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Speaker 1: From Media Doors World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This

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Speaker 1: is Kel's we can review with writing Kel Kelly. Now

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Speaker 1: here's Kel. This week we're talking about, among other things,

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Speaker 1: copper lights. A copper light is a classy name for

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Speaker 1: old poop fossilized feces. If you are the issuer, the

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Speaker 1: layer downer of a copper light, you are its author.

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Speaker 1: Biologists and anthropologists are interested in copper lights because they

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Speaker 1: are evidence of the animal's behavior rather than morphology, as in,

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Speaker 1: you can tell what it's been eating, which is telling.

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Speaker 1: In addition to old, dried up dumb. Today, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: touch on fish, birds, poachers, snakes, ticks, getting drunk, and

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Speaker 1: general outdoors goings on. But before we get into the

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Speaker 1: news from the big wide world. First, I'm gonna tell

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Speaker 1: you about my world. As it turns out, I'm still

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Speaker 1: recovering from my turkey hunt in the spring Green Hills

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Speaker 1: outside of Nashville, Tennessee. I woke up the other morning

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Speaker 1: with a Tennessee tick, a hitchhiker, if you will, embedded

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Speaker 1: in my armpit. This was troubling for a number of reasons.

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Speaker 1: One is being in your mid thirties. It just doesn't

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Speaker 1: feel great to question your ability to clean yourself. And

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Speaker 1: then there's the simple creepy feeling of discovering parasites on yourself.

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Speaker 1: On my way home from Tennessee um sitting Nashville Airport,

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Speaker 1: this is where it gets real exciting. Hacking away at

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Speaker 1: my emails in the Delta Lounge, I feel an itch

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Speaker 1: and find a tick embedded on the back of my arm. Thought, man,

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Speaker 1: that sucks. Then I felt another drop out of my

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Speaker 1: rapidly receding hairline and onto my shoulder. This was enough

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Speaker 1: tick activity to get me fully grossed out, up out

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Speaker 1: of my seat into action. So there I am completely

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Speaker 1: stripped naked in the bathroom of the Delta Lounge performing

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Speaker 1: a full on tick check where I find a tick

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Speaker 1: embedded in my screw them. I only bring this up

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Speaker 1: because I am big on honesty and quite sincerely. When

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Speaker 1: a man finds a disease carrying parasite and what the

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Speaker 1: old timers would call your soft parts, it's a real

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Speaker 1: sinking feeling. Ticks attached themselves to hosts by questing, which

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Speaker 1: is climbing to advantage point that WI allow them to

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Speaker 1: either grab or drop onto an animal as they pass by.

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Speaker 1: Ticks can carry a number of diseases, most notable being

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Speaker 1: lines disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which are both

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Speaker 1: bacterial infections that are introduced to humans through contact with

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Speaker 1: the offending tick. Ticks need to be attached for twenty

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Speaker 1: four hours or longer in order to transmit, so catch morarely.

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Speaker 1: Prevalence of tick born illnesses is steadily increasing in the US.

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Speaker 1: For instance, there's been an over three x increase in

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Speaker 1: confirmed Limes cases since Now Onto fish. For those of

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Speaker 1: you waiting on the Minnesota white fish record to be broken,

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Speaker 1: it's been a long time of coming. Quick facts about

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Speaker 1: the Lake white fish is is the most commercially valuable

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Speaker 1: freshwater fish in Canada. Here in the States, it's sometimes

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Speaker 1: regarded as a trash fish, but Europeans are mad about

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Speaker 1: the row. Commercial white fisherman who harvest the fish trip

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Speaker 1: with trap nets can make as much or more from

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Speaker 1: exporting caveat as they do selling filets. Anyhow, the Minnesota

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Speaker 1: white fish record from has been busted by a first

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Speaker 1: time ice angler. His thirteen pound, nine point one ounce

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Speaker 1: whitefish came in at almost thirty inches in length and

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Speaker 1: twenty two inches in girth. In Montana, we'd call that

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Speaker 1: a big whitey. While the angler was new to ice fish,

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Speaker 1: he's an old hand at noodling. For flathead catfish, noodling

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Speaker 1: or tickling is when you catch a flathead by inserting

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Speaker 1: a hand into their mouth and allow them to bite

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Speaker 1: down on your hand. When the cat bites, you haul

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Speaker 1: it from the water. The catfish noodling record is eighty

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Speaker 1: five pounds two ounces. The all time flathead record for

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Speaker 1: regular fishing with your standard, old rought and real setup

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Speaker 1: is over a hundred and twenty three pounds. That fish

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Speaker 1: was from Kansas. If you think pulling fish through the

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Speaker 1: ice or grabbing them by the mouth sounds cruel, or

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Speaker 1: if you think who cares, it's just a fish, take

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Speaker 1: a look at the case of Michael ray Hinson, not

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Speaker 1: to be confused with the wonderful Texas musician Mica P. Hinson.

