Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The TikTok Bear Encounter - Monkeys, Gators, and Bears in the Latest Animal Attack News Roundup

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Wes talks about a few recent run-ins with bears, while Jeff and Mike share a handful of other notable recent animal attack news headlines for the July 2022 Animal Attack News Roundup. The guys then talk about animal mimicry and, of course, Lord of the Rings, in the categories. ~~ 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. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Tooth and Claw. On this one, we have another monthly animal attack news roundup,

where we take some of the more notable headlines of animal attacks that have happened over the past month or so, and we share them with all of you. Of course, with Wes's expert, wildlife biologist opinion and outlook on the matter. So, we hope you enjoy it. All right, let's go. Okay, Tooth and Claw, at it again. We're in Jeff's apartment. In Jeff's apartment, I'm Jeff.

I'm Wes. My name's Mike. And we are Tooth and Claw Podcast. What do we do, Jeff? Well, you are supposedly a wildlife biologist. We haven't shown my credentials yet. Then I was your field tech on a Black Bear project. Mike's pretty good at computer stuff.

Great at computers. You're making me blush. A good friend of ours, too, for a long time now. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. One of our longest running friends. Yeah, that's us.

That's what we do. We talk about animal attacks, but we're trying to do it in a different way than a lot of other media organizations have done in the past. What do you mean by that? A lot more serious. What I mean is that, no, it's not necessarily the case. No jokes today, folks. But we don't want to blame animals for acting like animals. You know, we don't want to demonize them.

We want to show how their behavior can be predicted and how people can do their best to be safe around wildlife and how we can learn from these kinds of. of incidents. That's why when people are like, Ted Bundy was a real sick animal, you're like, hold on a second. Wait, he's just an animal being an animal. No, that's not what it's like, but that's an interesting sidebar. Yeah, but that's who we are. We're here in Jeff's apartment. We're butt naked. Yep. Except for Mike, who is kind of prude and left his underwear on, but yeah, it's hot. Aside from that, yeah. We can't have the AC on because it messes with the noise. Yeah, thanks Mike. I just, you guys, you would be nowhere without me, okay?

That's true. I crack the whip for very specific reasons. All right. We're not saying that. I quit. What's been, it's over? What's been the most annoying thing we've done as far as, like, editing out unnecessary noises? Oh, like, in post?

Yeah, can I guess first? Yeah, go for it. The first time we recorded, one of the episodes, Jeff had like a nose whistle. the entire episode where he was way too close to the microphone and you could just hear his nose whistling in and out the entire time. Yeah, that would be my guess. I've had that twice, right? Well, the first one was particularly bad because I had to spend a whole day of my trip while I was in Hawaii editing it out. And I was so mad because I was like, we were right next to the beach and all I could hear all day were just people having the time of their lives outside. And I was

Just like, God, this viewer is listening to Jess. Those whistles over and over. Well, Wes used to always say like a ton, too. I've gotten a lot better on that. But he's gotten better at that. Yeah. Quick editor's note, I just wanted to slip in here real quick. So Jeff accuses Wes of saying like too much.

And then later on in the episode, this little gem slips out of his mouth. Like, it's not like a complete cliff, like, but it's like. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. the first time I got to this part. I thought my brain had broken or something. So, yeah, Jeff's a hypocrite. So what is it? What's been the most annoying thing?

It was, so actually, Jeff's nose whistle is second place. Wes was eating something just for like the briefest of moments. It took all of my self-control not to just throw my computer out the window. Because it's an instant trigger for me. We both got some misophonia. I think yours is a little bit more intense than mine, but both of us hate eating noise. Well, should we talk about animals attacking some people? Yeah, really quickly before that.

Yeah. I wanted to bring up the new Rings of Power trailers. Oh, yeah? Quickly. Yeah. These last two trailers that have come out, there's one that came out on Prime and then one that was like a San Diego Comic-Con trailer. I'm excited. Yeah, me too.

For sure. I am. So I wanted to set the record straight on that that, like, I'm pretty excited now. And there's a lot of Silmarillion stuff, it seems like. It seems like there's going to be some interesting. villains. I'm looking forward to it. Oh, and the best part of all, we got practical orc designs. We're not doing CG orcs. They're doing real actors as orcs. So I'm excited. Yeah. I think that's a legitimate marketing tactic. Do you remember the first time we saw what Sonic was

going to look like? Yeah. And it was so bad that people speculated that they were doing that just to drum up word of mouth. And then like a couple weeks later, they released a number of new look for Sonic and everyone was like, wow, that looks a hundred times better. Yeah. You know, so like... So you think they were just trying to get people talking. Yeah, I don't think that's a bad idea. Teeth.

Oh, my gosh. First one was so bad. Horrifying. I guess he's in Alvin and the Chipmunks, that new movie that, like, what's his name? Andy Sandberg and John Mulaney. You mean Chippendale? Oh, Chip and Dale, yeah. Yeah.

I guess they used the first design of the Sonic in the movie. Oh, no. Really? Yeah. That's funny. I'll have to watch it. Anyway, I'm excited about Rings of Power. I actually started reading Silverilene for the third time.

Oh my gosh. Only three times. That's a surprise. Yeah, I like it. It's kind of my comfort book now. But now, I'm done. Okay. Okay.

So should we talk about animals? Let's do it. I'll start us off. Okay. It is our news episode. I was going to do a little spin the bottle, but you can go for it. Oh, yeah, spin the bottle. I don't have a bottle as the real.

You can't do spin the bottle every week. For once, can we not do spin the bottle? Thank you. I'm so lonely. I'm going to do one of two alligator attack stories I have. Okay. So this one I titled Jeff's Dushbag of the Week. Okay.

And it happened in Oak Park, Michigan this past June, and Joshua Applebaum was pulled over for, speeding and then like as he was pulling over I guess he sped off and tried to outrun the police and he crashed his car and then the police found a four-foot alligator in his car so it didn't say for sure I would expect he would get arrested for speeding off when they were trying to pull him over but it didn't say he was arrested but the alligator was taken the alligator got arrested yeah so Joshua says he was just trying to protect what was his, essentially the most important thing in his life, and he panicked.

Oh. The alligator? Yeah, that's the most important thing in his life. Huh. And the alligator was taken to, it's some person's last name. It's Chichili, Second Chance Rescue and Exotics. So I guess that this alligator was like a TikTok star. Like he had 300,000 followers.

and he named it Karen because his ex-girlfriend said he should name it Karen because no one likes a Karen. Okay. And she didn't like the alligator. Oh. If there's any Karen's out there listening, we like you. Yeah. Sorry that your name's been co-opted into something else. That would be pretty sucky if you're just a really nice person named Karen.

Maybe change your name. I mean, it's happened that, you know, there were Richards all over the place when Dick, you know, the whole Dick thing. It happens. It sucks. But, you know. The whole Jeffrey Dahmer thing, people were, like, thinking I was a killer then after that. So then I like being an example for other Jeff's. Like, you don't have to be a mass murderer if your name is Jeff.

Right. But, like, you're nowhere near as famous as him. That's true. So this guy would, like, sleep right next to it. Like, it was, like, his puppy dog. And just really love this alligator. And then April Chiscelli, who owns this rescue place. place where it was given, said that he can't provide Karen the needs that she has as like a

four-foot alligator. Yeah. And that the alligator's much better off now in its new home with other alligators that's designed for alligators to have a good life. Do you think it's telling the other alligators that it's famous on TikTok? Yeah, probably. And the other one's like, oh, shut up. We don't care.

