Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Zanesville Massacre

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Wes recounts the tragic events that took place on October 18, 2011 in Zanesville, Ohio wherein a troubled man with a rapidly expanding collection of exotic animals takes matters into his own hands in ...a moment of desperation. Trigger Warning for anyone dealing with suicidal thoughts. Reach out to someone if you are struggling, you are loved. ~~ 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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Get ready to ride. The Rocky Mountain Jamboree returns to Richfield, Utah, September 14th through the 18th, 2026. Join hundreds of OHV enthusiasts for five days of guided rides through Utah's legendary Paiute, Gooseberry, and Great Western Trail Systems. Enjoy daily breakfast. Prize raffles, a light parade, and a closing dinner with fellow riders. Experience Utah's trail country at the Rocky Mountain Jamboree.
Starting point is 00:00:26 Register today at Richfield, Utah.com. Hey everyone, Mike here for just a quick intro before I hand things over to Wes for another message. Before we got started, we wanted to issue a quick trigger warning for this episode since the topic of suicide is briefly brought up. If that's something that you struggle with, feel free to skip this episode. And please, please, please reach out to someone for help and know that you are loved by us and by many others. All right, now to Wes. Hey, Toothies, it's Wes. If you love Tooth and Claw and our main feed episodes aren't quite enough for you to get your fix,
Starting point is 00:00:58 then boy do I have some good news for you. Right now you can immediately get access to over 70 episodes on our subscription channels and you'll get brand new subscription episodes every other week. Plus a tooth and cloth subscription makes a great holiday gift and we promise it really will be the gift that keeps on giving. Right now you'll be able to listen to episodes like a recent one Jeff did where he talks about a man that was attacked by a Jaguar in the middle of a hurricane or a classic subscription episode from Mike where he goes over some frankly astounding weiner dog attack stories
Starting point is 00:01:28 and some crazy facts, or an upcoming episode from me where I'm going to go over people that were attacked by animals while trying to take selfies. Our subscription episodes really are where we feel like we're speaking right toward community and we have a ton of fun with them. So sign up today by going to patreon.com backslash tooth and claw podcast or just Google tooth and claw podcast and Patreon. Our Patreon subscribers get the added benefit of being able to send us direct messages,
Starting point is 00:01:54 plus they have a platform for commenting on episodes. So it's really turned into a fun community on there. Or if you're an Apple podcast listener and you prefer to have your subscriber episodes right in your Apple feed, if you're into that extra convenience, subscribe to our Apple Grizz Club, and you'll get access to all those subscription episodes plus our upcoming ones. Both of those subscription services are priced at $10 a month, which is kind of like the cost of just an extra sandwich every month. You can hardly even get a sandwich for $10 anymore.
Starting point is 00:02:21 So if you're into saving money, you can also get an annual subscription for $100. you'll save $20 on 12 months of subscription episodes. Plus an annual membership makes a great gift for the fellow toothy in your life. So sign up today. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of your favorite podcast. We hope tooth and claw. It better be. It better be in your top 10 at least.
Starting point is 00:03:01 There's some ragers out there. What will we do if it's not their top 10? stuff them in a whale's blowhole. Maybe we could just add mom to the podcast. Yeah, people do love the mom episodes. I wish there was a Yelp but for individuals, and we could just leave that individual a bad review. I guess it's kind of like Facebook, right?
Starting point is 00:03:24 Yeah, I think we have plenty of formats to do that these days. Yeah, true. If you just want to be a huge dick, you know? Yeah. Speaking of huge dicks. I figured something out. Whoa. I was just giving you guys the segue that you've always waited for.
Starting point is 00:03:44 I thought you wanted to talk about you pulling your pants down at the Lord of the Rings Marathon. You cheated a little, Wes. You cheated. I didn't cheat. I didn't flunking. I wasn't jelking. This is not how I wanted to start this episode. You started.
Starting point is 00:04:00 You're the one. You throw us a bone every once in a while. Is that that supposed to mean? I have a funny story that happened last week, a quick one. Did you want to go first, though, Jeff? Did you have something? Yeah, I was just going to say we went and did Lord of the Rings. Yeah, we did.
Starting point is 00:04:19 Our Marathon. Let's talk about it because we already kind of brought it up, so we might as well talk about Lord of the Rings. Any new takeaways? My big takeaway was I just, I don't really understand how the Ring would help humans, and I don't know, like, what Boramir would have. have done had he got it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:38 Because it's not like Gallum becomes more powerful with it. He just becomes like a frog. But that's why Gallum in a weird way was like the best person to have it because he just wanted to like covet it and he didn't really desire for much more than just like having the ring. But people in Gondor and like men in general, the danger is that they'll like use it to bend others to their will like Soron did. But ultimately like the main thing is just that whoever ends up with the ring,
Starting point is 00:05:05 if they aren't able to, like, control it, then Soron will get it back. That's the main danger of anyone else having it is that ultimately it makes its way back to Soron then. And he destroys Middle Earth with it. So I don't think I really got too much new out of it this time around. I unfortunately, I downloaded some new copies of it, and they were like a little smooth motiony for me. And my main takeaway was how much I hate motion smoothing in any kind of format. Oh, you could save that for. a category.
Starting point is 00:05:37 Oh, you're right. That's a good save. Yeah. Just come back to it. I'll talk about that later. Let's put a pin in that. Yep. Pinned.
Starting point is 00:05:43 We had a great time, though. We ate a lot of candy. We just gorged ourselves, watched our favorite movies in the cabin. It's honestly, this isn't an overstatement. It's probably that one of the days I look forward to most throughout the year, if not the day I look forward to the most, is our Lord of the Rings marathon. Yeah, I'm there with you. It was great.
Starting point is 00:06:04 You guys might come up this weekend of Montana. and we might just... We're going to come... The Montana Grizzlies are in the semifinals. Yeah, which is sweet. So, can I find that from my story? Tiny sports... Yeah, tell you.
Starting point is 00:06:18 I was... I'm just kidding. I just wanted to say how funny the new report. Like, a lot of our fans don't get all the sports news because, like, a lot of our listeners, I mean, aren't completely keyed in. But it came out this week that the Buffalo Bills head coach used the September 11th terrorist attack as like an example of like working together
Starting point is 00:06:43 as a team like from like the terrorist perspective and it's just like been really funny on Twitter. It's a pretty hot take. So yeah maybe if it got them pumped up that's all that matters. We we can be like them and put together a great episode today. I was going to talk about so you know, in our subscriber episode, I referenced that Jesse had like a pretty rough week. She had a crazy allergy that just came out of nowhere and had honestly one of the most insane rashes I've ever seen. And Jesse's a bit of a hypochondriac. So she would like show me the rash and she would be like, do you think this is bad? And in my head I was like, holy shit. But I'd have to be like, no, no, it's not that bad. But like truly a terrible rash.
Starting point is 00:07:34 you know and one night it broke out really bad and the problem is like her anxiety would then flare up and like that would amplify the rash because like that gets your blood rushing and everything so she was kind of freaking out and the rash was getting worse and worse and so I went and laid down with her and was like holding your hand and I had just been on my phone on my Discover page on Instagram and it was serving me up a lot of West Borland content for some reason Mike you'll appreciate this I do And so, and for those of you don't know, West Borland was the guitarist for Limp Biscuit. And, you know, whatever you think of Limp Biscuit, West Borland was pretty cool. Like, always wore crazy costumes, had an incredible stage presence.
Starting point is 00:08:18 My favorite Wes. And so I was laying there with Jesse and I was like, hey, what do you know about West Borland? And she was like, I've never heard of him. And so I started showing her just video after video on YouTube of West Borland. And then we got into like watching Limp Biscuit. get videos together and then we watched corn videos together and then like I gave her a whole background on like Woodstock 99 and new metal and how like weird of a time that was for music and we talked about it for like an hour and a half and it made her rash go way down because she like was able to
Starting point is 00:08:51 relax and so that's just the restorative power of of new metal in west Borland so it's a magical night yeah I hope I get a rash when I'm up this weekend we can do that together I feel like Wesley Snipes is my favorite, Wes, but... Okay. Yeah. And your second. Okay. I'm fine with that.
Starting point is 00:09:12 Yeah. What was the movie? I was just watching Blade 2, and there's, like, a 10-minute segment where all he says is nice. Like, he just goes, nice. And then, like, there's a new scene, and they're talking to him. He's like, nice. He says it, like, four times in a row. It's a great movie.
Starting point is 00:09:30 All right. Well, we got a real doozy today, fellas. You peed a really good W the other day. Oh, thanks. Just thinking of Wes is still, you know. Yeah, I got pretty good control. And you put WL in the tree. That was crazy.
Starting point is 00:09:44 That was a long time ago. I peed a WL just as a joke for that, but that wasn't me. The P was, but not the tree. It's funny with the tree, there's just a WL in the tree, and Wes was like, that wasn't me. And we're like, come on, dude. And then his story checked out. It was his friend did it for him. But West didn't want it.
Starting point is 00:10:05 Because it really bugged me that he was carving in an archery. Don't carve your initials and outdoors, you know? No. It's not cool. All right, sorry, Wes. You get into it. You may notice I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I'm wearing this shirt because our story's a little depressing today.
Starting point is 00:10:23 So I wanted to wear something fun that made me feel a little bit better. That's why everyone wears fun stuff to funerals and stuff. I would wear this to a funeral. It's black. This is a story that I think is like a really interesting one. Like honestly, it's one that I've been wanting to do since we started the podcast, but one that I've kind of been putting off just because it is pretty dark. There's some themes that are like are pretty hard.
Starting point is 00:10:51 And it's just like really crazy. And it's one that a lot of people are going to remember as we start telling it. But our listeners aren't going to like that less. What do you mean? They're not going to like a. A dark story? Intense story. You guys just want like a bedtime story instead?
Starting point is 00:11:07 I can just read you like something really nice and soothing. Should we just read The Hobbit? It gets a little scary when the dwarves come and eat all his food. That's horrible. That's true. Fair enough. Okay. Well, we're going to get into it.
Starting point is 00:11:23 So first of all, the sources for this are, we're really good. There's a ton of sources. Again, the story is like one that's been. reported on a lot. It was in the national media. It was in global media. But the main things that I used were this really great article that I found in GQ that was written by Chris Heath, a documentary called Shoot to Kill, the MSNBC produced that I found on YouTube. And then another podcast actually called Life on the Arc. And that podcast was really helpful. They did a really great job of just kind of summarizing this whole story. That entire podcast is devoted to this one story.