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Speaker 1: Michael ray Hinson was charged with one count of abandonment

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Speaker 1: of an animal and three counts of misdemeanor cruelty to animals.

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Speaker 1: Hanson was evicted from his home in New Hanover County,

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Speaker 1: North Carolina, and left behind a neglected six in oscar

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Speaker 1: Fish Authority. He's found the oscar in deplorable conditions with

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Speaker 1: parasitic hole in the head disease. Yes, hole in the

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Speaker 1: head disease apparently a common problem encountered by aquarium enthusiasts.

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Speaker 1: Good thing for Henson, New Hanover County District Attorney Ben

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Speaker 1: David determined that animal cruelty statutes don't apply to fish.

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Speaker 1: As the d A stated, we take a very dim

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Speaker 1: view of anyone who would abuse any creature, great or small.

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Speaker 1: Think about that the next time you see a bunch

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Speaker 1: of goldfish and plastic bags at the fair or Heaven

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Speaker 1: forbid in the bottom of your fishing bucket. Speaking of

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Speaker 1: protections for fish, check this one out. It probably goes

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Speaker 1: without saying that fish in the desert are rare, but

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Speaker 1: would you guess that Death Valley is home to the

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Speaker 1: rarest known fish on Earth. The Devil's Hole, located not

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Speaker 1: all that far from Las Vegas, Nevada, is part of

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Speaker 1: the Ash Meadows Complex, which is in turn part of

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Speaker 1: the Death Valley National Park. Complex is comprised of seeps

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Speaker 1: and springs that bring fossil water, which is water that

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Speaker 1: seeped into the aquifer Lennyago, to the surface. What could

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Speaker 1: be more tempting than water in the desert. Right right,

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Speaker 1: the Devil's Hole is a seriously protected place, ten foot fences,

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Speaker 1: highly controlled, highly monitored. In two thousand sixteen, small group

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Speaker 1: of board drunk and armed desert dwellers decided, for reasons unknown,

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Speaker 1: to go for a swim. The boys get through the

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Speaker 1: fence and in short order we've gotten illegal skinny dipper

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Speaker 1: in Devil's Whole. This skinny dipper is a convicted felon

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Speaker 1: in possession of a shotgun. During a swim, he manages

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Speaker 1: to step onto the small shelf of rock that is

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Speaker 1: the epicenter of life at Devil's Hole. When the National

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Speaker 1: Park Service crew is made aware of this violation, they

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Speaker 1: show up to investigate. As it turns out, and it

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Speaker 1: looks as though the disturbance of the pool and Devil's

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Speaker 1: Hole resulted in the death of a rare puff fish.

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Speaker 1: When I say rare, I mean the Devil's Whole pupfish

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Speaker 1: is one of the rarest fish on the planet. This tiny,

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Speaker 1: shimmery blue fish is only found there in the waters

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Speaker 1: of Devil's Hole. The Devil's Whole puff ish has been

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Speaker 1: on the Endangered Species List since the list was created.

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Speaker 1: While we don't know for absolute certain that this fellow

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Speaker 1: killed the pub fish, circumstantial evidence is pointing very decidedly

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Speaker 1: in that direction. So what's the punishment? If you learn

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Speaker 1: anything here? Let it be this, don't go drinking and

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Speaker 1: messing with the Endangered Species Act. Our skinny Dipper was

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Speaker 1: finally sentenced recently and got nine months in the clink

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Speaker 1: for the ESSA violation, four months for the trespassing and

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Speaker 1: destruction of property, and has to pay fourteen thousand in

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Speaker 1: restitution to the National Park Service, and to top it

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Speaker 1: all off, the Queen Mother of all punishments. Upon release

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Speaker 1: the devil's whole Skinny Dipper will be forbidden to enter

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Speaker 1: federal public lands for the rest of his life. And

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Speaker 1: this is where I start to feel bad for our Dipper.

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Speaker 1: This guy and his buddies made really bad decisions. Deplorable

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Speaker 1: when you think about wiping a species off the face

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Speaker 1: of the earth for the sake of drunken, dumbassary things

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Speaker 1: that will likely regret for the rest of their lives.

