them up and get everyone to safety. When she got home, Bridget spent the next three days sleeping, and at first she thought it was just because she was so exhausted from sledding through that blizzard, but the following Friday, she actually tested positive for COVID. But despite, everything that she had been through, she remains committed to one day finishing this race. Quote, I mean, I don't have these dogs just to look at. This wasn't a one and done.

This is our lifestyle. This is what we do. They're part of our family. Do you think her dogs are kind of like, eh, maybe we shouldn't fully commit to this? Yeah. Do you think she's having nightmares of a blizzard coming through her door now? Busted through her wall. Yeah.

Double the blizzard with a moose. Getting blown like a tumbleed. Well, better luck next time, Bridget. Like, it sounds like you're committed, you're driven, and these dogs, I know some people push back on kind of like the animal abuse side of this activity, but these dogs genuinely seem to just love running and that's what they want to do more than anything. So I hope you can get it together and make another stab at it. Yeah, I think we've been poking some fun, but this is an insanely tough, hard thing for any person to do. I wouldn't last long at all trying to do that sort of thing. So that's really, it's very interesting.

How many days is it? Did you break down the Iditarod at all? So it's a long, it's like over 900 miles. That initial CERM run was actually supposed to like on under normal circumstances take 20 days. They did it in five, but they only really went like a part of that distance. So the And it takes even longer. Exactly. Yeah.

So a month. I don't know. I should have known that with all the research I'd done, but it's a long time. Long time. Long time. Hard. Hardness. Difficulties. Long, hard, time. Low hole. Yeah. When you buy LG, you get so much more than just an appliance. You get more done, more cost savings, more peace of mind, and more control.

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See the latest models and savings now, at LG.com. Okay, categories. Wes, Jeff. Yeah. Categories. Let's go. Let's do it.

All right. So the first one is, what celebrity do you think would get a tattoo of a moose? Bonus points if you can tell me where they would get it. I thought about this quite a bit. Because for me, maybe it's because of Teddy, like Teddy Roosevelt and the fact that he like famously wrote a moose. To me, it kind of seems like a tattoo that more. kind of right-leaning celebrity might get.

Oh, because like hunting and... Yeah, like hunting and it's like a Rocky Mountain thing. And I'm not... If there's someone out there that doesn't feel that way and they have a moose tattoo, great. I'm sure there's some really great... Either way. You know, whatever.

But I'm going to say Dennis Quaid. He's right-leaning. Sure. He's kind of... I just don't see him getting tattoos in general. I know, but I'm just saying that's who, if like someone were we get a moose tattoo, I'm going to say Dennis Quaid.

Dennis Quaid. No, I like that answer. Jeff's answer is going to be better, though. No, I'm, I was just, I was just saying what people might be thinking, but I like the answer. I think it's well thought out and a good answer. It's fine. I don't need his approval.

I don't think mine's better. Mine's Pete Davidson, because I just feel like he's got a lot of random tattoos, and he's got like some sharks and stuff, and I could just see him getting a moose in there somewhere. For sure. Or like Steve Lowe, too. I went with Ron Puritan. I don't know why.

It's just kind of like when I see him, I think about most for some reason. That's honestly so weird that you said that because that actually passed through my head. Really? Yeah. We're on to something. I'm going to say the UFC fighter Alex Pereira. He has some really cool dragon tattoos. He actually has some of my favorite tattoos.

But he was just training in Utah and he found a moose like up in the mountains. and he got like way too close to it and then just like flexed his biceps and said chama which is what he always says because he's Portuguese and doesn't speak much English so he just says chama but he got super close to a moose and it went viral so now I could see him getting a moose that'd be cool uh favorite pop culture instance of someone getting hurt

but still competing you have a good good answer for that one i was trying to think i don't think joey chestnuts ever competed while like hurt. I think he has. Wasn't he sick or something once? Yeah. Oh, that's true. Bigger than Jordan being sick.