Starting point is 00:11:59 Yeah, but it is good. I recommend to check it out. So I will say that there are a lot of sources out there. I think I only scratch the surface when it comes to sources. What? Like Tyrannosaurus? No. There's a ton of those.
Starting point is 00:12:16 Allisource. I do feel like I got the story. Like with the sources that I used. I don't think I missed too much. You guys just want to keep naming dinosaurs? I'm out. I ran out. I don't know anymore.
Starting point is 00:12:29 Sorry. Okay. So here we go. In the late afternoon of October 18th, 2011, something was wrong with Sam Copechak's new horse, Red. The half-arabian pinto was acting nervously. It was anxiously running around this Zanesfield, Ohio field, where he kept it. So Sam went out to investigate.
Starting point is 00:12:50 So he's in Ohio, rural Ohio, kind of like northern Appalachia. As he approached this panicked horse, he looks over to his neighbor Terry Thompson's 73-acre property. and he sees that Terry's horses are also panicking. And in the middle of all the horses is a large, dark shape that he couldn't quite make out. So Sam's like a little bit older. He starts squinting, his eyes aren't working quite as well as they used to, and he's able to finally identify this shape as a large black bear.
Starting point is 00:13:18 And it's the source of all this commotion with his horses and with Terry's horses. So calmly and kind of shaking his head, he starts leading his horse back toward the safety of the barn. He'd only gone a few steps when the hair on the back of his neck stands up, and he has the distinct impression that he's being watched. He slowly turns his head, and his eyes meet the glowing yellow eyes of a large male African lion. It's laying down under a tree, a couple dozen yards in front of salmon red, and the only thing separating them was a four-foot fence. That's not even a jump for a lion.
Starting point is 00:13:53 That's super easy. Long or tall fence? Tall, like four-foot tall. So that's like a hop for a lion. Long would be a very effective fence. So the question begs, how did this lion end up in Sam's backyard in Appalachian, Ohio? Well, to get to that answer, we're going to have to go back to the Vietnam War. What?
Starting point is 00:14:17 Wow. Yeah. Unexpected. All right. So Terry Thompson never wanted to go to Vietnam. He'd grown up just outside of Zanesville. He lived a really idyllic kind of life that was typical for boys. that grew up in the 60s.
Starting point is 00:14:29 He was really into fast cars, boys'outs, sports, girls, and other really, like, quintessential 60s, small towns kind of things, you know, like a very Norman Rockwell kind of upbringing for Terry Thompson. But the one thing that made him the happiest was planes. In fact, he managed to get his pilot license before he even turned 16. And when he was still a teenager, his friend said that he would, like, buzz their houses with his plane. and like their parents would get pissed at him because he was like
Starting point is 00:15:00 buzz in his plane by their houses. That's crazy. But Vietnam changed all of that. You think they're like... He's ripped away from this buzz off. That's, I should have aborted that when I felt it was going to be that bad. That's my fault. I'm glad you interrupted me for that.
Starting point is 00:15:17 I think they had their coffee and they were like about to drink and they're like, whoa! Like in Top Gun. Yeah. And like shaking their coffee. pissed down the window at him. Oh, if you didn't just save our lives. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:34 All right, so Vietnam changed this for Terry. He's ripped away from this small town Eden, and he's drafted as a door gunner on a Huey helicopter, which means that he often had to clear landing zones in order to pick up soldiers. So they would come in a lot of people. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes he was also, like, a really hard thing about his job is he was forced to leave these really desperate soldiers.
Starting point is 00:15:56 that they didn't have room for. So people would be like trying to get on his helicopter. And he said sometimes he had to pry their fingers off of the helicopter in order to be able to take off. Yeah, that's crazy. I think for like jobs in Vietnam, he had a really hard one and a really violent one. And it really changed him. Like when he got back to Zanesville, people said that his cheery demeanor had been lessened.
Starting point is 00:16:21 He was much more subdued and he became much more of a loner. He's only buzzed in their house. like once every couple months. He was crying when he was buzzing their house. No, but he still, like, he came back and he tried to reinsert himself in normal life. He started collecting cars and other things that went fast. He was always, like, really into going fast, riding horses, riding speedboats, like going fast in cars, planes.
Starting point is 00:16:48 And he met Marion Sharp, who was a local girl who was also really famous for horse riding. Like, she was like a famous barrel racer. She was a really good horse rider, and the two of them just hit it off. Mike, you looked like you had a thought there. I just, I feel like maybe this is just a byproduct of me not having lived in those places, but I feel like that's not something you can be famous for anymore. You think that's like a bygone era that you can be a famous? We haven't heard of her?
Starting point is 00:17:14 It depends on how small. Like, I think she was locally famous. Okay. It's not like, sure. She would go to, like, New York and people would be like, oh, is that Marion? You know? It just, it made me think of Patrick's, Swayze and Roadhouse where he was like a world famous bouncer.
Starting point is 00:17:29 It's like, I don't think that's really something that happens. But maybe it was a thing back then. Now people just get famous for doing absolutely nothing. True. Anyway, these two hit it off. Going into Bairdon or something. Yeah, podcasting. These two hit it off.
Starting point is 00:17:47 Terry's really into horses and they get married not long after. Marion becomes a school teacher in Zanesville and Terry opens up a shop where he sells bicycles, Harley Davidson's, and guns. So people would joke that it was like probably the only place in the world where you could go buy a Harley and an automatic weapon at the same time. It's like Walmart before Walmart. Yes. I don't know if you ever get it all in one place.
Starting point is 00:18:14 Walmart and Montana, you can practically buy a machine gun. You can buy an AR-15. He still flew as much as he possibly could. He would buy planes when he had the money. He flew planes for local doctors and millionaires. He would like fix planes up. His exploits and planes are actually really famous in the area in the Zanesville area. People tell stories of him like flying a plane under a bridge that like spans the river.
Starting point is 00:18:39 And then also him landing a plane on the interstate. So like, people like knew all these kind of stories. He was kind of a local legend because of him flying around. Anyway, everyone in his life. Did he fly a plane to Africa? and put a lion in it. That's a good question. Investigative, yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:59 You're not far off. Employing the Socratic method here. Everyone in his life, and Terry had a lot of friends, agreed on one thing that he was a thrill seeker and he was only happy when he was going fast or pushing limits. Nice. Well, he's going to push another limit in 1997 when he and Marion go to the Mount Hope livestock auction in Ohio.
Starting point is 00:19:20 And they go to this auction to look at horses and other livestock, and they'd already start to collect quite the herd of horses, but while they're there, something else catches their eye. It's a lion cub in a cage. And this cub is for sale, and Terry decides to buy it as a gift for Marion, and they named the cub Simba. And apparently it was pretty malnourished,
Starting point is 00:19:41 and so the two of them spent time nursing it back to health, and it became, like, kind of an obsession for them. They just, like, really loved having this lion cub and being able to nurse it back to health, And for Terry, someone who always wanted to be on the edge and be able to do things that other guys couldn't do, it was like a new level. He had leveled up with this line cup. It's a bad thing to do, but that would be very cool to raise a lion cup. Totally.
Starting point is 00:20:10 Yeah, it'd be an experience. And honestly, Ohio in the late 90s was a place to do it. There are no kind of laws prohibiting any kind of exotic animals in Ohio at this time. That's crazy. And you can literally go to these auctions and buy anything. They have bears, they have lions, they have tigers, they have all this stuff that you can just buy, and they're pretty cheap too.
Starting point is 00:20:31 You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident,
Starting point is 00:20:51 restoration is guaranteed or your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. Terry and Marion, they start to become locally famous for all their animals. He starts buying exotic animals wherever they could find them. They pick up tigers, they get lions, bears, leopards, mountain lions, wolves, macaques, baboons, and camels. And some of these animals are bought at auction, some are acquired through trades. Like there was an anecdote in one of the articles I read that he traded a gun for a leopard, which is pretty badass again, but I don't want to support any of this because we're going
Starting point is 00:21:31 to talk about how terrible it actually is. Definitely, I would say the gun. But some of these animals he also bought. Leopards don't kill people. What do they say with guns? Guns don't kill people. People with guns. Yeah, leopards don't kill people.
Starting point is 00:21:49 people with leopards kill people. Yeah, not true, but also true. Anyway, he buys all these animals through back channels too, like some of these auctions, sometimes people would sell stuff in the parking lot and whatnot. So even though Ohio had like barely any regulations, he still pushed the limits of what he could have as a private owner. So they're like becoming famous in their area.
Starting point is 00:22:15 It wasn't uncommon to see Terry driving around town with like a bear cub, or a lion in the passenger seat of its car. They would invite people up to their property to play with their animals and get close looks at them. Marion took a baby bear to a friend's party and it took a big old shit on like a bright white rug, I guess. And then Terry would brag about sleeping in the bed with this massive white Siberian tiger.
Starting point is 00:22:40 And you'll actually want to remember that tiger for later. That tiger is going to come back into our story. But having so many animals was really expensive for them. So Terry and Marion didn't really have the money to support this zoo that was growing like every day. And the thing about owning wild animals like this or exotic animals is that cubs are really expensive, but adults don't really have any value because there's so many people that buy cubs that then the adults grow up and they like can't handle them and they're just trying to unload them. And so people like Terry and Marion wanted any animals they could get. And so they had a lot of adults unloaded onto them too. So their collections growing really fast.
Starting point is 00:23:21 And they just can't sustain it. So they're going out and they're collecting roadkill and they're like doing kind of like expired meat like Joe Exotic did in Tiger King. They're doing whatever they can to feed these animals. But they can really hardly keep up with it and care for these animals that's turned into a full-time job for them. They had to hire people to help them. And when people would ask them like, why are you still taking on more animals? Terry would just say, because I can. So really, like, he's hoarding these animals at this point.
Starting point is 00:23:50 He is a hoarder. And you see that reflected in the rest of his life. Like, he's collecting old cars. He's collecting guns. He's just, like, collecting them and putting them in places, and they just pile up. Like, he does have some real hoarder tendencies. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:04 But with core things, it's not like he's, like, collecting old signs. Right. So he didn't have a license to use the animals for photo shoots or commercial work in Ohio at the time, even though you could own these animals to use them to make money, you had to have a license. But he borrowed a friend's license to do that, and he tried to make some extra money with his animals doing commercials and other things.
