Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Nature is Metal - News Stories Including Orcas Ramming Boats, an Alligator Biting a Man's Arm Off, and an Interview with the creator of the Nature is Metal Account

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

Rick, the man behind the Nature is Metal Instagram account, joins Wes, Jeff, and Mike for an interview, where he talks about which animal he thinks is the most metal, the videos he has seen that have stuck with him the most, and how he got started in creating one of the most popular nature accounts on Instagram. But first, the guys discuss some of the more notable animal attack and encounter news stories from the past couple months. ~~ 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

If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Tooth and Claw, I'm Jeff Larson. We got my brother West Larson, our wildlife biologist.

That's me. And we got Mike Smith, the one, the only Mike Smith in the world. He's the only one. There's no others out there. I've never heard of any others. You know, in my mind, Mike, you are the only one. If we were succession characters, who would we all be? Ooh, I don't know.

I don't like any of them. I want to be like the waiter that got killed. I'd be Roman. I'd like think I'm an alpha and make jokes about everything. But then like when push comes to shove, I just am a little masochist. Yeah. I want to, I honestly, I think I'd be Carl because he just wants to like make his money and check out and like live the good life. Yeah, just.

And also I would totally play boars on the floor if they wanted someone to play boars on the floor. So I'd be Carl. Sounds fun. I'd probably be one of those little kids in that family that plays baseball in the park in that first episode. That's the only point of reference I have to the succession. I don't really watch that show. You'd be like Barry from the show Barry, just murdering people on the side. That does sound like me, huh?

Yeah, two great shows ending yesterday. It's kind of a bummer. We're recording this. Well, ending recently. Right. Yeah, anyway, what are you guys up to? Anything fun? Not too much.

Yeah, been kind of a slow week here too. I'm about to go to Yellowstone for a couple weeks here to do a little bit of guiding, which is going to be a new thing for me and kind of fun. Oh, guidemaster Wes. That'd be fun. Do you have like a little flag you carry around so people can tell where you are? No, it's small. Do you get to yell at people for looking at bears?

No, I'm not going to yell at anyone. Thankfully, that's not my responsibility. No, it's a small group. It should be really fun. Lots of birders. So I'm really, you know, I'm kind of catching the birding itch a bit. I set up a scope in my living room. Been watching birds out the window.

It's starting to set in a little. Have you guys ever, have you guys used the app Merlin before? Nope. No. It's kind of like, it's like Shazam for birds. There's a sound ID on there. And as birds are chirping outside, you can hit it and just hold a out and it tells you what species they are and it's pretty good actually that's cool isn't that just

like take your guiding job away uh it makes it easier because if i don't know what birds are all just have that in my pocket download that app and see which birds they are yeah yeah i guess i don't know west i have a little note here from the last time i saw you that i just tucked away and i wanted to ask you about great so we were talking about the sunset and you were like well we have a really opinion on sunset. We do. Peak time. We do.

And I don't know what you mean. We've had full on arguments about this where I think the peak of like a sunset, when a sunset looks the best, is when there's like bright orange and yellows and reds going across the entire sky. And it's really just like breathtaking. And you and dad seem to both really like it when that's like all died down and you're kind of just getting the very edges of clouds lit up by that color and then the kind of blueish after glow in the sky, sometimes you guys will be like, oh, it's getting even better now and I'll be like, wait, like 10 minutes ago is magnificent.

Obviously, when it's like the most colorful is the best. Okay, all right. I'll let you change your mind. But in Montana, I'm not changing my mind. I've always felt that way. I feel like you are. But I do really appreciate like the twilights in Montana because it just like, it kind of like glows a dark blue forever, which is really cool to me. But you hate that.

No, I don't. I remember the argument. I remember where we were. We were driving down the going to the sun road. There had just been like a really nice sunset up at the top. And then as we were about halfway down, we'd hit that kind of twilight afterglow, Alpin glow kind of thing. And you were like, oh, wow, the sunsets getting even better. And I was like, huh? I don't think I said that. I said, I think I like this just as much as the peak sunset. Okay. That might have been it. That might have been what you said. And I think that's what started the argument. because I was like, why? But you know, Jeff, I will say you appreciate a good sunset more than I do. You are a true sunset admirer. So I do defer to you in like appreciation for it. Yeah, I can tell sometimes like I annoy you where I'm like, oh, this is a good sunset and you'll come out and look and there's like three orange clouds or something.

Yeah, it's just like so basic. Mike, are you a big sunset guy? I was going to say that's actually my favorite part of sunsets is 10 minutes past the peak, quote unquote, when it's just like the weird little orangeish, almost like brown glow across the horizon. I think that's really cool. The whole sky's like glowing and the clouds are kind of dark now. Moore is coming back to me now about this argument because I think the rest of the argument too was that I said, this is no longer really a sunset.

We're into like twilight at this point. And then we got into a big argument over like what marks the. start and stop of a sunset. And like, for me, it was like, oh, this is just twilight glow at this point. And we did argue a bit about that as well. And that, you know, I'm going to go ahead and take a step back at this point and say, that's a pretty dumb thing to get in an argument about. It just doesn't matter.

Call it a sunset if you want to call it a sunset. Yeah. That's my, you know, that's my New Year's resolution at work. I don't need to argue that shit with people. Good character growth. All right. Well, I think we're pretty much. much on the same, or we're at least in agreement.

I don't know if we're on the same page. Yeah, I'm willing to defer to you on sunset related matters from now on. I'll let you be the decision maker. I'm just going to notify you during peak sunset hours. Okay, that's fair. Yeah. All right. Should we talk about some news stories?

Are we ready for it? Let's do it. Let's do it. It's been a good month or six weeks or whatever for news stuff. I feel like there's been some really cool ones that have happened, especially recently. So I'm excited. I think this is going to be a fun episode. Well, I don't know. Mike, before we started recording was like, mine's really sad. I didn't realize how sad it was until right before we started.

I got an update on one of my stories that really is just bummed me out. So like, should we end with that one? No, we don't want to end with the saddest one. Okay. So how about I'll go first. I've got a really good story. I think it's maybe one of the ones that's been most requested. And it's one that I want to spend a little bit of time on.

So I titled this story, White Gladys and her gang of Henri Orcas. All right. So we all know that Orcas are like, they're like the alpha predator on the planet. We've talked about them a bit. We did an episode on Tillacum, the Orca that killed Dawn, its trainer. It's an animal that comes up a lot on the show just because they're kind of the unbeaten champions when it comes to dominance. So it's an animal that's been recorded hunting blue whales, the biggest animal to

ever live. They kill great white sharks really easily and they'll even just eat certain organs from great white sharks. But for whatever reason, we know that orkhas or killer whales mostly leave humans alone. There are countless videos of people and boats interacting with orcas and attacks resulting from those encounters are really unheard of until recently. Oh, wow. Recently, since 2020, orcas have been ramming boats off the Iberian Peninsula and even sinking some of them, and scientists are having a hard time saying why this is happening. So the Iberian Peninsula is like Spain, Portugal, and then you can kind of, you're kind of counting the waters off of Morocco

in this too, so that's straight of Gibraltar in between Morocco and Spain. That's the area that we're talking about. Orcas in that part of the world are primarily fish eaters and bluefin tuna are some of their main fish options that they're chasing. Bluefin are really overfished and a result that population of orcas in the strait of Gibraltar and around the Iberian Peninsula, they're listed as critically endangered. It's also one of the most polluted shipping corridors in the world. So these orcas are kind of facing a lot of mounting threats from a lot of different angles. And to add to their woes, some of their recent behaviors probably put them squarely in the crosshairs of fishermen or yachters or people that might be looking for retribution.

And that's because these orcas have been pushing, turning, and ramming boats, primarily sailboats, boats, and these aggressive attacks are often focused on the rudders of the boats, and they can inflict quite a bit of damage. Dozens of these encounters have been recorded over the past few years, and they've even sunk a few boats. Recently, they sunk one. The orcas are targeting the actual propellers. The rudder, yeah.

Oh, the rudder, yeah. So, like, the keel and the rudder, yeah. And so there's, like, there's a few different theories around this, and the one that's been catching the most kind of steam in the media that's been put. forward a lot, is that there's this one adult female in these groups of orcas that's been doing these attacks. She's been named White Gladys. I'm not totally sure why that's her name, but that's her name. And they think that maybe she's the ringleader and that at some point in her history, she maybe had contact with a boat or something happened to her where there's some

kind of traumatic injury. And she's then teaching other orcas to ram rudders on boats because they think it was probably the rudder that would have hit her and just try and rip these rudders off of boats. So that's one of the main theories that's kind of out there is that she's kind of the ringleader of all this and she's teaching these other, all the other orcas have been juveniles. She's teaching them to do that.

So it's pretty much that she's leading this charge in like an orca uprising and that like no boat is safe from her and her goons. Yeah. There's another theory. A goons? Yeah, her goons, her or or goons. So the other thing,

theory is that they're simply involved in a play behavior that they created and that this behavior is starting to trend with other orcas. So that pretty much means that there is a group of orcas that thought it would be fun to knock the rudders off of boats. They decided that it was fun, and then they started teaching that behavior to other orcas, and now it's like trending. It's the thing to do for these orcas in this population. Like the TikTok pranksters. Yeah, or like a dance. Pogs? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, we're back in 1993. This is the Pogs. No, but that's actually funny. You should bring that up because this is something that's been going on for a long time.

And I think this is more likely of a theory because orcas have been known to engage in these kind of fads before. So this is a really interesting one. In 1987, the southern resident orcas, these are the orcas that you can find in like British Columbia and coastal Washington and the Pacific West Coast. In 1987, they started doing this fad. It was like a certain female orca, I believe, that started it, where they would kill a salmon, and then they would put it on the top of their heads and swim around with it on the top of their heads like a hat. No way. So you can see that behind me. And this took hold in multiple individuals across the entire population, started wearing salmon on their heads.

As was the fashion at the time. Yeah, exactly. And it's not, like, that's not a singular example of this. Orcas in Alaska became obsessed with playing with kelp. There was a group in Norway, they got really into keeping jellyfish on their nose. Like they would swim into a jellyfish so it'd be stuck on their nose. And then they would almost see who could keep it on there the longest, which is really fascinating. We should try doing that.