April says that she has no care in the world that she's saying. TikTok famous. She's in our large gator exhibit and she's with three other alligators and apparently they're both willing to take, willing to take the issue to civil court and try to see each other over it. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. What's the, what's the law as far as owning an alligator as a pet? Really depends on your state. State to state. Some states it's completely legal. Some states it's completely illegal. So like, and then there's somewhere you need like a permit. It's just, really depends. I always love the idea of a pet alligator ever since watching the Miami Vice TV series, Sunny Crockett, like lives on a boat with his alligator. I think his name's Rocky.

So cool, though. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's sad that someone's pet, regardless of what species, that's got to be hard, you know? Yeah. I don't, I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have made him my duchbag of the week. I could have maybe found the worst one. It'll be a douchebag of the week? Yeah. It's a question mark. Yeah, but you're right, it would suck to have your pet taken, and it does seem like you really loved it. Yeah.

But also, like, at some point you got to realize, like, it's just going to keep them bigger. This alligator's a lot better off in, like, a place for alligators than in my house. Yeah. At least it got to have an exciting last time with its owner. That's true. Owner probably got some tail from it, you know? Yeah, I guess.

Jeff's the new douchebag of the week. Yeah. You're replaced. All right. So I'll go next. Quick question for you guys. Where do camels like biting people? They like to bite their heads off.

All around their heads. The entire head. Oh, they like fighting heads. All right. So this happened on my birthday, July 13th. This was in the Minnesota Zoo. The headline is, camel bites Minnesota Zoo worker,

drags him 15 feet by the head before biting another employee. And I'm actually, on this one, like the police report really summed it up really well. Yeah. So I'm going to read the police report. On July 13th, the Stearns County Sheriff Office received a report of an animal bite, which occurred at the Hemker Park and Zoo. Upon arrival, deputies learned that the victim was an employee of the zoo and was escorting a camel through an alleyway to prepare it for transport to another facility.

The victim was Roger Blanker of Albany. During the process, the camel placed Blanker's head into its mouth. I like how they put that like that into his mouth. Biting down on his head. The camel then dragged Blanker by the head approximately 15 feet. The placing his head in his mouth. It's like when police reports said like, victim killed by gunfire.

And it's like, well, who fired that gun? Anyways, it dragged him by the head 15 feet. A second employee identified as Seth Wixen of Texas was able to intervene. Wixen placed a plastic walking board into the camel's mouth to release its bite from blinkers. head. After being released from the camel's mouth, Blinker stood on his own and ran to a safe location. The camel then charged at Wixen and it did his head. Whoa. Wixen was also able to get to

a safe location of his own. Double head shot. Wixen refused any medical treatment. Blinker was transported the St. Cloud Hospital by Lifelink helicopter. So I think he got some serious bites. And we've seen camel skulls. They're a serious skull. They look like a bear's skull. Yeah. So getting bit in the head isn't cool. What about just having your head placed in there? Yeah, then it's fine. But I was going to say, maybe if you're working with camels, like wear a helmet or something. Not a bad idea.

Because they're just biting heads out there. If your helmet's big enough, they just won't even be able to get their mouth. They couldn't get their mouth around it. It's like a jawbreaker. Wear one of those really big helmets. Yeah. Then they can't place your head inside their mouth. Yeah.

All right. Well, that's my first one. Mike? Yeah. So I've got a little monkey business. going on in Japan. Oh. It's a Japanese macaque, which I have come to learn through my research are, when you see

those monkeys that are like really red-faced and hanging out in hot springs, that's what, like, that's probably going to be a Japanese macaque that you're seeing. Those are sweet. They're so cool. Yeah. But this one, it turns out, has been kind of terrorizing for the past month, the town or the city of Yamaguchi. It's southern Japan.

One monkey? That's what they think. It could possibly be more than one because it's been upwards of 20 people at this point. They have yet to apprehend this monkey, but it's been going crazy in the city for a while, which is really unusual, which is why they think... When you say upwards of 20 people, what do you mean? Like a bit? Like bit and scratched and like just generally accosted. Nothing serious has happened, except for it's seen, it sounds like one, which I'll cover in just a minute.

But the reason why they speculate that it's only one is that seeing monkeys within the city limits is so rare. Like it just is never seen. So like the probability that more than one, maybe it was like a little group that came in together, but they're pretty sure it's just one at this point. Yeah. Sounds like it too. Once they apprehend it and question it, they'll probably. It seems like to me the probability of having a monkey inside the city, if it's low, then that's one thing, like seeing this monkey repeatedly. probably the same monkey. And then add to that on top that it's a monkey that's actively,

you know, encountering people and attacking people. Right. Then it's almost for sure the same monkey. So city officials are telling citizens to keep their windows closed because it is want to climb in through and harass and even there's one instance here of a 10-month-old infant getting dragged around and scratched up pretty seriously by this monkey. Oh, man. Thankfully, the child's mom was doing. housework vacuuming it said specifically and was able to scare it off before too much damage was done, but it's also- They do. Animals do hate vacuums.

They are very loud. Yeah. Maybe one of those handheld vacuums wherever you go. Yeah. So like bear spray and a vacuum. You're covered from animal danger. That's not actual advice that we're promoting on this podcast. Well, you're not, but I will.

Right. So this monkey has also been seen at a specific school lot where, It's attacked a couple of students, even so far as going into a classroom and attacking a four-year-old before a staff member was able to come scared away. Plus a couple of older women who, I'm just speculating, were probably there to pick up their children or something. But they were in the environs of this school lot, and they got attacked as well. It's on a rampage. I know. 20 plus people at this point.

Like I said, they have not been able to catch it yet, which is surprising. Maybe it's not surprising. It is surprising to me. It seems like it wouldn't be super hard. I don't think it's like in a school. So just like close the doors and like get out. I think it can be hard to catch it. I don't feel like it should be that hard to kill it, which don't get me wrong.

I don't ever want that to happen to an animal. But if an animal is on a rampage like this attacking this many people, that's probably what you're going to have to end up doing. So maybe. You think the teacher just like didn't skip a beat and it was like still just teaching like. lesson with a monkey in there. Just attacking whenever students. I doubt it. Believe it or not, I don't think so, Jeff.

But that's it. So it's still at large. All right. So if you live in Yamaguchi, careful out there, folks. Watch out. Maybe you should wear a helmet too. Shing guards or something, yeah.

This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. All right, I'm going to do a quickie. This one is called Eat the rich. Eat the rich. Okay. Yeah, I like that.

So this is, this happened in July. My source was Newsweek. So bears have mauled and eaten a wealthy couple and a pilot after their helicopter crashed in a Russian wilderness. Wow. Yeah. So this is like, cool. Okay. Um, it's believed the Corpses were dragged away, mauled, and eaten by wild bears that populate the region. So I have an issue with that. I do too. It says the helicopter reportedly caught on fire when it came crashing down. So, like, these people died in a helicopter crash.

Almost for sure. Sure, yeah. And then it says the bears mauled them. Yeah. Posthumously. It's like the bears got a free meal. It's like the bear's ate them. Yeah.

Right, right. You can't say, they don't just mauled them. A dead corpse. The bear was like the car. The bear was in the helicopter with them. And like, yeah. Yeah, we need a timeline. Right.

