Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Mountain Lion and Crocodile Attack - Mother's Day Special

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

We are joined by the one and only Cindy Larson, the greatest biological mother Jeff and Wes have ever had. Wes prepared two stories of incredible motherly strength and instinct, and delves into a little bit of the science behind the "mother bear" behavior seen not only from animals, but humans too. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds                          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Wes prepared a couple of stories, and I guess that's burying the headline a little bit. We also have the Larson Mother. That's right, Wes and Jeff's mom, Cindy, is on the show with us today. And I've got to say she held her own. This also means, and forgive a quick plug to our Patreon. I know I do it all the time, but I just got to say that everyone subscribe to our Patreon is getting two episodes this week. The first one was a mini episode on Beavers that was led by Jeff and turned out really well.

And this is the second one. And this one goes out to all the mothers out there. So yeah, tell your moms you love them. And without any further ado, let's get into the show. Oh, and also, if you're a new subscriber to our Patreon, stick around to the end of the episode where we'll shout you out by name and give you an extra special thanks. Extra special. We'll just say thank you.

And we'll mean it. We'll see you guys over in the bonus mini episodes over on Patreon. All right, now let's get to the show. All right, we are here for a very special episode of Tooth and Claw. We have got Mike. Hey, we've got Jeff. Hi. And we've got mine and Jeff's mom, Cindy.

Hi there. She is here because we're doing a special Mother's Day episode. And you guys have heard us mention her a few times on the podcast now. My mom has sent us a lot of different stories. mom you are a pretty big fan of animal attacks right i am i've i've studied them for all my life we always got readers digest growing up and a lot of times they had a section drama in real life that a lot of times had animal attacks in it i want to make a clarification though okay because once you said on the podcast that it made me more afraid to read those yeah and actually

i think it makes you practice more like what you're going to do if something happens about it. Yeah, well, anyways, thanks for being here on Mother's Day mom. So we are going to talk about a few different attacks. We're going to go into a little bit of science on the mama bear instinct. But really quick, I wanted to talk about something we were just talking about, which we brought up before on the podcast, which is misophonia, which is when you really hate certain noises. And a recent thing that my mom's been doing is when I call her on the phone, she'll immediately just start eating. She decides it's a good time to eat. No, no, you call me during when we are eating. Well, sometimes you're not eating. Yeah, there's been a few times you're not eating and then you'll

start eating. I'll be like, are you eating something? We actually cook. We don't do fast food. Last time it was a graham cracker. Did you cook the graham cracker? Let me just say today, just like in the living room, she ate a piece of celery. Yeah. Which is like fine. Yeah. But I don't think I can physically eat a piece of celery that loud. I should have gone down the basement. Yeah, this is actually just a mom roast. Yeah, we're just roasting you. Yeah.

Was it a good piece of celery? Salary's loud. Was it good? It was crisp. Yeah, very crisp. Apparently, graham crackers are really loud too. I guess so. That's just a funny thing that's been happening recently on the phone.

And then I always feel like a jerk because I'm like, hey, mom, Why don't you just call me back when you're done eating and then you always take it a little personally when I do that But oh, I would never I would never even when we bring it up right now You didn't take it personal right anyway there's a lot of other things I'm sure we could get into right now That's why I really like you Mike a lot of stuff you just really don't like about your mom Yeah what else? We'll get into that later What else can we talk about? We really we really like our mom a lot and she's been very patient with us our entire lives because we do we do some dangerous things and and you've always been

very embracing of our of our lifestyles with animals and with everything else. Mike is pretty cute. She was telling us that on her drive out here she was practicing talking like she's on a podcast. I totally get it. It's hard it's hard to just tell a story. I was really surprised. Even to tell it to yourself, it's not that easy. It's maybe even harder when it's just to yourself because then you start to feel really ridiculous about five seconds into it. Yeah. But there's some drills. We can give you some talking drills if you want. You put the pencil in your mouth and you've never given me these. Annunciate, you're just so good at talking. You don't need them. I actually recently, when I have something happened that I want to remember, I just do my voice

memos and tell stories to myself. And that's worked pretty well. But anyway, there's a tip out there for you guys. Yeah. But he doesn't tell stories. That's like a private investigation. We're never going to have him on the podcast, though. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. You could look into that. Anyway. So we have two stories today that involve moms and involve animals. Okay. Maybe animal moms, too. We don't, I don't know if one of them. The gender?

One of them I don't. One of them I do. But are we ready to just get started on the stories? Unless you want to roast mom a little more. I think I'm good. Okay, let's get into it. Mom, do you want to roast us at all before we get started? No, I think I'm good.

Okay. There was another thing I wanted to clarify. Oh, yeah, let's hear it. Okay. So Wes has mentioned movies quite a bit. Not just me. Jeff and Mike. No, but you mentioned the ones that hurt you as a child.

What did you say? Like traumatizing? Traumatized you, yeah. Yeah. And it was against the rules for you to watch bad movies, like hard, violent movies. Like, I really tried hard to. I snuck and watched a lot of them. Yeah, and also when I was gone.

Like, your dad's the one that let you watch arachnophobia. Yeah, yeah. Arachnophobia was the one that he really blew with. Yeah. The Jurassic Park, you had to read the book first. Yeah. And Jaws, I don't know about Jaws. I don't remember Jaws.

Jaws, you guys, Jaws I remember clearly. It was my sixth birthday, and you guys were like, we're going to let you watch Jaws. I don't know. You did. That's pretty young. Yeah. Anyway, I remember that one.

I was very careful about what you watched. Apparently not that careful. Oh, yeah, I was. And then when you said Ghost in the Darkness, that was our. You can watch our rated movies. What happened with Ghost in the Darkness is that you and dad saw it on a plane. Yeah. And you came back and told me about how you watched it.

Right. And then I ended up watching it once it was on TV. Okay. But Jaws, you let me watch pretty young because I was obsessed with it. And arachnophobia was a huge blunder by dad. Oh, that was terrible. Because I didn't even feel safe pooping for like years after that. That was terrible.

I was so mad. I had truly held in my poops for a long time. Yeah, what was it called? Sitting. Sitting. Just go to the bathroom and sit on my heel rather than poop. Anyway, we're not going to get into that. Yeah.

We could save it for like its own podcast. We'll save that. Anyway, so today we have two stories. One is about a mountain lion attack and one is about a Nile crocodile attack. Nice. So before we start, we have gotten a lot of comments from people about mountain lions in particular. And they seem to be one of the animals that people most worry about when they're outside, that they think about most often.

And I just want to reiterate that you're more likely to be struck by lightning or killed by a dog than attacked by a mountain lion. It's very, very rare that they attack people. If they did see people as prey, they would attack us literally every single day. There'd be people being attacked all the time. So basically don't like not be afraid of them. Just be more afraid of lightning and dots. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is they deserve our respect.

They have the potential to attack people. But it's really, really rare and it hardly ever happens. And I don't want people being afraid of them. So like I did a little bit of research in this. as of 2018, there'd been a total of 125 attacks documented in North America in the last 100 years, and only 27 of those were fatal. In comparison, African lions, which are much more likely to see people as prey, kill over 100 people per year.

