Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Mothers Day 2023 Special - One Mom against a Swarm of Yellowjackets

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Wes and Jeff's mom Cindy is back yet again for the annual Mothers Day special, this time to talk about one mother's epic struggle to save her family from a swarm of yellowjackets. A lot more mom-talk ensues as we cover a bunch of mother-related listener questions. ~~ 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

Tooth and Claw podcast, happy Mother's Day. Does it both sound like questions to me? Coming at you. We got Wes, our wildlife biologist. Here I am. According to our mom, Cindy, you got Jeff, also a biologist, right, mom? Yes, you are. You are.

You are. You are. You are. You are. And Mike. Biologist. Are you also a biologist now? I painted the fence.

at the Reno Animal Arc. So that's kind of like... That counts. Yeah. Yeah. If we're just getting them out these days. We got Cindy. Yeah.

She was paddleboarding before it got cool. Yeah. Also a biologist. Welcome, Mom. Thanks. No, just me and you're a biologist, Wes. That's not true. I'm the one that taught you everything.

Every. We're already off the rails. Who are you talking to? Both of you. No, that's not true. Okay. Absolutely. Absolutely not.

No. Jeff maybe. I had a listener who gave a recommendation for an intro. Oh, okay. Wes, a biologist who poops now but didn't then. Yeah, that's a good one. Mike, a coy, elusive cryptid who enjoys cows, so basically a chupacabra. That's the most flattering description I've ever heard of myself.

Jeff, a hymbo, popular with girls because he just uses Nat Geo for kids instead of struggling against a paper. lot. That's why you're popular with Susanie. Okay. Mom, I would say that you you know what I would say is that you started, you helped nurture my love for animals. I did. You did. You took me to the library.

The zoo. You constantly were helping me learn. You helped me start on my path toward wildlife. First step is the hardest. It is. You did the most work Cindy. Not Wes. West. Let's just keep trying. You said you had a question for

me right off the back. Yeah. So, like, we had kind of settled in to start recording and mom got up to go get some water. Yeah. Have you ever gone on like a trip or done anything with mom where last minute she doesn't have to get up to go get some water? Especially when this time she already had a cup of water here. And she had to go get different water. It's truly her most famous. Hey, mom, why do you have $20 bills with a bunch of coins on them? Well, you each get $20. Oh, sweet. But every time you say like you get a dollar deducted. What if I'm saying I like airplanes? Didn't you tell me that that's how Harvey Weinstein tipped people at Sunnance?

Oh yeah, he would start at like 300 and take money away every mistake they made. That's how our mom does it at restaurants too. She puts out it. She puts out $10.1 bills and takes one away every time they're too slow to fill her water up. She doesn't. She points at it and she goes, huh? No matter what the final bill is, it's just $10. I think that was Mike's mom.

Oh, shots fired already. My mom would kick your arm. Hopefully we all walk away with some money. I'm really excited to be a few dollars richer after this. Welcome, Mom. I'm just counting on losing all 20. Yeah, in a matter of minutes, probably. I could do it in one story.

So we've done, this is our third Mother's Day episode now. Yes. Our first one, I feel like, was pretty traditional. We told a couple stories where moms had an impact on a wildlife encounter. The second Mother's Day episode, you didn't really want to do anything too negative. So we talked about animals that actually helped people out of, like, kind of dicey situations, which was really fun. Now we're kind of going back to where we started. We're going to do another story about a mom that saved her family.

And it's one that you recommended. I would say more than anyone out there, you probably send us. stories the most. Good. How long have you been thinking about this story? Like what you're going to do for Mother's Day? Oh, well, I think about it all year. Yeah.

This, I couldn't find the best story. But this was a good one. I liked it. You know the meme of the woman like peering off and all the equations are flying by her head? Yeah. That's mom thinking about the Mother's Day episode.

Wes actually trumped me because he took the other, the shark one. Because that's the one I thought we were going to get. Well, you said that one last year. then you pulled it back because you thought it was too sad. We both pulled it back. Right. And so I didn't think we wanted to do it for Mother's Day because it was too sad. We don't want people bummed out.

No. Well, let's just start out. I have a question though. Oh, yeah. Okay. What was the word you were listening to on the computer yesterday? Let me look it up. Shuffles her notes.

Anthropomorphism. Oh, yeah? And you were just a tough one. Playing it over and over again and saying it to yourself. Because I knew I was going to probably say it. I had to ask Wes a question about it. Anthropomorphism? You did a good job.

Thanks. Way to prepare. Thanks. It was cute. So I just wanted to start with the correction corner. Okay, let's hear it. Okay. And we could start with that word.

But on one of the ones with the elephant in the circus, you said they murdered the elephant. Do you think that's anthropomorphism? No. Because you're talking about a human, you're talking about a human action against an animal. A human can murder an animal. I don't think a human can murder an animal.

Let's look up the definition of murder real quick. Maybe it's personification. I don't think so. Let's see. Murder. The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. So yeah, maybe that isn't. Cindy, yeah.

Nailed them. All right. Is it anthropomorphism? And then we mentioned your degree. You told everyone when you found it? Yes. Okay, who found the degree? You found it.

Okay, thank you. Oh, wow. I will say, oh, go ahead. Sorry. He took full credit for that. I could say something. I have left a lot of stuff at my parents' house since moving back to Montana, and they've been very generous in letting me store my stuff here.

And then when I couldn't find my degree, my mom did dig through all my stuff and found it, which was very nice. I actually had it in my file cabinet. She did. Okay. We could fill a whole episode with corrections that Mama sent us after episodes. Murdering an animal. You can just, you can say this.

Her Rombie was merged. Yeah. Okay. This one was the most important one though. Can I go ahead with it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So last year we recorded a Patreon episode, so I know not everyone listened to it. But then the boys put together a little more after they were done, after we were done, and I wasn't there. And Mike was telling a story about a bear getting a little girl. And she was outside because she was so excited about Mother's Day. Okay, and I just want to play what they said because it was a little upsetting. Not quite a... What we said? Or it was a little, it wasn't upsetting, but it was so incorrect.

You're playing us? Yeah. Okay. Do you think Mother's Day is like the least exciting holiday for kids? For a five-year-old? Oh, for sure. Because it's the one holiday where you have to do something for someone else. Oh.

You got to do like your last. little dishes coupon book and stuff. Yeah. And like dabs at least don't really care. But like moms, you kind of have to like try your best. Right. Now it's good because like you appreciate your mom more so you can like show her that a bit. Yeah.

But when you're little, it's not great. Okay. So I went to my journal. Okay. Wow. Digging up receipts. Yes. And here is Mother's Day 94, which was.

West would be 10 and Jeff was five. Jeff told me happy Mother's Day almost every hour of the day, plus lots of hugs and kisses and the card he made. Oh, I don't have it about Wes. That was on my other coffee. No, I remember that. I was faking. And then this is when Jeff was seven.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. All week long, Jeff has been bringing me little presents, telling me he loves me, drawing me, drawing me pictures and saying, I'm so excited about Mother's Day, three more days until Mother's Day, et cetera. It's been really cute and made me feel really good. What a little mama's boy. Okay. So I just, I don't have a real, real good memory, but it seems to me that that hasn't happened in the last 10 years.

I did that way? Like a full week's worth of appreciation. I set the bar high. Yeah, that is five-year-old. My point is the. It's more fun for little kids when they're little. Okay. I stand corrected.

Okay. So not that important, but I think maybe if you disillusioned any moms or families, it was important. I think every holiday is more fun for little kids, though. Yeah, I do too. And I think that Mother's Day, okay. I do, all right.

So you need your, like, copy of the journal to remember what Wes said? Don't you remember? Well, Wes didn't say anything, but he kept bringing me, little presents that day and doing nice things for me like bringing me drinks. And telling me he loved me. Sounds like less is the better child. Did you hear mine? Then sigh and Gil did the dishes.

Oh, that's big. All right. That's all. I remember I was always excited to bring you breakfast in bed because I thought that was like the craziest thing we had to do. Yeah, hide of luxury. Yeah. All right.

So we're going to. to start out with a really quick story that happened in December that's just kind of a little one-off that didn't have a lot of story to it, but it was kind of a cool instance of a mom really intervening in an animal attack. This is one that we had been sent by a number of listeners. It's one that we maybe have brought up before. I don't think so. But it's a raccoon attack. And we're all big raccoon fans here, right? Yep. Mm-hmm. Mom, would you say you're a raccoon fan? I am. Yeah. Okay. So this one happened. It happened in December. It happened in Connecticut. And there's a video of this whole interaction. It's a really interesting video. I recommend you watch it if you haven't seen it. But essentially it shows this little girl whose name was Riley. And Riley was outside. She's waiting for the bus when suddenly a raccoon ran up and started attacking her leg. Like biting her legs, scratching at her leg. It was a very focused, very vicious attack from this little raccoon.

Yeah, it was a real attack. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't like she scared the raccoon. or she tried to pick it up or something, it ran for her and attacked her leg. Likely a rabid raccoon from my opinion, I couldn't find anything afterward that said whether or not it was rabid, but almost for sure I would say this raccoon was. It was trying to. From the ankle. Yeah, I guess you could say that. It was during the day too, right?

It was, like middle of the day, which again is like not typical behavior for a normal wrecking the day. Sometimes, but yeah, it's not as active of the time. time for them. It's ever a few times. Anyway, so her mom, Logan McNamara, she heard all this commotion outside. Her daughter is just screaming bloody murder, which you can hear in the video. She opens the door to see her daughter, a five-year-old, being attacked by this raccoon. And in like one move, she grabs the raccoon by the scruff with one hand and then kind of pulls her daughter around her hip with the other hand and like shoves her through the open door. And then you see her holding this raccoon and it isn't able to bite her because she has it by the scruff,

but it's like clawing her up. And she turns to the neighbor and yells, it's a rabid raccoon, get inside your house. And at one point she tries to, like, chuck it and she can't because it's holding onto her arm. Yeah. So then she two hands it by the scruff and just like heaves it. Yeah, like a hammer throw.

