Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Toothie Tales: A Bat to the Mouth, a Snake at the Gates, and Many More

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Our listeners have had some sticky, sharp, and dangerous encounters with some animals, it turns out! These are a few stories you all sent in for us to read through and discuss. Thank you to everyone who submitted their stories! We'll hold on to all the ones that weren't used for another episode somewhere down the line, hopefully. ~~ Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/TOOTH and use the code TOOTH to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Goodr: Go to http://goodr.com/TOOTH and use code TOOTH for free shipping. Ollie Pet Food: Take the online quiz and introduce Ollie to your pet. Visit https://www.ollie.com/tooth today for 60% off your first box of meals! #ToKnowThemIsToLoveThem Wild Alaskan: Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to: https://www.wildalaskan.com/TOOTH ~~ 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

With all the GLP1 companies out there, how does someone know which one's actually reliable? I tell people to look at four things. Is it safe? Does it work? Is it affordable? And will you actually get clinical support? When you use that filter, one brand keeps standing out, believe. They use U.S. pharmacies. People see results close to the research, about 18% weight loss. It's around $4 a day, and they include nurse support at no extra cost. And full disclosure, I actually use them. I signed up during my lunch break and got approved before I even left work. Okay, I just Googled it while you were talking. And yeah, it really does look simple. For anyone listening who wants to check it out, where should they go?

It's joinbleve.com, spelled B-L-I-V. So if you've been curious about GLP1s, joinBleave.com might be a good place to start. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our wildlife biologist, Wes Larson. I'm here. That's me. He's a good guy.

Yeah. He'll watch most of all the new marvels. Sure. Why not? Yeah. I got no reason not to. I'm his younger brother. It's a spectacle.

I'm Jeff Larson. And then we got Mike Smith. And I just got a text that says, hello. Would you like to chat about it today? You got to say yes to that. Yeah. I don't know. I'm nervous.

That does seem like a loaded question. I don't know who it's from. I don't know the area code. They've never talked to me before, so like, could be about anything. That actually is kind of the type of prompt that's the scariest kind. Like, I feel like if Jesse walked in one morning, it was like, hey, do you want to talk about it today? I'd be like, oh, man. It's something important enough that I should know what it is. You start talking about something like way worse that, like, you thought you would want to talk about? She's like, I just wish you'd take out the trash more, but now we have some real problems. I guess I'll just handle that when I'm ready. Yeah, you don't seem ready at all right now.

Give yourself a couple weeks. It really threw me off right before we started recording. I don't know. What do they know? You know what I just noticed about myself in a video that Mike just made? Did I got a little blonde spot in my mustache that you really can't see when we record these things? so it looks like I have a little weird mustache all the time. Hitler.

It's kind of cool. Yeah. It's like when people like hash a little thing through their eyebrow, you got that, but it is. Super cool. Yeah. Thanks, Mike. You're such a good hype guy. You're handsome man.

Stop. One of the world's handsomest. He said stop. One of, you know, that could really, you could be like the 10 billionth most handsome person in the world and you're still one of them. If I'm 10 billion, that's pretty bad. How many people are in this planet? Like 8 billion, I think. So I would be...

It's looking bad for you, West. Yeah. And men, I mean, there's probably what, like 4 billion men. So that's too many billion men. Let's get rid of a few. Let's, yeah. Who's the first you want to get rid of? Jeff, you go first.

We'll do like a draft. Oh, man. This isn't going to go well. Okay. It's going to be something we have to cut. shoot does it have to be someone I know it has to be someone you like oh because otherwise it's like what you know the hardest sacrifices are the most worthwhile or whatever there's a saying kind of like someone already took your mom shoot that was going to be my first pick I'm just going to really

pretend to like certain billionaires and certain leaders of certain countries your mom she's not a billionaire no I'm not going to kill her for someone you like you didn't like his mom I loved his mom. I really liked her. You never even met. This is ridiculous. Wes has been posturing for so long about how much he likes my mom. Never met her.

I met your mom three times. And all three times, it was really wonderful. She just seemed sweet and nice. Once was at your house. Yeah, I remember that one. The other two I don't remember, so I'm curious what you guys are getting up to. I know I've met her three times. but I can't remember the situations.

But don't take this from me. Three is a lot. They were very brief meetings all three times, but I trust you too. I trust your opinion of her, you know? I know she made good lasagna. Oh, man. Oh, Jeff.

I wouldn't know. Her lasagna. Oh, it's so good. I don't even know that. It looked good. I haven't brushed my teeth since. You know how like when you shake the hands of someone really famous that you really like,

you're like, I'm never washing. this hand ever again. That's why I never have brushed my teeth after eating that was on you. Like five years later, six years later, you just still have little pieces of it in your teeth. It's a good trait, but like any food he's given, it's like, this was delicious, you know. Aside from in India, in India, you got pretty sick of the food. I liked it. It was just the same thing over and over again. So by the end, I was ready for something different, but I was still, you know, that's fair. Now, I think I'm never going to get tired of non-bred, like in a nice garlicy nonbread.

Yeah. Jeff, what were you going to say? You get tired of stuff pretty quick. No, I was going to say if I, like, order a steak and they bring me out like a grilled chicken, Mike will be like, why are you complaining, dude? That looks great. Dude, we were at a pizza place in Montana, and I get, I realize where Jeff gets it from. His mom tried to send the, you know, the take home box that they bring out.

She tried to send that back. It wasn't even food. She was like, this isn't the right box. I was like, oh, my God. Just put your food in the box and leave. Was that on her birthday? It was, yeah. She's probably feeling extra, you know.

All right, anyways, speaking of handsome, we're going to be telling stories from all of our handsome listeners out there. Yeah, just the handsome ones. Well, handsome works for women, too. I know. But everyone that said in the story, we're like, send us a photo. You're saying some of them are probably actually ugly. No, that's not what I'm saying.

All of our listeners are beautiful. By the end of Pride and Prejudice, Colin Firth calls Elizabeth. He's like, she's the most handsome woman I've ever met. And that was the first time I'd ever heard that word ascribed to a woman. And I'm like, you know what? Yeah. It's working for me.

Darcy, that's his name. Yeah. Let's normalize that. Let's normalize called men beautiful and women handsome. You know, why not? We asked on social media for your listeners to send in their favorite wildlife encounters, or most entertaining wildlife encounters. We got a lot of good ones.

I'm sure we'll do another episode of this, hopefully sooner than the spaces between this and the last one. Yeah. Because these are fun to do. We should do one around Halloween and have people send their creepiest, scariest stories. Spook them up. It's a good ghost voice.

All right. I'm already scared. It's going to be nice for us. Because we just did our three part on the Indianapolis, and this is going to be just kind of a more fun rolling episode format. It's going to be nice. All right. Who wants to go first? I guess I will.

I got a good one. Okay. It's a little bit longer, but that's okay. We'll have to see you about that. All right. My name's Eli. I'm a 21-year-old biology major specializing an ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I recently had a pretty wild animal encounter that I think would make a good toothy tail.

This past November was my 21st birthday, so my dad and stepmom asked me if there's anything specific I wanted as a gift. I own so much random stuff. I'm going to paraphrase a little bit here, but pretty much Eli ends up going on a week-long trip to the San Juan Islands. Ooh, cool. Because his dream is to be a cetacean biologist. Yeah. I've worked in as aquarist and salesmen in an aquatic pet store for over two years and recently started an internship with Lake County Audubon Society at the Great Lakes Piping Plover Monitor. So I spent the first day

Tidepooling and Birdwatching. The next day I joined us. Kind of like Sinabon, right? Except for Simon Bunn's. It's pretty much the same thing. Cars. Yeah. That's probably not a good enough joke to keep in the episode, right?

There's not a speed limit at either place. At the San Juan's. Your punishment is that this gets kept. The orcas are allowed to swim as fast as they want. Oh, I'm thinking of the Audubon. Audubon in Germany. No, Audubon Society is mostly a birdwatching. society, like bird conservation, bird watching, there's lots of different chapters all over.

All right, for the following two days, we spent every moment looking for orcas. While the crabs, jellyfish, seabird, seals, and porpoises were plentiful and incredible to see, by the time we landed on Jones Island on June 25th, we had yet to run into any orcas. Although I was extremely thankful to be in such a beautiful area, I was beginning to lose hope that I'd see them. I know that feeling. When you're like on a trip and you have one target and you're kind of getting toward the end and you don't think you're going to see it.

That's how I felt was snow leopards. When we were like on our last day, I don't think we're going to see one. And it was hard for me. So I get that. You would like that. Dude, you get like that so early. Yeah, we're not going to see it. I get a little anxious.