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Speaker 1: And should mind you, but imagine you even Nevada and

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Speaker 1: you've been banned for life from eighty four point nine

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Speaker 1: percent of your home state eighty four point nine is

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Speaker 1: the percentage of federally managed land in Nevada. You've basically

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Speaker 1: been sentenced to live in Las Vegas, and that sounds

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Speaker 1: cruel and unusual to me. In the spirit of reform,

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Speaker 1: I'd rather see the Dipper sentence to cleaning up the

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Speaker 1: desert as opposed to being banned from it. Let's go

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Speaker 1: from a little blue fish to the big and tooth

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Speaker 1: the alligator guard. A couple of guys on the brazos

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Speaker 1: for every landed a seven foot seven inch alligator gar,

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Speaker 1: weighing in at a hundred and ninety eight pounds. The

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Speaker 1: head alone weigh twenty five. Now, this sounds like a beast,

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Speaker 1: but the world record came out of Texas and went

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Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy nine pounds. These creatures date back

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Speaker 1: to the Cretaceous period, meaning alligator gara have been swimming

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Speaker 1: for at least sixty six million years. If you watch

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Speaker 1: the movie Jurassic World, the dinosaur that jumps out of

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Speaker 1: the water and eats the t rex hybrid at the end,

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Speaker 1: that's Mosasaur. The mosasaur and the gar swam at the

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Speaker 1: same time as Lee. The gar is still around and

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Speaker 1: the mosesaur is um, and that's how we get the

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Speaker 1: term living fossil. Some of our favorite living fossils horseshoe crabs,

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Speaker 1: snapping turtles, possums, and the tastiest evolve the American prong

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Speaker 1: horn antelope. Here's a few more fun facts about the gar.

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Speaker 1: Scales that stretch are called a lasmoid scales. Scales that

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Speaker 1: don't ganoid scales car have ganoid scales. They can hack

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Speaker 1: a serious bite without effect. One reason the gar may

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Speaker 1: have stood the test of time is in addition to

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Speaker 1: regular old fish gills, the gar has a specialized swim

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Speaker 1: bladder that acts like a lung. This specialized swim bladder

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Speaker 1: allows the guard to sit air from the surface. Because

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Speaker 1: of this, the guard can inhabit low oxygen water other

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Speaker 1: fish can't. I just flipped a few flies at another

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Speaker 1: gar species, the spotted gar down in Texas a few

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Speaker 1: weeks ago on the Lino River. Really need fish, you

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Speaker 1: should definitely check them out like public lands as I was.

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Speaker 1: Nevada has a good chunk of them, But soon the

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Speaker 1: sheep Range mountains that is which you can see from

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Speaker 1: the airplane window when you're landing in Vegas may soon

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Speaker 1: be closed off to the public ouch Right now, the

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Speaker 1: US military is asking for an additional two thousand acres

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Speaker 1: of the mountain range for bombing practice. That's the size

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Speaker 1: of two thousand, two hundred and fifty Disney Lands if

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Speaker 1: you include the new Star Wars expansion. There are a

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Speaker 1: few problems with this, one being that these mountains happen

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Speaker 1: to be some of the best desert big horn sheep

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Speaker 1: habitat in the world. Once upon a time, it's estimated

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Speaker 1: that we had around two million big horn sheep that's

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Speaker 1: both rocky mountain and desert big horns. Thanks to unregulated

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Speaker 1: market hunting, habitat loss and disease, the ladder of which

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Speaker 1: remains the primary threat to sheep, that number was whittled

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Speaker 1: down to roughly fifteen thousand by nd Now we're back

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Speaker 1: up to around seventy THO. Sure, not perfect, but we're

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Speaker 1: out of the big Horn dark ages and getting there.

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Speaker 1: Any sheep that's still on the mountain is there because

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Speaker 1: we've fought for it. That's certainly true of the sheep

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Speaker 1: range bighorns. For decades, conservation organizations such as Wild Cheap

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Speaker 1: Foundation have worked their asses off to consider the sheep

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Speaker 1: range and it's six hundred desert bighorn habitat improvements, water improvements,

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Speaker 1: and plenty of other hot, sweaty work. We're talking hundreds

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Speaker 1: of regular folks doning time and money on behalf of wildlife.

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Speaker 1: Let's not piss that away. Get off your butts and

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Speaker 1: act now. Call your elected officials if you care about

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Speaker 1: desert bighorns and public access of wild places. I understand

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Speaker 1: the needs of national defense, but let's play the long

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Speaker 1: game here. What's wild should stay wild. We're not going

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Speaker 1: to run out of degraded landscapes, so don't worry about

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Speaker 1: that and the war on wild cheap. Now we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about things that should be and things that

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Speaker 1: shouldn't be up near our northern border with Canada. Mountain

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Speaker 1: Lake Superior is Io Royal National Park. Io Royal is

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Speaker 1: a remote island chain in the northwest corner of the lake,

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Speaker 1: a car free Michigan wilderness where, at least nowadays, moose

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Speaker 1: and wolves rome Somewhat mysteriously. Moose first showed up on

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Speaker 1: the island in the early nineteen hundreds. Either they walked

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Speaker 1: across the ice to get there, or someone brought them

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Speaker 1: out there and cut them loose. Wolves showed up in

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Speaker 1: having crossed an ice bridge between mainland Ontario and the island.