So in the last 100 years, 27 people in North America have died from Mount Lions, but lions, African lions, kill up to 100 people per year. So that just goes to show, like, they really don't attack people that often. So you really don't need to be overly worried about mountain lions. There's a couple things that you can do to take the right precautions so that you're going to have like almost zero chances of actually being attacked. And that's what this podcast is for to give you guys those tools so that you're not afraid. Our victim today in our story, she probably thought that she would never get attacked by a mountain lion and she did.

So there always is that chance. But if you're prepared and you're ready for it, the chances of it ending and tragedy are really slim. That's kind of the whole purpose of this podcast. I don't want you guys getting more scared because of the podcast. So are you guys ready for our first story? The whole purpose is what? To try and not scare people. I mean, these stories are interesting,

and they're obviously like everyone likes hearing about this kind of stuff, but we can learn from them. Right. And that's what we're trying to do. When I was growing up, everyone said, play dead with a bear. Right. And now you don't say that. Right.

And so it's good to know that you don't play dead. Yeah. And you shouldn't be scared. You shouldn't. We'll just keep telling you. you that. Let's get into our story. In August of 1996, so Jeff, you were about what, like seven, six or seven years old? Yeah. Okay. So that, the reason I want to bring that up is because one of our victims in this story is about that age. Oh, wow. So in August of 1996, Cindy Perilyn was a 36-year-old

mother of four. Her name is Cindy? Yeah, her name is Cindy. And she has a seven-year-old son. Yep. And it's not me. Yeah, it's not you. This isn't about us. She's a 36-year-old mother of four, and she lived in Princeton, British Columbia. So Princeton's a small ranching slash mining town in the interior of British Columbia. It's surrounded by forests and mountains and wilderness. I looked it up, it kind of looks like western Montana. It's very like rolling mountains and lots of pine trees and very beautiful. So Cindy was really, she was very comfortable in the outdoors.

Like she actually thrived in them. She was regularly camping and recreating. And then during the fall, she would actually be out hunting on horseback and search. for a lot of different animals that she was hunting. Like many other people in Princeton, she also knew that there was a lot of risks associated with time in the outdoors, anything from like temperatures to freezing water,

and then of course the potential for animal attacks. So Princeton has moose, it has mountain lions, it has black bears, and then the occasional grizzly bear also will wander into that area. So Cindy had spent a lot of time for sure thinking about what she should do if she were an encounter one of these animals. Our Cindy has done that as well, right, Mom? Yep.

A lot of parallels so far. Yeah. So she thought a lot about it, but those kind of dangers for her only added to the allure of the wilderness. It was something that made it that much more enticing to her. Earlier that summer, two different children in different places were attacked by mountain lions on the same day in July in British Columbia. Oh, wow.

The attacks had made news, and many British Columbians had mountain lions on their thursday. thoughts throughout that entire summer because it was this crazy thing. We're on the same day in two different places kids got attacked. So on the afternoon of August 19th, Cindy got her kids, Stephen, who was six, Melissa, who was 11, and David, who was 13, and then their horses ready for a ride through the backcountry. And they were going to meet up with their husband, Les, and their other son, Billy, at a cabin, and they're going to camp for the weekend. Sounds fun. Yeah. So all the kids were really comfortable on horses. They'd grown up around horses. They had done trips like this before. And just like Cindy, they really loved spending time

in the outdoors and they felt really alive. Anyways, they had been riding for a little while, like a little over a mile. And the kids and Cindy, they noticed that their horses were starting to get really nervous and they really couldn't figure out why. But a few seconds later, the cause of the horse's fear revealed itself when a huge male mountain lion exploded from the brush alongside the trail and ran straight at Stephen, who again was the smallest and youngest of the group. So we've done a Mountain Lion episode, I've gone over some Mountain Lion facts, but I just wanted to run through a few of them before we get back in the story. So they're found throughout North and South America. They have a lot of different names. I usually say Mountain Lion, but you can also say Cougar,

Puma, Catamount. They're all names for the same cat. Puma Concolor is their scientific name. Okay, so in the U.S., they're found primarily in 14 Western states and then Florida, but there's some small populations that exist in other states east of the Rockies. They're just like a really impressive predator. I mean, they mostly deer and elk and small mammals, but they can take down, yeah, they can even take down a full-size elk. Jeff, you've seen a few mountain lions. Yeah. What would you say when you see them in the wild, what's like the thing that you think of? Sneaky. Yeah, they are very sneaky. Yeah. That first one, the first one I ever saw was with West and we were hiking to Fly Lake in Montana. Yeah. And I was like,

like staring at my feet just walking and West goes deer and I look up and like there's this big boulder 10 feet in front of me and a giant mountain lion had just like come out from it and then Wes immediately went mountain lion and then it just ran up the mountain and it never made one single sound yeah like it was super crazy how fast and quiet it was and as we talked about in our last episode, they have a really unique way of killing their prey, which is they jump on them and they bite them in the back and they put their teeth in between those vertebrae and they sever those vertebrae and that's what actually kills the prey. So they're not necessarily a cat that goes for like the jugular jugular. Jugular is a circus guy. It doesn't like jugglers. They literally separate your

spine, your vertebrae back there. And it's a pretty awful. way to die, but it's also very quick. Yeah, it's cool, like how good they are at that. Yeah, yeah, they're amazing. If you want more, I'm not going to go into too many details because we do have stories today, or two stories today. But if you want more mountain line facts,

just go back to our other mountain line episode and you can get caught up on the rest of it. Let's get back to our story. The mountain line was charging at six-year-old Stephen. Stephen's on his horse still, and the mountain line pounces. It lands on the neck of Stephen's horse and slips off. Immediately, it

attacks again. And this time it actually just grabs his shoe and pulls it off, which was a little weird that like this malign is really missing, you know, which makes me think it could have been a younger cat or maybe something was wrong with it. I thought you said it was a huge male. Yeah, you know, I shouldn't have said huge because it didn't say that in any of the story. Okay. Yeah, but it's a better story. Actually, I don't know why I said that. I think it might have said it was big. I think it, well, I think, okay, so I should point this out. One of the articles I read did say, was big, but then there wasn't any, like, weight for it or anything. So I don't want to... We'll assume it's big. We're going to assume it's big because that's what the article said,

but I don't like to say that if I don't know for sure. And the horses just stand in there? Yes, so we'll get to that. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years, savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. See site for details. So Stephen had gotten pretty lucky at this point because these attacks had been off target, but his luck's about to run out because his horse, as Jeff just brought up,

like had had enough of this mountain lion jumping at it. And it started bucking and it bucked Stephen off. So it's like, here, just take what you want. Leave me alone. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So it was too much for the horse. And then the bucking horse was too much for Stephen. So he falls to the ground.

And the second he hits the ground, the cougars on him. And it's tearing into his scalp. Oh, geez. With its teeth and its claws. So Cindy, his mom is watching in horror. In a matter of seconds, a mountain line shoots out of the forest, jumps on her son and his horse, and is now like trying to actually kill his son

on the ground. So she knew a lot about mountain lions actually because she'd spent a lot of time in the woods. And she knew how quickly they could kill their prey with that bite to the back of the neck. And so she knew that she really didn't have much time to react to this. So rather than think about it, Cindy just let her instincts kick in. And the five foot five mother dropped from her horse, ripped a large branch off a tree and just rushed at the cat. Oh, cool. Which is pretty cool.