I have to just, it's just me kind of not getting ahead of myself. And we ended up seeing like four snow leopards. We saw one snow leopard, but we watched it all day. Oh, you're right. I just saw it like four times in 30 hours. Yeah. It was great. To cheer myself up and increase my chances of seeing some,

I decided to go on a solo hike around the coast of the small island. Keep in mind, two of the other tourists that had hiked the same trail earlier in the day and told me it took them a little over an hour to finish. Given that there are no bears, canines, pumas on Jones, I thought it would be safe to go out on my own. I started hiking around 10 p.m. because we were so far north, the sun had just set and the sky was still glowing. About 45 minutes later, it was pitch black, and I was nowhere near the end of the trail.

10 p.m.'s a little bit late to start this hike, regardless of where you are. It's a little late. Unless you're like in a, you know, endless sun kind of place. Arctic. Yeah, the Arctic. Or you're, what are those animals that only are awake at night? Nocturnal. There you go.

If you're one of those. You're a nocturnal animal. Bush baby. I'm not a complete idiot, so I did have a headlamp with me that was at 75% charge when I left. At this point, I'd already run into a raccoon and a deer that I observed from a safe distance before continuing on the trail. Then I happened upon two raccoons that had just cracked open some shellfish about 30 feet below me on the rocky shore. As soon as they noticed me, they both started growling. If they start multiplying, like he saw one and then two, and next

he'll see four and then eight. Pretty soon he's going to see in like three trillion raccoons, if you go by that math. Yeah, what if he just turns to look the other way and then looks back and there's suddenly like 10 of them. All right, I got a little nervous and decided to call my boyfriend for some company. As we were chatting and I continued to walk, small flying insects were darting in and out of the beam of my headlamp. All of a sudden, while my mouth was open in a speech, a large bat flew directly into my open mouth.

Ozzy. The Ozzy. Oh, geez. Yeah, that's how you know a new Ozzy Osborne has been selected. That's crazy. Right before it smacked into me, I saw its brown, furry body and huge beige wings flashed in front of me. Its rubbery wings slapped me on my cheeks, and its little fluffy body hit me square in the

mouth and nose. I felt its soft fur inside of my lips. Wait, I felt it soft fur on the inside of my lips. He's getting erotic. I guess that makes sense, though, because the bat just thinks it's a cave. Yeah, that's true, just a tiny little cave. He's trying to, like, hang off the top of his mouth. Yeah.

I felt it's soft fur on the inside of my lips. What a fucking bat just hit me in the face, I exclaimed. As suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared back into the night. At this point, I was so, so, so over the hike and started speedwalking through the remainder of the trail. Then my headlamp died and the trail was impossible to follow in the darkness. I was freaking out and considering just sitting down until morning because I had no way of contacting the other people in my group. Luckily, I was able to use the downloaded map on the Merlin Bird ID app. That's cool.

And my phone's flashlight to guide me back the way I came. I hated retracing my path because I didn't want another bat in my mouth. That's just like the spot on that trail. It happens flying the mouth. I mean, it kind of was, you know. Yeah, yeah. Technically it is. I finally got back to camp around 1230 a.m., covered in sweat and tears welling up in my eyes.

Okay, the story is super long. I'm going to cut it here for now. If the boys have any interest in featuring my story, be more than happy to share the rest, given that the bat hit me directly in two mucus membranes, I ended up having to seek preventative rabies treatment, which is a totally wild tail as well. We're just going to, you know,

maybe we'll finish this tail at some point. But yeah, that's not, I think if I could pick the places where I don't want a bat, I think mouth might be number one where I don't want one. Yeah, butthole maybe. Undergarments, yeah, somewhere in the underwear area. In my scrotum. I think I'd still pick mouth

When we were in Australia You guys remember those big flying foxes Yeah Imagine one of those and you screwed them Do you guys remember there was one time I was out looking at them I was I can actually I was trying to take photos of them And one I like suddenly felt something wet hit my eye

And I think one of them may be peed in my eye And that was pretty gross to me Is that something you have to worry about If you get like fecal matter urine from an animal in a mucus membrane area? I would imagine so, especially a bat, but I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. I always thought rabies you needed a bite.

Like the bat actually needs to like, there needs to be some kind of fluid transmission, you know? So I guess the mucus membrane thing for him was like the kind of scary part. But I think you would have to have some of that bat's blood get in, I don't know, or it's saliva get into your bloodstream. I don't know. But yeah, apparently you had to go get rid of. baby's treatment, which isn't fun or cheap.

So Eli, thanks for sending in this story. We appreciate it. All right. Shout out that bat. Thanks for giving us a story. Yeah. Good point, Mike. I guess we, does that mean we just got to thank all these animals and the upcoming

stories? We profess we love these animals. We talk about them, but we don't extend our gratitude towards them enough. I don't think I'd spend like half of the episode extending my gratitude. to tort it these animals. Yeah, dude, when the bat was out of that story, West was just like, I'm done reading. Yeah, that's it. I'm done. That's true. This episode's brought to you by Miracle Made. The weather's heating up in your nighttime

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Thank you Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode. All right. This next one's from Freya. and um life voting nice interesting it says she loves the podcast oh that is interesting yeah I can't imagine but anyways

here's her tale in 2019 my badass 72 year old mom and I went riding she has a bat in her ass what are the chants? Bad ass oh Richard gear strikes

and I went riding on safari and Botswana This involved riding six to seven hours a day from camp to camp. Our group was quite large, so was split into two, with each group being assigned two guides each. The other group had their fair share drama, being charged by elephants and a horse getting stuck in quicksand, for example, but their stories are for another day.

So, on one of the days in my group, we are riding single file through quite a bushy area, lead guide David at front, the back guide, Tips at the back with me just in front of Tips. As we were walking along, Tips very calmly shouted David and another little whistle. I turned around in the saddle to see a large male lion about 20 meters away, crouched down and ready to charge. David immediately told us to all turn our horses around and face the lion,

whilst he and his exceptionally brave horse rode straight towards it. Mike, horses? No. good right here. I disagree. Wilst? Wiltz? Wiltz, Chamberlain. Hey, give me a break here. It's worth noting

at this point on the week of our trip, all the guns that the guides had usually carried with them for safety were in for cleaning. So all David had was a bullwhip. He cracked the whip. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's a bad time to clean your guns, it sounds like. Yeah, maybe you like stagger You're like, they can clean the guns. Your guns only need to be so clean. You don't need to. Hopefully the whip was clean. He cracked the whip multiple times at the lion, and it barely reacted.

A gun, I bet you it would react more. I bet you're right there, Wes. Just shifting a few meters to the side each time, but not backing away. At that point, David instructed us all to walk away. Absolutely not trot, which we all did. The lion followed us close behind for at least another 10. minutes, with David and his horse staying between us the whole time. Eventually, it lost interest and tiled off, but it was a wild experience. It wasn't until afterwards that we realized just what

a close call we had. Tips only knew that the lion was there because his horse tensed up ever so slightly. A couple more seconds, and it would have been a very different outcome. I think it was the same evening when at dinner camp a couple of guests in the guide escort went back to their tents together and came face to face with three female lions literally right at their tent doors. They immediately came back to where we were, sat around the table in the main camp, and the guide instructed us all to stay together in a group whilst he crashed into the other growth towards the lions. A few minutes later, he came back in the truck, ordered us all to get in, and we spent the next 30 minutes on an impromptu game,

drive in the pitch black crashing through brush trying to find the lions such an epic trip i've attached a couple of pictures uh pretty sweet though like that's pretty scary to have a full male mil lion right behind your horse as you're riding horse back and that's cool like crouched and doing that kind of behavior especially yeah yeah i'd feel a lot less safe on a horse than i would in a like land cruiser that's cool too david just put his horse right in between them and get in between them and the lion the whole time. Those guides are brave. They are.

It's funny when you hear about those ones where it's kind of, and I know these guys, like these guides know what they're doing and they've probably done that a billion times, but when you hear the story from the person, it kind of sounds like it's like the first time they've ever like had that happen, you know, where it's like, oh, lions and then like in camp too. It's like, uh-oh, we got lions in camp now. Like maybe they're, I don't know. Just seems like a weird.

I like the detail of the of tips or whatever the rear guards name was. Uh-huh. He shouted calmly. That's a real oxymoron. But I can kind of, I also can hear that in my brain, like how that would happen. Because you don't want to startle this lion at all. Yeah. It's kind of like how you were shouting calmly when we saw that leopard.

Or how Dumbledore was shouting calmly when Harry put his name in the goblet. Just in the book. That's right. That's the whole controversy, right? Yeah. Because he didn't yell. I don't know. I don't care.

He would never get mad at Harry like that. You think Wilt Chamberlain actually slept with 10,000 women with? I think we've talked about this. And to me, that seems unlike crazy. Like, I think if you run the numbers, there has to be multiple nights where there's like five or six women. Well, people didn't think he actually scored 100 points in a game. And it just got, like, proven that he did. That seems a lot easier to prove.

Probably. Pablo Torre has like a podcast and he just proved it. So maybe he can do the 10,000 women next. I guess. How many worker bees do you think queen bees are sleeping with? It's more than 10,000, right? They're putting up numbers, right?