It's so funny. And then the raccoon lands. And it's kind of interesting to me because when the raccoon lands, it doesn't just like bolt out of there. It kind of just like shakes it off. And it's just like, what that? heck. It does the funny thing too where like it spreads all of its legs and arms all the way out and like gets like as wide as he can. So he's just like cartwheeling through the air. Yeah. It's a great toss. Anyway, it was a really interesting one. It was one where again probably a raccoon something wrong was wrong with it. I would guess rabies up during the day man. How do you think the mom did mom? Yeah. I thought she did awesome. I thought she was one to ten on the mom scale. the mom scale 10.

No, 10 out of that. Well, you were saying, though, that she should have. Well, I just thought it probably had rabies, so I thought maybe she should keep it. What would she do to keep it? You just go in the garage and stick it in a box. Like put a bowl over it like a spider. So we're going to set this up. Or maybe a dog crate.

You're holding onto a raccoon that is desperately trying to bite you. It's just bitten your child, and you're going to just walk it in the garage and put it in a box. Well, I thought it was biting her, so then I'm like, well, it's already biting her. And so why not just try and keep it? I mean, if you could, pounding its head on the killing it, pounding its head onto the step, you know, but I don't think I could do that. Yeah, I couldn't do that one. I could see you doing that. You think you could throw it as far as she did?

putting it in the garage just wild out in the garage and letting someone else get it. You could do that as a prank too. Like when her husband gets home and say like, yeah, there's something in the garage for you. The wild thing to me about the video is it wasn't like the daughter was a three-year-old. She's like a larger child. And the mom just like easily hefts her up like with her left hand. Yeah. And just or right, whatever, one-handed and just casually places her back and try the safety of the house.

Mom strength. I think it's all about, too, whether, how scared you are of animals. Because I think when I was that mom's age, I would have been a lot more scared than I am now, but I've had some raccoon experience now. So she was pretty calm. Yeah. As far as she, as far as the situation, even like yelling at the neighbors to get back inside and stuff. I will say, I think your plan of like putting it somewhere is again something that's kind of uniquely American because we understand that we're facing a huge hospital.

bill if we do have to get the rabies shots and like you have if you can test the animal for rabies it's so much cheaper than just getting the rabies vaccine but if you get bit by an animal that's potentially rabid you need to get the rabies vaccine and it can cost like 10 grand that's the thing is um i didn't think about the bill i just thought about the pain i've heard rabies shots hurt Yeah. And I just thought I really, especially if you were bitten. I heard raccoon bites hurt. I know.

But if you had already been bitten and if her daughter had been bitten, then she's saving her from getting all the shots. Yeah. All right. It'd be funny to put them in a box and then just leave it on your porch. And then like those people who steal people's packages. Oh. Give it a rabbit raccoon.

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Fuel restrictions apply. See site for details. Anyway, that was just kind of a warm up. I was an appetizer. It was significant. It was an interesting video. It was a cool one. And it was neat that the entire thing was captured on like a ring camera or something. So all you listeners out there, if you want to see it, just look up Mom Save's Daughter from Raccoon.

But we're going to get to our main course now, which is a story about yellow jackets, an animal we haven't featured yet. So this is from a book called Alive. It's a collection of different stories of people that ran into different problems, some of them animals, some of them natural disasters. a bunch of different things. The author of this particular story's name was Jerry Johnson, and it's about some yellow jackets and a family that ran into a really particularly large swarm of them. So we're going to get into it. The story takes place in late October 1995, and our main person that we're going to focus on is this woman named Debbie Walker. She's 41 years old. She's a mother of two, and she's adjusting to this new life in the rural

wilds of southern Florida. Her husband Ben is a native Floridian. He's spent most of his 46 years exploring these dense swamps, these jungles around Florida. And on this fall day in October, he decides to bring his family along for an adventure. So they're out hunting deer and boar. And Debbie is a bit uneasy. She originally was from Maryland. She's not too familiar and comfortable in the swamps yet. And she knows that the swamps are full of potentially dangerous wildlife, stuff like alligators, Shrek snakes. Shrek lives in the swamp.

And the main thing making her feel more comfortable was that she was in a swamp buggy. So a swamp buggy is essentially like, they're typically these DIY vehicles. I just said, like, mom, get rid of a dollar. They're like these DIY vehicles where people build them up, they typically have an open-air platform

with a bunch of seats on top. And then these really big tires that are about six feet tall or even taller. And Debbie really liked being on this buggy because it gave her a lot of separation from the ground. They're almost a dozen feet above the ground. So they're there with their family. They brought their kids along. Matthew was four and Mark was two. It's pretty young kids.

Would you take us on adventures and excursions when we were that young? I'd take you on excursions, but we wouldn't have taken you a hunting. No, I don't think so. Yeah. So it had been a long day, the sun's starting to drop. It gives these large cypress trees, these long shadows over these big expanses of swamp water and grass. The two boys are sleeping on the back seats and the buggy. The buggy's hum is kind of lolling them to sleep. And beneath them in these two large cages, Ben has some big hunting dogs that are also napping. So it's a real nappy atmosphere on this buggy. Everyone's taking a little nap. Mike, you love a good nap. Yeah, I don't, buggy nap sounds hard, but these sound like professionals. Yeah. I don't know if you do that. So she's, Debbie's kind of getting ready to go. The day's getting a little longer.

They'd been hunting all day. They'd been outside a lot. She's ready to go. She tells Ben that she wants to head back home. She wants to get home before it's dark. And Ben says, all we have to do is follow our buggy tracks. And we won't have any problem getting back before sunset. Huh.

So they start heading back. They're going to just kind of drive their tracks back home. After starting back, though, the buggy. Ties get entangled in some kind of brush. It was a little unclear in the story what that was, but for some reason they couldn't move, and Ben had to get out and use, like, a knife or a machete or something to try and cut this brush away from the buggy.

You think the yellow jackets set that trap up? They might have. It might have been a trap from the yellow jackets. Or Shrek. It could have been a Shrek trap, too. Debbie had kind of zoned out a bit. She's staring out across the swamp, when suddenly a Yelp from one of the dogs snaps her back in reality. And then she hears Ben yell out, oh my God, and she turns and looks at her husband.

Ben's clawing at his jeans. And to her horror, she sees that he's covered from his ankles all the way up to his thighs in this writhing blanket of yellow jackets. Oh, man. It's like that speed racer scene where they throw the beehive into the other car. I kind of remember. That would be rough. We watched it last night, and I still don't remember it. That would be hard to drive, like, in a race.

I know. Or there's that prank in jarring. Jackass where they would like drop the beehive in the limbo. Yeah. One time on Fear Factor, they covered people in the bees. Yeah. Oh, it's terrible. I know why more race car drivers don't use that strategy.

What did they have to do? They had to just be totally covered with bees, and then their partner had to do something like five times, and they got stung by bees. There's no way I do it. I wouldn't do it for a million dollars. All right. What?

I'm never going on Fear Factor. You wouldn't get covered. in bees for a million dollars? No. Oh, I would do it. There's very few things I wouldn't do for a million dollars. What do you think would be the worst thing to have to do five times to save someone else from being covered in bees?

Well, I think they had to carry something with bees in their mouth or something like that. So when they do that, they put like a pheromone on them. Yes. And then they cover them. Yes. They actually have competitions for like who can have the biggest bee beard and stuff. That's like snakes on a plane, the pheromones? It is.

We're going to talk a lot about pheromones today. They always get stung, though, a little bit. Yeah. Usually you get a sting or two. Yeah. All right. So we are going to talk a bit about yellow jackets before we go back to the story. I do think yellow jackets, we're doing it right now, often get lumped in with bees,

but they're a very different animal. That is a beehive in speed racer. Yeah. And his bees in jackass and his bees in Fear Factor. But these are yellow jackets. Yellow jackets are a species of wasp. So wasps are very closely related to hornets. and less closely related to bees.

So wasps and hornets are really close, but bees are quite different. Wasps and hornets are both predatory insects, and they get a lot of their protein from hunting and killing other insects, whereas bees are getting most of their protein from nectar and from like visiting flowers and stuff. Yeah.

Cute. Bees are nice. Yeah. Yellow jackets, though, do have some benefits as well, which we're going to talk about. They all three of them, wasps, hornets, and bees, all three will feed on sugars that they get from fruits or other sources.

And that's why if you are at a picnic or something, they're going for your soda, they're going for like fruit, anything that's sugary and syrupy, they really like to get at. But yellow jackets will actually go for meat, too. They get their name from their distinctive yellow and black coloration. Paper wasps have a really similar coloration, but there are a few ways to tell them apart. The Pittsburgh Steelers, too. Yeah, also Pittsburgh Steelers. That's a good point.

Good job, Jeff. Paper wasps have like an open honeycomb-like nest structure. So sometimes, you know, when you're walking under eaves or something in a house and you see those like honeycomb-looking paper wasps, that's a paper wasp. If you can see multiple little pockets and cells in the nest, it's most likely a paper wasp. Yellow jackets tend to build their nest underground and there's only one opening to it. So they do still make paper and they make these kind of complex nest structures. but they're generally underground and there's generally only one opening.

So they're like the dwarves of the wasps family? Yeah, they're building Moria, whereas the paper wasps are like La Florean, building stuff in trees. Yeah, exactly. What else? Don't dig too deep. Mom, you agree with that? Mom's, yeah.

Do you agree with that, mom? The paper wasps are more like La Florean? I have no clue. All right. So. What would you say they are there? Yeah, what kind of elves? Of elf?

You don't need to answer to that, Mom. Christmas elf. Sure. Off on a shelf. Paper wasps tend to have yellow-tipped antenna and they fly with their legs out. Yellow jackets have black antenna and they fly with their legs tucked in. Yellow jackets are typically much more aggressive than paper wasps and they will sting sometimes even unprovoked. Whereas paper wasps, you have to kind of mess with their nest.

to get stuck. So that's a quick explanation on the difference between those two, because they do get mistaken for each other a lot. So Yellow Jackets have a really interesting life cycle, and a lot of what we're going to talk about, it revolves around that. This is something that I learned as I was doing the research, and I really liked it. Only pregnant queens survived through the winter. So only the pregnant queen over winters. So she, on her own, starts the new nest, and she starts building the paper, and she starts making all these little holes for her new eggs. She goes out and finds food. She defends the nest.

