Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Moose Attack - The Moose, a Dog, Some Gloves, and a Bra

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

Wes takes us to Alaska to tell of a malcontent moose messing up a morning mosey. All we can say is, thank goodness for bras.  ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds                          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. Today we're talking about one of the more heavily requested animals from you listeners, the moose. This encounter occurred up in Alaska and involves a couple of women out on a walk with a dog. There's some foreshadowing for you. The story's coming in just a second, but again, we want to give a huge thank you to everyone who's subscribed to our Patreon. We'll shout you all out by name at the end of the episode.

Just to get it out there again, joining our Patreon means that depending on the tier you sign up for, you'll get early access to our episodes, get access to our special Patreon-only mini episodes that we put out on the off week when our regular episodes don't get posted, which the plan for now is every other week, and you'll get some cool merchandise that we've had some professional help designing. So yeah, every cent that you send our way goes back into making the podcast better and better. And so many of you have already decided to support us that we can see some really cool stuff happening for the show in the near future. You can find where to join the Patreon at www. forward slash tooth and claw podcast.

And if you can't join now, don't worry, since our main episodes are still going to be released everywhere for free. Thank you again. All right. Let's get to Wes talking about a moose attack. All right. Tooth and claw, we're back. We're here again.

We're just doing this again, you know? How are you guys doing? I'm doing all right. Yeah, I'm happy. I'm a little tired. I had a flat tire today. And I found out. How long did it take you?

I took it. It took a long time. I found out like with my car my jack doesn't go high enough to replace a tire. Yeah. So I just had to figure a bunch of things out. And it was like a super nice day today. When I was changing my tire, it was a full blizzard until I got the tire on and then it was nice.

Just one of those days. Yeah. You know? A lot of people sent us a story that I had seen that was about a woman who went into an outhouse in Alaska. And she like, right as she sat down on the outhouse, a bear, I'm pretty sure it was a black bear, bit her on her butt. And she, like, had to run out of the outhouse. So it was down in the pit.

In the, okay. Yeah, which isn't, like, totally unheard of for bears. My advisor, Tom, Tom Smith had told me some stories from Alaska where he knew of bears getting into pit toilets. And then I know in Glacier National Park in the backcountry pit toilets, sometimes they get in there too. I don't know if it's like just a scent thing or they're actually like eating some turds in there. but they sometimes just like to get in there. You think maybe it scrawled on the wall like a time to meet up like truckers do at gas stations? Metallica.

Would you guys rather? I went on a date with a girl and she was telling me that I forget where she is even from, but she was saying that there was like a problem with people going in outhouses to take pictures of people when they were going to go. Yeah. Oh, go down in the hole? Yeah, I don't even know if I believe it. You gotta be pretty desperate. That's like pretty, yeah.

Well, also, like, it would just be like a butt. It'd be the worst big, a dark butt. Context or anything. Well, I don't think this bear was in there to take photos. My question for you guys is, would you rather, would you rather sit on a toilet and get bit by a big old spider or by a bear? Oh, spider, what? No.

Are you kidding me? I'd rather get ridden. Spiders mouths are like a hundred million times. smaller. I think I'd rather... I think I'd rather be hit by the bear. Why? It's a better story and it's just more interesting.

And then also, the reason I say that is when as a kid I watched arachnophobia, like, way too young. Okay. And there's a scene where the spider, like, kind of crawls under the toilet seat. And it, like, really freaked me out. And I, like, hovered over the toilet seat for years after that. And I've just always had a fear of, like, getting bit by a spider on a toilet seat. Okay, better question.

Let's throw it up on the pole. Python. Python biting your weener Or a bear biting your butt Bear Okay bear I do bear I think so Okay you guys are right

Despite your question I'm probably the only person No we should make it a poll though on Instagram All right We'll see how the Vox pop you're coming from With the story aspect of it Yeah But like you just don't want to ever get bit by a bear

Without clothing to I kind of though Like getting bit on the butt really quick And then running out It'd be a good spot to get bit Yeah. If you're going to get bit, why not the butt? You're going to have a cool scar you can show people. You're going to show people your scar on your butt. Yeah. If you had a bear scar on your butt, you wouldn't be showing your butt all the time.

Probably, I would. Yeah. All right. So that's our story. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in today, guys. We'll talk to you later. No, okay, so we are going to talk about moose. This is an animal that I think the three of us have had some experience with. I know me and Jeff have. Mike, have you seen many moose? I've seen exactly one. Okay. I've seen how hundreds of moose, and I think Jeff has two. They are a pretty unpredictable animal. They're an animal that a lot of people recommended for the podcast. They're one that we kind of always had the idea of doing because they do really cause a lot of trouble. Something, yeah, they're troublemakers. Something to talk about, though, and this is something I've been wanting to bring up, the animal

attacks, and again, on this podcast, we're talking about attacks, but it's almost always the person doing something wrong and the animal reacting to the person. We're not trying to villainize any of these animals or demonize them or anything. We're just trying to help you guys know how to recreate safely. But animal attacks can fall into a few different categories. And I think those categories are you have like a defensive attack where, for example, like the grizzly bear episode from a few weeks ago where they just bumped into a grizzly with cubs and she decided to neutralize a threat and defend her cubs.

you have an aggressive attack where an animal is like pissed off at you and it's trying to again neutralize a threat but it's like mad at you it's not necessarily like defending itself and then you have a predatory attack where it's trying to feed on you so the attack in quotation marks that we're going to talk about today is more of a defensive moose attack but with moose you really can get either aggressive or defensive attacks and if you're dealing with a bull moose that attacks you it's a good chance it's an aggressive attack and it's going to be during the rut in the fall when they're really super juiced up. Right, they want to have sex.