They don't sleep with the workers. Well, whatever. They're like inseminated by or whatever. Yeah, compared to a queen bee, it's not even that impressive, right? I don't know. I can't remember. We talked about this in our episode.

If a queen bee had a career as long as Will Chamber I think it's the drone she sleeps with, right? I don't know. How many drones? That seems like a pretty good career path. Actually, you know what? I'm going to change my mind on that immediately. That sounds like a terrible career path,

just to pump babies out. I'm sorry I even... I bet you... The Quinn usually mates with between 12 and 20 of the drones. Per what? That's total. Just lifetime? Oh, wait, during her mating flights.

Never mind. What? That doesn't make sense. Because don't they have to replenish? Like the whole hive? So I think, yeah, so she probably does multiple mating flights. And on each of those flights, she's mating with 12 to 20 drones. So she's doing pretty well.

It's got to be in the hundreds. I bet you, Will Chamberlain and the Queen Bees kind of start to lose some of the, like, connection you get from sex after a while? Oh, yeah. I think that's probably pretty safe to say. Yeah. It starts to just become a job. Like, will you please?

tell your story. The pillow talk after like the 9,000th one, you're just like... Think of how many cigarettes he must have. I guess you can stay here. Is that what got them in the end? Lung cancer? Okay. My story

comes from Danielle. I don't know which one. Danielle is all it says. Danielle's son. Like a gendered, swapped karate kid. Yeah, they'll do that at some point. I think they kind of did with karate. What was it, Hillary Swank in the third one?

With Hillary Swank. But at some point, they'll have one name Danielle, so they can make that joke. Daniel's on. And instead of Miyagi, it'll be Shiyagi. Because it'll be a... That joke's going. This thing writes itself.

Miyagi is not like a man-yagi. No, but Chi-Agi is good. This is me. We're going to wade through a lot of trash to get to the treasure. when we're writing this script. Okay. I get it.

Right. Yeah. Okay, so this is Danielle. Hey, guys. Last Labor Day, I was sitting by the fire pit near Columbia, South Carolina, holding my phone listening to music. It was late and the fire had burned down. I was sitting in an Indyarindak chair.

Adirondack? Is that how you say that? Adirondack chair. Yeah. Is that one of those? Oh, yeah. Okay, so I was low to the ground. All of a sudden, something just slammed into me,

clamped its jaws around my wrist and started slinging my arm around like my wrist was at the end of a rope and a pit bull had the other end. The sound the animal was making was like a high-pitched zombie growl, which is like Alvin and the chipmunks asking for brains or something? This all happened simultaneously. I couldn't see anything because the fire was low and my phone had been shining in my eyes and there was an animal crawling all over me by this time. The only thing I thought of to do was to put it in a chokehold. It didn't like that. Then I tried to squeeze it as hard as I could to my body so it didn't bite my face in my throat. This pissed it off too. It started growling in a higher pitch tone and was scratching my legs and stomach and arms and biting my hands and fingers.

One of my daughter's dogs, I was at her house, broke his collar to get to me and pulled the thing off of me and fought it, and it ran away. He's my little hero. He got a booster and was fine, by the way. I was covered in dirt and blood because the fight didn't stay in the chair. I got two stitches on my original wrist bite, a nice puncture wound on both wrists, it broke my right pointer finger from a bite. The reason I say it was a fox is because the Department of Health and Environmental Control said it was likely a fox because they are more likely to have furious rabies than most of the animals around the area. And it was about the size of a fox from what I felt. Foxes are still my favorite animals. Poor guy couldn't help it. And oh yeah, my bill was over

$16,000 because I went to the ER. Jeez. That is insane. They put 18,000. vials of immunoglobin in my wounds. Love you guys. Can't wait every week to hear new episodes. Anywho, I have cool scars now, love forever, Danielle. Oh, and she actually sent some, and I'm going to share my screen real quick, because she sent some pictures. Okay, so there's one.

That's not so bad. A lot of damage from just like a fox, you know? That is pretty bad. Yeah. Another wrist injury. Did Jeff say it's not bad? It is bad. And, yeah, from a fox. That's... That finger's bad. I'll give him that.

Yeah, actually, I read this one, and I think later on she had like a fox crawl up onto her AC unit and stare her down in the middle of the night or something. Fox has got it out for this person. I'm pretty sure there is a, like, witch curse, or like a curse you can do where foxes just go after someone. Ooh. Maybe she's cursed. She could be cursed. Yeah, because you would think that if they were like your protectors, they were. wouldn't be just running into you in the night and biting you.

Yeah. Yeah, if she's cursed, it's definitely a bad one. You brought up Alvin and the Chipmunks, and it just makes me think, it would have been pretty cool to live in the 50s where you could just, like, speed up a song and then make, like, a billion dollars and become the most successful children's artist of all time. Like, that's all they did. A whole Christmas album. Yeah.

Yeah. And just, like, say, hey, it's chipmunks. I mean, artists nowadays have some pretty easy songs. too. Yeah. Will Smith. It's been pumping them out recently. Yeah.

Just like, I like pretty girls. Yeah, but how's that song doing? That is fair, though. All right. This one is called the tale of yellow, yellow. And let me see. Mike, you have some tales about yellow, yellow, don't you? I actually drink a lot of water.

This is from Corey. Is that pee joke? I didn't get the joke you just said to my. Yeah, pee. People call pee yellow, right? All right. This is from Gory. It was the summer of 2010.

We were headed out on our annual backpacking trip, this time to the Adirondack Mountains. Oh, Adirondack again. Of upstate New York. I was 16 at the time, and along on the trip were my dad and younger sister and our friends, the Olsons, who had a daughter, my little sister's age, and a son a couple of years older than me. The moms were along as well, but decided. to get a condo near Lake George to join some peace and quiet. There we go. While we're out on the trail.

Mike's hanging with those moms. Love them moms. This crew had been on many backpacking trips together. I will say Mike on the recent backpacking trip that me and Jeff just did, I was like Mike would be so miserable right now. So we had to ride a horse in 23 miles and then it was a week of sleeping in tents. No. Yeah.

This crew had been on many backpacking trips. Did the horses stay in the tents? No, the horses left. I don't understand. Yeah. portions of the Superior hiking trail, the wind rivers, the porcupine mountains, and more. We're lucky to grow up on these adventures and almost always kept great attitudes and had a lot of fun exploring our campsites. You just left the horses outside all night?

Comparing notes. You think we'd put them in the tents? I don't know. It just seems like they're carrying you all the way to the river, and you're just like, no, you can lay in the dirt outside. They dropped us off and then went back. Okay. All right? They do lay down.

By themselves? You just like spanked them and they. ran home. No, with the people that helped us come in. Oh my gosh. You're coming next time just so you can understand better. You think they had like a barn out there? Well, I don't know.

I don't know the logistics. So Corey goes on about some of the adventures they've had. I'm going to skip that part. This particular story involves a black bear name for the two tags she received from the New York Department of Conservation, the notorious yellow yellow. We were about three days into our Adirondack backpacking trip. Conditions were less than ideal as it had been raining basically non-sense. stop since we started the trip at Cold and Dam.

That is less than ideal. Can't horses sleep standing up? I think they can rest standing up, but our horses lay down when they go to sleep. Just in the dirt? Yeah. People are always like horses are such beautiful, elegant animals. They're just laying in the dirt outside. Like every animal does that, Mike.

Truly every animal. Once me and Wes got off the horses, we laid down in the dirt immediately because it hurt so bad. We're in like prime grizzly bear habitat and Jeff just took a nap next to like six raw snakes like out of the air. We'll get into that in categories. We'll let west tell us. Okay. You would step into a puddle on the trail and never know if it was going to be an inch deep or a foot. It was slow and muddy progress, but the good company and albino moose buttholes kept us going, okay, I guess I skipped something that I needed to include it. You rewind a little bit.

Corey did say their favorite camp snacks were dried apple rings, which they called albino moose buttholes. What? That was important context that I had cut. All right. On our third night, we went to store our food and attractants, as we always did, and as the many signs of the trail had reminded us to do. The High Peak's wilderness area was known to have very active black bears, and we came prepared. We hung some food in Kevlar bags and had some in a plastic barrel. vault at the base of a tree.