Starting point is 00:24:27 So one of his lionesses actually appeared in a commercial with Heidi Klum. He appeared on the Rachel Ray Show as like an animal. She famous enough for you, Mike? Heidi Klum? Yeah. Oh, she transcends fame. She's a theoretical. So you don't follow barrel racing, but you follow mainstream actress.
Starting point is 00:24:49 Incredibly attractive women. Yeah, I guess you could say I follow that. He was on the Rachel Ray Show. You know how on talk shows they bring on people with animals? I do want to say, you got to be really careful when you watch those things, how much you let that impact you. Because sometimes they're kind of these people like Terry. There's people that like own animals.
Starting point is 00:25:11 that these talk shows are like, yeah, let's bring someone on that can bring on some cool animals. They're not all the same is what I'm trying to say. Like Letterman would bring on Jack Hanna and whatnot. But even Jack Hanna started as just like an animal handler, which is kind of crazy. So Rachel Ray is a food network personality, right? Is that? Am I thinking of a person? I think she's, I feel like she started.
Starting point is 00:25:35 I don't know how she started, but she had a talk show at some point. Gotcha. Okay. She makes like a super fancy steak for the tiger. That would have been a great crossover. Like look how much this tiger loves this cordon, cordon blue we just made. It's just like, yeah, of course it does.
Starting point is 00:25:57 He eats it in one bite. Newt Gingrich had his animals for like a photo shoot. His animals were kind of making the rounds for a little bit, and that's how he's earning some extra money. But the cracks started to appear in 2000. when Terry was charged with animal cruelty after some cows that he owned on his parents property died of starvation and the charges were like a really hard pill for him to swallow because he saw himself as an animal advocate so he denied the charges but he was still sentenced to house arrest
Starting point is 00:26:26 and he had to sell his parents property to pay for all the legal fees wow and because of these charges there was a lot more attention put on his operation at the thompson farm at his farm where he had all these exotic animals. So local officials started showing up at their farm much more often. And between 2005 and 2011, two different sheriffs sent officers to the Thompson farm over 30 times. And they would often bring veterinarians from nearby Columbus Zoo Safari Park, and they would check out his whole operation. And because the laws were so lax in Ohio, they often had a really hard time enforcing anything, but the veterinarians were like really horrified by what they saw at his place. They said the conditions were terrible. Some of the animals were malnourished. The cages were small and he was really
Starting point is 00:27:17 dirty. It's sad. Yeah. It's wild that the one animal he got in trouble with were cows when he's just got a complete menagerie of like the most exotic animals. It's just like you couldn't find some grass for these cows to eat, dude. Yeah. From what I gather, it's really hard to pin animal cruelty or like animal torture on these people, unless there's like an animal that dies. And so it just so happened that it was like his cows that died. But yeah, that is kind of funny. Anyway, like I mentioned he's hoarding all these things, but it was his gun collection that ended up being his undoing. So in 2008, the federal government finally felt as though they had enough evidence to conduct a raid of his property. And the ATF, local law enforcement, and professionals from the zoos went and raided the Thompson farm.
Starting point is 00:28:02 and once again they found just horrible living conditions for the animals, but the real prize they got were illegal firearms that they located. So he had some firearms that had like the serial numbers filed off and then some weapons that he wasn't legally allowed to have. So they brought charges against him, and he and Marion spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to fight these charges, but they finally realized they were going to go broken court if they continued fighting, so he just pled guilty and he was sent to federal prison.
Starting point is 00:28:32 Okay, so he spends 10 months in federal prison, and during that time, this relationship with Marion starts to fall apart. By all accounts, it was already strained before he left for prison, but while he was in prison, it hits its breaking point. And she leaves him while he's in prison. When he gets out, he spends some time in a halfway house in Columbus. He's in prison for like 10 months, goes to this halfway house for a little bit, and then rather than call any of his friends to come get him from the halfway house to go back to Zanesville, he buys a cheap bike at Walmart and bikes for 40 miles through like a rainy cold night to get home. So it just kind of speaks to like the mental space he's in at this point. Like his wife has left him.
Starting point is 00:29:16 He feels like slighted by the government that he fought to serve and protect. He feels like everyone's kind of abandoned him. And then he's got this like mounting pressure of 50 plus wild animals that he has to take care of, you know? Walmart took his business selling bikes. Yeah, they're selling bikes now. Yeah. The feds took all of his animal bartering chips with those guns.
Starting point is 00:29:41 You know he was just wanting to trade those guns for more animals. He wasn't going to do anything dangerous. He really wanted a Jaguar finally. Yeah. Yeah. That costs 40 guns around those parts. Yeah, I am curious, like, what the gun to animal selling points are. So Marion and their caretaker, like,
Starting point is 00:30:00 they hired to help with the animals. His name was John Moore. They had been doing their best to take care of the animals while Terry was gone. But when he arrived like she had left already, and there had been some large weeds growing around the enclosures, and things had kind of gotten to disarray. And so he started working to clean up the mess. And he reached out to a few friends, and they were all really shaken by how broken and distraught he seemed. He had lost 40 pounds. He seemed to just be a ghost of his former self. He had no money, his only asset at the point was really like 60 horses that they owned because again like all of his animals are full grown at this point they're not really worth money like people don't want to buy full grown tigers and
Starting point is 00:30:40 grizzly bears and stuff yeah well it sucks for him too like i lost 40 pounds and you guys are still acting like that's bad and i'm in a bad shape yeah yeah because he actually was like kind of a bigger guy yeah he can't wait like gone to them yeah on top of all that marian had moved a lot of the animals, like, had moved their cages around. So he didn't know, like, which animals were which anymore, because when he got there, they were all in different enclosures. So he felt like he didn't even know his own animals anymore. And that was kind of the final straw. So when a friend was visiting him in early October, he said that Terry threw up his hands and said, she can just have it all. I'm going to die. And his friend asked him if he had cancer or something,
Starting point is 00:31:26 and he said, no, but you'll know when I go. So on the Afternoon of October 18th, Terry Thompson walks out to where he kept his 18 tigers, 17 lions, nine bears, three mountain lions, three leopards, two wolves, three macaques, and one baboon, and he was holding bolt cutters in his hands. One by one, he cut the locks from each of the enclosures, cut holes in the chain link fences, and open the doors. then he spread some raw chicken around his body, pulled a 357 magnum revolver from his pocket,
Starting point is 00:32:04 and blew his own head off. Oh, geez. So we're going to go back to where we started with Sam and Red. What they didn't know is that the bear and lion they were seeing were just the tip of the iceberg. But the lion was still staring at them, and Sam and Red got into a barn, locked the door, and Sam called his 85-year-old mother that he lived with.
Starting point is 00:32:23 He told her that a bear and lion from Terry's farm had gotten loose and that she should stay inside and call the police, which she did. Like, everyone that lived near Terry and Marion knew that they had all these animals. Yeah. Like they would hear the lions roaring. They would, you know, every once in a while one of them would get out too. So that's why, like, Sam isn't panicking because this is kind of old hat for him at this point. It's great.
Starting point is 00:32:45 So she calls, yeah, she calls the police. And it's actually a funny police call because she's kind of just like, hey, there's a lion and bear out. And the police are like, huh? And she's like, yeah, at Terry's place, there's a lie. and bear out and they're like, okay, we'll send someone. You know, you can kind of tell this isn't news to them. But meanwhile, Sam's looking out the window of the barn and he starts to realize that he's in bigger trouble than he thought because a wolf, a second bear, a lioness, and a tiger all walk by the window. And he starts to realize something is seriously wrong at the Thompson
Starting point is 00:33:18 Farm. So Sheriff Deputy Jonathan Mary had just finished serving a court summons and he gets a call about the bear and lion at Terry's place. So he starts heading to the farm. So he goes to knock on Sam's door and to talk to his mom. And when he gets on the porch to knock on the door, a gray wolf runs out from behind him and down the road. And so he's like, I should probably see what's going on there. And word had gone out on the radio that potentially all of Terry's animals were out. And the sheriff, Sheriff Matt Lutz, had made a quick decision. He said, you know, there's an apartment building not far from here. There's a school. There's a busy interstate. We just can't take any risks. So he puts out the call and he says any animals off of Terry's property or near the fence are to be shot,
Starting point is 00:34:08 shot and killed. We're going to talk about that decision in a bit. Terry's not going to be happy about that. Terry doesn't care at this point. Terry's. Oh, yeah? We're happy. Yeah, we're not. Yeah. Anyway. The gun killed him. The gun did kill him. Yes. He succeeded. Oh, you didn't say that. Yeah, I just thought it was implied. But when I said blew his head off. So personnel at the local safari park, and the safari park's kind of like a satellite zoo to the Columbus Zoo, which is one of the bigger zoos in the country.
Starting point is 00:34:40 They had also been told that Terry's animals had been released. And they were very familiar with Terry Thompson. Like, they had heard all about him. They knew that he had all these animals. They knew, like, all too well that sometimes they would get out. and they were very aware that he wasn't keeping like peacocks and ball pythons. Like he's got a zoo full of some of the most dangerous predators on the planet. So they're loading tranquilizers, they're getting ready to go, and they're pretty nervous.
Starting point is 00:35:06 I heard another call between them, and someone calls one of them and they're like, hey, Terry's animals are out. And they're like, how many? And they're like, all of them? And they're like, all of them? Oh, man. You know, and they're kind of panicking. They realize, like, what they have on their hands.
Starting point is 00:35:20 and they're kind of wondering if sedating is even going to be an option for them. But hopefully they're thinking a lot of these animals have stayed in their enclosures and they can simply relock the enclosures and sedate the animals inside the enclosure if they need to. One of those animals probably still has those bolt cutters though. They're not just going to leave those behind. That's like a get out of jail free card. Slowly snuck it under its bed. I see.