She does that all on her own. Wow. And then she is storing sperm in what's called a spermatica, and it's essentially like a reservoir in her body that when she's ready to start laying eggs again, she can access the stored up sperm that she has in there. Oh, well. What?

Just get rid of my money. So you gave him a weird look when he used to, talking about sperm. Oh, okay. I was like, what does my mom have to say about sperm? Do I want to hear this? Yeah, share your thoughts. All right.

So she starts building this really tiny nest, and she creates 30 to 50 brood cells where she lays eggs. Those eggs hatch into larva, and she's going to go out and find food and feed them for about 20 days until they pupate, and they turn into small, infertile female workers. And so it's really cool because she's on her own And then she makes these like couple dozen female workers That then get older and they start building the whole nest around her

And then she keeps laying eggs and keeps making more and more female workers And once there's enough, she stops working and just starts laying eggs That sounds Cindy Sounds good, right? Yeah So is this for all wasps or is it just yellow? I don't know I can't say this for all of them but I would guess that there's a similar life cycle to a lot of wasps.

But we're specifically talking about yellow jackets today. So once that she has enough of these workers around her, she's just going to start laying eggs. The workers take over the main chores of the nest. So they're out getting food. They're defending the nest. Only female yellow jackets have stingers. So just remember that.

She now is just laying more eggs, and the nest is going to expand really quickly. At its peak size, they'll be up to 5,000 workers and 10,000 little cells for her to lay eggs in. Whoa. Up until the fall, every single bug in that nest, every single insect is going to be female. They're all going to be infertile female workers.

And then in the fall, she's going to start laying male and fertile female eggs. So you can choose? Yeah. That's so cool. She actually, like, will, like, not inseminate some of the eggs because those ones will grow into male drones because they don't have like the full gene.

It's really interesting. I couldn't find a lot of information on that, but one of the sources I found. So the one she's inseminates, we'll turn into fertile females. Okay. She'll lay these male and female eggs, like new queens, and they leave to mate when they're healthy enough. So they just leave the nest.

And the male drones form these groups that are kind of like bachelor groups. They're out there on the town. Jeff's been there. They patrol large areas looking for fertile female queens. And when they find one, they approach in a zigzag pattern. You've also been there, right, Jack? The whole group. They land near the female, and they climb onto her gaster.

Haven't been there. Okay. The gaster is like the large part of her abdomen. So it's essentially like her butt. They lock genitals. Some day, Jeff, you'll get there. They lock genitals and they mate. And when the copulation is over, the female will release a pheromone.

or nibble at the male to let him know that her spermatica is full. And the thought is she does this so that males aren't wasting energy trying to mate with her because she's full. A really interesting thing is that multiple males will try and mate with her, but they won't interfere with mating when it's happening. It's considerate. Yeah, it's very considerate. But as soon as the other male leaves,

the second male will come in and try mating with the female. And the idea behind that is like often it's that second insemination that's still. that is like going to pass on the jeans. So sometimes to prevent this, the first male will just extend his mating with the female. Yeah, that's my guy. It's like that lady sheriff who just got in trouble. I don't know about that. She was having like all the guy police under her just like take turns.

Mom, do you have anything you want to contribute to this discussion? No, can we edit that? We're almost through. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost.

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Hilton, for the stay. Sometimes the genital walks. are too strong. So these locks that they have, they literally kind of lock together. Sometimes it's too strong and when, and they both can die when they try and disengage. So this can be a fatal act for them.

The males die after mating. So again, this isn't a great, if you're, I don't know, it depends on your perspective. But being a male yellow jacket isn't the best deal. You mate and then you die.

And once her, the new queen, once her spermatica is full, she is going to go find a safe place to overwinter, like a hollow log, a stump. soil cavity, a man-made structure, and she goes into kind of like a hibernation state where she passes the winter. And so those are the only yellow jackets in like all these

yellow jacket communities, at least in the north, that survived. Just the fertilized female queens. Every other one dies. Those female workers die. Every year. Every year. Oh. And all the males die? Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, what the heck? So that's why in the late summer, early fall, you'll start to notice there's a lot more yellow jackets around. It's because all of those adult female workers are flying around and the males are flying around and these fertile female queens are flying around. Everyone's kind of out. There's only one queen per hive, right?

Right. But like one queen in that hive will make a bunch of other queens and then they go start their own hives. Got you. There is an exception to this. In warmer places, like southern Florida, where our story takes place, sometimes they don't die. and sometimes hives or nests will go for multiple years. And when that happens, those nests can reach up to 250,000 individuals in a single nest. Wow.

So they can be absolutely massive. And it's still just one queen? I think so. That's crazy. Actually, I'm not sure. I'm not going to say that for sure. It could be multiple queens. We think it might be just one.

It would probably have to be multiple, I think. But I don't know. I have to have to look into that some more. Stumped you. Stumped. Take a coin away. All right. Take away.

Yeah, do I get, do I lose coins for this being stumped? No, no, no. Okay. How about when I get angry? Do I lose coins when I get angry? I think you should give me one of Wes's coins. Only like a, um. That's fair.

For what? For stumping him. No. Sorry. When we were kids, my mom used to do this with us, but she'd make us fight and we'd get dollars if we fought with each other, right, mom? No. She'd call them kid fights.

She'd film them and sell them. Not true. Only one of us got dessert. Yeah. No. All right. Okay, so because they hunt and kill insects that are destructive to native plants and agriculture, Yellow Jackets are actually really beneficial insects to have around.

I think they've been villainized. I think most people have this really soft kind of fuzzy feeling for honeybees because they're cute and they're kind of our friends. But Yellow Jackets are actually really beneficial as well because they kill a lot of pest insects that do a lot of damage to crops and gardens and things that we eat. And they also sometimes are pollinators just because they'll go kill an insect on like a flower or something. And then they take some of that pollen to a different flower. That's what I was really wondering is what they were useful for, because I really don't like them. They're useful for killing pests.

For other bugs that eat gardens and do all sorts of things like that. Okay. But they can be a huge nuisance because they sting people. And they're, you know, they really hurts. Female yellow jackets are equipped with a venomous stinger that will pierce the skin of an intruder and inject venom. It acts really quickly. It causes immediate pain. Luckily it falls off and they die. It doesn't, Jeff. They can sting multiple times. The pain can be long lasting. It can lead to itching, burning around the

sting site, swelling, and fatigue. And death. It can. Exactly. I was just getting there. The body often produces histamines to fight the foreign substance, and that causes swelling and itching. And for some people that histamine response is really exaggerated, which is an allergic response, and it leads to a cascading response that can end up in anaphylactic shock. So some of those symptoms when that happens are coughing and wheezing, problems breathing, problems swallowing, a tightness in their throat, changes to your skin, breaking out in hives, feeling lightheaded or dizzy, passing out, vomiting. Mike, your favorite? Diary. Diarrhea. Really? I got to find myself a nest. problems living.

Do you think you're allergic? Have you been stung anytime recently? Yeah, a lot, actually. When I was little, I was always, yeah. Do you think you're allergic, though? Wasp. I mean, everyone is to like a certain degree, right? Right, your body is going to produce some histamines.

You're probably going to swell up a little bit, but you don't have, like, your throat doesn't close or anything. Mom, when was the last time you got stung by a bee? Can you think? A, like, yellow jacket? Yeah, sorry, any kind of sting from like a flying insect. Yeah, I picked some lilacs and brought them in, and I was, cutting them up and there was a yellow jacket in it and it stung me.

But now I'm realizing the yellow jacket was, because I was really mad. Like, stupid yellow jacket. It was just trying to help your lieax. Yeah, because they had bugs all over. Yeah. Okay. So, but one time I did get stung on the foot by a bee and I think I had a reaction. I thought I almost passed out.

Really? So I think it could be like what the circumstances too. Like I was hot and tired and probably dehydrated. Yeah. And also just like your mental reaction to the pain and different things like that too. Do you think it feels good when wasps inject their poison? No, I was wondering that too. No, for them.

Does it feel good to like, yeah, their poisons, of course. Okay. I don't think I've ever been stung by a yellow jack. Really? Yeah. Just two bees. Yeah. Let's pull a coyote Peterson.

One bee stung me at football practice when I was a junior. Uh-huh. And it was just like weird. all grouped up. And so then, like, I didn't make any noise because I didn't want anyone to think I wasn't tough because it's like at football, you know. Yeah. And it hurts so bad.

It hurts. It hurts for a long time. It's like every time I get stung by a yellow jacket, I always think, I forget how bad this hurts. Yes. This really hurts. And that's why these stories are always, I like to think about that when I, when we do stories about stinging insects, because I think you can hear about them.

people being stung and you're kind of like, oh, yeah, whatever. But then when you just get stung once by a yellow jacket, you just instantly rub it and it just hurts really, really, really bad. Yeah. It's like getting shot. Yeah. It kind of acts like it. By a little, by a tiny little gun.

Who? One of size kids. Oh. And it was, it's got stupid kids, though. No, he doesn't. Did it swell up? It did. Like a big old butt?

I felt really bad for him. Yeah. All right. Well, I was going to, oh, yeah. I had something else to say about that. Oh, yeah, you bring out... About his butt? No, no.

About one other thing. One little side note here, tangent, you said lilac. And just so you know, I think we're the only two people in the world that pronounce that plant that way. And I've gotten a lot of flack from it. Oh, really? Because I grew up saying it the way you say it, which is lilac, which I think sounds beautiful and just rolls off the tongue.

But just about everyone else in the world says lilac. Well, I didn't grow up with lilac's. All right, I just want to let you know that that's something we can bond over. We could go on to the computer. They could tell how to say words. Answer for warming. All right. Okay.