Us kids even went so far as to rig up the food stash with bells as extra protection. That night, around midnight, my sister and I woke to the sound of bells. We yelled over to our dad to tell him something was at the food, but he reassured us that we had stored things properly, and we were probably just hearing things. It's important to note that we had a history of working each other up about the possibility of bears in camp. On one trip, we even brought our metal camp cups into our tent with the idea banging them together to scare away any bears. Anyway, in the morning, we ran over to our food stash, and where our bear vault should

have been, we found a mess of torn apart, freeze-dried meals, and almost all of our food gone, including the moose butt holes. All that remained was some instant coffee, crystal light packets, and surprisingly, some beef jerky. Upon further investigation, we found the bear vault and could see the bear had stuck its canines into the lid and popped it right off. bear resistant my ass my dad exclaimed as he began to make plans to get a refund if mike was the dad he'd be like it wasn't a bear i'm telling you guys that's how you left it you're just going to gaslight your kids once they're like i told you those bells were a bear daddy but no uh pretty much they decided that they couldn't stay so they went back they went back

When they got back to Minnesota, my dad went to return the bear vault to REI and informed them that this contraption was in fact not bear resistant. They pointed him to an asterisk on their website stating that they did not guarantee the vaults would work in the cold and dam area of the Adirondacks, as there was a bear there called Yellow Yellow Yellow, who had learned to open the canister. Oh, yellow, yellow, yellow. Yeah. A few years later, we found an article stating that Old Yellow Yellow had been killed by a hunter

around 20 years old. She'd gained fame in the Adirondacks for ingenuity and ability to open several different tested and certified bear resistant containers. Pretty interesting. Corey goes on to say that they're now a wildlife educator in Montana, and they talk about that story when they're giving lessons on bear safety. And you know what? I wanted to include this one because I do think it has some cool lessons in it.

The first one being that the verbiage for those, like the wordage for the bearer resistant stuff is very intentional. Resistant is the operating word there. We do not say bear proof because bears are really good at getting into things. So bear resistant is the word and it's really smart to do anything extra you can to protect your food if you're in like in bear country because even stuff that's billed as being bear resistant bears can sometimes figure it out including like coolers, these bear resistant containers, ursacs, all of that stuff. Langley? You think a bear would be good in the Tom Cruise roll in Mission Impossible? Just like getting through the lasers.

Yeah. And then I think the other thing too that we need to talk about is just sweat. Because bears, if they don't sweat, they wouldn't even have to like be careful with the sweat drop on the floor. Oh yeah, then they don't have knives. So they're not going to drop the knife. You know? Right. Yeah. Black Bear would have been much better than Tom Cruise in that hole. I'll finally give you what you're looking for.

That's what I'm talking about. So me and Jeff were just, we were just on a week-long trip and we hung our food every night. And to be honest, sometimes when you're around Black bears, I even hesitate to do it because they are such incredible climbers. And you kind of have to have a perfect hang to avoid any kind of problems. Like you have to be up at least 10 feet. You have to be out away from the tree, at least four feet. five feet and even then sometimes the bears can get to it so once i was talking to tom and he said what he does is he just puts all of his food in one bag tries to cut down as much scent as possible and then

just takes it a few hundred yards away from camp and stashes it because if a bear's going to get it it's going to get it is kind of how he thought and he was like i'd rather just get it and be out of there than spend the whole night trying to get into the tree and get the food i'm not saying that's what I advise. I still think personally I think hanging is better, but you have to really look into the proper way to hang your food because if you don't, there's a good chance of bear will get it if they're around like that. We're me and Jeff where we weren't that careful because there's really not that many bears. But one night we did see one. So we'll get into that later, I'm sure. You said this bear was tagged twice. What's the use in how many, can you just like keep tagging bears? What use is that?

There's certain parts of the country while they'll just continue putting in new tags. I've seen some bears in like the Great Lakes area that have like 15 tags in their ears. And it doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why you would ever do that. I don't really like it either. I didn't really even like putting one in. So I don't really get why that happens. I think sometimes the state wildlife agencies just have like a way of keeping track of how many times they've caught that bear.

And that's an easy way to do it. But I don't really think it's fair personally. Do you think it's kind of like a 50 cent situation where he gets to brag he got shot nine times to all of his bear friends? When they meet up, the more tags you have. Or maybe it's like a mark of shame. Like I've gotten caught 15 times and the rest of the bears are like, you kind of suck. A scarlet letter. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. But I think it's really funny that that company had that exact bear as like the asterix in their company's like description for that product. If I were hiring a bear to break into Langley with me, I'd want one with zero tags that had never gotten caught even once, you know? Yeah, you don't want, and you don't want that tag. That is an interesting point, Mike. Like, R.E.I should have hired the bear to show them, like, how it gets in so that they could have designed a thing that. Like, it's like hackers, how hackers get jobs when they hack someone, you know?

Black hat hackers. It's funny you should bring that up, Jeff, because they do that actually. It's not REI that does it, but like the bears at the West Yellowstone Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, there's a bear there that's really good at breaking into things. So they've essentially hired that bear to test all of the bear-resistant stuff. They like throw in any new bear-resistant containers and see if that bear can crack it. Betts you that bear has more money than any other bears. That bear's got to be rich. What's the compensation here?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Gooder sunglasses are the best sunglasses for fishing. You can see straight through the water. You see all the fish. It's almost like you're cheating. Muenwes just did a float trip through the wilderness in Montana. And me, Wes, our dad, our cousin Brent, and our oldest brother, all were using gooder sunglasses by the end of the trip.

I actually brought two pairs of the Basset Hound dreams just because I love them for fishing. And I forgot that it is my oldest brother's birthday. while we're going to be out there. So on his birthday, I was able to give him some new sunglasses and he could immediately tell the difference between these and his expensive sunglasses he uses for fishing. And he used the Gooder Basset Hound dreams the rest of the trip. He loves him. I think he's sold on him. The best part of Gooder, though, is there are only $25 a pair, and you get 30 days of free returns if you don't like them. They also have a one-year warranty. I wear them all the time. I love them for a road trip. I love them if I have a headache just to kind of dole down that sun a bit.

They're the best. So if you need a new pair of Sunnies, Gooder is giving tooth and claw listeners free shipping. You can go to gooder.com slash tooth and use code tooth for free shipping. That's just $25. No shipping. Gooder offers a 30-day money back guarantee and 100% satisfaction. Again, that's gooder.com slash tooth. Use code tooth for free shipping. All right, well, should I do one? Sure. Okay. Hey, Jeff, Mike, and Wes.

Oh, Wes, last place. Is that hurt, Wes? No. Even when I sign emails from all three of us, I always put myself last. But I always go first on categories. I think they're going tallest to shortest. I'm, I... Jeff is 6-2.

Yeah, because if I just say six foot, it sounds like I'm lying. Right. Like you've rounded up. Because I am. You are. Yeah. But still, it sounds like it, too. My name is Manuel.

Man, I'm just struggling to it. My name is Manuel, and I'm from deep south Texas, what is known as the Rio Grande Valley, right on the border with Mexico. This is a story of my first snake encounter and how I became fascinated. with snakes to this day. It was a summer day at our family ranch, and I was in first or second grade of elementary school, so about 20 to 22 years ago. My job at the time was to open the gates so my dad could pass through with our truck. That's his job. Just to open gates. On the last gate to leave the ranch to go home, as I opened the gate, I happened to see my first ever wild snake of some kind coming out of the thorn scrub,

and in the middle of the dirt road, all the sudden it stopped moving, which I thought was weird. My dad, wondering what the holdup was, why aren't you opening those gates? It is, there could be a million reasons why he couldn't do his job, you know? Got off the truck to see what I was staring at,

and that's when he told me as a Western Diamondback rattlesnake. around four feet long, and to be careful around them since they are venomous. He also found it interesting that the snake could not move the whole time, so we waited a bit more just to see if it would slither off when the unexpected happened. A large black snake, which turned out to be an indigo snake, about seven feet long, had come out of the thorn scrub as if it had been following the rattlesnake. At that point, my dad told me to be very still since I was about to witness something that I might only see

once in my entire life. The indigo snake slowly crept up to the rattlesnake and started nudging its nose at the sides of the rattlesnake, working its way closer to the head. Mike, the head, what's dangerous about ralsnake's heads? That's where their teeth live. Exactly. The rattlesnake was not moving as if they're playing dead. As bull snakes had met head to head in a split second, the rattle snake tried to buy.

the indigo. The indigo countered even faster and bit down on the rattlesnakes head and slithered off into the thorn scrub with the rattlesnake in its mouth. Whoa. My dad later told me that indigo snakes will sometimes eat rattlesnakes if the opportunity presents itself. I mean, I feel like the dad might have just figured that one out by watching an indigo snake why eat a rat? He's like, actually, that one sometimes eats that one. First and second grade, you can teach your kids just like what you see. Amazed at what I just seen triggered something in me to have an obsession with snakes the rest of my life.

To the point where I did my master's thesis on snake's fungal disease just so I could work with snakes. That's really cool. Also, my dad was right. Ever since then, I have not witnessed another instance where an indigo snake hunts down a rattlesnake. Wow. Pretty cool. That is cool. That's really cool.

That's really cool. Yeah. Indigo snakes are beautiful, too. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Like, they're big black kind of, they kind of have like a purple erodescence to them. They're just really cool snakes.

That's like one of my top. That's what you're into, Wes. One of my top bucketless snakes for the, for the U.S., if I'm being honest. You wish, you wish Jesse were more iridescent, probably. Yeah, I just wish she shined a little bit more purple. Makes me wish I had a job opening gate so I could have. seen something like that, you know? Yeah.