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Speaker 1: Things have been up and down since then. The wolf

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Speaker 1: population got as high as fifty, but recently dropped to

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Speaker 1: just two in bread as all get out. Meanwhile, moose

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Speaker 1: are kicking ats at a current estimated population of around

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Speaker 1: fifteen hundred. The National Park Service recently released four gray

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Speaker 1: wolves to help the wolf population out, and they're preparing

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Speaker 1: to deliver twenty or thirty more over the next five years,

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Speaker 1: at a cost of two million dollars. You might wonder

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Speaker 1: why we'd be flying animals back and forth to a

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Speaker 1: national park. Parks are supposed to be places where nature

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Speaker 1: is allowed to run a course unimpeded by man. Granted

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Speaker 1: it sounds a little bit like zoo keeping. Well, in

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Speaker 1: this case it has to be with ice and cold weather.

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Speaker 1: Ice bridges between the mainland and Ile Royal we're more

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Speaker 1: common in past decades, which allowed some spread of coming

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Speaker 1: and going of critters, but times have changed now It's

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Speaker 1: seldom freezes good enough. From until two thousand eleven, a

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Speaker 1: solid ice bridge formed only once in two thousand eight.

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Speaker 1: From two thousand thirteen to two thousand seventeen, Ile Royal

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Speaker 1: was connected to the mainland only twice, and in those

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Speaker 1: instances only for a few days. Somewhat ironically, one of

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Speaker 1: the wolves that was flown out to save the wolves

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Speaker 1: that can't get replenished due to a lack of ice

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Speaker 1: promptly left the island on you guessed it, an ice bridge.

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Speaker 1: It's real complicated out there on Io Royl. You want

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Speaker 1: to know something that's also pretty interesting. Up until the

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Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, the island was home to lynx in caribou,

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Speaker 1: both of which banished without any restocking efforts from US. Humans.

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Speaker 1: Are we smarter now? We're just different? Onto Florida. According

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Speaker 1: to a two thousand four study of all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians,

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Speaker 1: and fish in southern Florida are non native. We're talking iguanas, snakeheads, telapia, parakeets,

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Speaker 1: and over a hundred and fifty other species. Florida even

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Speaker 1: has feral monkeys climbing around. It's the non indigenous species

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Speaker 1: capital of the United States. I'll add that Florida means

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Speaker 1: land of flowers in Spanish, so that's nice. Returning to

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Speaker 1: non natives. They've got the Burmese python living down there.

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Speaker 1: The biggest has been recorded over twenty three ft in

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Speaker 1: length and two hundred pounds in their native range of

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Speaker 1: Southeast Asia. They didn't think they could get that big

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Speaker 1: in Florida, at least until now. In Big Cyprus National Preserve,

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Speaker 1: researchers captured a seventeen foot female python that weighed over

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Speaker 1: a hundred and forty pounds and held seventy three eggs.

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Speaker 1: They caught it using the Judas method in the Bible,

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Speaker 1: Judas betrays Jesus. In Florida, Judas was a male python

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Speaker 1: with a tracking device that they released so he could

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Speaker 1: go out and do what male pythons want to do,

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Speaker 1: which is fine females give him some time tracking back

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Speaker 1: down see who he's hanging with. In this case, it

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Speaker 1: was the hundred and forty pound girlfriend, confirming beyond doubt

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Speaker 1: that Florida can grow a big snake. Big snakes can

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Speaker 1: only get big by eating wealth. According to studies by

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Speaker 1: the U. S Geological Survey in Everglades National Park, there

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Speaker 1: has been a ninety nine point three percent decrease in

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Speaker 1: raccoon observation and ninety eight point nine percent decrease and

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Speaker 1: impossum observations and an eighty seven and a half percent

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Speaker 1: decrease in bobcat observations. The most recent surveys have shown

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Speaker 1: that marsh rabbits, cotton tail rabbits, and foxes have quote

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Speaker 1: effectively disappeared. Of course, non natives cost us more than

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Speaker 1: just native wildlife. According to the Nature Conservancy, invasive species