Maybe it's fun. I don't know. Yeah, it might be. We just got to pick the right jellyfish. No box jellies. And then they would even, like, sometimes when they kill an animal, they'll flip it up in the air and stuff. Like, these are playful animals. They do like playing, and they're really highly intelligent and social, and there's even

instances of culture being taught to work as whereas that's like a transmission of thoughts and ideas across generations. So there is precedent for these kind of fats. And I do tend to think this is the most plausible explanation because when you listen to the accounts from like the fishermen or the sailboaters or whatever, and if you watch the videos that have been collected, it doesn't look very aggressive to me. It looks like they're kind of coming. Like, Jeff, when we saw those orcas in Laredo,

remember how they would like kind of peel off and swim under our boat or like jump in the wake or whatever? Yeah. But they weren't, you could tell that they were playing, that they were having a good time. It's not like they were a group that we were chasing or something. They were enjoying that interaction. And that's very much what it looks like in these videos too.

I feel like it'd be hard to tell if they were. showing aggression towards a boat though, right? I don't think so. Like they are ramming it. Yeah, I don't think it would be. When you watch these videos, they're kind of like coming in and out and swirling around the boat and then every once in a while they ram the rudder. I think if they were being like aggressive as like this is a threat, I think those attacks

would be much more directed a lot faster and a lot more kind of intentional. It wouldn't be like it's playing around and swimming and doing all these other behaviors at the same time. I think they would be solely focused on that. Do you think there's any chance, though, like, that they see all these boats taking fish out of the ocean, which is like their food supply and they're kind of like, these boats are bad? Yeah, I mean, that was the second thing I was going to say is I think the play thing is the most plausible, but I don't think we can rule out anything here. Like, I think these are a highly intelligent alpha predator that I think we've only scratched the search. surface on what these kind of animals can understand.

Maybe they're trying to wear boats as hats. Yeah, that could be it. They just want a much bigger, more unwieldly hat. Yeah, so I don't know. It could be anything. It truly could be. I mean, this could be much more than what we're seeing. And I think it's pretty cool.

I really do. I mean, it sucks for people that are taking their sailboat out around the Iberian Peninsula, but also, like, I think it's a real reminder. You know, we're not top dog when it comes to the oceans. We just aren't. Right. And I mean, I know we, like, we have the capability to kill these animals if we wanted to. They are protected, luckily, but they are now kind of, as I mentioned earlier, in the crosshairs.

There are fishermen that are amongst their community and whatnot saying, hey, someone should cover these orcas in diesel and light a match. Or there's a few other things that are kind of floating out there. Whoa. And, yeah, so hopefully that doesn't happen because this. This is, again, a population that's critically endangered. They just swim under the water if you did that? Yeah.

Wash it off. That would work. It didn't seem like a very good idea, but that's the one I read. Yeah, so I do think they are in some danger now of some retribution, but luckily they are highly protected. And I think, you know, if there's any billionaires out there that want to take your new yacht for a nice little cruise, maybe consider the waters off of Portugal and southern Spain. Just give it a shot. You know? Elon, Jeff, go ahead. Take your yachts out there. Jeff Bezos, not you, Jeff. Yeah. Yeah. He's a member of the Jeff Club, though.

Is he? Do you count him as a car carrying Jeff? He's a choice. Yeah. Anyway, that's my, that's my orca story. It's developing. We'll see what else happens out there. But for now, they're sinking chips and stealing hearts. All right. All right. Mike, you want to go next? If that one plan of attack is the best those people could come up with, it seems like the orcas are in pretty, they're pretty safe for the time. Yeah. And diesel isn't very flammable either. Oh, no, it's not.

It's like gasoline's way more flammable. Right. Well, yeah, these are workshop that one, boys. Winning that battle so far. This summer, serve up the cookout classics. Oscar Meyer hot dogs and Heinz mustard. Grill up a dog, add classic yellow mustard, or loaded, Chicago style.

We all know it's not a cookout without Oscar Meyer and Heinz. Yeah, so I'll go next. My first story takes place in Kerala, India, and it involves wild Gower. You guys ever heard of Gower? What if the orcas sucked all the diesel up in its blowhole? And then when they lit the match, it blew it into them and lit their boat on fire. Like, yeah, they could do that. Like a flamethrower?

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Sorry, Mike. I just thought of that once you start. No, I'm glad you. Worth interrupting me for that. Do you know what Gower are, Jeff? It looks like Wes does. He's nodded like this. What? Gap. Uh, no. Gower. I think you might, I think you might be pronouncing that wrong, though. Gaur? I think it might be Gwar. Gwar. Oh, yeah. I know, Gwar. Like the band? Not the band. You tell me. So I watched a couple of videos of some Gower, Gwar. They were getting transported from the San Diego Zoo to New York. And I heard Gower. But I'm more than happy to be corrected on that.

No, let's go with Gower. I could have been saying it wrong. Yeah. Yeah. So my only point of reference for these was it's actually from a video game. I didn't know these were real animals. But it turns out they're not just a fantasy video game creature. They're pretty cool. They are. They're super cool. They're like this super jacked Indian bison, basically. And this is, so this story, it's a bit of an ongoing situation as of now. but the main events of this story began on Friday, May 19th, with Purathel Chacochan from the Kotayam district of Kerala, India, who was passing the morning reading the newspaper at his house

when a rampaging gower attacked and killed him on the spot. Jeez. It then continued down past Purithel's house to a nearby rubber plantation where it attacked Thomas Plavinam Kuzil. Sorry if I'm butchering these names. I'm trying. Yeah, I have a story from India that I'm not excited to try to read the names. Oh, yeah. So anyway, this gower confronted Thomas as well, and he actually, he ended up surviving the initial encounter only to succumb to his injuries soon after when he was undergoing treatment at a hospital. So we've got a couple of people dead on that same morning this past May.

Meanwhile, on that same Friday morning, a separate encounter involving another gower took place in the Kolom district. Samuel Varghiz was killed when a gower charged and gored him in the stomach as he was out checking a rubber tapper. So that's up to three on the same day caused by Wild Gower. So, again, another incident on that same day, another Wild Gower strayed straight into a small town in Chalakudi, but thankfully it was scared off before anyone could be seriously hurt. But still, it caused some panic in the little. town. So these increasingly frequent encounters with Wild Gower finally just kind of reached ahead, and especially with them happening so close in proximity, time and location-wise to each other,

that it finally just resulted in this massive protest. So a bunch of local people, they all got together and they were claiming that just not enough has been done to prevent these kinds of attacks from happening in the first place, and they'd been lodging complaints, and yeah, just they haven't received the help that they, thought they should have been given, especially since these kinds of encounters have been happening for a long time now. But basically what they did was all the people gathered up on these major streets in this district, and they blocked traffic from happening.

And when I say block traffic, they were like standing shoulder to shoulder for good lengths of these streets. Like nothing was able to move through. So pretty effective way to like get some kind of authority attention on the situation. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard of people doing that. Yeah, Tineman Square. I was thinking were the semi-trucks after the election, where they kept blocking roads.

Yeah, I forgot about that. You were out there, weren't you? How did that work out? They didn't block traffic in Tineman Square. Dude, that guy was standing in front of a tank traffic. He stood in front of a tank, yeah. Yeah, but that's, like, not traffic. That's a tank.

Well, what do you call, like, a line of moving tanks? Tank traffic, yeah. Well, I mean, they weren't, like, blocking streets. They were just protesting in a square in the city. Okay. Yeah. I still think it counts. Yeah, it's a protest.

So there you go. You got you there. I will say really quick, a quick interjection. If you are interested in seeing a gower, like as you're listening to this, you want to take quick pause. There's a video that came out, I think within the year of a gower attacking a car and completely flipping this car. Like, it's nothing. I mean, they are a massive. animal. They're really big,

really powerful. Super strong, like bulging. You know those pictures you see of cows that are raised for their meat? They're just like injected with steroids and stuff and they're just like rippling and bulging. That's what these guys look like, but naturally. They're like Vin Diesel if he is

a bison. Sure. Yeah, right. They do kind of have like that headplate that looks like a bald Vindiesel head. So the people are protesting, like what do they want to happen. So basically, the police, they did dispatch, like, a big contingent of policemen to go and corral the situation, make sure that, like, these protests didn't result

in if you're anyone getting it further hurt. But they did, the police did agree to dispatch someone with an issue to shoot the gower if they could find it, hunt it down, find it, and shoot it. But this didn't placate the people all the way. They still had some issues taken with the Forest Service and the Forest officials claiming that lapses on these people. part also had led to these attacks. So a rapid response team from the forest department from Ronnie was deployed in the region for strengthening surveillance, and they were also issued in order to shoot to kill. And as of the most recent update I could find, because these are still ongoing, and it's not just like one gower is causing all of these incidents. It's increasingly frequent

behavior again. There's a team of forest officials that are just like camped out in the forest trying to shoot these gower. So, interesting. Hopefully the situation gets a little bit more under control, but yeah, it's wild. It's like,

it's one of those things where in Jaws, they have like a little community get together where they're all talking about, like what they should do about this wild animal. And it's like the kind of thing that I only ever would think and see happening in a movie. But this is like a real thing that's happening where it's kind of almost an unsustainable,

uncontrollable situation for these people that have to, live in these situations that are just so foreign to me. So I thought that was a really interesting story. It's not like that's the only animal they're dealing with too. Yeah, right. Like we've said it before and we'll say it again. Like India, people living in rural India especially have to deal with like a wide variety of potentially dangerous animals, probably more so than anywhere else in the world. So it's just kind of, yeah, it's got to get a little frustrating after a while. But I'm sure they didn't take this decision lightly because Gower, I'm pretty sure, are protected. I don't think it's just an animal that you can go out and kill without permissions from the government and stuff.

So I'm sure this was like a big decision that that wasn't reached quickly. Right. Definitely. Interesting. That's our first mention of that animal on the podcast. Yeah. And hopefully there will be some good updates to share in the future. But as of now, there's still a little bit of a fracas going down in India.

Yeah. What town? No. I was trying to pull it up in my brain. It was in Kerala. right? Yeah. A bunch of different districts in Kerala.

Okay. All right. All right. So do you guys enjoy peeing outside? Yes. Love it. Do it almost every night. It's great, right?