That's what I've heard is sex time is when they want to kill people. Yeah, their hormones are like full on. Think of like a dude that's just jacked up on testosterone. That's what a bull moose in the rut is like. And then the other most common is a female moose when she has a really young calf and she's defending it. So I've been charged like full on charged twice by moose. and that both times it was females with calves. And then once, and Jeff has had this happen to him too,

I was pinched between two groups of people and a moose didn't know what to do and ran right by me and almost trampled me. And that was more of just like a moose trying to get out of the way. Okay, because of the first time I was charged by a moose, I've always been pretty terrified at them. And I always told people like I would rather run into an angry grizzly

than an angry moose. I backtracked on that. I don't feel that way anymore. What would you rather have, bite you on the butt in a porta potty, though. A moose or a grizzly bear. Probably a grizzly just so I can show up the scar. But they are a real threat, and you do have to be careful of moose

when you're in any place where moose live. Yeah, they're just so big. I mean, I know that bigger animals just get more confidence about a threat, you know? Yeah, they just, I mean, they don't really have many things that kill them, and they know that we're smaller than them, and they're just mean as hell. Okay, so one place where, you're just mean as hell. you can really see a lot of moose is Alaska. And Anchorage, even, the main, you know, the main city in Alaska, it's not the capital, but it's the biggest city there. Even just in downtown

Anchorage, you can see moose. The first time I ever went to Anchorage, I'd just gone off the plane, and I was with this other guy, and we were heading up to do polar bear work in the northernmost part of Alaska. And as we were driving out of the airport, he was like, I hope we see a moose, and I turned and looked. And I was like, there's one. And like, literally within two minutes of getting out of the airport, we saw a moose on the side of the road. So there's a lot of moose in Anchorage. Alaskans are fairly used to them. They see them a lot. We're going to talk about two women who went on a hike in Kincaid Park. So Kincaid Park is a 1,500-acre park. It's a really big park, and it's located right near the Anchorage Airport. So if you've ever flown into Anchorage,

the airport's like kind of out on this little, almost like a peninsula, and the rest of that peninsula is this park. So it's pretty wild. There's lots of trails. There's lots of outdoor activities. And it's also a place where people go to like, you just sit in the grass and these huge cargo planes fly over you and they're like super loud. It's just like a dumb Alaskan thing to do. But it's really fun actually. The Wayans World thing. Yeah. I've gone there and like sat there and let the planes fly over and it's fun. So in late May 2016, Catherine Dwindle and Melanie Sandstrom, We're walking late Friday afternoon in this Kincaid park. It's technically airport land where they were walking,

but they're just west of a runway, but they were still right next to the park. Catherine was throwing a frisbee for her dog, Molnie, who was a blue healer, and she's wearing some biking gloves because Molnie would like slob her hand, so she wore these gloves, I guess. And that kind of comes into play later. That's why I'm bringing it up. So right around 1 p.m. on that Friday,

They're walking on this trail and a huge FedEx jet flies over them. And as Melanie raises her hands to cover her ears to drown out some of the noise of this big jet, she makes eye contact with a moose that's like 10 feet away in some alders. And she raises her hand and she sees this moose. And again, they're pretty used to seeing moose. Both of them had seen probably hundreds, if not thousands of moose in their lifetime. But this one looked really agitated and she immediately knew that something was off about this moose. Okay, so a little bit more about moose. So moose are the largest deer species in the world.

Bull moose have antlers. They're not horns. Can either of you guys tell me the difference between antlers and horns? No. Horns, they don't shed. Right. Antlers shed like every, is it every year? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So antlers shed every year. Antlers are bone. They're like, they grow out of their skull. They're bone, but they shed them every year. There's certain things that can happen that stop them from shedding and sometimes immature bulls don't shed them but a mature bull moose is going to shed its antlers every year horns have like a bone inner part but then there's like almost like a fingernail substance that grows around them and that's like a sheep do they have horns or antlers so they keep their horns yeah that's why it's big horn and that's why they get so big and curly as they just keep

done yep big horn good job uh so bull moose have antlers uh they can grow to be six feet across their antlers so they can be really huge. Oh, that's like a tiny bit bigger than me. Yeah, that's like if you were to lay out flat, that's how big their antlers can get across. They shed them in the winter, they regrow them in the spring. A really crazy thing is it only takes them three to five months to grow their antlers. So that's like one of the fastest growing organs in parentheses of any mammal. One interesting thing I learned is if a bull moose is castrated, like either accidentally

or if someone like chemically castrates a moose for whatever reason. They'll shed the set of antlers that they have. They'll grow a new set that's like misshapen and weird. And then they wear that set the rest of their lives. They never shed again. Whoa. And I guess those kind of weird-looking antlers have been called like devil's antlers. And there's like the source of a bunch of myths and different Native American cultures and Inuit cultures.

So if you cut off a moose's balls, that's what's going to happen. So don't do it. It's pretty mean. Yeah. Okay. No, that's another reason to put on the list of not to do that. male moose average around 1,100 pounds. Females are about 700.

There's quite a bit of range in there, though. The largest confirmed, yeah. The largest confirmed moose that has been killed is 1,800 pounds. What? And it was almost 8 feet at its shoulder. Oh my gosh. So, like, their head is higher than that, and the shoulder is 8 feet. It's a big animal.

They're, like, bigger than most bears. Yeah, I mean, a polar bear can get that big, but they're bigger than most bears, yeah. Wow. They have this, like, thing that hangs under their chin. It's called a dula. lap they're not really sure what that's for some of them think it's for like males to show off to females some of them think it's a scent thing biologists don't really seem to be positive what it's for same in turkeys right i don't with turkeys i think it's called something else but um a dongle

yeah maybe a dongle they eat lots of forbs and plants and stuff they're browsers not grazers grazers are eating grass browsers are eating like branches and leaves and stuff and then you see them around water a lot because they have to eat plants in water to get the sodium necessary for their bodies. And I guess like aquatic plants have a lot of sodium in it. So they're constantly in water eating all those sodium rich plants to balance out the other plants that don't have any sodium in them. So that's why you constantly see moose in like lakes and ponds and around water. It makes them very photogenic because they're always in like really pretty lakes and rivers. Yeah. And there's definitely like when we're.

we're driving, you'll look, you'll see like willows and water and it's like, oh, that's good moose country. Yeah. And then you see moose in there. If you know what kind of areas they hang out in, it makes it a lot easier to see. They can eat up to 70 pounds of food per day. This is a really cool fact. How much can that one Japanese guy eat? It's like 10 pounds of pasta or something?

The kebayashi eats the hot dogs? Yeah, the hot dog guy. I don't know. I haven't thought about Kobayashi. I think you need like 10 pounds of pasta. All right. Okay. Okay.

One really cool fact I learned is that they're the only deer species that can feed totally underwater. So like moose will actually dive. The moose have been clocked at diving 18 feet underwater to get plants to eat. And they eat while they're diving. And they can close their nostrils off and go down and eat underwater. Oh, that's cool. And be down for like 30 seconds. That's pretty cool.

