Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Mountain Lion Attack - A Mountain Lion Piggyback Ride

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Stephen Campbell got a lot more than he bargained for when he was attacked from behind while pipelining near Grande Prairie, Alberta. Wes takes advantage of another opportunity to talk about Lord of the Rings, Jeff channels his inner WWE wrestler, and Mike is once again insensitive about people experiencing emotions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Tooth and Claw. On this one, we're talking about another mountain lion attack. We hope you enjoy it. Hey, everyone. Hey, everyone. Hey, everyone. Hey, everyone. One of those will work.

We've got a few takes there. Yeah. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about animal attacks. We try to do it in a way that does justice to the animals, their behaviors. I'm a wildlife biologist. My name's Wes Larson. I've been working with animals for over a decade now,

mostly large carnivores, a lot of bear species, some other animals. I've never actually seen your college degree. You want me to grab it real quick? I'll grab my master's degree. I don't know if I, yeah. I got it right here.

Do you want me to grab it? Actually, I don't know if it's in this bin. It's not in this bin. I knew. I knew we wasn't going to have it. Wait, me. Maybe it is. Well, let's just say we're 99% sure Wes is a wildlife biologist, and then by next episode, we'll allow them to try again to prove it.

Okay. Oh, guess what I just found? Oh, there it is. My master's degree. Certificate of birth? Oh, no, that's not it. Never mind. So we know Wes was born successfully.

No, that was my certificate of training for wildlife immobilization. That wasn't. Oh, those are like participation ribbons. everyone gets one of those. Anyway, you'll just have to take it on faith this week that I am a wildlife biologist. Jeff helped me out on my Black Bear work, and Mike has just helped us with our self-confidence as a friend. You guys are looking great today. Oh, thanks.

You too. I was just about to comment on your appearance, Mike. You're wearing a beanie with like the little tassels, like the pigtail tassels. He's wearing a winter beanie, July 10th. It's funny, yeah, it's 105 degrees in Salt Lake. It's funny because there's a little bit of hair popping out right by where your eyebrow ends. Wait. And so it makes it look like your eyebrows are like so long.

Yeah. So that's it. That's the podcast. That's the hosts. How are you guys doing? I've been pretty hot. Just outside every day. You got two ACs in that apartment.

I've just been grinding, dude. Oh, man. You need to take it easy. Yeah. Depending on who you ask, you've always been hot, Jeff. Yeah, you're probably the hottest of all three of us. It's hands down. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I think so. I don't know. West has got the eyes. We'll ask the fans. Tell us who's hottest. Mike, how are you, pal? I'm good. I feel oddly energetic. Oh, good. That's rare for you.

It might be because I'm, you know, when you have like three hours of sleep the night before and you just, your body kind of just kicks into overdrive for like, yeah, we're going to make it today. I think that's where I'm at. It's playing games a little bit too late last night. Maybe you feel so energized because of Coyote Peterson's recent discovery. Is that it?

Mike, do you know what he's talking about? No, what happened? He found Bigfoot's skull. No way. Yeah, it just happened to be like sitting in a puddle in British Columbia and he just found it.

And it happened. to look, it happens to look exactly like a replica of a gorilla skull that's sold by this company in China, like the exact same. But, um, but it's Bigfoot. It 100% is Bigfoot. And I'm sure if it ends up being the replica of the gorilla skull, he still just found it. Like, he had nothing to do with placing it there. No, he found it. He just found it and didn't know what to think, you know. Well, maybe there's a lot of Bigfoot's over in China and they just have an excess of skulls. So these guerrilla replica skulls they're selling are actually Bigfoot skulls. They just have so many Bigfoot skulls that they're selling them as guerrilla replicas.

Well, I don't think Coyote Peterson would like lie or try to deceive his audience, would he? I don't think so. Not at all. So yeah, he found Bigfoot. So I'm sure we'll have him on any day to talk about Bigfoot. I think when we start a tooth and claw show, we got a one-up him to like a whole bigfoot skeleton and be like, his head was fake. There's, here's the real one. Yeah, we'll find like big feet that are playing video games with each other and they died that way.

And I don't know, something they'll want up him. Anyway, that's the big news of the week. What? I don't know. I was trying to think of like the most weird big foot. remains that you could find. That would be weird. No, you got there.

I guess I got it. Yep. That's all I got. You guys got anything from this week? It's my birthday this week. Oh, yeah. On Wednesday. You excited?

You're going to be in Yellowstone? I am going to be in Yellowstone. We're kind of celebrating it today. I'm going to go fishing and have a little picnic with Jesse and my friend Sam. And then I go back to Yellowstone tomorrow. You know, people named Sam are pretty. good, loyal friends. They are.

She's one of my more loyal friends. Just watch Lord of the Rings. That's true. What am I going to get you, Wes? I don't know. Well, usually you just like, eh, give me a 50 bucks, and it's like, well, that was easy for everyone. Sure.

I'll take that. Yeah. Okay. That's a deal. That's more than Jeff's going to give me. I'm going to fix, I'm going to make your horseshoes pit really nice. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's better than mine.

Okay. Shoot. It's fun having a friend named. Sam that I care about because I can send gifts from Lord of the Rings of Frodo saying like Sam, my dear Sam. And I can send that to Sam all the time and it's pretty fun. Or him like screaming Sam. You kind of seem like Elijah would a bit too, so it works.

You know? She probably feels like it's coming from Frodo when you do that. She probably does. Yeah, me and him took a photo together once because we were wearing the exact same thing. I was there. His girlfriend was all like, this is crazy. Like you guys look so. Much I like.

Yeah, it was fun. All right, well, that's all I got. Should we talk about our animal for the day? Yeah. Okay. Let's do it. Let's do it. Today we're talking about one of our favorite animals, the one, the only,

Mount Lions, or Cougars. There's only one? Or Pumas, or whatever you want to call on. That's critically endangered, right? They got as many names as any animal. Apparently, they have the Guinness Book of World Record for the most names for a single animal. Oh, there you have that. Okay. We're skipping ahead here, though. I've had a pretty busy weekend. I wasn't totally sure what animal to pick. I went with cougars. They're one that I'm

pretty familiar with, one I know a lot about. I was thinking I don't have to do as much research as normal. I still got into a pretty deep hole with the research on this one. I read a new book that I really liked, so I got some really good information from that. The story is from one of those animal planet shows called I Was Prey. We've used that show a few times now. It's the show, I'm going to be honest, like, a disclaimer here, that show can over dramatize. Is that the word? Nailed it. It can be overly dramatic quite a bit.

And I think sometimes they go a little hard on the sensationalism of these things. But as far as getting a narrative from those shows, it really helps. I can get a good story that has all the little details. And then I try and pat it with like all the other news articles and interviews and everything that those people have done. So it's not like I'm just taking this verbatim from the show. show, but I do get some of the narrative details from those shows. So why should I listen to you and why shouldn't I just watch the show? The reason I just explained.

I'm not going to over-dramatize it and I'm going to give you some more details that you didn't have and I'm going to fill in some of the biology that the show missed out on. Did the show have like actors and stuff? No. Oh, they don't do reenactments? No, they do. What this show does is, well, sometimes they do, but what they mostly do is just like a POV camera.