I don't know what it is about it. Me and Bryce are on this new routine where I usually take her out to go to the bathroom at night and then I just join her. I just take a pee out my yard while she's up there. You have a great house for peeing outside. Yeah. I'm jealous. What's the riskiest pee you can remember ever doing?

I remember mine. Yeah. It's when I was driving a commercial truck, and I was trying to get to the airport because I was parking it and leaving it for another driver, and I was running late, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it, and I was stuck in just deadlocked traffic in Virginia, and I, like, had no time to spare so I could not get off the exit and then try and get back on. And it was bumper-to-bumper traffic, and I opened up my truck door and just stood on this, steps and just peed on the asphalt.

No way. Oh, wow. In the middle of traffic. Yeah. And I remember I took like a flannel and like hung it kind of in front of me with, I like held it there and then peed. But it was a very desperate public pee. That's a good answer. I don't have any really good answers.

The main thing I'm thinking is like a different direction with it of just getting really close to cliff edges to try to pee off of a cliff. Yeah. Remember in Bryce when I peed in the wind? I was going to say, I know yours. And it just peed all over me. We went to this cliff that had a really strong up current. If you walked out toward it, they would like blow your hat way up in the air and stuff.

And Jeff was just like, should I- 30 feet in the air, though? Yeah, it was very strong. And Jeff's like, should I try and pee over it? And I was like, yeah, go for it. I have a video of it. There's just pee flying up in the air and just skinning them everywhere. It was so funny.

Do you have a good answer, Mike, or should I ask the next question? Just some urban dumpster peas. Well, would you pee next to an alligator if the bathroom line was really long and you really had to pee? I feel like I wouldn't have to be right next to an alligator. I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't do it. So no. I guess so.

Yeah. Well, how do you feel about waiting in line? I feel bad about it. I would rather wait in line than pee right next to an alligator. This can't be the only two choices. Waiting in lines become my least. favorite thing in the world. And then you add the uncomfortableness of having to pee. I would, I would risk pee and buy an alligator, I think.

All right. Well, I guess we're probably about to hear if it's worth the risk. You've seen this video. I don't know if Mike has. I have. But a 23-year-old in Florida named Jordan Rivera was out drinking at Bandito's Bar, about 45 minutes north of Fort Myers, Florida. Next thing he knows, he wakes up in the hospital, and he's missing his arm below his elbow. That's like his next memory. He like goes outside to skip the line,

and then he like kind of remembers getting towards the water and doesn't know what happened, and then his next memory's in the hospital. I have this once when I was riding a bike home from a friend's house, in my next memories the hospital and I have no idea what happened. Yeah. Oh, wow. In the hospital?

He doesn't remember how he tripped or if he tripped or if the gator grabbed him. Like he kind of remembers like, yeah, he doesn't remember it very well. Yeah. It was very vague. Did he pee or was he still, did he still need to pee when he woke up? I don't think he ever peed. Whoa, he's got to be. Yeah.

He needs to go bad then. Because, well, we'll get to the video. So what happened is he. He went outside to go pee. I'm going to say that he has probably had a lot to drink at this point because it sounds like he just kind of fell in the water from his account. He doesn't really remember how. And then a 10 foot alligator bit his arm off.

Whoa. Oh, man. Wes, how hard is it for a 10 foot alligator to bite off an arm? Not very hard. They got one of the strongest bites in the animal kingdom. It would just be a bite and a death roll and it's gone. It doesn't take them long. So, Mike, I'm going to have you put in an audio clip right here

because he says it pretty, I don't know, it's kind of funny how he says it while he's being interviewed in the hospital. He's not he felt out that the gator ate his arm. Fusion, I was like, whoa, like I was just because I woke up and I was just sitting here and I looked over, and then I saw my arm the way it was, and I was like, ooh. It kind of feels like my arm just there, but not there. But basically, he says, those gaiters,

I truly didn't understand them until I woke up in the hospital. and oh, Gator got your arm. So I want everyone to hear how he says that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, this dude was remarkably chill about getting his arm bit off. He just woke up and he is like really confused about like where his arm was because he felt like it was still there.

But then he like would look and it's not there. Yeah. And he's kind of just like, well, that was dumb. You know, I shouldn't have done that. He's just like very. Not even though. Yeah. Because like he doesn't even really know what he did.

Yeah. Fair enough. So there's a video that me and West saw where, like, he's kind of splashing around with one arm, but, like, visibly very confused. And bystandards walked up and realized he is missing an arm. So then all of a sudden they got really alert. Like, there's probably an alligator here. And they managed to drag him out of the water. And then he's missing an arm.

And all these new people keep walking up and being like, oh, he's missing an arm. in the video. And then there's an ex-military guy there who just applied a perfect tourniquet to him. Oh, clutch. Yeah, he's even like, he's like, your brachial artery is going to bleed out if I don't do this. Yeah, it's very like, it's intense. And Jordan kept like snapping in and out of consciousness. So like the guy would grab his stub and he would like wake up and be like, let go my arm.

And the guy's like, I have to do this. and then he would like pass out again. It's crazy. It's wild. It's a crazy video. It's all out there if you want to see it. But it is really graphic. We don't recommend it, but also it is out there.

Yeah. So he lost his arm above his elbow. They had to, it says they amputated, but I mean, the gator took most of his arm. Right. They cleaned it up. The gator amputated and they cleaned it up. So Mike, last time you talked about a zebra biting a guy's arm off, but he didn't really get his arm bitten off. Yeah, he overstated that.

Because this guy's arm was bitten off, like, passed his elbow, and he still, like, says, I still have my arm. I just don't have my elbow. Yeah, wow. So respect to the opposite way. Yeah, right. When, like, he, everyone that says, oh, Gator bit your arm off, he's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, not my arm, just my elbow.

My arm. Yeah. So I wanted to ask, what's your favorite? favorite pop culture person who part of their arm was bitten off by an alligator. I'm going to do chubs from Happy Gilmore. Okay, I think you maybe took the only one I could think of. So I think maybe that's what you intended. I actually just rewatch the movie Crawl.

Captain Hook. Crocodile. Oh, that's a good one. But yeah, it is a crocodile. Yeah, I don't know. I don't. In Crawl, there's definitely some people. Oh, yeah.

The dad in Crawl gets half of his arm bitten off by an alligator. Does he really? Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Now I need to think of one. Give me a bit. Hold on.

All right. We'll come back to you. So this was a 10 and a half foot alligator, which is a pretty big gator. It is. The females get to like nine feet, so the males will keep growing. From what I read, which was admitted the pretty quick research on it. But male alligators get to about 10 feet long at about 10 years old. And then after that, their growth almost.

stops, but not completely, to where they're growing about an inch a year. Okay. So, um, yeah, I don't know if that's true or not, but. Alligators that were alive when we landed on the moon are currently the alligators that are 13 to 14 feet long. Huh. Um, and the largest alligator ever recorded caught is an Alabama alligator that was 15 feet and nine inches.

Okay. There's claims of a 19 foot alligator. caught in Louisiana, but those were in 1890, so it's pretty heavily disputed that those were the actual numbers. Yeah. And we talk, I think we talk a little bit about all this in our alligator episode, the Tommy Woodward one. No, I'm just telling people, like, if you want to learn more about them, go back to that episode

because there are a lot of really good alligator facts in that one, too. I wanted to throw in another story that has to do with peeing while I'm talking about peeing. All right. Real quick. Sure. So I titled it, When Cows Fly, I'll Stop Peeing on Railways. The title leads me to think of, let's hear, this is very specific circumstances, but yeah, go ahead. Don't keep us waiting.

A man was killed by a flying cow while urinating beside a railway in a freak accident in India on April 19th. Geez. Wow. The fatality occurred in Alwar Rajahistan and happened when they were. The cow was struck by a speeding train which departed from Kalimori Gate. The victim was identified as Shvedal Sharam, a former electrician who actually worked at the railways and retired in the 2000s. And this train hit this, it hit this cow going 160 kilometers an hour, sent part of its

body that landed 30 meters from where he was peeing. but then another part of the body hit him directly and like killed him instantly. Jeez. Wow. It makes you wonder. That's pretty crazy. That's like a final destination death. Yeah.

You know? For sure. It's like, did he and his friends escape death in a weird way a few days earlier? But it's like doing the thing where like it's acting like the pee's going to electrocute him because he's like peeing on a railway. Right. And then all of a sudden this random cow just like smashed you. Yeah.

So be careful peeing next to railways or alligators is pretty much the point of my stories. I think that's good advice. All right. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items. Then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes. So you can feel confident it's what you ordered.

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Yeah. So this happened on April 5th. His name was Andrea Poppy, and he went for a jog on April 5th in the town of Caldez in the Brenta Dolomites of Italy. And he was going to be jogging around Mount Pellar, which is an area he knew really well and that he traversed a lot of times alone or with his mom, or with his girlfriend and dog. And then when he told his mom that he was leaving, he said he'd loved her and he'd be back for dinner that night. And she hardly even registered that. But it ended up being the last words he would ever say to her. He didn't come home for dinner, and later that evening, his concerned girlfriend

notified the authorities, who then launched a search for him. He's 26 years old, and around 3 a.m., his body was found in a wooded area. He was badly mauled. He had large wounds to his arms, his stomach, his throat, and he had been killed by a grizzly bear, and he was the first Italian fatality by grizzly bears on record. Wow. Why don't they attack people more often? Because they hardly haven't, Historically, they've hardly had any bears. So in the late 90s, brown bears were on the verge of extinction in Italy, and there were only three or four bears left in this really isolated part of the country. And so there's this group called Life Ersus Project,

and they launched this huge effort to conserve the bears in Italy. They brought 10 bears over from Slovenia, three males and six females, and they did a massive amount of education for the landowners and residents, and this bear population started growing. and DNA testing after this attack identified that the responsible bear was this female known as JJ4. And about two weeks later after the attack, they caught her and her three cubs. The cubs were two years old, so they were old enough just to be released. They got to go live their lives.