That's really tough. Hard to rip a branch off of a tree. I know. It's exactly what you would have done, right, mom? Yep, exactly. No, for sure. Okay, I believe you. Yeah.

So screaming, Cindy starts clubbing the cougar with the branch, and this snarling, angry cougar, immediately turns its attention to her, and it swipes at her, and it rips a large gash into her arm. And so now... You think it's me rowing at her? It might be mowing at her. Yeah. Now, at this point, she's probably too close to it to use the branch anymore.

So she actually was trained in karate. So she grabs it and starts punching it and kicking it and stuff. And the two were wrestling on the ground. Yeah. So she just like full on engaged this cat and started wrestling with it. So at this point, David and Melissa, the other two kids, they've dismounted from their horses. Their horses also get freaked out and run away. And they watch their mom wrestling with this cougar.

And they just watched their little brother get attacked by it. And she screams at them to grab Stephen and just to get out of there. So their horses, as I mentioned, had taken off. So they grabbed their little brother and they carry him a mile back to where the family car was part. Jeez. Yeah. So they just leave their mom fighting their mom? Because she's full on just screams at them, like primal scream.

Get out of here. And that's probably her karate training. Like she knows it's disrespectful to have more than one opponent at a time. I don't think so. No. She wanted them to be safe, Jeff. She wanted them to be safe. So they get to the car.

That's what you would have told us? Yes. And the little guy, I mean, his head's all bleeding. Yeah. And so they had to get him out of there. Well, I think when Cindy, when she engaged this cat and like started fighting it, she did it because she knew I'm trying to save my kids. Right.

So she wanted them safe as possible. That's all she was thinking about. This is a really good mom. Yeah. And we're going to get into just how good she was. So when they get to the car, Melissa stayed with Stephen in the car and David went around the campsite looking for help. and he found this guy Jim Mannion, who armed himself with a 12 gauge, and then jumped in his truck with David, and they drove up to where the attack had happened. So Cindy, at this point, remember, they had to hike out a mile and then go find this guy and come back up.

So at this point, she had been alone with the mountain lion for almost an hour. And when Jim and David approached the area where the attack had happened, Jim wasn't optimistic about finding her alive. So he was really shocked to hear her screaming. And so he follows her, sorry, he follows her screams to where she was still being attacked. For an hour? Yeah, the mountain line was laying on top of her. Blood was everywhere. She'd been worn down and ripped apart.

And when she saw Jim approach, she looked at him and all she said was, are my children all right? And he replied, yes. And after hearing that her kids were safe, she replied, I'm dying now. So she literally just stayed alive to make sure that her kids were okay. Once she heard that her kids were okay, she died. She died. Oh, man. Yeah, it's really tragic.

But she collapsed and the mountain line continued to guard her body. So Jim, he didn't know whether or not she was still alive. Jim has a gun, right? Yeah. But he was afraid to shoot because she's like right underneath this cat and he's got a 12 gauge. So shotguns, if you guys aren't familiar with shotguns, it shoots a spray of pellets. So he wasn't confident enough to shoot at the lion. So he fired near the ground and his plan worked and the cat actually left her and start.

started slinking towards him. And then he cocked another round in the shotgun, and he pointed to the cat and squeezed the trigger, only to hear his gun jam. So he quickly backed up against his truck, and he's frantically trying to clear this jam on his gun. And right as this cougar, like, jumps at him, he clears the jam, doesn't even have time to pick his gun up to aim.

So he just fires from the hip and hits it in the rear and spins it around. Oh, geez. And the cat runs off into the brush. That's cool. I can't believe that it would attack him, too. Yeah, we'll get into what might have happened in this attack, but there's definitely something up. Yeah. So Jim rushed to Cindy, but her fight with this lion had been way too much for her. She died.

Yeah, an hour is so long. Yeah, and it was definitely a cat that was predatory too. It wasn't just, you know, defensive or whatever. It was trying to kill her. So she had really given her life to protect her children. Stephen had been nearly scalped, but he received 70 stitches in his head, and he ended up making a full recovery. One thing about Cindy, too, is once the cat attacked her, she had to keep the cat with her so that the kids could get away. She did not want the cat to leave her. Right. Because then she wouldn't be able to, if the kids were half a mile away, she wouldn't be able to run up and save them again.

So she had to keep the cat with her, which is just terrible. Yeah, if something's biting you and ripping into you and imagine like feeling like, I have to keep this going. I mean, she was a mom. for an hour. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of all the stories we've done, this is one of the more incredible ones and probably the toughest person that we've talked about so far.

Yeah. She really is amazing. Anyway, she was posthumously awarded the Star of Courage Medal by the Canadian government, which is the second highest award for bravery within the Canadian system. So God knows what you have to do to get the highest award for bravery. If like holding a mountain line that's trying to kill your kids for an hour gets you the second highest. Yeah.

Anyway, it's like an incredible story. I'm glad you sent this one to me, mom, both because of like the parallels with the name obviously and then Jeff being that age when it happened. Well, and then she had two other kids with her. I have three kids. But the other thing that really hit me was David, the oldest, or the oldest son that was, he was back with the guy in the truck. Right.

And so he actually, he actually saw his mom still. And then they put her in the truck to try and save him. Right. They took her to the hospital, but she was there for the whole thing, which is really sad, I think. Yeah. The amazing thing to me is just that she, like, literally was holding on until she knew her kids were okay. And then she was like, okay, that's it. I'm good. Pretty amazing. It's a good mom. Bad horse. Really good mom, bad horse. Well, even if a couple of the horses had to stay, it could have been a different story. Yeah. Because they could have ridden for help. Cowards.

Yeah. Yeah, they could have rode their horses out. Yeah, it would have gone a lot faster. So really, there wasn't a ton, and this is why I wanted to bring up that, you know, I said a huge cat, but I don't know. The lion did die. They found it about 150 feet off of the trail. But there wasn't, in any of the information I could find, there wasn't any information on the actual lion, whether or not they tested it for rabies, whether or not it was starving, how young it was, how old it was. So there's really a lot of guesswork in this one. but there's a lot of things that could have caused it to be so tenacious with this attack. My guess is that it was a cat that for some reason was starving,

kind of like our lions asavo that, you know, they had a broken tooth or whatever and they couldn't down, they couldn't pull down normal size prey. So that's my guess is that this, whatever, for whatever reason, it couldn't tackle a deer anymore or kill something like that. So it was turning towards Stephen, who was, you know, the smallest and easiest of all these things. things to grab and then once she got it you know involved in this whole fray that it probably just

turned its direction towards her it's still a little weird though because he was on a horse so it's not like he just looked tiny no but they know i mean mountain lions are smart enough to know what's a horse and what's a person they don't just see it as one thing do you want to hear my take on it yeah i love so yeah i think there's mean people in the world and so i think there can be mean animals too That's my opinion And I think Some animals are just more grumpy The tiger

I don't know that all tigers But is it mean for a lion to kill a person Well It's like how they survive That's just not a Those lions went for so many people Okay but if you think about it then They went to the train station even

Like chickens and cows think They were the meanest jerks in the world I don't know I think that there's mean animals Just like there's many people I'm on Cindy All right Do you ever run into like a hornet's nest

They're mean I never did anything to any of those guys. I've been stung by so many yellow jettys. What we're going to do is we're going to change our terminology a little bit. And we're going to say there are animals that are more aggressive than other animals. And whether or not that's just that that's in their genetics. And they've been, they're more aggressive because of their genetics or because of the situation. I do agree with you on that.