You know, we'll get into some other things. But something that's important to learn is they're near-sighted. So they're not really good at seeing things far away. some biologists think that's why they're so cranky is they kind of just have to treat everything like a threat because they have a hard time knowing what's what. And moose attacks, as we mentioned, are more common in late spring when cows have calves

and in the fall when the males are all juiced up on hormones. If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night night. after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store

or go to sleep number.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Okay, so these women were walking in the spring. It was during a time when calves have just been born and they'd probably just surprised a female that had a calf. We don't know if she had a calf. They don't ever see it during this interaction, but it's very likely that she did based on the way she act. So Melanie, who's a school teacher in Anchorage, suddenly just has her vision completely obscured by this Moose's body. It just completely checks itself into her. She thought that she got hit by a truck, which is a common theme. I feel like we've had a few stories now where everyone's like, I felt like I got hit by a truck. I feel like these people haven't ever gotten hit by a truck, because the difference would probably be

pretty stark. You don't think if they got hit by a truck, she'd be like, I felt like I got hit by a moose. Right. I don't think you would equate that to. I actually thought about this a bit while I was doing this research. We're around cars and trucks all the time. Yeah. So I think when something just hits a person unexpectedly, that's just where your brain goes.

Yeah, maybe that. And it's not conditioning to you. When suddenly you're just like bowled over completely by something. It's like, oh, shit, I just got hit by a truck. Anyway, Catherine, the other woman there, she has. hadn't even seen the moose yet and she got hit from behind and just completely knocked over and she was a pilot and she thought that one of these planes that had just flown over them had dropped its landing gear and she'd been hit by landing gear so both of them have no idea what the hell's

going on but within seconds they realize like oh we got hit by a moose and we're being trampled by a moose and it starts to kick and stomp on them so when a female moose attacks someone and they're trying to like defend their calf what they often do is when the person goes down, they just start stomping on them. Like, you'll see these videos and they do like a little dance on the person. And they're just stomping and stomping and stomping. And again, this is an animal that weighs. You know, they can be up to like over a thousand pounds, the females.

And that's a lot of weight. Just doing the river dance on someone's head. How big are their hooves are probably like, basketball sized. They're big. I mean, they're not basketball sized. Bowling ball? What kind of ball are we talking? I would say like golf ball.

Is it similar to a horse? They're bigger than a horse hoof. Really? Yeah. Okay. So this is like, I'm holding my hands up. It's probably the size of like, like a really big grapefruit. We're doing an awful job explaining how big this size is that I'm trying to show.

You were doing hand signals on a podcast. I know, but I was trying to get you guys to explain how big it was. I gave you plenty of, you guys are just going to look up moose hooves if you want. Okay, so both these women are getting kicked and stomped by this moose. They both curl up into the fetal position, which at that, point is the right thing to do and they're feeling the hooves strike their arms their legs their backs their butts and Melanie remembers thinking so like this is what it feels like to die so she thinks she's gonna die which is a possibility

like they have killed people so there really are I mean we talk about this a lot on this podcast there's some animals that you really have like a fighting chance to fight back against and you read these stories of people getting attacked by those like Shannon Parker our mountain lion victim she you know had this urge to survive and like fought back. And that's not really something you can do with the moose. They're so big that it's more of just like go in a fetal position and hope that it doesn't decide to kill you. And so I think that's why Melanie was kind of like, well, I might die. You know, this might kill me. So both women are in the fetal position. They're protecting their heads.

The moose is just stomping the absolute hell out of them. When Molney, the dog decides to kind of get in there. But as soon as Mulny charges in, Catherine yells for Mulny to leave. She's like, get out of here, Malny, and Molney runs off. There's a good chance that dog's what triggered the attack in the first place. Moose hate dogs. It's one animal where having a dog with you really ups your chances of having an incident. The dog runs up, barks at the moose. Moose gets pissed off of the dog, chases it.

The dog runs back to the owner, and then the moose stomps you to. Yeah. And that is very likely. what happened here. You think that's a better rivalry than dogs versus cats? Dogs versus moose. Yeah. You know, it's probably not as class. Or maybe like elephants and mice.

That's kind of a... Those are the big three, I would say. That's the big three. I don't think dogs see enough moose to be in the big three. I don't think elephants see enough mice either. Maybe. I don't know. They probably see a lot of mice. So the attack continued for what was probably just minutes, but for these women, it felt like a lifetime. time and then suddenly it stops. In this in this sudden silence that happens they look at each other

they kind of crawl closer to each other to where they're within an arm's reach of each other and then suddenly they're snorting and the moose comes back and it starts stomping them again round two yeah a hoof strikes Melanie in her head she kind of goes a little fuzzy for a while they both get stomped on their backs a bit more and then suddenly she takes off again So the women were silent for a few minutes, and then they finally ask each other if they're okay, and they crawl towards each other again. Melanie looks down, and she sees that she has a huge gash on her leg, and she can see, like, exposed muscle of her thigh. And she tries to use those gloves that we brought up earlier, the biking gloves to, like, cover, somehow use a glove to, like, cover this gash, which doesn't work. Like, to soak up the bleeding?

I don't know. Like, I just read, this is, most of this is from, like, an allowed. It's better than doing nothing, probably. Yeah, this is from an article in the Anchorage Daily News. Okay. And that's where I got most of this information. Rather than do that, Catherine ends up taking off, like, her sports bra, and they tie that around it with a shoelace, and that managed to hold in more the bleeding.

That makes more sense. Yeah, it does. They didn't want to stay in the area any longer, but Catherine's prescription sunglasses had broke, and she could hardly see. but then they both, and they're both like all cut up and banged up. But they really realized they have to get out of there. So they got back up and they hobbled away. But they were missing Molnie.

Molnie wasn't anywhere to be seen the dog. Oh, no. So they hobbled down the trail and not too far from them, they stumble into some more park visitors. And luckily for them, in those park visitors, there was a doctor and a nurse. Wow. Yeah, really lucky coincidence. They really helped them.

treated them, they laid them down, they made them really comfortable. And someone calls 911. And the person that called 911, it was at like 215. So it's been about an hour since they first had this run in with the moose. They call 911. The paramedics show up. But these women were right at the halfway point of both of the trailheads on this trail that they were on.

So they didn't really know which was the better way to go in. And then they finally like decide, the paramedics decided to drive an SUV in to get them. and the SUV gets to like a point where they're at a bridge and they like didn't want to drive it over this bridge because they were worried the bridge was going to collapse. So they drive the SUV back and then they like found an ATV and drove the ATV in and then finally they like get to these women. So it took like an hour and they're on like an airfield pretty much and it takes an hour for the paramedics to come in and help them. And the article like went into more of the factors that, you know, were behind that. I'm sure it was this whole mess, but still, that's too long. Someone can bleed out in that much time.