I just thought it was funny. How they kept saying mauled. I honestly like, I'm glad you brought this one up because this is part of our podcast is like identifying the way that media portrays these things. And the fact that in those headlines, it's like, Bear mall's wealthy couple, you know, and like, bear kills them. And then when you actually read it, it's like, No, they died in a helicopter crash, and then a bear that was probably walking around was like,

oh, there's some food here and it ate it, like, as it should, you know. They found some free food, and it ate it. And then, Wes, correct me after I say this, but Kamchatka? Kempchotka. Yeah, you're close enough. That's fine. The country up, like, that connects to Alaska and risk, right? That's a great country to have in risk.

Yeah. It's part of Russia, and it's close to Alaska, you know? Yeah. And they have a very similar kind of ecology as Alaska does. They have like lots of brown bears, lots of wolves. Says it has 10,000 to 14,000 bears, and it's about the size of California. Yeah, it's beautiful. I've never been there, but I've always wanted to go.

Great fishing, tons of bears. Cool place. Quick note, I think when Jeff was like setting up the story, I might have said, oh, cool. Yeah. I didn't mean that. Like, not, it was not cool that, like, someone died and got mauled or whatever. I mean, they're super wealthy. I didn't help you with my title.

Just being Eat the Rich. Yeah, I do like that title. That's cool. And a side note in the article was that they crashed close to a volcano. Oh, wow. So they love throwing that in when they can. Yeah, you got to include that detail. Yeah.

All right. Is it my turn? Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to do a bear one. I've got a couple of bare ones today. and I'm going to do one that got sent to us a lot. So it's a video.

It was a TikToker. This TikToker's name is Paolo Z-21, and they had a TikTok go viral of a bear approaching them, a black bear, in Canaanascus. That's a hard one for me to say. Canaanascus, Alberta. It's Canaanascus. Thank you. It's a large multi-use recreation region in Alberta.

it's like not necessarily it's not really like a national park but it's close to a national park almost but um it's a place that a lot of people go to recreate and this ticotker ran into a black bear the black bear was following them throughout the woods um they were kind of doing what they could to get away but it continued following them and then in the video you see the bear actually like approach and there's a tree in between this person and the bear and the bear's kind of going back and forth on this side of the tree yeah a lot of listeners sent this yeah and then it grabs the jacket and pulls it away from this guy. And the title on the TikTok is like, my first bear encounter and I didn't even use my

bear spray. And then later, what happened is this bear continued following this person. His name's Paolo. And to try and discourage the bear from following him, he actually fed it. So he threw a protein bar and some boiled eggs to this bear. And then he, like, had enough time to catch up with some other, I know who hikes in eggs? He just had boiled eggs in his pocket.

Who's hiking with boiled eggs? When I said that Jeff gave me like a really puzzled look. It's such a weird thing to hike with. But apparently, remember in our casseroi episode, the guy that was just feeding apples to the casseroid? It's like a basket of apples on it. Anyway, that gave them enough time to catch up to some other hikers and then they scared the bear off. But I wanted to talk about this one because it's kind of important. I know some people that work in Canaanascus.

I talked to them a little bit about this. They had to kill this bear. And a big part of that, this bear they believed was food conditioned already. They thought that it had probably already gotten some rewards because it had been following people around. But then when they actually had proof that had been food condition that someone had given it a reward,

they had to take it out. And that's again because then you suddenly have a big liability because it might continue approaching people and acting aggressively. And then if someone gets hurt, you knew about that beforehand and you didn't do anything. So they had to put this bear down, and I wanted to bring up an important thing here

that had this person been hiking with bear spray, and had they gone and used their bear spray instead of throwing food to this bear, it's a very different lesson you're teaching that bear. Because if you spray it, then it's thinking and it's head, okay, I'm following this thing, I'm hoping for food, and I got this instead, this really terrible experience. But what the bear actually learned is,

if I push these things hard enough, they throw food to me. Yeah. And that's like a really, really bad lesson for a bear. And had they had bear spray and sprayed it, it would learn a really good lesson. And it might have saved its life. That bear might not have had to die. These managers might have been like, well, we'll see what happens because now it's been sprayed. Maybe now it'll leave people alone.

So find their TikTok and be like, tooth and claw said you should have had bear spray and sprayed it. He should have. Yeah, do it. should have and like yeah you go for it i just don't don't harass this don't harass them but honestly like yeah it's a good teaching opportunity too like canaanascus is grisly country you should be hiking with bear spray if you're in one of those places you just should and it's not something to like brag about either had they used their bear spray this would have ended a lot quicker and the bear might still be alive yeah so thanks everyone for sending that to us so all the listeners asking about if a bear's coming

towards me, should I give it my boiled eggs that I'm hiking with? You would tell them no. I'd say no. And then I would say, also really reevaluate your hiking snacks. How long does it boiled eggs stay good? I don't know. I feel like you don't want that getting warm, right? It's going to be warm and gross.

Yeah. Mike, what you got? I've got one entitled. I gave it this title. I'm taking credit for this since no one else will probably want to. Running of the balls. Okay. Because he got gourd in the groin.

Let's hear it. So, okay, for the past couple of years, the pandemic is more or less put an end to these kinds of events. They just haven't taken place, but, you know, since. The running of the balls? The running of the balls has not happened since around, like, you know, when this whole thing started, you don't need me to give you a history lesson of the pandemic. If you want a history lesson of running of the bowls, though, what can they do?

Oh, that's a good question. And listen to your episode about running the bulls. I did do one, didn't I? Yeah. No, that was a good one. I enjoyed researching up for that. one. But this is a different occasion. This happened just a couple of weeks

ago in Benadorm, Spain. It's the southeastern coast. And they have this event called the Bouss Al-Amar. Basically, they set up kind of this enclosure where they set some bowls loose, and we'll just call these people brave enough to get into

the ring with these bowls. Stupid enough. That's another word we can use. But when they sense that they're in enough danger, they just hop into the sea because more likely than not the bulls aren't just going to hop off the key. Yeah. And then the bull sharks. Swimming of the sharks happens afterwards.

So he's only identified as a bare-chested man, but he was attending this Bousalamar, and he was pinned to the ground by a bull. And like, Standersby said that it was just inches away from really goring him and some really, like, sensitive and important places, the stomach and the head. And they got him in the groin, dude. Yeah, remember the title. But it was on the ground tussling around with him for about half a minute when he was lucky enough to be able to stagger away and hop into the water. That's a long time to be, like, gored by a bowl. I know, like 30 seconds, like imagine being gored by a bowl for that.

Yeah, I was just like, whenever you put something in a microwave for like a minute, it doesn't sound that long. But then it's just like you're sitting there waiting for it and you're like, man, this is taking forever. Yeah. Imagine like you're waiting for your hop. pot pocket, but also a bowl is like getting it. Do you guys remember the Tom Green show? Yeah. There was an episode where he was like, I'm just going to eat this bowl of food for like two

and a half minutes on air. And he did and it was the longest two and a half minutes ever. I was like, oh my, this is so long. So yeah, it can't. That's a long time. Yeah. And it got him in the nuts. It got him pretty good and like bad enough that he had to be taken to the hospital.

And I don't know how major or minor the operation that was performed on him was. but he was operated on. So it's that serious. But this is notable because just a week, or maybe it was like a day, I believe, earlier, within 24 hours, three other people died in running the bulls type event. Yep. In different locations.