So like shot after shot of like blood on snow and like the camera's all shaky. No mountain lion in it. Yeah, they'll do shots of like a mountain lion like screaming or like a close up of its face and stuff. They don't because like in a when they do like investigative work on old murders in small town America. Yeah. They always pick like really good looking actors to play the parts of the real people.

And then you see the real person like, a really handsome cougar to put in the film instead of like the original one. Just the best-looking hooter. But then they'll cut back and forth to interviews with the actual person, which was interesting. Right. So what we're going to talk about today is the 2015 attack of Steve Campbell in Alberta, Canada, featured on the program, I Was Prey. I also got some, as I mentioned, some of this other sources are from news outlets. So our story.

So Steve Campbell was seven years old when his family moved to Alberta, Alberta, Canada, which is just North of Montana. Me and Jeff have been there. Mike, have you been to Alberta ever? I have. I've been there with Mike. Okay. We did the same trip. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's right. Up to Alaska. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful province. Yep. So for Steve, it was really the perfect place to spend his childhood, the majority of his childhood. He moved there when he was seven. Except for the malignines. Uh, yeah, true. He and his brother grew up in rural Alberta, rural Alberta, so they were really comfortable in the outdoors. They'd spend all day in the summer. They'd spend all day in the summer. outside riding bikes.

They would come up with lots of different games to play outside. And during the winter, they'd do normal winter stuff, throwing snowballs and sledding and doing typical outdoor winter activities. Snow angels. Snow angels, whitewashing each other. Sticking snow down your pants. Yeah. To me, it sounded a lot like growing up in Montana, which was a really idyllic place to

grow up, lots of outdoor stuff to do. It sounded really great. Mike, did you spend much time outside growing up? Not a whole lot. We're very fair-skinned, like my family heritage has some history of, yeah, doctor's orders. Yeah, right. So Steve's dad worked in the oil and gas industry, and that's what brought them to Alberta. And Steve knew it was what he wanted to do as well.

He joined the company as a young man, and that was almost completely due to the fact that it paid so well for jobs that required almost no experience. That great pay, though, really came with a catch, and that's that he would have to work for his which was a really a big challenge for the two of them. When he started working at the pipeline, he was working about 50 miles south of Grand Prairie, Alberta, and he quickly learned doing that job that it wasn't free money. It was good money, but it wasn't free money. He would work 14-hour days.

It would be really difficult physical labor. It could be frigid cold in Alberta. One thing, though, that he did really like about it is that he relished in the fact that he got to work with mostly men, and they got to do a lot of joking around, and like kind of guy talk. And a quote from him on the show was that he said, there was no room for feelings on that crew.

I want you to picture this guy. He kind of looks like a magician to me. He's kind of a smaller guy. And so it's kind of funny him being like, yeah, I love the guy. Like, no room for feelings. It's how you mean like a David Copperfield type? I was thinking like a wizard, but you mean like a stage magician? Yeah.

I was thinking Job from arrested. Yeah, more in that line. More in that line. You know, what's better than that, though? Guys being dudes, right? That's what he liked. So his work took him into the forest where he was accustomed to seeing lots of wildlife. They would see moose, black bears, an occasional grizzly bear.

And he did know that mountain lions were in the area that it was mountain lion country. But we all know they're very elusive animals. They're not commonly cited. Most people, even people that spend a lifetime in the outdoors, a lot of them never see a mountain line. Our cousin Brent. Our cousin Brent. Works for the Forest Service. Never seen one.

One of his favorite animals. His favorite animals are lying. Yeah. Me and Jeff have both seen seven, so Brent sucks. So on January 30th, 2015, I mentioned Steve was working about 50 miles south of Grand Prairie, Alberta. He was 31, and he was actually working his first job for the pipeline that his dad hadn't helped him secure. So he was feeling good. He was starting to really come into his own in the profession.

He's just feeling good about being a pipeliner. On that particular day, he'd be working with three other dudes. Dan, who's good. No, no women. Okay, he's not on that true. No room for feelings on the pipeline, Mike. So there's three other guys. Dan, who Steve knew.

He really liked Dan because he had a really good sense of humor. Rick was the foreman who Steve described as funny and rude with no filter. and then Dave, who he hadn't met before. So we got Steve, we got Dan, Rick, and Dave. So the four men had been tasked to clear the brush and some deadfall and whatnot from this particular section of pine forest, and that was to make it easier for them to build the pipeline to run through the area. The work really didn't require them to use a lot of heavy machinery, so for a pipeline job, it's relatively quiet work,

and as they were working, they could really feel this eerie stillness of the winter forest around them. And I, you know, I felt that. Like when you're out in pine forest in the winter and it's like fresh snow and everything, it's about as quiet as an outdoor place can get. It just sounds really... Just like anywhere. Yeah, any place, exactly. It's just very quiet.

And it can get a little eerie if you really let that sink in. I love it. Me too. Just the dead silence of winter. Yeah, I also enjoy it quite a bit. Oh, I like it. More even. I think you probably do.

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you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. So during the day, one of Steve's job was to load some wood pallets onto the back of a flatbed truck. So as he loaded the pallets, his back is to these dense woods, and the woods are really just a few feet away from him and the truck. And his coworkers were on the other side of the flatbed.

They were doing something else, and they threw a ratchet strap over to Steve to secure the pallets. And as he bent down to secure this hook to the rail of the truck, he felt a large weight hit him in the back. And he assumed it's just one of the other guys that had like shown up to roughly. house with him and kind of like, you know, play around. And his hard hat then flies off and he feels teeth sink into his head. And he realizes like, oh, this probably isn't one of the other guys. Taking this joke a little too far. This is going to, this is turning a little weird.

So he turns to see a tawny body clamped onto his. And he realizes tawny. Like, tawny is like the color of like deer or mountain lions like that kind of like, yeah. I didn't know that. All right. So he sees this. tawny colored animal clamped onto his back and he realizes he's being attacked by a mountain line. So we've done a few mountain line episodes. We did one that was totally devoted to Mount Lions and then

they've been in our news episodes a lot. They were in one of our Mother's Day episodes. But this is our second episode that's, you know, fully about them. We went over a lot of these facts in the first one. Some of these might be repeats, but there's a lot out there about mountain lines. They're really fascinating animal. So I learned a lot more again this time as I was studying them. But a couple things that we're going to go over that we've probably touched on already. They are the most widespread large mammal in the Western Hemisphere. So they can be found all the way from up in the Yukon down to southern Argentina. So pretty much all of North America outside of like the Arctic. You can find out there. And South America. Yeah, they can be found throughout the Americas. Exactly.