I don't know. Sometimes, like, in Lord of the Rings, those big trolls that have to open the black gates, that's like... It's a lot of jobs. Yeah. Like, a lot of people at Mordor's job is just to open and close that gate.

You know, not all of them are, like, super motivated. And that orc goes home, and its wife is like, how is work? It's like, uh, it was okay. Open more gates. I saw this weird little guy rolled down the hill and then he just disappeared. It was crazy.

Ogar was laid again, so we had to open the gate twice. All right. Ogar. I think it's my turn, right? Yeah. This one's a little, I saved the longer one for my last story.

This is from Louise. Hi, guys. Hi. Hey. I might have left it a bit late to get this to you in time for your Mother's Day episode, but I thought I'd still give it a shot. Hi.

We're past that, yeah. Prior to COVID, we made introductions already. We're moving on. Prior to COVID, I used to go to Bali, Indonesia, every year with my mom. Being from Perth, Western Australia, it's a super close travel and fairly cheap overseas travel destination. In 2015, you don't really think about that, like, how people that live in other countries, it's like, like, Bali is the same thing as, like, them going to Cancun or something for us. Right.

It's pretty cool. I've heard I've not been to Bali. Have you been to Bali West? No, I'd like to go sometime. Yeah, me too. You heard it's a ball. That's such a good. That's funny.

Thanks for making that joke, Jeff. In 2015, my new at the time partner and youngest brother joined us for the first time, so we decided to do some extra touristy things this time around. While in Uboud, we thought we'd visit the famous monkey forest. Not just full of monkeys. it has beautiful old temples, carvings, and waterfalls. Sounds great. After paying the entry fee, my mom and I wondered ahead

while my partner and brother dawdled at the entrance. I sat down on the rock while lining the path to wait for them. Immediately, a tiny baby monkey jumped on my lap and grabbed at the ticket I was still holding in my hand. Now, Balinese monkeys are notoriously not shy and are even known to be downright aggressive. You're warned not to carry things openly is they will steal them, especially food, sunglasses, and hats.

But this was a baby. And I think that makes a difference. I don't. Babies are subject to the law, just like the rest of us. I'm standing my ground. Yeah. They're not. Are they not?

You can't just shoot a baby if it comes on your... For a baby, like, stole this property? Well, I think, right? What makes them any different? I'm all about being, like, equally subject to the law, in my opinion. I actually don't know that. I'm not sure. I don't think.

But in Texas, if a baby, like, crawls up onto your property, you're not allowed to shoot them. You're saying, Wes. I think in Texas, you probably are. Right? Yeah. What if, like, you're at a grocery store and the baby, like, steals a sucker off the shelf? I don't think it should be prosecuted. I'm just going to go ahead and come out and say.

I don't think babies should be held to the same laws as adults. Wait, but in the animal world, you know, I think sometimes you see a baby animal and you think, oh, yeah, this one's safe. And this is like, you know, obvious, but often parents are very protective of their babies, primates especially. So I wouldn't ever recommend messing with a baby animal when its parents might be nearby especially, you know? Oh. What about like a whale baby? Because like, yeah, they're only like a week or too old, but they're like huge. So I feel like they should have more responsibility for being that big already.

Yeah, I would agree with that. That one you can shoot if it comes into your yard, Mike, in Texas. All right, we're moving on. As it pulled at the ticket in my hand, I pulled back playing tug-of-war with it. But then the ticket tore suddenly, which startled it, and it leaned down and bit me on the thigh. Its sharp little teeth dug into me, and reflexively I shoved it off my lap. What I didn't realize at the time was that behind me, beneath the wall I was sitting on, were two large adult monkeys. Oh, Wes called it.

When I shoved the baby off my lap, it shrieked, and those two big adults leapt to its rescue, jumping on my back and biting me in several places. Ugh, that's not good. Macax. Macacs. Is that what these are, probably, in Bali? Yeah. Oh, most certainly. Luckily, I was able to stand up and fling my arms back, somehow managing to throw these monkeys off of me.

I launched myself forward as I did that. My mom grabbed me and pushed me behind her. As these two monkeys stalked up the path towards us bearing their enormous teeth. It's like a parent off. Like her mom's protecting her, the monkey's mom's are protect. That's interesting. And you know a mama bear is just like rare indigo when she sees other moms squaring off. This girl's a bear?

She didn't specify whether she was a bear. Right back in, Louise. As these two monkeys stalked up the path towards us bearing their enormous teeth, my mom stood in front of me, put her palm out towards them and yelled, stop. Ooh, that works with velociraptors too. Yeah. Yeah. She stood in that power pose like a five foot three gand off the gray and leaned towards me

whispering, be quiet, just act non-threatening. I cowered behind her, trembling, panting, and staring at these monkeys, my mind going a million miles a minute, but suddenly stuck on, how the hell do I look non-threatening? After what felt like an eternity, they flashed their teeth again, then picked up the baby and sauntered off. Nice. Hand out. Worked.

I burst into tears and my mom hurried me back up the path, passed my confused partner to the nurse's station at the entrance, which is there for exactly this reason. Which would have been so, like, if I was the partner in that situation, I'd be like, oh, no. Yeah. Especially since this is like a new relationship. You're like, I messed up somehow, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I made her five-foot-three mom save her life.

I'd go, like, track down the monkeys. Yeah. You show up for the hospital, which is a handful of dead monkeys. I got them. Or at least just, like, slap them around a little. Just film yourself slapping them. Anything for the gram, you know? No, don't do that for the gram.

Don't do that. The nurse tried to calm me down as we assessed the damage. I'd gotten away lightly with only scratches, really. There were clear bite-shaped marks on my upper arms that were bleeding slightly, but it could have been a lot worse. Somehow their teeth had only scratched me, but not really broken the skin. Do you think that matters for a rabies situation? I think if she's bleeding, I think it's pretty bad, you know?

Like, because then you have saliva hitting your bloodstream. I think that's all that it takes. but I also don't really think monkeys are big rabies vectors either. I could be wrong there. I think there's other diseases you have to worry about, but maybe not rabies as much. But yeah. As we watched the blood off my arms,

I had a moment to think about what happened, and I looked at my mom in astonishment. You pushed me behind you, I said in shock. She looked at me like I was stupid. Of course I did, she said matter-of-factly. What else was I supposed to do? Yeah, but what were you going to do? Fight them?

I said laughing a little even though I was still shaking. I hadn't thought that far ahead yet. All I knew is that I had to get you away from them, she replied. My mom, an absolute hero, ladies and gentlemen. Great mom. Yeah. Now comes the rabies part. Even though at the time rabies hadn't been found in Abood monkeys for a long time,

and they regularly test any dead monkeys they do find, it's still better to get the shots than take the risk of a breakthrough case. I had to have a tetanist shot in the first two shots of the rabies course. And when I got back to Australia, I had to have the rest of the injections, which I can tell you now, were not fun at all. They work out the amount based on your body weight. So, Jeff, you're getting out. Oh, man.

You know, you're getting like, Shut up, dude. I weigh a lot more than you probably. I'm betting. I don't know about that. Well, you're taller than me. When I got back to Australia, I had to have the rest of the injections, which I can tell you now, were not fun at all.

I read that part. But I just wanted to emphasize how not fun. They should make them fun. I'd be surprised if they were fun. Fouchy, yeah. At least like the band-aids they put over the injections, make them like peanuts themed or something. Yeah, you can make those fun. Man.

Where was I? Just like give you laughing gas. Like the dentist wasn't fun until they started using laughing gas. And that's fun. Yeah. A lot of fun videos out there. Until they started using like mint and grape-flavored fluoride. I wasn't having that much fun there.

Maybe they should use like a grape-flavored rabies injection. That might be good. In total, there were eight injection points. None of them tasted like grape, I bet. On my upper arm, elbow, and the massive mouth-shaped bruise on my hip. And one on my thigh where... I'm sorry. It's such a dumb joke to lose it on.

I think it's a good idea. I almost got through it with that. All right. I hate that joke. I'm back. Okay. Eight injection points on my upper arm, elbow, and the massive mouth-shaped bruise on my hip. and one on my thigh where the baby bit me. So all up, I needed 11 shots to make sure I was safe.

The travel doctor back home told me I was very lucky, as they'd seen some horrific injuries caused by Bolly monkeys. Maccax probably? Yeah, bolly monkeys is what they specified here as. Almost for sure. I got away without any scars, and an exciting story I can tell at parties. I now have a healthy amount of respect for monkeys

who are thankfully easy to avoid back in Australia. I'll take spiders, snakes, and sharks any day of the week. Lots of love, Louise. Thank you, Louise. Monkeys can be scary. Yeah. Macacs can be really, like, very defensive animals. So, yeah, that is scary.