All right. So people that do go into an anaphystic shocker that have an allergic reaction can die as a result. What happens is that histamine response lowers their blood pressure, which means much less blood is sending oxygen to their brain, their heart, and their other vital organs. And their external tissues also get less oxygen. And so there's external tissues open up their cells and they swell up with fluids. And that swelling can cause the throat tissues to swell and restrict the airway and can actually lead to suffocation and death. Crazy.

So most people that die from wasp, hornet, or bee stings die from that allergic reaction. But you can also just die from getting stung way too many times and having way too much venom in your body. That doesn't happen that often. It takes about 1,500 stings to kill an average adult man. The CDC reports that between 2000 and 2017, 1,109 people died from hornet wasp or bee stings, which averages out to about 62 people a year. One of them was in Speed Racer. One of them was in Speed Racer.

He died from, it's actually like, I would be curious to know if they count people that have like a wasp fly into their car and then they get in a car accident. Because I think that happens more than we think. That happened to our cousin Eric. He took out a fence. Oh, yeah, that's true. There's a B in his car. It happens a lot.

All right. So I do think most of these deaths should be attributed to probably the allergic reaction, though. Right. All right. So you want me to transition you back to his story? I'm ready. So Shrek's got their buggy caught in a trap, and the dad's outside trying to get it untangled, and he's all a sudden covered in yellowjack.

Yeah, most of that was right. We're going to subtract Shrek from there. which we all know I'm not a fan of Shrek. All right. So within seconds, these yellow jackets are swarming the swamp buggy. The entire family is covered in a cloud of these stinging buzzing insects, which again, for me, like imagining the noise of that too would be really overwhelming. Just having that many buzzing insects around your head. To me, it's more the poisonous stinger.

The poisonous stings are the worst part. But the noise is also, it would be really confusing is what I'm saying. You would just be like deafened by all these buzzing insects. And before she really even has time to realize what's happening, Debbie starts filling these stings from the yellow jackets. And she, in her panic, realizes that her young children are also being stung by them. And Matthew wakes up screaming. He's waving his arms.

Two-year-old Mark was pleading for his mom to make it stop. So we got Matthew and Mark. They're really upset. They're getting stung. What do you think the odds are if they had more kids? They need them either Luke or John. I'll give you five to one odds. Okay.

So Ben climbs back into the driver's seat of the buggy, and he's trying frantically to get it into reverse, but it's not budging. And they don't really have time to try and troubleshoot what's going wrong with the buggy. And through this dense cloud of yellow jackets, they're yelling at each other, trying to figure out a plan,

and they're getting dozens and dozens of stings. And the kids are still screaming, and then these dogs, which are trapped in cages, are yelping and crying out and howling, too. So Mark finally just yells to death, Debbie says, hey, we got to get out of here. We can't. The buggy is a lost cause.

So he jumps down from the swamp buggy. Remember, this is like 12 feet. He jumps down in the tall grass and breaks his leg immediately. Oh. Yeah. It buckles underneath him. He can't run away. So he drags himself to some mud at the rear of the vehicle.

And he yells to Debbie, says, hey, the grounds a lot softer here. Toss me those kids, essentially. Wow. Yeah. And he knows, like, if they fall here. they'll probably be okay. So Debbie's holding the two-year-old, Mark, and the thought of dropping him almost a dozen feet is really scary to her.

It seems pretty crazy. But even as she's thinking about it, she starts getting stung again, and she bends over in pain and just drops him. So Mark falls, he lands in the soft mud, he's fine. Debbie then drops Matthew down, who's four. He tumbles down in the swamp, too, and then Debbie jumps down. Wait, why didn't the dad catch the kids?

I don't know. I was thinking the exact same thing as I'm reading this. But yeah, maybe. She just tossed them in the ground. That's what it said. Yeah. So they unfortunately have to leave the dogs behind. Their focus is on saving these kids.

The kids are now covered in stings. She and Ben are in the mud. They're doing their best to scrape all these yellow jackets off the kids and roll them around in the mud. We're going to talk in a minute why that's a bad idea. It seemed like a good idea. The mud isn't necessarily a bad. idea, but trying to knock the yellow jackets off isn't a good idea. And when we do what would Mike and Jeff do and Cindy do, I'll tell you why that's a bad idea. Okay. Okay. She suddenly realizes that she

can't see anything, and she's lost her glasses and all this chaos, and she's incredibly near-sighted. Like, she said she would even need her glasses to move around her house. So she's just, like, getting stung, can't see anything, covered in mud, her kids are dying, the dogs are yelping, her husband broke her leg. Yeah. Or his leg did break her leg. That would have been, yeah, that was actually bad.

So it's, you know, it's getting really bad. And they're starting to see the effect of these stings settle in. Her face is swelling up. Ben's like, like sees her and sees that she's almost unrecognizable. And he knows that they need to change their circumstances really quickly or all his entire family is going to die. So he tells Debbie to take the two-year-old mark and just get away from the swarm and that once they got away he would send Matthew after them mom could you do that

do you think like if dad if we were all in the mud say me and jeff are in the mud and dad says take one of them and go do you think you could do it you and cyrus is better because you're two years apart i think i would take both of you okay i don't know yeah i don't think i'd split up yeah i was a little curious about that too and i think that was probably one of the hardest things for her is running away. If you had to pick which one you took, which one would you go? Between me and Cyrus. Well, Cyrus would be better, I mean, at four would be better at walking.

Going with you. But Wes actually having a littler person, I don't want to leave him. I mean, it seems like the bees would affect them more. And you do think about that as a mom. Yeah. I mean, like we said, it'd take 1,500 stings to kill an adult man. Yeah. It's significantly less to kill a two-year-old child.

Sophie's choice. Yeah. It's a real Sophie's choice. I don't, yeah, I don't, I'm not sure why. It's tricky. Me neither. But she does grab Mark. She stumbles away from the cloud of insects.

And within a few dozen yards, they stop chasing her. So she managed to get away with Mark. And she sets Mark on the ground and turns back for Matthew, but he's already crawling out of the swirling cloud of yellow jackets. Good. Ben is still inside. So she tells the two kids. to stay put and she puts her head down and then she runs back into the swarm hoping to be able to get

Ben out but he's like 6-1-220 pounds and there's nothing she can do to pick him up and get him out of this mud and get him out of the swarm so she her speech is starting to slur she's really panicking she's pleading with him to get up she says ben what are we going to do and he just calmly tells her that she needs to leave and go get help and she says leave me leave the kids go get help. And he knows that if she tries to take the kids with her or whatever, they're going to slow her down and she just needs to get some help. She knew her history. She knew she had an allergy to stings. She could die if she stayed there and she knows that Ben's right. But it'd be really hard. Like that'd be a hard thing to do. So hard. Yeah. Is there any other like animals out there?

Yeah. I mean, they're in South Florida. There's tons of alligators. There's like lots of venomous snakes. Yeah, there's stuff for sure. Yeah, that's an impossible choice. Yeah. Because I just can't imagine leaving you guys, but if it's between, I mean, if it's the only way, which it might have been. Yeah. So, I mean, we weren't there, but I just can't imagine leaving. What if the wasps told you they would stop stinging us if you went to the moon? I'm not going the moon. Okay.

I didn't think so. You'd let them stick us to death? No, I... That's the only way we're getting out of there is if you go to the moon. I guess we all die together. All right. Oh, Jesus. Mom really doesn't want to go to the moon.

All right. Might as well die together. I don't want to be way on the moon dying while you guys are getting. You're not going to die. All right, whatever. We all have that dream trip. We've been wishing we could go on. But too often life or usually price gets in the way.

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see these buggy tracks in front of her. And she's stumbling through the swamp, her pants. panic's growing. She's becoming lethargic. Her thoughts are getting jumbled as like the venom sets in. It's doing its work and she's starting to go in anaphylactic shock. She's losing her ability to focus. And during that time, she actually stops following these tracks and starts following a different set of buggy tracks that were out in the swamp. So pretty, you know, it's not a good, this isn't looking good for this family. But not on purpose. Like she just not on purpose. She just got, she got lost. So Phil Pelletier. had just enjoyed a really nice day of hunting with his buddies. And when it came time to pack up their camp that afternoon, this 42-year-old Floridian had this nagging feeling that something was wrong. His friends all wanted to get going. He volunteered just to stay in the camp, pack it up, because he just had this weird feeling.

That's interesting. Yeah. Because there's probably no reason for him to feel that way at this point, right? No. He has no idea what's going on. He decides to stick around. His friends are like, sure, whatever. If you want to pack up, we're out of here.

His friends take off and he hangs out. It's almost 5 p.m. And he finally packs up. He gets in his truck. He's starting to drive and makes it a couple hundred, not even that, just makes it a few yards and sees a woman stumbling down an old railroad bed toward him. And she's covered in mud and she's all bruised. So immediately he thinks she's probably a victim of assault like someone had hurt her.

So he yells out, lady, are you all right? And she, when she hears another voice, just starts screaming. My babies are dead. husband broke his leg. We were attacked by yellow jackets. They were all over us. So he tells Debbie that he would help and then he'd go look for her family, but she's like, her airway is shutting down at this point. She's having a hard time breathing. So they decide to go to try and get help. There's this town called Ortona, which is only about five minutes away and there's a store there. So they load her into the truck and they just speed off to the store, which I think again would be,

mom, I mean, really hard thing to like have the foresight to think, well, if I die, then I can't help find my family. Because I was just thinking that as you were telling it, thinking that took so much guts for her, just let him do that and make that decision because she would be just like, no. I'm sure every cell on her body was like, I need to get my kids. I need to get my kids. But like she knew that if she didn't survive that her kids would die too. And I was thinking he might have been a good talker like talking her into it.