They also have some of the most names of any animal, as we mentioned, already. In the U.S., we often use cougar or mountain lion. Puma is the name they often use in places like Central or South America, but they all have the same Latin name. It's Puma Concolor, and it's the same animal. So there are some subspecies, but they're all Puma con color. And con color means like uniform color, and Puma is like the type of cat. All right, they are a dimorphic species. Males will be about 7 to 10 feet long from the tip of their nose to the tip of their tail. females about six to nine feet adult males average around 150 pounds and females around 120 pounds I should know really interested when we get one that's not dimorphic at this point yeah it doesn't

happen that much there's usually some difference I should note that those weight averages that I just gave 150 for males 120 for females from what I can tell that's for the entire species throughout their range but those weights really vary based on what population you're looking at. So like typically the further you get from the equator, the bigger they're going to be. So cats in like Alberta or Montana are going to be a lot bigger than Puma's in like Columbia or Costa Rica or something. Do you know why? Yeah, I was going to ask in a more convoluted way, but it's what I was going to ask. There's actually, there's actually a rule. I can't remember what that rule is called. It's like named after this guy. But it explains that generally as like creatures get

further from the equator, they get bigger, but like shorter and more dense. And that's, you know, obviously for heat conservation. But with mountain lions, I'm guessing that's mostly it. It's just like their prey species tend to get bigger as you get outside of that range too. In the jungles, they're typically eating like bats and possums and lizards and stuff. But if you get up into like Montana, Alberta, they're eating mostly deer. And so they are growing larger because of that. And then they also just have to be larger to survive cold winters. So that would be my guess. Bats seem like a hard food source for them to get.

Yeah, not so much fruit bats, though. Like where they just hang out in trees and they're big and they have a lot of meat to them, it's probably a pretty good food source for them. You've never seen a cat catch a bird? I don't think I ever have actually seen that happen. I like that has nothing to do with what we're, well, I guess a cat, but we're talking about bats. It's like a mountain lion's like an elite cat.

Yeah. It's going to be able to catch bats. Anything. An elite cat. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I like that turn of phrase.

I start using that. I shouldn't have made fun of you for that. It's true. Yeah. I accept your apology. Yeah. That's maybe my second one this episode. I can't remember.

They're unique in that they don't really have a breeding season, which was something I didn't know about them up until now. They're pretty much ready to go all year. Ready to go whenever. They're like humans in that regard. and females can have their kittens just about any time of the year or two. So at any point you could see brand new cougar kittens, which is kind of cool. I do think there's a time a year that's more common for them to have kittens,

but it can happen any time from what I read. They are really perfect predators. They have some really specialized systems for hunting down and some doing prey. So one thing that's really cool about cats is I think we've talked about a lot of animals that have these really interesting senses. Like we just talked about sharks and how they pick up electrical fields in the water and they have this incredible sense of smell.

I think as humans, our sense that is the one that we think about the most or that we rely on the most is our sense of sight. And cats actually really rely on their sense of sight as well. So it's kind of an interesting similarity that we have with them. Cougars and other big cats have really round or oval pupils. And that shows that they really have a reliance on both daytime and nocturnal hunting.

So some other cats will have a really thin, like more slitted pupil, and those are the ones that are almost solely hunting at night. But cougars and big cats tend to have these more rounder pupils, and that gives them a lot more flexibility to hunt both during the day and at night. Their eyes are really fascinating. So when light goes through their pupil and their lens, it hits all these different light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye. that's your retina. And there's two different kinds of cells back there. There's rods and cones.

So rods function in low levels of light and they don't detect color while cones are really sensitive to high levels of light and they're used in color vision. So because cats need to be able to see in low light, they have lots of rods and not that many cones. That means that they can discern the color of stuff that's close or really large, but outside of that, color isn't that important to them. Really the main thing for them is having all those rods so that they can pick up stuff in low light. Another really interesting thing about their eyes is behind the retina. There's a thin layer of reflective cells called a tapetum lucidum. And that means bright carpet. It's what reflects light back through those rods and kind of gives them like a second chance

to look at whatever they're looking at. It almost like it like increases the amount of light that they're seeing. So when you like shine a flashlight in an animal in the night or it sees your headlights and you see that that like eye glare, that's that, that reflective covering, the tapetum lucidum. Tepatum, lucidum, cool. All right, so they can likely hear sounds in the ultrasonic range. There's not a ton of science on exactly how well they can hear, but they can move their ears together or independently to isolate noises and to judge distances. Their rear legs are longer and more powerful than their front legs. That means they can jump nearly 50 feet horizontally and 18 feet vertically, which is just

insane when you think about it. Yeah, that's... Like an 18-foot vertical is unreal. Think about how they could pull vault, because if they're high jumping 18 feet, you know, they're getting like way up there. I bet people, if they pull vaulted, they would probably be on the side of that truck instead of you. Yeah.

I'm glad they can't. That's like my one claim to glory. It's thought that they're one of the fastest animals in the Americas. They can probably hit speeds of upwards of 50 miles per hour, even maybe a little bit more. We've never, like, been able to put a mountain lion on a treadmill and actually see how fast they can go. But it's somewhere around there. What, Michael Scott in the office ran like 30 miles per hour. That's what he said, right?

There's like a car that drove past. Oh, yeah. I forgot. So they're ambush hunters. So they'll typically stalk within their prey trying to remain unseen until they get about 50 feet away, and then they rush larger prey. They typically jump onto the back, and they latch onto the neck, shoulders, or head. And then as we've talked about before, a really fascinating thing about Mount Lions

is their method of killing. Do either you remember their preferred method of killing prey, larger prey? Oh, yeah. What is it? They put their tooth in the back of your... your right below your skull in the back of your head and paralyze you. Pretty much, yeah. They slip their canine in between one of your vertebrae,

and it creates a wedge in between those vertebrae, and it separates them. So they essentially break your neck by slipping a tooth in between those vertebrae. It's pretty fascinating. Is it the top tooth or the bottom tooth that they put in? It could be any of the four canines. They probably try and get those bottom two, I'm guessing, or the top two in between them. but like they're trying to get like they have four canines and those of the teeth they're trying to get in between the vertebrae and they do it on your neck right yes so here's a question okay are you sure we're not just saying like a really

fancy way to say that they bite you really hard through your neck uh i mean if you really want to dumb it down i guess but like any animal that bites you in the neck couldn't they be doing the same thing But it's like, are they like targeting to go between. Mountain lions are trying to get in between your vertebrae to create that wedge. Okay. If it were just like at random, they're just trying to crush necks, you would see lots of animals that just have like crushed vertebrae or you'd see lots of like really ugly wounds on necks.