But she was taken to a holding pen. And she is actually the offspring of two of the original bears that got brought over from Slovenia. So she's like a second generation bear after this reintroduction. effort. So there have been some setbacks to this project. Seven attacks have occurred since the bears were reintroduced, and this is the only fatal one. To put that into some context for you, though, so seven attacks over like roughly 30 years since these bears have been, you know, kind of started to be put back, or 23 years, I guess. In the last 10 years, there have been 58 fatalities from domestic dogs in Italy. So these aren't, and I know like we're around dogs a lot more, I know

that's kind of apples and oranges, but I don't think people should suddenly be really afraid of bears in Italy just because one person was killed. Let's hope they don't overreact and like try to get rid of the population. They are overreacting. So we're going to talk about that. The population now is around 90 to 100 bears. Some people think that's way too many, including the hard right provincial president of Trento, Marizio Fugati, which to me sounds like if you told chat GPT to come up with an Italian name, Marizio Fugatti would be at the top of it. It's a cool name. Yeah.

He was outraged by the attack and he said that the bear responsible JJ4 should be killed. And to be honest with you, I kind of agree with him on that point. And that's because in 2020, JJ4 also attacked a father and a son that were out on a walk in the area, injured both of them and they managed to escape. But this is a bear with the history. But then he goes a bit further. and he says that they should remove 60 to 70 of these 100 bears that are in the province. That's a lot further.

Yeah, I do not agree with that. I think that's like a massive overstep and overcorrection. On the other hand, there are some environmental groups in the area that are fighting really hard for a stay of execution for JJ4 and cooler heads in general when it comes to talking about this population. They're arguing that better bear safety information and better bear safety tools will help people in Trento avoid these kind of dangerous encounters. and that removing a large number of animals would be a really big setback for a really impressive and amazing conservation success story. What, like a spray for bears or something?

Yeah, exactly, bear spray. So bear spray is currently illegal in Italy, and that needs to change. They now have a population that's big enough where they're coming into contact with people and if people are carrying bear spray, it's going to help them avoid a lot of these kind of encounters, or at least come out of these encounters without any injuries. So as far as this bear is concerned, the bear that's responsible, she has been held for a long time, and then they were going to reach a decision this last week. And the decision they reached is they were going to give her another month to really look into this attack and see what all the factors leading up to it were

to decide whether or not they should put this bear down. But every bear expert that's looked at it, and Tom Smith, my advisor, is actually in Italy right now. He's in Trento. He's talked to all these people. And so I've been communicating with him a little bit about this as well. They all agree, including Tom, they all agree that this was a prolonged defensive attack. So she had three cubs. He was trail running, which unfortunately is one of the highest risk activities you can do in Grizzly country because you're moving fast. You're being quiet if you're by yourself. You know, you're often listening to music. And you don't give that bare time to react to you when you suddenly show up and you're fast moving.

So rather than the bear running away, which they want to do, that's like their preferred method of escaping, it decides to engage, you know, because you're moving too fast, you're coming in too quick, and it just hits you with what it's got to try and neutralize you. So that's what happened to this guy, unfortunately. It did show that there was like a bloody branch on the scene, so they think that he tried to defend himself with this branch. but her attack was just way too overwhelming and it did end up killing him. So I will say if you're a trail runner or a mountain biker or something where you're moving fast in bear country, make sure that like around blind corners especially or places where you don't have great visibility, make sure to be making lots of noise because you want to give these bears time to hear you coming because you're moving fast and you're not going to give them that time

otherwise. All right. So yeah, we talked about how Italy doesn't really allow bear spray, but that needs to change. And I personally think the solution here lies in the middle of what these two parties are kind of saying. I think Fugati is really saying way too much, like killing 60 to 70 percent of a population is what, you know, what 60 to 70 bears would be. I think that's way too much. I think you're really overreacting to a really insular problem. But what I do, really think needs to happen is that in a place where people aren't used to bears yet, where they don't have generations and generations of living around bears and kind of knowing the risks and dangers, you do need to remove animals that are causing problems. I think that helps the public feel like

something's being done, so they feel like things are kind of in control. And then you're also removing those bad eggs from the population. Like those bears can teach that behavior to their cups that can get passed along. And when you remove those problem bears, that kind of stops. So I do, I do kind of agree with the side that's saying this bear needs to be euthanized. And that's coming from someone who loves grizzly bears more than just about anyone else on this planet. I think that this bear has, she got a second chance back in 2020, and now she's attacked another person. And unfortunately, she needs to be removed from that population. And I think they should continue to do that when they have these kind of problem bears.

All right. Anyway, that's pretty much that story. It's still developing her stay of execution has gone through June. Even though I think that's the right course of action, I do kind of find myself rooting for her still. Sure. Do they guillotine people in Italy? I don't think so.

And I don't think they would guillotine this bear, if that were the case. I would hope that it would go the way that it happens with bears that kill people in the U.S., which is if they're captured and you can say, capture it, it's just an injection just like a dog would get a vet or something when it's being put down. It's very painless and quick and very effective. So hopefully if that is, if that is the case with her, that's what she gets. But, you know, I'm mostly rooting for this population. I hope these bears are doing okay out there and that they can kind of push the tide of public opinion back toward the positive. Yeah. You don't think any grizzly bears killed some gladiators

back in the Colisean? Maybe, but that wasn't, was that in Italy? Yeah, that wasn't Italy. Sorry, in Rome. They did. You think this may not have been the first one ever. That's true. Like, Italy's probably had...

Wild Grizzly. Yeah. Italy's had a lot of animal deaths. Okay. Good call. That is a good call. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, that's why I'm here just to make sure everyone's got their ducks in a row, you know?

That's why we hired you. I got a story about that. Okay. Do you want to go or do you want me to go? Perfect segue. No, you go. Okay. So this one happened on May 22nd, Lake Matthews, California. We got some requests to cover this story I was seeing about the bee swarm that occurred. And it goes like this. Tommy Baker was out in his yard getting ready to replace an old fence when he and the guy he had brought over to help noticed a beehive in the old fencing. Tommy thought the hive was small enough to take care of himself. So he hopped on YouTube, watched a few videos about how to remove and relocate a hive. And he got to be a hive. And he got to be small enough to take care of himself. So he hopped on YouTube, watched a hive. And he got a hive. got to work. So he put on a beekeeping suit that he had just laying around the house.

Oh, just had it laying around, huh? Yeah. I wonder if he and his wife, like, play beekeeper or something. That's why he had that just laying around. Yeah. It'd be hard to, like, sensually take off a beekeeping suit, I feel. I don't know. That's true. Maybe he doesn't, maybe he leaves it on, man. You don't have to take it off. The logistics of that don't make a lot of sense because, like, you can give it to work. He had to patch up one hole in it before he put He zipped it up in the, yeah. So he put on the beekeeping suit that he had just sitting around, got to work, and then things quickly went south.

Quote, it got very intense. It got to the point I couldn't see very far in front of me. There were so many bees just swirling around. And he was actually, he took a video of himself doing this, going through this process. And in that video, the bees start going crazy. And so he runs off to his golf cart and hops in and tries to drive away to safety, all while he's in his B-suit. So, like, he recognizes that this is a dangerous situation,

but he is not personally. He's not sustaining any injury from these. Does he have, like, the queen or something? Why are they all following him? They do that. Okay. I think probably had, like, a chunk, or maybe they just got so mad.

In fact, they got so mad that they followed him around the block. So these have to be, like, the Africanized. Yep, bees. Okay. Yeah. I was going to see if you could name drop those for me. Yeah, I got you, dude. Thanks.

Again, he was quoted to saying, they followed me all the way around the block, and this block is a big block. It's probably a mile. That's what he said. All right. Had to brag about his block while he's in there, huh? Right.

His golf cart wasn't moving too fast, because I actually looked it up, and Africanized honeybees can only fly up to 15 miles an hour. So his golf cart had maybe like a governor on it or something. Yeah, that's pretty fast. And golf carts don't really good. Like four or five miles per hour tops, right? It depends.

If it's your own personal one, they're a little faster, but like... Yeah, that's true. You don't need it going more than 15 miles an hour out on the course. How fast do you think you're running when you're running a mile, Jeff? Because you did it in eight minutes, you said? Eight minutes. I think I'm going like eight miles an hour or something? No, wait.

It would be... It would be slower than that. Yeah, it'd be a little slower. It'd be like between seven and eight, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Because six miles an hour would be 10-minute mile. Right.

It'd be between seven and an eight. Yeah. It does make it seem less of a stupid idea for him to do that, that he, like, happened to have a beekeeper suit. Right. That makes it seem like... Yeah. Right.

He wasn't like... So if he was, like, going to YouTube to figure out how to move a hive, though, it's not like he is a beekeeper, which I think is important to note. I guess we can just drop it here. Like, if you do have a hive and you're not confident in removing it, You can call a professional. The police or the fire brigade or a beekeeper, just any kind of authority. Sometimes beekeepers will be thrilled to get that call.

Yeah. Because it means they get to come collect a new hive to use for their honey and stuff. So, yeah. So as he was driving away in his golf cart, a chunk of the swarm split off towards his neighbor, Brian Engen's yard, where Chance, the two-year-old Pitbull Mastiff was spending his day. Chance's first move was to try to knock down the front door. But when that proved unsuccessful, he ran towards the fence, slamming his body into it until the latch broke and he could run to safety. And so Chance's owner, Brian, he was watching as all this unfolded out his window in horror.

Quote, I looked back and it just looked like a dark cloud moving across my backyard. Once Chance opened the gate, the swarm started to leave the yard. So I ran out, chased him down, and got him into my neighbor's garage with them and started taking care of him. You've mentioned a couple of times. So how many stings from a bee does it take to kill a human? Do you remember? I feel like it was like a hundred, but I can't remember exactly. I feel like it's like a thousand.

You know, I'll do a quick Google search. Because the people on the cliff got bit more than that. Yeah, right. So they were like in the range that it could have killed him. Let's see. How many bees does it take to kill you? You're right, Jeff. A thousand.

I was wrong. Oh, Jeff. You got to add a zero to that. You owe me a billion dollars. Oh, I don't think that was the agreement. I remember him saying that. You should be a beekeeper. Jeff. You got naturally talented. I know my honey.