Yeah. You know like we can get more help. I need help with. Totally. Yeah. Well, the thing too is there. the middle of the swamp. This isn't like a developed area. There's no way

they're finding them without some context from her. Right. So. The other thing is like if your throat is closing up and you think like if you can hardly breathe at all. That's all you think about. Like you're kind of like I need to breathe. Right. You know. Right. So after getting to the store, the paramedics then arrive

they give Debbie a shot of epinephrine. They mark her condition as life-threatening. And it's likely without this intervention that she actually would have died. They start working on her. And as they are, she's pleading with Phil to go back and look for her family. And she's describing the general area of where she left him. Phil's already a hero, but he jumps back into his truck. He speeds down this railroad bed at 60 miles per hour.

So he's flying through the swamp. And she had described this area where she'd come out of the woods. And when he sees a clearing that looks similar to what she described, he turns off the railroad and heads towards it. But his truck immediately begins sinking in the water. And he even says that he could hear his head. fan blades of his engine hitting the water because it had risen so much in his truck. So he puts it in reverse.

He goes back and he then like realized that he's not going to be able to get through that area. So he looks for a logging road and finds a little logging road and turns back off into the swamp. And he's like again really worried about his truck because the water's rising in again. And he's about to give up when he sees a little flash of color. And he looks out and he sees a child sitting in a puddle of water. And this kid was facing away from him. And when Phil got close to the kid, which was Matthew, the four-year-old, he was talking to himself. And Phil yells out, I've got your mama.

So Matthew turns towards Phil and he starts crying. And Phil is, like, shocked by what he sees. Because at this point, he's totally swollen. Like, he doesn't even really look like a person he's so swollen. And he describes his face and his head being so swollen that his ears were just, like, sticking straight out. Oh, geez. Yeah. Like Shrek.

Yeah, and it's just like Shrek. We finally got Mom with the Shrek, dude. His skin is stretched tight all over his body. He's pale, he's white. He's covered in all these purple stings from the yellow jackets, which thankfully had moved on. And Phil picks up Matthew, and the boy starts screaming in pain

because he's irritating all those stings again. And then he starts shaking violently and then goes limp with his head down and Phil's arms. And he knows that Matthew, again, close to death, needs a media help. So rather than look for the rest of the family, he loads them into the truck and speeds off towards Ortona again, which, again, is only five minutes away.

He speeds back through the swamp. He's doing his best to avoid deep water. But his luck runs out when he hits this huge pool and he completely floods his engine and it just shuts down. Oh, no. Yeah. So he jumps out of the truck and he immediately starts wading through this, like, chest deep water with Matthew in his arms.

Again, there's alligators, there's snakes, there's all sorts of stuff. And he's like, even if I have to run Toritona, I'm getting this kid to safety. So he crosses a clearing. He's holding Matthew and he looks up and there's this deputy sheriff, Carlin Coleman, who's standing there on the other edge of the clearing. And he followed Phil's tracks and he's there to help. So they pile into the deputy's vehicle and they race off.

And he explains that the only way they're going to rescue the rest of the family is with a swamp buggy. He's like, hey, we're not taking another truck in there. It's just going to end up the same way. We need a swamp buggy. and they get about a mile or two down the road and they run into the fire chief, whose name is Dennis Hollingsworth, and all the three of them come up with a plan of action. So at this point, I'm just already panicking as a mom because they left the two-year-old. I know.

I just can't. I'm just like, no, just go a little further. I know. But so far, he's saved the mom, and now he's saving, I guess each person is important. They had to make a lot of really hard decisions. Yeah. And it's the crazy thing about this story is like a lot of the decisions they made, I don't know if I would necessarily make the same one,

but it ended up turning out just right for them. And a lot of that's because of luck. Like this guy running into the police deputy and then them running into the fire chief, suddenly they have multiple people. But maybe they had come because of the mom. Yeah, for sure they had. For sure they had. But like he didn't know that when he turned around.

Right. Okay. And if like a four year old just like, shakes and then passes out in your arms. It's kind of like, I don't think I have much time. Right. You don't want to go looking for the two-year-old only to figure out that the four-year-old died in your arms.

Yeah, right. So they split up. So what they decide they're going to do is Coleman, the deputy, is going to take Matthew to Ortona so he can get some help. And then Phil, the bystander that's helping out, and then the fire chief, Dennis, are going to go look for the rest of the family in a swamp buggy. So at this point, they're running out of time, though.

it's starting to get really dark, they're realizing they don't have much time left to find Ben and Mark. So they start searching, and it doesn't take them long to find an area where they see these really large buggy tracks that cross some smaller ones. And they realized that that's where Debbie had gotten confused, and she'd followed the smaller ones. And had she not followed those smaller ones, she wouldn't have bumped into Phil. Phil, yeah. And had she just stayed on the large ones, she would have just gone way out in the swamp and probably died. So the fact that she got confused and got on those smaller tracks is probably what saved this entire family. That's wild.

Yeah. So Phil and Dennis follow these large tracks to a pond. It's surrounded by high grass and across the pond they can see a little baby's head. So Dennis jumps out in the water. He wades through it. He gets to mark the baby as quickly as possible. He's two years old. Mark's bloated.

He's gray. He's covered in stings as well. But he's still breathing. So Dennis scoops him up and radio's dispatch tells them they're going to go. they would go get Mark to help and then they're going to come back for the dad. So they're going to take the boy. Kind of a miracle he didn't drown. I know.

Like all he had to do is pass out in the water and he's gone. Yeah. He's sitting in like a few inches of water? I think so. Yeah. So then Ben is found not long after. They had stopped singing him. They were still stinging the buggy, but they had stopped stinging Ben.

He was losing consciousness when he heard the rescuers call out to him. They retrieved the buggy. They'd burn all the wass. off of it. The thing that made me really happy too, the dogs are still alive. The dogs made it through this whole thing, which is crazy. I kept wondering, why don't they let the dogs out of the crates? I know. But I just think if you're dealing with all that, it'd be so hard to focus on your dogs. I think so too. And then like climbing back up 12 feet to get to them and stuff. Oh, okay. Yeah, for sure. But they also saw where the yellow jackets come out of the ground. And what had happened is this

nest had gotten so big. It was probably one of these multi-year nests where it had spread from this underground cavity into a fallen log as well, and they had hit this fallen log with their buggy, and that's what caused them to become so enraged. Yeah. Everyone recovered from their injuries. Ben had broken his leg in several places. All right. So that's the story.

That's why she didn't throw the kids down to him. Because he had broke his leg. In several places? I mean, maybe it was even sticking out or something. I think he was in, like, a lot of pain at that point. Yeah, because he didn't really crawl out either. I mean, he crawled to the back of the vehicle. But, yeah, I think they were just, I just think of, like, all the stinging and buzzing and everything.

And it would just be so hard to make a good decision. Yeah. I mean, they really did very well for the circumstances. I mean, the B episode that we did, the guy climbing and stuff, it's just, it seems like this stuff happens in the worst possible places. Yeah, it's such a bad spot. But at least he did say a prayer, you know. He did say a prayer, yeah, at least. All right, so we're going to do our ouchies.

Who wants to go first? Yeah, I'll start this off. Let's just do, I don't know, it's kind of like four people combined. Yeah, I feel like you can kind of give Debbie, Mary, or Debbie, Mark, and Matthew, like, a one score, and then Ben probably gets a different score, right? I don't know, Debbie to, like, not being able to breathe is really bad. Yeah, she had the allergic reaction. That's true. So go ahead.

Dude, you know, I'll give Debbie and Ben. I'm just giving them all sevens. Okay. How long did this from start to finish? How long of a time? I think Ben was out there for hours. Oh, man. Debbie, it seemed like she only got stung for a few minutes,

but then she had to, you know, deal with all the effects of the allergies. Yeah. The boys, I also think only got stung for a few minutes, but they just had to, like, sit in the swamp. The emotional torture for Debbie would have been. I mean, that's like a 10 out of 10. Emotional. I know the boys.

had nightmares for a long time after this. But I don't know if it's just a few minutes because they were all upset. I mean, they just... But they got out of them and then they weren't being stung anymore. It's not like they all just stay there. So you're giving them like a one? Yeah, from what I read, after they got away, they didn't, they weren't stung anymore. But they got dozens and dozens and dozens of stings.

Like all of them got stung a lot. I think we can just assume they did get stung more. Okay. Sure. All right. Sure. What score are you giving them? Oh, I'm giving them a nine.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. What? I'm going to go with a five. All right. I think from our B story, which I know, again, it's apples and oranges, but they are somewhat similar. They kind of describe the pain as after a while, they just kind of became numb to it.

And I think it would really hurt, but I don't think any of them had to, besides Ben, none of them really had to spend much time in the hospital or anything. Yeah, I'm going to go with five. Did Mike do it? I'm not sure. I'm having a hard time because the dad Ben, it seems like so much of what made this experience. Well, I don't know if so much is the right phrase to use, but there's just so much uncertainty and like emotional and mental a toll that was being taken because like he's sitting

there with a broken leg, not knowing if his wife survived or would be able to help the kids. Probably feeling like super helpless. He couldn't do anything. Yeah. So I'll go with like a six. Okay. It seems like a story. where like you just want to, like they just want to give up and die.

Yeah. You know? I think like a lot of people would. Yeah. Yeah. See, I think ouchies too have to deal with fear because sometimes if it's a wild animal, then all your adrenaline goes and you're fighting. And so you don't feel the ouchy as much until later.

But with this, I think you just totally feel it the whole time. Yeah, I wonder what the dictionary says. how the definition is. Yeah, I don't know. I think they probably had some adrenaline kick in, though, too. I don't know, though. Yeah. All right.

So before we get to our main categories, I asked Mike and Jeff and myself to each come up with a story, a quick story, where you felt protected or cared for by your mom. So why don't, I'll go first, then Mike, then Jeff.

Sure. Yeah. One that I'm going to tell, and I honestly can't remember if I've told this on one of our other Mother's Day episodes, But it's one that really I, like, remember very clearly is I was pretty young and I was walking home from school and I had been throwing dandy lions up in the air. Like I was picking dandy lions, like the yellow ones.