Like, this isn't really a joke. It's not good for the bulls. And more, I'm not going to say more likely than not, but it's not good for the humans often as well. No, I definitely feel worse for the bulls and the running of the bulls. though. It was like 11 people had died since like the 1910s, but then like the last couple years, it's like five people a year dying or something.

Because people are out of shape from the pandemic. They can't run quite as far as true. Yeah. I did want to cover one other event just to reinforce the dangers of these events. There was a 64-year-old French man named Pierre. And I wanted to talk about this one because he was attending the event, but not really like, quote-unquote, participating in it. He walked out of a bar

and was kind of standing around a protective barrier and unbeknownst to him, a bull was charging at him through the crowd. And it caught him with his horn, threw him up in the air, and he just landed directly on his head

and went into a coma that he just never woke up from again. Wow. So he's kind of a bystander. A bystander. Again, if you're planning, and like I would urge you to reconsider summer plans

if this is something that you may be thinking about doing, be extremely careful and just don't. How about that? Yeah, I just don't. I think we kind of came to that consensus when we did your episode on it. It's just even though it's like tradition and cultural, it's a little too brutal for us to ever get behind something like that.

How bad does it suck if you get like your groin trampled by a bowl for, or gourd by a bowl for a minute? And then when the news reports on it, they just refer to you as a bare-chested man. I'd rather that than have my name just get broadcast out to the whole world. Yeah, I guess. Well, Mike just got st stumped in the book. Well, if it was Mike Smith, they would be like, oh, this could be 50 million people.

Yeah. The hockey goalie? Yeah. All right. I'll go for my next one then. You done? I think so. So this one was pretty sad, but also made me laugh.

Okay. Wes was like, what are you laughing about? And I had to show him this funny thing that I'll describe. But this one is a monkey and a bulletproof vest. That's how I named it. And it's from CBS News in June. So in Mexico, Texacalitan, Mexico. I'm not going to try.

I speak Spanish and I can't do it. A monkey was found dead wearing a camo jacket and a bulletproof vest. And it was lying on top of its dead owner's body. Oh, wow. Imagine if that's the crime scene you walk into. Yeah. And you're just like, oh man, something interesting happened here. So in Texcalatin, Mexico.

I think that's probably like a Mayan name is what I'm guessing. Well, it also kind of seems like Texas and California. Huh. Okay. Texcalatilan. It sounds indigenous to me. There was a shootout with one of the local drug trafficking families where 11 people were killed and a 15-year-old boy was arrested.

And the police walked up and saw this dead monkey in diapers, a camo jacket, and like a bulletproof vest. And it's pretty sad. But then someone made a meme of it with angel wings up in heaven wearing its bulletproof vest, and that got a pretty good life. Do you think it was just too sad to keep living on one of those little poisonous dates, like in Indiana Jones?

It is funny that police said that they couldn't tell if it was killed by gunfire or by its owner or something. Yeah. So, like, they sent it to a vet. That's what you would think. You would think that. But they weren't willing to confirm whether it was a bullet or not. So I don't know.

The same day in tequila, tequila. It says tequila. Yeah, tequila is like a, it's a place in Mexico. Is it? Yeah, I think that's where tequila comes from, right? Yeah, that's tequila. Okay. Yeah.

I just, the name of the town being tequila threw me off. Sure, right. Understandable. The same day in tequila, Mexico, there's a viral video that went out, maybe you guys saw, but there was just like a random tiger walking through the streets. Yeah, I saw that one. And like, there's a girl kind of screaming, and there's just this huge-ass tiger in the streets of this little Mexican town. And a bystandard came up and roped it around the neck.

and led it off to like a place where there was no people. But the tiger had been declawed and defamed. Don't do that, guys. Don't do that to your pets or your animals. So. It's so sad that like the most beautiful animal in the world is just mutilated. And then there's another story in, I'm normally good at Mexican city names, but this one's hard too. Let's hear it.

Mishua can. Michua Khan? Yeah. Mishu Khan. I think that's how you say it. I know the place that you're talking about. So it says it's been dominated by the Halisco cartel for a long time, and it's like one of the five most dangerous criminal organizations in the world,

according to some justice, the Department of Justice, sorry. Some Department of Justice. Yeah. But anyways, there's a guy in this little area of the town. And it's like the avocado growing region where like we get a lot of avocados. And I guess the drug cartel does a lot of stuff in the avocado trade, probably to like launder and like, I don't know. I guess it's a big drug trafficking thing too. But anyways, they had a tiger.

This guy walked up to it, started like calling it over to the fence. And then he gave it some food and stuck his other arm all the way through the fence and was just pet. its head. Bad move. The bad idea. And the tiger ate both of his arms off and then he got sent to the hospital and he died a few days later. Oh man. Yeah. Just remember if you're ever going to pet, like if you're ever thinking about petting an exotic animal, once it's got you, once they have your arms in there, you're not going to be able to get them out until it's ready to let them go. And it might completely consume them before you're finally able to get out. So if you want to there for 20 minutes while a tiger eats your arms, go ahead and stick your arm in there.

But it's a pretty terrible thing. Like, honestly, the one that we talked about with Echo the tiger that died in Naples, the video from that kind of scarred me. Watching that guy's like arms stuck in there, the tiger like ripping it apart and then the tiger getting shot, it was pretty grim. So don't do that. I know someone who had that happen with a lion. That's right.

It sounds like this guy in your story, Jeff, he didn't die immediately. immediately. Like, it wasn't like at on site. He probably bled out. Yeah, bleeding out from that kind of... He died a few days later in the hospital. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. That's got to be real painful. That's pretty bad. Yeah, that's a nine claw maybe. Yeah, I'd say nine. I'd say ten even. There's like... I'm like, I started to read about it and out's easier. And like, uh, and like a lot of the Mexican drug traffickers collect exotic. animals and kind of build their own zoo. And it's kind of like shows that you are a drug trafficker in Mexico to like get your own zoo of animals.

And that stems from Pablo Escobar and like the Colombian cartels because he had like a full-fledged zoo. Yeah. There's like wild hippos in Columbia now just because when he died, his hippos got loose. So like Mexico got really into that same thing, which is really bad. and like it's terrible for the animals, but also if I was like a super villain, I'd probably want a ton of cool ass animals.

Yeah. If I just didn't care about like any morals anymore. Right. And then I was reading about it, and I guess like, I think he's been caught a couple times now, but one of the times El Chapo, like one of the biggest drug cartel people ever in Mexico,

was caught, was because he had a pet monkey that he loved named Bota. and like they were able to like track the permits to el chapo and like go and arrest them because like you still need to get permits and it's really hard and like the drug traffickers go through a lot of stuff to get permits to get those animals into Mexico yeah it says here too that some drug cartel capos like the zeta's leader hilberto lescanzo they acquired exotic animals to torture or disappear their victims. Oh, wow.

Several of his enemies were devoured by the tigers or crocodiles that the Zetas kept in their pens or cages. Wow, it's such a bad way to go. It's crazy. To be, like, fed to an... I was telling Wes, one of these guys needs to write a book about how they kill people with animals and everything. I don't know if I'd want to read it.

It'd be a lot to handle, but I mean, I would be interested in some of the details of I hope someday the cool thing to do for like a subset of rich people, like it becomes like a status symbol to like donate to charity or like pay your taxes. Yeah. Like that's how you show that you're like super rich and awesome. Instead of getting pay your taxes. Right. Like hey, I'm going to pay an 80% tax rate. Yeah.