Sadly, when all was said and done, Chance had been stung over 700 times. And this is like, it's, you know, pit bull mastiffs aren't like a tiny breed of dog, but it's not like a full grown human, really. Yeah. He was rushed to the vet and received an emergency blood transfusion. And like this, this is just like super, it's tragic. Everyone loved. Dogs can get blood transfusions? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sure. Huh. Everyone loved Chance. He was just like, almost like a neighborhood dog. Everyone was happy to just let him play around in their yards. He was almost kind of like a mascot to everybody. Yeah. And so quickly he gained a lot of support when a GoFundMe campaign was set up to help

because these medical bills were pretty quickly piling up for this family. And I really thought I was going to have kind of a happy note to end this one on because this GoFundMe quickly hit its stretch goals. And I was even going to go in there and help out. if I could, but the GoFundMe was actually shut down, and I was kind of curious as to why, because it seemed like everything was going well until about five minutes before we started recording this episode, I saw an update that Chance had actually passed away. And it was just, it really, it's like, it's just nature, you know?

Sometimes you don't. You can't control what happens. But again, tragic, we feel, I feel, we all feel, I feel, I feel comfortable putting words into everyone's mouths that that's just the worst, one of the hardest things to go. through. Totally. But I guess in a different set of updates, Tommy, the original guy that was removing the hive. So he hired a professional beekeeper to come out and help him remove the rest of the hive.

And there turned out to be several more hives that he was helped removing as well. And the guy that came over said that these were Africanized bees. This was not normal bee behavior. So, yeah. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. I didn't want to do it.

I didn't want to. It's all right. We're glad you, you know, gave us the full story, Mike. RIP chance. Bad behavior. Yeah, that is some bad behavior. You're right. I put the emphasis on the wrong word there.

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you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Price Line. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. I'll just do a short story and headlines once you guys are done with your other ones. Okay, I got one more short one here real quick. This happened on May 20th in the northeast corner of Yellowstone. A man in a blue shirt and black pants approached a newborn bison calf that had been separated from another. I think I know that guy. Yeah. The man picked up the struggling calf.

He pushed it up onto the riverbank and onto the roadway. And the calf was then seen following cars and approaching people. The park issued a statement. They said this kind of contact can cause bison to abandon their offspring. You may assume that you're helping that bison, but you're actually hurting it because when they see like another animal interacting with it, they may just assume that baby is like a lost cause and abandon it. So the park tried to reunite the calf with the herd.

It failed. So after a while, they actually had to euthanize this calf. And then people, a lot of people were like, why did you euthanize it? Why didn't you just put it in a rescue or something? And the park federally isn't allowed to take any of these bison out

unless they're like for meat or for a few other reasons. And if they do, they have to put them in this really long quarantine to test for bruselosis and a few other diseases. And that's an expensive, lengthy procedure. So to do it for just one bison calf, just financially does not make sense. So they just euthanized it. Luckily, they did put it out onto the landscape, which, you know, likely had this calf just been left alone, a predator would have picked it off.

And now one of those predators still gets to eat it because they're going to find it. And coyotes and birds or bears or wolves or whatever, we'll get to eat that carcass. So it still is part of the ecosystem, which I think it's beautiful. But it does kind of remind me of, I think it was in 2016. Why was the guy trying to move it? That's what I was going to say is like in 2016, these other people picked up a bison because they thought it was like separated and put it in their car to try and take it to help. I don't remember that.

I thought it was like cold. No, they thought, yeah. But it, they also thought it had been separated from its mom. And like, it's just these people that think they're doing something good because they've seen animals struggling out in the wild. but it's like just let nature take care of itself. This is why we have national parks is so that we're not interacting with these animals

at that kind of level. We're not saving them when something like that happens to them. You just have to let things run their course. Or if something does happen to the level where there does need to be some intervention, the wildlife professionals that work in the park will do that. So you can call a park professional, you know, and say like to a ranger or something,

hey, I noticed this bison was abandoned, and maybe they'll look into it. But maybe they'll just let the wolves or the bears get it too, because that's just how it works. That one from, like, years ago, it's really stupid, but I at least, like, understand their logic of thinking it was cold and putting it in their car or whatever. Yeah. Like, what was the logic of just moving it to the road and leaving? He thought it was going to drown, and so he went and pulled it out of the river. Yeah, he pulled it out of the river. And then he pulled it up to the road so that it could like reunite with its mom.

But it's still, that's not your place. If you're a visitor in one of these places, don't interact with the wildlife. So the calves can kind of struggle to cross the rivers there? Oh, for sure. Yeah. And sometimes they'll die. Sometimes they get swept away. Usually they don't know.

Usually they're absolutely fine. And they join back up with their moms. They are looking for this guy. He could face jail time. He could face some really high fines. Oh. If that's, you know, if pretty much sentencing that calf to death is an, enough for you, just know there's some high legal penalties too.

I saw someone in a blue shirt and black pants just yesterday. Go tackle him. Go find him and tackle him. It's probably the guy. All right. That's it for that story. It's short one, but I'm sure the park will be posting updates. So I actually have a really interesting one that I wanted to share that's kind of a

follow-up to that. And I was going to frame this as like a feel-good story, but I'm actually more interested to hear what you have to say about it now because I saw a story about this guy named Byron Holbick, he's an Instagram user, he made a post not too long ago about him and some of his friends. They were hiking across Ontario Lake as it was frozen over, and they came upon this large female moose that had plunged through the ice and was struggling to stay, keep its head above the water. It couldn't get back up onto the ice through its own power. So what they actually did was they had some, a chainsaw and a bunch of sledgehammers with them,

is I don't know exactly what they were doing, ice fishing or something. and they cut a path for this moose to be able to climb back up out of the water to safety. And all the people who took part in that rescue, they never thought twice about it, whether it was the right decision or not to help that moose. Yeah. What do you think about that? I don't think that one's nearly as complicated. I think it's probably fine that they helped it. I tend to think those things can be such a windfall for the other animals out there that are trying to make it through winter.

like if a moose dies in a spot where they have access to it, then it's like suddenly you have foxes and coyotes and ravens and bald eagles and all these animals that have a really good source of food. So for me personally, it's just kind of let things run their course. But at the same time, I don't think that's like that it's an adult moose. It's hard to watch an adult moose drowned in front of you. And it's not like you're not really changing behavior or separating animals from other. I think that one's probably fine.

I don't think it's that big of a deal. Yeah, cool. They saved it? Yeah, so they said the moose flopped up onto the ice and was motionless for about five or six minutes as it was just wheezing and trying to recover its strength. And then it popped up and just took back off into the wilderness, a live, healthy and whole. All right. Jeff, you got some more? Yeah.

So this one is called What Would Jeff and Mike Do in Real Life? So just a real life example I'm going to try to keep doing these ones going So if you guys ever see them listeners send them to me But a 13 year old girl said she had 19 stitches After fighting off a shark at a Florida beach So Ella Reid was just sitting in shallow water With her friend at a jetty near Fort Pierce

And a bull shark approached her And like started ramming her stomach and biting at her. So she said she punched it, and it left but circled right back, and came and started biting her again. And Reed said, so there was about a five to six foot long shark. And she said, it wouldn't leave me alone. So I had to use my arm and put it in there and use my hand too.

So I got my finger on my arm right in there. I'm pretty sure I've given that advice before, just to shove your arm. It's your fallback when you can't. If a shark's biting you, you just try to get as much of you in its mouth as possible. That's not true. Don't actually listen to that. Well, it worked. Although it worked for her.

It works for Ella. Ella, yeah. Okay. And her mom said that she was completely covered in blood head to toe when she, like, saw her daughter and was just shocked. But Ella ended up being pretty fine. You saved her life, Jeff. She probably is a listener. She probably listened.

It was like, oh, God, just shove my whole arm in it. No, but obviously, you listened to Wes on those things. All right. So the New York Post has gotten me a couple times, but they wrote a pretty deceptive headline of a dingo almost trying to drown a six-year-old. Okay. And first of all, Wes,

that one guy in our dingo story couldn't even hold the bucket of grass. in his mouth for 45 seconds, right? It's pretty embarrassing. So this whole article is in question now and from my perspective. But apparently these dingoes grabbed this girl by the head and dragged her into the ocean, a six-year-old girl. Is that possible? Yeah, I think so. All right.

I do too. I don't know. Australia is probably going to like put her mom on trial for murder now or attempted murder. That guy with the gravel. Yeah. And then they saw these dingoes holding her underwater for a few seconds. So, of course, like, all the headlines are like, Dingoes tried to drown a girl.

But, like, they took her into ocean and started attacking her pretty harshly. Was this Fraser Island? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's where these things always happen. Yeah, it's the world's largest sand island. Huh. It's also the hotspot for dingo attacks. Maybe just don't take your kids there.

Wait until they're a little older. And they went and had to like pick them both out of the water for the dingo to let go. Oh, geez. Interesting. Then coyotes be whiling. A large coyote in Arizona injured two separate toddlers in Scottsdale. Knocked one over and bid him up a little bit. And then went to a playground a few hours later and bit another one.

So they're whiling. They're wiling. They know what size of human they can handle and it's toddlers. They got that figured out. This was a crazy one West sent me. 40 crocodiles killed a Cambodian farmer while he was attempting to wrangle one of the reptiles. I think this was in April or May. I didn't write it down.

So he's a 72-year-old and he like went into the crocodiles and he's using like a poker stick that they used to get the crocodiles to do what they want. And this crocodile started attacking a stick that he's using to try to corral it. And it caused him to like fall into. the enclosure where there's 40 crocodiles and they did not hold back at all. All of them just started attacking them all at once and like killed him super fast. It's crazy because it feels like those are like kind of trained, but I guess not because they just, the second he made a mistake devoured him. Yeah, I mean, I have friends that work with trained alligators and stuff. And at the second there's something novel for them, they're so used to the same routines and everything, but

If something changes, goes off script, then they go for it. That's like how animals in the zoo are, too. So, yeah, I don't know. I was just thinking, as you're saying that, that seems like a supervillain death. Like, that seems like something that should be in a movie. Yeah. It's really sad. These next four, I don't have dates for much information.

They're just headlines that I screenshoted that happened this year. A bear helped itself to 60 cupcakes in Connecticut bakery. Oh, that's great. From what I could tell, no ice cream was reported as being eaten with the cupcakes, but we can only hope the bear found some ice cream to go with this. It would have been like two dessert? Should I? Or should I just do one?