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Speaker 1: cost the United States about one hundred billion dollars per

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Speaker 1: year over west to Florida a few states. You've got

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Speaker 1: Texas sitting. They're all proud and beautiful, rattlesnakes, oil rigs,

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Speaker 1: shipload of tigers. If you don't know what I'm talking

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Speaker 1: about and I mentioned tigers, you should have listened to

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Speaker 1: last week's episode of this show. Also, poachers doing it

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Speaker 1: for the Graham Instagram. That is, deeds done for the

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Speaker 1: Graham might lead a poacher to time behind bars. Recently,

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Speaker 1: the Texas Operation Game Thief Wildlife Crime Stoppers hotline started

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Speaker 1: buzzing about an illegally taking wild turkey. The perpetrator spotted

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Speaker 1: the bird, rolled the windows down, squeezed off a shell,

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Speaker 1: and ended the life of a spring turk. Apparently, this

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Speaker 1: wizard of multitasking caught it all on video and loaded

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Speaker 1: it up for his i G followers. Common sense would

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Speaker 1: dictate that you, first off, should not roll down the

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Speaker 1: window of your hunting rig to blast a turkey or

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Speaker 1: any animal for that matter. In most states, shooting for

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Speaker 1: the roadway in any fashion is illegal. Secondly, don't post

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Speaker 1: your illegal activity to Instagram and share with the world.

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Speaker 1: I appreciate the easy job you were making for the

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Speaker 1: game wardens, but I don't want to be associated with

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Speaker 1: you as part of the hunting community. More from Texas.

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Speaker 1: Remember that opening bit about copper lights. Here's why I

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Speaker 1: brought that up. In the late nineteen sixties, archaeologists collected

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Speaker 1: over a thousand samples of human produced copper lights at

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Speaker 1: the Canajo Shelter in southwest Texas. Just recently, these samples

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Speaker 1: were re examined by an archaeological team from Texas, A

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Speaker 1: and M. In one of the samples, they found a

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Speaker 1: small road apparently eating a hole, which, for the people

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Speaker 1: living around Canajo Shelter was not abnormal. Life in the

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Speaker 1: desert has its challenges, and another sample, the team did

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Speaker 1: get a surprise, a surprise in the form of what

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Speaker 1: appeared to be a whole rattlesnake, including the snake's hide

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Speaker 1: head and a one centimeter long fact. According to the

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Speaker 1: authors of the report, quote we proposed that a likely

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Speaker 1: explanation for the ingestion of an entire snake is that

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Speaker 1: the individual did so for a distinctly ceremonial or ritualistic purpose.

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Speaker 1: End quote. You know there's a joke in the archaeological community.

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Speaker 1: Is something you've dug up doesn't make sense, Call it

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Speaker 1: ritualistic or ceremonial, and move on. The thing is, I

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Speaker 1: can think of a few things I've ingested that we're

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Speaker 1: certainly not ceremonial or ritualistic, though they'd still make it

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Speaker 1: tough for anyone to propose a likely explanation for my behavior.

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Speaker 1: From our technology desk, engineers at Cornell Lab of Ornithology

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Speaker 1: have created, at the request of a professor in the

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Speaker 1: Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis,

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Speaker 1: a sage grouse femba. The request for these lovely robotic

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Speaker 1: ladies of the sage was inspired by the desire to

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Speaker 1: understand say grouse breeding habits, specifically how man made disturbances

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Speaker 1: affect breeding efforts on and around lex which are communal

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Speaker 1: breeding areas where male sage grouse compete for females through

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Speaker 1: elaborate sexual displays. Scientists remotely drive these robotic bird renditions,

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Speaker 1: which sport an external frame that's wrapped with female sage

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Speaker 1: grouse skin and feathers, and further fitted with all terrain wheels.

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Speaker 1: The mechanized love birds are fitted with camera to capture

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Speaker 1: male behavior up close and personal, sometimes too close. Streading

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Speaker 1: males have repeatedly mounted and attempted to breed these female robots.

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Speaker 1: Then again, they've also been reported to mount an old,

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Speaker 1: dried up cow patty. Tough times for sage grouse love making.

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Speaker 1: And lastly, a word from that wonderful Texas musician I

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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Mica P. Handsome Again, don't confuse him with

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Speaker 1: Michael Ray Handsome, the guy who neglected his pet fish

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Speaker 1: gram Boll on a cold summer's day. Now in New York, Chicago,

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Speaker 1: any special place thanks to tune in next week. Find

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Speaker 1: out more about all this fascinating information at meat eater

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Speaker 1: dot com and email me at ask Cal at the

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Speaker 1: meat eater dot com