But theirs are so clean and they're able to do that in such like a surgical precision almost that it would be dumbing it down to say it like that. I see. I'm crushing necks like McGrewber? Yep, exactly. that's their preferred method of killing sometimes what they'll do is they'll just grab an animal by the neck and pull its neck down so fast and hard toward the ground and kind of back that it'll break its neck and then sometimes they'll actually latch on to the windpipe and crush it and suffocate an animal that way too

so it really can be a variety of different ways but the preferred method is that vertebrae separation So after they've killed an animal, they'll use their teeth and their tongue to clean hair from the animal. Then they open the carcass using their claws behind the ribs. They remove the stomach, the intestines, and drag those away because they don't want to eat that. And then what they typically eat first are the organs. So they'll eat like the heart, the liver, and the lungs. And then they use these really sharp specialized molars to strip away large pieces of flesh that are swallowed whole. They eat a large variety of prey.

ungulates like deer are one of their most common prey items in North America, but they really do kill a lot of stuff. So I've got a number of things here that I'm going to list off that cougars have been known to eat. So mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, big horn sheep, moose, mountain goat, pronghorn, peckery, porcupine, beaver, badger, armadillo, black bear, bobcat, cougar, coyote, pompous deer, guanaco, wild boar, snowshoe hair, pikeum, marmot, skunk, ground squirrels, pine squirrels, flying squirrels, rock squirrels, pocket gophers, wood rats, white-footed mouse, meadow vall, raccoon, fox, quadamundi, a goody, a possum, sheep, cattle, pigs, dogs, chickens, turkeys, rough grouse, fish, insects, lizards, berries, and grass.

So those are just some of the things that cougars have been known to eat. That pompous deer sounds like you had it coming. Yeah, exactly. It's tasty. We do. I think we tend to think of them as just eating deer, but they actually have a pretty flexible diet when it comes down to it. And in really rare cases, they will actually kill and consume humans.

Do you know what their favorite food is? Deer. One other question. So in our Lions Asavo episode, I thought it was really interesting that you mentioned how lions tongues can, like, I think it was peel skin off at humans. and then you were saying mountain lions will like lick deer and stuff. Do they have the same type of tongue? They do.

Their tongue have those same like, they're almost like barbs that come off their tongue. Even domestic cats have that. That's why when a domestic cat licks you, it feels like sandpaper. But bigger cats, it's much more pronounced and it's enough to clean fur from skin. And then in the really big cats, they can even clean flesh from skin using that tongue. Okay. Yeah. Pretty impressive.

Okay, so I think we're going to get back to our story. So Steve's head is in the Mount Lions Jaws, and he had enough movement that he could turn and see its huge green and black eyes. And in the interview I was watching, he said that he saw its claws come out, and they started slashing at him. Now, we've mentioned this before.

Claws coming out in Cougars, it's not like a conscious decision. It's a passive response when they extend their forearms. So retractable claws isn't really a great name for it. Protractile Clause. would actually be a better word, but he said that the claws were at least six inches long and that the cat was slashing at his throat trying to kill him. I couldn't find a really great resource for how long cougar claws are. They're not six inches. They're not even close. I saw some display claws that when they pull them all the way out of the cat, they're about two inches long. So the part sticking out that you would see would maybe be about a half inch at most. Grizzly claws aren't six inches.

Like, Amur Tiger claws are like four inches long. Six inches would be like a velociraptor claw. Yeah. But that's what he said. He said the Mountain Lions claws were at least six inches long and that it was trying to slash his throat to kill him. It's not likely... His head is in its mouth and he can just see these claws like coming out of his neck.

Yeah. So it keeps releasing him with its head, I think, but it keeps grabbing him with his claws. Oh, I see. It's not likely that it was trying to kill him. with its claws, as we just mentioned, they don't really use their claws to kill. It's more just trying to find a grip. And that process to a human can be really devastating because we don't have very thick skin.

You know, our skin is very thin. Especially you, dude. Especially me. Compared to most animals, it's my birthday this week, Jeff. Yeah, come on me. I should have said to Mike. Summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup, and craft singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly milty cheese and thick, rich ketchup.

We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and Kraft. You know, just their claws can be really devastating to us. Like a cougar just trying to figure out how to grip onto you can really rip you up pretty good. Yeah. So as he's struggling with this mountain lion, he can feel the claws ripping through his skin all over his torso. Luckily, he was wearing like a coat and some thicker stuff. but he described it like a sharp knife through butter, and as he looked at the ground,

he saw blood staining the snow and flowing down his coveralls, and he actually thought that this mountain lion had slid his throat and that he was going to die. So he starts slipping into shock, and then he feels sharp pain in the sides of his face, and that brings him out of it. And the cougar was actually clamped onto his face now with its paws,

and he could feel the rough surface of the paw pads on his cheek. He said it felt like sandpaper, while these claws are digging into his flesh. And one of the claws catches him at the side of his mouth and slices through his cheek. And he had the strange sensation of both air and blood rushing into his mouth from the side of his face. And the cougar had actually split his face from the corner of his mouth a few inches up onto his cheek. Gave him the old Glasgow smile. Well, it made me think of the joker when he was like, want to know how I got these scars.

And then he'd be like a cougar. It was up in Alberta laying pipe. I was pipelining and a cougar got me. All right. So at this point though, blood is spraying out of his face and Steve is struggling to reach up and pull this cougar off. But he's completely useless. He can't get the cougar off of him.

And he starts screaming for help. But his screams are drowned out because they had a really large diesel truck that he had been loading these pallets onto. And it was idling. and it was so loud that his friends couldn't hear him, or his co-workers. So he couldn't, like, he was starting to not even feel any pain, kind of starting to get a little woozy and drift away. This cat's clamped onto his face, and he's kind of,

he's losing his resolve to fight back. But then he stares at the ground and he sees all this blood in the snow. It kind of gives him a second wind, and he stands up and starts running around with the mountain line on his back. And once again, he starts yelling for help. And my guess is, as he's doing, this, he gets far enough away from the truck that finally his co-workers can

hear him. And they come running around the side of the truck to, like, probably a pretty unexpected sight, which Steve, who's the smallest guy in the crew, has an 80-pound cougar on his back. Its rear legs are pushed up against his back, and its four legs are clamped on his, or his four legs are clamped on its face.

So the men immediately begin yelling at the cat. They hit it with the metal hook ends of the ratchet straps, and like, they're getting it really pissed off. So as they're doing this, it actually bites down harder on him and it starts biting at his ear. And then they run in and they start actually like pounding the cougar with their fists and they continue hitting it with these hooks. And finally, Steve feels the cougar just let up a little bit. Like he had this pressure of this

vice with its like paws on its face and it biting his ear. And he feels it let up a little bit and he reaches behind him and grabs the cat by the scruff and throws it over his head onto the ground. And as he does this, it rips off a big chunk of his ear. ear because it's biting his ear and it rips off like a big part of it and he actually sees the piece of his ear fall to the ground by the cougar vander holyfield he hears it hit the ground from it like like in almost heroes where they're talking into the ear so immediately the cougars back on its feet and it runs under the truck and lays down all four men run inside the truck and steve applies pressure to his wounds he's trying to stem the bleeding and they use the truck radio

to call for help, and they know that the nearest hospital's about 45 minutes away. But not too much longer, EMS shows up, Steve's loaded into the ambulance, and he breaks into tears. And they take him to the hospital where he gets 30 stitches on his chin, his cheek, and his ear. I thought there was no room for feelings on this trip. Yeah, exactly. I'm just kidding, Steve. No, this is obviously awful, but you're allowed to cry. I would cry in that situation, I'm sure.