Yeah. But I'm being, I'm like, I'm sure these people are doing their best, but still. Anyway, in the hospital, the doctors discovered that Catherine's lung lining was punctured, and she had broken bones in her wrist. Out! Melanie had cracked ribs and a deep laceration on her butt and leg. Both women had huge purple bruises all over their bodies, and the nurses attending them said they could see the hoofball.

prints all over their backs so they could see these actual like prints from the moose and you know we can talk about how big those yeah that's what that's where my mind wins they're about the size of like three chocolate chip cookies maybe four so molney the dog is still missing uh katherine they both recover katherine and melany katherine goes out puts flyers all over town like she goes back to the area where they lost the dog and she like puts the dog's bed and like a bowl of food out which was really tragic that's sad and then goes back another time with like a ranger or maybe reporter or something to look for the dog and when they go back the moose was there again so they like take off yeah but this article that i read just like ended on that note and so i like did i had to do a deep dive and

look up this lady and everything and turns out a couple days later they found the dog oh nice So they were united. She set like live traps all over the place and one of her live traps caught the dog. Oh really? Yeah. That's an obedient dog. It's an Alaskan woman. Yeah, very Alaskan thing to do.

Exactly. He told that dog to go away and it was like, fine, I'm out of here. Yeah. Forever. Yeah, totally. Most dogs would like keep fighting. And honestly, like, that was really smart of Catherine to do that because it just would have agitated that moose even more. You think the moose recognized her when she came back?

Just like, this chick. Yeah, who knows. You learn your lesson? Rubs its hooves its hooves together. It's like, oh, round two. Okay, so these women were pretty lucky. Moose attacks can be much worse than that while I was doing research for this episode. Yeah, they didn't even get eaten at all.

Yeah, they don't really eat people. No? No. What would happen? What do you mean? If a moose ate someone? It doesn't. It can't.

It's like not, they just don't have the ability to do that. It's a great question. Was the laceration on the butt from a chomp or? From a hoof. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I wasn't trying to eat it.

No. So it can be a lot worse. I found, I know that was like not a real question. I answered it like it was. I found this paper that was in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. It was really interesting to me. This was like a really interesting story. So there was this woman that they found in this, she was in her 60s in Sweden.

I can't remember what year this was, but they found her dead. and she's down by the lake and when they found her she had like lacerations all of her body really bad ones like in this paper it showed the actual like lacerations on her legs and it was just like muscle like everything was exposed

and her she was like it looked like she had been cut up and dumped because those can be pretty sharp they can be really sharp oh I'm spoiling you no no you're not and when they have that much power behind them they cut into you so she had been dumped and the detectives ruled at a homicide

And the crazy thing is they their main suspect they thought this guy had killed her with a riding lawnmower like that's how messed up she was So they ruled at homicide with a riding lawnmower and they and part of the the justification for that was there was grass like embedded so deeply into these cuts That that was their mindset of like these blades on the lawnmower left grass in her cuts But as they did more and more research they found hair way into these cuts as well and they pulled it out and they did analysis on it and like guess what it was moose hair this woman had been killed by a moose and her actual cause of death was what's called flail chest do rather you know what flail chest is so they didn't like think the moose was driving the lawnmower they knew that the moose had just trampled of yeah one of the detectives is like so the moose was

doing the lawnmower and the other detectives like uh no so have you guys heard a flail chest before This was a new one for me. I'd never heard of it either. Flail chest is when your ribs get broken to an extent to where the broken chunk pops off. So an actual section of your ribs becomes detached, and then it, like, punctures your lung. Where does it go? That's the bad thing is as you try and breathe with flail chest, there's this weird effect to where, as you breathe in, it sucks the wind out of you. so you have to like do this weird backwards breathing and it just ends up killing you.

It can be like a really, it hurts your lungs. It does all sorts of. Probably takes a while too. Yeah, it sounds like a terrible way to die. It's a terrible way to die. And that's what ended up happening in this lady is her ribs got so broken by this moose that part of them disconnected and she got flail chest. Man.

This woman also did have her dog with her and they think the dog probably provoked the moose. Interesting. Dogs. It's not a good combo with moose. If you're in like really good moose country or if you think a moose is around, leash your dog. You don't want to chase a dog. Yeah, we're getting it into what you should actually do with like a moose attack.

But don't let your dog run and chase moose because no dog and bring a bra. Even if that moose is really far away and you're like, oh, you're, you know, my dog's out there chasing a moose, who cares? That moose gets pissed enough at your dog and chases it back to you. Suddenly you have a moose right next to you because your dog brought it back. to you. Yeah. Okay. My last tiny moose story, moose attack story. Another one I found was a guy in Red Lodge, Montana. In 1999, he was attacked by moose. They're not totally, they just found this guy dead, so they're not exactly sure what happened. But an antler,

one of this moose's antlers went through his eye and into his brain. Wow. And that's how he died. And it was a tiny moose? No, it was a big moose. Oh, you said it was a tiny moose story. Oh, no. Tiny story, full-sized moves. Oh, I got it. Tiny is actually funny because this antler, like antlers' branches are called tines. Oh, really? So the tine to his eye and got a triple layer joke.

So it is a tiny story. Okay. Oh, man. That's crazy. Yeah, it was a pretty wild one. I wish there's more details, but that was all there was, so it couldn't really fill up a whole. Their antlers aren't even that sharp, right? It just has a lot of force.

They have these really big paddle antlers, you know? Like they're not like elk where they're all just in points. But on those paddles, sometimes the tines get pretty pointy. This summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup and Kraft singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly milty cheese and thick rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and Kraft. Okay, so a little bit more about moose. They don't have upper front teeth and they have a real.

really flexible, sensitive lip. And they use that lip to actually like differentiate between food sources and then to like strip bark off trees and leaves off of branches and stuff. So they have, it's almost prehensile. It's like very, very, very, very sensitive and flexible. That's cool. Yeah. A couple more things. So in North America, we actually have four different subspecies of moose. We have, let's see, we have Alaska. moose in Alaska. So that's what these ladies ran into. We have northwestern moose, which you're going to find throughout Canada. And then that's the moose species that you'll have in like the Great Lake states. We have eastern moose. So those are the ones you're going to have in like

the northeastern United States and New England. And then we have shiris moose. And that's what you have in like Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Utah. All through the western States. Through the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. They're not in like New Mexico or Arizona or any of those places or California. So those are the four subspecies that we have in the U.S. And then throughout the world, you also have moose in like Scandinavia. You have moose throughout Russia.