Starting point is 00:35:45 So if they put them cage him, he'll be able to get out again. Right. All right. So meanwhile, John Mary. Probably the chimpanzee. He doesn't have a chimpanzee, but he has got him a cox and a baboon. Yeah. So John Mary is the guy who went chasing after this wolf, the deputy, and he ends up dropping
Starting point is 00:36:03 this wolf with a single shot because it was approaching a neighbor's house and he's acting on the sheriff's orders. He raises his high-powered rifle, kills the wolf. He goes to inspect the animal. And while he's doing that, he gets word that some of his colleagues had cornered a lion back at the farm. So he gets back into the vehicle and he speeds off to where they are. When he gets there, one of the officers is pacing back and forth erratically and Mary goes to grab his rifle and it kind of catches on his computer and he decides to just leave it and go
Starting point is 00:36:33 talk to this officer because the officer's like really worked up. But just as he leaves his car, he turns and a black bear's charging at him. And he just has like a split second to draw his sidearm, which is a Glock. He fires a single shot. hits it dead in the brain and drops it seven feet from him. So he had one shot before this bear was going to get him. All right, so I want to read an excerpt from the GQ article because they really say it much better than I could have. And this just kind of like speaks to the chaos of once they decided
Starting point is 00:37:07 they're going to shoot these animals like what happened afterwards. This is verbatim from the article. After that, Mary went back for his rifle. An African lionist crawled under the livestock fence and ran south down the road, then headed towards someone's home. So he shot her before she could go any further. Then he turned back, intending to deal with a black bear and a tiger along the roadway, but he was distracted by a cougar heading south.
Starting point is 00:37:30 So he followed the cougar into another driveway where he met a male African lion. Yeah. He followed the cougar into another driveway where he met a male African lion coming the other way. He shot the lion while some other deputies shot the cougar. Soon he was instructed to patrol the border between the Thompson's, property in Interstate 70, and over the evening he shot another wolf, two more lions, a tiger, and later on, after its hiding place was revealed by a fireman's thermal imaging camera, a grizzly bear. That's what it was like. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Sergeant Steve Blake is trying
Starting point is 00:38:07 to figure out just where the hell Terry Thompson was. So he's driving around the property, he's doing his best to avoid the large predators walking near the house, and he finds John Moore. So if you remember, Remember, John Moore is the caretaker that they had hired to help them take care of the animals. So Moore says that he had talked to Terry the day before and that he knew Terry was around, so the two start looking for him. And they go into the house, which is incredibly dirty. There's monkeys everywhere. There's dogs.
Starting point is 00:38:35 They're all just like running around and shitting wherever they want. And they find pants that have like twine on them and stuff and it's just dirty. It looks like a hoarder's house. They get back into the car and they head back up the property. toward the enclosures and that's when Sheriff or Sergeant Blake thinks he sees something by the cages And they get closer and they make out the body of who they think it's Terry Thompson laying on the ground But they're not able to get any closer to the body because a large white Siberian tiger is standing over the corpse and it's chewing on the head or what was left of the head Oh man so now he's dead for sure
Starting point is 00:39:13 Yeah, I would I would say so I think he was dead for sure before but now Definitely. So Blake, Sergeant Blake and John Moore, the caretaker, they retreat and they meet with this growing team of law enforcement on the property and Moore starts doing some counting the caretaker and he's trying to come up with the total number of animals that are probably loose and his girlfriend helps him a bit and they come up with the number of 56 animals So now whenever an animal's killed they drag it to a location where they're laid out by species and that way they can count and try and figure out how many or something still loose somewhere on the property or in the town. So the officers still couldn't say for sure that this was Terry's body and it's kind of like gnawing at them that there's this body laying up there. So Sergeant Blake forms this kind of strike team with some officers that had arrived from the local SWAT team. So these guys are like they're shooters. These are dudes that one of them's like a sniper. All of them are very trained when it comes to operating firearms. So he drives and
Starting point is 00:40:17 they have these four guys in the pickup of a truck. And they start heading toward the enclosures. And they're armed with sniper rifles, automatic 9mm and AR-15s. So they're like a little bit better prepared for, you know, these predators that they might run into. And as they work their way up toward the cages, two tigers charge out of the barn and try and like pounce on them. And they shoot them and kill them. Yeah. And that's what they say happened.
Starting point is 00:40:45 So they have in trouble. Honestly, it is kind of hard to say what happened. But they end up getting close enough to the cages to verify that it actually is Terry, and they also are able to see the handgun. So now they're thinking, okay, we might actually be working here with the potential suicide. But then they get called away to handle some chaos that's going down on the hill. There's like a lot of other animals showing up and they need extra support. So they leave the cages and they go down the hill.
Starting point is 00:41:13 And to be honest, like there's a ton of stories. from these guys about all the animals they kill. And I'm not going to share them all because you get the idea. Like they spend the night massacring these animals. And when I was watching the documentaries, a lot of the guys seemed like very military and super hardcore cops and really ready to shoot things and very excited when they're talking about their guns
Starting point is 00:41:40 that they use to shoot all these animals. So at the start of these documentaries, I like wasn't into these dudes. You guys kind of know my feelings about law enforcement to begin with. So it was kind of like immediately I was like, I don't like this. I don't like these guys. But it's like a dream come true for them. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Starting point is 00:41:58 And then as these documentaries went on, some of them started talking about just like how much it affected them to shoot these animals and how traumatizing it was. And there's like a particularly emotional scene. And I'm going to try not to get emotional talking about it because it did make me cry when I was watching the documentary. about this sniper who's like this hardened sniper and he's like so again he comes off like so kind of macho and everything and he chokes up when he talks about having to shoot a grizzly bear and he just like starts crying in this interview and it was it was really like affecting and hard to watch because you can see that even 10 years later when they made this documentary or however many years later these guys were still haunted by what they had to do that day and it actually made me
Starting point is 00:42:44 like them a lot more. Like I had a lot of respect for them because they had to do something really hard that day that no one wants to do. And they realized like these animals didn't deserve this. These animals did nothing to deserve it. And even more so like they're finally experiencing their first taste of freedom. These are animals that have been living in dingy, terrible cages and they finally get out. And then these guys are tasked with just killing them. And that's really tragic.
Starting point is 00:43:10 You know, it honestly makes me really upset to think about. They should just let them all go, I think. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they could, but I know what you're saying. Just wild buy-ins and grizzly bears in Ohio would be, I would be way more likely to go visit Ohio again. A crazy thing that you think about is, like, how many people have these? Like, when you, like, there's that statistic that there's more tigers owned in private zoos in the U.S. than there are in the wild. and I think that may have changed recently because of something we're going to talk about
Starting point is 00:43:47 but if like shit really hit the fan in the U.S. and like we had apocalyptic conditions going on like they would probably just establish themselves you know we would have like big cats populations get out though yeah but you probably have yeah I don't know you're right you're thinking uh what's that will Smith movie I am legend yeah
Starting point is 00:44:10 it honestly could be like that where there's just like free-ranging big cats. It probably would be- Well, it sucks with your story too because they can't put them in the zoo because in Ohio they just kill the animals in the zoos too. RIP, R-A-R-P-R-A-R-P-R-A-Rombe. All right, so anyway,
Starting point is 00:44:30 after they kill a lot more animals, the strike team heads back up to the body and they're able to approach it this time because this big white tiger is gone. They inspect his body, and they find that this tiger or some other animal had done quite a bit of work on Terry. So I'm going to read some quotes from the coroner
Starting point is 00:44:47 that were in this article from GQ. It says, at death, Terry William Thompson was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 174 pounds. He'd been wearing a black t-shirt, blue jeans, and white briefs. And this is kind of a side note. His pants were pulled down to his ankle
Starting point is 00:45:04 and like unbuttoned and unzipped and they think that he may have unclothed himself to like make it easier for the animals to eat him. Because a lot of his friends think that he wanted to be eaten by his animals after he was killed. Well, I mean, he surrounded himself with chicken. Exactly. And that was to bring him in. So, like, it's very likely that's what he was doing.
Starting point is 00:45:23 His gallbladder had been removed earlier in life. He was suffering from severe atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The only notable substance in his blood was Benadryl. There was gray powder residue on his left hand that appeared to be from a gun being fired. The wounds mentioned in the autopsy report, aside from the gun shop, wound began with a two and a half or two and one fourth inch vertical laceration on the lower right lower forehead and along the spine of the nose 21 other injuries or clusters of injuries were detailed just on the head and neck the side of the most widespread damage others were noted on his torso and
Starting point is 00:45:59 legs and then there was what the coroner described like this a five and three force by four inch gaping laceration involving the pubic region and bilateral medial thighs with the absence of genitalia, exposure of the pubic bones, and adjacent soft tissue. So just to kind of like lay that out for you, by the time they got to his body, his junk had been completely eaten. There was nothing there but like a raw, fleshy void. They'd eaten everything out from his thighs and his nuts and his balls and his penis. Looks like meat's back on the menu. I did a really poor job explaining that too. You just came up with five different ways to say balls. That's all I took away from that.
Starting point is 00:46:43 That's horrifying, though. Yeah. Absolutely horrifying. There was on the documentary, they talked to, like, one of the officers, and they were like, you know, what was eaten? And he's like, well, I'm just going to put it this way. Animals in the wild often go to the fleshy parts first. And the fleshiest part are your private parts.
Starting point is 00:47:05 It's like, okay, I see what you're getting at. So after inspecting the body on the ground, the men also noticed the bolt cutters. and the pieces start falling into place. They noticed that some of the cats were still in their cages, and they go to lock the doors, and then they realized that Terry had also cut large holes in the fences. And when they realized that, one of these lionesses actually charges them,
Starting point is 00:47:27 one of the ones in the cage, so they have to shoot her. At that moment, it dawns on all of them that they're, like, going to have to kill all of the animals. Because even if they were to capture some of them, they have no place to put them, because these enclosures are no good. So the call goes out that like even the animals that are still on the property have to be killed.
Starting point is 00:47:47 They're just going to kill them all. The vets especially hard, I feel like because it's like knivode like in front of houses. It's just shooting an animal in a cage. Totally. It's like it's like hiding behind some old rusty cars and they have to shoot it still. Those vets were on the way from the zoo and they actually agree with this call. They're like, you know what? Even if we were to try and sedate these animals, it'd be really dangerous.
Starting point is 00:48:09 And it would be. When you think about it, I've sedated grizzly bears. It takes some time for that sedation to take hold. And between poking the bear and waiting for it to go down, they are pissed off. Like they are not happy that you just put a needle in them. And that's a really dangerous time. And if you have 50-odd animals that you're trying to do that too, you're like creating an absolute cluster. Like it's just they are going to be super agitated.
Starting point is 00:48:39 and then while you're working on, like, if you do get one to go down, you have to go in and, like, immediately make sure it's breathing and all these other things, and that, like, puts you at risk of attack from all these other animals that are out there. So there's just really no safe way to do this. And the other thing to think about is, like, it's almost night. It's starting to get really dark. And if they don't take care of these animals,
Starting point is 00:49:01 if they don't either sedate them or kill them before it gets dark, they're going to be able to spread way out, and it's going to get a lot harder to manage this. so they had to do something before it got too dark. And that's why they just decided we're going to kill them all. And people really didn't like that. By this point, this had caught on. It was national news.
