Wild Times: Wildlife Education - Raptor Conservation with Alura Big Talons - The Wild Times Ep. 111

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

This week we have Alura Cora with Big Talons joining The Wild Times podcast to discuss all things birds, falconry, and raising kids with birds in the home.  Alura's Links:  https://www.instagram.com/big.talons/ https://www.tiktok.com/@big.talons https://bigtalons.com/ Visit https://thewildtimespodcast.com/ now! Get your Wild Times Podcast merch: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/merch Leave a review on iTunes Apple Podcast: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/itune... Get Up To 4 Bonus Podcasts Per Month ▶▶ https://www.patreon.com/wildtimespod Subscribe to The Wild Times Podcast on YouTube ▶▶ https://www.youtube.com/@WildTimesPod Watch More Episodes Here ▶▶ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP... Follow The Wild Times Podcast on socials: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildtimespod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wildtimespod Twitter: https://twitter.com/WildTimesPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildtimespod/ Listen to The Wild Times Podcast on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2cbFBzf... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0... Anchor.fm: https://anchor.fm/wildtimespod/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WildTimesPod Enjoy, brosteners! TWT 111 - The Breakdown 00:00 - Intro 01:35 - Alura & Michael Join The Show 13:45 - Raising Kids With Predators In The Home 18:15 - Birds of Prey Imprinting 25:40 - The Staircase 29:45 - Forrest Sees Two Red Tails Talon Locked 35:00 - Alura's Birds 39:00 - Alura Exits 41:05 - The Dodo Bird is Coming Back 47:50 - Theranos 51:52 - Battle Royale 1:01:43 - Outro https://www.newbelgium.com/beer/fat-t... #podcast #wildtimespod

Wild Times. Here we go. It is the Wild Times episode number 111. This is your daily dose of comedy and wildlife and all things fun in the wild world. Weekly. Weekly dose. Whatever, dude. I'm your host, Boris Galante, the broologist.

Joining me is the lion-mained PhD in podcasting, the professor himself. Mr. Rita. How you doing, Peter? Thanks. Good. I'm doing good. Didn't mean to interrupt you. I just know that people will give us shit.

And they'll be like, it doesn't come out daily because they've done it before. It's early in the morning. I might be off my game. I got my 7-Eleven coffee. It's fucking disgusting. It's noon. Cheers, mates. It's noon.

It's not early at all. On the East Coast. And, of course, here always really sporting the beanie hard this winter season. the producer, Mr. Patrick DeLuca. Good afternoon for us with your whatever fucking product that you saw on Rogan's podcast. Don't worry about that. That sounds important.

Peanut butter milkshake. It's blended liver. The Liver King sent you. It's all the meat products in a blender. I'm happy. I'm well. Everything is good. I'm really excited.

I think we should just get right into it. We have a very special guest. joining us today. Ladies and gentlemen, Alura Cora, director of Big Talons, conservation, education, and Raptor Rescue

will be joining us later today. And by later today, I mean, right now, as soon as she wrangles Michael, her male-sounding owl, who's actually a female, and that's a pretty funny story

that Allura told us recently. So she'll be jumping on in a second and telling us about that. There we go. All right. Michael's back. Boom. Look at that.

Look at Michael. Just majestic. Yeah. Hey, Laura. How are you? Hi. Good. How are you?

Good. That was chaotic. So we just did your intro. And then Kyle frantically messaged the group. Michael took off, hold on. And it was like dragging on the intro to bring you onto the camera. When you're working with wild animals. Yeah.

I ran. I'm sorry. Take advantage. He's in the shot. She's in the shot right now. Can you introduce Michael in case she flies off again? Yeah, this is Michael. She is a female Eurasian eagle owl. She weighs like eight pounds. She is nine months old. So she's just a baby.

Yeah. She's from New York. Yeah, she's pretty cute for an apex predator. Little. She's massive. Yeah, she's a big. She's a big bird. So for those that don't know, that's great, we got Michael's intro. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, Allura, and what you do. And then, you know, we'll, by the way, if you're listening to this on Spotify or iTunes or any of those things, come and check out the, the, YouTube and you can actually see Michael, the magnificent Eurasian Eagle Owl on the video. What's she doing right now? What's the throat movement?

Is she eating? Oh, she's just mad that I'm making her sit there. So it's kind of like stress breathing. Wow. So, yeah, if she flies off and I go grab her because she wants to sit on her other, she wants to sit on the cabinet. So she's just on the cabinet. She'll be fine.

She'll calm down in two minutes and then eat her food, her quail that I have up there and she'll be fine. So, you have your intro. Okay. So my name's Alura. I started a company called Big Talents. We do educational outreach and try to expose kids to raptors, birds of prey, owls, hawks for conservation purposes. So my whole goal is to make kids love these birds and be excited about it and grow up trying to protect them.

I also do raptor rescue. So locally, I pick up raptors if they're injured. A lot of times I get birds that are shot or poisoned. and then I stabilize them and I transfer them to rehab. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. It happens a lot. We met Allura Forrest, myself, and Kyle went to the reptile show in north of L.A.

And you had Michael with you. And this is like 17 football fields of insane, huge snakes and rare lizards and all of the stuff. and all of a sudden there's a crap you decided to take michael out because i think four asked you to do it i begged i begged i begged there were literally like 1,200 people like michael stole the show yeah right yeah it was crazy um she did actually really well given the circumstances every time i pulled her out she was pretty relaxed but um she's been raised in the house so she's kind of used to being around chaos and kids and noise and animals so it's just she's just used to it how did you uh So did you, how did you get her?

So I ordered her. She's captive bread. Okay. Well, I ordered her. I bought her from a raptor breeder in New York. Okay. So they do it. There's specific conservation programs that breed these birds because their numbers are dwindling all over.

So there are a few breeders here that still do them. They'll only sell them to like falconers or educators. So she is technically an educational ambassador. So I bought her to do the school events and educational events and, like, hospital visits and stuff like that for kids. Cool. So yeah, I bought her. You have to have the like federal permit and the state license for them to even send it to you. But yeah, then they just, you buy it and they ship them over.

She came from New York to LAX and I picked her up in a box. How big was she when you got her? Shoot. little, I mean little, like just a fluff ball. How old was she when you got her? Oh, two weeks. She was two weeks old. Okay.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah, she was a tiny fluff ball. So, okay, I feel like there's a lot of questions here, Laura. First of all, I think anytime you're dealing with an apex predator or something at the top of the food chain, the criticism flies in, right? Absolutely. People fly at you and like, how could you do that? And that animal's supposed to be in the wild.