And then there's a couple other countries like Mongolia has a few. China has a few. So it sounds like a northern hemisphere. Eastern Europe. Yeah, pretty much throughout the boreal forest. throughout the world. You're going to have moose. What are the differentiating factors between the subspecies?

Are they pretty vast? Like the Alaskan ones are the biggest of the four subspecies. Because they eat in salmon, like the bears. Not necessarily. They're not eating salmon. Why would they be bigger? I don't know exactly why they're bigger. For some reason, those ones just genetically become bigger.

They're not, they look pretty much all like the same animal. I'm sure there's a moose biologists out there right now that's like, no, they don't. But to the lay person that's not a moose specialist, they're going to look pretty much the same. That moose we saw in the middle of the road in Canada, that thing was so big. In Canada, when was this? When me, you, and Rob were driving to Alaska? Yeah.

That was like the biggest moose I've ever seen. And they're big enough sometimes that they'll like ram cars and stuff. It was way bigger than our car. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so large, healthy adult moose don't really have many natural predators. Things that can kill them are more tigers, which are kind of our number one predator that are terrestrial predators, wolves and brown bears. A pack of wolves can take down a healthy adult moose and a big brown bear can too. But they're not necessarily targeting big healthy adults.

Wolves get a lot of moose in the winter, right? Because they can't run as fast through the snow. But even wolves are looking for like sick, injured, older, younger moose. They're not necessarily going for like a big, healthy adult male. That being said, they can do it. They can pull it off. Black bears and cougars will kill calves sometimes. Swimming moose have been killed by killer whales.

And then there's one recorded instance of one being killed by a Greenland shark, which is a really rare shark species that lives up in the Arctic. Yeah, I've seen that. They can live to be like 400 years old. Like crazy. Yeah, I think the longest living vertebrate that people know of is a Greenland shark. It lived like 400. If you like see a picture of one too, you're like, that's what.

a 400-year-old shark. They're cool. They're really cool. Yeah, cool. To me, it was really interesting learning about that, too, that, like, a killer whale would kill a moose, but that they don't kill people. Like, you know, it sees a moose swimming around, and they're like, this is food, and they see people, and they still don't kill them.

That is really weird. So, moose attacks, they're more than bears and wolves combined. There's more moose attacks than bear and wolf attacks combined. But the results are generally pretty minor. People don't often get like sustained, big sustained injuries from moose. It's usually like they get kicked once or twice and the moose is done. Neutralize the threat and then they're gone. Yeah, or just like they're pissed at them, kick them once or twice and then they run off.

So if you see a moose in the wild, we're going to get into what you should actually do if you are charged. But something you should look for like with an aggressive or defensive moose, they're going to look like right into your eyes. if there's prolonged eye contact, like if they're tracking you with their eyes, that's the first thing you should look for. Then if it lowers its head and puts its ears back, that's the second thing. And then if its hair pops up on its neck and its hackles, which is like around the shoulders kind of, like if it does that, you're about to get charged.

My first time that I got charged by a moose, it put its head down and its ears back. And I was like, oh, I'm in some trouble here. And I was really close to it. I could feel it breathing. The second time, Jeff got to watch the whole thing. How did it charge you if you were that close? It just took a couple steps towards me really quick.

I say charged. It really didn't. That one wasn't like a full on charge. It was more like I stepped down right in between it and its calf. It stood up, turned towards me, and took a couple quick steps. Nice. And then luckily decided not to keep going. You are pretty imposing.

I understand where that moves is coming. This is when I was like 18, too. And I was just like, oh, please, no. And then the second time I was out fishing on a little peninsula, I had a big trout on, and the moose like ran out on the peninsula chasing me. Whoa. Yeah. And Jeff saw that from the other side of the lake. Yeah, I was watching.

It is awesome. Yeah. So a couple really interesting things I learned about moose. So in Sweden, in the late 18th century, there was a big debate about the idea of using moose as a domestic animal. and then they were talking about using them as like a postal service animal like that they would ride to to pass out letters. I don't know like where this idea came from. Yeah. Or why.

But there was a big debate about whether or not they should domesticate moose for their postal service people to ride around. And then they also were talking about developing a moose mounted cavalry for like battles and stuff. Yeah. That's sweet. Yeah. Like pretty cool idea. Yeah. Would have been really cool if they followed through.

You can domesticate them fairly easy, right? So that's another thing that I want to talk about. Like right before World War II, the Soviet Union decided they were going to domesticate some moose. And they created this moose farm in some tiny village. And they did this small-scale domestication program where pretty much they would just breed moose that were not as angry as the other ones. Yeah. So whenever a moose showed good qualities, they'd breed those ones together. and after a few generations they had some really tame moose,

but they didn't end up really doing much with them. So there's this moose farm. I think it still exists somewhere in Russia, where they sell like moose milk, and like you can go visit, and it's like this farm that you can come see these tame moose, but they haven't really done much with it. It's just kind of there.

Interesting. That's cool. Yeah. It'd be pretty cool to just like be able to go on a moose ride instead of a horse ride, like through the hill. or something. It would.

And it would be like pretty intimidating if you went to battle with Sweden in the late 18th century. They're just all on moose. They're just all mounted on moose. Yeah. And like right into battle. I said mooses. I know it's just moose. Yeah, whatever.

It's kind of one of those tricky ones. It is. I've almost said it a couple of times this podcast. Okay. So that's pretty much what I've got for moose. You guys got any questions about moose? No. I'm fresh out of questions.

Okay, we'll get into our categories then. All right. Yes. Should we do our pop culture moose? Do you guys have any? I do. I just was going to do a favorite moose. Okay.

Do your favorite moose. My favorite moose was the one I watched Charge you. It was pretty awesome. Mike, you got a favorite moose? Yeah, so first we got to give a shout out to Bull Winkle. I think we need to just bring it up. But my favorite moose are the two moose. are the two Moose Brothers from Brother Bear.

Yeah, which is a totally underrated movie. That is an underrated movie. That's a good movie. Especially Rut, but Rut and Tuk, the Two Moose Brothers. Because they're like a direct kind of, they pay homage to another couple of brothers from one of my favorite movies of all time, the McKenzie brothers from Strange Brew.