That's what I think is going to be cool. Yeah. Instead of collecting a menagerie of animals and feeding people to him. Well, Pablo Escobar kind of did that. He was kind of a local hero. but he's also a bad dude. All right. I got a coyotes be Weilin.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, great. I'm taking it from Jeff again. Let's do it. All right. So the headline here is Labrador Retriever scares away coyote to save Boston Terrier from attack in California backyard. So this was in Huntington Beach and a coyote jumped over the six-foot wall. Our last one was Huntington Beach.

Yeah, there's a lot of coyotes in Huntington Beach. Wow. Jumped over a six-foot wall surrounding the home of Melissa and Freddie. Patriarcha, and it landed in their backyard. And they had a surveillance camera. There's actually footage of all of this. And the coyote immediately attacked their Boston Terrier, whose name was Sadie.

The dog's significantly smaller than this coyote. It was shaking it around. It was going to kill this dog. Like watching it, it was going to take it a little while, but it was going to kill this dog. Yeah. But Sadie had a big brother, Cody, the Labrador, a big yellow lab.

And in this video, you see the coyote is grabbing Sadie. it's shaking her, and then all of a sudden it looks to the side, and it drops Sadie and runs off, and then you see Cody come running in, and then you also see another little dog, like, I don't know what dog that is, come chasing in, and they both chase the coyote off. And then Sadie kind of shakes off being shaken by this coyote and joins the chase as well. Oh, nice. Yeah. Well done.

But this is all off camera at that point, but Sadie was treated for a wound. She made a full recovery. I was a little bugged of this tiny dog, didn't get any credit. edit. It was like all the articles I found were about Cody the Labrador. But like no one even mentioned this other dog. But they did save their friend Sadie. So you think that's because you're kind of small? That might be it. Yeah. Sure. And a middle child. So that's Coyotes B. Weiland. I also have a quick one that's mostly just a headline. This isn't a coyote one. But maybe the best headline I've read so far as since we started this podcast. Lifeguard bit by Shark while

delivering shark attack training. So, just going to give you a brief recap of the story. This was in New York, which there's been a big spate of shark attacks in New York this summer, and they're not totally sure what species is to blame. One of their most common species is a sand tiger shark, which isn't responsible really for any deaths or anything, but they do occasionally attack people. They also recently did see a great white there, but based on this guy's injuries, I think it was a smaller shark.

He was out doing a training. exercise on what to do during a shark attack when a shark came up to him, bit him on the hand in the chest, mid-training. And he like hammer-punched the water to get the shark to release. And then he swam away and returned to the beach where he got treatment from the other lifeguards, had a few stitches, but minor injuries. He probably felt so lucky. Just imagine that, though, like, if you're one of the trainees and the person's like pretending to be bit by a shark, and then they actually do get it. You're teaching people bear safety and getting mauled by a grizzly bear.

Yeah, and if you didn't see the shark, you'd be like, oh, is this dude just like going full method acting? You know, like, what's going on? Daniel Day Lewis in the ocean. I want to add a story onto that. Okay. It's not an animal story, but it's related to that. Okay. So I watched a video of this plane crash, and it crashed in the ocean during a lifeguard competition for, like, who's the best life?

Oh, really. It's a best place to get a plane crash. They crashed in the water during this competition and all these lifeguards and saved them out of the plane. Can you imagine like you're one of the passengers and then like three seconds after the accident there's like four lifeguards helping you? You're like, what's going on around here? Let me do one more quick headline one.

Yeah, go for it. And this one was sent to me by my good friend Mickey who sent us some other great stories. So thanks Mickey. Shout up Mickey. it. Mickey sells some really cool crafts and stuff online. Disney. Oh, no, this isn't Mickey Mouse. So this headline is, Escaped Monkey Attacks 2-year-old Ukrainian refugee in Russian Village.

Whoa, that's quite the headline. It is quite the headline. And it was a 2-year-old refugee from Ukraine. Her name is Paulina. There's video of this one too. I do it, like, it's a crazy one. You guys should check it out. She's outside with her parents. I assume they're her parents. playing around. She's like on a little ladder. And all of a sudden this black monkey rushes in. I believe from looking at it, I think it's a Francois Langer, which is like a really rare type of languor. But I'll explain why it might have been in Russia. It rushes in, grabs this girl,

pulls it off the ladder, bites her repeatedly. The mom goes up and pulls the little girl away from the monkey and then the monkey charges the mom, rips the baby away again. No way. Bites it some more. The dad runs in, does some really half a little. part of kicking. But kicks at the monkey and the monkey finally seems to kind of give up. But it's multiple attacks while these two are trying to keep the baby. It was really focused on getting this kid. She's in critical condition.

Oh, no. Yeah. Like it really, and I'll show you guys a picture of what this monkey's teeth looks like because it's kind of wild. So that's a Francois Langer. Oh, my gosh. They have huge canines. That looks like the Green Goblin and Spider-Man.

Yeah, that's kind of what it looks like. You at home, look it up. Look up the green goblin spider. Anyway, apparently there was a really rich, like, millionaire somewhere nearby in this village in Russia, and they had a little menagerie, much like a cartel person might have, and this monkey had escaped from their property and attacked this girl. So it sucks. Like, you're a Ukrainian refugee living in a village in Russia, which seems like a weird country to live in.

But that's where they were living. and then this monkey escapes in a taxer. So Paulina, I hope you feel better. So I'm sure the Ukrainian refugee side if they sue this Russian million. Yeah, I'm sure that's how it's going to work out. All right, well, Paulina, we really do truly hope you get better, and we're glad your parents were there to protect you. Otherwise, this would have been a dead kid.

You have to be a refugee in Russia right now. That's sex. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock Monitoring. there's hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own.

If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply.

All right, Mike, you got anything? I do. I have another alligator story. Okay. And I was worried for a second there that we picked the same one, Jeff, but mine does have it down. And you have another one? Yeah. Whoa.

Okay, so maybe I'm stealing one of years then. Reverse. Uno card. So this one does take place down in Florida. Oh, yeah, I'll tell it. I'm just kidding. So this one, I wanted to talk about this one for a couple of reasons, but just when I was reading the article, I had like really just an awful mental image of what happened.

So tragic is a good thing. word, I guess, for it. Our sicko fans love this stuff. Yeah, our real weirdos. You're going to like this one. So Florida is home to over a million alligators. And in the year 2021, there are only nine bytes documented throughout the whole year. I don't think there were any, maybe there's one fatality recorded.

And I don't even think that happened in Florida, just like countrywide. Those are the stats. So this has been like a really... You're a stats guy. Yeah, I'm all about spreadsheets and like Microsoft Excel and stuff. stuff, numbers, those kinds of things, stats, I call them for short. Yeah, we got it. Not statistics.

Now, we're on. We know. We're with you. Right. So it's been a crazy year. Jeff already went over one kind of alligator story. I don't know if we'll classify that as an attack. Exactly. There had been a handful of attacks.

But there's been kind of a spate of incidents and encounters that end up in attacks and some in fatalities like this one I'm about to talk about. So it was an 80-year-old woman out on a stroll. on a golf course at the Boca Royale golf course it was. And she accidentally, I'm kind of envisioning maybe slipped a little bit, but she fell into one of the water hazards on the golf course. And the articles that I read, and this is from ABC News primarily that I got this information, she was struggling just to stay afloat.