It scared the bakery workers out and just started eating all their cupcakes. Can bears get diabetes? I don't think so. How fast could a bear eat 40 cupcakes? I bet it could do it in less than like five. Like stopwatch. Less than five minutes. Yeah, I'm going to guess like a minute.

in it 22 seconds. Yeah, I'm with you there. I need to know the size of the cupcakes first. That's good. I don't answer till I know. Stinking a cupcake. Yeah. A man was killed, Mike, this was your ducks in a row thing.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Man was killed in Rockland after helping ducks cross the road. Oh, so you actually did that. So he got hit by a car. Oh, okay. All right. And I remembered my driver's ed teacher telling us, like, if you ever see an animal in the road,

you should just hit it because you don't want to like cause an accident behind you. That's terrible advice. That guy sucks. He was like offered to give us five bucks if we hit an animal. I had the same teacher. He tried getting me to kill squirrels. I hate it. Yeah, that's messed up.

I used to always like I like grew up wanting to run animals over because of that guy. And then I was like, wait, this is messed up. I never did. Well, I never have on purpose. Yeah. A zoo in England is hiring a seagull. deterrent worker who will have to wear a giant bird costume to scare away the goals. I could do that.

I want to hire someone with a hawk to do it instead. I'm surprised that they're having the costume be a bird. Isn't there things that seagulls would be more afraid of than a bird costume? Yeah, it's a good question. Like a bear costume or something or lion. No, like other, like hawks and eagles and stuff are going to be their main predator. All right. Falcons.

I guess in England they would be like a bear. What's that? Yeah. Goodness. I can't do an English accent. I heard a little Sean Connery coming out there. Yeah. Yeah, I liked it.

Last one. A black bear broke into a vehicle and guzzled 69 cans of pop. Nice. So the real question is, why did this guy have 69 cans of pop? Yeah. That's a good question. Yeah. It's the real Coke bear there, huh?

Do you guys call it pop or caffeine bear? No, Wes got it. I call it soda. Yeah, I used to always call it pop, but then people sometimes with pop are like, what's pop? With soda, no one ever asks you. Pop sounds very Midwestern to me. Yeah, yeah. And Montana people say pop.

They do, but Montana has some crossover to Midwestern stuff. I was surprised to learn when we moved to Georgia that all sodas just called Coke. That threw me off for a South. Yeah. They do that. In Guatemala. In Guatemala, they called water coke. Really?

What? Yeah. Interesting. Just like any liquid you could drink, they would call Coke. Their PR managers got to be stoked about that. Yeah. Seriously. Anything you drink is Coke.

All right. That's all I got for headlines. Great. Well, that's it for our news episode. We do these about every six weeks. I really like doing them. I think they're fun. And for our second half,

we have a really special guest. So let's get to that. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton.

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All right, we're back, and I did mention that we are going to have a really special guest here, and we do. We are joined now by Rick, and Rick is the person who created and is behind the Nature is Metal account, which is an absolutely massive account on Instagram, almost 5 million followers, and constantly posting really cool videos, highlighting different personal. predator-prey relationships, human wildlife conflict, weather patterns, like a lot of really insane stuff that happens in nature. And truly one of my favorite accounts to follow. So thank you so much, Rick, for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks, Rick. It's really such an impressive collection of just like pictures and videos that you have there. Yeah, stuff we were lucky enough to, because like content is just like a, it's its own beast finding the content itself. We're lucky to have followership where people actually want their stuff to be seen and they look at us somewhere to get a lot of eyes on it. So it's good. It works out for us to. Yeah. I've sent you stuff in the past.

Yeah. It's a great spot. And I do think for me, you know, to keep, I'm going to praise your account a tiny bit more. The thing that I really appreciate about nature is metal, like coming from a wildlife biologist is that it's obvious that you. do your research, that you're not just posting content, you're not just giving it the most sensational kind of caption that you know is going to get you the most clicks and views, you're actually putting some thought into what's happening in that interaction or that, you know, whatever's happening in the post. And when Instagram was first really revving up,

there was so many different animal and wildlife accounts that I would try and follow, but then sooner or later I'd get burnt out because they just started posting like bullshit. But nature's metal does a great job at really sourcing that information. And I do think that's, that's an impressive aspect. I appreciate you saying that. Especially because you're, you're educated in this field and I'm not, like, at all. I just like this stuff. Yeah. That's how you guys started talking a bit, right? Was Wes was like commenting about how the animals were behaving on some of your pictures? Is that right? Yeah. Actually, the way I remember it, you're, picture was the one where you were inside the cave, right? Oh, that's right. And you posted that. I think we shared

that and it was like a miscredit. Like, I credited the wrong person. And I remember you being very nice about it. You're saying, I think that's, that's my photo. It's not that guy. I could be remembering this wrong too. I can check my DMs. I don't know. But I feel like it was that. That photo is where we both started talking to each other. I think you're right. He likes that version of the story where he's really nice. So let's stick with that one. The reason I remember is because there are people that are not nice. They try to ask your entire account. They try to ask your entire account. They threaten you with legal action.

He's like, I think that's the wrong or something like that. And I'm like, how do you know? Is it because I, that's me. That's great. Yeah, I think you're right. And then I know you reposted that one after a while and we talked a bit more. And then every once in a while, you have a bare video that you bounce my way to kind of get my take on on what's going on. And again, like usually what you send me is

is the right thing. You already have a pretty good grasp on what's going on. And I can just kind of fine tune it for you. So I might like my first question for you then was like, how do you do your research? I mean, you're putting out a lot of content. What are you doing to to figure out what's actually going on in those videos? I'm a lot. Okay. So I will, I would like to start by saying I'm wrong a lot. Okay. I'm not always right. Me too. People in the comments love to point out when I'm wrong.

Oh, your comments can be a mess sometimes. Which is why I stopped reading comments in like 2019. That's so smart. Yeah, a smart way to go. I just, you can't. You can't keep up. And if you, if you participate, it's over. Yeah.

And they got you. Sometimes sometimes I'll, I'll comment like, man, bear sure do love food or something and like I'll have people in your comments being like, you. True. You don't like food. So I would like to give all the trolls that I'm wrong a lot. Okay.

Because I'm not educated in this. I just started this because I like it. Yeah. I like watching the cheetah run. Like I could watch a cheetah run for 15 minutes straight. Yeah. We all have that in common. They can't even run that long.

But if they could. I would love to watch them run for that long because that's just, it's just a beautiful thing that just happened. It's just crazy. Like, all this is just happened. But you ask you how I do my research most times. So I'll say this. Most times it's very streamlined. Like I have a plan for my week.

But then sometimes, I'm going to say it's about 50. It's 50.50. I have a plan. And it's 50 50 where someone throws a video. Like I'll have a 70 video. is ready to go for the whole week. And then someone throws a video at me. And I'm like, this has to go up like now.

Yeah. Because there's there's also this timely nature of Instagram where. Totally. Like we're not in the same class as like Nat Geo, obviously. They're like 200 million followers. They're in like their own universe. I'm not putting myself in that universe. What I'm saying is like for like the smaller independent nature channels,

we are the biggest one. So. Yeah, for sure. We're in competition with. I wouldn't even say competition. Like I don't really, a lot of those nature accounts post porn now. Right.

It's crazy. Like I don't know what they're doing. Like which ones? Yeah, specifically. I know I'm getting off topic, but what I'm trying to say here is the timely nature of Instagram

kind of throws my plans to the wayside. Yeah. I mean, you want to be the first to get something out if it's like really crazy. Yeah. Like just out. Yeah, yeah.

Because sometimes that's, that's where the capital, like that's, you can capitalize. Yeah, and then people repost from your account and not so much. Exactly. So most times it's planned out, but when something like that happens and you have to like jump, like I could be at a party or something.

Right. Look at me pretending I would have parties. You're like, you're like woes for animals. If I'm out somewhere and someone sends me something and like this has to go up, it's like, it's got to go. Like I could be. Oh, my girlfriend and my girlfriend's going to be mad at me. But it's, it's not.

Most times I have it regiment. but sometimes it's like chaos. It's just pure chaos. Well, it's good. I mean, I think it's good that you're so timely with that stuff. It's funny. Sometimes I'll see you post something that really feeds into like stuff that we've talked about on the podcast.

And I kind of just like shake my head. I'm like, oh my God, here we go. And then just all of a sudden we'll have like 20 or 30 DMs of someone sharing what you posted with us. And it's like it's just, it's really funny how quickly that stuff can. is on. And yeah, I do think you do a great job of staying on top of it. I appreciate it. I'm terrible at taking compliments. I'll stop then. Yeah.

But thank you for seeing that. I try. I try my best. So how did you come up with the idea? Was it just, you mentioned that you love thinking about watching animals, learning about, was it just born of a natural passion? Or was it something that was a little bit more thought out? Most of it was, I've talked about this on other podcasts. So I'll just, it's going to be like a condensed version. That's fine. It's just like a little short origin.

It started as an anti-instagram account. Interesting. I didn't like what I was seeing on Instagram. I didn't like the people taking pictures with like leopards and like tigers and stuff. Like these are just like props. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I just bugged me.

So I was like, okay. So how do we how do we counteract this? So you just start posting what true things like things that. And I would just take photos off of Reddit. Like the I would find stuff on Reddit or like. like Twitter and stuff like that, I would just find photos and yeah, just come up back in the easy days where I didn't have to like get everything licensed and permission. Where did the metal aspect come in to are you like a fan of metal music? Because I know a lot of your posts are accompanied with, you know, short little snippets of songs and stuff too.

I'm huge metal fan. But also I was in metal bands when I don't know starting the account. Nice. Like I used to play. I don't play anymore. but I used to play bass in like I was playing bass at one point in like three bands. They weren't all metal bands, but like because in Toronto it's very the like the music seems very incestuous. Like this bass player plays with this drummer and then they play in another band together.

And then this guy plays with another guitarist. They know each other. They were in a band before. It's just everybody knows each other. Yeah. So when I started the account, I was I was paying. I was living in like a house of three other. It was all, I was living with all girls.

It was very weird because I was like the odd man out, like literally. Yeah. But, and I was just bored. Like I was trying to be a home inspector and I was like, I kept going on Instagram and I'm like, because I was trying to start the business on Instagram. I was trying to use Instagram advertising to sell my services. And then I'm like, if I'm doing this, I can, I can do the nature thing too. So when I just do both.