They're animals. And like, I even know there's like lines of bears that are just more aggressive and they pass that through their genetics and those particular bears are more aggressive. But I don't think we should subscribe human tendencies of being mean or evil to animals because well, Wes, if I may, in the Simpsons episode, Bart gets an elephant. Yeah, Stampy. Yep. At the end of the episode, he's in an elephant park and he's just headbutting another

elephant over and over. And they're like, why is he doing that? And the elephant person's like, well, kind of like humans, some elephants are just jerks. Totally. And Homer's headbutting him. Yeah. So? Yeah.

Aggressive. Case closed. They're like some animals are more aggressive than other animals. But for us to say that because this mountain lion was trying to get a meal and attack Stephen, that it was a jerk or mean. It's just looking for food. Yeah. Because that's what they do. There's a lot of different things that could have played in.

It was demonstrating behavior that of a jerk. Yes. No. We don't know for sure this specific one was mean that I actually think there are animals that are keep that belief, but it's not a very scientific one. Now you guys know what I have to deal with. What we're doing right now is called anthropomorphizing, and it's when you take human emotions and characteristics and put them on animals when you can't prove that they actually have those.

So what we can prove is that certain animals are more aggressive than others. And also what we can prove is that certain factors, and characteristics and settings will lead an animal that typically won't attack a person into attacking a person. That's what's probably what's happening here. We have a crocodile story too? We do. Should we move to that?

I think we should. But really quickly, I want to say just again, like what you're supposed to do, you know, we'll get into this when I ask you guys the category of what you do when you see a mountain lion. I also really want to quickly say, my mom is not an animal expert, so don't listen to her on that stuff. Another thing, a really interesting thing I wanted to point out about this story is that this one really illustrates why bear spray is such a good deterrent for animal attacks. Because had this guy had bear spray instead of a gun, he could have sprayed him. He would have sprayed her. It probably would have hurt.

But it would have stopped the attack then and there. And he wouldn't have been worried about killing her. And then his gun also did jam. He probably was really used to shooting his gun. But when you have an animal attacking you, a lot of those rules go out the window. and bear spray really gives you a lot more room for error. So I would really, I carry bear spray and then in times I've carried a gun too, but I would always go to my bear spray first and the gun's very much a secondary defense.

Okay, our second story. We're going to talk about crocodiles for the first time on this podcast. So we're probably, at some point we're going to have a full episode dedicated to crocodiles and we'll go into all the nitty-gritty. My favorite things about them. Yeah, about crocodiles. So we're going to kind of just glance over that on this one because it's, It's a short story.

So in April of 2020, Marina Musis and Jana and her two sons were enjoying a beautiful African day on the Runday River in eastern Zimbabwe. So I probably messed up some of those pronunciations. Sounds nice, though. Thank you. It's a good picture. Yeah. Her sister-in-law was with them, and she had offered to take this small family fishing, and Marina was really happy for this chance to be outside of the village and on the river fishing with her family.

So 30-year-old Marina had grown up in the area. She felt very comfortable on the river. And they'd set up a beach umbrella for the two young boys that they had with them. So her two young boys were playing under this umbrella while the two women were fishing. And she was like kind of getting lost in the rhythm of the river and like kind of tranced out. You know how it is when you're fishing. Sometimes you just kind of zone out. Yeah, you zone out.

When suddenly screams from her sister-in-law broke right through that trance. So Marina turns around and she sees any mother's total worst nightmare. Her three-year-old son, Gideon, is being literally dragged down the beach by a crocodile. towards the water. Oh, man. Yeah. Wait, so it's a saltwater crocodile? Nile crocodile.

Oh, so that's different. Yeah. So Nile crocodiles are the most plentiful and largest crocodile species in Africa. The maximum size they've been is like 20 feet long and 2,400 pounds, which is just massive. Yeah. But averages are about half that size. So they're found in 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and they're so populous that they actually are considered a species of least concern.

They're not in a lot of trouble with their conservation. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere of the crowd, but too often, life gets busy. Or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happy. With millions of deals on flights,

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They're generalists, meaning they'll pretty much take whatever prey they can get, and they'll also scavenge dead animals. So I like that word generalists. Yeah, just whatever comes along. They knew there's crocodiles in the river, and they're like kind of, it's in their mind, right? Yeah, totally. Anyone that lives in sub-Saharan Africa when they're around water knows that there might be crocodiles in it. A couple of more things about crocodiles. They do have sensory pits along their jaw that allows them to detect even really minute vibrations in the water. And then they have conical sharp teeth that are designed to penetrate and hold rather than like cut and chew.

That's why they just have all those long kind of sharp teeth or really sharp teeth. They're widely considered to be the most dangerous crocodile in the world. They're responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of deaths every year. They're the animal in Africa, aside from like snakes and mosquitoes that are responsible for the most deaths. More than hippos. More than hippos, more than lions. They're ambush predators, so they'll wait underwater for prey to get close enough. And then they drag their prey under water and they drown it, kind of like we talked with alligators.

And then they use that gator roll to rip chunks off that are big enough to swallow. All crocodilians don't chew. they just rip off chunks and swallow. So they use the gator rule, but they're not all alligators. They're not. They're all crocodilians. Crocodilians, crocodiles, alligators, Caymans, they're all crocodilians. They all have very similar behavior.

Crocodiles are a bit more aggressive than alligators. Which ones are you into? There's that word again. Mike. Yeah. This is crocad jerk. It's a mean, it's a mean crocodile. We're not, this isn't going to be a comment thing on this podcast.

This croc sounds like a real jerking. I like how Wes said he's not going to say, much about crocodiles and then he can't help himself to answer the question you were about to ask Wes I'm a gator guy I was always more of a crocodile guy but recently have been more indicators I think so what was the kind that you always slept with when you were a little the rubber one was that a was that an alligator that was an alligator okay yeah but it was hard to tell it wasn't very correct okay if you do if you are looking to tell the difference between them when a crocodile closes its mouth, you can see its teeth pointing up and its teeth pointing down.

When an alligator closes its mouth, you can only see its teeth pointing down. Also, alligators have a broader snout. They're typically more black in color. Crocodiles have like a brownish color pattern typically. Crocodiles are more aggressive. They have a narrower snout. And then alligators are only found in the U.S. and China. Crocodiles are found.