So she was like laboring to swim and just that's as much as she could do just to like keep her head above the water. and it made it sound like it was not an immediate thing that happened. So two alligators took her down while she was just like flailing around in the water. And I just, I really don't like the image of an older woman struggling to swim. And then she was pronounced dead on the scene. These two alligators just made pretty quick work of her, it turns out. But yeah, it was just a really hard thing. When I read it, like it seemed like they didn't really get to her very quick.

No, that's what I was trying to say. Did she drown first or did she? No, so she wasn't drowned, but it probably was two alligators that were assessing the situation. They saw, like, in their minds, like, a sickly... Or was everyone else? Indisposed. Yeah. That's a good question because apparently there were eyewitnesses.

I didn't see anything about eyewitnesses. Well, I just don't know how you could have these details unless there was someone there. See, I thought it was kind of vague from when I read it. Okay. Because it's like she probably fell in. The struggle to stay afloat. was what made me think maybe there was. Right.

But that was like from the sheriff's office. It wasn't from like a bystander. So let's just call it speculation. But at the end of the day, she fell in the pond and was killed by two alligators, regardless of the circumstances. Cause of death was probably two alligators. So they did apprehend, if that's, I don't know if that's the right. Captured two alligators.

One was about eight feet. One was about nine feet long. It's long enough. They don't know if these two that they captured were the correct alligators. But. Yeah. So one thing, can I add something? Yeah, go for it. One thing that really stands out to me in this story is the fact that this was at a golf course. I don't think you would expect that to happen with the really wild alligators, like if you're in the Everglades or something and you just fall in water that you immediately have aligators approaching you. But at a place like a golf course, there's a really high probability that these alligators have been fed at some point that people have been interacting with them. And from talking to my friends that worked with alligators, like we talk about with a lot of wild animals, that's the number of, one thing that preconditions an animal then to attack is being fed or food conditioned. So that's a guess

of mine of what could be a contributing factor in this. I don't want people out there to think, if you fall in water in Florida, even in like golf course, you're going to die. That's not the case. But if you've been doing this thing to the animals and then you fall in water, then you might be in some trouble. So yeah, that's just some insight. Yeah, but that's also just a guess. It's a good thing to From what I saw to, I watched like the news video. To me, when it showed the pond, it almost looked like it was this big pond in like the golf community and not actually like on the golf course. Still probably a place where people are feeding alligators. Yeah, it could be.

So a lot of times like my friends that work with problem alligators, these are the kind of places they're removing them from. You know, they're like ponds in communities, they're people's backyard pools. They're those kind of places because those are the places where alligators are becoming habituated and food conditioned, and that's where they're a problem. You don't have to remove alligators from a wild place because they're fine there. But in these places, they are an issue. And don't forget, they are dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs.

You can't never forget that. You always talk about how good at baseball they probably are. I think they probably good at golf. More crocodiles. He did say crocodile. Oh, you're right. That's my bad. They probably could hit a golf ball pretty.

pretty far with their tail. Yeah. Yeah. Over like a home run distance, you think? Yeah, for sure. All right, Jeff. What's your next story? That was my, that was my last story.

Oh, I did steal it. I think I have two more. Is that okay? Yeah. All right. Don't ask us. Do you have any more, Mike? No.

All right. Well, I'm just going to do these last two then. Hopefully the listeners are cool with it. Let us know, guys, I guess. This is a tiger attack. And something that's really sad to me, is for our news episode, one of the ways that I collect stories. Like, one way is from listeners and from like our mom, who constantly sends up to me.

And then friends and stuff. But then another way is I'll go into Google and literally just type in a name of an animal and then attack. And then I go to the news tab and like see what recent news there are about attacks from that animal. And unfortunately, there's one animal, there's always some recent news, and they're always really tragic and devastating, and that's tigers. There's constantly tiger attacks in India. There's a lot of people there. They are an animal that does sometimes see us as a food source.

They're one of the few out there that occasionally will hunt humans. And this one's a sad one, but it also has some pretty crazy details. It's like tigers and mosquitoes are the two animals that hunt humans, right? Sure. And, you know, there's some others. Like, I kind of take some umbrage with like, like I was watching alone recently, which I love that show, but they always make it seem like predators are such a huge problem. And the guy was like, polar bears are one of the only animals that actively hunt people. And that's not true, A.

And I think if you were to say, are there any animals that do actively hunt people, it would just be some of these big cats. B. What? You can't just say A. Oh, yeah, but sorry, did I say A earlier? Yes. And then B, even though they do hunt people, it's not like we are their typical prey. It's not like there's tigers that are born out there.

They're like, you know what? I'm going to hunt humans my whole life. They're opportunistic, and sometimes they'll hunt people. Okay. Sorry, that was the long aside, but I just wanted to make that clear. No, it's interesting. So these two friends, Afzirul, Un Ahmad, and Mohamed Anas, were two friends from Northern India, Thank you.

They'd been riding a motorcycle along a highway near Corbett Tiger Reserve. Corbett Tiger Reserve has one of the highest densities of tigers of any reserve in India. They're wild tigers. They are tigers. Wild tigers, yes. They are tigers. Bengal tigers. So this attack occurred on July 16th when a large Bengal tiger shot out from the brush

and launched itself at the two friends on the motorcycle. They fell to the ground, the motorcycle toppled over. Anas scrambled to the other side of the motorcycle and then watched as the tiger grabbed Amad and quickly dragged him into the dark brush of the jungle. Anas managed to escape with minor injuries just from the crash, but Amad hasn't been seen since. So authorities got to the scene to look for Amad

and they found two human hands lying not far from the river inside of the forest. It's not yet been confirmed whether the hands belong to Amad. I'm guessing they do. That's my guess. They also uncovered a bloodstained mobile phone, a bag, and some other remains not far from the highway. Why like tigers like eating hands?

I don't know. That actually, I was wondering that exact same thing. I mean, if he's like you guys, you probably didn't wash him after peeing. That's a good point. You don't want to eat. I'm glad you brought that back up because I've been thinking about it every time I go to the bathroom ever since. And like not thinking about it in the moment, but I'm realizing I wash my hands every time. Oh, good.

And I don't know why I said I did it. This is a redemption story. And I think it's because at one point I was like, this is stupid. I'm not getting any pee on my hands. Why am I washing my hands? But I still do it every time. Good. Anyway.

So they talked to the divisional forest office ranger. His name was Chandraska. See, no, you lost me. His last name is Joshi. And he talked about how they're trying to find the tiger. and then according to the India Times, this tiger might be responsible for other attacks that have occurred in the area.

There was other bike riders that have been attacked. So in June 15th, a tiger in that area killed a single bike riders. And then on June 17th, two forest officials were riding a bike and they were attacked by a tiger. So I think it's pretty likely that this is the same tiger and that it's kind of figured out,

oh, I can jump on these guys that are riding by and it's a pretty easy meal. Yeah, it's kind of crazy you can ride bikes through like a tiger reserve. Yeah. Yeah. I will say I've been in some tiger reserves in India. I, it was one of the few places where I was like, I don't even want to get out and walk around.

Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a real danger from tigers. Like it's not, they're not the same as a lot of other animals in that regard. All right. So my last one is another one that a ton of people sent us. And it was this influencer family. Her name was Brighton Peachy.