Yeah, the flu game. I'm going with a knight's tail at the end when... Oh, that's a good one. The bad guy cheats and puts like a little like shank at the end of his jousting lance. And William has to like strap it to his arm because he can't hold it anymore but still wins.

Dude, that movie is so good. I'm gonna say it. It's my favorite Heath Ledger performance. Oh, wow. Impressive. I love that movie so much. We're very much on the same wavelength today, Mike, because my pick was the last duel. Oh, yeah.

Jousting. Which I just recently watched it. I think I just brought it up again recently too, but like I don't think I've ever been more dialed in. Spoilers for the last duel here. I've never been more dialed into a final fight than I was in that movie. Like I never wanted someone to win so badly, even though I kind of hated both people fighting. sure and Matt Damon again huge spoiler here Matt Damon gets injured but still continues competing

and I love that movie just absolutely love it everyone just seems like they're having the best time acting that movie yeah mine's pretty similar as well I went with Gladiator in the final fight where he gets like stabbed in the chest with the knife and he's all injured and comatist has just some unreal that he can beat him even though he's like killed the best gladiators in the world yeah and he just smokes him but i want i want to shout out a few yes donvin mcnab played the super bowl on a broken leg and he was my favorite quarterback as a kid i forgot about that yeah that like olympic didn't miss

that did carry strug yeah carrie cobi when he shot his free throws on a torn achilles the movie warrior when he like pops his shoulder out of place that's that's And like, or like, yeah, it has like a dislocated arm in the next round. The Terminator, the first one, when the robot loses all of its skin, then it gets blown up. And then it's just crawling with its arm and only its head. Yeah. And then my last one's Monty Python on the Holy Grail, that tis but a scratch. Yeah, the Knights who say, or is that the Knights who say?

No, that, which night is that? It's the, um, the Black, Black Knight. Yeah. Yeah. No more limbs. I'm surprised you didn't have karate kids somewhere on that because that was my that was the first one I thought of it was like so obvious that I

Yeah it seemed too obvious Something else Okay next category I think he's just being soft You know he could have stood on his leg Daniel son was kind of a He got like kicked once in the leg Yeah

Or like punched in the leg And then he couldn't stand up or something Okay What would Wes and Jeff do in a moose attack scenario with a parka or just whatever however you want to answer this question

yeah yeah i mean are you giving a shot the shots earlier before they like got before it got to my dogs seems like that wouldn't have really worked though so then i would have just like i think i would have gone full speed like just collide

like chicken when like you know like fast furious seven when and Jason Statham just like hit cars, something like that. Yeah, I, you know, if I'm in this situation, I think I have ran through a million times in my head what to do with Moose because I have, like, I've been charged a few times by them,

and they are really scary. And if you're on your own, you can get behind a tree, you can climb a tree. There's a lot of different things you can do to get away from a big ungulate. You can run. But with dogs, it's pretty hard. Like, this is a tricky one because you don't want to, abandon your dogs to this moose. So I think along the same lines of what Jeff kind of said,

shooting earlier, I think I would do that, but I wouldn't shoot at the moose. I would shoot up in the air a couple shots as the moose was coming to try and discourage it. Because I think if you're hitting it right off the bat, then it's engaging. It's like, okay, this thing is attacking me.

I'm an attack back. Sure. But maybe if you fire a couple shots in the air, that's enough just to discourage it. But not necessarily. I mean, this is a tricky one. So, but that's my answer. I think once the gun got jammed to and she got it unjammed and the moose was already entangled with the dogs.

Yeah. I might have walked like closer to it and tried to shoot it like straight in the head. Well, when we mentioned this isn't an isolated incident. This happens to dog mushers and there's not really a great way to prepare your dogs for this. There's not really like a training scenario to go through. And so it could happen. Like this is a real threat if you're mushing in a place that has moose. Yeah.