I love that. Acceptable. He is missing 25% of his ear The doctors use skin from his thigh To recreate the mission What's up, Jack? The other guys are just like making fun of it for crying All right, so back to Steve

He got 30 stitches on chin, cheek and ear 25% of his ear was missing And the doctors had to use skin from his thigh To recreate that missing portion Which you know, our thighs really just help us out When we need some extra skin I feel like that's where they're always pulling it from That's still saying.

Yep, the old skin factory, the thighs. So while he's at the hospital, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police showed up. The Mounties. Ooh, the Mounties. Yep. And they killed the mountain lion, which was still hiding under the truck. It's funny. In some of the articles, they were like, we're pretty confident we got the right lion.

And it's like, oh, really? The one that was still under the truck? You don't think that. Covered in blood. Yeah. They were all like, yeah, we didn't take DNA, but we're fairly confident we got the right one. It's like, yeah, I think you probably did if it was still under the truck. He suffered a lot of psychological damage.

Maybe it knew and it, like, tricked another mountain line to go under the truck. Just be like, hey, listen, I'll give you my dear that I just killed. I just need you to hang out under this truck for a couple hours. That's messed up. I'll be right back, I swear. There's a little bit of a ear for you to eat while you wait. Anyway, Steve had a lot of psychological damage. He would see the mountain line whenever he closed his eyes or tried to sleep.

He became a recluse. He stayed in his house. He was unwilling to socialize or like go back to work for a while. He ended up doing exposure therapy. And in the beginning, they would like take him to pipelining sites in the woods. And it would take him 20 minutes to even get out of the truck to go out into the woods. His PTSD lasted more than half a year. But at the time of the interview, which was like two years after his attack, he reported that he was now able to sleep again.

So he had a hard time with this one. All right. Does exposure therapy work? Is that like, yeah, it does for some people, not for everyone, but for some people it definitely does. You can't just like, I think it's a tricky thing. You can't just like, if someone's afraid of snakes, you can't just like throw a snake on him and be like, here you go.

I think you have to kind of ease them into it. Like, what's that? Talladegan Knights where he has the mountain lion in the car. Yeah, exactly. I don't think that'd be great for Steve. All right. Well, that's the story. Do you guys have any questions about it?

So you said they're like pretty much perfect predators. Yeah. Maybe if you want to save this for cage match, if you're doing that, we can. Yeah. But I was wondering like pound for pound, how good do you think they are compared to other predators? If they were all the same size or something, you know? Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's a hard one to answer.

But I think they are like having seen a number of mountain lions, I just, and knowing how athletic they are, like the amount of, like, the distances they can jump and everything, I think big cats in general stack up really well against anything else. So like if every predator in the world was uniform size, I would put a lot of money on big cats. Like they would be the predators that I would bet on over like dogs or bears or reptiles or whatever. I would bet on cats. I mentioned this thing about exposure therapy. There recently was another mountain lion attack. It happened on May 28th of this year. It was a nine-year-old girl who was in a summer camp in Fruitland, Washington. And she was outside playing hide-and-seek with her friends, just like by some camp buildings. And she jumped out of the woods to surprise her friend when there was a cougar there and it attacked her. And she got attacked really bad. Like she got ripped up bad. They had to put her into a coma at the hospital. She had a really long recovery. But she had a has recovered and pretty amazingly one of the first things she did after she recovered enough to be

out of the hospital was she went on a cougar capture with some biologists and how old was she she's nine years old whoa that's cool they call her to cougar and she went and got to be there and get this appreciation for this animal that drastically changed her life her name's lily a keiz of veninsky i have a really hard time with her last name but um she's pretty impressive, really impressive little girl from Washington. That's awesome. I wonder if she is like afraid to try to scare her friends anymore. Yeah. She's like I'm not playing high and seek. Yeah. All right. So let's do our ouchies for the Steve story. I'll let you guys go first because I kind of have my own decision. A lot of stitches. 30 stitches. Lost in the year.

Quarter of his year. Yeah. Yeah, 25% of the year plus the he got the Joker scar. I'm giving it a six. That's what I was going to say, too. All things considered, it didn't seem like, it seems like it could have been a lot worse than it even was. Yeah. I mean, like, if a chimpanzee, like, ripping your penis off with its hands is our 10, probably, right? According to you guys. Yeah, I would say the Moe stories so far has been my 10.

The Mo. Yeah, that's our chimpanzee stories. There's lots of other stuff, too. Right. But that's our 10, so we're saying I'm putting it at a 6. Okay. Yeah, I was like trending five for this one even, because he was interviewed not long after and I saw the photos and like, they stitched him up pretty well and it wasn't that bad.

So I might go five. I think it's scary. It was only an 80-pound cat though, which still is scary. Don't get me wrong. He got ripped up pretty good, lots of blood loss. I was obviously terrified afterward. Like the psychological stuff seems pretty bad. You know, given his psychological.

status afterwards. I'll give them a six. I'm giving them a six as well. I'll switch mine to five. Okay. Okay. Is there an estimate start to finish how long this attack lasted? I don't have a total estimate, but my guess is like a couple minutes. Pretty quick. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, I feel okay with six. Okay. You know, but a 10 for the, the feelings that he had to feel afterwards. Emotional damage is off the charts. Exactly. Because he doesn't like feelings. All right. Imagine not liking feelings and then having to feel one. Yeah.

I don't know. You could probably tell us the most about that, Mike. I am emotionally dead inside. Yes. All right. So that's it for the story. Let's get into some of our categories. All right.

Chris crap. Cha, cha, yeah, real smooth. Do, do, do, do, do,

all right. So our first category is our pop culture category. We've done Cougars before. there's not actually a ton of cougars in pop culture either unless you're talking about the other kind of cougars which then there's a lot plenty and i got some favorites you do have some favorites there's like a whole websites out there i picked uh i picked kind of a weird one though instead because of his scars i decided to pick what's your favorite joker from pop culture history so for many of the batman tv shows movies comics whatever what's who's your all-time favorite

choker. Jeff, I'm going to let you go first because I think I know yours. Yeah, mine's Heath Ledger, for sure. I thought he was so good. And, like, one of the best villains all time, he, like, just, my favorite thing about it was, like, he didn't care if his plans didn't work. Right. He just wanted to stir shit up, you know? And if he got killed, he didn't care. Yeah. He was a scary villain. New movies need to take some lessons from that. Just, like, just make a villain scary. It's all you got to do. Yeah. Mike. I'm going with the Joker from the

short comic The Killing Joke. Oh, that's a good one. Have you guys read it? Yeah. It's so good. He's so demented in it and it seems kind of like the culminating moment between everything that the Batman and Joker relationship has been leading up to. And depending on who you ask, like

the ambiguous ending is just like I don't know, it's just a perfect little microcosmic representation of the character. I love it. Yeah. If you're going to read that listeners, just some real trigger warnings in that graphic novel. Like there's definitely some sexual assault and some other things in that one that you want to be careful about. But it is a crazy comic. Mine is the Joker from the Batman animated series.

That's kind of the Batman that I grew up with. That's like, we watched the 60s Batman for a long time as a family, but it's like so goofy and stupid. and then I obviously saw the Michael Keaton movies as a kid, but the thing that made me like Batman a lot was the animated series. And that was like my Joker. Mark Hamill is a great voice for the Joker. Can you do as like... Do you have a good Mark Hamel Joker laugh?