I was posting. So I was looking on Reddit for two things. I was looking for deficiencies in houses that I could, could post and pretend that I did the inspections on these houses so that I can try to sell this business. Yeah. And I was looking for like hardcore like nature photos that I could share on the nature account. And then so I was doing both of those at the same time. And then I was also working like a job doing like outdoor festivals. And I was working at a festival in Toronto. And I got a notification on my phone back when I

could keep notifications on my phone because now it's impossible. But Joe Rogan started following you and I'm like, wow. I was showing everyone at the bar. I was like, you see this? This is crazy. Like I have like 1,500 followers at this point. I have no like nobody knows who I am.

Oh wow, that's crazy. Yeah. And he started following like he was one of the first 1,500 followers of mine. Like that's really cool, man. Like that's like awesome. And then I forgot about it. I went back to doing my jobs, whatever. painting and then a month later i posted i remember the video it was a woodpecker hammering into like the head of like a dove or something okay i've seen that twitter or something yeah and uh he

saw the video and shared it on his account and that's it went crazy and then he talked about it on his podcast a week later oh no way that was it it was like off to the races wait so i have a question for you uh you get all these like you have just such a huge compilation of animal videos and animal pictures. So in your opinion, what animal is the most metal? A single animal? Yeah. Like species, you mean?

Mm-hmm. Okay. I mean, like, any, like, any, like, wild canid, like, any dogs, wild dogs. But, like, wolves, I call wolves dogs, because dogs and wolves, whatever. Wolves, dogs, like, what are they called? They're called doles. Yeah, in India. Yeah, they're, they're freaky.

Like, I don't like, I don't like the, I don't like the, the possibility of being eaten alive while I can look back and see them eating me alive. Yeah, it's a bad way to go. Giving you enough time to film it and make a post out of it, though. That's kind of cool. That is, that is the most, they're the most ruthless. I mean, unless you go, like, really small, like, if you go to, like, insect level, then it's just craziness. just eating each other. Like, they're still trying to move and they're just, like, swallowing them.

Yeah, I like the wild dog answer because I do agree, you know, there, we talk about this a lot on the podcast that, like, some animals do you the favor of dispatching you before they eat you, but dogs aren't one of those. Like, they're just going to tear into you. They're going to, like, knock you down and then just tear into you. So that is a pretty bad way to go. They're like some of the most successful land hunters there are, right? African wild dogs are like 80% successful, which is crazy.

Considering lions are like 30% or something like that. Yeah, and tigers are like the lowest, I think. Yeah, yeah. But there's a reason. There's a reason they're successful and there's a reason they eat so fast and there's a reason they do it so brutally is because they don't have time. Right. Before a lion comes in or something. Yeah.

Because it's going to get stolen. Their chase lasts like hours. Like maybe not hours, but they've been known to last. like 45 minutes. Because they're trying to exhaust whatever they're chasing. And it's not always fast. So yeah, once they get it down, they just got to go and get in there as fast as they can because there's other things

on the way. Yeah. It's like my golden corral before the afternoon rush. He's just trying to get all that food down before everyone comes. I got to work with African wild dogs a little bit. And they, uh, they truly smell very metal too. Like, that's a smelly animal that you know has been rolling around in a lot of carcasses and stuff.

You were rubbing their butts. I was putting my finger up their butts. So, yeah, that does add to it. Was it like an iron smell? Like blood? It just smells like musky, a little bit like blood, and then a lot like carcass, just like rotten meat. Yeah. They're bad smelling animal.

Like a mosh pit at a metal show kind of. When they hunt, don't they have like groups that are like they chase them into, other groups of dogs that are just waiting to start the chase. They're very coordinated. Yeah. Some of the most coordinated hunters out there. Well, cool. That's a great answer for that.

Yeah. So I guess, you know, we had a couple other questions that we just kind of wanted to ask you out of, you know, that you can answer more of an interview format. But one that Jeff had that I thought was a really good one is do you ever get sent videos that are like too much? You have to, right? That you just know you can't post Instagram. Yeah. It's, it's usually like, if there's a human involved. Right.

Like, I don't want to get into, like, details. I mean, I don't know how else to say it, really, but. People getting killed by animals. Well, it's not even that. It's more like, people will send me stuff from, like, South America. It's like, there's a lot of, like, let's say turmoil. Okay. So dead bodies aren't as rare.

And sometimes they find their way into the waterway. Oh, yeah. And then things find. them and they send me stuff like that. Yeah. I would never share anything like that. Yeah, I think that's a good move. I would have to start like a telegram group or something.

We appreciate that. No, honestly, like we, I genuinely appreciate having someone like you who like has to see that stuff, but then digs through it and finds content that is actually like what I want to see and really interesting. So like, thanks for like sifting through all the, yeah. I'll never sleep again, but you're welcome. Yeah, I bet. I can't imagine.

I just want to finish his thought for a second. Yeah, yeah. The amount of bad videos that I get, it's unreal. Like, not even, like, I can't share them. It's just like someone found a dead caterpillar on their windowsill. Here's 300 megabytes. I don't, I don't want to. I'm sorry.

I thought it was cool. Yeah. I don't want to discourage it from. from submitting because I truly appreciate them. The people that submit and the stuff that we get to use, I truly appreciate them because content is hard to come by in this space. Yeah. Because, I mean, you have to be outside and you have to get,

sometimes you have to get extremely lucky to catch some of this stuff. So I truly appreciate the people that do. But some people, like, if I could just say it one time and never have to say it again, don't send me pictures of roadkill. Yeah. That's not what this is. That's fair. Yeah.

Fair? Fair? Fair? I would say, right? Yeah. It's something that you've never seen you put on the account, like, don't send it to you, you know? Exactly. But, yeah, we don't want to discourage people.

I don't want to discourage them from sending it in. I just, some things are just not necessary, but whatever. Well, you know, I think you've done a good job of putting out the stuff that's actually fun and not the people like showing you their bearded dragon eating a cricket or something. I want to see that caterpillar. Yeah. Do you have any videos that come to mind that you remember being particularly memorable, like any of them that have really stuck with you?

There was one. There's a couple. Like, the Rogan one will always be one that sticks with me because I watched that like a hundred times. The Woodpecker? On his account. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember that one. I remember that one. I remember like kind of having a hard time watching that one. Just because it's like so gnarly. Yeah. No, no. It was, it's, it's, it's. on the account it's like the third it might be right at the bottom but uh i made sure to keep that

one i was like i don't care if this one gets me in trouble this one has to stay up because yeah it's very it's a very it's a milestone but um totally that one for sure and then there's another one it's weird like some instagram's weird this video i thought was going to be like the craziest it was going to be like viral viral viral and it didn't really go anywhere but it's one of the coolest videos ever seen like to this day, this guy caught a video of a heron. He killed a gopher, like in a gopher hole, which is something we've shared on our page a lot because people, most of our followers are in North America

and great blue herons are prevalent in this area. So I get a lot of stuff like that. But what's good about that is you get to pick and choose which stuff you share. And because we get a lot, I can share just the best stuff. And I'm not really like missing out on anything. Because people have seen this before. seen. But this one,

okay, so he's, he, he, he shot, so they, they hunt with the beak, but it's like a spear. They keep their beak closed, so they can jam it into stuff and pull it out. Like, it's like they're like sticking it with a fork. So he picks it out. He picks it out of the gopher hole.

And he's there for a couple of seconds. He's just like catching his breath or something, or I don't know what he was doing. Yeah. But he's standing there and then he gets jacked by another bird of prey. Really? A hawk flies at him and scares him off of it and steals it and takes off

with it and like nobody saw this video like that's what I mean Instagram is very weird it might be because it was like a longer video it's like maybe like 25 30 seconds which just doesn't sound like a long video but it's for Instagram that's like an eternity

but yeah I think that maybe that's why but people because the other thing I don't like about Instagram is when people say wait for it I don't know why that bugs me, but it bugs me. Well, I think it's because it bugs me. It bugs me because of how many times it actually tricks me into watching the completion of an uninteresting video.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, you wait for it and then it sucks. Yeah, it's like a toy fall. Yeah, because you can abuse it. That's why. Yeah. Yeah.

So I need to wait for it, police. So anti-wait for it. I like it. Appreciate it. It does me. It does, it did that video a disservice because nobody, not as many people saw to the end. Why this was so cool. Like I wouldn't, like, I haven't shared one of those in a while and I was like, this one should do well.

But whatever. But that one I remember because I feel like it didn't get the, it didn't get what it should have. Anyways. Yeah. Well, we each, we each picked one too that we especially liked. I'll go first. One of, it was just one. came to mind that's like somewhat recent, but it was a video that I just absolutely loved,

which was this couple getting married on the shores of one of the lakes in Glacier National Park. And as they're like going through their nuptials, a grizzly bear kills a moose calf on the side of the lake. And the moose calf is like screaming and there's all this commotion. And they're like midwetting while this is happening a couple hundred yards away. And it just had like my combination of all these perfect elements, like something very, very, very, very, visceral that's happening in nature that I you know I've seen grizzly bears kill small ungulates and it's it's always so like violent and amazing and then you also just have the most important moment of these people's lives while that's happening and I think I commented something on that one and I'm sure I got a

billion people telling me to to shut up but it was it was a good video that was one of my favorites oh that was that was like an all time couldn't have like asked for a more perfect thing to happen. Oh yeah. I hope that happens at my wedding. That's like your dream wedding, Wes. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Mike, would you pick? Yeah. So I'm not going to lie. I'm always biased whenever I hear a band that I really like happening over the footage. So recently you posted one with a mushuga song playing underneath the footage of a, what is it? What are they called the mantis shrimp? Just hanging out on the sea, the seabed floor. And the little tiny fish swims right about. above it and all of a sudden its skewer just pops out and it's in slow motion it has to be slow motion since they're so fast you probably otherwise wouldn't really understand what was happening but the the footage shows its forearm skewer pop up through the bottom of the fish's head right up through to the top and uh the caption the thing that like really sold it to me was the caption on the side telling us all of it i think they're the strongest punchers or the fastest punchers in the natural world or something like that and uh it just made me think

of that one time Mike Tyson wanted to fight a gorilla in a cage. And it's like, maybe you should be, that gorilla can't punch like this mantis shrimp. You should fight one of these guys. But no, it was really, it was the Musuga song that did it for me, if I'm being 100% honest. It's a good pick. One of my, like, that's like my favorite band from when I was in high school.