And I feel like that's an animal when you get bit by. You kind of just feel like it's a dirty bite, you know? Like, there's certain animals. If I got bit by, I'd just be like, oh, whatever. Like a lizard or something, I'd just kind of be like, yeah, you know, I got bit by a lizard. But if it's a monkey, you kind of worry about some disease transmission. Depends on how cute the monkeys. That's true.

If it was like a gibbon, I'd probably just be like, that was a cute. Titty monkey. I guess gibbons are apes, but yeah. It's not even a joke, they're cute. They are cute. Just happens to be their name. Squirrel monkeys. Yeah, if you get bit by monkey, get it checked out.

Unless it's a Clovis monkey. It says, are cute. Yeah. And don't worry about it. You're A-OK. Surely all of our listeners know that August is actually poop month, right? You guys all know that. There's a month for everything now, and August is poop.

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Oh, okay. You do yours then. Okay. All right, so this is from Jacob. So imagine I, a young college student, am on the beaches of Santa Barbara, California, on a beautiful day in the summertime. This is before COVID, so the world was still beautiful. After a day of water play, I put my shirt back on to go to dinner with my sisters.

While in the car, I feel a weird pain on my nipple. I look down my shirt to see why, and a scorpion is stinging my nipple. He must have hitched a ride on my shirt while it was in the sand. Anyway, it didn't hurt that bad, but I was scared. We pulled over, took my shirt off, and brushed them off into the bushes. I read the last line of this one. Oh yeah. If you read my story, can Wes please be the reader? No. As someone with sensitive nipples, this one really stuck out to me.

I hate getting my nipples stung or pinched or anything, so I would, you're a worse nightmare. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. It's like, like, honestly, I can handle it. and hit in the nuts more than like a real hard that used to be that was like how you could end something with jeff is just be like i'm going to give you a titty twister and he'd be like okay okay okay i'm done dude once i get ripped i might i might just like do that as an excuse like if i'm going out just put a scorpion in my shirt so i can take my shirt off yeah i'd be like oh shoot squirreeper in my shirt guess i can't wear this you know yeah i do

And then I had one other one I just thought it's funny in context to us being on National Park After Dark, Lass. Yeah, do it. So we were on National Park After Dark. I read a story about a goose attack. And let's just say us three had a little fun with it, especially me and Wes saying, you know, geese shouldn't actually be that scary, was kind of our take. But then Wes said, like, I don't even think your scars are from a guy. goose and he's kind of retracted that a little bit.

Yeah, I found the photos and I was like, okay, I found some photos of goose bites and there were some pretty bad ones. So I said, okay. So this one's titled, geese are scary, Wes. Here you get to go second. Hi, Jeff, Wes, and Mike. I'm Kim and I live in Maine. Maine's pretty dull when it comes to predatory animals as we don't have many.

Probably our most dangerous animal is the moose or gris. white sharks. Anyways, when I was young, I was on a lake with my dad and brother. My dad dropped my brother and I off on an island and I was reading Twilight, Team Edward, I hope, and my brother was wandering around as my dad was outfishing. After a few minutes, my brother comes up to me and says, there's a big snake. He looks quite scared, but I, of course, annoyed said, there's no big snakes like that in Maine. But he was adamant, so I went looking for the snake and stumbled across a fully pissed-off mother Canadian goose.

Hopefully, he didn't think that goose was a snake, right? They might need to do some testing with her brother. She was hissing wings out, pissed. I can fully relate. They both hiss. Relate to the story. Yeah. I think he probably heard the hissing and thought it was a long neck.

You know, that looks kind of like a snake. You're right. I think he just heard it. Yeah. Yeah, maybe I detesting. This is like, this isn't it picky. I'm just going to say this, though, for people out there, you know, the name of this animal is Canada goose, not Canadian goose. But it's fine if you call it a Canadian goose.

No, it's not a big deal. But just so people know, the actual proper way to say it is Canada goose. It's good to know, though, like, because if they were Canadian geese, that would mean, like, they would need identification to come to the United States. States. Right. Like they would need their papers and stuff. They are Canadians. I think being a Canada goose, they don't necessarily need that.

Yeah. Yeah. Is that true? I don't think that's it. But I think more, I just say that because if you're around birders and you say like Canadian goose, someone's going to be like, it's a canada goose, like I just did. But I tried to do it in a much nicer way than sometimes people say it. Because I've been corrected with that one before.

Well, I mean, this was supposed to be a short one. so I blame you if it takes long now. I can fully relate to the story that one girl on your co-lab with National Park after dark, geese are scary. What? So I was like, uh, backed away only to be met by what I assumed was a father goose equally as pissed behind us. So what did we do? Well, the only rational thing and started screaming and running, which caused the geese to start chasing us hissing. I will say geese are very brave.

My dad came over, got the boat as close as he could, and told us to swim. The geese pursued. I know you said, West, they're not scary and harmless, but they're super scary when they chase you hissing, flapping their wings. And would be scary if you're, like, swimming and they're still chasing you. In the water, I'd be scared. That's how people could die by a goose. It's like, you overreact so much. You, like, drown yourself in a lake or something.

Yeah. Run into a telephone pole and bonk your head really hard. Like that girl in hereditary. Got in the boat and they actually were flying at the boat hissing and making horrible sounds. I had to swing the oars of the boat at them while my dad started the engine to get away. Imagine a goose in the car. It could get its heads so far out of the window. Not safe from any telephone.

The telephone pole. It's having an asthma attack. Anyway, all that to say. that's probably my wildest animal encounter I've ever experienced. I have more like getting bit bad pig, picking up a bat with my bare hands and watching my friend get chased by a squirrel. But this story felt sufficient. Love the podcast list in every week. Also, P.S.

Wonder if you're going to cover the shark attack in Maine was the first we ever had a few years ago. Yeah, we'll probably get to it at some point. I love how they're like, this is my scariest animal attack ever, more so than seeing my friend get. chased by a squirrel. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, how'd you pick between those two? It's a low bar.

Yeah. Can animals be just on the topic of hereditary? Can animals be allergic to things? Is that a naturally occurring phenomenon in other species? I would have to imagine so. I don't know. And I know that like for humans, a lot of the reasons we're so allergic to things now

is because we've kind of like put ourselves in a position to like stop a lot of the natural things that typically make you so you're not allergic. to a lot of things, you know? Like we've cut down on our parasite load and all these different things that used to kind of keep us at an equilibrium. But yeah, I'm sure they can. Like, I know dogs can be like allergic

to like different medicines and stuff. Oh, yeah. Interesting. I would say to this story, Kim, that is scary. Like geese can look really big and be very aggressive, but also like had you just not reacted, nothing would have happened probably. I kind of felt I felt bad after our MPAD collab because we really kind of laughed about that.

And when we did our goose episode, I told people like, don't be afraid of geese. They are intimidating. Like when a big bird is flying at you and hissing and like not flying away because birds always fly away, it's intimidating. What I was trying to say is like if you can override that and just say, listen, there's really not much this bird can do to hurt me. then there's a very, very, very, very good chance that if you just hold your ground and don't do anything, that it's just going to leave. Like any animal where an umbrella is like a hundred percent effective at deterring an attack, it's like maybe not that scary as animal. But the thing that I worry about is people running from them or people like freaking out getting hurt by like tripping and falling or like running into something or drowning. Yeah, whatever.

That, I think, is where the larger danger comes from. So my advice was just hold your ground. And remember, it's just a bird. There's really not much it can do to hurt you. You think that guy we just saw at the lake, there's like a goose that distracted him when he was trying to catch that drone? Oh, yeah. Me and Jeff saw a guy, like, chop three of his fingers off with a drone.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. It was funny because they were droning the lake, and Wes was, like, telling me, like, hey, Jeff, like, ask him what they were looking for. And I was like, no, I don't want to, like, go over there. And then the guy, like, comes, like, marching so fast straight at us.

And I was like, oh, maybe I will ask him. And he just comes up and he's like, hey, I just chopped off my finger. Can you guys watch the boat? Well, I go to the hospital. And we're like, yeah, I guess so. And then as he's leaving, I was like, hey, what were you guys looking at? And he's like, oh, we're just messing around. I had the same thought when he came over.

I was like, oh, we'll get to ask him. And then when he told us, he chopped his fingers off. I'm like, oh, I'm absolutely not asking him now. Yeah. In retrospect, I shouldn't have still asked. Like, I shouldn't have took his time to stop, turn around again and have to, like, respond to that question. It was pretty funny, though. I'm glad you asked him.

All right. All right. Great. Well, that does it for our stories. That does it for our stories. Thanks for standing. I'm in a, and them, thanks. I tried.

That was hard. Cool. All right. So let's do categories. So I thought the detail in Manuel's story was kind of funny of just like, I'm sure, I'm sure he was helping out. And, I mean, he was only in first or second grade, but he said my job was to open gates, the gates. So I asked, most simple pop culture job. And I can start us off.