I don't, but... I don't think anyone does, and that's what makes him great. The animated series is also by far my favorite Harley Quinn, too. Oh, yeah. I think she's so cool. So much cooler than in anywhere else. Yeah. Wait, Wes.

Yeah. Can I do another pop culture category? If you want. That I thought of during it. Yeah. I want to do favorite pop culture for your ear getting taken off. Okay. Sure.

I already said mine. It's the guy in almost heroes. He loses his ear when the bear attacks him. And that's all his friends find. And so they keep being like Higgins, Higgins, into the ear trying to find him. That's my favorite. Mike? I'll go with the Mike Ty, I reference mine too.

Mike Tyson of Ander Holyfield is just, I was young enough for it to be the most like scandalizing thing that I had ever heard. We watched it live and I was just like, what is going on as a kid? I'll go with the one in Reservoir Dogs. Yeah, that's a good pick too. It takes the cops here. Yeah. And then does the dance.

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When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. All right. Okay, we kind of already did our cage match. I'm going to skip it for now. So we're going to go on to what would Mike and Jeff do? So what are you guys doing if you're just, you know, grab-assing with the boys,

roughing around, and putting some pallets on a truck and a cougar attacks you? Well, I have a few thoughts. Okay. First, the cougar seems to be trying to pull him closer, you know? Yeah. What if you take that away from the cougar and just, like, bear hug it? So then it can't try to pull you anymore. It's not going to claw you as much.

It's like clinching in a boxing match. A lot of his claw marks is it just trying to pull him in and him trying to get away. So it just keeps clawing him. Yeah. So I'm just going to bear hug it and then see what happens. And then also towards the end when he had it like biting him and it was up on his shoulders and head. Uh-huh. That's like prime position for a suplex.

So all you need to do, maybe like I would probably go up on the best. of the truck to get some more leverage, you know? Kind of like when you go on the ropes in a wrestling match. He's got all those pallets there too. He's got a perfect medium. And then you jump and you just land on the ground square on your shoulder blades. And that's a K-O move for sure. All right.

I need a little... I need you to elaborate a little bit on the bear hug. What's your end game in that one? Just not to get clod up. Okay, but like how long? you bear hugging it for? Well, until someone comes, right? The long as it takes for it to fall asleep.

Or get bored and leave. Mike, what's your... Mine's actually kind of similar to the suplex, and this is probably a bad answer since the example I'm going to cite didn't really work. But you know in the Princess Bride when Andre the Giant is slamming Wesley against the rock when he's like choking him out,

I'd probably just try to do something similar to that. On the truck? Yeah, on the pallets. I think for once your suplex move and your backslant move are actually decent options. So here's a little bit about what you're actually supposed to do if you encounter a cougar. And I will say, as far as this story goes, I don't think Steve really did anything wrong. He was outside working in an environment where he couldn't really hear the cat sneaking up on him because he was by the idling truck. Like maybe don't idle the truck.

Bad for the environment. Yeah, that's true. That too. outside of that, I said that true, that too, which is kind of funny. Those both work. Outside of that, he really didn't do much wrong. This mountain line snuck up on him. It wasn't like a surprise encounter or something.

It was a predatory mountain line. So really, though, if you are out recreating, if you're hiking or camping, hiking in groups is a big thing, keeping small children close to you, keeping your pet close to you and on a leash, making enough noise when you're walking to avoid some. surprising a mountain lion or other wildlife. Don't ever approach like a carcass that you find, like a deer carcass because there could be a lion nearby guarding it. Just like with bears, you want to keep a clean campsite that can also attract mountain lions. If you're mountain biking or running or something, you want to ride with run or ride with other people. You want to make

as much noise as you can and you want to avoid having like headphones in just if you're in Cougar country because you need to be able to pay attention to your surroundings. If you actually encounter a mountain lion you never the main thing and this is for all of our predatory animals you don't want to run if you run away that's going to trigger it into knowing that your food knowing that you're a potential prey item and there's a very good chance it'll chase you down don't approach a mountain lion uh if you see one you want to pick up any small children that you might have around or like if you have a small dog you want to pick it up as well you want to face the mountain lion use them as bait uh you don't want to use them as bait maybe the dog not your kids no not if you

trying to, if you're just trying to survive, though, that might be good. Yeah, that's true. You want to face the mountain line, you want to talk to it. That's going to help calm you down. It's going to help kind of let it know that you're aware that it's there. You want to appear as big as you can. So like, if you have a jacket, you want to stick your arms out and like flap your, unzip your jacket and have it big. So just make yourself look as big as possible. And then if the lion doesn't leave after you've done all of that, at that point, you want to get more assertive. So if you can safely grab, if you're a wizard, You want to make the whole room dark I'm just like in a hog

I am not some conjurer of cheap tricks He looks so big right there He does yeah So if it's still there If it's not leaving after all of this If you can without crouching down Grab like some sticks or anything to throw at it Do that you want to start yelling and getting as loud

And as assertive as possible I would even suggest at this point Doing like a bluff charge towards the cougar to see if it will scare it off. If that still isn't happening, then start throwing stuff at it. Again, crouching down can kind of trigger it to attack you. So you don't want to completely bend over and grab something,

but you could maybe quickly grab something off the ground if you needed to. And then if the cougar actually attacks you, if it makes contact with you, you need to fight back. There's no playing dead with them. You need to fight back as hard as you can to get it to decide that you're not worth eating. And for them, again, they need every muscle in their body to sort. survive. So if you put up enough of a fight against a cougar, it might be enough to discourage it, because if it gets injured, it's a death sentence for it. Do they attack for any reasons that aren't

predatory? Like, are they? Yeah, they can be defensive. For like their cubs and stuff. Yeah, but typically that's going to be more like that video that came out of Utah a few years ago with the hiker and the mountain line chasing it. Just try to intimidate you away. It's just intimidation, yep. It's escorting you away from whatever it doesn't want you near. It's not generally going to make contact in those kind of situations. So if it makes contact, it's probably going to try to eat. It's probably trying to kill you. Yeah.

Bear spray works great on them. So if you have bear spray, by all means, use it on a mountain lion. It works really well. If you're worried about Mount lions, carry bear spray with you. It works really great on Mountain Lions. As far as Steve's attack was concerned, I think there's a lot of explanations for his. It's an 80-pound cat, so it could have been a malnourished cat. They didn't really say in any of the stuff I could.

find if they did a lot of, like, analysis on the cat after they'd killed it. It could have been malnourished. It could have been a young mountain lion that hadn't really figured out how to bring down deer yet, and he was just easy prey. It could have been a rabid cat, which is very unlikely, but not impossible. So there's a lot of explanations. It also could have just been a normal mountain lion that's a predator and decided that it was going to, you know, try and kill some new prey, which was him.