Oh, yeah. So good. I'm going to have to watch it. Jeff, what did you? I couldn't pick just one, so I did three. I really liked, well, Mike did an episode about draft. and he's talking about how their osicones are like prehistoric pretty much, right? Wasn't that what you said?

Yeah, it's like a prehistoric remnant. But in April you posted a giraffe video of like two drafts just headbutting each other in the neck. And I don't know. I thought that was just really cool to see because Mike had like told us about that happening, but I couldn't really visualize it. And like they can put so much force into a headbutt. It was amazing. And you just don't think a draft.

that way. You just don't think of your head as a weapon. Right. And that's like the thing you want to avoid. Yeah. Unless you're in Dienesalene. Yeah. Or Vin Diesel in Fasting and Furious Six.

I love your jaguars when they hunt Cayman and just how precise they are at like grabbing the Cayman like directly in the skull every time. But my number one was from last December. posted a hippo that charged these male lions that were crossing a river. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. It was just, like, so cool to see something as huge as a lion just be, like, completely dwarfed by another animal, you know?

Yeah. And, like, yeah, I think they, like, hippos are not to be messed with by anything. No. I don't think anything. Maybe elephants and rhinos could maybe, you know, elephants for sure. But, yeah, there. Yeah, there's some cool footage of an elephant knocking a hippo over. Yeah, lions don't match, though, for sure.

Yeah, like even three lions, especially in the water. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not going to happen. Game over. Well, cool. All right. So another question for you, what is your favorite wild animal?

After, you know, doing all these posts and, like, doing nature is metal now for a while, do you have a favorite? It changes. Because I'm looking at it every day. like I remember so I've done I've done maybe like three or four podcasts grand total I think I give a different answer every time yeah because it's just like I don't I do have favorites but like it changes so right uh it used to be like jewel yeah it used to be jewel wasps like oh cool that's an interesting just because of how like precise they are they're like surgeons they're like little sadistic

surgeons. That that's their, the females are the only ones that do it, but they are, that's their prime directive is make a kid, make another kid. And the only way to do that is to catch cockroaches, lay an egg on their chest, and have this thing eat it alive. It's just insane. But that used to be my favorite. Is this the wasp that can like, they put the thing in the cockroach brain? We actually just serendipitously, we were just talking to someone about this. Is this the same animal that can do that they like jabs into a cockroach brain and can like mind control it or something maybe i'm totally off no i think it is i don't know if it actually goes into the brain i thought it was something no it is but it's not their brain isn't in their they're not going after the brain in their head

they're going after okay central nervous system yeah yeah and they can control the legs like that they they that's so cool that's what i mean by precise they have to hit this certain spot and in that spot and they hit it every time yeah it's like they've been practicing for for billion of years. Yeah. They have been. Yeah. It's crazy.

That's a great answer. But I don't know. Like I said, it changes. So if you ask me tomorrow, maybe something else. Okay. Is there an animal when you get sent, like a specific video of a certain animal that you're, like, most excited to see the, you see that it's a tiger and you're like most excited to see the video after you know what it is?

You know what I mean? Like, is there a type of animal that you're most excited to get sent videos of? Yes. And I've only been sent one. Wolverines. Oh, yeah. I don't know what it is, man. There's like no footage of Wolverines.

They're hard to get. What happens in your video that you have? Oh, it hasn't been shared yet. I can't tell you. All right. Now we're looking forward to it. But it'll be cool just because, so it's weird. Like you start ranking stuff in your head.

It's like, I'm not going to share this heron video unless a hawk attacks it and steals its kill. You know what I mean? Because you get so many of them. But because I get so few. Wolverine videos, it might not be as spectacular as you think it's going to be, but to me it is because the footage is so rare. Like, I never see Wolverines. That makes sense.

I still, I think it's cool, but it might not be as cool as like other videos on the channel. So I'm just trying to subvert your expectations. I like that. I like that you still post things that just because you think they're cool, you know? Yeah. That's the way it should be. Yeah, yeah. Agreed.

All right. Our next question for you is, what's your favorite animal attack scene from a movie? So on Tooth and Claw, we talk a lot about animal attacks, and we also talk a lot about movies. So this is kind of a combo of both of those. You know, it's funny. I actually did on Twitter, I think a week ago,

I was compiling photos from movies. Because there was like a thread going around. It was like, I can't remember what it was. But it was anyways, in it, I put the jaws, like anything with jaws. Yeah. We're all big fans. Lake Placid. I had the Revenant.

And then the last one I had was the gray. Do you watch the gray? Oh, yeah. William Neeson. Yeah. So the gray, I think, is my number one. That's my favorite one. I mean, it's not very realistic because I don't think they're going to hunt a human.

Yeah. But in like movie land for like a movie scene, it's a, that's the coolest ending that could have happened. Where he's like, he's literally. electrical taping airplane bottles in between his knuckles and he's like I'm going to take as many of these things out as I can it was just so cool man it was one of the most things that could happen yeah and it's a metal ending I mean that's an animal attack but I mean the animals won I'm assuming yeah you would think so especially with how aggressive those wolves were being yeah yeah they were you know you know Liam Nissen's good at getting out of some tricky situations though so you never know

All right, our last question for you on my list, and this is one we ask all of our guests, is what's the most impressive animal you think you could take in a fight? Okay, I thought, I'll say this. Before I started the account, I probably would have answered, like, something mid-range, like a mid-sometimes, something the size of like a mid-sized dog. Like a coyote. Something, yeah. Yeah. Maybe something like that. but now that I've been doing this for like almost seven years,

I would say goose. And I'll tell you why. I don't even know if I can beat the goose. I have to get very lucky. I have to catch him. I have to be able to grab his neck. If I can't grab his neck when he comes at me, I'm scroof. All right.

And he's not going to kill me. Like, I'm not going to die. No. Yeah. I'm also going to be running while I'm thinking about it. At least I'm like, I'm so confident. I'm a goose confidence motivational speaker for people. I just want to tell you right now, you can take that goose.

Just stand your ground and you'll take that. I believe it. They're so like, they're so aggressive. We have a lot of them in Canada. They're confident. Yeah. It's like alarming. I went to college after high school.

I didn't go to. school right away. I waited like 10 years. Okay. That's when I became, I tried to do like home inspection. But there was a, at the school,

there was a goose at like, it was like, what's it called when there's like four walls and like, man, I'm gonna put this. It's no, but it's like an outside area enclosed. You know what that is?

Kind of like a concourse. I don't know what it's called. I'm just, sure. sure. There was a goose with two geese in that concourse. We're going to use that word. I'm sure it's wrong.

That no. could walk through. No one could walk through there without getting a time. And me included. Yeah. Me included. It's just big, but nobody could go in there. They had to get like city people.

Two keys. Tewis had the whole school on lock. Like they couldn't know what could go in there. Oh, that's really good. Yeah. Well, I think it's a great answer. Well, I think that wraps that up for my list. Guys, did you have other questions for Rick?

I think, no, that was really, that was really interesting though. Yeah, for sure. It's cool to get some background to an account that I've been following and that I love when our listeners send me stuff from your account especially because I just know like, oh, this is going to be cool to see. So like, it's just cool to get information along with an account that I've really enjoyed following. I like it because I know I'm not going to have to correct. a bunch of like if they send me that video i have to i don't have to be like hey just so you know that actually that's not a deer that's a no exactly yeah so yeah we do we appreciate it and honestly in some ways it's helped us come up with new ideas for the show too so it it's cool to have to have

someone out there that's posting that kind of stuff that we can see and get inspired from so we do appreciate it mike you got anything else just hope you keep at it for uh forever It's great. You got any song suggestions for him, Mike? Have you, uh... Oh, man. This is a band that probably, I'm sure you've heard of since you're from Toronto and probably isn't nearly metal enough for you.

But I love Pup, which is like a punk band from Toronto. No, I love, I like Pup. I actually worked a couple of their shows. Cool. Yeah, they're really, they're fun. They're fun band. Yeah. There's this new, they're not super new, but have you heard of Sleep Token?

They're kind of like a newish metal kind of act. But yeah, if you hadn't, I totally. They're great. They're just super like a weird melange of all kinds of different styles and really think it's like a breath of fresh. Yeah, there's some like weird soul and electronic, but also like very heavy stylistic decisions. It's strange. But yeah. No, yeah.

I'm going to check that. All right. Well, we can talk. Sorry, I just wanted to just take one back. Spirit box. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know the vocal.

name she's insane though i'll just this is the i promise this is the last no you're good yeah but i went to go see them i went to see my friend was coming back from texas she works out there she's like do you want to come see um after the burial at uh this club in the city i'm like sure i'll meet you there she came straight from the airport she only saw one song of after the burial and they were opening for spirit box we're like we're here let's just stay let's just have a beer and watch. Because I had seen that I had listened to them, but I had never actually like, I didn't really get it.

I didn't understand until I saw her live. And I saw what she does live, which is, I just couldn't, I couldn't get over how easily she went from super clean, like angelic vocals to like, it sounds like you're speaking through a coffin. It's nuts. Like, I couldn't believe how deep she could get. It was anyways. I saw her do like a live performance just, uh, saying, what is it?

Holy Roller. I think she was performing. And it just looked effortless for her on the mic. We've talked enough about this. But like I... Me and Jeff, man, absolutely astounding how easy she makes it look. I love hearing the names. Like, the names are so good.

Metal bands have the best names out of any genre, without a doubt. Well, cool. Rick, we really appreciate you coming on the show. As I mentioned already, it's been a big source of inspiration for us. It's a great account. So if anyone out there is listening, isn't following Nature is Metal. Check it out on Instagram.

It's a really cool account. You're going to get your fill of some really interesting interactions between animals, between people and animals, weather patterns, all sorts of really cool stuff. So check it out, Nature is Metal on Instagram. Anything else you want to plug, Rick, while you're here? Nature ismetal.com. You'll find a lot of, you'll find all of our stuff there. Some cool merch.

Yeah, and we're going to have more soon. But yeah, nature's metal.com is. I got a shirt from you guys. I wear it pretty often. So, yeah, it's a great. It's a great account, great website, great merch. Great guest. Thanks so much for being here, Rick.

We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks for having. We'll see it.