They're actually also found in the U.S. in southern Florida throughout Central America. Oh, really? Yeah. A little bit of South America. Africa, Africa, Asia, Australia, kind of all over. That tooth fact is totally going to be this new stalagmite stalactite. Yeah. I'm going to know that there is a way to tell which one's which, but I'm never going to remember.

If you can see both directions, it's a crocodile. If you can only see one direction, it's an alligator. I've already forgotten it. I thought you said it the other way the first time. No. Alligator is only down? Yeah. Crocodiles both directions.

Which one's only up? Uh, neither. Okay. See, it just gets more. So the crocodiles, I think they look like they're kind of smiling, sinister. A sinister smile. Yeah, they kind of does. Yeah, yeah.

You just think all animals look mean, huh? Okay, so let's get back to our story. The crocodile was trying to drown Gideon, so it was dragging him down to the water where it could drown him and eat him. Marina wasn't about to let it succeed. As the crocodile was about to enter the water, she sprints over in an act of desperation. she grabs the animals or the animal by its jaws, and then she shoved her fingers up into its nostrils. Wow.

Yeah. What a move. Yeah. So this was actually a tip that she had heard from her village elders. And she knew that crocodiles breathe through their mouths when they're on land. But when they're underwater or sorry, when they're on the surface of the water or when they're eating, they breathe through their nostrils. So because it was subduing prey, this quick thinking action by her pretty much just shut off its airway. Uh-huh.

And she said, she was quoted to say, if you suffocate a crocodile from its nose, it loses its strength. And that's exactly what I did. So really cool that she knew how to do that. Yeah, that's awesome. Because usually I feel like those little tips don't work. And they're like right at the bank of the water. They're right. It's about to get into the water.

Yeah. So that's what I like about her as a mom too, because she thought about it. She was prepared because she did live around crocodiles. Right. So she knew what she was going to do. And when you got into bears and we started talking about bear attacks a lot, you know, I practiced with my bear spray all the time. Good. The cap, the little safety thing.

So I feel like I would at least know how to take off the safety and spray the bear. Yeah. And if you're around these animals all the time, especially a crocodile, which is responsible for a lot of deaths in Africa, you do think about what you would do. Now, at this point, the crocodile is on the defensive. It's has airway shut off. and she's got her fingers up its nose. So she uses her other hand to pry open its jaws. Because it's on the defensive like this,

it's probably released that pressure. And she pries open its jaws, which were still clamped down on his head. And she frees her baby boy. And the crocodile, as she freed him, turns and bites her on the hand. And then it turns off and goes into the river. Like Captain Hook.

Yeah. Yeah. Except they didn't fight off her hand, luckily. I mean, that's kind of mean. It is a little. Just like, I'm going to leave, but I got to bite you before I do. We mentioned their bite pressure, but I think it's important to note that that doesn't mean every time they bite down it has that amount of pressure.

They have a lot of control with how hard they can bite down. Because that could have like crushed its skull if I wanted to. If it was just like, I'm going to kill this thing right here right now, it probably would have done that. And I also don't know how big this crocodile was. There wasn't any information on how large it actually was. But Gideon's face is pretty cut up. And the cuts in the blood were actually making it difficult for him to breathe.

So they rushed to a hospital where both him and and Marina were treated. And they both have fully recovered as far as I understand. Okay. So another really cool story. This one not nearly as tragic is the last one. Still pretty scary. Like to turn around and see your kid being dragged into the river by a crocodile. Yeah.

But again, like a mom that didn't really have time to think or decide whether or not it was worth, you know, interjecting into this thing, like she just ran and attacked the animal. Mom's just do that. They do, and we're going to talk about that a little bit. You two are fishers. We're what? You like fish. Yeah, we're fishermen.

Are you into fishing really at all? You know, I fished when I was growing up. Okay. I think this story is a little rich with irony, because they're just sitting there fishing, totally ruining some innocent fish's life, pulling it out, taking away its ability to breathe. But all of a sudden when it happens to their kid, it's a tragedy, and they have to go save the kid, you know.

What do you have to say that? Fair enough. I don't have anything to say to that. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, it's a great point. Thanks. Yeah. Okay, so right before we went on that little tangent, which was a good one.

Yeah. Was it? Yeah. All right. My mom had brought up this kind of instinct in mothers to defend their children. And this is actually something that's been tested a little bit. It has this kind of colloquial name of Mama Bear instinct. But essentially, we all have a fight or flight response to threats.

every animal does. And for humans, a lot of times it's flight. When something comes and, you know, is threatening our instinct is to run away, which we've talked about in this podcast is usually the worst thing you can do. But with moms protecting their kids, there's the switch that turns that flight into fight. And scientists have actually looked into this and they found that oxytocin, which is the same hormone that's responsible for like bonding and love, is responsible for this instinct, and the experiment they did to test this is really interesting. They conditioned rats to associate a peppermint smell with a slight electric shock. And so these rats, anytime they smelled this peppermint shock, they would get shocked, or this peppermint smell, they'd get

shocked. And then after that conditioning, anytime they'd smell it, they would freeze, because they were anticipating the shock coming on. And then they introduced these rats babies, and then they introduced the peppermint sense. They were like, oh, a shock's about to come. And rather than freeze, like they did before, they actually attacked the tube that was spraying the scent in, and they pushed nest material up against it to try and stop it from putting that scent in the cage. And then what they ended up doing after that is they blocked the oxytocin and the rats, and they found that after they blocked that hormone, they started freezing again. Kind of made me like rats a little more.

Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting. And there's a lot of really interesting science out there about mothers protecting their young. something we brought up recently was residual reproductive value, which is that... With the raccoon? Well, mostly with bears is what I was thinking. Oh, yeah, but it was in the Patreon episode. Yeah.

Residual reproductive value pretty much says that a younger female is going to be, like in bears, is going to be much more likely to abandon her young because she inherently knows I'm going to have five or six more litters of cubs. Whereas an older female, if she's like on her last litter, she's going to defend them really intensely. There's just a lot of really interesting. That checks out with our mom too. Yeah. When we were young, she was like, whatever. I don't think she would have sacrificed for Sye.

And then for you, maybe, but for me for sure. She'd fight to the death. Yeah. I'll go with that. So that's it for our stories. Thanks, Mom, for sending those along to me. These were hand-picked by Cindy Larson. Yeah, great story.

You're welcome. You know how to pick them. They're good ones. We had one that was very tragic, and then one that's a little bit less tragic. How do you think West did? Helen. Good. Really good. Did you miss anything? No. And the one with Cindy and the Mountain Lion, I actually read when it happened. And it just stayed with me. I just remembered it. Yeah. Because there's so many similarities. Of all the ones we've done so far, that's the only one that

has almost made me cry. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to get into our categories. We're going to do them a little bit differently today since today's a special episode for Mother's Day. Yeah, we're not going to swear at all. No, we're going to do, rather than pick our favorite of these animals, in pop culture, we're going to pick our favorite animal mom in pop culture. So it can be in movies or TV or it can be one from actual real life. So I'm going to go first. Mine is a real life bear. It's Bear 399, which is a really famous bear in Grand Teton National Park.