Starting point is 00:49:20 There was like play-by-plays on different news networks. And when people heard that they're killing all these animals, they were just inundated with calls, like people, death threats. We might play a couple of them actually if I can track them down for you. But they are gnarly. Like people saying that these are like the, of the earth for killing these animals. But something that really helped is Jack Hanna actually said, you know what, they made the right call.
Starting point is 00:49:45 And he was like the Columbus Zoo guy nearby. And he was like, but again, Columbus Zoo, right, Jeff? Or no, that was Cincinnati Zoo. Cincinnati Zoo. All right. So I do think it was, even though this is like a really hard call to make, I do think it was kind of the only option for them at this point. So this massacre continues. People in the surrounding area said it sounded like they were an award.
Starting point is 00:50:08 torn country. They just hear machine gun fire for hours, high-powered rifles going off. It was crazy. But in the morning, they take stock of all the dead animals, and there's a really famous picture from this incident, and you guys can look it up if you want. We might post it to the Instagram, but it's really rough. It shows all the animals just laid out on it like a kind of muddy hill, and it's crazy how many there are. They found that a few animals were still missing, most notably one of the large tigers, and the zoo vets, are still with them and the vets are like, hey, let's just try and save one of these animals. So they find this tiger, it's like bedded down in some brush.
Starting point is 00:50:45 And this woman from the zoo gets her dart rifle and she like sneaks up on this tiger in thick brush. She's like 30 feet from it or something. The sniper was like, she has much bigger Cajonis than I had because she got so close to this tiger. And she puts a dart in it. And when she does, one of the officers that was giving backup yelled out, did you get it? and it roused the tiger.
Starting point is 00:51:09 The tiger got super upset, pounces out, charges her, and they open fire and kill the tiger. Yeah, so they're not able to save that one either. But luckily, they do find behind the house, there were still some cages that didn't get opened. In those cages, there were three leopards, a macaque, and a small grizzly bear. So those are the animals that were sent,
Starting point is 00:51:33 or sorry, two macaques, three leopards, two macaques, and a grizzly bear. It'd be pretty messed up if they shot the macaques. Yeah, just in a cage. Yeah. Well, yeah, and they're still in cages, so they're good. There was one macaque that got out, but a tiger ate it. Oh, wow.
Starting point is 00:51:50 Got handled by the tiger. Yeah. Those animals that ended up, they get sent to the Columbus Zoo. At this point, Marion had shown up. You think that... And Tiger put on, like, a SWAT team member uniform and tried to pretend like he was one of the cops. He's like, I'm just helping out here. Yeah, I'm thinking his...
Starting point is 00:52:07 teeth with the macaque. All right, so by this, it's morning time, Marion's shown up. She's completely devastated. All of her babies are dead. She insists on going to the zoo with the leopards and the macaques. Apparently the macaques were like her favorite animals and she had like hand raised them. So she was at least happy that a couple of them had survived. And law enforcement goes and they talk to John Moore because he's the last person that had talked with Terry. And he brings up that Terry had actually received a letter from an anonymous sender that said Marion had been cheating on him while he was in prison.
Starting point is 00:52:43 And he had asked, like Terry had asked John Moore if he thought that she had been cheating. And Moore replied that he wasn't sure. Like he didn't know if she was cheating on him or not. And then Terry said back, well, I have a plan to find out and you'll know when it happens. So just a like a warning for people out there. If you're ever talking to someone that seems like very distraught and they say something like that to you, you got to be like, hey, what does that mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you've got to make them tell you what they're hinting at there, because that sounds very bad, you know. Mm. Murdery.
Starting point is 00:53:22 Yeah, it sounds very murdery. Yeah. Like, you're going to know when I do this. So, we're almost done, but the most incredible fact from the night is that no human was killed or injured by the animals. I do think from a biologist's perspective, like, when these are you, we're almost done, but the most incredible fact from the night is that no human, animals first got out, they were probably just really interested in exploring their new habitat, figuring out, like, what was happening. They probably weren't in like full predator mode when they get out. You know, I think they're probably like, pretty nervous and pretty just like confused and curious. Except for that one tiger that took out. Yeah, I think some of them still are. Like, they're still aggressive animals. But I do think like the thing that you have to remember is that
Starting point is 00:54:01 he had been feeding these animals on a regular schedule or somewhat regular schedule. And that would stop when they get out like they're not going to have access to food anymore and that is going to make them very desperate as time goes on and had they been able to kind of proliferate and get out further i think it would have been an absolute disaster i think multiple people would have lost their lives there would have been a lot of people hurt and it's kind of a miracle that no one was hurt and honestly like as controversial as a decision as it was i think the person that kind of can take credit for that is the sheriff that just said we got to kill him you know all right so a couple quick things to talk about like why did terry thompson do this and there's a couple theories out there some people think
Starting point is 00:54:47 he wanted revenge on the system that had wronged him that sent him to vietnam that imprisoned him he kind of just was doing this as like a middle finger to the establishment some people think he wanted to give his animals a taste of freedom as kind of this last parting gift like he was going to kill himself and he wanted to have a taste of freedom although it sounds to me like his last parting gift was actually a taste of his dick. And then the final theory is that he wanted to get revenge. That's what that sounds like to you? You're right.
Starting point is 00:55:22 You're probably right. Yeah, we can probably cut that. His last theory was that he wanted to get revenge on his wife, like that she cared deeply about these animals. She had wronged him. and like even though he kind of pretended to care about them they were really just collateral to him like he didn't actually really care and who knows like we don't know which of these it was it could have been a combination of all of them he didn't leave a note it's impossible to know but the thing that we do know is that he endangered the lives of lots of people and that he got 50 animals killed for no reason and i think when you talk about this guy i think there's a lot to be said about the fact that he was drafted to vietnam and forced to kill people. I think there's a lot of trauma associated with that.
Starting point is 00:56:07 I don't think we can diminish that in any way, like the kind of mental trauma that that causes people. But still, like, this is a very selfish, horrible thing to do. You know, there's no winners in this. So, yeah, it's pretty terrible. But there actually is a winner in this. So I'm going to go back on my statement immediately. There's a silver lining.
Starting point is 00:56:30 The little baby grizzly bear? Yeah, that little baby grizzly was a winner. Got a better enclosure now? No, the winner, well, yeah, honestly it did. But the real winner is that this Zanesville, they call this the Zanesville Massacre. It was a catalyst to get people talking about exotic animals and exotic animal laws. And it made global news, and people just, like, couldn't believe that Ohio didn't have any laws on the books. And that getting these animals was so easy.
Starting point is 00:56:59 You could just literally go to an auction down the road and buy tigers and lions. Yeah, like you're not even thinking of buying a lion and then there's a lion and now you have a lion. Yeah, exactly. So because of all that, in 2014, as a direct result of this chaos, new exotic animal laws in Ohio took effect. And they prohibited dozens of species from private ownership. And people that already had big cats in Ohio and other dangerous wildlife, they were grandfathered into their possession, but they were forced to obtain permits. and they had to submit to stringent care and safety regulations. So they were, like, much more monitored.
Starting point is 00:57:37 Up until this last year, six states had no regulation on the ownership of big cats. Those states were Nevada, Wisconsin, Alabama, North Carolina, Delaware, and Oklahoma. So those six states, like, you could just buy a big cat and have it in your backyard, and no one cares. Like, go for it. But in the end of 2022, the Big Cat Public Safety Act went into effect. It bans the private possession of big cats. So that's tigers, lions, jaguars, pumas, leopards, cheetahs, snow leopards, and clouded leopards. And it permitted exhibitors, like people that had these animals, to allow any contact with their cats.
Starting point is 00:58:24 So if you did have like a little private zoo or something, people could no longer like hold cubs. or have like a VIP experience where they're allowed to touch the cats. And they couldn't breathe them anymore either. So when this law went into effect in late 2022, people that had cats had like until July or June 2023 of this year to register their cats. If they didn't, they were going to be taken away. And only 17 owners registered their cats. So everyone else is legally going to have to surrender their big cats.
Starting point is 00:58:57 Wow. A big reason this law went into effect is Tiger King. After Tiger King, people were kind of outraged. They were like, why are we allowing this? And so this had been talked about for a while, but that's a big reason why this got actually pushed forward. All right, it's a pretty crazy story. Yeah, very sad.
Starting point is 00:59:18 I again got like pretty emotional thinking about these animals that had to spend their entire lives in small, dirty cages. is, they finally get a taste of freedom and then they get gunned down. This is not, it's not acceptable. That's not an okay thing to do to any animal. And then to have it be like some of the animals that we care the most about and that have like culturally inspired the most awe and wonder to do that to those animals too. It's just, it seems so wrong.
Starting point is 00:59:51 You know, it seems just like really terrible. I was thinking, I was thinking for the, what would Jeff and Mike do? Yeah. Like, if you're the tiger getting released, how would you, how would you like? You can go that way if you want. Okay. I didn't see that in your categories you sent. Oh, I only sent you the one that you got to focus on, but I've got some surprises for categories.
Starting point is 01:00:16 All right. Do you guys have any questions about the story before we go into those categories? So they're positive. They got every animal? They're pretty sure. Yeah. Positive. That'd be pretty sick.
Starting point is 01:00:28 there was like some tigers out there. One out there on the lamb. Yeah. They're pretty sure they got them all. This John Moore guy was pretty confident in his count. They ended up like digging a big hole on the property and burying all the bodies there. Wow. So I'm sure there's like, you know, like traditional medicine people trying to dig up that ground all the time.
Starting point is 01:00:50 Dude, you could get another bear skull to show off in classrooms and stuff. Yeah, I don't want it from there. Yeah, it'd just be full of bull-holes. Yeah. Is it also a crime to defile a bear grave? I don't know. You can't dig up humans, but... Their spirits might be like after.