They weren't fuzzy yet. And just like chucking them up in the air. And I threw one and this car sped by right when I did it and it hit the car. And the guy thought I had thrown a rock at his car and screeched off the road and came out in this huff. And I'm like six years old. And like pretty much chases me. me up to my door. And I run in, I get behind my mom who would come to the door too. And he was just

like so pissed off and was just like, your son threw a rock at my car and was really angry. And I, you know, really sheepishly, it was like, it was a dandelion. It wasn't a rock. And he was like, it wasn't a dany lion. It was a rock. I know a rock when a rock hits my car. And my, my mom was just like, if he says it was a dany line, it was a dany lion. And just really stuck up for me. and I felt very protected and believed. And that was important for me as a little kid because it was a Danny line. And like it was just, it was a very nice moment. So thanks, Mom.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And little did I know for the next four hours my mom was seething in the airport parking lot.

Yeah. And I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I was just like, whatever. This probably seems maybe normal. I didn't know how travel worked. So we finally landed and I was one of the last to get off the plane. And so I was walking almost shoulder to shoulder with the captain back through the terminal. And somehow, this is like post 9-11.

My mom had somehow gotten past security. and was waiting at the door, like to, basically a cost and, like, assign blame to this poor captain who had no, like, nothing to do with this. It was not his fault. It was just whatever. Yeah. And I was like, I was afraid it was going to get physical. This was like such a small deal for me, you know, but a little, something unexpected happened to one of her children, and it set her off. And I was like, whoa, this is the most angry I've ever seen my mom get. Mom will go to bat for you. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how she met her solid past. security and got to that gate.

It still doesn't make sense. A lot of ticket somewhere. It's funny because we were supposed to go to a Denver Nuggets game and we just missed it completely. So maybe that's why she was mad. She just wanted. She big Nuggets fan. Carmel and Anthony.

Just got it. Jeff, you got one? Yeah, I'll just say like my three like big surgeries I've had in life. Mom's like always been there to drive me there and take me back. And yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed-sponsored jobs.

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Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Okay, well, we'll get into our categories unless anyone has anything else they want to add. Mom, do you got anything you want to add? Just the second time you did that, it was a rock. It was a rock. Yeah.

I graduated to rocks. Yeah, it didn't take much longer. All right, we'll get into categories. So we're going to do, I think in our other Mother's Day episodes, we've done some of our favorite pop culture moms and whatnot. So this time we're going to do our worst pop culture mom. Moms from movies or TV or whatever that didn't do a really good job, mom and... I'll start us. Go for it.

I'm going ordinary people. Okay? I don't think I've ever seen it. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's like two brothers, and they're like both out at sea, and the boat there are in capsizes, and the older brother drowns. Mm-hmm.

And the mom just, like, in the rest of the movie, clearly loved the older brother more. and blames the younger son for her losing her other son. And the younger son is all depressed. And the mom just like never figures out that she loves him. I'm going to want up you. Okay. I'm picking Tony Colette's character from Hereditary. I was thinking about picking her.

She also blames her son for the death of another child. But then pretty much sacrifices him to a satanic cult. and he turns into a demon at the end of the earth. Yeah, he becomes like a demon. Pretty bad mom. Kills her husband. Yeah, bad. It was her ratitary.

It wasn't her fault. Yeah. Mom, do you have an answer? Can we go to Mike? Sure, we'll go to Mike. Just to make sure this is worst mom, right? Yeah. You guys, your moms were pretty good.

It sounded like for one of the kids. Yeah, so I'm thinking a movie I just saw for the first time recently, the man from nowhere, Jeff and I are big fans of them. At the very beginning, there's a little girl. great little actress, super cute. Her mom is like a go-go dancer who's super addicted to heroin, and she gets into smuggling and stealing and trafficking the drug, and basically just leaves her daughter to be abducted by some gangsters

in like this child organ trafficking ring, and that's a pretty bad. It's a pretty bad mom. Yeah. Felt really bad for her. That's a good one. Yeah, that is a good one. And there's so many like that that I would, you know,

like when the mom sits down to smoke with the child. Put a point back. That was an acceptable way. But there's the two I thought of there's one Stephen King one. It wasn't a movie. It was just a little TV thing. But the mom actually gave her son to the devil to save the town or something. I don't know.

To do. Yeah. And I just. You wouldn't do that. I wouldn't. Yeah. But the other one on a softer note, let's just talk about Swiss family Robinson. Yeah.

She's a good mom. She was a good mom in a way, but she kept keeping the little guy out of everything. Like, oh, don't let him do that. He just wanted to explore. And she actually, you know, he could do that. He needed to learn it. So she needed to catch a tiger if he wants. Yeah, she needed to let up a little bit.

She's a bit of a buzzkill, wasn't she? What a hell of a copter parent. Don't even let her. Don't catch a killer. Tiger. Yeah. All right. That's a great answer.

That was really good. All right, so we're going to go now to our next category, which is our favorite moms in nature, our favorite animal moms. I'm going to go first. I'll say elk moms are one of my favorite moms. And I think that's just like living in mammoth and them dropping their calves all over the city and like them or the town and just being charged nonstop by elk moms. They're really devoted to keeping those little elk calves alive. and they turn from this really docile animal into an animal that you just absolutely have to avoid.

And I just, that transformation when they have a calf was always really interesting to me. Just like that motherly instinct just really kicks in for them. And so I'm going to pick them as one of my favorites. They're not my favorite, but they're one of my favorites. I'm going to pick gray whales. Okay. The moms are like the calves go up to boats right away

and just play with boats. Yeah. Like, if I was a few weeks old, I would be stoked to play with a boat. That's true. Like in a boat, just let me drive our family boat we had when I was a few weeks old. Why didn't you do that? You couldn't do anything in a few weeks old. I know.

You could hardly do it. And these whales saw the whole world. It was winter, Jeff. It was winter. Do you want to go out in the winter? The whales saw Alaska, their first year alive. Yeah, that's true. I had to go myself when I was an adult.

You saw California, the ocean. My first year? You saw those whales traveling probably. I wish I could be out there playing with boats. All right. It's a weird, weird thing, but Mike. I'm picking elephant. I like how mom elephants kind of use their trunks.

It's just like a constant contact leash. I think that's really nice. They're just always touching their little babies with their trunk. It's good pick. It's cute to me. Elephants are pregnant for two years. Yeah, that's a good mom. Longest gestation of any of any mammal.

Yeah. Longer than even like whales? That's a good question, actually. Land mammal, let's do that. Land mammal. Yeah. I'll go with dolphins. I just read up that the mom dolphin actually sings its little noise to the baby before it's born so that it'll recognize her when it comes out by her little voice.

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. All right. Can you make a dolphin noise, Cindy? I can't. But Kelly, my niece can really well.

I think you should try. Why don't we have her on for next Mother's Day? You don't even know? I don't even know what they sound. You don't want to try? Well, let's see what you think they sound like. They click. Like what?

Click, click, click. No. I could do a chicken. Perfect. I can do a chicken. That was a chicken dolphin. All right. I like that.

All right. So, Mom, we're going to do a quick cage match category. And it's going to be you versus some different animals. And I'm mostly just curious. to know if you would actually engage in these scenarios or if you would run away. Okay. So the first one... Wait, can I ask a question about the cage match?

So with the animals, do they have their same amount of brain activity? Like, they're not smart. These are just animals. These are just normal animals. I'm going to set up the scenarios for you. These are not special... They have guns. Yeah, they don't have guns.

X-Men or special brains. What were you trying to say? Well, sometimes when you guys put, like, you know, said you were going to go again. Like, you didn't think you could take 100 kindergartners. Yeah. But I know that you can even take one kindergartner because of your emotion. Oh, because I wouldn't punch a kindergartner.

You would, yeah, you wouldn't. Okay. Oh, yeah, I mean, that's a good point. Okay. I'll set up a scenario for you, though. Okay. The first scenario, we're just going to go with the story. Your two kids will see me and Cyrus, when we're really young, are being attacked by

yellow jackets. Are you running away or are you helping us? How young? We're two and four. We're all being swarmed by yellow jackets. I'm helping you. You're helping us. Okay. The next one, it's just me. I'm 16 years old. We're on a walk and a coyote runs up and starts biting my leg. Are you going to engage or are you going to run away? I'm going to pause and see what you do. All right. Not engaging. All right, but you'll hang out. I will. I won't run away. But at 16, you're going to let me take care of it, myself. Yes. Okay.

Jeff is 10 years old. He's fishing and he steps in between a moose and her calf. And the moose charges at him and you're able to get in front of them if you wanted to. Would you get in front of the moose and Jeff? She wants to say no. I don't know what I'd do. Okay. I probably would look for a weapon.

You'd pause again? Yeah. I probably would look for a weapon. Like get a big rock or a log and start beating on it. but not till it got him. All right. Because maybe your best option to save him, you getting in the way and getting hurt yourself

might not be the best option. That's true. Thank you, Michael. Yeah. Rock. Plus, I would be afraid. You didn't consider going after her baby? No, I didn't. That's what Jeff would do.

Hold the baby hospital. Punch his baby. That's a good. Great idea. Cyrus is 28 years old. You're on a hike in Glacier National Park. He rounds a corner and a grizzly bear attacks him. pulls them down and starts flipping them around like a rag doll.

You and dad both have bear spray. What are you doing? We run down and spray the bear. You're going to go spray it? Oh, yeah. You're not just going to wait for dad to do it? Oh, no. Okay.

No. Well, if you don't have bear spray. Then what would you do? We might try and distract it, so it came to get us. Flash it. But there's two of us, so grouping is better. So you would try and get a grizzly bear to attack you, but not a moose? Well, I have to step in front of them. It's already charging.

All right. Okay. I'm 33 years old. We go on a trip to Mexico. I jump in the water off the boat and you see a great white shark swimming toward me. What are you doing? I'm screaming my lungs out. You're not getting in the water, though. That's not going to help anything. It does. I'm pushing your dad in the water. There is data that shows when a shark attacks a person that people responding and helping can stop the attack. There is data that the shark attacks, two people. I'm not sure if there is, but that's possible.