And she's so famous because she constantly has a bunch of cubs and they're really cute and they're really visible and people take a bunch of photos of them. So that's my favorite animal mom. Jeff. That's pop culture? Yeah, kind of. It's in culture. I'm going with the mom in 101 Dalmatians.

Okay. Perida. Okay. And just that whole movie, I felt like the parent Dalmatians were really good parents. They were. 101 is a lot of kids, you know? So you got to be a great mom to have that many kids and not lose a single one of them when some evil ladies' life goal to get them all. Yeah.

She didn't lose any of them. them and like just really did a great job i feel like yeah uh mike yeah i'll go uh so i brought this up on a patreon episode a while ago but i'm going with mrs brisbee i thought you were gonna pick her she's just the coolest it's from uh the secret of nym and everything she does she's so terrified of everything in that movie of everything she has to do and she does it all in the name of saving her sick child timothy yeah i rewatched it after we talked about it last time and i really enjoyed it and she is a really good mom yeah yeah and like a true heroin you know i feel like back in the day they didn't they weren't that great especially in cartoons with like strong female characters

but she's a really really good one so was that a animal yeah she's a rat or she's a mouse okay because i was thinking oh can i choose a person no okay okay so i'll just i read the question wrong earlier so i didn't prep but i'll just go with bambi's mom okay because bambi's mom was a good mom. She dies really quick. She does. She does. And the other, and I'd like to still give. Just kidding. That's the ultimate sacrifice. Yeah. It's very applicable to Wes's story. Mom sacrificing itself for the baby. Yes. And then I'd also like to give just an award to Mowgli's wolf mom. Oh yeah. That's a good one. That's a good mom to Mowgli even though she, he wasn't a wolf. Stood up to a tiger for it. Yes. That was a good pick.

Thanks. I always really like the wolf parents. I felt like they really cared about Mowgli. They did. That's my favorite Disney movie. Disney's built an empire off of anthropomorphizing animals. They have. Do you feel about that, Wes?

I think that's fine because in that context, you expect an animal to be anthropomorphized. When you're listening to a science podcast about animal attacks, you don't expect them to be anthropomorphizing. It's the end of the day, whatever. Yeah. Good point. True. Yeah, nothing actually matters. Okay.

So we're going to do our cage match category. But Mike, what I would appreciate we do this time, since this is your category. Oh, you take it. No, I want you to do it. But it's going to be how my mom, Cindy Larson, would stack up against each of our animals. Okay. Well, let's do this then. So how much do you weigh first?

What weight class are you in? We'll just put her between 100 and 180 pounds. Okay. Perfect. That's a fair window. So what we do in this category, the cage match is we match up the mom of the day, Cindy Larson, up against all of the animals that we've spoken about thus far on the podcast. So anything from the Great White Shark to the Funnel Web Spider. Sure, the Funnel Web Spider.

And let's see how we fall on this, what we think she could take and what we think she couldn't. I think there's probably three that she has a chance against. Oh, I can only think a two. I'm thinking spider, funnel web spider and the monitor lizards. Yeah. The other one I was thinking is the python if it's small enough. Yeah, our pythons and our stories. But our full-sized python, she doesn't.

That's going to be tough. Yeah. I think she could do the mountain lion. The mountain lion, you could fight until we get away. She could do, she could let us get away. Yeah. And honestly, honestly, a lot of people do successfully fight off mountain lions. Yeah.

But if it was a fight to the death in a cage. Caged magic. So I couldn't have bear spray? No. With bear spray, you're going to, in a cage, you're still just going to piss a lot of animals off. Yeah, you could step on that spider. So that one you're winning.

And the monitor, I think you could probably kill as well. But I think everything else is probably going to, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we don't want to put it in submission. Well, how come the spider didn't bother you? Well, I'll put a little twist on it too. Okay, let's hear it.

Am I trying to save when I? of your lives or not. I still think it's probably going to end up about the same way. A funny side thing with that is once I asked my mom if she would go on a space shuttle to the moon to save our life. This is my favorite question. And she said, are you dealing drugs? Or yeah, as a way.

No, it was me that asked her. I asked her about the shuttle to the moon. But the question, the actual question was, first of all, I said, if you could travel the for a year for free or go to the moon, which would you do? And she like scoffed at me and was like, travel. And then she's like, I do not want to go to the moon. And then we slowly learned how badly mom doesn't want to go to the moon. Yeah.

And so then I said, okay, someone's got a gun to my head. They're telling you they're either going to kill me or you have to go to the moon. Would you go? And she said, well, why do they have a gun to your head? I'm like, I don't know. And then I said, and she's like, were you doing drugs? And then she's like, were you dealing drugs? And I was just like, does it matter?

But apparently it does. She'd rather let them kill me if I'm dealing drugs than go to the moon. So we truly literally have someone playing a snare drum in the background right now. So you guys can hear a snare drum. Sorry about it. Hopefully they keep beat and it just adds to the podcast. Yeah, sorry about that. This is a Bose moment.

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Anyway, next category. Our next category is what would Mike and Jeff and mom do if they were attacked by these animals? Okay. I'm going to go with the crocodile story. Yeah, pick the one that you want to do and then you can. Yeah. So I'm the mom. And my kids getting dragged off his. his head's in a crocodile. Yeah. So I think it's, like, I feel like sticking my fingers in its nose is like a joke answer. Yeah. But that's, like, awesome that that worked.

And it's like a great move. So I'm just going to go with, I just run up there and try to crawl into the mouth with it. Because I don't think it could get both of us. Okay. So I would just crawl into its mouth with my kid in there already. Okay. So I either die with him or it's like, oh, this is too much and lets us go. Yeah, its mouth is closed on him, though.

How are you getting in there? Yeah, that's a good point. All right, you're done, though. That was your turn. Mike? So I'm going to go with the mountain lion. Okay. And here's my strategy.

I'm just going to let it have my mom. And I get away. Perfect. Eventually. I don't. I'm going to pass on this one. You're not going to do it. You're not going to do it.

I can't even. Okay. I think they did perfect. Yeah, so let's get into it really quick. Your main things with the mountain liner, maintain eye contact, stand as tall as you can. You essentially do what you'd do with the black bear. You look as big as you can. You wave your arms.

You speak to it. You yell at it. Throw stuff at it. First, you're going to want to throw stuff around it. And then if it keeps coming, throw it actually at it. You don't want to actually bend over and pick stuff up. So if you can get it from like a trail cut or off a tree or something. Because then you don't look as big.

Yeah. And it triggers their predatory instinct to pounce. in the rare event that you're actually attacked and it's on top of you, then you just got to fight back with everything you've got. Kind of like Cindy was doing. She was pretty small though. She's like 5-5. A bigger person or even someone that size has a chance of fighting off a mountain lion.

I feel like she had a disadvantage of like she was just trying to hold on to it instead of fight it because she wanted her kids to get away. She also had a disadvantage that this seemed to be a particularly determined mountain lion for whatever reason. Yeah, even grouping up, I was thinking that probably wouldn't have worked. You don't know. So that's the thing I thought of when I was reading this is that had the kids stuck around and maybe tried to fight it off, it would have been too much.