And there's just so much nonsense. So let's break that down a little bit. Okay. First off, why is it important to have an animal, a raptor like Michael? I mean, and also raising one in the house with your children. Like, let's talk about that a little bit. That's pretty fascinating. So my whole point behind doing this was to show people, again, especially children, hey, these things are super cool. They're super important. They're sentient. They're funny. They're quirky. They also live substantially longer in captain. than they do in the wild.

I mean, her average lifespan in the wild is five years. The average lifespan of a raptor in the wild, they die. They have a 70% mortality rate before a year old in the wild. And that's at no fault of their own. That's, you know, lack of prey. That's car accidents, wind turbines, all kinds of different things. So it's super important to expose people and children to these birds and to show them they're important.

We need them, you know, so that they grow. grow up and want to ban the poisons and, you know, not build all these wind turbine structures and things that kill them. So I, it's kind of hard for me to even engage. I get so many comments that are like, let her free. She needs to go free. Why do you have this bird? But I let her go free and the population's dwindle, you know, she's just going to die. Yeah. She likes her life, man. She looks pretty sweet. She looks a great life. Yeah. She gets fed whenever she wants, you know, she gets to fly. It's not like she's tethered constantly. People are always like, why do you have chains on this bird. She doesn't have chains on. She's free to go wherever she wants.

No, she's tearing up your living room as we speak. Yeah. Tearing it up constantly. I mean, that's why I can't show you the other side of my living room. It's that fucking bad. You don't hear a lot about like, you know, we met you and you were talking about the conservation a little bit. I, you know, even as someone who has made a lot of wildlife content, like you don't hear much about owl populations declining. So just Googling it. It's like, certain species of owl, their populations have declined 75% since the mid 90s.

It's not even like it's just, you know, have been a long, slow decline. It's like since the mid 90s, some owl species have gone down 75%. Right. Yeah. It's crazy. It's sad. It's terrifying. And it's not an evolutionary problem.

It's not a them problem. It's what we are doing to them. So to make the argument that they should just be out in the wild, well, that's not working because the people that are arguing that they should be out in the wild, they're not doing anything about the poison and the lead bullets and anything else. You know, they're not doing anything about the stuff that's actually killing them. They just are saying, oh, put them out in the wild. Well, it just doesn't work.

We need the captive breeding programs. We need the re-release programs. We need the exposure for people to donate and care and want us to continue to breed these birds and put them out there. Otherwise, the population just disappears. These birds were all over the UK, I think, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 years ago, something like that. They're almost gone. They almost don't exist there anymore. I think they've spotted two in the last 20 years.

So, right. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. So you have to have these programs to keep the species alive. Otherwise, we're just going to let them go extinct. It's just not, it's not right. And by the way, by the way, that is a statement across pretty much all taxa. You know, that's not just about Eurasian eagle owls, right? And I was talking with Joe Rogan about that last week.

And I was explaining, you know, he was talking about how sort of the flip side of coin, how there are too many bears in the northeast in this area, I think Connecticut, where these bears are like in people's backyards and things. And the point of the conversation was that we're at a point in human history where wildlife has to be managed. No longer can we deal with wildlife out in the open and free spaces. Of course, in certain areas, in uninhabited areas, it's great to leave things be. But for the most of it, like, you're talking about the UK, right? How much wild spaces they're left in the United Kingdom? Not a lot.

So if we don't manage the species, it disappears from the face of the earth. Correct. I did have a quick question just about you've mentioned a couple times about the poison that they encounter out there. And then the lead. I know I've heard about the lead. That's when hunters will shoot something else and then they'll go and they'll get it and they'll ingest the lead. What's the poison that they, that threatens them? So rat poison. So, and squirrel poison. So they, they've banned a couple different types of these poisons, but they still exist just in different forms. So you have businesses and homeowners and stuff deploy these poisons. The squirrels, the rats, the mice, they all eat these poisons. And then, of course, you know, an owl like Michael or barn owl. I think barn owls are really specifically affected by it. But they pick up that rodent, they ingest it. And over time, it kills them. It kills, you know, entire nest,

entire clutches of babies for great horned owls specifically here because the parents take the rodent back. And while it's not enough to kill the parent immediately, it kills the nestling as soon as they ingest it. So, I mean, it takes out all of their babies immediately. There was a story in New York where, you know, people were watching this little family. And within a week, two weeks, they were all dead. And it's from a poisoned rat being taken to the nest and they eat it and they die. And those poisons are still widely used. It's like we haven't, we just ban one portion of it or one country bans like one brand of it, but it's still all over the place. I've seen that story a bunch with like, even like just water supplies that have been poisoned,

like for human populations. They ban a chemical. So the way that it works is a certain chemical gets banned, but it's the exact molecular structure. Right. They change one molecule of it. And then it takes years for the legislation to go through to ban that chemical. They just change one. And they can do this indefinitely.

going. Yeah. They have them ready to go. And I was just reading before you came on that 50% of all the bald eagles in the U.S. have chronic lead poisoning from early people just putting out, you know, test control type thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Gold needle. People don't know. People don't know. Like my, the only reason I knew about something about it was because my dog, my family dog ate rat poison and got super sick when he was young. I had to go to the vet and they told us. And I was like, oh, like, you know, there's, so it's good to just know and get it out.

Like, if you can do something else to get rid of your rat problem, do it. And it's not just dogs. Rat poison kills kids in this country. It kills children. So it's not just a animal problem. It's not just your dog or the bird or, you know, the vulture. It's your kids get into the poison and eat it and die or have, you know, long-lasting side effects from being poisoned at two years old when they get a hold of it.

You know, it's just horrible. When there's so many other options. to fix that problem to still be using anything like that. Well, and speaking of that, one of those best options is having more owls, more birds of prey to reduce the road to resolution. So I want to segue a little bit here. Speaking of killing kids, you're a mother. We're all parents too.

Yeah. Let's get to the fun stuff. Let's get to the fun stuff. Yeah. No, but seriously, you're a mother. Yes. One day, what's it like raising kids side by side with an owl that quite frankly could do that kind of damage if it so chose to. And it hasn't. You know, and that's amazing.