What? Yeah, I'll pull away. This is a job. I'll go with in, I always mix them up. I think it's Infinity War or Endgame. I think it's Infinity War. Where there's like that one, what are the jewels called again? Infinity Stones.

Infinity stones. There's that one infinity stone where you like have to sacrifice yourself to get it like one of the people had to die yeah and there's that one dude from the first captain american whose whole job was just to wait at the stone to be like you guys are at the stone you can go get it now it's just like that's his only job was waiting that entire time just to like tell them what they already pretty much knew going into it yeah that is a that's a pretty simple job he had could not have been making that much wasn't it like a punishment wasn't it wasn't He like kind of in like

I think so but it's still a job Still a job. Yeah it's a good point Boring job Maybe that's a good point though Because like if it's so boring Doesn't it kind of start getting hard to do If you're just standing there That's maybe the hardest

That's a terrible job Like easiest is In terms of responsibilities Probably you're right But well I didn't say easiest Oh did you not? He said simplest You're right okay

Got me on technicality I'm saying Homer Simpson Because Homer Simpson It's like that great kind of Like weird dichotomy He has like a really important job Where he's like a safety coordinator For a nuclear power plant

But he also just has to like Push a button You know And so I really like Just kind of how they show his job As being really really complicated And important But also like the simplest stupidest job

that a monkey could do. You know, like the one where he puts on all the weight so he can work at home, he just sets up that little bird to like hit the Yiki over and over and over again, which ends up causing some problems. But yeah, he has a very simple, funny job. He made my short list. I'm glad you took him. I'm going to go with Daniel Stern's character in a movie called Blue Thunder.

It's an early 1980s film about a police helicopter unit. And Roy Scheider is like the main point. pilot doing kind of some stuff. And then Daniel Stern is the co-pilot. And he just sits on the side and just looks, peeps into ladies' houses with binoculars through their windows. So that's pretty simple. He doesn't really do anything beyond that.

That's a great movie, though. I'm going to shout that out real quick. Awesome chase scene. You love Roy. Under scene, I guess, I all say. And I love Roy. You love anything with Roy in it. I do.

I got honorable mention, too. Yeah. I want to go with Michael Buffer. The guy at, like, all the fights. That's the right answer. And he got, like, the patent on, uh, let's get ready to rumble. So he's, like, the only one who can say it. Yeah.

So they just bring them to, like, every huge fight. And all he does is go out there and say, like, let's get ready to rumble. That is the right answer. And he's getting paid hell of money to do it, too. He's great at it. I want to shout out my job in the locker room during college, probably. That's not really. I did that one to you a bit.

We would just, like, our job was to check their student ID and, like, to give them a bracelet so they could go use the facilities. But my shift was always 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. And I would just, I don't go to sleep until late. I can't. So I'd be so sleepy. You did that job, too? Yeah, for a little bit. And Mike had set a precedent, too, like, my first day at work at that job.

he was just hitting a tennis ball as hard as he could with a golf club in the office we worked in so I was like okay this job doesn't matter but yeah he told me like sometimes he would just set the bracelets out and like lay down on the ground and people just grabbed the bracelet and that became like the only thing I did was just set them all out and take nats. And that's how I became the man I am today. If you've been listening to the podcast for a bit, you know that one thing I really, really care about is seafood. I know that a lot of fish is caught unsustainably, that it's terrible for our oceans, and it's a huge problem that often goes largely ignored. So when Wild Alaskan company approached us about reading ads, I initially thought there's absolutely no way that we're going to read ads for a seafood company.

But then I called some marine biologist friends. I did a lot of research online and I was incredibly impressed by Wild Alaskan sustainability policies. I learned that they are one of the most sustainable seafood companies that are out there. Their fish is all wild caught from Alaska. Every order supports sustainable harvesting practices. And your membership is going to deliver flexible shipments, expert tips, and truly feel good seafood. You're going to have 100% wild caught never farmed fish. That means there's no antibiotics, no GMOs or additives, just clean, real fish that supports

healthy oceans and fishing communities. And fishing is a part of life. It's something that, you know, people have been doing a very long time and you can do it sustainably. And a wild Alaskan really proves that. It's been fun for me to finally reintegrate some seafood into my diet. Their fish is delicious. The three of us have talked about that quite a bit.

It's just a really great company that I'm proud to support. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com slash tooth for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That's wildalaskan.com slash tooth for $35 off your first order. And again, I would not recommend them if I didn't believe in them. So thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. What's the next category?

Three highlights for me and Wes's backcountry rafting trip we just did. At the end of our trip, my dad had parked the truck in the wrong spot, and because of that, Brent was either going to have to hike like 10 miles to get to the truck, or we could run this section of river that we'd never done, and we thought it was like too crazy to run. But the last day of the trip, we bumped into this outfitter, and she told us that it was doable, that we could do it. And so the last morning, me and Brent got to take our pack rafts down this whitewater section that was pretty crazy.

But I told this story just recently on Too Scary didn't watch. So a little more detail over there if you want to listen to that. But there was a section where me and Brent, we were like in this tight canyon with just the river in the middle. And we came into this area and there's like 10, 17-year-old boys perched on the walls, just like gargoyles. And they're just immediately antagonistic with us. Like one of them immediately starts calling me a pussy and just like,

spitting chew at me and just like really upset and one starts yelling at Brent too and then as we're floating through Brent's just got like his head down he's looking at his phone to look at the map and one of them says hey you're probably from Canada right and I was like no we're from Missoula and he's like that's stupid and I look at him and I was like you're stupid and then they immediately like got mad at us and like start talking with each other and I just felt really dumb because once Brent got beat up in front of us because he talked back to a big group of kids like that. And so we got down river a little bit and we had to portage around this rapid. And as we were portaging, I saw their backpack that these kids had lost. I didn't know they had lost it. I thought

maybe they just left it there to come back to. And they could like barely not see us where we were if I like crept along the rocks. So it was creeping up the rock and I opened up their backpack and there some drinks in there and I asked Brent, what were they doing? There's just Mountain Dews. No beers? No. So it's like, I think I'm going to take their drinks.

And Brent's like, if there's a beer, take it. And I was opening their backpack and I was thinking in my head, like, this is horror movie shit. This is like where you're yelling at the person, don't do it, don't do it, you know? And so I zipped it back up and just got out of there. Good move. So, yeah. You got him good though.

That was my first one. Called a bunch of 12-year-old stupid. Nice, dude. You got them. And then there was... They were in the parking lot where I hiked out, too. I didn't have a pack raft, so I couldn't do the float with them. But they were like causing ruckus.

These kids wanted to fight. All they had was Pepsi, and it was so funny. Yeah. One of them had a black eye. Like, they were looking for trouble. Well, and they were in that canyon, and you have to, like, hike in. So these guys got up at like 5 a.m. just to like go harass people. Just to yell at rafters.

My number two would probably be at one of our campsites. We had a black bear walk by. And it was just, it's always fun to be out in the middle of the wilderness and just see like a black bear. And then my number three is honestly, you know, me and Jeff get to spend a lot of time together now because of the podcast. And just we always kind of have lived close. I didn't get to see Cyrus as much because, he got married younger and, like, has a family and just is more busy than us. It's really fun for me to, like, see Cyrus be able to kind of let loose for a week.

He's really funny. We don't talk about Cyrus that much on the podcast, but he's just really a funny, kind person. And so it was really fun just to have a week with our older brother, too. I love Cyrus. Yeah. He's awesome. Yeah. My favorite thing was, so a while.

back on social media, I saw someone who, like, did a handstand on a toilet seat and then peed into the toilet over their face. So I tried to do that, and it, like, wasn't even close. I had to pee so bad. I wasn't even close. So I told everyone, like, oh, yeah, it's impossible to pee upside down. And my cousin was like, I could pee upside down. And I was like, I'll give you $300 if you can pee upside down.

And he did a headstand against a tree and tried to pee and couldn't. And it was the funniest looking thing ever. But then he drank more and tried again later and peed. And then our oldest brother was also like, I think I could do that. I was like another couple hundred bucks just because he did not seem like he would ever try it. And he did it. He did it well, I have to admit, too. Wow.

That was one of the funnier. things I've seen in a while. Money well spent, in my opinion. Another funny moment, there was a time when I'd like boiled over a little bit and I was letting out a little bit of steam and I was like also across the river from like West Side and my dad so I like had to yell and as we're like in a confrontation I caught like the biggest trout I just had to like end what I was saying and like go catch this fish and I thought it's kind of funny. It's a good, yeah. Peacemaking fish.

That's nice. Yeah, but it's a great trip. Beautiful. Wait, I thought you were supposed to do three. Well, you took bear. You took the bear one. All right. Okay, what's something you recommend?

Mike, I call it. I want to, if you want to do one that's like media and one that's just like, Something you own, too. That would be fine. Something we own. Okay. I'll explain. I've been really into my shower, boof thing, you know?