Red, shark attacks. This is the last one. Jeff, at his current age, has a raccoon run up and latch on to his leg, and it starts attacking him. But Jeff was dealing drugs in that area where the raccoon's attacking him. Are you going to help him? No, I wouldn't help him. Even if he wasn't doing drugs. No, not doing him.

He's dealing them. Yeah, he can. He can handle the raccoon. All right. Well, would you guys say that she passed the test? Like, if there were a test to say whether she was responsible enough to have children or not. I think she passed, but she didn't ace it. Yeah.

It's like a B. A B minus. All right. Yeah, I think I would like to just say that the more familiar you are in a situation, the braver you are, like with the bear thing. You've gone over that a million times. Yes. We've done that.

I mean, we've discussed every bear attack that ever was. that we know about. Well, that's the whole point of the podcast, too, is like, the more people hear about this, the more it becomes second nature to them. Right. It's not like, oh, what did I hear about bears that once? You know, it's like, oh, I've heard about this 30 times. So I know what I need to do.

If it's a great white swimming at you and we're in the boat, we should just like cannonball next to you or something? No, no. So I, yeah, actually, when I said that, I immediately wanted to take that back. if you were in the boat, what you'd want to do is like yell for me to get in the boat. Yeah. But if I was actually being attacked, like say the shark came and attacked me, you guys should try and rescue me. However, that needs to be.

Even if you have to jump in, you should try and rescue me. Well, we'd probably get the boat right by you and then get an oar. But if you didn't have the ability to do that, you should jump in the water and pull me out. Okay. Because they almost always, it stops the attack. It's too much for them. And they just decide they don't want to do it anymore. I'll try, Wes.

I'll try it. Mentally first. You'll imagine it. Yeah. You know, Mom? Picture. I don't mind. If that's the way I go, that's the way I go.

I'm okay with it. You don't have to jump in, too. I'm scared of sharks. I know you are. Okay. Jeff, do you have something for us? The questions you prep for us are pretty much what West just asked you. They are.

So do you want to ask us anything else or are we good to just keep moving? Or do you just want to flip the script? Yeah. Test us. Okay, so there was a bison attack this year and the parents were on the, the path with these kids and they're trying to take a picture with the bison with one other and a guy watching him ran up right as the bison attacked and the parents both ran away and the guy that was watching that came to help him he actually grabbed the kid and saved the kid really and bear sprained

the bison jeff yes so um what what do you think the the dad said would you to his son afterwards yeah yeah when he was running away as he's running away Run. He probably told him to run. He probably said, by, son. Right? Good job. And there's the little girl one too that that happened to. Well, you can't do that.

The daughter doesn't work with the jail. If you're with just a random child and a bison. Don't be with a random child. Would you help them or would you? If I saw a random child getting attacked? If you were just walking by a group and it just happened that the bison came right then. Yeah. 100%.

You would? Yeah, I'd run in there and grab them. If it were like a person that was taking photos and getting way too close, like an adult, I wouldn't intervene. In that case, it's like they're asking for this. I'd even do it if I knew I was going to get tossed, I think. Yeah, if it was a kid. I just don't want to live with like not doing something. Okay.

I'd think about it the rest of my life if I didn't do something. Yeah. Unless the kid's like not that cute or annoying. Here's the shark one that I think of all the time. In Kauai, I would go down to the beach by myself early in the morning because I couldn't sleep. And there'd be this man that came out and swam. And it was just like the two of us on the beach. And I just kept, no, I just kept picturing a shark attacking him.

And I didn't know what I would do. Like, I didn't know if I would help or if I'd just run for help. I just kept thinking would I do it? And then I put different people in the scenario, well, who I would. I'd be sure to do it for. I would do it. I'd swim out. Yeah.

Even if it's a stranger? I would swim out. Uh-huh. It's another one of those things that I would just think, like, had I done it, you know, I wouldn't never want to be responsible. I wouldn't be responsible, but I wouldn't want to think that maybe I could have saved someone and didn't do anything. I don't think, I don't know if I, like, didn't have the knowledge that it probably

will stop the attack if I would do it. Yeah. But knowing what I know, I would swim out. See, that's kind of a new knowledge to me. So, like, mom. I need to take some mental reps of it first. I thought if there was a... You can out swim a shark.

Cattleboard or a surfboard or even a float. You would do it. I'd be willing to, but if I was just on my own... Or would you just push it out there? No, I would go. I would go. Okay. Because then you can use that against the shark, too, if it comes. Well, if the guy started attacking a shark.

Would you go help the shark? A seal did come and swim in there. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. That might have been anyways. Okay. All right.

So what we're going to do next is what would Mike, Jeff, and Cindy do? You are on your swamp buggy. Yeah. Spending time out in the swamp. And you get swarmed by a ton of yellow jackets with your family. What are you guys doing? Yeah. It's tough.

I mean, I probably just start squishing them one by one. Okay. Squishing them one at a time? Yeah. All right. Hoping to get that queen. That'll take a while. It sounded like once the mom got far enough away

in proximity to where the nest was, it sounded like they let up on her. So maybe just try whatever you could to drag yourself with a broken leg, with your kids, whatever you needed to do, just get as far away from the buggy as possible. That's good. Mike?

I think I would jump the 12 feet. We've already, I kind of, we did that through the thing. Yeah, you kind of already told us what you'd do. All right, so, Jeff, you're wrong. Mike, you did pretty good. If you start getting stung, you don't want to do lots of swift rapid movements because that actually will cause the yellow jackets

to become more aggravated. That's the first thing to think about. And then you actually don't want to kill them or even like hit them really hard because when you do kill them or when they get hit away or something, they can release a pheromone that attracts other yellow jackets.

It's kind of like if you ever see leaf cutter ants, if you like see that line of ants and you kill one of them, they peel off and they start attacking you because a pheromone gets released and they see you as a threat then. So if you start killing them, they go for you. It's like bullies.

Like you're not supposed to hit your bullies because then they'll come back at you harder and beat you up worse the next time. But at least you hit them, you know? At least I killed a few of the suckers. Yeah, I guess if that's the way you look at it, then yours is a good point. Yeah, it seems like the bully and the bullied person.

they always both get in trouble, even though it was always the bully's fault. So it's like you're going to get suspended. I got in trouble for getting hit with spit wads in middle school. I don't know if this applies. I got in trouble for getting punched once. You don't want to kill them. If you kill them, they start coming at you.

What you do want to do is cover your face with your hands. And even though this is going to be really hard, you want to calmly walk to an area with more protection, ideally inside of a structure or a vehicle, running again can just like it's too swift it's too rapid it makes them focus on you and sting you even more so you want to be as calm as you can to get to an area with more protection once you're stung when you have stings the things you can do to help is you put some ice on them anhystamines will stop the swelling or at least help with the swelling you can make a paste

of water and baking soda which will neutralize the acid and the venom and then you can also put vinegar on to reduce the itching. If you put that vinegar on at the same time as the baking soda, you can make a fun little volcano too. A little red food dab. If you do know that you have an allergy or if you're unsure if you have an allergy to insects and you're going to be spending a lot of time around wasps or yellow jackets, it's not a bad idea to have an epi pen with you and know how to use it because it could potentially save your life if you get stung by something that you're allergic to. So that's kind of what you should do.

So did you say why they shouldn't have rolled in the mud? No, the mud was okay. It was more that if they have those wasps on them, the yellow jackets on them while they're rolling around, they're going to be killing them. And they said they were scraping them off of them, so they're killing them. And that's just attracting more and more and more. The mud isn't necessarily a bad idea, but the thing that they really needed to do is just get out of there. Just get away.

As soon as you get far enough away, they're probably going to stop focusing on. off the buggy was a good idea. Yeah. I think they would have died had they all stayed on the buggy. Okay. How tall would the buggy have had to be for the yellow jackets not to be able to fly that high? I don't know. Probably thousands of feet.

It's like a 400 feet high. The better question there would be like to where you don't jump off. That's what I thought he was going to say too. But then you really asked a dumb question by the end. It was dumb and got even more dumb by the end. Sorry. Speaking of dumb questions, Jeff, do you have any questions? questions from our listeners.

Yeah, I got a bunch. Jogar, see you later. Ask, what animal would you most want to kiss on top of the head? I think a blue whale for me. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.

I think a gray whale since I haven't done that yet. We haven't done it yet. We have kissed gray whales on the top of their heads. Yeah. So maybe that's not a great pick since I've already kissed a whale. But it'd be cool to kiss the biggest animal that's ever existed. And they're nice and like, like, firm. I think I want to.

I want to kiss a lion, a male lion. Like, bury my face in that mane. Yeah. And get a kiss in there. That is a great answer. Mike? I'm picking one of those dinosaurs that have like the bald head thing that they used to run cephalosaurus.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Armando Jr. 97 wants to know. What was your reaction when you found West was eating bugs? I told him to stop. Did you do it?

No. We don't eat bugs. Don't eat bugs. Mm-hmm. Just stop. Wes, stop. Did it stop me? No.

What finally stopped me was one of my friends getting hives for meeting too many pucks. Maui, Meowie Sullivan, did you know about the poop issue and just not want to address it? So for those who don't know, Wes would sit on his foot so he didn't have to poop for weeks. When I was a very small child. Called it sitting. Yeah. I obviously didn't know for a long time. And then we kind of just found out, I didn't even know Wes was doing it.

I thought it was just Cyrus. Okay. So I don't even remember. Because you called it sitting. You guys are the ones that named it sitting. And then you specifically would tell me that I would get worms if I didn't poop. And that did sink in after a while. That was actually probably what finally made me decide I need to start pooping.

Okay. Because you were like, Wes, if you don't poop, you're going to get worms. And I didn't know what that meant. I was just kind of like, what is that? Where do they come from? You know? I was aware, though. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Jigolo Thomas wants to know who's the most sensitive, me, Wes or Mike? The most sensitive? Yeah. That's kind of a hard, like sensitive. We're sensitive in different ways, I think. But go ahead.

It might be Wes. I would agree with that. I would say it's between me and Mike probably. What do you think, Mike? My first thought was Wes, too. Okay. Is in like he seems to be a little more in touch with his emotions. That's not me.