Starting point is 01:01:09 Yeah, you might get haunted by a grizzly bear spirit then of these animals, you know? Yeah. There was a stat that I read that at the time, like tigers have done significantly better since this. The population of wild tigers has done really great in the last 10 years. But in 2011, these like 18 tigers or whatever the guy, killed, they represented 1% of the wild tiger population in India, which is crazy. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:36 Also, I don't really love, like when people talk about how we have more captive tigers than wild tigers in India, to me, those are like apples and oranges, you know. Those aren't tigers that we pulled out of the wild into captivity. We're not, like, taking from that wild population. It's just kind of crazy that there's so few tigers left in the wild. But those two don't necessarily have affected. other yeah but they're not like related problems is what I'm saying sure okay you guys got any other questions nope okay again there's a lot more to the story well not a
Starting point is 01:02:11 lot more but there's a lot of detail if you want to check out any of those sources I highly recommend them the one is the GQ article there's the shoot to kill documentary on MSNBC there's several other documentaries that I didn't tap into and then the podcast was called life on the ark I just wanted to shout them out again because they really helped me all these sources. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event.
Starting point is 01:02:46 Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry and the best have you wait in the world, Frances Angano versus Felipe Lins. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p. Eastern Center time 6 p.m. Pacific time. Okay, let's get to our categories. My first question for you guys, our first category, is your favorite pop culture
Starting point is 01:03:12 where someone getting cheated on is a big plot point. Yeah, I'll go first. Okay, mine's nocturnal animals. Oh, is there cheating in that? Yeah, that's like the whole point. And then he like sees her at the abortion clinic, with the new guy and she like didn't tell him that he was like dating someone else and then she has to like tell him and that it was like his kid and then I just thought it was great that
Starting point is 01:03:42 like at the end she like really wanted to meet up with him and he just like invited her to dinner and stood her up like he at least got like one little laugh in there that is a rough movie, by the way. If you're thinking about checking out of that movie, there's some big trigger warnings on that one, like especially sexual assault. You go, Wes. I want you to go. Okay.
Starting point is 01:04:06 Mine is Gone Girl, another rough movie. Definitely cheating plays a big part of that movie. It's like a central plot point and leads to like some of the more harrowing stuff I think I've seen in a movie. So that's my thing. We listened to the book tape of it before the movie doing Barry. dense. I listened to that with you. I just listened to like the end of it. Okay. Yeah. I love the book. Love the movie. I think it's one of Fincher's better movies. So that's my pick. I wanted to go last because I
Starting point is 01:04:39 thought maybe one of you two would pick Scott Pilgrim. I thought about it. Because Scott, knives deserve better. But that was like kind of the whole point. Um, yeah. It's kind of a dirtbag. But I came up with a second one because I thought maybe that one would be taken. It's a, it's a manga called may I ask for one final thing. It's about this noble woman who's in this like really tenuous relationship with another nobleman. And she catches him cheating on her. And she basically, just to keep things short, this is getting, it's going to be stupid the more I explain it. But she basically just turns into one punch man and just blast the face off the chick that her fiancee was cheating on her with.
Starting point is 01:05:17 And it just gets out from there. It's incredible. I'm telling you, if you like any kind of revenge, like badass girl stories, check it out. All right. It's so good, man. Is it just like a reading one or is it also like an anime? No, it's a comic. All right.
Starting point is 01:05:35 Okay. The next- Punches her face off? No, dude. It's like chapter one. It's going down hard. Did she die? No, which is great because she's around to take more punishment as the story goes, you know?
Starting point is 01:05:47 All right. My next question is, what would Mike and Jeff do? So I'm going to let you go either way. I'm Jeff. If you want to go to the tiger perspective or. or any other animal perspective, that's fine. You're also, you can go put yourself in Terry's shoes if you want. You know, just take whichever perspective you want.
Starting point is 01:06:06 I'm going to take a tiger and, like, Cincinnati has the Cincinnati Bengals. So they should have some wild. Yeah, but Ohio should have some wild tigers, is my point. Okay. If they're going to have that name. So I'm taking, I'm leaving. I'm a guy tiger. and I'm taking one of the girl tigers with me.
Starting point is 01:06:26 And we're just sprinting up into the force as fast as we can and like finding an old mine shaft or something and waiting it out. And we'll just kill deer in the, you know, as much deer as we can and just try to like wait it all out. Okay. Mike, what would you do? I'll just be the girl tiger that goes with Jeff. That's what you've always wanted.
Starting point is 01:06:57 You're going to be a tiger and have sex with a tiger and have sex with Jeff. It's like all three things you've always wanted. You know, every man at one point in his life is curious, you know, just curious. Okay. All right, I'm going to introduce something kind of new. It's a listener comment that I wanted to read that I thought was really interesting. Someone sent this to our email, and I just kind of thought it made a really good addition. So this is from John Armstrong.
Starting point is 01:07:32 John says some really nice things about the podcast, and then he says, now enough jerking you guys off, which I thought was funny. He talks about one of that. He talks about one of our episodes and a thing that we were kind of debating, and it was why we rub injuries. And I think John is some sort of medical professional because John says it does have an effect. And the reason is a complicated neurophysiological. Please have Jeff read that word on air. Reason.
Starting point is 01:08:03 Sorry, I didn't have you read it. You messed that up. Yeah. Yeah. He says, I'll explain as basic as I can since the master's degree obviously didn't include advanced anatomy physiology or neurological studies. He put master's degree in quotation marks. I think that was a shot at me.
Starting point is 01:08:19 at you, yeah, wow. Anyway, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but he says you have a few different types of nerve receptor cells. He lists them all. And he says, among them are fast and slow receptors. When you rub the tissue of the injury, the deep sensing nerves fire faster than the surface pain receptors and outcompete the pain signals. Or at least make them fuzzier and less clear of a signal. Think radio interference. So in closing, yes, it helps.
Starting point is 01:08:49 to rub and no it doesn't spread the pain around. Ha ha. Keep up the good work, boys, and I'll be really excited if you mentioned me on the podcast. So excited, in fact, I'll make a deal with you. I'll join the Patreon if you do. Falls in your court, John. I thought I was really interesting. I was reading it.
Starting point is 01:09:09 It wasn't just that. I thought that was really cool. And like, I do, I welcome our listeners. Like, if there's ever something that we're not sure about that you have inside information on, do send it to us. Not the stocks, though, not the Wall Street. Don't give us inside info on that. Well, maybe.
Starting point is 01:09:27 It's illegal. Just don't tell us it's inside. Anyway, that was great. Thank you, John. Okay. Next, we're going to do. He was making fun of how I would pronounce, what word was it? Here, I'll type it out for you.
Starting point is 01:09:41 Okay. There you go. Neuropsychological. Close. Sociological. Physiological. physical as all. Mike, I was thinking we could put the Zion
Starting point is 01:09:55 clip where you're saying lackadaisical. We kind of went into the game to Lackasegoel. I'll put it there. Zion Williamson from the NBA. It's so funny. Anyway, what were you saying? Why did you want to read that, Jeff? I just told you why.
Starting point is 01:10:10 You read it. So we could do the Zion. Got it. Okay. Well, Andy told me to and you just blew past. That's true. I skipped over. All right, so we're going to go now.
Starting point is 01:10:20 We don't want to give him any opportunity to renege on that Patreon thing. That's true. John, you owe us, you owe us that money. Give us that money. Get that money. All right. So our next category is where Mike and Jeff paying attention. You know I was going to do it.
Starting point is 01:10:36 So I'm doing it. All right. Who wants to go first? I'll go first. Okay, Jeff. In what year did the Zanesville massacre occur? Uh, two, 1997.
Starting point is 01:10:51 Incorrect. Mike, do you remember? Like last year or something? I don't know. 2011. 2011, no. No points. I had it.
Starting point is 01:11:00 Dang it. Mike. What was the first animal scene after Terry opened the gates? The first animal scene. Uh, grizzly, grizzly bear. Jeff, would you like to steal? Black bear. Black bear.
Starting point is 01:11:15 Correct. One point, Jeff. I knew it was a bird. bear. Jeff, what was Terry's job in Vietnam? He's the helicopter gunner. Correct. Two points, Jeff. Mike, name one of the stunts people said Terry did with his plane in Zanesville. Buzzed people. Buzz people's houses. Yeah, I'll count it. I was thinking the bridge or the interstate, but I did say buzz people. Oh, that's right. He did that too. Yeah. All right. Jeff one. I would count that. Yeah. I got two. Or no, Jeff two. You're not. Jeff two. You're
Starting point is 01:11:46 You're right. You're right. You're right. Okay, Jeff. How many wolves were killed? Four? Mike, would you like to steal? Three? Incorrect. Two wolves. Mike, named three of the six states that recently, completely allowed big cat ownership. And I say recently because now they can't anymore, but up until recently they had it.
Starting point is 01:12:08 Right. Nevada, Oklahoma, Alabama. Correct. One to two. I don't know, two to two. What? Sorry. Two to two.
Starting point is 01:12:16 Three didn't you. Jeff, you got three? Mike has, no, Mike stole one and then he just answered one. Don't you have three now, Mike? No, he didn't steal because he didn't get the wolf one. Oh, you're right. Two to two. Okay, Jeff.
Starting point is 01:12:31 Got a billion dollars online here, I wish. I don't know. Oh, yeah, we didn't do a bet. Whatever, billion dollars. You have one minute, Jeff, to name all eight big cat species that are protected by the big cat act. All eight? Yes, and we're going to start. If I just get seven, then Mike only has to name one.
Starting point is 01:12:49 No, this one's not a little to steal. Yeah. Okay. Ready. All right is tough. Go. How much the time? One minute.
Starting point is 01:13:00 Jaguar, snow leopard, cheetah, African lion, tiger. Yeah. Puma. So that's six. Yeah. Leopard Yeah Just missing one
Starting point is 01:13:18 Seven And It's not as big of one It's the smallest out of all of them I want to say Ocelot It's not an Ocelot Is that your guess
Starting point is 01:13:34 No Bobcat No The final one was clouded leopard Clouded Oh Three times I didn't name
Starting point is 01:13:50 I could just say tiger, but I can't just say leopard. Yeah, they're not the same. What do you mean? Leopard doesn't encapsulate all those same. There's like African leopard, Asiatic leopard, but they're all Pantera partis or whatever it is. But like, and tigers are all pantera tegris, I think. But clouded leopard is a completely different animal from a leopard and a snow leopard.
Starting point is 01:14:15 They just have the same less like leopard. Okay. So it's still two to. Mike, how old was Sam's mom? Who's Sam? The guy that had the horse at the beginning. His mom was having. Oh, that's right.
Starting point is 01:14:30 She's the lady that called the cops. Yeah. 14. Jeff, do you want to try and steal? 71. 85. Okay, you were closer. This is the bonus.