Okay. And I just think they're so fun. Oh, yeah, they had like Canadian accents and stuff. Yeah, totally Canadian mannerisms and speech. What's yours? Mine, so. When Teddy Roosevelt first ran for president, he ran on a different party from the Democrats and Republicans. I think it's the last time that a third party won the, yeah, and it was the progressive party.

And there was a moose that was their like their mascot because, you know, the other ones have an elephant and a donkey. So there's was a moose. And there's all these photos out there of Teddy Roosevelt like riding a moose. And there's this really famous one of him in the water riding a moose. and I always thought it was like the coolest photo but then as I was looking into it for this I learned that it's like the first Photoshop like ever probably

Oh really I'm sure there was some before that These dudes that were like on his campaign Cut out a photo of him writing a horse Put him on a photo of a moose And then like I don't know what they did to print it That's awesome printed it that way Yeah and so it was a fake But I really like that photo

So that's my favorite moose I'll give a pop culture shout out to the moose in the book Hatchett Because I really liked that book as a kid Yeah that's a great book was like the best part of the book to me when it attacks him Yeah Okay so let's do our Mike you want to do our cage match category Yeah let's do the cage match this is where we talk about How the Miss would stack up in a fight

A caged environment fight against all the other animals we've talked about on the podcast so far This one's interesting It is interesting This is a good one. Because this is like one of our first animal that's like prey, you know, for some of our other animals. But it's got some real weight to it. Yeah, but it's not like easy prey. So like I mentioned, an more tiger can take down a moose on its own.

I think it could take out the chimpanzee? Yeah, it can take out the chimpanzee. The weenie python? Yeah, I think it could take out the pythons. And a python wouldn't attack a moose because it's way too big for it. A singular wolf it would take. Black bear? Yeah.

In this category, what we usually do is look at our biggest example of both, right? So the biggest moose could easily kill the biggest black bear. Okay. Yeah. The ones that have a shot against the moose are a more tiger, are polar bear, our brown bear, or grizzly, or killer whale or or or a orca.

The hippo. The hip-up. The hip-haired. Great White. Yeah. And the Great White probably, you know, if it's in the water, the Great White's taking it out. And we do go in the water so I think we can count that.

But it would be, it could take out the cougar, the wolf, chimpanzee. Alligator? Python. Yeah. The most impressive is that it would beat the Black Bear to me. The Black Bear. And it could probably beat a grizzly, right? It's just like most of the time it will lose.

Yeah, that's a good fight. It's a really good fight. The only ones that I, of our mammals, the only ones that I'm like pretty confident are winning are the tiger and the hippo. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, interesting.

Yeah, it's actually an interesting cage match. Cage match is getting harder. We've done a lot of animals. Yeah, true. That's a good one. Okay, so our next category is what would Mike and Jeff do if they encountered an aggressive or a defensive moose in the wild? I can start us off. So I was thinking Star Wars

I forget what they're called The walkers, the huge AT-A-T-A-T's. They kind of have a moose shape. Moose are like real top-heavy With like kind of skinny legs compared to their body. Okay.

So like... Oh, I know where you're going with this. Oh yeah, everyone does. You try a rope around their legs, trip them, they fall on their legs. their face. Okay. And it's done. Yeah. So you're just running around it real quick. Running around the legs with a rope and then it'll trip on its face. All right. Mike? So you said moose are typically thought to be near-sided. Yeah. So I guess if you notice it soon enough,

just retain as much distance as you can and kind of obfuscate yourself in the trees somehow. Maybe even climb one if you can because it seems like a moose probably wouldn't be able to climb a tree. Perfect. So for once, Mike's really close to the actual answer. Jeff, yours, I think of you, like, I just feel like animals are always better at everything than us mostly except for like intelligence. So yours is smart, but I don't think you would be agile and fast enough to get that rope around its legs. Yeah, I need like a lasso it or something. Yeah, you could maybe lasso a moose.

Unless you're in the A-wing, like in Star Wars. Yeah, exactly. line around. Or if you're in like an ATV, like ripping around. Oh, the ATV. Yeah. There you go. Um, so Mike, what you said, for all those of you out there that are really, you know, that want to know what you do if you run into moose, this is one of the animals that we're talking about that you have a pretty high chance of running into if you live in any of those states that we talked about or countries. Um, if you see a moose, if you're out hiking and you see a moose and like say it's on your trail and it's not moving, you got to just wait for it to do its thing. You don't want to like approach it and try and scared off the trail or push it or do anything like that. You want to back up a little bit, just wait for it to leave and then go on your way. There's got to be like a time though where you just give up. I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to tell anyone out there at some point just to be like, okay.

So if they've been waiting two hours, you wouldn't like walk up to it? I would try and walk around it. I'm not, I'm never walking up to a moose. It's a bad idea. if you come upon a moose and you're in like a bad situation where you're close to a moose and there's a chance of it charging you this is probably the first animal we've talked about where running away is actually a really good method you just want to get away from it running away from a moose isn't bad because when you run away it's like okay this thing's not pissing me off anymore I don't have to defend my calf anymore and it's not like our predatory animals potentially predatory animals where it might trigger that predatory response it's you're just getting

out of there. And when you run away, what you want to do is put something big in between you and the moose. And Mike, you kind of hinted on that, like, by getting into the forest, get a big tree in front of you, in between the two of you, get like a snow berm between you, a car, anything that's big. And you could truly like, yeah. Hey. Sorry. Say sorry to Cindy. You can do, and then you can kind of do that thing where you just even run around that object until the moose, like, decides it doesn't want to mess with you anymore. And you can't actually climb a tree with them too. They can't climb. You do run the risk of it just parking itself under the tree and you might be up there for a while. I'll tell my story real quick.

Yeah. So I was hiking with three friends and there's a moose ahead of us. But it was like, it's smaller. It's probably like two years old maybe. And then it would just run like a hundred yards ahead on the trail. And then when we would get like 40 yards from it, it would run 100 yards up again. And it just kept doing it until a hiker came from like the other side of the trail. And it was pinned in between us. So then it just like turns around, looks at us and just like sprint straight at us. Yeah. So I like pushed all my friends off the trail into these bushes.

But then like there wasn't any space for me to squeeze off of the trail anymore. And it just ran like less than a foot away from me. Yeah. And that so the exact same thing happened. And it was like a truck had just passed me. Yeah. A landing gear had just flown right past your ear. The exact same thing happened to me last year where one got pinched on a trail and ran right by me.