Tell us a little bit about that. So for me, it's understanding the body language of any animal, a dog, a cat, understanding what you're dealing with. They're all animals, right? At the end of the day, they all have the capability to do something potentially dangerous. It just so happens that this bird is obviously on the top of the food chain. And if she does decide to lash out, it could be potentially pretty bad, but it's no different than a large dog, you know, around your kids. So I'm just acutely aware of her body language, her signals when she's irritated. The kids know when she's irritated her body language. And she's not outwardly aggressive. So if she starts to get irritated, her initial reaction is not to strike out her attack. She just leaves. She'll just exit the

situation. And they know not to go after her. And again, anytime these interactions happen, I'm there watching it the whole time. So it's not something. where the kids are alone with a bird at any point and I'm just like, oh, well, good luck. Even then, I don't think she'd ever do anything. But again, it's like unconditional love, not unconditional trust, right? Like, I don't trust her unconditionally. I know that there's always that capability

and I'm just aware and ready for it. She, however, is extremely gentle. I've never had an aggressive incident with her so far. I'm ready for it, but I have. The difference being, you know, and I think this is interesting, we as human beings have evolved side by side with wolves into domestic dogs for tens of thousands of years, right? People haven't been keeping owls in the home for as long. So I feel like we're much more trusting towards a canine where, of course, you know, a big dog has far more ability to do damage than an owl does.

But I think we sort of forget about that because of the domestication process. Michael, I mean, would you consider her a domestic animal? I mean, I wouldn't, right? No, because technically what, domestication takes a thousand years or something, right? But we've been working with Birds of Prey for 4,000 years. Oh, there you go. The falconry started in China. I think it's like 2000 BC or something.

It's the first recorded time we can date falconry. And not to say that we've been working specifically with Eurasian Eagle Alibals, so we have domesticated them over that thousand-year process. But we've been interacting and working with Birds of Prey since the beginning of time. with people. So I'm not saying she's domesticated, but there is a certain way to tame these birds and work with them safely. And I can do that very well. I've done it very well. Michael is a hard imprint. Michael doesn't look at the kids like anything other than her own, like her own family. And same thing with me. Right. Yeah, because that's what hard imprinting does,

which that's why hard imprinting is controversial too. I don't know if you've seen any of that in like the UK and stuff. No? Yeah. What's hard imprinting? So when the bird hatches, there's a certain period of time after they hatch where they kind of just stop learning. They say with owls, it's like a year.

But nonetheless, in barn owls specifically the first 19-day period, if they're exposed to you that whole time, they call it a hard imprint, because then they don't know anything other than the human and you. So you're their family, you're their, you know, you're their nestlings, you're their parents, you're their mate until the day they die. And so out specifically really hard imprint. That's why she is the way she is.

She's just a hard imprint. She doesn't know any different. So living in this house with the kids and me, it's just that's her world. Right, right. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. Hey, if you like the wild times and you think we're fun, you know, you're getting information.

We're getting a few laughs. Please check out the Patreon. There's a link somewhere right here. Four extra podcasts a month. That's four days. You get to drive to and from work, and you won't even think about driving off the bridge. Not only we do not think about it,

because these are four, this is our good stuff. This is our late night content. We are unregulated on Patreon. This is where we take the blur off of Peter's Peepee. You know, it's good stuff over there. It's the cinemax of podcasts. Don't forget about the merch too.

There should be a link there. Got a lot of cool stuff. And by the way, I think, and Allura, correct me if I'm wrong, but just for those listening to this, you're not advocating that every single bird of prey should be imprinted on a human being, right? Nobody's saying that. That's nonsense.

But the greater good of having a handful of them that are imprinted on human beings and people can connect with them and learn from them and learn about them and fall in love with them is what's going to allow. allow for more of these animals to be out in the wild and to be successful. Yeah, so just to clarify, in almost no circumstance, do I believe that, not no circumstance, but generally no, birds of prey shouldn't be imprinted.

Eagles are extremely dangerous imprinted. Hawks are extremely dangerous imprinted. There's different ways different birds of prey react. Owls are the only ones so far that I've seen and I've heard that imprint very well. So imprinting birds of prey is not smart. it shouldn't be widely used. They don't in rehab situations. Obviously, they wear the little gloves so that the bird has no idea that a human's feeding them for re-release,

because otherwise then they'll just rely on the human forever. I'm not advocating for that. I don't even advocate for people having birds of prey as pets. I think falconry is, I think falconry is really important, and I think whoever wants to practice falconry should do it, and they should do it well and really learn about how to do it. But this specific situation, I think that, yeah, it shouldn't be widely applied. It's just very important because if I can convince 20 kids, right, that she's incredible and

amazing and beautiful and they grow up and want to ban the poisons and, you know, fight for conservation and do all this. Then I've done my job with her as an imprinted bird. You know what I'm right? What do you love that? How much does she eat? What do you feed her on like a weekly basis or how often? Well, I feed her three times a day.

It's like we're like at 11 chicks, 11 or 12 chicks a day. and then I mix it in with mice and stuff. I think it's like three or 400 grams a day of food. Okay. And then how do you go about feeding her? Do you just put it out and she goes and gets it or do you have to like cue her? She knows her name and she responds to whistling. So I ask her, are you hungry?

And I whistle and she'll start putting her head down and kind of bobbling like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm hungry. And then she has to come to me because they all, all birds of prey when you keep them like this. should be recall trained. So she has to come to me to get her food. And then she eats with me next to me. And is that so that like she knows that if your kids are eating, that it's not,

that's not her food kind of thing? Or why does she have to come to you? It's more if she gets out, I can get her back. Gotcha. Because then once she gets hungry, because that's what falconry is essentially, right? You drop the weight a little bit. You get them to respond.

You build that relationship. So if she gets out at any point, which I obviously don't plan on happening. When her weight comes down, she'll know, oh, okay, I just come back to mom when I want food, which is how you retrieve a lot of these birds in general, is they have to be recall trained. Yeah, owls won't leave the vicinity from what I understand.

They'll stay in like a two-mile radius, even if they get out from where they were raised. But you still have to be able to get them back somehow. Yeah. Right. Man, I have so many questions. Laura, I want to go backwards a little bit here. Okay.

I don't think you just woke up one day and we're like, guys, time to get an owl in this house. Right? So like, give us a little bit of a background. Like, you know, I know people are always interested in how I got into wildlife and I grew up surrounded by it and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, how did you become a raptor specialist? What made you get into doing owls? Were you into falconry?

Did you just grow up obsessed with birds? Like, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today with Michael. Well, long story really short, I was like the weird kid who took my turtle and my snake into the grocery. store and like I think I think you're talking like everybody that's listening to this is the weird kid just so you know right which is not like a mainstream thing that we're doing over here this is the weird kid by the guy okay then I fit in great here okay yeah yeah because I was the weirdo I went everywhere with the snake I had a boa constrictor um I went everywhere with the turtle I had hissing cockroaches that like I thought was cool to scare other kids with um I was just always that like

animal weirdo forever and then I just carried that I have a pig in the backyard you know like I just have always wanted to be completely surrounded by animals. I really did pick up falconry because my daughter was like, hey, I want to work with, I want to work with owls. Like I want to, my, you know, my nine-year-old, I think she was seven at the time, was like, yeah, I really want to work with birds. We had been playing a video game, actually, where there's a little owl in it. And I was like, okay, well, let me figure out how exactly they get into this.

Because I've been working with birds forever, parrots, chickens, quail, whatever. So I was like, let me figure it out. And I discovered falconry. And then the first time I trapped, I trapped my first hail by myself with the help of my sponsor. And I just, I was like, okay, this is my whole identity. This is my whole life. I've found what I need to do in my life.

It was just the most unbelievable, incredible experience I've ever had. When you trap and then work with. And then when you recall that bird. So like you spend the first, you know, six, seven days, seven to ten days training and manning the bird. And then you let it go when they come back to you willingly, happily from flying to a telephone pole or whatever else. It's just, it's like nothing you've ever experienced before in your life. So are you like I've been through phases, right? I was a fish guy as a kid.

Do we just lose, Peter? That's great. I don't like them. I was like big into fish as a kid. I had like 14 fish tanks in my bedroom. And then I went into snakes and I was big on snakes for years and years and years. And in the last like six years, I've been a turtle guy. Like I've just become obsessed with freshwater turtles.

Are you just a snake or an owl person now? Is that it for you? Until the day I die. Yeah. You found it. You're hooked. This is my whole personality. I like that.

Is that bird. Yeah. Let's, uh, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I mean, look, it's not every day we have an owl expert on the show. So I'm not an expert.

I'm not an expert. I mean, you live with an owl. Hold on. Can I have a rant? Can I have a rant? Can I do a rant? Do we have a jingle for my rants? I don't think so. Let me have a rant.

Someone needs to make one. Okay. All right. Listen, Allura is an expert. And I don't care if she says she's not. I don't care what anybody watching this says. I don't care if people get upset. She lives with an owl. It's in her house.

It interacts with her. It interacts with her kids. It goes to reptile shows. goes to meet people. The academic that has been studying that species and written 35 papers on him and have only ever seen him in a tree 300 yards away is not the fucking expert. Excuse me, Forrest. I'm a PhD candidate at the Cornell School of Ornithology. I know much more about owls. You do not. I get that a lot. You might know more about the anatomy of the interior of their mouth parts, but you know much less about owls than Alora, who has one literally

tearing up her living room as we do this podcast. She's actually sleeping right now. This is crazy. She's chill. She's going tonight. I want to talk about something. It's selfish. There's a very popular series that went out on Netflix in the last year.

Oh God. Don't bring up the staircase. I'm about fucking bringing it up, baby. Don't fucking bring up the staircase. All right. So for people who don't know, for people who I think I might know what O'Lora's opinion is, but the people who don't know,

there's a guy who may or may not have made out of murdered his wife. So they made a documentary and then they made a scripted version of it. I watched both. Pretty interesting stuff. A lot of reasons to think he might have done it. He was arrested. He went to prison. He eventually gets acquitted and released, or maybe not acquitted, but he gets released because partly because of a new theory that came up. So she had these scrapes and scratches down her head and then a blunt force trauma. You mentioned this on a prior podcast. I remember this now. And so this new theory gets brought to light and eventually the guy gets released as a result, which is that she went out to unplug the Christmas

decorations. There was a barred owl living in the tree. This is the theory. And it attacked her and dug its talons into her head. She's bleeding and discombobulated and then tries to go up the stairs to get help and then falls down the stairs and hits her head at the bottom. So Kyle, bring up the picture that was used. So what the defense did was they showed the autopsy. photos of the skull and then superimposed an owl claw over it. Go ahead and take it down. So we don't get demonetized here. And they found a little feather in her hair during the autopsy of an owl.

And this was enough to get this guy released from prison. The superimposing of the owl claws should not be admissible in court. Like I looked at and I was like, oh, guilty. 100%. And then you're like, it was superimposed on top. Still, I'm like guilty. And I'm like a dumb, a dumb, dumb, I'd be a juror. All right, Alora, what do we think?

Did a bard owl, you're the expert. You must know whether a barred owl attacked this woman or not. Well, let me back up. So in the documentary, if you remember, his first wife died on a staircase too. Okay. Oh, you're kidding. In like Germany or whatever. Right.

And that wasn't an owl. Wow. That was a fall. Okay. So I don't know what happened. It was a fall. That's what he claims it was. It was a fall.

Okay? And now he's blaming the owl. Fine. But I will tell you, if you are in an area where they have an active nest and they have babies, they're fucking aggressive. They will actively dive. I know that there have been cases where they have dive bombed heads and they've attacked people. Have they ever killed anybody? We would have to pull that up.

I don't know. But I don't believe so. I don't see that bird footing the woman's head, which is what I'm assuming they're claiming the bird did, and holding on or something. It's not going to happen. She's too big for them to. They'll dive by them coyotes and golden eagles,

but if you watch those videos of when they do it, it is quick. They're in and they're out. They hit them and they go. There's no holding on. There's no attacking. And she's not up in this tree at their nest site, right? She's walking in her backyard.

So if it's going to do anything, it's going to swoop down and die better. It's not going to sit there and attack her head like it wants to kill her. It just doesn't, to me it doesn't make any sense. So he did it. It's ludicrous. You're saying he did it. You're saying he kicked them both down the stairs. I'm not saying shit.

So if his third wife also dies on a staircase, the next one around, is it pretty fair to say that this is all not. No, that's going to be an iguana's fault next to it. Yeah. She ate rat poison that time by accident. All right. Well, speaking of aggressive birds of prey, and if you're listening to this, you're going to have to come check out the YouTube.

The other day... Michael is, by the way, dead asleep. He is just more relaxed than any human. Yeah, she's out. Good. That looks so nice. Yeah, I could just do that right now. The other day, we were doing a podcast, and I had to go to head to the pool, take my son for swim lessons.

And if you guys remember, I wrapped up, I was like, I'm out of here. And I left here, jumped in my truck. And as I drove out of my driveway, Peter and Patrick, you guys know my house. house is like you go down that little side road and then as I turned left up the main main road I caught out the corner of my eye some movement in the bushes and I was like what the heck is that I live in a pretty wild area so I was like let me pull over see what it is I pulled over hopped out of the truck and Kyle's going to pull up the video here I walked over to think what I was seeing was maybe a deer's head in the bushes or something and instead what I saw was Kyle this oh boy so I filmed this

on my iPhone. It's two redtail hawks, of which we have a lot in my area, and they've killed lots of our chickens. And I had never seen this before. And so these two are tal-in-locked, you know, on each other. And I honestly didn't know. So I took this video, I took a couple more videos, and I put them on my social media, and I said, I don't know the answer. Are these guys in some sort of very aggressive mating situation, or are they fighting? And after an hour of idiotic from the internet, I sent it to Allura. I said, Allura, what's going on here? So, Alara, do you want to break down what's happening?

I mean, you explaining it is a lot better than me explaining it third hand. They're just, so what happens is in these territories. So I can tell one is a hag, which means it's over a year of breeding age, which is when they get the red tail. Those red tails don't have that red tail until after a year. It's just like brown like the rest of their feathering. but they, if they have territory and another bird, a juvenile or a hag comes into that territory, they'll lock towns like that and they'll just come spinning to the ground. And then they sit there because that lock, once they lock, there's no opening those feet.

It's like a pit bull bite, you know, it's just like you're not opening those feet. It's just stuck. So they sit there locked and they just roll around until one of them finally, you know, the brain lets go of that, of the ligaments that are locked in their feet. And then they fly off. A lot of the times that doesn't end in them really killing each other. from what I've seen, from what I understand, they just kind of get up and fly away

and the other one leaves whatever that territory is. I've had a juvenile redtail come down on the bird I was flying and locked down. And they just, yeah, and they spin to the ground. They come tumbling. It's kind of funny looking but scary at the same time. But actually, before my bird hit the ground, they let go and the juvenile, the wild one flew away

and my bird just came back to me. So it's just a territorial thing. And I should have, when I went out there, I should have known because that bird was screaming. my bird. I mean, just going nuts. And I was like, oh, I'm going to try to fly anyway. And I probably shouldn't have done that. So I did, oh, I did the responsible thing of like staying, I don't know, 30 yards away and zooming in on my iPhone. I, in hindsight, I wish I had walked right up to them and been like, hey, break it up, guys, let's go. Maybe just taking some claws off

and just thrown them back into the air. That's what I wish I'd done. I was going to say it's, it looks pretty tame on the video. Like that, you know, normally you see like, like two moose or something to like just budding heads and like going crazy a bear fights another bear it takes a big old shit putting all this force in they're just like locked claws rolling around on the ground and then they fly away i like it the uh the sound effects were not as mild though i don't think we got the sound in that were they screaming oh yeah they were screaming at each other it was it was awesome i've it's funny because you know travel the world look for all these different wild animals all over the place i'd never seen that and it was literally like 300 feet from my back backyard

It's pretty crazy. Yeah, pretty cool. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, it's fun to watch. Do you just find, is that like a territory thing? Or are they actually trying to eat? No, they're preying on our chickens. No, so we have sarama bantam chickens, which are the smallest species of chicken in the world.

So let me be clear. A redtail hawk's probably not taken out your big old farm rooster, right? But we have these little sarama bantam chickens that are like, they're basically like halfway between a quail and a chicken. They're tiny little things. Cow can pull up a picture. We don't have them anymore. Oh, yeah. We had, we, Patrick, you've seen him.

We had like half a dozen of them. And my wife was like, oh, they're so cute. I want these little chickens. But we're, you guys know what my place is like, it's free range everything, right? Everybody goes out in the morning and goes back in the evening. And so we raised these chickens. My son had one that was his absolute favorite, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the Red Tails figured it out.

And, like, systematically six, six of them disappeared over the course of like two weeks. And you'd hear some commotion because all the chickens or the guinea file would start spazzing out. You'd go outside. There'd be a red tail on top of like a decapitated chicken like ripping its guts out and all the other ones surrounding it like screaming at it. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So no more, no more Sarama Bantams around here. Well, you're telling that story, Michael just did one of these.

Just kind of opened one eye. I took a quick. Yeah. Make sure everything was okay and went back to sleep. Just keep one eye open. Yeah. Yeah, she does that. She's looking for the kids.

Do you have other birds, too? I do. Yeah. What else do you have? I have a passage red tail I'm working with right now that I fly, which is like a juvenile bird under a year. And then I have a barn owl and a burrowing owl. And so I have a barn owl and a burrowing owl breeding program that we, the guy that I work with, we supply to zoos and like wildlife centers. the barn owls and the burrowing owls.

And then I'll probably expand the breeding program as time goes on. I just, it's a lot of work. Each individual bird is so much work. So I'm just trying to juggle. I wanted to raise her correctly. So that was like my main goal. Raise her well, get her good with educational programs and then get into like the breeding and

supplying side of things. Gotcha. The red tail, uh, that you're working, you said you're working with a red tail? Mm-hmm. Now,

so do you like put videos of that on your Instagram and stuff like that because that stuff is fascinating to me and I definitely want to check it out if so. So I do and I don't. So my audience obviously doesn't want to see things get eviscerated and like funnies die and you know, so it's like the carnage of actual falconry for my audience on Instagram just doesn't really work. Gotcha. So I maybe could create a separate, although I've tried to, I just don't, like I keep

my falconry stuff pretty much totally separate. from the Apple stuff. Those are two different worlds. They don't really get along. So I just kind of try to keep them a little bit. Laura, where do you live? You know, give the internet your exact home address. No, I'm joking. But where do you live? Where about that? You're in Southern California, right? I'm in the LA area. In the L.A. area. So do you have some acreage or how does that work with these birds? No. So the federal and the state entities don't actually have size requirement. They have suggestions and each enclosure has to be 8 by 8 by 12. Your house is also legally an enclosure depending on they have to have safe tethering areas.

There's like several restrictions. Interesting. Yeah, and rules. Yeah, but you can use the inside of your house for a falconry. I don't. I have an 8 by 8 by 12 for the red tail. I have multiple 8 by 12s for all the birds and some are larger. But specifically for like the red for my falconry birds, I at least have 8 by 12s.

That's wild that you, that there's a law. that's like you can raise falcons in your house in California. Because I know you can't like own a ferret, but that's probably because of ecological destruction if one gets out. Very good, Peter. Look at you. You're like a real pro these days. I've learned a few things.

Like ecological destruction. Man, I was hoping ecological is an actual word. Allura, thank you so much. It's all really interesting. Where can people find you? Like if they want to follow along what you're doing, what Michael's doing, Give us a little synopsis of where they can follow you. So I'm bigtalons.com, B-I-G-T-A-L-N-S-G-A-L-N-S-G.

And then I'm big dot Talens on Instagram and big dot Talens on TikTok. They can find me on all of those. Nice. It's a fun. It's a fun follow. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

I try to make it fun. Try to make it interesting. I got to tell you, I'm a H-H-R-P guy much more than a bird guy. I would say birds are my weakest field by far. and my favorite part of the LA Reptile Super Show was getting to meet you and Michael and get to hold Michael. Thank you.

Of the gazillion incredible reptiles that were there, my favorite part was Michael for sure. She's really cool. She's a lot of fun. She really is. She's a cucky bird. Alara, thank you so much for joining us today. Michael, thank you for being so well behaved.

You didn't even fly off. People are going to actually wonder if she's real because she looks like a stuffed animal. I know. She looks like an animatronic. like something at Disneyland. Yeah, totally. Looks like an animatronic doll.

Yeah, she's funny. But hopefully you got some of the flight, right? The flyoff and the- Yeah, in the beginning. In the bloopers reel, yeah. Cool. Laura, thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you later.

Bye, Michael. Thank you so much. Bye, Michael. Pretty cool. That was really cool. How long until you get an owl for us? Eight minutes. Eight minutes.

I'm leaving this podcast. He's been going straight off the eucalyptus tree. He was on his phone ordering one while we were still talking. I saw him do it. I couldn't. I couldn't. As much as I respect it, the amount of work, it's like anything, right? It's like, like, Patrick,

you don't want to get a fucking snake because you don't want to feed it once every three weeks. Like, the amount of work that goes into, the amount of work that goes into a bird of prey is so substantial, as Allura was saying, it's just, I couldn't, there's no way. I just, I'm literally, I'm literally debating whether or not

I want to get another dog after, after, yeah. I don't know. It's morning, I told you. It's not even noon yet. But like, now that I've had a cat in my life, I'm just like, it's so much easier, dude. You just feed the cat. Like, the cat comes around once in a while. A dog, it's just like, look at him. He's just, he's just been sitting there. I mean, he's, my dog is hyper aggressive. It's, it's a different scenario. I'm actually more afraid that my dog would attack my kid than her owl would attack her family. I would trust. If, if somebody said, all right, I'll give you a thousand dollars to wire

your eyes open and put them in front of Michael or Charlie, I would literally be like, here go, Michael, take your best shot, because Charlie would rip my eyes out. Yes, he would. No question. That's super, it's interesting. And it's also just like, as the layman, it's just insane to me that there's two little, two little toddlers bopping around in the house with this giant owl that's just flying around. Yeah.

Yeah. It's incredible. do something that I've been excited about since, well, I found out about this about two weeks ago, but I knew the announcement was coming today, and I've been like, come on, come on, it's been like Christmas for me. You've been hiding things from us, dude? Come on.

I've had to hide it from the whole world. I have to sign big NDAs and whatnot. All right, Kyle, we got what's in the news. What's in the news? What's in the news? Okay, look, I mean, we all know I'm obsessed with what's going on in this world, but this is the biggest news of the year.

Hands down, 2023. There won't be bigger this year. Colossal biosciences, the company that is the de-extinction company that has already announced that they are de-extincting the woolly mammoth.

And the thylacine announced today. Say it. The do-do. They are bringing the iconic dodo bird back from extinction. This is so big, you guys. I mean, what an incredible thing to see in our lifetime,

this giant flightless pigeon come back to Mauritius where it was extirpated from. I mean, to me, this is the most exciting what's in the news of the year. They've secured $150 million. That's incredible.

To help this project. The Dodo is one of those things where I saw, I don't know if it was a taxidermine one or just a recreation. I'm pretty sure it was just a recreation a museum when I was a kid. And they're big and they're funny looking. And I was like, it's definitely one of the things

that was like, oh, What a goddamn shame that I'll never be able to see one of these alive. Yes, absolutely. Sorry, go ahead, Peter. Well, I was just going to say, I mean, last time we posted like a video that got a lot of views or whatever, there's a lot of people. We were talking about them bringing back the woolly mammoth. Yeah. There's a lot of, like, controversy about that.

I feel like this one's a no-brainer. We extinct this animal, like morons, humans did, and we're bringing it back to its natural environment where it existed, right? What's wrong with that? It's funny. You're right, by the way, you're not wrong. What's funny is that the controversy is definitely, like, misplaced because bringing mammoths back will help with, like, combat global warming and climate change, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, what's so exciting about the dodo coming back is this is the most iconic extinct animal in history, right? If you watch the cartoon movies Ice Age, if you go on any, anything, right, you see the dodo bird, like when it comes to extinction. And we talk about the, Dodo Bird. And one of the reasons that I think is often swept under the rug that we talk about it is because we landed on Mauritius. Ten years later, there was none left. And the reason that we killed them, one, it was for Habitat, but two, there was nothing to fucking do on the island. So here came these colonialists that would just take a big stick and go for a jungle walk and just bop them on the head for fun. I hate everybody. How could you do it? And they didn't even eat them, by the way. Apparently they tasted terrible. Apparently they were a terrible food source. So it was just something to do on the island.

and before you know it, there were no dodoes left in Mauritius. So I don't know. I just think this is absolutely amazing. Me too. Beloscel announced its avian genomics group, which is a group that's dedicated to the de-extinction of birds, avians. Wow. They're starting, you know, that's what this round of fundraising was for.

They're starting with the dodo. They have plans, you know, because I've been working with them in a conservation advisory role, I've heard a lot of the inside stuff. They have plans to expand this into other species of which I can't say on the podcast. but like this is just big man you know it's huge well we're going to get to see fucking dodo it's got to be like some of the biggest news 150 million dollars is going into this into this venture here and you know it sounds like they're being responsible about it you know it's not just for appearances or whatever they're actually doing this in a in a a way

that benefits conservation right for us oh yeah certainly Certainly, certainly. So yeah, the whole thing is just really cool. It's really exciting. It's interesting. I don't know. To me, it's, I don't even want to do any more what's in the news because that should stand alone as the most important news maybe of the year.

Maybe no more what's in the news this year. All right. How do we think the dodo bird got its name? The etymology of the term. Well, it dodo, obviously. Helpful. I'm going to assume that that would, that the name. spard from the fact that they had absolutely no fear of humans,

and so people assumed them to be incredibly dumb, and hence the name Dodo came about. That is correct. That's what I said. Portuguese settlers on Mauritius. The word duodo, the Portuguese word duodo, was another word for like simpleton or dumb-dum. So it's from the Portuguese word.

It's literally exactly what I said, by the way. wodo in Portuguese, please. Don't. Kyle, if you do your fire, well, I can't fire you anymore, but I'll take a vote on something. Yeah, no, it's exciting, man. I don't know, you

may know more than in this incredibly long article that came out. What's the timetable for are they saying for this one? Well, they're just starting it now, but the thing is they have excellent DNA samples from the dodo because there were so many of them in preservation. And it's very,

it's a pigeon. A lot of people don't know that. It's a large flightless pigeon. So it's quite, or maybe it's a dove. Sorry, large flightless dove. Somebody's going to have to fact check me on that. But it's one of the two. It's other pigeon or a dove. Okay. Pretty sure it's a dove. And so yeah, so it's a pretty easy one to do. So while they're only announcing and starting the avian genomics lab today, I think the timeline's short, you know, like five to seven years kind of short from start to recreation of the animal. Well, and here's saying, man, if something happens in the world with news, a good way to tell, I think, how big of a deal it is, right?

Because every news source is going to sensationalize it and make it the biggest deal ever, every other world's coming to an end. It's going to be chaos. Just go to see NBC and look what the stock market is. Right? Smart. Is the stock market crashing? Okay, it might be a huge deal.

If not, people don't think it's that big of a deal because money tells you a lot, right? So we're not allowed behind the scenes at Colossus, but they went from 75 million in their first series A funding. They just got a new round of 150 million. It's not like people just threw money at it because they took their word for it, right? They must be making some good progress that brought in this next round of funding. Well, their recent valuation, I saw this morning. I'll tell you where in one second. Their recent valuation is over a billion dollars.

Wow. Yeah, so is Theranos. So is what? I don't know what that is. Don't compare Colossal to Theranos, you son of a face. I don't know what that is. $1.5 billion is is Colossil's recent valuation.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what Theranos is. That sounds like the bad guy from the Marvel movies. She was the one that basically created a fake company that he claimed it could you could put a drop of blood in this machine and it would tell you everything that's wrong with you. And it was all just fake and she got arrested and is now in jail, I believe. She just got sentenced. Yeah. What was her sentencing?

11? Was it 11 years? So it was all a facade? Like she never even had the machine. She just, it was like... Not only was it a facade. I mean, she intentionally, according to court and everything, basically like fabricated the results would send the actual blood into a real lab and then give the results as if they had been read by the machine that she didn't invent or create. Got it. Yeah, it was a big scam.

And she had a personal net worth of in the billion. She was a billionaire. Wow. And it was all fake. And it was just, it was just a case of hysteria. Yeah, tech hysteria. Not at the end. No, not at the end.

She's a do-do-y-do-wee. Do we, do we? It reminds me of like the South Park, Osama 5,000 or whatever, where Cartman dresses up as a robot and is like in the meetings with the Japanese business executives. And they're like, give us an idea.

And he's like, calculating. It's like, people bought this? Like, who was believing this? Oh, the huge, huge drugstore franchises that they were going to have the machine there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But Colossal is not that. She was a colossal dodo. And she's going away for 11 years. She's a real, a real fucking piece of work, man. Like, prior to her trial, she quickly got pregnant. And everyone was like, yeah, it's like certainly just to like get sympathy from the jurors. Oh, interesting. But she got 11 years.

She's going to go to a prison camp in Texas, which apparently is quite lovely. It's like, I was reading about the prison she's going to go to. It's like they get like gourmet snacks. What? You're just free. You don't even. sleep in a cell, you just sleep in dorms. It's like, not. It's like going to college.

It's delightful. Yeah. That sounds so much less stressful than my daily life. Well, let's what, Forrest. What's that? You pay for this. It's a federal prison camp. So, when you pay your taxes, it goes to these camps so that people who defrauded people out of billions of dollars get gourmet snacks and get to do arts and crafts for six hours a day. Good.

Yeah. Good. That's what I want. I want my criminals to be very comfortable. By the way, while all of the money that they've already made is still making them money in the stock market on the outside of the club med that they're at. I mean, they're still making money. Dude, so I fucking had this, I was applying for a mortgage. Got my fucking shit checked. You know, my credit scores all good. Your blood checked in a machine. Yeah.

You're a fecal. Yeah, and fucking, and then like midway through the process, this shit hits my credit report. Someone had used my social security number to take out all these lines of credit. Oh, yeah, you mentioned that. Yeah, yeah. So I have to file a police report. I have to go to fucking all the places they took out credit and reported as fraud. It's obvious fraud.

It's some bumble fucking Pennsylvania. So I'm furious. So everyone I talk to, including the police, I'm like, hey, there's an address. Like, is someone going to go, like, will something be done? And like, everyone's like, no. But it'll go off your credit. They're like, no, no. All that money was used for that federal prison in Texas to give them snacks and a

dormitory to live in. Can we do, can we wrap up with a quick, a quick, Brossner submitted, BR? We must. We must. Get my notepad. Do you know what time it is? To what? Okay.

Bedroom. That's a lot. Oh, yeah, baby. Dimitri sent an idea, and I like it for a couple reasons. Okay. You are going on the first manned mission to colonize Mars. Smart.

Okay. They're just, you're going to try to start, you know, we're going to be humans and three other species on this planet, just kind of starting to get some wildlife in on this first mission. Can't use them as working animals. Interesting. Pick your three. Forest, you're the biologist. You go first. All right.

Mars is extremely desolate, right, as we know. And, well, as we know, but I believe, if I'm not mistaken, there is. history of being a ton of, there used to be a lot of water on Mars, but isn't any more, isn't that right? Isn't that it all dried up or underground? It's your battle royal. Just go with it and get skewered in the comments if you're wrong. That's smart. Anyway, my first pick, the Asian water buffalo. I'm going to bring them. They breed rapidly. They're fun to look at. They feel like wildlife, even though they're not particularly aggressive. And they're going to help start the ecosystem. They're going to be rooting around. They're going to make mud puddles. You're going to give us some water.

that's going to in turn make vegetation. So we're just going to start, they're going to sort of kickstart a grassy, wet ecosystem, which would be very nice to look at when you're on Mars, which basically looks like Arizona. Okay. I love it. All right.

All right. You want me to pick? Sure, go ahead. All right. I'm going to bring, and I don't have any evidence behind this, but I assume that worms are good for, you know, you put them in the dirt, they'll make it so that things can grow. I know potatoes can grow on.

Mars according to that movie. So I'm going to go, I'm going to bring a colony of just your straight up earthworms. If we do find water, we can use them for fishing. You can use them for fishing. You want to go go do some Mars fishing? Yeah, we broke the worm.

Yeah, see what we catch. That's a good pick. All right. I'm going to start with a naked mole rat. Smart. Oh, look. The atmosphere in Mars is just, there's very little oxygen, right? I mean, there's, we have, I think our atmosphere is in the 20%

oxygen. Mars is 0.15%. So I need an animal that can survive on very, very little oxygen. I don't know how the naked mole rat does it, but it's an animal that can go 20 minutes without taking a breath. It doesn't need a lot of oxygen. It's going to just go into the ground. It's going to do its thing. And it's going to bring me a lot of pleasure knowing that they're down there. Also, it's probably from Mars to begin. It could be. If you look at it. Yeah. It's definitely from out of space. So that's one. Now, two, I want something

that lives a long time that's going to keep me company. Okay. Right? That I can kind of have as my reliable friend. I can watch it grow. It's going to be there longer than me. I'm going to take I'm going to take a Fernandina Island tortoise. There you go. Nice. That's actually smart. He'll probably like survive well there.

Great pet. I can keep him right in my little human enclosure so that he can breathe. I know he'll be, like I said, you don't want to outlive your pet. Nice pick, fine. And look at the picture that Kyle brought up her very own. Forrest, did somebody whiten your teeth in that press photo? Go back to it? He had Benares put on.

I don't think so. Super white. Oh, they did for sure. It's been touched. Oh, you know what it is? I think you're super tan from just getting burned a shit and the glockos for a week more likely. And my beard was really dark and I had less gray back then. So yeah, I think Yeah, dude, your beard is way darker. Yeah, I mean,

like I said, a lot less gray. Well, it's more, it's like red. Times are it changing, Peter. You're like 28. Why do you have gray beers? Yeah, 30 hard years, dude. All right, Peter, you're up. All right, I'm up. Well, listen,

you know, I don't know much about science or things in general, but I do know that I love a good companion and I'm taking dogs just you know whatever can I bring various breeds worms and dogs baby worms and dogs

I mean I'd probably bring like God I don't know what I'd bring I'd probably bring maybe like a golden retriever out there with me or a lab you know be fun toss a frisbee around in my dome my dwelling until we finally get the atmosphere set up for

dogs to be able to roam free. And then, which the worms will help with. Kyle, good dog photo. Just dog. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Dog.

Love it. For us, you're up for two. I'm up for two. I'm up for two. Well, look, I don't want these water buffalo to just run a muck on Mars because that would be shenanigans. Then we're going to have all kinds of problems. So we got to add a predator into the equation.

Furthermore, I don't want it to be boring up there. You know, if you get up there and there's no, there's nothing intimidating going on, like what's the point? So in addition to my water buffalo, I'm just going to bring in tigers. Just simple, very scary. You know, I just want, I want tigers on Mars. It's going to be terrifying. It's a good movie name.

Tigers on Mars. Nobody's going to enjoy it. They're going to be like, you want to go for a walk on Mars? No, there's fucking tigers out there. You know, and no, it's feeling like a science fiction space movie. Are they going to have those spacesuit helmets on? Yeah, they're going to have little helmet. It's going to be like Tony the tiger on the moon with the little gold football.

Yeah, okay. And then my third pick, this is most important. Again, entertainment value. It's something that I've just always wanted. I want one as a pet. I'm going to want one on Mars. I want to have some quokka. I just want some quokka running around.

That's a hell of a call. Yeah, they can live indoors. They can be in our habitat. They don't have to be out with the water buffaloes and the tigers roaming the plains of Mars. They're just hanging out inside. They're like cute or squirrels. I just, I'll go to the hugging one, the one to the left of the one you've selected, Kyle. That photo, just the past one.

I found this out yesterday, by the way. Quoka are such terrible parents that when threatened by a predator, they will throw their baby at the predator and run away. Fun fact. Yeah, isn't that great? All right. Now it's my turn. Is that how this works? Always.

Okay. My final animal is going to be two. Any reason? Well, I mean, come on. They don't actually make fruit loops here. Yeah, I was, I was going to say. Are you sure? I thought they're beaks from head out of fruit loops,

and that's where fruit loops came from. Maybe. Listen, dude, are you kidding me? Imagine just having these guys hanging out. Come on. I just got offered a two can two days ago. Really? See, something told me that inside my subconscious,

and I knew, and I wanted you to just say it aloud. Literally, like somewhere. I get what you're doing. I get, sorry for us. Why didn't you take the toucan? Because it's a toucan. Too much work. Yeah.

It's a lot of problems. You can't. I do can't do it. What am I doing? What am I doing, Pat? Because I don't even know. You're going to have these around. It's going to make the enclosures that the humans are in, feel more tropical, feel like you're on vacation a little bit, kind of have them by the pool area.

And I feel like it's important to have birds around for the ecosystem, birds and worms and then dogs for companionship. That's not bad, actually. You got in the ground covered, in the sky covered. You got a dog to hang out with. This is pretty good, Peter. This might be your best BR of all time. But I just sent it in the private chat. This is by far the best VR we've ever done.

Valerious. All right, Patrick, how are you running us out here? I'm going to round right now with just a general, general sort of pollinator. I'm just going to take a whole bunch of bumblebees. Nice. You know, they're going to help with the crop. They're cute.

They're fuzzy. They're big. You know, they don't really, they're not very stingy. They're not. So I'm just going to bring a shitload of bumblebees. I'm going to get really into my vegetable garden. Smart. Not much else to do on Mars.

You better get into it. A lot of potato farm. It's the only thing to do. Yeah. All right, brusters. Well, let's do a quick recap. The Battle Royale is you're inhabiting Mars and you're taking three animals with you, but you're not putting them to work.

I picked the water buffalo and the tigers to roam the point. planes and shape the environment and keep things spicy with the quokin doors. Peter has earthworms for the soil, two cans to make it feel tropical and a nice golden lab as a companion. Patrick has naked mole rats because he just feel good about them going home, back to where they're probably from. Fern so that she lives forever and he can hang out with her and probably just so you can see her again. And then just a big old flock of bumblebees to pollinate and be around and help with the veggie garden.

Way in, let us know what three animals you would take to Mars, and we'll tell you why you're wrong. And if you like the show, check us out on Patreon where you can get four more shows per month. That's what is that? Six total. Two regulars that are on YouTube. That's almost 50 a year.

It's a lot of hours. Damn. And that is patreon.com forward slash wild times pod. Wild Times pod on all socials. Also, on Spotify, you can also. subscribe they have video now you can get those bonus pods there too for a month plus the two public pods check it out and wild times dot club forward slash info to get you directly to all of those links i am that super annoying guy at the end of the podcast nobody listen i'm telling you i don't think it's

annoying nobody's valuable all right if you've listened through this here we're going to continue the experiment just comment dodo do do do do do do let's see and we'll see you'll get three comments three people listened through our sign-off. That's true. Three. All right. Let's not make it awkward on the sign-off this time, okay? Every time you say that, it makes it stupid.

Like, we just got to like- I told you. No, you got to be quiet. No. Just say nothing. Quiet, it's awkward. Good night. Wait, dude, the timing is all off.

No, if you just let the music play, then it wouldn't be awkward. But you're like, let's not make it awkward. And then it's awkward. And also, he said, good night. It's the middle of the day. It's like 9.30 in the morning. Well, I love everybody except for you two. Good night. Isn't that 7-Eleven coffee just rip through your gut yet?

That's terrible. Brazilian. How many times you get a poop now?