Well, next category. Yeah. Favorite pop culture race? This was a hard one for me. I don't really see color. So like people have to tell me when they're a different race sometimes. Sure. I just,

colorblind. I just don't know. So it's hard for me to pick my favorite race in pop culture. You're not going to pick like the blue avatar people, the navvies. So I'm obviously. talking about like a race to a finish line kind of scenario here. Maybe not obviously. I should have cleared that up.

Wes, you go first. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to pick one that might not be that fun of an answer, but it's true for me. I'm going to pick the Amazing Race, the show on CBS. I just think it's a show that's been on for a really long time and I don't get tired of it. I get excited when there's new seasons. It's probably the reality show I'd want to compete on the most, just because it's

seems really fun. And I just think it's, it's just a really fun, interesting show. So I'm going to say The Amazing Race. There you go. I'm going to go with The Great Race. It's an old movie, classic. Jack Lemon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, top of their game. It's just a really, really fun kind of cross-country hijinks ensue kind of race situation.

Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, too. That's... Aren't they racing? It's kind of a race, yeah. But I don't know. I'd kind of call that more of a cape. than a race. But you're right.

And that is one of my favorite movies. But the great race is just, it is a race is the central plot device. I mean, I love the, I love the tortoise and the hair. I feel like people use it the wrong way, though. They, like, act like the turtle. Like, if you're the turtle, you'll win the race. Like, just be slow and steady. It's like, no, like, turtles never winning that race again.

Like, if they have a rematch, like, the rabbits, not taking a, nap, you know? That's a good point. Like, that's the only time the turtle's ever going to win that race, but I love a good underdog story. So the real moral of the story is just to be faster, just be better and don't rest on your levels. Don't slack off.

Yeah. High effort race. I thought it was kind of a cool move to take a nap in the middle of the race here so much. Big flags. I like a little show off in my athletic performances. But shout out to cool running. too got me just like into bobsled racing as a kid i was like this is cool yeah got me into regate for a little bit too wow power of film yeah um last category the worst snowstorm you've ever been in

uh once when i was doing polar bear work so i i was studying denning female polar bears and so this is the only time a polar bear dens is when it's born or if it's a pregnant female so if you're born a polar bear, you never go into a den after you come out of your maternal den. So I was looking at denning females and they den in the winter. So I would be in the Arctic during a really inclement time of the year, which would be like late winter or February. And one year I was there and I would stay on these oil camps that are essentially just big like train cars almost that are welded together.

And we had the craziest storm that I've ever personally been a part of. it was like gusts up to 100 something and really sustained winds of like 90 to 100 just wild like a hurricane tumbleweeds blowing snow and it was like negative 50 and a bunch of people actually died in some neighboring villages not a bunch but a handful of people it did some actual like real damage and I remember when it started and it wasn't that crazy yet I tied a rope to myself and I tied it to the banister and walked out into it, kind of like they doing the thing. And just instantly got covered in snow. And then the snow that touched my skin melted and then instantly froze again.

No way. So when I came back, I had a sheet of ice covering me because that snow that melted instantly froze. And it was like I could see how you would only last a tiny bit of time and something like that. Wow. Kind of ice power vibes. Yeah, kind of.

Set the opposite maybe. day after tomorrow. Dennis Quaid, moose tattoo, full circle. Full of moose tattoos. So like, we're doing a lot of callbacks

to the episode within the episode. Yeah. Tumbleweeds. The worst like snowstorms are always like high wind because like that's the difference of a blizzard and a snowstorm is like you're getting snow blowing

from off the ground and coming down from the air stella. So once just on a drive from when I went to school at Utah State, I was like driving to Provo, Utah, and in Sardine Canyon by Logan. All I could see was like the white line on the side of the road. Like there's so much snow, you know. So I was just kind of following that. But I was the only car. Well, no, there's one car like a little ways behind me.

And then I got to this area where it opened up. And it just was like literally like a snowplow was just dumping snow on my car. And like I couldn't see anything. Like, I could not see a single thing. But I couldn't stop because there was one car behind me. So, like, I felt like if I stopped, like, the car might hit me. Yeah. So I just, like, had to guess for, like, a little ways of, like, where I could remember how the road went.