Boof? Yeah, your lufa. Yeah, your lufa. Oh, yeah. I think boofing is something a little different. Lufa. Like, that thing just keeps the soap going forever. Yeah.

And I didn't realize that. I've just been using my hands my whole life. Yeah. And it feels kind of nice. it like scratches you while you use it. So I've been really happy with that. They make those from like an animal too. Like that comes from something in the ocean.

I'm pretty sure Mark didn't. That's what I thought. Mine was like a dollar at a grocery store. I'm pretty sure mine's just plastic. Plastic sounds bad. Yeah. Dried fibrous fruit of the lufa plant, a type of gourd. Hmm.

Huh. Any of that? That's probably like the nice ones though. I bet there's plastic ones too. Jeff just boofing soap in the shower. Nice. It's the bloodstream faster. So that's what you're recommending is Lufus?

Well, I got a media one, too. Let's hear your media one. Been really loving the first two episodes of South Park. Just so good. It has been really good. They're back on. The AI Trump campaign thing at the end of the first one just killed me where like, you just got to watch it if you want to. But it was so, it's so good.

And like, especially where. Trump had just sued the guy who, like, owns the network they're on. And then the guy gave them, like, $1.5 billion deal. Yeah. And then their first two episodes are just raping the guy who just sued them for, like, it's like the context just adds so much to the funniness to me. I'm going to go ahead for my immediate one and say the movie Weapons, which is the new Zach Krieger or Crager, however you say it.

Mike, let's go. Horror movie. I did already. Oh, you dick. I know, I'm sorry. We both saw it opening night. This was the movie I was looking forward to, probably the most this year of any movie.

I loved Barbarian, which was that director's first movie. And I think I liked this one even more. Like it was like part thriller, part mystery, part just like balls to the wall, horror. Like multiple moments that just made me squirmed. Spoiler.

I'm not spoiling anything. It was better. made me swear. I don't want you to. Just like gave me everything I wanted. And I saw it alone and just left the theater. Saying you liked it is a spoiler because now I know I'll like it. Okay.

Saying you even saw it is kind of a spoiler. So that's my media recommendation. My item recommendation, we just talked about this a little bit, but I have a packraft that I used on our trip through the wilderness. And I really, really, really liked it. was from alpaca pack rafts and it was just like really fun to kind of like have this little vessel that just sits one person weighs nine pounds and I could pack all of my stuff inside of it it just made me feel very free like I felt like I could go do a very long trip with just that

and be able to float a river and just really liked it. It was just a cool feeling. So that that's like my thing. Yeah, I've got it. That I'm excited about. Yeah, you do. You spoiled that whole like you, there's nothing even left for you to even think about it. I didn't spoil it for you. No, but for yourself. I could have texted you right after I saw it and been like, I really loved it. Spoiled it for himself by watching it. Yeah, you watched the entire thing.

What I don't like is when someone like doesn't give you any kind of lead to interject. Like where I just said, my thing is the movie weapons. Like that lets people be like, oh, I don't want to hear this. I'm going to skip ahead. But if I just like said, I've loved how. scary and crazy the movie weapons was. You know, I get how someone kind of might be like, yeah, I don't even want to hear anything. Sure.

Or when our mom with the newest James Bond, spoilers, where she asked me first, like, have you seen the new James Bond? And I had been busy and it came out like a week ago. And I said, no, I haven't. And she said, he dies. It's like, why are you asking if I saw it if you're just going to spoil it? Our dad will be watching a movie with our dad and he'll be like, oh, I hope this isn't the part where he's about to die. The worst was...

Like right before the scene. He was so excited for me to watch that like Beatles movie yesterday. Oh, yeah. But then like the main jokes of the movie is like... Yeah, he'd be like, oh, they don't have Coca-Cola or Harry Potter either. I was just like, okay. you still want me to watch it? That's funny.

What's your item, Mike? My item that I recommend, I upgraded my garbage can. I should have done it years ago. Having a good garbage can has kind of changed. I'm not going to over-exaggerate, but it's made things a lot nicer in the kitchen. I'll tell you that much. Is it one those ones where the lid goes up and down and talks to you?

Like it's like a mouth? Oh, no, it doesn't talk. That does. Oh, well, I'm. mean it does that like yeah but it doesn't talk about it doesn't go oh yummy trash yeah um good garbage can though you get what you pay for kind of thing does it motion sensor or you got to put your foot on it no it's actually it's AI it knows when something is garbage and it just goes around my house and just throws stuff away for me creates its own

garbage you have an app on your phone that connects to it right you got to you got Like subscribe. You see garbage that looks just a little bit off. The dead squirrel has too many fingers. I don't throw squirrels away in my kitchen. I was going to say that's weird. All right. And then, well, I don't know.

It seems like it's really blown up and hit the mainstream. But I watched the K-pop Demon Hunters movie. And that movie is so freaking good. I love it. Yeah, I absolutely. If you're, I don't know, it's kind of musical, very, animated, more geared towards children probably, but it's not going to stop me from liking it. I thought it was great.

Cool. I might watch it then. All right. Sorry, guys. A whole team of landscapers just came outside right by me, so you might hear them in and out. But I just want to do a little of our, a little subscription episodes roundup for those who aren't subscribed.

But Mike put a lot of effort into just like collecting song recommendations for favorite songs from our subscribers. Then he made a 64 song bracket. And we did two episodes with Bill, our editor, Mike. One was with me. One was with Wes. And we just narrowed it down. And you'll have to listen to find out what songs made it the furthest.

It was really fun. Some real regrets on my side of the bracket, but we had fun with it. And yeah, I just wanted to say, like, go check that out, you know. See how far I got Taylor. through. You put up a valiant fight. I tried. People loved it though, and we're going to do more of that. And that's going to be like more geared towards our subscribers.

So if that kind of thing, it's not really animal related in any way at all. But if you want to get some outside of the regular wheelhouse tooth and claw content, we're going to try and do that kind of thing a lot more often. Also, we are putting two trips for sale. They go to on sale on Tuesday. You have to be on Patreon to have the first. access to those trips. We have more spots to these ones.

There are cheapest trips to date. We can say like Thailand and China is where we're going. Both of them are 2750. Sign up right when you hear this episode if you're not signed up on Patreon and want to go because you'll have like one day before those trips are announced on Patreon. And if there's still spots, we'll put them out for everyone after the subscription release. Yeah. We've talked about this a little bit before.

there's enough demand for these trips that really they sell out so quickly that we just decided the fairest way to do this would be to give our subscribers first access it kind of has become a perk of subscribing especially on Patreon um so it's just like that's just the only way we're able to really do it fairly and that's so if you do want first access to trips you patreon's a good way to do it you could always cancel if you don't like it And just subscribing to us is not going to guarantee you a spot on a trip.

Just to be 100% clear if that's like the only reason you're going to sign up on Patreon. Yeah. It doesn't mean you're automatically going to get a spot on one of those trips. It's just like kind of the only way to even have a chance at getting one of those spots, which it's sad, but we're trying to do more trips and get everyone involved. We do have millions of hours of extra content on there. Millions. Maybe.

Don't take me at my word for millions. Yeah, Jeff just did a really fun, a fun episode where we just did like a shark draft. We each picked our favorite sharks and then we decided to have the best draft. Ask me anything. I'm still losing. Which I'm actually kind of excited to do that. I'm glad I lost in a way. But I do want to just rationalize my pick of doing a spotted eagle ray as the last selection on my team of sharks, which, you know, I did a little interstitial audio there to explain myself that rays are.

not sharks even on a technical level. They're just very closely related. But I want to absolve myself a little bit by saying they counted them on all the sharks. They took a picture of a ray. They got points for it. I knew that's why you did it. They're elasmo branches. I mean, they're very cartilaginous fishes.

They're very closely related to sharks. Right. We counted it. Yeah, Mike just did a fun episode about a crocodile that caused a plane crash plus some other airline kind of related animal things. Probably caused an air crash. Still not sure. It's really fun.

I love our Patreon and Apple Grizz Club channels. I think it's just fun to have a built-in community there. It feels like we have a lot of inside jokes with those folks. And yeah, we just kind of get to know on a little bit better. Jokes is folks. Yeah. Nice joke. And it's only $10 a month.

So if you sign up and you decide it's not worth your money, you can cancel. And we totally understand. We know that times are hard for a lot of people. So no big deal. Well, that does it for this episode. of Tooth and Claw podcast. Thank you for joining us. Real quick, I'm just going to throw in a Jeff's random animal fact.

I think I'm going to start doing it at the end of episodes, just so people always have to listen to the entire episodes. That's what they're here for. Per size, honey badgers have the thickest skin of any animal, land animal. Wow. Like if you do it per size. Okay. So there's your random animal fact.

And thank you, everyone, for listening. I love you. I love you. I love you too. Mike. Those are words not to be taken lightly. Yep, that's safe. That's fair.

I appreciate you very much. All right. Thank you everyone. Bye, guys. See ya.