And the line would have taken off. But you don't know. And, you know, it might have gone back to the little kid. They would have all been hurt, probably. Yeah. So I think she probably did what was best in that situation. As far as crocodiles are concerned, there are a few different tips out there. So if you're in crocodile habitat, the main thing is.

is just to avoid getting too close to water that you can't see into. You want to avoid standing right next to rivers and waterways, and then you don't want to approach, obviously, like a swimming or a basking crocodile. And then if one chases you on land, there's this common misconception that you're supposed to run in a zigzag. That doesn't matter. Just run a straight line away from that crocodile as quickly as you can.

That makes sense. If you are actually attacked by a crocodile... Zig-zag is for bow and arrows. Yeah, for boneros, exactly. If you actually are attacked by a crocodile, same as the mountain line, you need to fight back. You hit it on the snout, I guess put your fingers up its nostrils, try and gouge its eyes. Any of those kind of tactics might lead it to release its grip a little bit, and that gives you the opportunity to escape. If you're attacked on land, you want to do whatever you can to stop it from dragging you into the lower.

So it's kind of good that it had the kid's head in its mouth. Why is that? Because then you have all four limbs you can feel. fight it with. Yeah, but the kid wasn't really fighting back. So that's a great point. Okay, so that handles that category. Jeff, I think we have some special listener questions today, don't we? Yeah, so I asked people to, if they had any questions for Cindy, our mom. Okay, so first question from Norma Rockwell 11, and mom, she wants to know, would you rather eat a meal from Cyrus, Wes, or Jeff? Cooking her? Yeah.

Oh, that's a hard one. All three boys are actually very good cooks. Can I pass on that one? No, you got a pick. There. All very good cooks. Let's go with Wes today. It could have been Jeff or size.

Yeah. Pretty close. This is from Rory. How does one woman raise three Eagle Scouts? Well, a lot of times they give mom's credit for that, but I would give their dad the credit for that. He pretty much. You deserve a lot.

No, he had to be in scouts that whole all the time, all those years when you guys were in scouts. Your dad was in scouts. All right. This is from Catherine Quinn 18. How did you pick your son's names? Oh, well, Cyrus was, do you want me to? Yeah.

Okay, Cyrus was named after his grandfather. It went every other generation, although Cyrus did not name his son Gilbert, because it was Gilbert, Cyrus, Gilbert, Cyrus. Right. And then West, Gilbert had a best friend named Wes and I had a really close friend name Wes.

So we just, that was just Wes. And then Jeff, since we did Wes and Cyrus more for Gilbert, I had dated a lot of Jeffs. And so I actually really liked the name Jeff. And I always thought maybe I'd marry a Jeff. So instead I just named my son, Jeff. So I was named after your ex-boyfriends. No, yeah, maybe. I really love the name, John.

All right. And then from Daisy K. She wants to know how you feel about Mike. Oh, I love Mike. He's like one of my favorite people to come and stay at our house. He and I have books in common. We like to talk books. He's a reader.

Oh, we love each other. Yeah, Mike's one of my favorites. Mike, how do you feel about our mom? I think she's incredible. Oh, except. Except. Except. Yeah, she's awesome.

Okay. And then let's do this one for all of us. Okay. Um, it's Ellen's O-something. Okay. Uh, hopefully. That's close enough. Yeah.

Favorite book and favorite national park. So we've answered this in variations, but I think we can all do it. Mom, you want to, or we'll start. I mean, my favorite book would have to be Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter was very, Harry Potter was like the first real book you ever got me to read because I hated reading. I was like a bad reader. And then for National Park. It's got to be glacier for us, me, you, and mom.

Give me a shout out to the ones in Utah. They're pretty cool. Lake Powell's pretty cool. Is that a national park? It's not. It's a national recreation area. That's your favorite. Vacations.

I would say my favorite books are probably Lord of the Rings books as well. I also really like Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck. It's one of my favorites. And then River runs through it. Those three are kind of the three that I constantly bounce back and forth between. And then, yeah, my favorite national part. park is glacier. Mike?

So I never know what is a national park and what isn't. I know last time we had a variation of this question, I said the Oki-Fanokey. Yeah, that's not. I don't think. I don't think it is, but I'm going to go with that because I can run down a list of parks that I know. Yeah, I probably haven't even been to that are national. Yeah, I think that Oki-Fanokey is a national wildlife refuge, but I'm not sure.

Well, but that would count it. We're going to count it. You read a ton of books. Yeah, what's your favorite book? My favorite book is Catch 22. Interesting. I know. I think we've had this conversation before.

Joseph Heller's masterpiece. It is endlessly entertaining. Well, then you always get it when someone says it was a catch 22. Mom, what's your favorite book? Okay, so I have so many favorite books. But I'm going to just go with one that we read together that we read together when you guys were growing up. Yeah. Because it's my favorite one to read with kids and it's owls in the family.

Oh, yeah. I love that book. It was just, and we laughed so hard. We were crying sometimes. And it's a true story. So that was a good one. A young adult book, I like The Thief. And then there's just so many other books I really love.

Well, that's good enough. What's your favorite national park? Glacier. Yeah. Okay. And then Yellowstone's probably second? Probably. From Bairdender.

Where do you stand on the legitimacy of cake and ice cream as a single? single dessert. Oh, no. She was in the argument. Didn't I agree with you, Jeff? No, you agree with me. I don't remember. I agreed with West. That's okay.

It seems like she's switching sides. I honestly, there's been some good arguments on that threat. You're coming around. I'm not, but I am open to the argument now. I go back and forth. All right. And then a lot of people wanted to know this, but I'm going with Nicole Riley's. They want to know what we're like,

kids, me, Wes, and Sy, and if you have any embarrassing stories. Okay, so Cyrus is the oldest, and then Wes was two years later, and then Jeff was five years later. And so Cyrus was interested in everything, but when Wes was born, West was only interested in animals, and they were mean animals, not nice animals. So even when we went... Aggressive. Yeah, aggressive. Aggressive, sorry. But even when we went to the library, we couldn't just, you know, there's lots of animal stories where the animal goes home with a child. And even if it's a lion or a tiger and then they're friends, we couldn't find those stories. We had to find stories where the animal would eat people, which is really hard when you're trying to find children's stories. We finally did find a few,

and then we checked him out like every time we went to the library. I did lots of drawings of animals seeking people too. But then also he was a storyteller. Oh, big, big surprise. And so we would film him, we would videotape him because it was just so funny. He had a speech impediment. And the Hawaiian quiped up and the Taiwaneseaurus flex bit him. And there were three drops of wood. And just really funny. They're just so they were and his eyes were all glowing and even now. And then Si would like pop in and be like, yeah. Your grandpa, there's dinosaurs over here. And I'd be like, okay, Wes is telling us. a story. And so then when Jeff was born five years later, it was just kind of a done deal. Everything

in our house was animals. Like animal cards, animal puzzles. And Cy and Jeff both like sports too. But Wes, Wes was, we made him play Little League baseball. And we watched him and he's out there chasing bees and butterflies on the field. But with Jeff, I just wanted to tell a little story about Jeff too. So Jeff was born without the fear. to take care of him. And he just, he just didn't have it. Like, he would jump off cliffs into water without checking if it was shallow or deep. We had to all watch Jeff. But it came in, it came into play when Jeff was three, Wes had this big garter snake. And we had an aquarium outside because they lost the snakes in the house. And so they had to stay outside. Wes wanted me to bring

his snake to show and tell. And so his teacher said, I had to do. drive it there and then drive it home. He can just bring it. And so we got ready to go. Jeff and I were going to take it to Wes's school. And I look in the aquarium and it's this big, it's a big snake. And it was really active. It was like thrashing around in the aquarium. And I was like, hmm, I don't want to pick up that snake. And so, and I have held snakes. I mean, I'm not afraid of them, but I just really didn't want to get it. So I just looked at my three-year-old and said, hey, Jeff, will you put that snake in? in the shoebox for me. And Jeff just walked over and grabbed the snake and put it in the shoebox.