And I got past the opening and then I could, like, see my line again. But it was crazy. That's so scary. That happened to me last year in Utah, too. It's terrifying. quick. I should correct myself really fast. Go for it. It definitely wasn't sustained winds 100. It was Gus up to 100 in mine. The sustained wins were less than that. I just, I had to fact check myself there. No, that's good. We don't have to issue a correction corner. Yeah. So I was living in a town

called Vitrol in southern France, and this is in 2008. And this town, like, just rarely ever saw snow. And rarely as hard as it did snow, just like never saw snow like that. So it wasn't, the worst snow storm I've ever been in, but like the effect of it, the town just wasn't prepared. So like all the power went out for days and the roads were just inaccessible. Nobody had any clue how to deal with it really.

So it was just kind of like, it was almost kind of like a quarantine with no idea about like end in sight or what to do about it, you know? Yeah. And we were kind of stuck up on this weird little hill without a good way to get down. So like we just stayed in our little apartment

for a few days. We weren't getting super nervous by the end, but like after a few days, we're just kind of like, what's happening here? Yeah, is the world over? Like, what's happening? But yeah, it was really, really crazy and just kind of goes to show how like,

you know, you see footage in South Carolina when it snows, like a millionth of an inch and all of a sudden cars are like hitting each other and like falling off into ruins. Schools canceled for the year. Yeah. Yeah. So that's it.

Now is the worst than I've ever been. Cool. All right. That's all I've got for you guys. I'm done talking. Good episode, Mike. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Maybe you can do it again sometime on the main here.

Oh, I hope not. In a couple more years. I want to shout out something to you. You mentioned Nome, Alaska and like a few of your stories. Yeah. Payne Lindsay who was like on our dingo attacks. His newest project is a Nome. So I just want to shout about that.

Oh, cool. That's where the Iditarod ends every year. So that's kind of why it was a major point of interest. At least you know one thing about the Iditarod after this entire episode. Can I do a quick wildlife experience? Because I had a good one last week. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

So I did a Pontanol tour through naturalist journeys. And these tours are great, but they're focused around mostly birding and they're more or less. They're adventurous, but it's not like we're like, hiking through the jungle or something. It's typically a little bit older clientele, and they're mostly birders, so things are fairly structured. But we were out in front of the pontonol is super dry this year, and we managed to find one big area that had some water, and we're looking at it, and the other guide said, I think

I've seen anaconda out there. And sure enough, I looked through my binoculars, and it was a big anaconda with a big female with two males behind her. And so we walked over to get a closer look, and these are yellow. Anaconda, so not quite as big as the green ones. But we're sitting there looking at her, and she just slithered out and slithered right by my feet. And it was like, you know, I could have reached down and touched her, no problem. Yeah.

And it was just cool. It was neat. For me, it's always really fun when you get to have an experience like that with an animal where you don't feel threatened. And you also didn't approach that animal. It came by you. They don't, like, anacons don't attack people unless you were to mess with it. so I didn't feel like I was being unsafe. I've seen a documentary.

Unless you're Ice Cube or, yeah, or John Voight. That's the only guy I didn't mess. That's true. Good point. Unless you're Owen Wilson. But it was cool. It was neat that I didn't have to mess with that snake at all. I didn't have to do anything to it.

I still got a really up-close look at it. And it was shedding and just beautiful. And it was a really cool experience. Where does that rank for wild snakes you've seen? it's up there. Yeah, it's definitely up there. I don't know what rank it would be exactly, but it's probably top 10.

Yeah, it'd be top 10. Oh, wow. Cool. Probably top 5. The Cobra's? Yeah, probably the Cobra's in India. And then probably rattlesnakes after that. I just love it.

Every time I see a rattlesnake, I get so excited. Anyway, thanks for letting me share that, Mike. Thanks for doing the episode. It was fun. I'm going to go take a nap. Me too. All right. We'll see you guys next time.

All right. Love you guys.