So there's a lot of explanations, but it's impossible. to say which one it was. I have a thought that's kind of, I don't know, it's not that important, but I want to bring it up. Okay. I kind of feel like being attacked on snow is like the most ideal spot I'd want to be attacked on. Okay. Just like kind of like, you're already kind of like numbing the wound. You're wearing a lot of clothes usually.

If there's no snow, you're going to get dirt in it. If you're in the sand, obviously that would suck. Yeah. The ocean, you get salt water in it. Like, snow kind of seems like the best thing to be on when you get attacked. I tend to agree. I think the bad part about snow, the only downside to it is you can see all of your blood and you might freak out because you are like, oh, this is a lot of blood that's coming out of me.

But outside of that, I tend to agree it's probably like the best medium to be attacked on. It might be harder to like find a rock or something too. Yeah. It's probably bad if you have like a long survival thing afterward, like if you're in remote area because then you're really cold too. But before, okay, before we get too far off of the attack stuff though, I do just want to mention, even though I just said, you know, we're not, we can be prey for mountain lions. It's still incredibly rare. It doesn't happen that often. There are a lot of mountain lions in North America and South America.

These attacks don't happen that often. So they don't necessarily see us as prey. But they are capable as taking us as prey. So, okay. So our next category, we're Mike and Jeff listening, my new favorite category? Mike, you're going to go first this time.

We're going to start easy. They're going to get increasingly harder. You each get four questions this time. Mike, what Canadian province did this attack take place in? Alberta. Good job. Point Mike. Jeff.

Yeah. Ooh, I forgot to say this. this. We're going to see how good you are. Sorry, you already take a hit. Where do Cougars rank in size compared to other big cats? Oh man, I wasn't listening when you talked about this part. Let's see. So it goes, Tiger, Lion, Jaguar are the big three. That's my big three. Yeah, personally. Leopards are bigger than Mountain Lions, I think, but those ones are close. But I'm going to say fifth. They're fourth. They're bigger than leopards on average. Ooh.

Sorry. Sorry, that's my bad, but, you know, that's just luck of the draw. So Mike, you win. You're up one zero. Mike, what do cougars tend to consume first when they kill larger prey? They take out their intestines and stomach and stuff and then, like, drag them off and eat them. Wrong. Ah, dad gilmit. They take out the intestines and stomach. Oh, Jeff. Do you want to steal? Yeah, can you repeat the question? I wasn't listening. What do cougars tend to consume first when they kill prey?

Well, I didn't give Mike the chance to steal yours. But he couldn't really steal that one either. Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah, I've done very well. I'll give you a chance to steal this one. What do they tend to consume first when they kill urge or prey? Intestines in organs. No.

Good gravy. So they pull the intestines in a digestive system away from the body, and then they eat the heart, the liver, and the lungs and other organs first. because those have like the most nutritional value for them. Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, Wes. All right. Fair enough. Jeff, approximately within three feet, how high can Cougars jump vertically?

Uh, it was 18 feet. Correct. 1-1. We are tied at one. Mike, how much did the Cougar weigh that attacked Steve? 80 some odd pounds. You got to give me a guess within three pounds. 80 pounds.

80 pounds. Correct. All right. So it's 2-1. Jeff, how old was Steve when he moved Alberta? Seven. Correct. Good job.

2-2. Mike, what is the Latin name for Cougar? Oh, Puma ConColor? Wow. I'm impressed, Mike. I was just been thinking about Chili Con Carnet ever since he said that, and I knew it was kind of the same thing. So. Jeff.

Yeah. I said retractable clause wasn't a good name for what happens with big cats. What word is a better word to replace retractable with? No, you said it and I, like, forgot it the second you said it. So I have no idea. Mike, it doesn't matter if you steal because you're already winning. Pro tract. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks. West stole it. Yeah. Mike had a point. Did you know it, Mike? Yeah. I was going to say that.

Mike, congratulations. The podcast makes it another week since Mike didn't lose the quiz. You guys are lucky. I would have been raging right now. All right. Our next category is listener questions. Jeff, you got any listener questions for us? Okay.

Patreon questions. From Stacey. I live in Central Florida and a bucketless thing for me is to see a black bear in the wild. I know they're here because my husband has run into a few, but never when he was with me. Do you have any super secret bear spotting point? I don't have any super secret ones for Floridians, but I do know the area around Jacksonville has a lot of bears. The Everglades have a decent number of bears. I would just try and find local hotspots and then drive around in the mornings and the evenings.

Those would be my pointers. Just do it from the road, drive around mornings and evenings on rural roads, and look for bears. And you'll find one sooner later. So I'm going to go to a Instagram question and come back to a Patreon question. Interesting. Okay. So this is from, oh man. You guys try to make your Instagram, change your Instagram names to like easier to read stuff for me, please.

Pika Rescetes asks, what is the name of the coyote book West recommended? Can't find it. Hold on, Wes. Yeah. Okay. Oh, I want to say it's so bad. Jumping back over to Patreon. All right.

Carissa. And actually James is asking about this kind of too, but Carissa says, any good informational book recommendations? I read Coyote America after hearing about it on your podcast and I have a whole new appreciation for coyotes. I also read deaths in Yellowstone. I had no idea so many people have died there from such dumb mistakes. So there's your answer. Yeah. Coyote America by Dan Flores.

Yep. It's a good book. Yeah. As far as the other questions, like some good book recommendations, I think I'm going to make a list of books, movies, etc., for Discord. So that's kind of where you're going to have to. If you really want access to all those, you're going to have to be a patron because it's going to be on Discord. and that's just going to be kind of a benefit to being on our squad.

So it's just the easiest place to keep like a running updatable list. It is. So our Patreon members do get access to our Discord server where we have a lot of really fun community groups on there. So that's going to be one of them that I'm going to work on. Cool. Yeah. And then thoughts about coyote. Or wait, what?

Yeah. I think they just wanted to know what the name of the book was. No more thoughts. Do you have thoughts on that? Nope. All right. From our oldest brother, Wes, Cyrus, what is actually the smartest animal?

Dolphins, pigs, crows, dogs, rats, or chimps? My vote would be for chimps. Intelligence is really hard for scientists to measure because there's so many metrics that you can use when talking about intelligence. There's like social intelligence. There's counting. There's like all sorts of different.

There's verbal, you know, There's all these different things that you can look at when you're looking at intelligence. So it's really hard to measure. But I think if I were to have to gun to my head say like what's the smartest animal, I'd probably say chimpanzees. I'd say humans. Yeah, well, outside of humans. But there's also like elephants are supposed to be really smart. Pigs are supposed to be really smart.

Lots of parrots, birds. Nope. You're done sounding smart. Yes. Jeff got you. If you Google smartest animal chimps is like besides humans chimps is like the highest thing. Well, Google says it. Our Flynn 2 says cage match.

Dumbledore versus Gandalf. The people need to know. So this isn't this isn't who we like more. It's who wins a cage match. It's Gandalf. Gandalf's like essentially an angel. He's immortal. He is much stronger than any mortal.

person and Dumbledore's just like a dude. Well Dumbledore's just a dude as powers and he's mortal but he's a wizard. Gandalf's like literally like a god. That's like kind of the mythology behind Gandalf. Like he's... So why doesn't he just walk up to the... Like why didn't he

just stay with Frodo and walk right up to Mordor and help him throw it in? Okay but really quickly the big god in Lord of the Rings like in Tolkien is Iruuluvitar and he told the Miar like Gandalf and the other Maiar, that they were only allowed to interfere at like a certain level. And that's why Gandalf doesn't just like immediately save the day because like he wasn't allowed to.