So she is like... Influencer family. Yeah. Like Kardashian. She's kind of the main influencer, I think, in the family. But then she does a lot of trips to their family and they record their experiences. And they do a lot of outdoor stuff. I think they're actually, they're cool.

Cool. Like they show how you can take your like family out into the wilderness and like do all these fun camping trips and stuff. But they were out hiking in British Columbia on a pretty popular trail when a black bear started following them. And props to her because her video that she posted says bear encounter. And then every single media outlet that posted this said family stalked by bear. And what happened is her and her family are walking up this trail and you see this bear probably about 100 yards away following them up the trail. And it's not really deterring at all.

They're yelling at it. They're walking from it. They have several small children. They're like six-year-old is just kind of like really calm about it and is like, hey, when do we play dead? It's really pretty chill about it, very brave. But they're just walking away. And at one point they kind of get a little bit more frantic and she picks up the kids.

The bear's like following them in the video. Right. But like the bear doesn't give a shit. No. They're being really calm, but the bear is also, yeah. So my kind of expert opinion watching this video is that this bear wanted to use that trail at the same time as them. It was trying to move along the trail. It's probably very habituated and used to people because it didn't care at all that they were there.

But it also wasn't following them in like. a stalking behavior or trying to chase them down or it wasn't predatory. It just happened to be on the trail at the same time as them and it happened to be a very habituated bear. So I think they handled it really well. I think the media hasn't handled this one very well, but they did. And she gave some good advice on her Instagram about what to do if you do see a bear. But my advice in this particular scenario, say you're like on a trail, a bear's coming

your direction, you happen to be going the same direction as this bear, and it's not deviating when you start yelling at it or making noise or doing all the things we've said to do, my advice would be get off the trail, get a good distance off the trail, and see what the bear does. If it continues to walk down that trail, all it was trying to do was use the trail. If it also turns at the spot that you turned and starts following you that direction, you've got a problem, and you need to start being a lot more aggressive with that bear. This is a black bear. With the grizzly, it's a whole different story.

But with a black bear, you start throwing things at it. You start being very loud and aggressive. If you have bear spray, you should get it ready because you're probably going to have to use it. That's my advice. If you got a vacuum cleaner, plug it in. If you watch the video, too, there's kind of cliffs on both sides of the bear. Like, it's not like a complete cliff, but it's like obvious that it's way easier to walk on the path. It's a corridor. Right.

When you're looking at these videos of like an animal stalking someone, look at the trail that they're on and be like, is this trail just a hundred times easier to walk on than like in the forest? Also, look at the behavior of the animal and think, does this look like stalking behavior? Yeah. If this animal were stalking something with this work, like if I were a deer and it were coming after me, would it get me?

Because it's not. It's walking slowly down the trail. if that stalking behavior, that bear's never going to have a successful hunt, you know? Right. It was a good video. It was very compelling. I think they did a great job staying calm. But if you ever do find yourself in that situation, get out of its path and see what it does.

All right. That's all I got. Good job. Wes. Yeah. There's a lot of news this month. Yeah. A lot.

Oh, yeah. All right. Well, since it's our news episode, we don't really have a ton of categories, but we do have some listener questions. We do. Let me start with Patreon. Okay, from Christina. What's your favorite animal mimic? Mimicry.

Mimicry or camouflage. For example, I really love the hummingbird maws and a lot of insects that mimic stuff. Some caterpillars look exactly like bird poop. Got any cool examples of this? Yeah. Can I do my first? Yeah. There's a snake.

I think it's found in Iran. It's somewhere in the Middle East. It was in one of the last, like, Planet Earth series or one of those series. It's a snake that its tail looks like a spider. Yeah. And it, like, kind of, like, moves it around just like a spider. And then its body is perfectly camouflaged to match the rocks that it's found in. So it really just looks like a spider on the rocks.

And it draws birds in. And then it strikes out and kills those birds. And it's some of the coolest mimicry I've ever seen. That's awesome. Yeah, I was going to say that one. I'm going to look up the snake species name. I don't know if this counts, but I like when octopities, octopi mimic rocks. Yeah, they just try that to do a rock.

It's called the spider-tailed horn viper. Yeah, octopus really do look amazing when they look like shells or rocks. The snake one's cool because it's like catching birds by like doing that. Yeah. I feel like there's so many cool ones that I'm just not like stick bugs, I guess. I love stick bugs. pretty like that's really interesting yeah yeah i think the thing that got me with this snake one is that i saw when when i saw the video of it i saw the spider and i didn't see the snake usually

when i see mimicry i can pick it out pretty quickly this one i didn't until the snake moved and then i was like oh shit there's a there's a snake right there yeah do you have a favorite uh that was mine okay yeah i mean i really like gaboon vipers a lot and if they like are in a bunch of leaves sometimes it's like impossible to see them but yeah cool and then let's do one more Hannah so she says she lives in bc canada and they get a lot of rattlesnakes in this summer and she'll like catch them with a pbc pipe and rope and move them away but her cats don't understand that they're dangerous and like go and like play with the snakes and one of them got bit and it survived but she wants to know is there anything that she can do to do to do

deter the snakes. She weed wax as much as she can, but they live in the woods. Yeah, I mean, the main thing is getting rid of any kind of cover for snakes. So if you have like piles of logs or like old stuff outside that the snakes might want to hide in, getting rid of that because it also gets rid of cover for rodents. And that's what brings snakes in to begin with. So it's getting rid of any kind of cover for snakes or rodents or any kind of attractants for rodents. So like bird feeders, anything else that might bring rodents into your general area is the best way to get rid of them. I will say also just consider not having your cats outside because they also can be a pretty bad kind of thing for the local environment.

So, yeah, because it's really hard to teach a cat not to mess with a snake. Okay. So this is from Instagram. And it's a question from Rue and Joe. If you could be any animal for a year, but you had to live in the zoo. Which would you be? Any animal, but you had to live in a zoo for a year? What's like the most well-taking care of an animal?

That's what I'm trying to think of. Probably like some stupid bug that doesn't care and just would like sit on the wall and not think about anything for a year. But you're in there. You're thinking of it. Oh, am I like I still, I retain my human brain? Yeah.

Okay. I think so. That's a little different. That's a lot harder. I think if it's just like you get to have that animal's experience, for a year. Like once you're done, you just remember it? Yeah, sure. Then I'm picking like a reptile or something. Something that doesn't need a huge enclosure, like an alligator.

See, I'd still want to pick. I'd pick a tiger, I think, because they always have a really good enclosure and then like, it'd just be cool to feel like that powerful and be like that cool of a cat for a year. They probably just bring like mating opportunities right to your front door. I think you're that cool of a cat anyways, yeah. Yeah, they might, you might get breeding opportunities, but I'm still picking, like, I want to be like a little dwarf came in or something. So, you know, up at the Hogle Zoo, they have peacocks that just kind of like are let, they let them stroll around, maybe one of those. Yeah. Because you're, you're just out there hanging around.

Okay. This one's from Steff Dog 18, and they want to know, would Bear Spray stop the ring raise in fellowship of the ring? It's a good question. There's that scene where Frodo is hiding from the black riders, and it almost seems to be sniffing him out. Would Bear Spray have had any effect on the Black Riders or other Middle Earth creatures? You guys are both looking at me. You're the Bear Spray guy.

