Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for
Speaker 1: every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: this is a special kind of like a literary It's
Speaker 1: like a literary and biology special edition. Joined here by
Speaker 1: Carmen van Bianki, who's here for the third damn time.
Speaker 1: What episode numbers were you in before? I want to look,
Speaker 1: I don't know, fifty four and nine, and then you missed,
Speaker 1: then you missed a hundred in some episodes, and now
Speaker 1: you're back. But we need to check in with you
Speaker 1: because I feel like we um I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: we get all these questions all the time. People be like,
Speaker 1: how can I have a job in the outdoors? Or
Speaker 1: how do you be of this or that? So you're
Speaker 1: our case study. Okay, well it's not been any sort
Speaker 1: of traditional path. But you've arrived now, I think you've arrived.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know if I've arrived. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've arrived, but you trap animals for living man. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll give you that. Yeah, I have a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: Do you have a year round position? No, really, we'll
Speaker 1: get to that. But you're still alive. You're obviously feeding
Speaker 1: yourself and you're clothed and whatnot. Yeah, markers of success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we make it work. Um, but it's a hodgepodge. Although
Speaker 1: I am starting a new chapter and hopefully this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a full time the rest of my time. Deal.
Speaker 1: Have you have you if? If you might, you might
Speaker 1: have to lie, bec I want just to look positive
Speaker 1: no matter what. But has have any opportunities, has this
Speaker 1: has coming on the show to explain your pro professional
Speaker 1: path opened any doors? Don't lie? I gotta be honest. No,
Speaker 1: damn it really because I felt like I really like
Speaker 1: laid it on thick and that was, you know, so
Speaker 1: sweet of you. But um, I mean I've got I
Speaker 1: more get my jobs, you know, just based on my
Speaker 1: my skills, and no one cares about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Our listenership back probably the last time Karmen was just
Speaker 1: trying to get those jobs. Yeah, so now you know
Speaker 1: we have twice listenership. It probably made it worse for
Speaker 1: Carmen because a bunch of dudes are like, Dude, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to get that job. I'm gonna go into that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go into that line of work. That's good.
Speaker 1: So everything it's like a meritocracy. It's a meritocracy in
Speaker 1: your field things. Yeah. And and I've had I've been
Speaker 1: really fortunate to have some regular, uh field jobs for
Speaker 1: the last years. I mean, I think since we did
Speaker 1: the last podcast, I've been working on the same project.
Speaker 1: And so that's been really nice, just not having to
Speaker 1: worry every season about what the next thing is going
Speaker 1: to be and where I'm gonna live. Um. So, so
Speaker 1: that was really nice. And now that project is just
Speaker 1: about completely wound up. And um, three of my colleagues
Speaker 1: and friends from that that project, well two of them,
Speaker 1: there's three of us, are starting a nonprofit doing independent
Speaker 1: wildlife research. That's the next chapter. That's good. That's the
Speaker 1: word right out of my mouth. Also joined by what
Speaker 1: cows here? Hello, fresh off a babysitting my dog? Um,
Speaker 1: you honest is here fresh off big huge run this morning?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I was just getting up. I got a
Speaker 1: picture from a friend of mine who did he did
Speaker 1: you just run into him up on top of that mountain.
Speaker 1: We ran up there together, ran up there together. We
Speaker 1: hiked fast up there together. You guys speed hiked. That's good.
Speaker 1: We kind of ran down. Phil here, say something for yourself. Phil,
Speaker 1: you don't sound very thrilled in the room. Get pills here,
Speaker 1: I guess for some reason. And then, uh, very special guests.
Speaker 1: Who Kathy Raven whose brand new book is out yesterday. Yes,
Speaker 1: I heard you guys sold so the books called Fox
Speaker 1: and I and my exposure to it is your publisher,
Speaker 1: Cindy Spiegel took um, you know, through me a real she.
Speaker 1: I don't think she would describe it this way, but
Speaker 1: through me a real lifeline. Many years ago I bought
Speaker 1: my second book I published with her imprint at Random
Speaker 1: House for a long time. They've gone on to now
Speaker 1: start their own publishing venture. You're I think their first book,
Speaker 1: their first so Spiegel and Grow. It's with spiegl and Growl.
Speaker 1: Speagle and Grow used to be an imprint at Random House,
Speaker 1: but now it's a very exciting new venture. Um, you
Speaker 1: were their first book. I heard you guys have Uh,
Speaker 1: you've sold the book to eleven different countries. I haven't
Speaker 1: kept track because that's not my thing, but it's been
Speaker 1: a lot of countries. Russia picked it up, and Korea
Speaker 1: and Italy and Germany and waiting for Japan. So does
Speaker 1: this if you can put in a plug A lot
Speaker 1: of good populations in countries, so you hear that, you
Speaker 1: people in Japan, so it'll be widely translated. Yes, even
Speaker 1: I'm really happy that even the English folks decided to
Speaker 1: translate it. And I don't know if the Australians and
Speaker 1: New Zealands have, but I think that's really helpful because
Speaker 1: when I watch English, I guess Cindy told you. I
Speaker 1: don't have a TV or stream or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but I buy DVDs and mostly the DVDs I buy
Speaker 1: for entertainment are English ones, and I have to watch
Speaker 1: them with the you know, the close captioning because I
Speaker 1: don't understand what they're saying. So I think English people
Speaker 1: probably don't understand all of my vocabulary and such. So
Speaker 1: they hired a professional to translate it from American to English,
Speaker 1: and I'm really happy about that. Do you mean like
Speaker 1: the print version. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question about
Speaker 1: the audio. Yeah, the spelling is different, and I think
Speaker 1: some of the slang. I might have used the word
Speaker 1: mother country at one point, and I remember they wrote
Speaker 1: and said, so when you say the mother I was
Speaker 1: being facetious. When you said the mother country, were you
Speaker 1: talking about us? I said yeah, And there was something
Speaker 1: else that. Yes, some minor adjustments. So the folks over there,
Speaker 1: I hope they didn't cut out all my stuff about
Speaker 1: fox hunting, but I talked about England and the fox
Speaker 1: Hunters and Downton Abbey and all that. Yeah, they're trying
Speaker 1: to wash their hands a little fox The whole Fox
Speaker 1: Hunt made that look a little nicer. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: It has been translated to a lot of different languages
Speaker 1: and different accents. That's great. So we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: that book in a little bit too, But first we
Speaker 1: gotta talk about then our thing. Now. Listen, I don't
Speaker 1: want you to take this the wrong way. I think
Speaker 1: everyone should go buy your book. But we're gonna promote
Speaker 1: like we have to promote a thing of ours. So
Speaker 1: we talked about a week ago. I don't know when
Speaker 1: the hell, I don't know a while ago. No, it's
Speaker 1: out right now. The closest listen. Yeah, if you listen
Speaker 1: to this show on a regular basis. You heard us,
Speaker 1: uh um getting all excited and explaining our audio book. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I heard somebody say that an audio original like an
Speaker 1: immersive audio experience. It's not available in print. You have
Speaker 1: to listen to it six hours long. Um, but I
Speaker 1: just want to give everybody a taste of it. So
Speaker 1: this is like, this is the story. I heard this story? Um,
Speaker 1: I heard a version of this story, I think from Callahan.
Speaker 1: Did you originally tell me the story? YEA, some details wrong,
Speaker 1: cal That's because I never heard the story. You heard
Speaker 1: a story about Brody was like, hey, do you hear
Speaker 1: about And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's this guy. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: do you have his phone number? I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: but he used to work Pheasants forever and I know
Speaker 1: a bunch of folks in that organization. So I had
Speaker 1: one email tracked down his cell phone number, and and
Speaker 1: and and I still haven't heard the story. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you still haven't heard the damn story. It's a guy
Speaker 1: named Sam Lowery. He's a game board in Arizona. Before
Speaker 1: we we jump into this, you want to do a
Speaker 1: quick summary of what this is, what the whole project is.
Speaker 1: In case they missed the last and you brought it up.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna edit that out or leave that in film?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave it in your little comment there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's called direct fils big time producer. H that's going
Speaker 1: on with her. I would never take that away because
Speaker 1: because Karin's out of town. Now, Phil's gonna act like
Speaker 1: big time Mr Director. All right, Phil, Phil's take him
Speaker 1: jobs away from the folks who answer listener emails. You
Speaker 1: know what my dad has a story about He was
Speaker 1: when he was a little kid, he had a job
Speaker 1: as a soda jerk, and when he came back from
Speaker 1: the war, he beat the guy up who had that job. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's unnecessary. Found out that the guy had the job,
Speaker 1: the guy didn't want to give it back. My dad
Speaker 1: beat him up. Do you what's your opinion on that?
Speaker 1: Do you think your dad had the right to take
Speaker 1: his job back. He felt that you wouldn't that you
Speaker 1: would if a veteran was returning got it would very
Speaker 1: quickly step aside and not make a play to keep
Speaker 1: the job. What if you were in that new soda
Speaker 1: jerk's position and some guy came in and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want my job back. I just said, here's the
Speaker 1: apron that guy wants of vanilla soda. Point Man Krim
Speaker 1: might come back and beat your ass, Phil, But I'll
Speaker 1: take that little directing. I'll take that little directing comment
Speaker 1: and I will Um. It's called meat Eaters, camp fire stories,
Speaker 1: close calls, and it is about. It's a it's a long,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a collection of a wide variety of
Speaker 1: different storytellers from mountaineers, game wardens, hunters, spear fisherman. I
Speaker 1: don't know who else is in there. My daughter has
Speaker 1: a cameo. Yeah, that's right, she did a great job.
Speaker 1: Um about close calls and near death experiences and close
Speaker 1: calls in the wild, and kind of the way like
Speaker 1: the sort of the physiology that goes into it, the
Speaker 1: psychology that goes into close calls, the way close calls
Speaker 1: tend to live with you and haunt you. Um. And
Speaker 1: one of them, just to give you a taste, what
Speaker 1: this is all about, is the story of a game
Speaker 1: board named Sam Laurie who is operating in Arizona. And
Speaker 1: we described us before as he has a run in
Speaker 1: with the sociopathic, suzy wielding elk poacher. So take a listen,
Speaker 1: and such thing the mud puddle. Over the years, I've
Speaker 1: had the occasion to speak with several game wardens on
Speaker 1: the subject of poaching. Among the most interesting of these
Speaker 1: conversations was my talk with a warden who studied what
Speaker 1: he called super poachers. Super poachers, he found, almost always
Speaker 1: exhibit sociopathic tendencies. They commit their crimes very quietly. They
Speaker 1: don't show off photos or brag about the animals they
Speaker 1: poached on social media, and they don't tend to poach
Speaker 1: for material game. The real thrill for them is killing
Speaker 1: animals illegally and doing so without getting caught. The hunt
Speaker 1: for one such serial poacher is the focus of this
Speaker 1: next story from Sam Lowry, a retired game warden. Sam
Speaker 1: told us that most of the time he was dealing
Speaker 1: with normal people who might have made a minor honest mistake,
Speaker 1: along with the occasional poacher who was deliberately flouting the
Speaker 1: rules for profit. In this case, though, he was playing
Speaker 1: cat and mouse with a dangerous sociopath. My name is
Speaker 1: Sam Lowry. I've held different positions with the federal and
Speaker 1: state wildlife agencies, spanning about a forty year career in wildlife.
Speaker 1: Back in about three or so, I was a wildlife
Speaker 1: manager for what they called Unit one and three B
Speaker 1: in northern Arizona. Closest larger town would be Sholow, Arizona.
Speaker 1: Most people think Arizona is filled with sorrow cacti and desert,
Speaker 1: and yet in reality there's there's a beautiful high country
Speaker 1: element of mixed conifer and aspens. And that was the
Speaker 1: district that I was responsible for that held a very
Speaker 1: very healthy elk population. In fact, you know, probably world
Speaker 1: renowned UH units for pursuing elk in that particular region
Speaker 1: of the White Mountains. So usually by springtime of every year,
Speaker 1: we were looking forward to Turkey season with spring Gobbler's
Speaker 1: goblin everywhere, and all the big game seasons were over
Speaker 1: in terms of elk and deer and big horn sheep
Speaker 1: and what have you, and things for the most part
Speaker 1: started to slow down. Um with the exception of one
Speaker 1: evening I got a call and this would have been
Speaker 1: about in March, that one of our local outfitters who
Speaker 1: lives quite a ways out into the Boonies heard some
Speaker 1: shots and U reported it to Gave and Fish. We
Speaker 1: had a twenty four hour hotline where they could call,
Speaker 1: and of course that information came back to me that
Speaker 1: these shots were fired at night. UM sounded like small
Speaker 1: caliber and fully automatic, which is very unusual for the
Speaker 1: area we were in. I knew that the caller, so
Speaker 1: I contacted him the next day and determined the location
Speaker 1: he was even referring to, and I went out there
Speaker 1: and sure enough I found two elk land down. They
Speaker 1: were both probably within eight hours, had been shot. As normally,
Speaker 1: you take your metal detector and look the carcasses over.
Speaker 1: You look for any places where the vehicle, the suspect
Speaker 1: vehicle would have pulled off the road. You want to
Speaker 1: look for any shell casings in the road. You want
Speaker 1: to look for anything that give you any idea of
Speaker 1: of evidence to to link whoever shot these elk to
Speaker 1: a person. Unfortunately, there was nothing. Probably about two weeks
Speaker 1: later where we received another call shots being fired at
Speaker 1: night and general location but no specifics. I responded to
Speaker 1: that one the next day as well and found two
Speaker 1: cow elk. One was alive was still kicking. When a
Speaker 1: game warden or a wildlife officer comes in contact with
Speaker 1: an animal that's been poached, what we rely on is evidence.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of times these violators are out
Speaker 1: there at night party and two and they'll throw beer
Speaker 1: cans out, or pop cans or you know, you look
Speaker 1: for anything that might be able to lead you to
Speaker 1: an individual down the road, and there was never anything
Speaker 1: on the on this particular guy's m O. The evidence
Speaker 1: was always very lacking with this particular case. I was
Speaker 1: getting pretty bothered because if you think you found this
Speaker 1: would have been the fifth elk um. They looked like
Speaker 1: they were being shot with twenty two caliber as the
Speaker 1: projectiles that I was able to carve out of the elk,
Speaker 1: how many did we not find? So my my aggravation
Speaker 1: started to grow. I wanted to catch this guy, so
Speaker 1: I actually made a decision to call a reporter while
Speaker 1: I was going to begin performing the knee crops he's
Speaker 1: on his elk. Told him we were again out looking
Speaker 1: at these elk poachings and hoping that an article in
Speaker 1: the paper would stimulate some folks to maybe step forward
Speaker 1: and put an end to who's doing this. The one
Speaker 1: that was still alive I dispatched, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the duties officers have to do once a while,
Speaker 1: never pleasant, but you put the animal out of its misery.
Speaker 1: And the reporter showed up and walked out to the field.
Speaker 1: I remember he looked down at me. He looked like
Speaker 1: he was going to kind of maybe get sick. And
Speaker 1: not that we're hardened that much, but to him, I
Speaker 1: imagine it was a It was a pretty spectacular nasty scene.
Speaker 1: The one that was alive had been kicking all night
Speaker 1: trying to get itself up, so it had had made
Speaker 1: this kind of circle depression of of soil around it.
Speaker 1: And so he's asking me, as I'm carving into these
Speaker 1: things about what I'm looking for, And sure enough I
Speaker 1: was able to locate a couple again, twenty two caliber
Speaker 1: slugs that were mostly fragments. At that point, one might wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, how how did kill an elk? Well, when
Speaker 1: you hit him with two or three of them, and
Speaker 1: a couple of them probably in the spinal cord, it
Speaker 1: can drop them. So it it certainly does. I reached
Speaker 1: down into the the more of the gestive area of
Speaker 1: the cavity, and this again was in March and not
Speaker 1: the do you sing in the world. I reached in
Speaker 1: and grabbed about a jack rabbit sized fetus from one
Speaker 1: of the cow elk, and I lighted up on the
Speaker 1: rib cage and looked him in the eye and said,
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't three elk, this is six elk.
Speaker 1: And that's what really kind of turned him white. And
Speaker 1: by the end of the knee cropsy, I had three,
Speaker 1: uh you know, two ft long fetuses laying on the
Speaker 1: rib cage of this one elk, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: if that doesn't stimulate someone to come forward and help
Speaker 1: me nab the guy doing this or guys doing this,
Speaker 1: I don't know what can. And the article did come out,
Speaker 1: and all I got was feedback from the public that
Speaker 1: will do everything we can to help you catch this guy.
Speaker 1: But no information ever led to that from that knee cropsy.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't not tell a little piece of
Speaker 1: a story that comes to mind about this individual poaching
Speaker 1: all these elk and and the first thing you want
Speaker 1: to do is a is a war and has catched
Speaker 1: the guy or guys. And an old mentor of mine,
Speaker 1: a warden, had been around for many, many years. We
Speaker 1: called him the herd bull, and we were referred to
Speaker 1: as satellite bulls. And he used to always tell us
Speaker 1: satellite bulls to walk to the dance and you'll finally
Speaker 1: get to dance. Don't run to the dance. And so
Speaker 1: that message to me always said to me to just
Speaker 1: slow down and eventually the person is going to make
Speaker 1: a mistake. And uh, I kept going back to my
Speaker 1: old mentor, thinking, someday, somewhere this guy is going to
Speaker 1: mess up and I'm going to catch him. So after
Speaker 1: the newspaper article came out, nothing ever turned up. Things
Speaker 1: were cold, and uh. In fact, there is a point
Speaker 1: at which I kind of thought maybe the person moved away,
Speaker 1: which could be a good thing, at least some more elk,
Speaker 1: we're going to get tipped over. My wife and I
Speaker 1: lived in a little town called Vernon, and it was
Speaker 1: about twenty miles from a little larger town called Sholo,
Speaker 1: and every once in a while, this was prior to
Speaker 1: us having any any children, we'd head on into the
Speaker 1: big town for Saturday night. On one particular Saturday night,
Speaker 1: we took off to Bill's Bar, famous little tavern and
Speaker 1: in Sholo, whereas, in fact, I had another story where
Speaker 1: some old codgers back in the sixties backed up to
Speaker 1: the back door of Bill's Bar and let a mountain
Speaker 1: lion loose into a crowd of patrons. And uh, and
Speaker 1: you didn't go in there very often without probably seeing
Speaker 1: some kind of fisticuffs and kirk. So you had to
Speaker 1: be a big, big, broad shouldered burley book aoroo work
Speaker 1: in a wide open wind with wilderness to get in there.
Speaker 1: So my wife I did and we we uh went
Speaker 1: had dinner and went dancing, and luckily that night there
Speaker 1: weren't too many cold beers going down the throat, but
Speaker 1: enough to have a fun night. And we were heading
Speaker 1: home after closing about one o'clock in the morning, about
Speaker 1: a twenty mile drive to our little cabin, and uh
Speaker 1: about five miles from home, I could look up into
Speaker 1: the vicinity of where all the out poachings were and
Speaker 1: my gosh, there was a spotlight being thrown around. Spotlights
Speaker 1: are just very very distincting and being able to say
Speaker 1: that's not your headlights. You headlights when vehicles drive, don't
Speaker 1: sweep across the hillside as if they're searching for something.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a searchlight, if you will. And
Speaker 1: I could see that spotlight being kind of covering different
Speaker 1: hillsides and no doubt in my mind there was some
Speaker 1: activity going on. So I know my my little bride
Speaker 1: wasn't happy, but I decided to to hurry on home
Speaker 1: and put the uniform on and go out and get
Speaker 1: this guy. Um, I certainly wasn't in any condition that
Speaker 1: would prevent me from from doing that. So I I
Speaker 1: made the decision, I'm gonna go suit up and and
Speaker 1: catch this guy. Too good of an opportunity. Jumped in
Speaker 1: my game and fish truck and notified the dispatch that
Speaker 1: I'd be out attempting to make contact with this potential
Speaker 1: health poacher or spotlighter, and took off. And I had
Speaker 1: about a five mile drive to get to where I
Speaker 1: could see the spotlight working. And in those days, we
Speaker 1: had what you call a blackout light that would go
Speaker 1: to the front bumper your game and fish truck, and
Speaker 1: it would allow you to slowly proceed down a dirt
Speaker 1: road without any other lights on. It was a military
Speaker 1: device that we got for all the officers in the state.
Speaker 1: So I proceeded kind of in the direction of this spotlighter,
Speaker 1: occasionally stopping and listening, and I, you know, it was
Speaker 1: difficult to tell. Sometimes I thought I heard rapid fire
Speaker 1: kind of automatic weapon, if you will, And sometimes it
Speaker 1: was more of a crack cracking noise, like more of
Speaker 1: a report of a rifle but nonetheless, I kept entering
Speaker 1: my way to where I thought this guy was working,
Speaker 1: which is a forest service road home to running in
Speaker 1: and out of that vicinity that time of year. So
Speaker 1: I positioned my game and fish struck at the end
Speaker 1: of that and thought, I'm gonna get him. He's gonna
Speaker 1: come out. And now you start to feel the old
Speaker 1: adrenaline coming. You're going into full blown enforcement mode and
Speaker 1: you're pretty sure you're gonna make a stop on what
Speaker 1: was likely to be the worst poacher I'd ever encountered.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, the lights changed and
Speaker 1: they went they went a different way. They were going
Speaker 1: back the same way, but they then turned west, which
Speaker 1: you know, when you're when you're responsible for these districts,
Speaker 1: you know that country like the back of your hand.
Speaker 1: And and I knew that he turned on what I
Speaker 1: assumed was this little dead end two track road, and
Speaker 1: I need to reposition myself to that road, and now
Speaker 1: I'll haven't blocked in. So I did, and when I
Speaker 1: got to that road, there was a a little dip
Speaker 1: onto this other two track road. There was a dip
Speaker 1: with a mud puddle, and it was probably twelve ft across,
Speaker 1: you know, ten ft wide, maybe eight inches deep, and
Speaker 1: if a vehicle goes through that mud puddle, you can
Speaker 1: tell there's gonna be bubbles in it or wash out
Speaker 1: on the other side where water dripped down from the frame.
Speaker 1: And so I accided my game and fish truck, and
Speaker 1: I grabbed a flashlight and I just slowly approached that
Speaker 1: mud puddle and I got down on my knees and
Speaker 1: I kind of muffled the light. I could see no bubbles,
Speaker 1: and then I I kind of walked over to the
Speaker 1: other side and looked on the where the vehicle would
Speaker 1: have driven through, and there's no tracks, there's no sign
Speaker 1: of any washout. I just was bewildered. I thought this
Speaker 1: guy didn't go down this road. So I was discouraged.
Speaker 1: And you know, this has probably been an hour now
Speaker 1: that I've been pursuing this guy, thinking I'm gonna get him,
Speaker 1: and he gave me the slip. So I got my
Speaker 1: game fish truck and backed out and went back on
Speaker 1: the other side of the two road all the way
Speaker 1: out towards Vernon. Uh. I was done for the night.
Speaker 1: And the only thing I can remember is when I
Speaker 1: got back to the cabin that night, my wife was
Speaker 1: let's just stay happy to see me there, not necessarily
Speaker 1: excited about the fact, and running out to catch a
Speaker 1: bad guy at two in the morning. So after that happened,
Speaker 1: I was again discouraged. I thought, when when am I
Speaker 1: going to get another break? I just don't know. But
Speaker 1: that that night I thought I had him, but he
Speaker 1: slipped away. So following that that evening where I felt
Speaker 1: I was the closest at catching this guy, things continued on.
Speaker 1: We we ended up getting a couple more calls on
Speaker 1: elk that were shot UM No again, no no leads.
Speaker 1: And I do recall the vicinity though it was a
Speaker 1: very localized area, you know, all right around that road
Speaker 1: that I found the spotlighter on um and those elk
Speaker 1: would soon be moving out of their winter range up
Speaker 1: into the north range, up into their their summer country,
Speaker 1: so we kind of felt things would be be slowing down.
Speaker 1: But after an elk or two more, it just stopped.
Speaker 1: And while I thought maybe it had to do with
Speaker 1: that migration to higher country, there was still enough elk
Speaker 1: in that lower range to warrant some shooting at the
Speaker 1: guy was still around, but I felt like it it
Speaker 1: just stopped and pretty much kind of stamped at case
Speaker 1: case unsolved. We couldn't put this one behind us, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of a lot of people trying
Speaker 1: to to make this case work. Never did, and I
Speaker 1: just felt it was it was. It was on onward
Speaker 1: to the next one then that that's gonna be one
Speaker 1: for the books and other blue. One day, our investigator
Speaker 1: called me and said, hey, we got a weird call
Speaker 1: today from a narcotics agent up in Holbrook, which is
Speaker 1: a town about forty miles north of Vermin, and he said,
Speaker 1: we have a guy in custody that is being held
Speaker 1: on some pretty serious drug trafficking charges and attempted homicide charges,
Speaker 1: most likely going to be moved to Albuquerque, but he's
Speaker 1: in our holding facility and during interviews he mentioned something
Speaker 1: about shooting a bunch of elk in the Vernon area,
Speaker 1: and so this UH narcotics agent asked our investigator if
Speaker 1: we had any interest in interviewing him, and of course
Speaker 1: I jumped at the opportunity. I thought to myself, if
Speaker 1: this is if this is the guy, I can finally
Speaker 1: maybe get some closure to this. And it's not going
Speaker 1: to be a citation for killing fifteen elk this season.
Speaker 1: It's this guy is going away, probably too much, bigger house.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I want to go. I want to go
Speaker 1: visit and I want to go talk to him. And
Speaker 1: an Arconics agent relayed to our investigator that he's a
Speaker 1: pretty strange duck and you might want to bring him
Speaker 1: a Baby Ruth candy bar because he likes candy bars.
Speaker 1: That if you bring him that, he might might be
Speaker 1: willing to talk to you. So we did. I've stopped
Speaker 1: the store, got a Baby Ruth candy bar and or
Speaker 1: civilian clothes, so I didn't intimidate him at all with
Speaker 1: the uniform and drove to Hoolebrook and checked in with
Speaker 1: the officers there and let him know what I was
Speaker 1: there for to to interview the suspect. His name was
Speaker 1: Okay and uh. