Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to us,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by First Light creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear.
Speaker 1: For every hunt, First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, Phil
Speaker 1: Turn the Machinity. I got a I got a medical
Speaker 1: hot tip that I want to share. Go Ahead is
Speaker 1: already on its on. So years ago I had a
Speaker 1: very convoluted health problem that had like a lot of
Speaker 1: steps to it. Reboard like will this happened? And I
Speaker 1: ate that you know? And then this happened? And I
Speaker 1: got sick of telling when you go to the doctor,
Speaker 1: how everybody wants you to tell happened, And then they
Speaker 1: don't talk, and then another person comes in and you
Speaker 1: got to tell the story again. The other day I
Speaker 1: had to take my kids down. It was a very
Speaker 1: convoluted story about who had strap win and what happened
Speaker 1: to them, okay, and then what happened after that, and
Speaker 1: then what happened after that. So the first person that
Speaker 1: comes into the like and I knew they weren't the person.
Speaker 1: They're the person that weighs your kid and she said,
Speaker 1: so tell me what's going on? And I said, it's
Speaker 1: a long, complicated story. Can I just tell the next person? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So my whole life, I've been doing that, not knowing
Speaker 1: that you could just skip the part. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It's like, yeah, it's like being like hitting
Speaker 1: zero with a person manager yas, I'm like, there's no
Speaker 1: point in me telling you all this because I get
Speaker 1: someone else is gonna come in the door and they're
Speaker 1: not gonna know. Yeah, that's smart, and you're not gonna
Speaker 1: do anything about it. Why do I have to tell you?
Speaker 1: You don't the person way and your kid just has
Speaker 1: a fetish for the stories red It's like, doesn't go
Speaker 1: beyond that, Like, oh I heard a good one today,
Speaker 1: a twenty two pounder. Can I tell a funny doctor
Speaker 1: visit story? Please? It's from our buddy Jake. Did he
Speaker 1: tell you this already? Nobody know he's got the He's
Speaker 1: got the West Nile, West Nile. Yeah, he's on he's
Speaker 1: on the man. Now. I think he's back. He's back hunting.
Speaker 1: But as they were trying, where did he Mississippi? When
Speaker 1: you told me that, I feared he had to be
Speaker 1: somewhere because it's like the wintertime here. Okay, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: he's going through the process trying to figure that out,
Speaker 1: probably retelling his story over and over. Oh yeah. Finally
Speaker 1: gets to the infectious disease doctor and uh. He sends
Speaker 1: me a text says, the infectious disease doctor just asked
Speaker 1: me if I had if I've had contact with any
Speaker 1: wild animals over the past thirty days. I listed Bobcat's,
Speaker 1: mountain lions, elk, wild pigs, coyotes, ducks, and deer. Her response,
Speaker 1: you're weird. Had a very similar conversation with the Montana
Speaker 1: State Game Harvest Survey the volunteer lady who called me yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: She's like, upland birds and I was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like you want to be more specific because she's like,
Speaker 1: well what region. I'm like all of them, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, how many an eat? And then
Speaker 1: she's like, well, what do you do with this? We
Speaker 1: had an equally long conversation about cooking various birds, what
Speaker 1: I do with them, and at the end she's like, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This has been great, awesome because
Speaker 1: most people are like, didn't make it out, She's like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I just piggyback on that. I got a lovely
Speaker 1: call from our local fishing game office the other day
Speaker 1: doing like a postseason survey, and we had a lovely
Speaker 1: conversation and he was like so thankful for taking time
Speaker 1: to answer his questions. And I asked him, like if
Speaker 1: that was rare and apparently a lot of people are
Speaker 1: really mean and hang up right in their faces, and yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you're no, he wasn't hitting on me. But
Speaker 1: if your local fishing game calls to add you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like they're trying to find out uh right,
Speaker 1: like like secrety stuff that you've done right exactly, Like
Speaker 1: it's not like they're not like if you didn't poach creature,
Speaker 1: like you've got nothing to hide, Like that individual's not
Speaker 1: trying to find out your hunting spot. Like they are
Speaker 1: just taking dad and information and collating that and passing
Speaker 1: that along to you know, volunteers. To keep in mind too,
Speaker 1: that when you buy a license, you agree legally that
Speaker 1: you would escort someone to the kill site. If asked,
Speaker 1: I didn't, like, you don't use surrender your right to
Speaker 1: have it be a secret. We so, uh the um lady.
Speaker 1: I was speaking too. She's like, well, you drew this
Speaker 1: antelope tag in this region. I'm like yep. She's like,
Speaker 1: were you successful? I said yep, So how many days?
Speaker 1: I said? I was probably out there six days. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: and what region did you harvest the animal in? Oh?
Speaker 1: She was trying to catch. It's like the one on
Speaker 1: the tag. They are just playing a sting Join a
Speaker 1: Day by Megan Baker born in Michigan. Yeah, so's Megan Denin.
Speaker 1: I just got married. I just got married. To name
Speaker 1: your email, still, says Megan Baker. I know, I know.
Speaker 1: Did you did you debate I'm changing this right here?
Speaker 1: Did you debate maybe not taking his name? You know?
Speaker 1: I didn't think it would be that hard until now
Speaker 1: that I switched it, and I went from a really
Speaker 1: basic English name that nobody mispronounces to something that everybody mispronounces.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely been a learning curve. How's it spelled?
Speaker 1: D E N E A n oh? Yeah? Yeah. Did
Speaker 1: he you think if you'd have said that you weren't
Speaker 1: going to change it? What he'd have called off the
Speaker 1: whole wedding? No, because at first I was like, I
Speaker 1: just I don't really don't know if I want to
Speaker 1: change it. And he's like, is this some weird feminist thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, it just seems like a pain in
Speaker 1: the butt. Yeah, man, I've told it. Like, that's what
Speaker 1: my wife did to me. Is she she said the
Speaker 1: weird feminist thing? No, no, no, no, she laid out
Speaker 1: the pain thing. She said, well, I'm gonna change it
Speaker 1: when my passport expires because I got to renew it anyway,
Speaker 1: and I'll just change my name then. So I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so in eight years when my passport expires then well
Speaker 1: and then that happened and still has changing name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should have take in her advice. So now, like
Speaker 1: I'll say, um, I'll say the Ronnell's are coming in
Speaker 1: Katie too, because yeah, because there's no use dropping that.
Speaker 1: That's great. No, keep that one right in my back pocket.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it stings at all. You are,
Speaker 1: uh you're the first airport biologist we've ever had on
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah. Yeah, um. So as an airport biologist,
Speaker 1: my job is to reduce damaging wildlife strikes with aircraft.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much all of it. Keep planes from hitting critters. Yes,
Speaker 1: we had a trivia question one day. God, I can't
Speaker 1: remember the answer and I can't remember if I got
Speaker 1: it right. I don't think I got it right. I
Speaker 1: think it was like, what is the most common Yeah, animal, No,
Speaker 1: he didn't say bird, he said animal. What's the most
Speaker 1: common animal that a that an airplane runs into? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think it was a morning dove. I think I
Speaker 1: got that right now. I think I put down like
Speaker 1: crows or Canada geese or something like that. It's morning doves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're Yeah, they're just everywhere. I think they're just across
Speaker 1: North America, So they're just pretty common. Do you do
Speaker 1: a lot of that? Um, we're gonna dig way into
Speaker 1: your we gotta do some other stuff first, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna dig a way into your occupation. But do you
Speaker 1: do um, what do you call it? Like? Do you
Speaker 1: do any lethal control? That's kind of last resort, but
Speaker 1: it does happen? Does that happen? And then real quick,
Speaker 1: what's the weirdest thing you've ever heard of a plane?
Speaker 1: Has a plane ever hit a turtle? I'm sure that has.
Speaker 1: Um the weirdest strikes that we have are there was
Speaker 1: a deer that was struck but at thirty thousand feet.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that was that was a real stumper.
Speaker 1: So we work with the Smithsonian and when they ran
Speaker 1: the DNA analysis on the strike, it was deer and
Speaker 1: they called the pilot and he's like, no, I heard it,
Speaker 1: like I know it hit at thirty thousand agl and
Speaker 1: of ground levels a good one. Yeah, And so someone's
Speaker 1: got like, that's what the Chinese are doing with that
Speaker 1: balloon deer into plane pads. I can't believe you guys
Speaker 1: went there because my mind is at right now that
Speaker 1: this fall. I'm gonna be Mark will be like where
Speaker 1: you sitting, I'll be like, I'm on the oak flat
Speaker 1: about twenty two agl on the ground. You can be
Speaker 1: like I saw it from six foot two. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: happened around Christmas time and so everyone kind of joked that,
Speaker 1: you know, Santa Claus was just doing his last rounds.
Speaker 1: So then they took some more of the strike. Um,
Speaker 1: we call it snarge. So snargees that's no, it's all now,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm looking at it. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: don't believe two things you told me. So snarge is
Speaker 1: the remains of a bird on an aircraft. So that
Speaker 1: would be blood, tissue, and feathers, and so when they
Speaker 1: collect the snarge off the aircraft. So imagine when you
Speaker 1: were driving and you hit a bog against splats on
Speaker 1: your windshield. When that's a bird on an airplane, that
Speaker 1: is snarche. You want a little history on that. Sure,
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty, Lockheed L one eight eight electric airplane
Speaker 1: nose dived into Boston Harbor, killing sixty two people. As
Speaker 1: investigators sorted through the rubble, they kept finding globs of
Speaker 1: what appeared to be black feathers. Such material came to
Speaker 1: be known snarge. There I go, you know, we all
Speaker 1: do a far amount of flying, and I'm definitely gonna
Speaker 1: be talking to my seat made about that. Hey wings
Speaker 1: a little dirty out there. I think that's snarge. But yeah,
Speaker 1: to conclude that story, though they did find it, they
Speaker 1: did more DNA analysis, took some other samples and found
Speaker 1: out it was a vulture. So most likely a vulture
Speaker 1: had been eating maybe on a deer carcass. And so
Speaker 1: then when it splatted, they actually hit pick up the
Speaker 1: DNA from the stomach. But could that thing be that high?
Speaker 1: How high? Thirty thousand? Yeah, So when birds migrate, they
Speaker 1: migrate really high, and a lot of people don't realize that. Um.
Speaker 1: So when you're migrating from North America, South America, Europe
Speaker 1: to Africa. Um, they're not flying you know where we
Speaker 1: can see them. They're flying as high as they can,
Speaker 1: just like how we when we fly, you know, cross
Speaker 1: continents and stuff, we try to fly as high as
Speaker 1: we can to shorten the distance and looking for the
Speaker 1: gray air currents. Ruple's Vulture is the bird that claims
Speaker 1: the highest air strike ever recorded at thirty seven thousand,
Speaker 1: one h a gl Well, no, because no, she's only
Speaker 1: she's down to one line now because the other two
Speaker 1: lives weren't lies. She was off by how many feet? Well,
Speaker 1: that was just different, right right? That is wild man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They also have fish strikes too, So a lot of
Speaker 1: times like your offsprey, bald eagle, stuff like that. Either
Speaker 1: they'll get you know, get struck and same thing, the
Speaker 1: DNA will be picked up by the fish, or they'll
Speaker 1: just drop a fish because they're scared of the aircraft
Speaker 1: and splat a fish on your wind shield. Man, does
Speaker 1: every strike get a DNA test? Um? So, basically, when
Speaker 1: when your aircraft lands, maintenance crews are checking out the aircraft.
Speaker 1: If they see us like a snarge, they do collect it.
Speaker 1: We work so snarge is uh, it can't be singular
Speaker 1: like there can be a snarge. Yeah, because my favorite
Speaker 1: smear of SNAr. Yeah. So when we when we collect
Speaker 1: all that information, we have a partnership with Smithonia Feather
Speaker 1: Lab and when we send in all this material, they
Speaker 1: can use their archives of all the carcasses and stuff
Speaker 1: they have, so they'll do feather ID so they can
Speaker 1: actually compare if there's like a feather, compare with the
Speaker 1: feather that's in the archive. Then they can do DNA
Speaker 1: analysis and then they also do microscopic analysis as well.
Speaker 1: It might hear. We got to cover a couple of things.
Speaker 1: But my next question when we come back, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be this. I'm not trying to be I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to be like a like a smart ass, but after
Speaker 1: a strike has occurred, it brings up the question of
Speaker 1: I don't want to say who cares? But you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, why Like if a strike occurs, why
Speaker 1: is it important to know what? Yeah, So as an
Speaker 1: airport biologist, that information is really crucial for us because
Speaker 1: it'll tell us what do we need to manage. For so,
Speaker 1: if we're hitting a lot of water fowl, then we
Speaker 1: know that. We look at the habitat and we'll go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot. Maybe there's a lot of water on
Speaker 1: an airfield or near the airfield, and can we manage that?
Speaker 1: Can we change that habitat or modify it to keep
Speaker 1: these waterfowl out? So we knowing what we hit is
Speaker 1: going to help us manage the air feel better. Like
Speaker 1: you see a spike in some type of strike and
Speaker 1: you gotta be okay, what are these what are these
Speaker 1: doing hanging out here? So bad? Uh, you're not going anywhere?
Speaker 1: Can you can you alter your flight paths though, like
Speaker 1: like can that be a solution versus like altering a
Speaker 1: wetland like certain times a year? Right, you have different
Speaker 1: migratory species moving in, they fly at certain altitudes or
Speaker 1: certain times of the day typically, and you can suggest
Speaker 1: that the seven thirty sevens go yeah, so that fun
Speaker 1: word AGL A can so um seventy percent of our
Speaker 1: birth strikes will hop in below seven hundred AGL and
Speaker 1: so that is within that air fills your takeoff and
Speaker 1: landing areas. So it's really hard to say, okay, well
Speaker 1: just don't take off this direction because that's that's just
Speaker 1: where the runway is. You can't really change the direction. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, when you get a little farther out, we
Speaker 1: can say, you know, we'll let Tower know. Um, and
Speaker 1: the pilots will talk to each other too, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I see a group of docks over here, there's a
Speaker 1: flower gastline. Yeah. Yeah, they'll talk to each other and um,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll even let them. Now, I'll call Tower and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, you know, I'm five miles out, I
Speaker 1: see a you know, flock a geese fly and over
Speaker 1: and they'll roll out their pilots. Now, no, kid, all right,
Speaker 1: hang tight, you're gonna tell us a moose story later. Yes,
Speaker 1: we were talking about the other day. I was saying,
Speaker 1: I was reading a book these my you know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna start a book club. Spencer's working on it all right.
Speaker 1: People have been asking for that for a long start.
Speaker 1: A monthly book club. Cool, and I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna do the book club. Will drop the book
Speaker 1: club on this feed. Can we call it Oprah's book Club?
Speaker 1: But better so, tell me how it's gonna work. Well,
Speaker 1: we're working out the details. I think if you become
Speaker 1: like a book club member, will probably just mail you
Speaker 1: the books. But I guess how does it become part
Speaker 1: of the podcast feed? Well, because then everybody reads the book.
Speaker 1: I've never been in the book club my whole life. Oh,
Speaker 1: so everybody, all of us would just come back in
Speaker 1: after we read said book, discussed what we would say
Speaker 1: this for this week's book, we're gonna do um, maybe
Speaker 1: I would maybe we'd make it both. Uh, the memoir
Speaker 1: of Um Human Row Human Row who lived with the
Speaker 1: Blackfeet starting around eighteen ten. And then then there's a
Speaker 1: so his book was called a Rising Woolf or something
Speaker 1: like that. Then there's another book called My Life as
Speaker 1: an Indian, which is Charles Willard Shoals who live with
Speaker 1: the Blackfeet, kind of like right after he did. And
Speaker 1: then these books are collected together. So it's just this
Speaker 1: portrait of these it's this like basically amateur ethnography by
Speaker 1: two individuals who lived in hunted with the Blackfeet. We
Speaker 1: would read that, everybody would read it. So you're at home,
Speaker 1: you're in the book, you're in the book circle. You
Speaker 1: read the book, and then after some amount of time,
Speaker 1: we have a discussion. We have a one hour discussion
Speaker 1: of the book where you'd be like, oh, I like
Speaker 1: that part. Where right? And that's the book club and
Speaker 1: then we have like little titillating facts about the book
Speaker 1: that you might not know. We can maybe even have
Speaker 1: some authors join us. We talked about that would be
Speaker 1: great that the book club would end with, well, these
Speaker 1: people I just mentioned are dead, but yes, that would
Speaker 1: be the ideal situations you do living authors, Like let's
Speaker 1: say we did coming into the country and we somehow
Speaker 1: manage you get John McPhee to come in. Oh, but
Speaker 1: I'd read that one. Um again, I think he might
Speaker 1: be like way up there, maybe not alive. There used
Speaker 1: to be a radio station did a show called dead
Speaker 1: or Alive. I think he's I think they name a
Speaker 1: name and then you have to guess whether they're dead
Speaker 1: or alive. He's dead. I think he's alive. He should be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he made a different one. I mean, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't mean mean macab content for the eventual podcast we
Speaker 1: should cut. So yeah, point being, point being. I My
Speaker 1: new favorite book is This is Human Rose Story as
Speaker 1: told to the Shul's character In it, he names the
Speaker 1: he names the blackfeet word for moose, as he understood
Speaker 1: it to be six sis, I'm not pronouncing it right.
Speaker 1: When he later learned the language, and he learned it
Speaker 1: very well. Their word for moose was they didn't have
Speaker 1: many of them. They're out on the plane, so they're
Speaker 1: east of the Rockies. Their word for moose was black
Speaker 1: going out of sight. And I mentioned this on the
Speaker 1: podcast a couple of episodes ago, and I said, I
Speaker 1: wonder if our word means anything like our word, Like,
Speaker 1: what does our word for moose mean? A guy brought
Speaker 1: it in and he says, our word for moose is
Speaker 1: derived from the Eastern Abanaki word mos. However that's pronounced
Speaker 1: or there's an eric Gansit word that's m o s
Speaker 1: or m o o s u variously translated. It's a
Speaker 1: long bill up, isn't it? Phil? Phil? He he's messing
Speaker 1: with the knobs and stuff. He's so lost. That's his job. Bro,
Speaker 1: Guess what moose means when you say moose, Hey, I
Speaker 1: saw a moose. Guess what you're saying. I saw a
Speaker 1: twig eater. I saw he who strips off leaves and bark. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the word moose exists in German, right, like
Speaker 1: moose's elk like deer. So yeah, so I find it
Speaker 1: very interesting that we're like, oh, it had to come
Speaker 1: from the Native Americans und around. I find it very
Speaker 1: maybe wrong. You sure about that? Yeah? Yeah, damn it.
Speaker 1: Did you check into that? Grin Nope? I well, Phil,
Speaker 1: I want you to research it, and if it makes
Speaker 1: me look bad, cut it out. I got up. I
Speaker 1: want to believe that in these Blackfoot camps with these dudes,
Speaker 1: that the entire time that they were present, the black
Speaker 1: Feet were like Noah, remember like guy's media, so be
Speaker 1: careful what you say around them. Yeah, it is. It's
Speaker 1: like I was trying to explain to someone. Well, I
Speaker 1: was talking to Clay Nucombe about reading. Right, you get
Speaker 1: into so you're reading journals of Euro Americans who spent
Speaker 1: time with tribes. Invariably they were not understanding, they were misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: People were not telling them things, sometimes just messing with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: having fun with them, not telling them things that they
Speaker 1: didn't want them to know. Whatever. Like you're with someone,
Speaker 1: you're very suspicious of them, you're suspicious of other motives. Right. However,
Speaker 1: each of these chronicles, each of these individuals that spent
Speaker 1: time with Indigenous Americans and like a precor in early
Speaker 1: contact times. Every one of them had biases, no doubt
Speaker 1: every one of them was getting some sort of incomplete picture. However,
Speaker 1: taken as a whole, it still is a window into
Speaker 1: It's like a snapshot of a culture in a life, right,
Speaker 1: Like you know that it's not all wrong, right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But I'm a sucker for those books. But I always
Speaker 1: read those books with some level of skepticism, being when
Speaker 1: someone you have someone over for dinner and you portray
Speaker 1: to them how shit goes in your family and everything,
Speaker 1: and then they walk on and be like, here's how
Speaker 1: shit is in that household. Right, they make a big meal,
Speaker 1: they put out cheese and crackers every time. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you're like, no, we actually never done that. I was
Speaker 1: doing time. I've ever done that, you know, because you
Speaker 1: were coming over. Yeah I heard you like cheese crackers.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I hate that ship whatever. So but anyways,
Speaker 1: they're great books. Oh it gets way more complicated too,
Speaker 1: because like think of like the true things that had
Speaker 1: to have seemed so like fancifully drawn up, like the
Speaker 1: number of bison on the plane, right, like people coming
Speaker 1: back and saying like, yeah, this is how it is
Speaker 1: people had to have a real level of skepticism. I'm
Speaker 1: still a defender of the books. If they're super cool.
Speaker 1: I haven't your stomping grounds, dude. Every place he talks
Speaker 1: about in those books, you'd be like, Oh, I've been there,
Speaker 1: I've been there, I've been there. I'm man, I'll read them.
Speaker 1: Sign me up for the book club. They get to
Speaker 1: a creek and they get to drainage and I found
Speaker 1: the drainage. I'm a map. We don't call it what
Speaker 1: they called it. They get to a drainage that flows
Speaker 1: into the Missouri and they said that that creek is
Speaker 1: called it crushed to them because some people were gathering
Speaker 1: clay blow a high cut bank and the cut bank
Speaker 1: collapsed and killed them. And that cup, that creek's name
Speaker 1: is it crushed them. That's cool. Yeah, Yeah, It's not
Speaker 1: like Dickens Creek. The old man Dickins got crushed by
Speaker 1: some he lived there. Yeah. Uh man. A lot of
Speaker 1: feedback on cadavers people. When we had Jonathan Reisman, doctor
Speaker 1: Jonathan Risman on the lung King, which is a little
Speaker 1: inside joke about the liver King. Knows the outside joke
Speaker 1: about the liver King. He had a lot to say
Speaker 1: about cadavers, and my goodness, makes you seem like everybody
Speaker 1: that listens has cadaver experience. Yeah, and these emails especially
Speaker 1: are wild, this person was saying. Someone wrote in in
Speaker 1: regards to a recent show where the Meat Eater crew
Speaker 1: was surprised about mobile labs on our roads carrying bodies.
Speaker 1: I worked a certain government agency's forensic laboratory. I was
Speaker 1: surprised to find out that we would receive human body
Speaker 1: parts via ups and FedEx. He worked with a woman
Speaker 1: that was in charge of examining human heads involved in homicide,
Speaker 1: and she would put the heads in a crock pot
Speaker 1: to get the skin and muscle off, to check the
Speaker 1: skulls for injuries. She went into you better mark that
Speaker 1: crock pot. She went into Walmart. Listen, are you ready
Speaker 1: for this? She went into Walmart and put her head
Speaker 1: into various crock pots to find the one that was
Speaker 1: going to work best for her application. Think about that.
Speaker 1: It's a very normal sight at Walmart. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone a coworker taking like profile pictures. Make sure your
Speaker 1: chins in there. We used to joke about going to
Speaker 1: like a Walmart buying like everything you'd ever need if
Speaker 1: you just murdered somebody like latex gloves, plastic sheeting, duct
Speaker 1: tape like whatever, like, yeah, what point with some of
Speaker 1: goal at a minute? All I am out here? What's
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah? And then the last thing is a
Speaker 1: crock pot that you've been going like to see if
Speaker 1: it fits your head or not. I like how Nicholas
Speaker 1: puts in there a second to last sentences. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure you wanted this information, but there it is, Nicholas,
Speaker 1: You don't know. Steve very well keep sending that stuff in.
Speaker 1: Here's another really interesting one about the cadaver business. I
Speaker 1: was asking doctor Reisman if he because he spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time with his cadaver in medical school, and
Speaker 1: I said, what did you wind up knowing about the person? Now?
Speaker 1: When I had cadaver bone in my jaw, I asked
Speaker 1: if what I could find out about whose bone it was?
Speaker 1: And they said, they can tell you whose bone it is.
Speaker 1: So I was spitting out a little hunks with some
Speaker 1: guy for two weeks, no idea who he was. He's
Speaker 1: all over this studio. I mean, I say, right here,
Speaker 1: as the little bone hunks would come up out of
Speaker 1: that hole. My job. He says this, this is very interesting.
Speaker 1: University of Oklahoma. You were given so this is a
Speaker 1: medical school anatomy Okay. You were given a seat assignment
Speaker 1: in the lecture hall and what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: random name on a sticker. About six to eight other
Speaker 1: classmates had the same sticker with the same name. We
Speaker 1: soon found out the name on the sticker was the
Speaker 1: person we would be dissecting in anatomy lab in a
Speaker 1: few weeks, one hundred and sixty students, twenty different names
Speaker 1: on the stickers. Later that week, we were all bust
Speaker 1: to a ballroom you'll state this cow at the Cowboy
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame to sit with the family of the
Speaker 1: person whose name was on your sticker. This was called
Speaker 1: the donor Lunch and was a way to show the
Speaker 1: person you were dissecting was really a person. I sat
Speaker 1: with the son and daughter in law of my cadaver.
Speaker 1: There were pictures of her on the table, and they
Speaker 1: brought photo albums to show us her through the years.
Speaker 1: They discussed injury she had sustained through her life, which
Speaker 1: we correlated with later in anatomy lab. Broken leg here
Speaker 1: scar their new hip. Here. The only rules we could
Speaker 1: not contact the families later with any information about what
Speaker 1: we found in the lab. All the remains were cremated
Speaker 1: and scattered on school grounds. Unreal, Yeah, right, unreal that
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it'd be an interesting lunch to sit
Speaker 1: down too. Obviously, if you sit there as yourself, why
Speaker 1: you listen to this show? That's why right there? Think
Speaker 1: you're getting that on Maury Povich. No, not not even
Speaker 1: this American Life good stuff, man, No, that causes you
Speaker 1: to think a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I would have
Speaker 1: gone a little bit deeper and said exactly why you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously he says, just so you know that
Speaker 1: it's jokes man, It's referenced everywhere. But like the yeah,
Speaker 1: just gave it, just didn't say anything, but he expressed
Speaker 1: facially he doesn't think that that's why there might be
Speaker 1: one little bitty reason why the you know, the origins
Speaker 1: like the medical educational system, right, like body theft, stealing
Speaker 1: bodies in order to be able to research because there
Speaker 1: are so many taboos around, like dissecting a human. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to think that that existed within the same profession
Speaker 1: that now you can sit down with a family of
Speaker 1: people that donate anybody. H that's wild, real weird. Um,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say something that I should say. Here's
Speaker 1: another one. I'm I was gonna talk about like a thing.
Speaker 1: I just realized about a good grave Robin strategy that
Speaker 1: I learned reading a book that I was just reading.
Speaker 1: But you shouldn't be doing that. No, but it does
Speaker 1: does make us wonder if our guest Megan used to
Speaker 1: be Baker Denne will ever get some snarge off of
Speaker 1: vulture that had dined on a human, so to be
Speaker 1: a human strike at thirty sound agl um. I think
Speaker 1: if that happens, it's usually because the person who collected
Speaker 1: the stars didn't use gloves. Yeah, I am. Here's the
Speaker 1: more on this same subject. Not me. When I say
Speaker 1: I am, I'm the listener. This is the listener talking.
Speaker 1: I am a student working on my Doctor of Chiropractic degree.
Speaker 1: Is that an actual can you get it? Is that
Speaker 1: an actual doctor? Either way, it doesn't matter. I trust
Speaker 1: the person who's in the program and studying and writing
Speaker 1: into this lovely show. Yeah, he opercased d as such.
Speaker 1: I have dissected close to half a dozen human cadavers
Speaker 1: from head to toe in the last year. In my experience,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of cadavers are just as doctor Reissman
Speaker 1: was saying, out of shape and full of large fat deposits.
Speaker 1: That being said, oh, does this get any better? Yes? Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean said he encourages everybody to donate your body. Remember,
Speaker 1: like Spencer was like, I'm sure that the only people
Speaker 1: who donate their bodies are are yeah, young in vain
Speaker 1: and want their eight pack to be shown off when
Speaker 1: they're dead. Ye there Yeah, where He's like, I'm so
Speaker 1: good looking. I hope they dissect my body and find
Speaker 1: out just how good looking I am. That was Spencer's thought. This,
Speaker 1: this art, this letter does get great. For someone who's
Speaker 1: fascinated by the inner workings of the human machine, as
Speaker 1: I am, human cadavers are a gift. No, here's where
Speaker 1: it gets good. The unsettling part for me, I say
Speaker 1: this at risk of sounding like a psychopath, is the
Speaker 1: hunger that comes along with dissecting. Ah, as well as
Speaker 1: many of my classmates, have all experienced the same phenomenon.
Speaker 1: After about a half hour of dissecting skeletal muscle, one
Speaker 1: tends to get hit with a severe hunger. At first,
Speaker 1: I thought and hoped that it was a chemical reaction
Speaker 1: with the formal behind and other preservatives that causes this
Speaker 1: to happen. But after asking several of my professors and
Speaker 1: the lab managers themselves, I have learned that it is
Speaker 1: an instinctual response to seeing meat. Yeah, next time you're
Speaker 1: at the old Cairo fractor. I'm not saying who this
Speaker 1: guy is. I just wanted you know, he might be
Speaker 1: sitting there being like loins. That is interesting. Eventually, it's
Speaker 1: when he's back there. Yeah, But have you ever felt
Speaker 1: this phenomenon when you're skidding and breaking down an elk?
Speaker 1: And absolutely? Oh yeah, yeah, I like some things like
Speaker 1: dear mule deer elk, stuff like that. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: find it's like when I'm cutting it up, it's very appetizing.
Speaker 1: But I don't find myself like insatiately hungry, a severe hunger.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, no, I don't find myself insatiably hungry. Thirty
Speaker 1: minutes later. He might be a psychic because I feel
Speaker 1: like we've got it a lot of stuff together, butchered
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the field together. Cal you too,
Speaker 1: I can't remember any time we're like thirty minutes in
Speaker 1: either of you are like my god, am I hungry.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, I had no, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: think we got stuff to do, right, like clocks ticking.
Speaker 1: Typically he's describing maybe it's I think it's like psychopath
Speaker 1: the federal be I may want to pay attention to
Speaker 1: this one. You know, when I'm collecting snarge, I instantly
Speaker 1: have a craving for chicken wings. No you don't, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: there's one more about this. Oh, this is something that
Speaker 1: caldies know about. Just in case this is a strange behavior.
Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with cadavers. This guy's an
Speaker 1: electrical lineman for a local public power district. They install
Speaker 1: and repair electrical poles and utility structures. His crew will
Speaker 1: often work in areas far from restrooms, and especially after storms.
Speaker 1: It isn't uncommon for him to work twenty four hours
Speaker 1: straight to repair damage to electrical poles. Because it is
Speaker 1: They often pack several meals worth of food and the
Speaker 1: haul around drinking water those large orange igloo drink coolers.
Speaker 1: They also will haul a green drink cooler for the
Speaker 1: purpose of housing their number two, since they are often
Speaker 1: far from a restroom but still too close to houses
Speaker 1: to do their business. When they're done with the cooler,
Speaker 1: they toss it into the trash. This is a note
Speaker 1: for cow it's a little wasteful. It is right when
Speaker 1: Cal's doing all of his dumpster diving, guys staying watch
Speaker 1: out for the green coolers. That's good info than it is.
Speaker 1: They should find something else wanted. It's going to contractor bag.
Speaker 1: But I was just gonna say that is pretty trying
Speaker 1: to keep it. We already covered the whole thing. He
Speaker 1: could they sell those fancy five gallon buckets that you
Speaker 1: could just take a bag out of, And why they
Speaker 1: wanted to keep it warm. Well, I think it's right.
Speaker 1: It's you're not gonna have a ruptured bag as you're
Speaker 1: jostling around stuff in the track to be an insulated
Speaker 1: container you're trying to keep No, I think you're gonna
Speaker 1: trap in the smell. But you're also not gonna have
Speaker 1: liquids escaping, you know, because it's a fortified vessel. Cal
Speaker 1: sympathizes with him. Well, I understand, for sure, but I'd
Speaker 1: rather I'd be more for Lynne just doing being able
Speaker 1: to have carte blanche to do their deed on the
Speaker 1: side of the road. Yeah, dig a little cat hole
Speaker 1: or whatever exactly. Yep uh. Speaking of cat holes, see
Speaker 1: that good one. Good one. This is another one that
Speaker 1: the cow will appreciate. Some women. This is a strange story.
Speaker 1: Two women in Alabama got in all kinds. They got decurdy,
Speaker 1: then they actually got roughed up by the police, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is true or not. This
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing Crine should have called them
Speaker 1: and talked to them. Well, their lawyers put out statements
Speaker 1: and there's some video footage out there showing them get
Speaker 1: roughed up. I mean roughed up is the bruises. That's
Speaker 1: all kind of like up to interpretation. They were feeding
Speaker 1: cats in their neighborhood and what Tumpka What Tumpka Alabama,
Speaker 1: and the guy points out and the regional Native American
Speaker 1: language rumbling Water Alabama. They've been feeding lots of house cats,
Speaker 1: which is illegal, feeding stray house cats, but they would
Speaker 1: feed them to lure them in and catch them and
Speaker 1: then fix them. M So it's like letter the law
Speaker 1: of spirit of the law not supposed to feed stray cats,
Speaker 1: but they're catching them and fixing them. They've been warned
Speaker 1: and warned, and they felt that they had the moral
Speaker 1: high ground and then they got coughed and stuffed. I
Speaker 1: think five year old and a sixty one year old
Speaker 1: should point out that we don't want our a bunch
Speaker 1: of people writing in and being like, oh, it's not
Speaker 1: illegal to feed straight cat. This is probably like a
Speaker 1: municipal or county ordinance that they're violating. Yeah, people over
Speaker 1: sixty years of age, Like, you're you're not gonna fix
Speaker 1: those people either. They're gonna do whatever they want. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is never a good idea to feed a
Speaker 1: bunch of stray cats. What if you're fixing them trying
Speaker 1: to solve the stray cat the Uh, the kiddies aren't
Speaker 1: having sex with birds to death, they're eating them. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. He can be, he can be as
Speaker 1: fixed as you want. We're still gonna go kill like
Speaker 1: three birds a day. Yeah, I was talking about we
Speaker 1: were talking recently about a Bob Kat getting hit by
Speaker 1: a train. This is the last thing, Megan, Bobcat getting
Speaker 1: hit by a train, and I was talking about how
Speaker 1: why you know, how does that happen? Um? And a
Speaker 1: guy from the railroad. Uh, he calls himself a train
Speaker 1: track station biologist. No, no, no, that that was my
Speaker 1: little topic yeah, oh no, just like as a transition
Speaker 1: into talking about good transition. Here's what they find happens.
Speaker 1: Stuff gets between the tracks, between the rails, and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, it's impulse when the train comes, it's impulses
Speaker 1: to like the Bob bobcat for instance, its impulse will
Speaker 1: be to turn from the train, not jump the rails,
Speaker 1: but just go down. He's like he's like consciously staying
Speaker 1: within the line. Yeah, like like he's he's They they
Speaker 1: they feel corralled by the corralled by the rails, and
Speaker 1: so they just take off, Yeah, something like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's wild, um, the earl he says this about them.
Speaker 1: They then tend to stretch out and try to jump
Speaker 1: the rail once the locomotives are on top of them,
Speaker 1: so they'll get overtaken and they try to bail out
Speaker 1: from under the thing. They're only saving gray seems to
Speaker 1: be if they come upon a grade crossing at that point,
Speaker 1: they will veer off to the side. He said, I've
Speaker 1: seen this in everything from raccoons to cattle. Oh, it's sad.
Speaker 1: Possums get up on the rail and run down the rail.
Speaker 1: That's terrible, man, that's sad. I think it's a natural
Speaker 1: instinct for animals to follow lines. So when we I've
Speaker 1: trapped like you know, ducks and stuff, and we have
Speaker 1: confusion traps where it's like a funnel that they go
Speaker 1: into these traps and then they're gonna hit the edge
Speaker 1: of the cage and it'll funnel around and they'll just
Speaker 1: keep following that line and they'll never actually just like
Speaker 1: the opens wide open, but because they follow that line.
Speaker 1: And the same thing when we're managing moves up in Alaska,
Speaker 1: we can get them up on a fence line and
Speaker 1: they'll follow that line and something about following the lines.
Speaker 1: So your trap they could get out like the duck one,
Speaker 1: but there keyboard do yeah, but most of them will
Speaker 1: just keep doing this figure eight because they just follow
Speaker 1: the line. Really, that makes for inexpensive trapping materials. Right there,
Speaker 1: you get a rope. So what was how did you
Speaker 1: get into your How did you get into your business
Speaker 1: in your line of work? Yeah, so I went to
Speaker 1: Michigan Tech University up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I got
Speaker 1: a degree in wildlife management. Like every other person, I
Speaker 1: wanted to work for the state and went to a
Speaker 1: conference and somebody was given a talk on wildlife damage
Speaker 1: management from Wildlife Services and I was like, oh, that
Speaker 1: sounds fascinating. He happened to be the state director out
Speaker 1: of Michigan, so I went to his office a few
Speaker 1: weeks later and he said. I was in his office
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh, there was a seasonal position that
Speaker 1: just opened in Alaska. He printed it off and said,
Speaker 1: here you go. And I'm from the cornfields of Michigan.
Speaker 1: I never have left Michigan before at that moment, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm never moving to Alaska so far
Speaker 1: away from home. So you were damned close to ly
Speaker 1: even by the time you go up to Michigan Tech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you had that big ass lake you'd had, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly cross the ice. Yeah, my parents said, was the
Speaker 1: forest I could get away from home with still paying
Speaker 1: state college? Yea, um, so you know, naturally, six months
Speaker 1: later I was in Alaska. So after I graduated, I
Speaker 1: ended up doing a seasonal position up in Kotsabue, Alaska
Speaker 1: for Wildlife Services. Part of being an airport biologist is
Speaker 1: a lot of surveys and creating management plans. So my
Speaker 1: position was working in Kotzebue, Alaska, and I was up
Speaker 1: there for six months just doing surveys on wildlife and
Speaker 1: but related to an airport or not really started right
Speaker 1: out in the airport business. Yeah, I got you. So
Speaker 1: just doing surveys um you just trying to see where
Speaker 1: animals are moving, their behaviors, stuff like that, and it
Speaker 1: was It's one of the greatest experience of my life.
Speaker 1: Just the cultural experience is just getting to live in
Speaker 1: that native village. You know, it's way up it's remote,
Speaker 1: like I think the closest row systems like five hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, and it was a really really great experience.
Speaker 1: And then the wildlife up there was really interesting. So
Speaker 1: some of like the weird things that can happen up
Speaker 1: there on an airport are like muskox. So you guys
Speaker 1: might be familiar with the muskox like defense circle. So
Speaker 1: imagine you have a group of muskox and they get
Speaker 1: on your airfield and you try to you know, harass
Speaker 1: them off, and they just stop and they create that
Speaker 1: defense circle and they're on your runway and it's like
Speaker 1: really difficult to get them off. So then you got
Speaker 1: to cancel flights, Yeah, exactly, So it'll definitely delay some stuff.
Speaker 1: I know, my airfields. Like right after I left, they
Speaker 1: actually had a caribou migration go through and it like
Speaker 1: disrupted the airfield because just thousands of cariboos were walking
Speaker 1: across and you can't. They don't fence the airfield there,
Speaker 1: some do, so it's just part of that management plan.
Speaker 1: Some airfields, you know, they'll have eight foot because why
Speaker 1: I tell dear, can't jump over eight feet? Sometimes they
Speaker 1: don't haven't. Could be a funding issue, could just be
Speaker 1: they might not think it's important until you know, they
Speaker 1: get a strike with a cariboo or something. They'll learn
Speaker 1: pretty quick. And with those muskox that's gonna be you know,
Speaker 1: you know what we didn't, what we had, we weren't
Speaker 1: talking about. But it just we keep not talking about it.
Speaker 1: And it got so long ago? Was it? They just
Speaker 1: Alaska had their first um the first person ever killed
Speaker 1: by a musk Ox, right reported first reported person a
Speaker 1: trooper was he stay a trooper? Let me pull that
Speaker 1: back up. I actually did not hear about this. This
Speaker 1: is a shocking. Well, someone rolled in. They had just
Speaker 1: they were trying to get some kind of ATF permit
Speaker 1: or something. I think he had just someone rolled in,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, man, that guy. I was with the guy
Speaker 1: an hour before. He was doing some kind of filling
Speaker 1: out some form or checking my ID for a form.
Speaker 1: The guy went home. There was a musk ox harass
Speaker 1: and his dogs. Maybe he had sled dogs and uh
Speaker 1: they yep. Officer with officer with Alaska State Troopers killed
Speaker 1: by muskoks while trying to scare away a pack of
Speaker 1: wild animals outside his house stomped him and gored him
Speaker 1: to death. Whoa. He was trying to scare away a
Speaker 1: group of muskoks from near a dog kennel at his
Speaker 1: home when one of the animals attacked him. He was
Speaker 1: declared dead at the scene. Horrible, isn't that's very rare?
Speaker 1: I thought, I remember seeing that it was the first.
Speaker 1: No one, I'm sure it's happened, right, But in terms
Speaker 1: of first, but with muskoks on the air, if you
Speaker 1: got a bunch of muskaks or a bunch of caribou
Speaker 1: out there, I mean, there's got to be a little
Speaker 1: bit of an element of sort of public perception, like
Speaker 1: you don't just you can't just run out and start
Speaker 1: shooting at him. Probably no, on top of you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to shoot something like that because they're also a
Speaker 1: large animal, because now you're delaying time trying to get
Speaker 1: that animal off too, so you created more problems. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so you're just trying to harass him off, get him
Speaker 1: off there? What Why was that a temporary position? So
Speaker 1: that was just temporary so they Wildlife Hazard Management Plan
Speaker 1: only has to be renewed every couple of years. So
Speaker 1: I was just doing surveys for this plan. So it
Speaker 1: was just a written up plan and it's just recommendations.
Speaker 1: So we do these surveys and then we'll be able
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, you know this particular part of
Speaker 1: your air fields a hot spot, Maybe you might want
Speaker 1: to change something around that area. And then what have
Speaker 1: you heard of getting run over by planes up there? Oh? Gosh,
Speaker 1: just about everything. I mean, ay, we're like you're talking
Speaker 1: cotso Beyer just in Alaska in general. Yeah, like like
Speaker 1: Cotsaby for instance, what's a typical strike up there? It's
Speaker 1: not a morning dove. Um, So you have ptarmigan up there,
Speaker 1: and I remember they had ptarmigan issues. Honestly, it was
Speaker 1: pretty low strikes up there, because I mean, there's just
Speaker 1: not a whole lot that I know. They had to
Speaker 1: remove a seal off the runway after I had left
Speaker 1: as well. Really, yeah, seal on the runway? Was that
Speaker 1: in your management plan? Actually? No, so the like we
Speaker 1: flew this person up here, did a whole management plan,
Speaker 1: she leaves in and here's a seal. No mention of
Speaker 1: that in the management plan? Yeah, yeah, I know, I remember.
Speaker 1: They're really easy to do though. You just take a
Speaker 1: red ball and you bounce it down the runway and
Speaker 1: they follow it right off. You know, do you remember?
Speaker 1: I think that the most this has to be the
Speaker 1: most famous bird strike is the Miracle on the Hudson
Speaker 1: Captain Sully. Yep, they hit what they had a flock
Speaker 1: of candy geese. How many? I don't know the exact
Speaker 1: flock size, but I know it took out some of
Speaker 1: their engines and that's why they couldn't couldn't get back
Speaker 1: to the airfield and time like a bunch of geese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a flock. Yeah, so imagine that flying v
Speaker 1: going across. That's what I'm curious about because movies make
Speaker 1: it seemed like a bird at any time can take
Speaker 1: down a giant plane. How fragile are the planes? Like?
Speaker 1: What's like a concerning bird strike? What has to have on.
Speaker 1: I think it's just like any you know, when you
Speaker 1: hit something with your car as well, like something that
Speaker 1: could just splatter off some things that could actually cause damage,
Speaker 1: depends on how it got hit. But I know, you know,
Speaker 1: with technology and stuff, they're testing more and more on
Speaker 1: how to like, you know, toughen up these aircraft. So
Speaker 1: I know a lot of agencies that are, you know,
Speaker 1: building engines. They use like frozen turkeys and frozen chickens.
Speaker 1: They'll toss them into an engine to see how well
Speaker 1: they handle the impact. You know, what they ought to do,
Speaker 1: You ought to tell them this thought out. I bet
Speaker 1: they do, Steve well, then wouldn't be frozen, she said,
Speaker 1: She just said that they buy frozen ones. She just stood,
Speaker 1: buy frozen. I mean you can ask the because if
Speaker 1: you throw a rosen turkey there, man, yeah, you might
Speaker 1: as well throw a rock in there. Yeah. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: about honing the wing tip to a razor's edge, slice
Speaker 1: them so you're just slice them through the sky. Well
Speaker 1: that's like if you run into them at that at
Speaker 1: an angle where they're sliceable, you know, yeah, because they
Speaker 1: may Yeah, well I would elsewhere. What if it's not
Speaker 1: the way that they're hitting. Well, I don't think the
Speaker 1: geese are going to like t bone a seven thirty seven.
Speaker 1: Well wasn't it? Did you? Did you say to me
Speaker 1: that if there is a strike that occurs, depending upon
Speaker 1: like how far the aircraft is from the runway, uh,
Speaker 1: the plane actually needs to turn back around. A lot
Speaker 1: of strikes people don't even like the pilots won't even
Speaker 1: realize that happened. Okay, Um, so that's a lot of times.
Speaker 1: That's why a lot of times they don't realize that
Speaker 1: happened until they're doing their maintenance checks. I'm like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: obviously if it goes through an engine, you know, they
Speaker 1: might feel it. They may smell it. I know, pilots
Speaker 1: say they can smell when a bird gets ingested. Lo'll
Speaker 1: get like a burnt bird smell. Um. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: just kind of he'd be hungry, I'll get But like
Speaker 1: you know, like JFK, LaGuardia, places like that, I would
Speaker 1: imagine like lots of pigeon strikes, and that's like that's
Speaker 1: a light bird. It's not gonna bring down a plane, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If there's one thing I learned from my travels is
Speaker 1: every airfield they got a runway, they got taxi ways.
Speaker 1: Like there's things that are very standard in an airfield,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to managing the wildlife itself, it
Speaker 1: is vastly different. Because you can have cultural things, environmental things,
Speaker 1: the type of wildlife that's there, the regulations on what
Speaker 1: you can do to that wildlife is going to change
Speaker 1: on every Airfield's really fun. How often do planes hit? Um? Like,
Speaker 1: if a bit, give me just a like, what's a
Speaker 1: normal jet? Like a normal jet that's flying nowadays there's
Speaker 1: both okay, seven thirty seven's coming down the land and
Speaker 1: there's a white tailed deer. Is it just blam deer
Speaker 1: flies out of the way or can that screw the
Speaker 1: plane up? Oh, if it hits a deer, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would probably cause a lot of damage. That doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen very often. Oh So I looked up
Speaker 1: some numbers and I believe it's about you have a
Speaker 1: point zero eight percent chance of hitting a bird, and
Speaker 1: that's just to hit a bird, but to actually cause
Speaker 1: damage is going to be like a point zero zero
Speaker 1: three to five percent. So the chances of hitting birds
Speaker 1: are really low. But when they do hit and it
Speaker 1: does cause damage it causes on average like two hundred
Speaker 1: and eight million dollars a year. Wow, So do you
Speaker 1: have any nice states? Do you have a number? So
Speaker 1: if the chances are low though, do you have a
Speaker 1: number of how many strikes maybe happen on average? Yeah?
Speaker 1: On average is looking through numbers between nineteen ninety to
Speaker 1: like two twenty one, So like it's there are growing
Speaker 1: more because as we fly more, we're gonna be hitting
Speaker 1: more birds and stuff like that. But it's on average
Speaker 1: like one hundred and fifty five strikes a week or so,
Speaker 1: but there's also one hundred and seventy five thousand flights
Speaker 1: in a week. Two. Sure. Oh, it may seem like
Speaker 1: you guys doing a good job of de gating bird crashes.
Speaker 1: We do our best. What what's the best airport in
Speaker 1: terms of the wildlife habitat? I mean, are they are
Speaker 1: they actually trying to make it not good wildlife habitat? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's part of the steps of being an airport biologist.
Speaker 1: So one of the first things we do is, you know,
Speaker 1: observing wildlife and serving wildlife. We look at the habitat,
Speaker 1: so we look at the airfield as a hole in
Speaker 1: the surrounding areas and we go, Okay, we're looking for food, water,
Speaker 1: and shelter. Which of those three components are on the
Speaker 1: airfield or near the airfield that are attracting wildlife? And
Speaker 1: can we change that? Can we modify them? Can we
Speaker 1: remove a forest? The type of grasses that are on
Speaker 1: an airfield, you know, can we change that? Can we
Speaker 1: make it a grass that geese don't like? Um, it's
Speaker 1: just changing, you know, just the habitat to make it
Speaker 1: less desirable for wildlife to be around. So you'd be
Speaker 1: like that food plot that runs down the length of
Speaker 1: the air has to go. Yeah, the corn feeder can't
Speaker 1: be there anymore. But what ones have like a what
Speaker 1: ones have great great habitat? I mean, but it's a
Speaker 1: weird occupation to have to have to like interrupt habitat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I know a lot of airfields, you
Speaker 1: know that we're built fifty hundred years ago. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of times they were just looking for land
Speaker 1: that was wide and open, so allocatet wetlands. Nobody likes these,
Speaker 1: so they would build on those. But obviously conservation efforts
Speaker 1: and stuff have ramped up a lot in the last
Speaker 1: hundred years and now we're going, ah, these are actually
Speaker 1: really great habitats, and so it you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of have to balance this of like, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: to make sure the air field self doesn't have great habitat,
Speaker 1: but also conserving what we have on the outside of
Speaker 1: the airfield as well, just outside of our flight paths. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I imagine the mandate becomes a little bit different,
Speaker 1: Like you could picture. In the old days, it'd be listen,
Speaker 1: kill anything that might possibly come near an airplane, and
Speaker 1: now there's a lot you know, we try to be
Speaker 1: a little more surgical and delicate. Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: lot more research and stuff too. I mean just the
Speaker 1: technology in the research and technology that we've had throughout
Speaker 1: the years, as well as just also increasing our understanding
Speaker 1: of wild wildlife is on the airfields and what we
Speaker 1: can do, Like you know, you can sit there and
Speaker 1: try to shoot every duck that comes on. Why not
Speaker 1: just remove that pond of water and now you just
Speaker 1: removed all those future ducks from coming in. Yeah. Do
Speaker 1: you ever have to get involved in the like, how
Speaker 1: do you guys do if you get where you just
Speaker 1: get like a deer infestation in some area? How has
Speaker 1: it ever decided that you're going to have the mechanically
Speaker 1: removed deer. So it kind of depends on where it's at,
Speaker 1: you know, what is the fencing situation. So that's another
Speaker 1: stuff that we often take is just you know, creating exclusion,
Speaker 1: creating barriers to make it harder for wildlife to get on. So,
Speaker 1: you know, you remove all that habitat, you remove those
Speaker 1: forests and stuff off the airfield, you're adding fences up,
Speaker 1: and when deer are on there, like, they are at
Speaker 1: risk and they are hazards. So oftentimes we will remove
Speaker 1: those individuals. And I know at my particular base, when
Speaker 1: we were move them, we actually donate all the meat
Speaker 1: and stuff, so is they're not wasted When you have
Speaker 1: to remove a deer, is it like is it a
Speaker 1: thing you're just sort of working away at or is it,
Speaker 1: oh my god, right now there's a deer that's presenting risk.
Speaker 1: We need to go get the deer. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's like right there, right on the runway rate within
Speaker 1: that strike zone, like it's if if an airplane takes off,
Speaker 1: that thing is going to be hit. We also try
Speaker 1: to remove those. Yeah, how is that done? Oh we
Speaker 1: just use firearms? Yeah, huh. Does every airport I'm a
Speaker 1: little confused. We just need to and to straighten this
Speaker 1: out for me. You have like a home base airport,
Speaker 1: but you're also traveling around reviewing other airports. Does every
Speaker 1: airport have a biologist? It's do Some airports have full
Speaker 1: time biologists that are constantly working, constantly watching the skies
Speaker 1: and that way when they see the flock, they radio in,
Speaker 1: can you yeah. Yeah, So we cover eight hundred and
Speaker 1: thirteen air fields across the United States agency as an
Speaker 1: agency as USDA Wildlife Services, and so there's some airfields
Speaker 1: that'll have full time people like me, Like your larger
Speaker 1: airfields will have multiple you know, wildlife texts and wildlife biologists,
Speaker 1: and then some might even just be Wildlife services going
Speaker 1: in and telling, you know, teaching our airfield operations like hey,
Speaker 1: this is kind of what you need to do if
Speaker 1: you see a bird or see some wildlife and giving
Speaker 1: those recommendations so that they can handle themselves if they're
Speaker 1: a smaller airfield. But yeah, any FAA regulated airfield will
Speaker 1: have some sort of wildlife management plan. Well, we're during
Speaker 1: a normal day of work. You're not just sitting there
Speaker 1: watching the skies and watching the runway now, So we'll
Speaker 1: do patrols, we'll do like observations and like I said,
Speaker 1: if I see a flock of geese flying over, I
Speaker 1: will call tower and let them know. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing a lot of those other steps of harassment.
Speaker 1: So part of harassment is you know, scaring birds or
Speaker 1: like professionals. So I think there was like a joke.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, describe your profession badly, and
Speaker 1: it was like, I'm a professional bird shooter. Um, so
Speaker 1: I shoe birds off the airfields, shoot you know, go
Speaker 1: away birds, and using um pyrotechnics so glorified we shoot
Speaker 1: like glorified bottle rockets at birds. So if you have
Speaker 1: flocks of birds, flocks of geese and stuff on the airfield,
Speaker 1: we'll just harass them off. We use bird cannons. Just
Speaker 1: how's your accuracy? You got it? You gotta do it
Speaker 1: enough to where you can refine glorified bottle rocket, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like our pyrotechnics, the ones that we use, they're
Speaker 1: like like a revolver and so it's just you know,
Speaker 1: you're not shooting it at the birds, you're just shooting
Speaker 1: them in the proximity to make it uncomfortable for them
Speaker 1: to be there, and they'll take off. My old man
Speaker 1: had a big gallon size ziplock when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: probably wasn't even ziplock. He had a giant plastic bag
Speaker 1: someone had given them. You shoot him up A twelve
Speaker 1: gage shotgun. Oh yeah, Oh yeah, we use some airfields
Speaker 1: will use those. Um, we use them up in Alaska
Speaker 1: because a lot of the birds that we're working with
Speaker 1: up there, you know, they're so you have Lake Hood
Speaker 1: out there, which is the world's largest plane lake, and
Speaker 1: so you'll have ducks and stuff. They're way out in
Speaker 1: the middle of the lake and so you can't really
Speaker 1: reach them. So we had to use those. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a break action that we would. You guys
Speaker 1: get involved in that. What was that they get involved in?
Speaker 1: Scaring them off lakes for floatplanes. Yeah, so that's part
Speaker 1: of Anchorage National Airport. That's their floatplane lake. A million
Speaker 1: times you guys will scare birds off that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still a hazard. Here's one thing I don't get about
Speaker 1: this though, running around an airport with a shotgun, if
Speaker 1: that's concerning. Everybody knows I'm out here right and I'm
Speaker 1: on the same team just triple checking today. If a
Speaker 1: plane okay, a plane's haul and ass and and burt
Speaker 1: at what foot at? What was that acronym? Hl agl uh?
Speaker 1: The plane takes off but his he's left airport and
Speaker 1: his wheels are still right like scraping the ground. How
Speaker 1: many miles out is the plane by the time it
Speaker 1: hits a thousand agl I'd have to look that up.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure way ass out there? So how does
Speaker 1: does your jurisdiction extent? Like let's say this, Let's say
Speaker 1: I live a mile from the airport and I say, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start planting waterfowl food, I'm gonna do all
Speaker 1: kinds of habitat improvement. I'm going to make the duck
Speaker 1: hangout of all duck hangouts. So yeah, so part of
Speaker 1: the job we do what So we'll put out recommendations,
Speaker 1: be like, hey, like this is what's going on. We
Speaker 1: do have like safety zones outside of airfields as well,
Speaker 1: so you hold some jurisdiction the airfield does not while
Speaker 1: I services but yeah, yeah, yeah, so just so you
Speaker 1: can go bang on the guy's door and be like
Speaker 1: you gotta cool it on the ducks. The airport maybe
Speaker 1: the airport, but again we'll just give recommendations. And oftentimes
Speaker 1: if you explain to someone like Okay, what you're doing,
Speaker 1: this is what could happen often there. You know, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can understand that. Do you ever need to go
Speaker 1: have those conversations not at my current base now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're assigned out like you're assigned out all over
Speaker 1: the place to go do airport assessments. Like my profession
Speaker 1: or like my career has just taken me all over
Speaker 1: the place. So I've worked in seven air fields in
Speaker 1: five different countries. Yeah. You and Yanni were talking about
Speaker 1: hanging out in Latvia. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm currently a
Speaker 1: Selfridge Air National Guard base, which is just outside Detroit, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and our sister base is in Leovard, Lafia, And so
Speaker 1: I've had the opportunity to go out there twice, and
Speaker 1: then my counterpart has been able to come to Michigan
Speaker 1: as well. Are there any major differences, like any any
Speaker 1: safety things that are concerns in Europe VERSUS and not
Speaker 1: concerns in the US vice versa, where like in the
Speaker 1: US they'd be like, oh, make sure there's no geese here,
Speaker 1: and then Europeans are like, oh, who cares about geese
Speaker 1: anything like that. I mean, everything is going to be
Speaker 1: are if it's on the airfield. So maybe not so
Speaker 1: much as they don't consider it a concern, but they
Speaker 1: just have different concerns. So in Latvia you have those
Speaker 1: the white storks, which are really large bird. They really
Speaker 1: like the airfield and they're really protected as well, so
Speaker 1: you know, just trying to keep them off the airfield
Speaker 1: there and they just aren't They don't scare very easy.
Speaker 1: They're completely non lethal over there, so it's not something
Speaker 1: that you know, we can lethally remove. So it's just
Speaker 1: you know, learning the behavior of the bird and when
Speaker 1: we harass it or chase it down, like what it's
Speaker 1: going to do, and trying to get it out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you find around the country do you find that
Speaker 1: there are very different perspective as people have about In
Speaker 1: some areas they kind of got like a kill them
Speaker 1: all that God sort them out attitude, And in some
Speaker 1: areas they're very concerned about not harming anything or not
Speaker 1: scaring anything. So that like cultural aspects are definitely a
Speaker 1: part of you know, airfield management. So when you have
Speaker 1: you know, if you're in a country that has sacred animals,
Speaker 1: you got to be very conscious of that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm in this country and a white pigeon is a
Speaker 1: sacred animal. Like, let's not do anything to those guys.
Speaker 1: But it's just you know, being cognizant of where you
Speaker 1: are and what you're doing. But you know, everything we
Speaker 1: do is you know, we can justify. So when I'm
Speaker 1: doing you know, starling removal on my airfield and people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, what are you doing with those? And
Speaker 1: it's like, well, those are an invasive species and they
Speaker 1: compete with twenty seven of our native species, nobody argues
Speaker 1: like and then you know it is a safety aspect.
Speaker 1: So when you say this, you know these birds or
Speaker 1: this wildlife could cause you know, a strike or it
Speaker 1: can cause damage from aircraft and you know the very
Speaker 1: very rare cases of fatal crash. You know, when the
Speaker 1: name of safety not made, people argue with it. How
Speaker 1: do you get rid of a bunch of starlings? So
Speaker 1: we have different traps and stuff that we can use.
Speaker 1: Um So we have as a starling trap, which is
Speaker 1: it's just a large cage with a funnel on top
Speaker 1: and we put in different feed and stuff that when
Speaker 1: they get inside of it again, they can't figure out
Speaker 1: how to get back out. Yeah, just set it out,
Speaker 1: so you're like catching handfuls them out of time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then as well as the other thing that we
Speaker 1: like to trap our raptors, so hawk owls and falcons,
Speaker 1: So we have live traps for those are modified specific
Speaker 1: four raptors. And this is something I get to do
Speaker 1: a lot in Michigan. And so when we catch these birds,
Speaker 1: we catch them live. And how do you catch them?
Speaker 1: So we I guess the most popular one is our
Speaker 1: gossac trap. So the best way to explain it is
Speaker 1: we'll use like a pigeon and we put it in
Speaker 1: a cage and then on the top of it we
Speaker 1: put this trap. That is the doors are opened with
Speaker 1: springs and there's a trip pole that hold it open.
Speaker 1: And so when this raptors flying around and sees that pigeon,
Speaker 1: it'll come down, it'll hit that pole, clothes and so
Speaker 1: pigeons in the bottom, he's totally fine. Well, be a
Speaker 1: little traumatized because then he's got oh heste yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then when we catch these raptors, we put a
Speaker 1: federal band on them and then we work with our
Speaker 1: states to find suitable habitat for these guys. So we'll
Speaker 1: fly or I'll drive them out hour hour and a
Speaker 1: half away from the airfield and release them and hopefully
Speaker 1: that they don't come back. Do you very often just
Speaker 1: catch the same bird on occasion? I think it's less
Speaker 1: than a ten percent recapture, right, It just kind of
Speaker 1: it's effective moving them how far I usually drive like
Speaker 1: an hour hour and a half. It still doesn't seem
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem like you'd thrown It seems like he'd
Speaker 1: be back before you got back, right. It just depends
Speaker 1: on the birds. So is it If it's like an
Speaker 1: adult bird that this has been their territory for years,
Speaker 1: chances are those are guys are going to come back
Speaker 1: where a lot of birds, you know, if they're young especially,
Speaker 1: they're going to fly back and when they see that airfield,
Speaker 1: they're like, I remember what happened there last time, And
Speaker 1: they're out there talking about that. What that pigeons day
Speaker 1: is like? Right where he here's that thing gossip caught
Speaker 1: a trap right above him and he's got to hang
Speaker 1: out there. We had a guy on the show that
Speaker 1: was doing work with ocelots, so it's like a souped
Speaker 1: up little cat like a spotted like a jaguar. The ocelots,
Speaker 1: so they use they'll put they put their traps out
Speaker 1: and they put two roosters. They'll set two traps with
Speaker 1: the rooster in each trap as bait, and they get
Speaker 1: to cock, they get to talking to each oart so
Speaker 1: it's making a lot of racket. And then the ocelot
Speaker 1: gets caught, but he's got a little little cage that
Speaker 1: separates the rooster from the ocelot, and then that rooster
Speaker 1: has to hang out there for however long with that cat.
Speaker 1: And I was like, that's gotta be like a fatal
Speaker 1: level of fear. But he said, man, I got, I
Speaker 1: got roosters have caught multiple cats. But just imagine when
Speaker 1: we gotta run around with that biologist in California trapping
Speaker 1: mountain lions years ago. Now, they had a live quail
Speaker 1: that they would use for you know, luring in a
Speaker 1: mountain line into these big cage traps that they had
Speaker 1: to use. That works. I just I thought it was
Speaker 1: hilarious because I was like, there's no way this works
Speaker 1: because in California, like the amount of signage that they
Speaker 1: had to have up saying like this quail is being
Speaker 1: very well cared for. Please don't release that. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about this quail. Yeah, yeah, very happy. Like this doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like it's worth the effort, Like cat has to
Speaker 1: figure this out. You ever had to get rid of
Speaker 1: a cat, bobcat or line off a cougar? No, not
Speaker 1: any of the places I've worked. Now, feral cats. There's
Speaker 1: got to be a lot of feral cats around airports. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I see them on occasion, but they're not
Speaker 1: enough for me to be like, ah, these guys are
Speaker 1: going to be causing a strike. You mentioned that porcupines
Speaker 1: can cause a lot of stir Yeah, up in an Anchorage, Alaska. Porcupines.
Speaker 1: It's probably like one of my favorite things to catch.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure Tower probably loves watching whileye services employees.
Speaker 1: So when you see a porkypine, you take a tub
Speaker 1: with a lid and you run with it usually above
Speaker 1: your head, and you're chasing this porkypine down and eventually
Speaker 1: you'll catch out to it. You drop the tub on it,
Speaker 1: and you grab the lid and you slide it under,
Speaker 1: you flip it, and that's how you could catch a porcupine.
Speaker 1: And but these guys, yeah, if they're up on like
Speaker 1: the runways and stuff, they can actually pop tires. What
Speaker 1: do you do with the porkupines? We'll just relocate them.
Speaker 1: How many porcupine is? He's probably whatever, you know, just
Speaker 1: keep slowly moving. There's so like I don't want to
Speaker 1: call them oblivious, but they're just easy going man, easy
Speaker 1: going animals. What back to, like the social acceptance thing?
Speaker 1: What is the Have you ever get witnessed something that
Speaker 1: like straight out of like the movie Airplane or National
Speaker 1: Lampoom in regards to an animal strike on the runway.
Speaker 1: I've never seen either of those. I don't know read
Speaker 1: that old geez there were two apocalypse now, don't worry
Speaker 1: about like, um, there's never been like a strike on
Speaker 1: the runway where folks are you know, sitting, are ready
Speaker 1: to take off and it's like grape jelly across all
Speaker 1: the windows at one point or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that could. I mean, yeah, when the bird
Speaker 1: gets hit, it's just like again, if you hit like
Speaker 1: a bug with your car, like they splat, that's a snarge.
Speaker 1: Oh you know what you did? Do it? Tell us
Speaker 1: the moose story? Oh, yeah, so when I so after
Speaker 1: I left Cots of You, I went and worked in
Speaker 1: South Africa for a little bit volunteering, and then came
Speaker 1: back to Anchorage. And when I was an Anchorage, I
Speaker 1: got to do more of the hands on direct control.
Speaker 1: And they're mixing it up with porcupines. Yeah, yeah, working
Speaker 1: with the porcupines. And I got a call that there
Speaker 1: was a moose going on and they were damaging airfield
Speaker 1: property and I was like what, And it was the
Speaker 1: middle of the rut, and I show up and sure enough,
Speaker 1: there were two huge bulls fighting. But they were fighting
Speaker 1: on each side of a chain link fence and it
Speaker 1: was an airfield fence, so one got on the inside
Speaker 1: and one got on the out and they were just
Speaker 1: hitting each other so hard, and every time they'd hit
Speaker 1: that fence, you were just ping, ping, ping, ping, just
Speaker 1: coming off like all the wires and stuff. And I
Speaker 1: couldn't get them to pull apart. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: just raging to stopsterone bowls, and so it was kind
Speaker 1: of the fence through the fence, and so it just
Speaker 1: kind of turned into just getting people to stay back,
Speaker 1: and because people were wanting to get pictures, they were
Speaker 1: trying to get closer, and it was like, ah, these
Speaker 1: guys are not safe. Well, one of them, as they were,
Speaker 1: you know, growing at it, got his antler caught up
Speaker 1: in barbed wire, and the barbed wire ended up you know,
Speaker 1: from every move back and forth, they kept getting tangled
Speaker 1: and tangled. So we end up having to call the
Speaker 1: Laska State Game to come in and trank liz Us
Speaker 1: moose because I mean it was he was just covered
Speaker 1: in this barbed wire after an hour. And this was
Speaker 1: I was twenty two, so I was just bright eyed,
Speaker 1: bushy tailed, fresh into the wildlife field and moose are
Speaker 1: my favorite animal by far, and so I was just like,
Speaker 1: can I help, And they're like, yeah, here's the clippers
Speaker 1: you can clip off the wire. And I was so
Speaker 1: excited and so we get the moose down. I run
Speaker 1: up to it. I'm clipping all the wire and the
Speaker 1: biologist was like, yeah, I just can't a run your
Speaker 1: fingers through the firm make sure there's no large gashes.
Speaker 1: And the best way I can explain this is that
Speaker 1: in a Jurassic Park, when the couple go to the
Speaker 1: park for the first times out of very familiar with
Speaker 1: so they see that try saratops and it's on the
Speaker 1: ground and the guy gives it a big hug and
Speaker 1: it takes that deep breath. I did that with a
Speaker 1: moose and it was the greatest day of my life.
Speaker 1: And so we were able to get the barbed tire
Speaker 1: off of it, you know, we're able to put the
Speaker 1: reversal ind and he was able to get up and
Speaker 1: walk away. That's cool wild. But oh, my backtrack a
Speaker 1: little bit. So when this moose was covered in barbed wire,
Speaker 1: he eventually stopped fighting the other moose because he was
Speaker 1: just more concerned with this barbed wire. Though he's been licked, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean he's just shaking his hand, he's trying
Speaker 1: to get it off, and like I said, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people all, you know, spectating, and he was
Speaker 1: rubbing up against a bush trying to get this barbed
Speaker 1: wire off. And there was this car parked next to
Speaker 1: this bush, and he walks right up to this car
Speaker 1: and this lady has her falling out. She's just taking
Speaker 1: pictures and he just rubs himself across the side of
Speaker 1: her car. And I was like that insurance claim, He's
Speaker 1: gonna be great. Like what happened all this moose try
Speaker 1: to rub barbed wire off on my car. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: you imagine the skepticism. Yeah wow, No kid, You know
Speaker 1: I had a thing. I put it on Instagram, but
Speaker 1: I don't think we talked about on the show. Is
Speaker 1: this guy sitting in in Ohio three perfectly fine deer,
Speaker 1: like a really nice buck, a nice buck and a
Speaker 1: doe dead in a pile and it had there It
Speaker 1: was a down power line and these two bucks must
Speaker 1: have been duking it out and there was a dough
Speaker 1: there and one of them hit that power line with
Speaker 1: its antler and just in a pile. Wow. Well, and
Speaker 1: they said that they got to the fire department, got
Speaker 1: the skulls and got them cleaned for to decorate the firebarn,
Speaker 1: and a dude down the road took all the meat,
Speaker 1: which leads me to my next question. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: ask you a question. I'm gonna ask you this because
Speaker 1: so you have a you have a job, and you
Speaker 1: want to keep your job, and no doubt, there's like
Speaker 1: certain things you just don't talk about. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you a story before I ask the question. A friend
Speaker 1: of mine I can't name them, used to do fish
Speaker 1: surveys um for this well for our home state used
Speaker 1: to do fish surveys in Michigan and they would have
Speaker 1: to do nets surveys just to count what was in
Speaker 1: the lake, right, but they were not allowed to utilize
Speaker 1: the resource because they felt that it was a conflict
Speaker 1: of interest. So they would go and do these net surveys,
Speaker 1: and then he would go out and they had a
Speaker 1: spot out in the woods where they would have to
Speaker 1: dump it all. So he would come home, get his
Speaker 1: own vehicle, get his cooler full of ice, and promptly
Speaker 1: zip back out there and get all the whitefish and
Speaker 1: northerns and perch and get them all filaied up and
Speaker 1: give them out to everybody. Question being if I asked
Speaker 1: you if you ever eat the stuff that you control,
Speaker 1: would you be able to answer honestly or would you
Speaker 1: probably not answer honestly? Yeah, No, honestly we don't. So
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we control, well no, no,
Speaker 1: So like when we like when we shoot deer, we
Speaker 1: donate all that meat, so it actually goes to food
Speaker 1: for hunger, donate the meaning so do you have to
Speaker 1: do all the field dressing? So yeah, we have to
Speaker 1: um field dress it. But then the butcher will do
Speaker 1: all the processing, so you gotta go fiel dress. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. So you dragged the gut
Speaker 1: pile off to the side of the runway, A bunch
Speaker 1: of big ass vultures land on there. Old Souley comes
Speaker 1: in and what hits a vulture? Do you ever think
Speaker 1: about that? Well, I wouldn't dress it right next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to put anything like attractive next to
Speaker 1: your runaway, so yeah, no, we would you describe the
Speaker 1: white starks and labba as a tender meat. That'd have
Speaker 1: been a better way to do it. Yeah. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: which region were you? So? Do you like the deer
Speaker 1: meat that you take? No? So you guys will you
Speaker 1: guys will fin you'll you'll be responsible for getting it
Speaker 1: dressed yep, and bring it to a butcher yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then it gets donated and then it just depends again.
Speaker 1: It's all region. So when I was in Alaska, even
Speaker 1: all the ducks and stuff that we caught, we wou
Speaker 1: address him and then they would get donated to the
Speaker 1: elders of the community. You're kidding, huh. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of extra work. That's cool, It's worth it, though, it's
Speaker 1: better than just tossing them all the time. I'm telling
Speaker 1: their story about my same friend that I can't mention
Speaker 1: his name. He later in life had a job as
Speaker 1: a surveyor and they were surveying a place one time
Speaker 1: and it was full of He found someone's little weed plantation.
Speaker 1: This is pre pre when everybody loved weed, like when
Speaker 1: a lot of people still hate a weed, like the cops.
Speaker 1: He finds a giant where a guy's growing a giant
Speaker 1: thing of weed, and they're surveying it, and he keeps
Speaker 1: an eye on this area and pretty soon they go
Speaker 1: they clear it. Dozers come in to clear the lot.
Speaker 1: So just like he did with those fish, he then
Speaker 1: snuck back out there at night and got all the
Speaker 1: weed that the bulldozers, that got all the buds that
Speaker 1: the bulldozers had cleared off into the back end of
Speaker 1: the debris pile, and brought all that home. I think
Speaker 1: about that. That's a good gig. No, this guy's very
Speaker 1: a job. I'll say one more thing. He told me.
Speaker 1: They would go into the up where you're familiar with surveying,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they'd be surveying in the wintertime and they're
Speaker 1: out and all that seedar swamp, you know, and they'd
Speaker 1: cuddle line way through the woods and the deer would
Speaker 1: be you know, let deer have a hard go of it.
Speaker 1: And those winners up there and those deer would know
Speaker 1: they would come to a sound of a chainsaw and
Speaker 1: you'd clear a big line to shoot a line. So
Speaker 1: you'd like clear it all through the swamp and you
Speaker 1: get your two things, those little looking holes in there
Speaker 1: that you look through the line them up when you
Speaker 1: survey in, and the deer would flood in so much
Speaker 1: to the sound of the chainsaw that you couldn't shoot
Speaker 1: the even though you cleared the line, you couldn't shoot
Speaker 1: the line because so many deer would be in that thing,
Speaker 1: and they'd have to have a person such as yourself
Speaker 1: trying to clear the deer out to be able to
Speaker 1: survey the thing. That's amazing. It's an amazing story. You
Speaker 1: like that story, Phil loved it. I just have a
Speaker 1: question about any stats that you have of like yearly
Speaker 1: or over the course of a number of years, like
Speaker 1: the costs to airlines of damage. Yeah, so the average
Speaker 1: right now is about two hundred and eight million um
Speaker 1: it did it has gone up, So this is like again,
Speaker 1: this is like an average between the last thirty years.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's going up a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But it's just I mean, it's our planes are getting faster.
Speaker 1: We're flying a lot more. Again, there's one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand flights in a week. That's that's just
Speaker 1: in the United States. That's not across the world. And
Speaker 1: we've been hitting birds forever. So the first documented bird
Speaker 1: strike was Orville right in nineteen oh five, right to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his diary that he hit a red
Speaker 1: being blackbirds. So this is not anything new. It's just
Speaker 1: our aircraft are getting faster. We're in the air Moore
Speaker 1: were sharing those these guys like it's just going to happen.
Speaker 1: Did he refer to it as snarge? I think he did.
Speaker 1: When when did I guess the airport biology become h formalized,
Speaker 1: just like a job within the USDA to even have
Speaker 1: you know, have this be a position. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it was in the early nineties, And it was that
Speaker 1: strike that happened in Alaska, that was that fatal strike,
Speaker 1: and that fatal strike was um it was a military
Speaker 1: aircraft and it was brought the whole aircraft was brought
Speaker 1: down by a flock of geese and it killed everybody
Speaker 1: on board. There was like over thirty souls, and so
Speaker 1: that was kind of a big jump with like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to do something about this so this doesn't
Speaker 1: happen again. That's when they recognized it as Yeah, even
Speaker 1: though that's so funny, that was his name was Wilbur Orville.
Speaker 1: Orville was will Who the hell? Oh no? Those two brothers,
Speaker 1: the brothers, Yeah, okay, yeah, the two brothers, which one
Speaker 1: which one of the brothers had a red wing blackbird
Speaker 1: or and I think he did his first flight in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh three. Yeah, it's amazing those like he like
Speaker 1: identified it. Did he write about it as have you
Speaker 1: ever read his journal? Did he write about it as, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: if we get into this flying thing, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be something to keep in mind. I think it was
Speaker 1: just a really brief mention about the fact that he
Speaker 1: hit or read being blackbird out and when he was
Speaker 1: in I think Dayton, Ohio. Yeah. Yeah. If you if
Speaker 1: someone if someone comes you and says, man, I want
Speaker 1: to get a job as an airport biologist, do you
Speaker 1: do you say good luck? Or are you like, oh,
Speaker 1: you just gotta do X, Y and Z and you'll
Speaker 1: get the job. Yeah. So it's it's definitely a growing field.
Speaker 1: So it's just again as we're recognizing more and more
Speaker 1: need for it. You know, we have technicians, we have biologists.
Speaker 1: I mean, we cover all the airfield or mostly airfields
Speaker 1: in the state or sorry, gosh, mostly airfields in the country,
Speaker 1: and so it's definitely growing. A lot of people just
Speaker 1: don't know that we exist. So I mean, like wildlife
Speaker 1: tech positions, they are open quite often. And if you're
Speaker 1: ever interested getting into this field, as long as you're
Speaker 1: willing to move around, it's like how I moved right
Speaker 1: to Alaska. Once you're that foot is in the door, like,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much you can live anywhere in the
Speaker 1: country really, because every airfield needs somebody like us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then it's a it's a federal salary deal yep,
Speaker 1: it's good healthcare. Yeah. Then you gotta worry about when
Speaker 1: the government shuts down. Nope, because we are considering emergency personnel.
Speaker 1: You need to worry about that. So when that happens,
Speaker 1: and when that happens coming up here, you'll just you'll
Speaker 1: still be out there cranking away. Oh yeah, because they're
Speaker 1: still flying. Yeah, I got you. Uh does every airport
Speaker 1: have to use the federal agencies? Like, let's like, why
Speaker 1: does an O'Hare airport or some giant ass airport like that?
Speaker 1: They don't do in house like you guys do that work.
Speaker 1: There are some private agencies that do it as well.
Speaker 1: Just with a federal we get the federal expertise, and
Speaker 1: we are wildlife professionals and you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: inherent authority like we don't we're not a regulated service,
Speaker 1: so we do work closely with US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Speaker 1: We work with the state agencies to get permits and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: so we have the ability to really you know, trap
Speaker 1: and relocate raptors and working with all the migratory birds
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, do you You know what I also
Speaker 1: want to ask you about is do you are you
Speaker 1: from with a thing called avatroll like an avian like
Speaker 1: an avian poison. Yeah, I've like I've heard of it,
Speaker 1: but that's not something that you guys use are allowed
Speaker 1: to use. I hear people use it for street pigeons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't use it in myerfields. No, no, but what
Speaker 1: like what is it? I don't know because I hear
Speaker 1: people refer it like uh like um like rat poison
Speaker 1: for pigeons. You don't have any exposure to that. I
Speaker 1: don't personally have any experience using it. See that's you
Speaker 1: guys can't get like you guys can't get like medieval
Speaker 1: like that with with poisons. Um not for me personally, No, No,
Speaker 1: I just don't have the experience. Do you guys have
Speaker 1: issues with iguanas? Let I say we have iguanas in Michigan. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean not in Michigan. No. But you know, I
Speaker 1: guess what are the top like maybe other than birds,
Speaker 1: the top disruptive critters that we maybe wouldn't think I
Speaker 1: think additionally, Yeah, so I know, like white tail deer
Speaker 1: and coyote are going to be our two highest mammal strikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah really yeah. They love airfields. What does the picture
Speaker 1: of being a little I don't know, spooked or like
Speaker 1: a little sly, you know, like like I don't get
Speaker 1: off because they because there's a bunch of out there,
Speaker 1: they're they're hunting, all their presources are right on that airfield. Really,
Speaker 1: short grass vowles my stuff, like yep, exactly what do
Speaker 1: you do to get rid of them, are usually trapping.
Speaker 1: How do you catch well? You do, yeah, seriously, So
Speaker 1: you gotta make a little dirt hole set alongside the runway,
Speaker 1: not exactly alongside the runway, but yeah, I mean because
Speaker 1: you're not focusing just on that runway. I mean you're
Speaker 1: using the entire de of the airfield properties, and so
Speaker 1: it's you know, finding their habitat and stuff and where
Speaker 1: you get to do a little kyote trapping too. Okaid,
Speaker 1: what else do you gotta catch like that? Using like
Speaker 1: old school stuff boxes? Yeah, some air fields probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will catch boxes and stuff too. It's just again,
Speaker 1: every air fields different. So it's really just whatever is
Speaker 1: prevalent at your airfield and running around your airfield. So
Speaker 1: let's say you call it a bobcat, You're probably gonna
Speaker 1: move them somewhere. I think Bob's cats are pretty sly.
Speaker 1: Like you just said of kayotes, I've never heard of
Speaker 1: any bobcats causing issues on an airfield. But again, I've
Speaker 1: never been in a region that had bobcat issues like that.
Speaker 1: Coyotes and deer deer, I could definitely picture snowy owls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: snowy owls are probably one of the big things this
Speaker 1: time of year. So that's the other thing is just
Speaker 1: every time of year, seasonally, you're gonna have different things
Speaker 1: that you're after. So this time of year in you know,
Speaker 1: in Michigan and a lot of these like the northern
Speaker 1: Lower States, all the snowy owls will come from the
Speaker 1: Arctic and they migrate down and when they come down here,
Speaker 1: they're trying to find something that is as close to
Speaker 1: their habitat as possible. What's the closest thing to the Arctic.
Speaker 1: They want something wide open and flat. So when I
Speaker 1: tell when people are like I really want to see
Speaker 1: a snowy owl, I'm like, go to your local airfield
Speaker 1: because they love it there. And then when they're down
Speaker 1: there or when they come down here, they they love
Speaker 1: the airfield. Maybe if there's not a whole lot of snow,
Speaker 1: they're gonna watch sun something white and a lot of
Speaker 1: runway lines are white, and so they'll hang out on
Speaker 1: a US sit on the runway, they'll use the signs,
Speaker 1: they'll just and then great, there's just tons of like
Speaker 1: voles and mice and like it's like a buffet out
Speaker 1: there for them. How do you catch one of those
Speaker 1: using those raptor traps. What do you bait it with pigeons?
Speaker 1: Do you ever get a snowy owl that you've banded
Speaker 1: it in a litt skill that shows up on an
Speaker 1: airfield in the lower forty eight um. Not necessarily out
Speaker 1: of Alaska, but there are times that we will ban something,
Speaker 1: relocate them, and then they'll get picked up into another
Speaker 1: airfield because again it's just they love that wide open
Speaker 1: flat area. So they just airfield hop are sandhill crane's
Speaker 1: an issue? Yeah, so I have them on occasion, but
Speaker 1: I have heard, you know, in other states that they
Speaker 1: can you know, they'll come across and like large flocks
Speaker 1: and stuff. Probably picture that taking a plane down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: snargo come off one of those things, big long bones
Speaker 1: and stuff coming out of there. Oh oh, so when
Speaker 1: you're doing your foothold draps, I mean, air airfields are
Speaker 1: pretty busy places just from you know, my point of view,
Speaker 1: a landing on them and taking off and stuff. There's
Speaker 1: like folks walking around all so do you kind of
Speaker 1: have to like I imagine there's a lot of communication, right, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's foothold traps out here, so don't go walking out
Speaker 1: on this area to have lunch or something like that.
Speaker 1: Or is there just a huge amount of ground that
Speaker 1: nobody ever walks on in an airfield. So yeah, most
Speaker 1: of the time it's just a huge amount of ground
Speaker 1: that people are just not around. But you put the
Speaker 1: signs out, you know, this is going what's going on
Speaker 1: on my base. You know, we work with security forces
Speaker 1: and let them know. You know, we'll let if there's
Speaker 1: an airfield that's got kenine units and stuff. We always
Speaker 1: you know, we try to be cognizant of who may
Speaker 1: be coming around here, who may be attracted to the
Speaker 1: lures and stuff we're using. Yeah, so yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: You know, you're working with your airfield. You're working with
Speaker 1: your airfield operations, your airfild managers. You know, there's it's
Speaker 1: a whole team of people that are doing this. So
Speaker 1: you know, we are the experts in doing the airfield
Speaker 1: managed wildlife management, but with airfield we have then actual
Speaker 1: airfield management who are out there all the time, so
Speaker 1: they probably observe just as much as we do. So
Speaker 1: we do a lot of education and outreach with people
Speaker 1: across our base, people across the airfield. This last year
Speaker 1: I just started a I'm calling it the snow spot.
Speaker 1: So I put out flyers and was like, hey, who's
Speaker 1: the first person to see a snowy owl? Now this
Speaker 1: is my You know a lot of people are just
Speaker 1: birders and they're just excited to see a snowy But
Speaker 1: for me, it's like, this is great because the second
Speaker 1: snowy owl shows up on my base, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be notified about it and I can start managing for them.
Speaker 1: So just getting people involved is actually so a lot
Speaker 1: of times people are like, oh, you're trying to be
Speaker 1: hush hush. It's like for me, no, Like I love
Speaker 1: telling people what we do and educating people what we
Speaker 1: do because in turn it'll help us do our job.
Speaker 1: Cool if you go, if you go to do an
Speaker 1: interview like this, you gotta go get you probably just
Speaker 1: can't do it on your own, right, you gotta go
Speaker 1: get permission. Yeah, pretty much. It's hard to get permission, no,
Speaker 1: because we're not ashamed or we're not hiding anything that
Speaker 1: we're doing, And so getting to do stuff like this
Speaker 1: is a really great opportunity for people to know what
Speaker 1: we do because a lot of times it's a thankless job.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was in an anchorage there was
Speaker 1: there was a group of ducks along in a ditch
Speaker 1: along one of the runways. You know, A shot one
Speaker 1: of my techniques at them. They flew away, airplane landed.
Speaker 1: I happened to look up and it was one of
Speaker 1: my friends flying. I texted him and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: just saved your life. So, I mean, and it's people
Speaker 1: don't realize that we're out there and what we're doing.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's hard to be like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: because of us, we prevent an x amount of strike,
Speaker 1: because it's it's a preventive thing. You know, we're just
Speaker 1: trying to reduce the amount of wildlife strikes. We can't
Speaker 1: say we're never going to have a wildish strike, but
Speaker 1: we're hoping, as you know, those damaging ones will go
Speaker 1: down because you know, that's money for the airfield. That's money,
Speaker 1: you know, our government money and stuff too with new
Speaker 1: military aircraft. And then it's people's lives. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you have even like a small Cessna hit a large
Speaker 1: bird like that can bring it down. Yeah. Like a
Speaker 1: great proof of a great job is that there's no news. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. I try to think of some way to
Speaker 1: brag it up. But it would be hard. It'd be
Speaker 1: like people that point out with TSA, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: does it really work? I'm like, I mean, has that
Speaker 1: happened since have we had that happened since TSA became
Speaker 1: of things? I see, like it seems like something's working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if he looks atistically, strike numbers have like gone
Speaker 1: up exponentially. But it's because of that outreach and education
Speaker 1: that we're doing. It's hey, guys, like, if you see something,
Speaker 1: even if you're like, I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: a bug or a bird, snarge collected anyway, because we
Speaker 1: can decide that for ourselves. If this is just a
Speaker 1: bug and we can ditch it. But if it is
Speaker 1: a bird, it's you know, using that information and then
Speaker 1: we can get that information to then your return and
Speaker 1: you know, manage for it. Who actually collects that's just yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Like when your plane lands, you know there's like a
Speaker 1: cleanup crew that comes into the airplane. Is there like
Speaker 1: a snarge specimen collecting crew on the outside of the aircraft,
Speaker 1: not specifically, but there are the crews that are checking
Speaker 1: to make sure, you know, mechanics are working right and stuff,
Speaker 1: and so they're the ones that usually are going to
Speaker 1: collect them, So I work with you know, on my base,
Speaker 1: I'll work with our maintainers and stuff, making sure they
Speaker 1: have the kids collecting them appropriately. You know, don't wear
Speaker 1: you know, gosh, wear gloves, don't try to touch things
Speaker 1: bare hand. Um, and just getting that information we can
Speaker 1: and then if we do we get like a whole
Speaker 1: bird and stuff we can just if we can identify it,
Speaker 1: like yep, that was an Eastern metal arc, We'll just
Speaker 1: swim in that a freezer and send it the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: some pictures. They're like, yep, it is, then we can
Speaker 1: dish the carcass it Does it throw off a whole
Speaker 1: plane's whole schedule when that happens, Like if that flight
Speaker 1: has to leave in forty minutes to go somewhere else,
Speaker 1: is it up too bad? We got to take care
Speaker 1: of this strike or whatever? Does it? Snarge is usually
Speaker 1: pretty depending on if it's just you know, a little
Speaker 1: snarge splatter, it's pretty quick just to clear up. If
Speaker 1: it's a damaging strike, you know, that could probably slow
Speaker 1: down the aircraft itself. But they're actually doing a lot
Speaker 1: of studies right now on the economic impact of a strike.
Speaker 1: So if you have you know it a civilian and
Speaker 1: real busy o hair or something, and you have one
Speaker 1: an aircraft takeoff, hit some birds. They call in tower like, hey,
Speaker 1: I just hit some birds. I got to turn around.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure like if that caused damage. And so
Speaker 1: they turn around. Now all the aircraft that we're about
Speaker 1: to take off, we'll all pause because they're you know,
Speaker 1: they'll have a your wildlie professionals run out there and
Speaker 1: make sure there's nothing that's that they can handle and
Speaker 1: take care and get out of the way. And then
Speaker 1: now that aircraft just got delayed, the one behind that
Speaker 1: one got delayed. The next thing. He knows this domino
Speaker 1: effect not only for those airplanes that are trying to
Speaker 1: take off, but now all those passengers on that aircraft
Speaker 1: now they ought to rebook their flights. So there's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty un I mean they're working on it right now.
Speaker 1: I mean there's been some studies coming out, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to see what the economic impact is. You know,
Speaker 1: we can say damaging is two hundred and eight million,
Speaker 1: but like what about all those ripple effect costs? Right?
Speaker 1: I wanted to do one of those analyzes around air
Speaker 1: Force one because like during Obama's two terms. I got seriously,
Speaker 1: seriously screwed. When they decide to land the plane. I
Speaker 1: mean no, I mean it has undo with who it
Speaker 1: was as president, but it happened to be. Then how's
Speaker 1: for anybody where I'm like, oh, where did they get off?
Speaker 1: I mean it close the airport down. And one time
Speaker 1: I learned they close the airport down. Listen to this,
Speaker 1: They closed an airport. This is how audacious I think
Speaker 1: this program is. Someone should look into this. He lands
Speaker 1: in the big plane, okay, and he's going to make
Speaker 1: a stump speech for someone running for Congress. They shut
Speaker 1: the entire airport down for the plane to land, Get
Speaker 1: in a helicopter, take the helicopter to give a stump speech,
Speaker 1: a campaign speech, stays closed, comes back, helicopter lands, speech
Speaker 1: is over, gets on air force one, air force one
Speaker 1: leaves the airport, can resume flying. Wow. Now I traced
Speaker 1: the economic impact, and I was particularly incense because I
Speaker 1: didn't feel like it was of national significance. It was
Speaker 1: a speech. Well, I guess you could have like a
Speaker 1: plane that would be otherwise taking off for landing, that
Speaker 1: would try to crash into the plane issue, right, Like
Speaker 1: I think but that's that's why I think, right, I
Speaker 1: felt as though if it was I felt as though,
Speaker 1: you can't do that to people, to go give a
Speaker 1: speech for a guy. Okay, I got it. I got
Speaker 1: over the anger. But I was like particularly angry for
Speaker 1: a while, and I said some things that probably would
Speaker 1: have put me on the UM no fly list or
Speaker 1: like the Secret Service whatever. You know. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was pretty mad. Man, that was pretty bad out
Speaker 1: shape about it? Yeah, like fly someplace to diffuse some
Speaker 1: international situation or make something better for everyone. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can wait. That's great, man. You're gonna diffuse tensions with
Speaker 1: North Korea? You know, I can wait. I can wait.
Speaker 1: You're gonna go give a speech for some Yahoo running
Speaker 1: for office yep, so we can lock up some sector
Speaker 1: in Iowa or yeah. Man, people got a place to go,
Speaker 1: they got things to do. Got it? You seem incredulous? No,
Speaker 1: I just I'm amused. Megan. You can play trivia? Yes,
Speaker 1: oh I got. I had one last question for you, though.
Speaker 1: Did you grow up hunting? Yes? Okay, yes, I did
Speaker 1: grow up. My I have an older brother that just
Speaker 1: wasn't into the hunting fish. Well, he does fish, but
Speaker 1: he was just not into that outdoorsy thing. And so
Speaker 1: when I came around, my Dad's like, it's gonna be you.
Speaker 1: Oh really, So he took me out hunting and I
Speaker 1: was real little, and you know, it just gave me
Speaker 1: some hostess, you know, cupcakes and stuff. We're like to
Speaker 1: sit here quietly. Your brother wasn't into it, and your
Speaker 1: dad was cool. Your dad like it took you on. Yep.
Speaker 1: Do you look him back on it? Do you think that,
Speaker 1: let's say your brother had been into it, would you
Speaker 1: have gotten the same opportunity or would your dad have
Speaker 1: been Oh no, this I got my boy and that's
Speaker 1: my hunting body and you'd got left in the dust.
Speaker 1: Or do you think he would have either way of
Speaker 1: giving you the opportunities. Oh, I'm pretty bullheaded, So I
Speaker 1: probably would have still tried to join because it was
Speaker 1: interesting me. Right. So it's just something that interested me,
Speaker 1: and my dad capitalized on it. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the hunting and ching aspect. But you know, when I
Speaker 1: went out to I was like eight or nine years old.
Speaker 1: We did this big road trip out to Yellowstone, hit
Speaker 1: all the national parks and my mom had me and
Speaker 1: my fund all the way through. Yeah, but just like
Speaker 1: you know, being out in nature getting to see all
Speaker 1: these like the megafauna and stuff. And my mom had
Speaker 1: me and my brother write essays about our trip, and
Speaker 1: I wrote in there how I wanted to like work
Speaker 1: in the wildlife sector like that, Like all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, I think I wanted to be a National
Speaker 1: park ranger. But like I didn't you know to me
Speaker 1: at eight year old, like that was all the same
Speaker 1: any but it was in the wildlife fields. Like I've
Speaker 1: known what I wanted to do since I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Were you big into Independence Day celebrations too, fireworks? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really spoke to me. Yeah. So yeah, when you
Speaker 1: filled out your application, you'd be like, I love doing
Speaker 1: shooting off fireworks. I like shooting guns romaniac. Yeah. Did
Speaker 1: they when you applied, did you weigh in how you'd
Speaker 1: had Like did they care that you'd had hunting experience
Speaker 1: or did that? Was that inconsequential to them? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: with the work that we do in wildlife services, having
Speaker 1: those grounds definitely help because you just want people to
Speaker 1: be comfortable with it. You don't want to give a
Speaker 1: firearm to somebody who has never touched one before, maybe
Speaker 1: be you know, really scared to hold one, and you know,
Speaker 1: not even just to shoot stuff. So having those backgrounds
Speaker 1: are definitely beneficial. Great, not necessary, but it definitely helps.
Speaker 1: Now back to trivia. Have you have you ever heard
Speaker 1: the trivia shell? Yeah, my husband and I have played
Speaker 1: trivia every week since it came out. WHOA and how
Speaker 1: do you do? Do you beat the Shelby Index? Do
Speaker 1: you beat like? Do you beat like krine? Do you
Speaker 1: beat cow? Everybody beats karne Um? I usually am right
Speaker 1: there with the Shelby Index, But disclaimer, I also I
Speaker 1: also pause it and think about it. So actually being
Speaker 1: in person, real time, I have no idea how all
Speaker 1: this is stressful. Yeah, so you're not. You don't know how.
Speaker 1: You don't think you're gonna like tear it up. You're
Speaker 1: gonna hold your own. I'm gonna survive, Okay. And then
Speaker 1: have you coordinated with Spencer about what bone he's gonna
Speaker 1: throw you when he gives you like a bonus question.
Speaker 1: I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet,
Speaker 1: So how does he how does he? I don't understand
Speaker 1: how does he do this? Because yeah, we talked, we
Speaker 1: talked about her. He looked at the podcast. No you're
Speaker 1: I'm a laugh if he's like, what snarge? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: when we record the pot, when we record the trivia
Speaker 1: show in a minute, I'm gonna be like, well, how
Speaker 1: do you know? Well, I know yesterday. That's happened once
Speaker 1: before where Spencer's not a part of not always a
Speaker 1: part of the podcast we do before trivia, and we've
Speaker 1: things would come up on that podcast that were the
Speaker 1: bone that Spencer eventually threw to the guests. That happened
Speaker 1: once or twice I've noticed. So yesterday the bone he
Speaker 1: threw was he just like the person was from Texas,
Speaker 1: So you had a Texas reservoir question. But I'm curious.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna dig in with him a little
Speaker 1: bit about how he's determining what to throw your way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: could be a host of good questions. Well, you're gonna stay,
Speaker 1: You're gonna stick around. Yes, we're gonna need some lunch
Speaker 1: or something, and then we're gonna have a trivia Thanks
Speaker 1: for coming on. Thank you