Dumbledore sends like an 11 year old kid to do all of his dirty work. Well, Dumbledore's like constantly hiding. Gandalf sends like a mini little person to do all his. But he knew that that he had that like ability. He's like smaller than Harry Potter by the time Harry Potter's taken on Voldemort. The thing I hate about Dumbledmore. is how he's like constantly withholding information from Harry for no good reason. But at least he like lets him win all the house cups.

Dumbledore literally hires the dark lord to be one of the professors. He's like stuck on the back of some dude's head. And it's like, hey, that's actually Voldemort you just hired. Dumbledore's bad. And the guy's like a terrible professor too. Yeah. It's like at least if he was like a really good professor that's charismatic, like I could see you. wanting to hire him, but it's like, not only is Voldemort attached to his head, he's actually

bad at his job, too. There's also like a 200-foot dinosaur living in the bottom of Hogwarts, and Dumbledore has no idea it's there. But Dumbledore does have the elder one. It's pretty powerful. It's Gandalf. I'm taking Dumbledore over Gandalf the gray, Gandoff the white over Dumbledore. There's no, there's no real difference. It's Gandalf. Um, well, that's your opinion. All right. What is Jeff's favorite Shrek movie out of the three? I don't know. One? It's got that really good, hey now, you're an all star.

Yeah. Part at the start, you know? All right. It's got a lot of really good. I'm not a big fan of the Shrek movies, to be honest. Well, you should. All right. Well, yeah, you're probably right.

Who does the best animal impression? Wes, I want to ask this one just to get your Dolophosaurus impression. Okay. Well, yeah, and so that was from Marcia Crazer, and the other one was from OS. Ospiki. Okay. And then the other one. Or loosen my. Oh, yeah, I said. Okay.

Okay. From Ben, he wants to know what is the most creative way to catch slash release a mouse stuck in your house? Oh, watch that movie Mouse Hunt. Or what was that movie called? Willard? No, not Willard. I don't know. That's a good question.

I'd have to give that one a little more thought just to answer off the top of my head. We'll come back to that one. Yeah, why don't we save that one for another episode? Okay, so that's good for listener questions. All right, perfect. We're going to do a quick conservation corner. They are considered least concerned by IUCN standards. That's probably because there are some places where they really thrive, like British Columbia,

parts of Patagonia, there's lots of mountain lions or Pumas. But they were completely extirpated in the eastern U.S. The eastern cougar was declared extinct in 2011. With Florida Panthers, really the only viable cougar population in the eastern states, and Florida panthers are really highly threatened. Western cougars in recent years have wandered all the way out there, but there's still not a population of eastern cougars that exist. In the west, there are healthy and stable populations,

but there are much lower densities than they were historically before these predator control programs in like the 1800s and 1900s. They're hunted in many of the western states where they live. Hunters will use teams of dogs to tree cougars and then the hunters shoot the cat while it's in the tree. Not really my cup of tea, to be honest, as far as hunting is concerned. I think it's kind of not the best way of hunting an animal. But I do have some houndsmen that were friends of mine,

and they are sometimes. some of the loudest voices in the room when it comes to cougar conservation. I would say just overall, their really flexible diet, their elusive nature has allowed them to really survive a lot of our continued assault on the natural world. And you can even find cougars in super cities like L.A. So they have managed to survive in the face of everything that we've thrown at them, and they're actually doing pretty well in some areas. If you guys want to learn more about Cougar Conservation, specifically conservation in places like Southern California,

I have a friend that started this really cool nonprofit called Cougar Conservancy. They have some really neat resources online. If you happen to live in Southern California, you should go out to one of their events and check them out. They're a really cool conservation organization that I wanted to plug. So that's my quick conservation corner. Let's give them our claw rating. Wait, Wes. Can I do my Instagram category real quick?

Sure. Okay, so it's like best Instagram picture content from the attack. Okay. I think it'd be pretty sweet if someone got footage of him just chucking it off of his head. Just throwing it through the air. Yeah. Just like him throwing it like the ears midair. Yeah.

And so is the mountain line. Like that'd be some pretty cool content. I just want to shot that out. Yeah, I tend to agree with you on that one. I want a picture of the moment right before he realized. is it's a cougar and he still thinks it's his friend on his back because he's probably smiling really big he's like got a Frodo like oh you little bugger smile and then it's just a mount lion like with its mouth open about to bite him that's a good answer that is a good answer all right

claw rating Mike how many claws you give mount lions I'm giving him a six oh wow that's lower didn't do a whole lot to move them up my at least my big cat rankings I still think they're kind of like the most nondescript of all the big, or like cats really in general, to be honest. But I do like their, they kind of have like Pete Wentz eyeliner I'm noticing around their eyes. And I think that's kind of cool. They have that little black mustache too that I really like. Yeah. It's pretty good facial feature stuff going on.

Yeah. So, okay. I think they're cool. They're just compared to all the other cats. I think they're my least favorite. That's a pretty good point, actually. Because, like, I think I only have them ahead of leopards as far as, like, the real big cats go. Interesting.

Because I think cheetahs are maybe cooler than them. I like mountain lions maybe a touch more because I've seen them. But, like, cheetahs are really cool. And then, like, they're not going to be ahead of lion, tiger, or jaguar. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe they are, like, a seven for me. Okay. I forget what my overall ranking was.

But Mike made a good point there. Okay. For me, they're ahead of African lions. Really? Probably ahead of leopards. Yeah, without a doubt. I think it's a 10-cloth animal for me. I, like, there are big cat in North America.

They're the animal that, like, when I see one of these guys in the wild, I think about it for days afterward. Like, it's, it really sticks with me how just beautiful they are, how lively they, like, how they just move through the forest in such a way that I, I just think they're so graceful and beautiful and amazing. And you kind of forget they're there until you see one. And then you remember like, oh, we have a big cat out here. That is cool. And like sharing space with us. I just, I think they're amazing.

And I actually think they're so beautiful too. Like they're light green eyes and just their tawny coloration and the long tail. I just, yeah, they're a 10 for me. When you see one, do you think you or Steve thinks about it longer afterwards? Probably Steve. but in very different ways. I'm looking at Jeff's Animal Rankings Discord channel, and you had them ranked 15th overall it looks like.

Wow. That's pretty high. Yeah. I'm going to have to adjust that a little bit. Okay, we'll update that. Let me give them a ranking. I'm bumping them. I'm bumping them to 29.

And there's still a seven? No, I'm going to give them eight clause. Okay. All right. So we got 10, 8, and Mike, what were you? Six. Wow. I'm not budging.

All right. I might. Sorry, Cougars. All right, everyone. Well, that is it for this episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. Happy birthday to me. Go, best.

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