And off we went. That's great. All right. Good. Good stories. Well, I think that's pretty good for listening to the questions. Good job, Mom. Thanks guys for asking those.

That was fun. Yeah, this has been a fun episode. Okay, so we got a couple more quick categories. First of all, I want to do a really quick correction corner. We had a comment about Boxing Day that they gave me a lot more information on what Boxing Day actually is. You'll remember in our Spider episode, we talked about Boxing Day a little bit. Yeah.

Second Christmas. Yeah, that's what I said. But what they said, let me read it here really quick. It's like lots of deals like Black Friday. Yeah. They said Boxing Day rocks. And it's like a second Christmas, but not really. It's like a day of playing with your new stuff and eating leftovers and there's sales and

people go shopping. And it's not like a statutory holiday, but people recognize it as one. And then she also corrected me. I was trying to find the word Canada and, like, Australia and everything. They're commonwealths of the UK. Right. Whereas we, like, declared independence from the UK. That's how they're different.

Anyway, that was Haley has that corrected on us. So thank you. Boxing day sounds pretty fun. It does. It sounds nice because there's a real Christmas hangover after Christmas, and it'd be nice to have a buffer for that. When we go to Australia, we should go when it's Boxing Day. Okay.

Is that the 26th, though? Yeah, that'd be over Christmas. Okay. I'm game. All right. And then another correction we had. Plenty in Australian vacation around boxing days. I mean, let's go for it.

It's summer. It's summer in Australia. That's true. That's true. And it's winter in Montana. There we go. I'm just perpetuating the American ignorance. Mike, don't ruin this vacation for us.

No, I'm not going. What are you talking about? No, maybe you will. What? There's a bunch of dangerous animals. We can do podcasts. Outside. I'm going outside.

Also, someone mentioned, when we were talking about home alone and the tarantula being put on the face, I accidentally said Harry was the one that got the tarantle put on his face. It's Marf. Yeah, I wasn't thinking. Okay, so I wrote in under a fake account to let you know that. I forget who corrected us with that, but thank you. Okay, and then our last two categories, how are we messing things up for them?

So Mountain Lions, it's mostly habitat destruction, and then in some places over the aggressive hunting, they've been pushed to the brink in a lot of places. And luckily they're a cad that does pretty well living on the fringes of society, but they do cause a fair amount of human conflict. So we've messed things up pretty substantially for Mountain Lions. Nile crocodiles are doing pretty good. As we mentioned, there's a lot of them, but they are poached. Their skins are sold. They're poached for bush meat.

There's a few different ways. A ton of people wear them his shoes. It's true, crocs. Yeah. But luckily they're doing pretty well. Okay. So finally, our last category. We usually do, do we like these animals?

Today we're just going to do, does mom like these animals? So mom, do you like mountain lions? I'm, they're probably the ones I'm most scared of. Still? I'm more scared than a bear. Really? Wow. Because they're sneaky.

Fair enough. So that's a, no. That's a human emotion again. Well, sneaking, like, isn't that bad because they do sneak around. So I think I like them from the car that I don't actually want to be in the wilderness. I actually, I think sneaking is an animal.

It's an animal characteristic that we attribute to humans. That's pretty fair. But you do, you think they belong in the wilderness and you're happy they're in the wilderness. I think they're beautiful. I would love, I would love to see them more. Have you ever seen one in the wild?

Yeah, just a couple times. But, um, they saw one at Como lake and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Um, yeah, but I, they are. You're a little afraid of them.

Well, I hike. Like, and I just think. But you don't, I mean, carry your bear spray. You'll be fine. Okay. And then how about Nile Crocodiles? She, I want you to, she grimaced at me when I said that one. So again, I'm pretty, those I just don't think I'd really have a chance against.

I don't even know if I could save you. Yeah. And so that one makes, I think they're really fascinating, but I don't really want to, I don't really want to come in contact with one. Fair enough. Okay. Okay. So she doesn't really like either of these animals.

I think the rest of us do quite a bit. But we've already done mountain lions and we'll get into crocodiles at some point. I would like to clarify. I think I do like mountain lions. I'm really glad they exist. I just don't want to meet up with them and I am afraid of them. Okay. Well, hopefully over time through this podcast will help you get rid of some of your fear.

I know that's not really working for you. But anyway, thanks so much, guys, for being here for this special episode for Mother's Day. I actually do have something I want to bring up. Oh, let's hear it. Maybe it's just Cindy here. It's got me feeling a little sentimental. Okay. This is the second episode in which I've made a fairly tasteless joke about my mom.

Yeah. And I have no doubt that had she the opportunity she would sacrifice her life to save her children. Yeah. And this being a Mother's Day celebration, I thought maybe I should clear the air a little bit. My mom actually passed away earlier this year. And it's been a hard few months. So I just want people to know that I guess humor is the way I approach these kinds of life events. It's just kind of how our brains are wired in the Smith family.

And we just find a little bit of the humor in the morbid. And I just want to say that I love her and she's the best person I ever knew. Yeah. We love your mom too. We definitely miss her. Yeah. It's sad having one less listener. One of my favorite facts about your mom is that she never beat you at any games,

that she always let you win. Oh, it's so sweet. She was really, she never allowed herself to beat us at anything. She had so many opportunities, but she just loved us that much. Yeah. She was like,

she's great. The nicest lady I've ever met. Sorry, mom. That's okay. I know I'm not the nice. I won't go to the moon. No, but she was super nice. Yeah, thanks for saying that, Mike.

We all do really miss her. And we're glad that. You're part of the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully people made it this far, so they don't just hear me telling terrible, awful jokes about my mom. I don't. Okay. Well, thanks everyone again for being here.

Mom, thanks for being here. You're welcome. We really appreciate you being here and for sending those stories along. Thanks for making my life more interesting. Yeah, of course. Happy Mother's Day, everyone. We'll see it. See it.

Bye. Love your moms. All right. It's that time of the show where we finally get to recognize the true stars of the show. show, you new subscribers to our Patreon account. You guys are awesome. Quite frankly, you make this whole thing so much more fun to work on for us and we truly appreciate it. So let's get to it. We've got Devin, Claire, Trudy, Alyssa, Elliott, Asia, Nicole, Cameron, Courtney, Taryn, Lily, Randy,

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