Okay. And the Simerilian guy. Yeah, I mean, they're not a big part of the Simerlilion, but they are part of it. And, like, they're, I mean, they're dead. These are, like, essentially ghosts that we're talking about. I don't think bear spray would work on him. Right. But he does smell the hobbits under the tree.

He does. But I think it was more he could feel the power of the ring, not so much smell the hobbits. What do you think wraith spray would be? I don't know. It would be like when they stab him finally, you know, when like. Oh, so just like a sword? There's like some kind of blade or something that like a numinorian blade or I can't remember what it is. But there are things that like can repel the ring race.

So like essence of numinor? Yeah. I don't know. But as far as other creatures in Middle Earth, yeah. Like, it would probably work on Bjorn. He's pretty much a bear. Yeah. It would probably work on some of those spiders.

Probably not Shelove, but some of the other ones. We'll just tank it, yeah. And actually, I'm going to keep Lord of the Rings theme here and go for one more patron question from Allison. And it says, I'm almost through with the Simerillian, and I know that there are lots of characters. but if you had to choose, who do you think is the unluckiest character

in Tolkien's universe? She says, it's got to be Turin, Tumber, right? Without a doubt. I don't know what happened to him. Oh, man, you guys got to read the children of Heron. So, like, the Silmarillion, just a quick, like, thing, Similarylian's, like, this broad history

of, like, the first and second age and then a little bit of the third age, and it tells all these kind of, like, little vignettes throughout it. Before you get really into it, Can we give our answers too? Yeah, yeah, go for it. All right.

I wanted to say Smeagel's friend. What was his name? Deagle. Deagle. Yeah. Because Deagle, it's like his birthday. Yeah. And he finds the ring of power.

And then he's just super excited and has like the most powerful thing in the universe. And then his best friend strangles him to death. Uh-huh. That is pretty unlucky. That is pretty unlucky. I wouldn't like that. Yeah. So anyways, there's all these bignettes.

Yeah. And one of them is about. this guy, Huron and his kids, and Heron gets captured by Morgoth. And Morgoth is like the big bad in all of Tolkien. And he pretty much says, like, I'm going to screw up your entire family's life. And he does. And one of his kids is Turin. And Turin pretty much ends up marrying his sister without knowing it because a dragon

tricks her. And then like, when they find out, she kills herself. and then he ends up like killing a guy that had tried to like warn him pretty much. And then it's just this really, and then he crosses paths with his dad without realizing it. It's a really crazy dark tale. And it's like everything wrong that could happen to a person happens to this guy. So yeah, he would definitely be my pick to run him. I'm going with Sauron.

He's, how is he supposed to know that the good guys were just going to have like a huge go ghost army that couldn't lose. The whole ghost army is pretty unfair. And I know that's, I don't think that even happens to the book. That's not canon at all. That's just a Peter Jackson thing. Come on, Pete.

I think, too, that the Saraman was pretty unlucky. Because it's like, he, what? Go ahead. Bad pig, but go ahead. Well, hear me out. All right, I'm hearing you out. So he's got like this huge army, and he's kind of like competing for like overall power.

He's a really powerful wizard. Right? Yeah. And then... He's a Maier. He has this, like, huge army. He's doing really well. And then these...

Pippin tricks the ants into seeing that he destroyed the forest. And if Pippen never did that, the ants wanted taking out Eismard. Yeah. And, like, the one time you sent his army away, he's just vulnerable, you know? Yeah, but even, like, in the movies, Gandalf's, like, Sauraman should have thought of that. He was right by Fingor. Forest.

Yeah, they would have found out. Yeah. So he was just like overlooked a really dumb weakness. If you know Pippin is on the other side of the war effort, you got to be extra careful because you know he's got tricks. I thought you were going to pick some ork that gets shot in the butt or something really done like that. The one that gets hit in the boss.

Yeah, exactly. Saraman's pretty unlucky because like he looks into one of the Palantir. He's actually seeing what is real, but like, unbeknownst to him, it's, he's not. getting the whole story. So, yeah, that's a little one lucky. He shouldn't look into the ball. No. Whatever the Palantiers.

We could go about it. On the. Casa Frazier. Cage Mac Vixter. Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny. Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny? Definitely Bugs Bunny. I feel like Bugs Bunny could get Donald Duck to, like, beat himself up.

Donald Duck's the Disney Duck, right? Louie. What's the Black Duck? Daffy Duck is Looney Tunes. And then I pick Daffy Duck probably. Who's Donald Duck? Donald Duck's the Disney Duck Like with the little sailor outfit

Donald Goofy and Mickey I'm definitely picking Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny would like trick him into beating himself up Like how he tricks the hunters Into like shooting themselves Yeah yeah it's a good trick Yeah duck season

Rabbit season Yeah Elmer That's Daffy duck Yeah Maybe he meant Daffy duck Yeah I would pick Daffy in a fight though

Daffy's my favorite of any of those characters Daffy loses every fight against us But he picks himself right back up and he keeps going. Like, he's like rocky. He's going to win. Yeah. Thanks everyone for the questions.

Thanks guys for doing the news episode. Oh, yeah. And I wanted to say an idea. I think I'm going to do like a monthly listener stories thing and set up an email for that. So I'll put that on our Instagram and then, like, instead of only having listener questions, we can do like one episode where we have listener stories. So if you guys have any great stories out there,

about animals or just about your life, send them to this email that I'll put on our Instagram. Yeah, and we could even every once in a while just like, during, after listener questions, we could just put in like one story too. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But this isn't us encouraging you to go out and get into sticky situation, you know. Don't like, don't roll yourself in honey and go into bear countries.

Honestly, like some of the ones I've liked the best. We recently got an email from a listener who said that they work in British Columbia, that they are an archaeologist and that they like had some really scary bear encounters where bear spray saved their life and they like sent us a really nice message saying that like thank you so much for spreading awareness about bear spray because without bear spray I wouldn't even be writing this email we love getting that kind of feedback yeah from people because it really does make us feel like we're not just joking around we're actually teaching some important lessons And especially for me, it especially hits home when it's someone who like has a lot of experience outdoors as well because those people have a lot to contribute to the conversation.

So thanks so much for sending us those. And yeah, I agree, Jeff. I think we should try and pepper some of those in. Every once in a while, you got a little something up there. Dude, eat the rich was a great idea. That's a good idea. Well, thanks, guys. We really appreciate it.

Again, as always, if you're interested in more content, check us out on Patreon. or if you're an Apple podcast listener, you can also subscribe to the Gris Club on Apple. You'll get those bonus episodes. It's going to cost you about, it's going to cost you less than seeing one extra movie a month. Unless you have movie pass. Unless you have movie pass.

If you're the one person that somehow still has movie pass, Jeff's right. Is that a thing still? Then it'll cost you the exact same amount. They've tried to bring it back a few times. But this is like what you get, either on Patreon or Apple subscription, It's like upwards of 40 hours of bonus content.

And we add to it every other week. Every other week we add to it. We put really like hard spent hours of research. They're maybe a little more loose and fun in ways. But like they're primarily led more by me and Mike. You don't have to listen to my dumb ass anymore. I can unbiasedly say too that we are the best podcast that's ever existed. Yeah.

So I think it's well worth. $10 a month just for like you're getting you're getting history we're making history yeah jump on the bandwagon now because we might not have room for you in a year yeah exactly all right yep I agree with everything they just got said all right thanks guys and we will see you soon love you guys bye you