And I was in cross-country skis and had no idea what to do. Oh, cool. Yeah. But it can happen. And they kind of know that there's not much out there that messes with them. So you do have to be really careful if you're in Moose Country. Bear spray can work against Moose. There's not a ton of data out there, but people have sprayed them.

and it has stopped attacks. So if you have a moose coming at you and you have bear spray, get it out, use it. But the main thing you can run from them and just put a big obstacle in between you and the moose. That's kind of the crux of it. I'm sure there's other little tips out there, but those are the things to remember. If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses, is adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night.

And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnomer.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Okay, so our next category is some listener questions. All right. All right, so we're doing a special listener questions today, and it's going to be from our Patreon.

Cool. Okay, so let's start out with Hannah blank, because we're not going to say your full name. We don't want to dox you. Which region or biome has the highest concentration of your favorite animals? Like if you were restricted to one area, where would you be most likely to see the most cool animals? Do you guys, are we all answering this one? Yeah, let's all answer it. For me, this is a hard one because the animals in North America are the ones I'm like most familiar with

and have like the most connection with. But I think if I were just to pick any other region, I'd pick this region in India where there's like tigers, lions, leopards, wolves, elephants, rhinos, so much stuff all in India, like tons of reptiles, crocodiles. Like India, for me, is a place that has wildlife that I'm really interested in. There's bears.

There's like so many cool things there. So probably for me it's India. I'd probably go on land. I'd go either Yellowstone or Glacier because that's just the places I see the most wildlife that's interesting to me. Yeah. Like big horn sheep, mountain goats, bears, moose, bison in Yellowstone. And then sea like in the ocean, it's Sea of Cortez in Mexico where there's whale sharks and sea lions and all that. dolphins.

Mike? Yeah, mine would be aquatic too. I'd either do any diving spot, kind of in the hot spots in the Caribbean or down near Cozumel and Cancun. I'm excited to go diving with you. You live for scuba, right? I love scuba.

I'm getting certified right now. I know. We got to plan a cool trip. Hey, thanks for the question, Hannah. That's a great question. I guess that biome in India would probably be like a jungle, like a dry jungle biome just so, yeah.

Okay. All right, from Miriam. You mentioned something about the size of bird brains in the crow episode. Is the brain-to-body ratio truly indicative of how smart a species is? Also, what animal has the largest ratio and the smallest? Are they really the dumbest and smartest animals? Yeah, so that's a really great question. It's not truly indicative of intelligence, the brain-to-body ratio.

So if you are just looking at ratio, the one that I think actually has the biggest, like the best ratio is ants. I think their brain to body ratio is like one to seven. So their body is seven times bigger than their brain. And then the smallest is hippopotamuses and it's like one to like four thousand or something. That makes so much sense. Their brain is like one brain is like four thousand, you know. But you say it's not indicative of half. So it's not indicative.

What some researchers have come up with that's more indicative is this thing called encephalization quotient, which is pretty much like it quantifies that relationship, that brain-body ratio relative to animals for that same type and size. So pretty much like it's saying like if, you know, a human's brain-to-body ratio is 1 to 40, which it is, and you take an animal that's about the same size as a human. Yeah. And then you look at its ratio and then you compare them. You know, it's pretty much like putting everything at the same size. So like going back to the Crow episode, it's like the smartest birds did have the biggest brains compared to other birds.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so if you're looking at, yeah, if you're kind of like adjusting for size, then it matters. But if you're not, it doesn't necessarily. Right. Okay. And then we have. Clark, and he's asking, he's planning a trip to one of our favorite places. Oh, which one? I'm planning a trip to Yellowstone in mid-July.

What is the best place to get good photographs of grizzly bears in the wild? Great. So, Clark, if you're going to Yellowstone in mid-July, just so you know there's going to be a lot of people there, and if you want to see grizzly bears, what you're going to want to do is get out real early. the best time to see him is like right at dawn or right at dusk and the two best places in the park to see grizzly bears are both the Hayden Valley and the Lamar Valley. If you drive those valleys dawn and dusk and look for bears,

it's a good chance you'll see them. Look for a bunch of people pulled over taking photos of something. That's the best way to find bears. Also on social media, West, like last year, you saw that there's a bear on a carcass. Carcass that was just staying there, right? Yeah, so just look and see what's going on. on in the park, ask the Rangers.

But the Hayden Valley, Lamar Valley are the best places. If you see like a traffic jam or a bunch of cars pulled over, there's a good chance there's a bear. Yep. All right. From Jenna. Hey, guys, I got a question that's not really a question. I was just wondering your thoughts on Timothy Treadwell.

I just watched Grizzly Man for the first time and I have so many thoughts. I specifically wonder if he did the bears and foxes harm by desensitizing them to people. Yeah. So he definitely did. The bear then ended up killing him. You know, they had to kill that bear. So that's one bear at least that he, you know, messed up its life. We're going to definitely do an episode on Timothy Troydwell, so we'll save some of our feelings about him for that episode.

You don't think his problem was just not desensitizing that one bear. No. He definitely was passionate. He really cared about those bears. His tactics, though, were like not. It wasn't science. It was just a crazy dude trying to get used to bears and he ended up paying for it with his life. But we're going to, we'll definitely do an episode on Timothy.

Okay. Is that it for questions? That's it. Thanks, Patreon. People, we love your questions. All those of you out there that are not Patreon members, we are going to be asking for more listener questions here soon. So don't worry, we will get to yours as well. Our next category is how are we messing things up for them?

So as climate change gets worse, something that's happening is there's all these parasites that moose deal with that really cold winters like really keep those parasites down and as winters aren't becoming as cold they're having like a big influx and ticks and different parasites that can actually kill moose so moose numbers have really drastically declined since the 90s actually like all over their range except for the really high arctic moose populations they're really starting to lose numbers and that's because of those parasites it's because they're interacting more with animals that they didn't necessarily interact with as much, like white-tailed deer. They give them more parasites as well, these weird brainworms and stuff.

So there's a lot of disease problems happening with moose that are a direct result of climate change. Sounds like parasites are flourishing, and that's good news for parasites, right? It's great news for parasites. It's a give and a take, you know? You can't have both. Yeah. Yeah, I guess if you're a huge, if you're like a parasitologist or something, you're pretty

stoked about that. Yeah, global warming's like you're all about it. Another thing is just habitat loss, which for pretty much every animal we're going to talk about, that's an issue. So, okay, where can you see them? We've talked about this a lot. You can see moose in pretty much any like riparian area in those states that we talked about. The riparian just means like close to water. So if you find a place that has a lake or a pond or a stream or whatever with big willows,

and you're in Utah, Montana, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Canada, and then a bunch of places in Europe and Asia, you can probably find a moose. Mike, we're going to show you, we're going to go find some moose for you. Let's go. Okay. Moose hunt, not moose hunting, but moose hunting, you know. Yeah, Jeff, you're really good at finding moose. I feel like every time I go somewhere with you, we see moose. Yeah, I'm pretty, yeah, I got it down.

Yeah, you got an eye for moose, and I think, They're just attracted to you. That's cool. Do we like this animal? I'll go first. I really like moose. I did after my first and second run-ins with them, I had a few years where I was pretty scared of moose.

They're the one animal that I think I was nervous about. I shouldn't say scared, but I had like a really healthy respect for them. Any more I don't really worry about them. They're beautiful. And I think like I love seeing them. Like I get really excited every I've seen hundreds if not thousands of moose and I still get excited every time I see them. So I really like them.

Yeah, I love moose, especially in this case like male moose like just a big bowl moose with the antlers are just so cool to see. Yeah. So yeah, I'm going to put it probably at like 49. Yeah, I think mine would be in like the 30s or 40s. Yeah, of all the animals we've talked about so far on the podcast, they're, They're approaching top five for me. I like this quite a bit. Dude, we don't find you some moose.

I know. Moose are cool. I like most a lot. I don't, we don't have to go into it. I like, I think I like your, you're like,

the way that you're doing this by just looking at animals in the podcast. I might start doing that as well. Yeah, and I didn't think as hard as I usually do about this, yeah, this time around. They're top five for you though.

Close. Okay. I wouldn't say not quite, but, you know, six, seven, eight range. I don't think I really got to this,

but they can, run like 35 miles per hour. They're pretty agile. They can dive underwater. They're a pretty agile animal. You think they could do one of those agility runs that the dog contests do, where they like weave in and out of the things and run through the tunnels? It'd be pretty cool to see.

What if you got like a full-sized moose and a horse race? I think that's about as fast as horses run, too. It's a good question. Yeah. Anyway, okay, that's it for moose. Mooses. So I was going to give a little tease too We're going to do a Patreon episode that I'm leading

And it's going to be about an attack from an animal that's been in movies And then we're going to give our five favorite Animals and Movies that you want to bring up So our top fives And just to give a little teaser for it We're going to each give one that didn't quite make the cut All right so I'll start us off I'm going Lola Bunny from Space Jam.

Hot. That's definitely the hottest one. She's hot for a cartoon, but then when you, like, factor in that she's also a rabbit, very hot for those qualifications. So you think it makes it even hotter that she's a rat? No, I'm just saying, like, if you're going to have a cartoon rabbit, that's like the very peak for hotness. Yeah, I will go.

And then she's really good at dribbling a basketball. Super good. Can dunk. I mean, the hottest, like, cons is confident. She's kind of a tease. That's her only con. Also a rabbit.

I think that's a pro, if anything. I think it's a pro. You like the, she's confident, hard to get it a little. She's like making bugs work for it. All right. She's kind of a femme fat house. Give us your number six.

My number six, I'm going to go with the oliphants from Lord of the Rings. Oh, wow. Samwise action coming in. Yeah. Samwise gets real happy to see him and like says, you know, would anyone back in the, what does he say? Would anyone back in something believe this? Brandy book.

And then also when they come into the battle and they have like all the spikes on them and stuff. Like return of the king for me, I don't know. It's probably my least favorite of the three, but I still really love it. But that's the scene that if I'm like sleeping during that scene, I'm always bummed that I missed it. I miss that one. Because it's such a good scene when the Oliphant's come in and just like, not. all the writers of Rohan off their horses. All right, Mike, those are some good one.

These are just the honorable mentions. Yeah, this is an honorable mention. And you saw how it worked up Jeff got. But so my number six, the one I had to leave off, and this one kills me. And it's a little bit in the same vein as what Jeff was talking about, is Tanya Mouskowitz from Fival Goes West. Specifically, Fival Goes West. It's the first female character, regardless of species, that I remember acknowledging to myself that I was, developing like a crush on.

This is my first romantic interest, I think, ever. But I know Tanya isn't like the most mainstream of what's eventually become the furry community. I think Lolo is really what kick started that whole scene. But Tanya has always been. A special place in your heart. When she's doing the, she opens up her voice and finally sings, yeah. Yeah.

I'm looking her up because I can't remember what she. She's a dweeby little mouse, honestly. Oh, it's so. funny that this is your first crush. I know it's crazy. Anyone out there that's listening to this, please look up Donya Mouskowitz to get a better peek. It's just like a homely little mouse.

Yeah, there's like, it's not like sexy. I kind of know where you're coming from. All right, well, if you want to listen to that, sorry, but you're going to have to sign up for the Patreon. But just so you guys know, it does really help us out. Yeah, it's the, the Grizzly and Amur Tiger Tears are where you get access to the mini episodes. So that's our $10 and our $20 tier.

Like Jeff was saying, it really helps. And they're fun little episodes. Like, I really liked our last one a lot. They get posted every other week, so you'll get a main episode on the main feed, which is free to everybody. Yeah. And then the mini episodes are for those patrons only that's subscribe. And our main episodes, like our ones on the other feed are always going to be free. Don't worry about that.

Like, they'll always be free. Those mini episodes. Our bonuses for people that feel like helping us out a little bit. All right. Cool. I think we got one more thing. Mike, do you want to read off the list of our new patrons? Yes, I do.

This was, we're overwhelmed. We've gotten so much support, and I don't know if any of us were really expecting this. But the new patrons that we have received since our previous episode, this is going to be a long list. So bear with us. And I wish we could spend more time shouting each one of you individually out. But we have Hannah, thank you. Heidi, Lucas, Morgan, Michelle. Lynette

Miriam Anne Olivia Carrie Jocelyn Jenna Clark Matt and Beth Jamie

Kayla Megan Ulyssies Andrew Nadge I think is how you pronounce that Laura

Kelly Peyton Tracy Lauren and Emily thank you so much that's honestly incredible

every cent that you don't you donate I guess is what you call it It goes to candy it goes it goes it goes

it goes it goes back into making the podcast better. It does. Eventually, hopefully we can make this a full-time thing, and you guys are really, really making that reality that we can see happening in the future. So thank you.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. We'll talk to you later. Bye.