Starting point is 01:14:42 It's going to be our first tie, I think, if one of you doesn't get this lightning round bonus for 10 points. and this is lightning round, so just say it if you know it. How many of the exotic animals survive the massacre and how many of what species were there? Five. So you got a name, and what species were there and how many? Well, I said five. I think there's two lions, two macaques, and one grizzly bear.
Starting point is 01:15:11 Mike, do you want to try? There's two macauses, a bear cub. Macawks. Yeah, sorry. I'll count it. A bear cup. I just don't like saying the word cock. And that's all I got.
Starting point is 01:15:25 And three leopards. None of you got it. Three. Oh, shoot. It's a tie. You both owe each other a billion dollars. All right. Let's move on to Jeff's animal fact.
Starting point is 01:15:36 That's me. That is you. You're Jeff. You're our only Jeff. I went to the zoo with one of you and looked at flamingos, I think, right? And I asked why flamingos stand on one. leg and you didn't know? I know that.
Starting point is 01:15:50 Is that ringing any bells? Yeah. So Flamingo stand on one leg to stay warm. Keeping one leg close to the body conserves heat. Yeah, there you go. It's also like energy saving. Like they do it for muscular fatigue as well. So it's kind of both.
Starting point is 01:16:09 But yeah. Well, you didn't know that when we went to the zoo. I did. That wasn't me that you're talking about. I think it was Todd. Okay, yeah, I'm definitely not Todd. Oh, man. I am not taught.
Starting point is 01:16:22 Cincinnati. Yeah, so. Neither of us that I was taught. If it was Todd, I would Terry Thompson myself. All right. Okay. Let's do something overrated. I'll do mine first because I alluded to it earlier and Jeff stopped me and I'm to take that pin right out.
Starting point is 01:16:45 Smooth motion. Smooth motion. on TVs is not only overrated, it's one of the worst inventions that we've ever done when it comes to like entertainment. I absolutely like nothing drives me more crazy than when I go to someone's house and we're like watching a movie and they have smooth motion on because I have to be the asshole that's like, hey, can I turn your smooth motion off because it upsets me that much? Like I can't, I feel like I'm watching like I'm made for TV movie that there was no editing direction. You like see the stage more.
Starting point is 01:17:18 It doesn't like, yeah. I just can't believe. There are people out there that don't. They like it. They either like it or like don't even realize it, which is crazy to me. Most people. I think that's most people. I really do.
Starting point is 01:17:30 Really? Yeah. And that's like why every hotel TV is on smooth motion because like, you need to get out and meet more people. Standard anymore. Yeah. It's awful. I hate it.
Starting point is 01:17:40 Yeah, that's terrible. That's mine. You want me to go, Jeff? Sure. Yeah, go for it. Okay. So this, I don't. I don't want to like, I don't want this to be misconstrued, because I do think it's pretty
Starting point is 01:17:50 impressive still. It's pretty cool what they're able to do. Habachi chefs, I think they're a little overrated. You see them like, throw the food in people's mouths. I disagree here. So 75% of the time, you watch them, and I did this the last couple times I've gone. It's been, you know, in the past two or three years, I've been a couple of times. 75% of the time, they're just like banging their stuff together.
Starting point is 01:18:13 Like, that doesn't take skill to do. They're just like slapping their spatula and fork or whatever they have. They all do the same tricks. They either got the volcano or the train. They've been doing those same tricks since I can remember. No one's innovated yet. I'm waiting for the day. A Habachi grill chef just really changes the game, you know?
Starting point is 01:18:32 They have the trick where they like flip the egg up into their hat, which would be pretty cool. If you haven't seen clips of Red Panda doing it on a unicycle and instead of one egg, it's like 30 plates at the same time. So it's like, what do you guys? A red panda? I'm not impressed. That's her, like, name. Yeah, her state's a entertainer.
Starting point is 01:18:53 She is, I mean, you guys, go watch that. Maybe she's just underrated. It could be, yeah. And the food's fine. Like, I don't know. The food's okay. It's not so good that it necessitates all those theatrics. Again, you guys are cool, but I'm not going to argue too much on this,
Starting point is 01:19:08 but I'm going to tell you that I hold the exact opposite position of everything you just said. So that's my statement. Wow. Yeah. I like it. I think it, I always like it in like pop culture when they're at a habachi grill. It's always going to be a fun time. And then I like the videos.
Starting point is 01:19:25 I love the fail videos like where someone like bangs their face on the table trying to catch a piece of meat that the guy flung at them or something. That is pretty good. Yeah. All right. I'm going to go with bringing back dead characters and just the multiverse in general. I just hate it And it's just like
Starting point is 01:19:49 No one's actually ever dead I would I would prefer end game If they just killed half the Marvel characters Right And then the next one they It would have been like such a crazy moment But then like it's like
Starting point is 01:20:03 That was a great movie But then when they made the next Infinity War Or whatever Now I don't even like end game as much Because it's like oh they're not dead The worst one ever turtles around, but yeah. Endgame's not the last one, is it?
Starting point is 01:20:18 I guess that makes sense that it is. The worst one ever is Palpatine. It's just like, oh, somehow Palpatine lived. It's just like, that's the exact line. Yeah. And that's how they say it. It's like Leia died and like comes back in the spaceship and it lives. And it's like, she's actually dead in real life.
Starting point is 01:20:41 Like, just kill her. Like we can't kill anyone? God. I'm with you. I like any more in movies when they say multiverse, like my brain just kind of shuts off. Unless it's the Spider-Man, like the animated Spider-Man movies. I love those movies. I love them, but even like the plot of the new one, I was just like, oh my God, what are we doing here?
Starting point is 01:21:07 They did establish though that like there are those moments that can't be changed. and if you do it like messes everything up. So at least like there are some stakes. But usually it's just like, well, let's go find them in a different universe of which there are unlimited amount. So I do love those movies. Go grab another one. Yeah. I didn't mind.
Starting point is 01:21:25 I like the end game. Like I liked that one, but I didn't. I like wanted them to start a whole new thread after that. I didn't want any multiverse stuff. Just wait. That'll they bring Tony. Yeah, he'll be back. Stark back in a something, Spider-Man.
Starting point is 01:21:39 Yeah. Oh, look. I made myself a robot before I died. I think they kind of already did that. Like there's like messages and robots and whatever. Hadiday presents
Starting point is 01:21:53 in the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated weed wacker guy. Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the challenger extra strength, Hannity!
Starting point is 01:22:08 Eye drops and work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Padiday. Paraday. Bring it on. Okay, we're going to do some listener questions. We're going to start with some subscriber ones. We finally got through all those subscriber messages,
Starting point is 01:22:29 so we're, you know, fresh slate. Thanks everyone for sending them. There's some really great questions in there. We're going to start with the spicy one from Raphael. Raphael says, I got a spicy question for you guys in the fourth. of a three-part question. First, what celebrity would be the most shocking
Starting point is 01:22:46 to find out they have an only fan? For me, it'd probably be like Maggie Smith or just like some really old British actress. I'd just kind of be like, whoa. For me, it would have been Stephen Hawking. Yeah, that would be a surprise. Yeah, especially now. Maybe Obama.
Starting point is 01:23:06 Okay. I don't know. He's just like very presidential. All right, next question. on the same question, if Steve Irwin had an only fans, would you subscribe? Yeah. There'd be a pretty weird only fan because he's dead. So, yeah, I would because it'd be crazy to see Steve again.
Starting point is 01:23:25 We're just going to skip on to the third one. Out of the three of you, who would be the most shocking to find out that they have an only fans? I think we all probably agree on this one. It's Mike. Yeah, Mike. Yeah. Yeah. Although he's got, he could show, dude.
Starting point is 01:23:45 Oh, yeah. The thing is, it's always the person that you suspect the least, right? So it'd have to hit that middle ground, because we all expect Jeff's got one, I assume. I've just assumed he has one. Me, it's like a little too obvious that I wouldn't. So it's like maybe I'm a little secret backdoor only fans participator. Wes is the answer. All right.
Starting point is 01:24:06 Fair enough. I'm not subscribing. No, neither am I. Yeah, I got to see it for free at Lord of the Rings. This is a fun one from, this is from John Mark P. And John Mark P says the podcast reminded me of a hypothetical situation. This is a long one, so buckle in, that I came up with as a kid and used to think about when real life got boring. In this situation, you're dropped in the middle of a locked Walmart right in the middle of the store.
Starting point is 01:24:33 All exits are blocked, and there's access to side rooms like bathrooms, but the doors have been removed. In the scenario, there are 50 to 100 black mambas spread across the checkout and entrance area bottom left corner of the store. There's a mother grizzly in her cubs released from the top left corner of the store. There's a full-grown Siberian tiger released from the top right corner of the store.
Starting point is 01:24:57 Five Cape Buffalo are released from the bottom right corner of the store. Sounds like that guy's house. Yeah, it does. This is a good episode for this. Your goal is to survive. Your goal is to survive from 10 p.m. until the store opens in the morning. What moves are you making, what direction are you heading? Let's assume there's no guns, but everything else in the store is in play.
Starting point is 01:25:18 Do you think most animals would try to mind their own business or would it be chaos? What do you guys think? Interesting. So I need to choose a room to stay in you're saying? No, you just need to. What's your strategy? Or they're all out. These animals have all been dropped at the same time in the Walmart in different corners,
Starting point is 01:25:34 and you have to survive the night. Well, luckily, Walmarts have guns, so I'm just going to go get a gun. He said guns aren't in play, but that is a good thought. I think I would get, like, I would go to sporting goods, and I would get, like, some golf clubs and some other, like, baseball bats and some weapons for the snakes. And then I would probably crawl up on top of, like, a high shelf and try and spend the night there. I think up there, like, the tiger and the snakes are going to be your main problems. But you're just going to hope that. you can stay away from the tiger.
Starting point is 01:26:08 I'd probably, like, get in the tissue paper or, like, toilet paper section and just surround myself with toilet paper, just because it sounds comfy. And I just, like, hope that the snakes and the tiger don't show up. That's my pick. I'm going to set up two tents because West said grizzly bears can't attack you if you have two tents set up. I never said that.
Starting point is 01:26:30 It's a great idea. It's more safe if you have two people. Oh, there's bear at Walmart. Two tents because one tent, the bear will go in the, the wrong one all the time you said. And then I'll tell the grizzly bearing the tiger that the other one was talking mess on them so that I can try to try get them fighting each other. That eliminates them.
Starting point is 01:26:51 Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Mike, what are you doing? My thought is I always get really annoyed when I'm in a grocery store, but there's like only one person working at a register and they have carts that are blocking all the lanes. So you have to like walk all the way down where until there's an open. to get out. So I would just do that because I just put them across all the lanes so they wouldn't
Starting point is 01:27:13 have a way to get on the other side of the registers to leave the, yeah. I'd go get some meat for sure and throw meat everywhere. I was thinking that all get pretty full. Yeah, that's what Terry did, and it didn't work out well for him. Well, he put it on himself. That's, you know, he threw it all around him. Okay. Yeah. One more question. Natalie says, hey friends, I've absorbed your catalog. I'm so excited for all the hours I get to listen to on Patreon. I have a question for Wes. I live in British Columbia, Vancouver Island. I heard that when they relocate a food habituated bear, they don't actually relocate them because there's nowhere they can drop them that isn't in another bear's territory, implying that they just get euthanized because other bears
Starting point is 01:27:56 wouldn't tolerate a strange bear in their territory. Have you heard this? Can you explain how bears feel about their territories? They seem to be tolerant during the salmon run, etc. Thanks so much. Love you guys. So this is a great question. That's why I wanted to answer it. Bears tend to be more territorial the less access they have to food. So like at salmon runs and stuff, there's so much food to go around that they're not very territorial. They're willing to share space with other bears. But when there's less food, they do tend to like patrol and protect their food resources much more aggressively. But I think to get to the meat of this question, this relocating thing, Usually when a bear is to be relocated, it means that it's like a problem bear that they're trying to move somewhere where it's not going to get in trouble anymore.
Starting point is 01:28:38 And what we've kind of learned over the years as bear biologists is that when you do that, you're kind of just moving a problem. So the issue isn't really necessarily the other bears that's going to come into contact with, but it's the other people that it's going to come into contact with. And even if you place it in the middle of a wilderness, there's a good chance that bear's going to work its way toward humans and that it's going to cause problems. again, so you're kind of just moving a problem. And that's been shown, like relocation used to be a really popular tool, but now through like study, we've learned that it doesn't really work that well. So I think that's why it's not being used nearly as much, and those problem bears are being euthanized more, and because we've done a really good job conserving bears that those hard decisions can be made. So that's kind of the best answer to your question. Okay. The best. Jeff, you got,
Starting point is 01:29:29 you're just going to claim it's the best you'll ever get. I'll say it's the best that I can give. Yeah. Jeff, you got some listener questions from Instagram? Little Calypso asks, what's the coolest concert venue you've been to? Mine's the one here in Missoula, actually. Just outside of Missoula in Bonner,
Starting point is 01:29:48 the Kettle House Amphitheater, it's like this really cool amphitheater right on the river with like beautiful cliffs and mountains right behind it. And they do summer concert series there with like really big bands. I saw Boy Genius play there this summer. and third eye blind last summer. Cool. It's just really fun.
Starting point is 01:30:05 Yeah. We'll have to go there next year. Yeah, you guys should for sure. It's really, really fun. For me, it was just like in the jazz basketball arena, but watching Muse, like they had the best set design, so I'd probably still have to say that. That was so sweet when they brought out like.
Starting point is 01:30:22 It's so cool. Man, they kept bringing out huge robots, and they can't possibly have another one back there. And they did like three times. And they have like a movie. it's just really, just barely good enough that you like kind of want to watch another two minutes of it in a bit. Yeah, that's been muse for like the past 10 years. They've been just vaguely political enough to, I think they have some opinions. I just don't really know what they are. They're saying
Starting point is 01:30:51 something here though. My favorite venue is Red Rocks in Colorado. I just think it's like such a pretty, the way it's integrated into nature is just really, really nice. I love that place. Great. Larissa is, Larissa's emos. What's your ideal first date or perfect date night? In parentheses, Jeff, we should go out. I like, I like, I like a sports, like going to like a basketball game because you can
Starting point is 01:31:23 like talk, but there's other stuff going on. Like movie, it's hard to like talk enough for a first date. One time I dropped a girl on a river on a first date. first date. That is a bad one, though. Is that ideal? I think those are two very different questions for me. The one where she wants to go out with Jeff? No, no. I can answer that one. Yeah, I think it's just one question, right? No, she said ideal first date or perfect date night. Yeah. So for me, like, the ideal first date is just dinner because I think you like, it's short. You get to meet the person. You get to talk. There's no expectations. Like, you just get to like meet. You,
Starting point is 01:32:01 them and eat dinner and then like if you're having a lot of fun then maybe you do something else afterward but like dinner this should be like the expectation in my mind there's a tic talk of this guy trying to take a girl to cheesecake factory and she just wouldn't go with him I would happily go with him wait what was her problem with cheesecake there wasn't a nice enough place for oh what come on yeah that's like as good as it's going to get from me right I know. I was like, wow. Man. I don't know what my perfect date outside of that would be.
Starting point is 01:32:37 Like, I think I've gone on a lot of fun ones. Like, for me and Jesse. I like zoo. I like zoo dates because I can show off a little. Be like, hey, those grizzly bears right there, they ate someone. Yeah, I promise. Me and Jesse have had some really good dates where we just kind of like go on a little adventure or something. What was your first date with Jesse?
Starting point is 01:32:58 Our first date was like a night in Santa Fe where we like did some bar hopping and played pool and stuff. And? Yeah. And then what? We're not going to get into it. So something happened. It sounds like kind of. We don't have to get into it.
Starting point is 01:33:14 Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to take a girl to a hibachi grill. No, not really. I think I've been on a couple really pissed. Why can't they be like, look at this. They did this last time. Yeah. Watch. They're going to do this, the volcano. Watch. See? No, I went on a couple really fun ones. My go-to for a year there was there's this little place where you can roll up like very simple candles, like wax candles, just do some crafts with each other. I think that's a fun way to just get a little more movement and a little more focus into something if like the conversation is not flowing super well. You know, I don't. like talking to people. I'm not trying to talk to this girl too much.
Starting point is 01:34:02 Focus on a candle. Yeah, candles are sick. Love All Chocolate asks. On a scale of one to ten, how accurate is the TV show Yellowstone about Montana Living? I got really strong. Show us your brand that you got, Wes. They branded you.
Starting point is 01:34:24 I, like, I watch that show because it's like a, a, guilt like fun watch you know yeah but i kind of hate it i feel like i hate the like machismo culture that it that it like is trying to push like hard work culture like rise and grind kind of like that's the only way to live stuff and then i also hate just how much it's like bringing rich people to montana like people see that and they're just like i want to buy a ranch in montana and they are and I have a friend that's a realtor here that gets a call every day they said from someone saying
Starting point is 01:35:01 they want something like Yellowstone so it's really changed things here and I don't know I just wait until they spend a couple winters out there well the funny thing is the show is set in Paradise Valley but it's not far from where I live in the Bitteroo Valley so yeah
Starting point is 01:35:18 luckily it's the one thing we got going for us is everyone's trying to move out by Bozeman even though the whole show was like set by Missoula or filmed by Missoula. Nice. There's like this second episode, he like has to blow up an old car because he can't move it with the tractor or something. There's just like a perfect velociraptor skeleton in the ground under that. So like that was kind of like, yeah, that's how it works. There's dinosaur bones everywhere, you know.
Starting point is 01:35:51 I also love how like livestock agents. They got that one right. livestock agents just get in like the craziest shouts battles on like a day by day basis and I looked it up I don't think there's ever been a recorded like shooting by a livestock agent like these are people that go to like livestock auctions and like you know are there to help make sure everything goes smoothly so anyway that's that's how I felt when Reno 911 was airing and I lived in Reno
Starting point is 01:36:19 I was like this is totally inaccurate this is not how it had people moving to Reno Trying to move out here. New boot goofing. All right. Well, I think we're getting to where we should probably wrap this thing up. But thanks everyone for listening. Again, this was a story I've wanted to do for a while. It's a story we've referenced a number of times on the podcast already.
Starting point is 01:36:44 So I'm glad we finally got it out there. If you're considering buying an exotic animal, I'd really want to urge you to rethink it. I just think like it creates a lot of problems. You're very likely not going to be able to give that animal the kind of life it deserves. And you're very likely going to be doing it illegally too. There's a lot of cool pets that aren't exotic, you know? Yeah. I was about to say like there are so many good dogs that are in need of a home.
Starting point is 01:37:14 So you can do a lot of good by adopting a dog. And that's an animal that's been already socialized to live with us, to be your best friend. I can't imagine life without my dog anymore. So Bob Barker over here. Yeah, well, it's true. And like, there's so many dogs that need homes. And it breaks my heart thinking about it. So get a dog instead.
Starting point is 01:37:36 All right. Well, any last thoughts for you guys? And also, Wes just did a subscription episode. So find us on Patreon. And it is a really good episode about taking selfies too close to animals, which Thanks, Jeff. Can go wrong. And if you subscribe to Patreon, a whole host of benefits,
Starting point is 01:37:59 other than just the 70 plus hours of stuff. Me and Mike making up stuff up. Yeah. But you get access to, I mean, you can ask us questions in the Patreon DMs. You get access to Discord where there's movie nights and just like the most welcoming kind community of people I've ever seen. They're all super awesome. Message me if you need a link to that and you're subscribed.
Starting point is 01:38:21 Right. Yeah. It's great. And we'd love to have you. If you don't prefer Patreon, we got our Apple Grizz Club too, which is just right in your Apple feed, really easy. Both of those services, we got a discount, or not a discount, but yeah, discounted annual rate.
Starting point is 01:38:37 So you can save a lot of money by just signing up for the whole year. So we really like them. And then I did say on the subscriber episode, the subscription channels, I think they're fun. You guys do a lot of really good episodes for them. Yeah. Yeah, we like that. I see what you're saying. I will say on my subscription episode, I teased a sloth bear episode.
Starting point is 01:38:57 That is forthcoming, but I'm working on a sloth bear paper right now, and I kind of want that paper to be out before I do a sloth bear episode because I'm going to reference it. So we might wait a little bit on that. But just seeing all that is coming. People are going to storm the capital if you wait too long. I love teasing, Jeff. You know me. I'll tease until they storm.
Starting point is 01:39:16 I'll do it. All right. Thanks, guys. We love you. and love you guys. Happy holidays. Bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.