It just, Jeff is. I cry in the most movies. I don't know about that. I cry in a lot of movies. Dragons got me. Yeah. There's no reason to cry in that movie. Yeah, but what, I mean, West can do.

What I do is, like, you walk into a room and if there's tension, he fills it automatically, and so do I. But you don't. usually, which you're so lucky. I wish I was like you. Empaths. Empathetic. Emotionally stunted. Yeah.

I wish I didn't have that. It'd be so much easier. Us Jeffries just don't care. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Psychopies. Sarah F. Rice wants to know.

Are you ever sad that you didn't name Jeff Tyrone? I'm sad that I didn't name Jeff Zane. It's middle name. Okay. Yeah. Not Tyrone. Yeah. Okay.

You got past that one. sigh, so we didn't need a tie, too. Where did that come from, Tyrone? Oh, I saw it on TV one time. Well, that's pregnant. One time on TV. Stuck with you. Well, it was only one day, but it just, Gilbert just thought it was so weird that, of course,

that's what he's always talked about. But actually, I like Zane. I like Zane. I like Zane. Gotta, BKD wants to know why is Jeff's voice like that? Jeff actually sounds pretty normal in real life to me, at least. Because I'll listen to my voice on the tape and I hardly can listen. And so maybe just the tape is what you're talking about.

I don't know. I'm not sure what you mean. The tape? Like recordings. The recording. But I mean, I'm just speaking how I always speak, right? Yeah. So they know how I sound.

This recording does not sound like me. Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. You're just talking. My voice isn't like that. It is weird how different. Like, whenever I hear my voice, I'm like, that. isn't even a person.

Yeah. Edd Grub asks, which one is your favorite? And does Wes lie to you about his master's degree too? We really got to get rid of this whole. Wes is lying about his master's degree. I don't have a favorite. West took so long to get his master's degree. I can verify that it is definitely a degree.

It took me four years. Yeah. Three different bear species. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mostly. Yeah. Maybe that gets rid of it.

I feel like it's. Not, yeah, listeners can decide if it's real. It was almost a PhD. We thought about it. I'd say Jeff is your favorite, Cindy. He's the newest. I like them in different ways.

Like, Wes does a lot more with me right now, but Jeff used to. But Jeff is, Jeff is just always fun. Like, everything is so fun when he's around. So, and then. He is fun. And then Cyrus is just nice. And, you know, it's just, I don't have a favorite. Cookies cake and ice cream.

You got favorite things. Where would I rank in like the four of us? In the four of us? Yeah, Cyrus, Wes, Jeff and me. And what? And what? And favorites? Just in your favorites.

Yeah. Throw our cousin Brent. Yeah, we'll throw Brent in there. Mike, you're right there with them. Oh, man. What do I got to do to like take top spot? Text me back when I text. Yeah, I have a real problem.

Yeah, they call me every now and then say, hey, Cindy, how you're doing? Yeah. What was it? You have to let her know if you ever watch RRR again. Yeah, you have to text. Yeah. Okay. The John Drives wants to know when did West start to show signs of a koala brain.

What's a koala brain? That's what I say I have. I don't have one. Slow? Smooth and bad. Yeah. He's always been pretty smart, right? Well, who is the smartest as a kid?

Jeff, you're just as smart. You just don't focus. I'm just as smart. I just not as good at school or learning. Or trivia. Yes. Or facts. Because of focus.

Yes. All right. What have we done that has scared you? This is from C.J. Turner. So have Wes or Jeff ever done anything that scared you as a mom? Like today? Everything. Yeah.

This is constant. What comes to your mind? I don't worry about it anymore. Like I don't. Every time I'd go to Mexico, every time we'd be on anything high, you'd get really nervous. And you've done a lot better now. Yeah. I just blank it out and just think, wait for the phone call.

Oh, wow. Okay. All right. I got a couple more. Okay. Courtney, one, two, three. Are you ever surprised at the personal stories they tell on the podcast? I'm never surprised, but I sometimes would like to have my say on how I think it went down.

Sometimes. Yeah. Every time. N. S. Couts. Who's harder to birth, Wes or Jeff? Let's throw sigh in there too.

Well, sigh was definitely because I didn't know what was, you know, I didn't know what was going on. Well, Wes almost killed you. Well, Wes was the hardest pregnancy. That's what he's at. Yeah. But you had to have naturally. They didn't have epidurals. And so for labor, you were very hard.

You hit me with x-rays. That's why you're qualified. But we're both alive, Wes. We're both alive. That's what you have to count on. Yeah. Jake Ockelberry wants to know who is the easier. baby.

Cyrus was the easiest baby and then Jeff and then West. I was the hardest? Yes. Oh, what did I do? I always thought I was easy. No. Oh. Cryer?

I just drooled. I just sat there and drooled. What was hard about me? Yeah. Disobedience? To sleep on the schedule. Yeah. I've always been a rebel.

Yeah. You were trouble. Smoking. You always, you know, if we said don't touch that, then you would touch it. Would I look at you while I did it? Uh-huh. For sure. Adam Robinson's five, favorite flavor of pie.

We can always do this one. Raspberry pie is your favorite? Whoa. That's pretty uncommon, I would say. Okay. You're crazy. I think Huckleberry's my favorite. You're one of a kind.

I might go right now I might say blueberry. It changes, though. With some ice cream. Can I have that with? Sure, yeah. How about you, Mike? You're really into that McDonald's blueberry. Oh, it's so good.

Mine is strawberry rhubarb. Oh, that's also one of my mom's favorites. Oh, I love it. I love it. We're almost the rhubarb season. I have frozen rhubarb in the future. Let's wrap this up so we can make some ruby. Yeah, I think that's good for questions. Oh, I've got one more.

Okay, let's do it. It's from your Patreon. So I listened to your earlier episodes and notice that the first polar bear and Mountain Lion episodes you mentioned, the victims had teeth shards removed from their heads. Who's this from? This is from Miss. Is that common for predators to lose part of their teeth when attacking? Or is it just both because both those stories, the animal is extremely underweight and maybe their teeth became brittle after prolonged maltrition?

I think we may have answered this, but we'll go ahead and answer it again. Because it might have been on a second attempt at the question. Yeah, it might have been on a bonus episode, but we'll answer it again. They do lose a lot of teeth. It's common for healthy animals just as much, or not just as much, but it's common. healthy animals will lose teeth. If they're malnourished, it is more common, but it's like, that's not, it's not like finding a tooth in someone's skull

or a piece of tooth or something isn't necessarily an indication of an unhealthy animal. Healthy animals will lose teeth too. Okay. Yeah. And I just, I mean, a hundred percent I would want that tooth. Oh, yeah. If one bit me and the skull,

and I was still alive. Yeah, for sure. What did you make a necklace? What did you do with it? I'd maybe put it out for display. Where? How? Just by the tooth, the claw that Wes made me, the grizzly claw.

Uh-huh, just above it in like a little frame or something. I'd replace one of my teeth with it. Oh, that's a good idea, too. Yeah. Cool. Cyrus could do that. Go get them back. Don't humans have, like, really thick skulls compared to a lot of animals?

I don't know. I don't think so. I feel like we have, like, bigger brains and we have thicker skulls because of that. Maybe. And then animals probably lose a lot of teeth in our skulls. I know we don't have like thicker skulls and bears. Their skulls are much thicker than ours. Yeah.

Sorry. Sorry that I couldn't back you up on that, made up fact on this spot. All right. So as far as conservation goes for yellow jackets, there aren't any real conservation concerns. One thing that is happening is there was a species of yellow jacket introduced to the U.S. in the 70s called the German yellow jacket. that does sometimes choke out some of the native species. So that could be a problem for the native species of yellow jackets in the future. But as of right now, all of our native species are doing fine.

There's a few different species of yellow jacket, but they're all okay, conservation-wise. All right, so we're going to do our claw rating for these animals. I'll go ahead and kick it off. I'm going to give them like three claws. I just, like, to me, I'm always a little upset when they're going to. they're around and I'm worried that I'm going to get stung. I think they're really cool looking. When you actually look closely at them, their patterns are really cool.

And I've learned before this episode, I probably would have given them a one or a two. But learning that they actually are beneficial and that they have this really interesting social structure bumped them up to a three, but they're three for me. Oh, I'm giving them a half a claw. Half a clock. Yeah, I don't like them. All right. Yeah, I think I'm going two.

Really? Two. Yeah. I just think they're like a less cool version of a. a bee and then I like bees a lot and then like but like bees have all the cool stuff. Bees are top 10 for you. These guys like no. Oh, that's Mike.

Yeah. But these guys like take out bees and just chop their heads off and stuff. Yeah, it's more hornets. But yeah. Well, that's true. But yellow jackets will kill them too. That's true. So then like, I don't know.

I'm like that. So I'm going to put them at 888. All right. I'm speaking of eights. I'm going eight. All right. I think yellow jackets are sweet. I'm a big fan of all bees, wafs, hornets, all that stuff.

Mostly just because they look super cool. They look like little warriors with cool coloration, big stinger, all that stuff. I think they're great. I don't have much more to add other than they just look really cool. I always like when a sports team or something, their mascot is a yellow jacket. Yeah. I think it's a cool mascot. I like the show.

Have you ever been strong? Soccer team. By a yellow jacket? Yeah. Like quite a few times. Yeah. I don't hold it against them. So we don't, we like see a sloth or koala or a hippo and yellow jackets like on the ground nearby.

You're going to look at that. You know it. If there was a hippo in my backyard, Jeff, I'd lower the blinds. Mom, thanks so much for joining us again. Thanks for being our mom, our biggest fan. We love you. Thanks. All of us love you a lot.

Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. Mother's Day to all you mother listeners. Yeah. Mike, we really miss your mom a lot. We always say it on Mother's Day, but we do. Even I do, and I didn't know her, but I always wanted to meet her. Yeah.

You had gotten along famously. Yeah. All right, happy Mother's Day, all you moms out there. We love you all. Okay. See you. DM me. Bye.

See you.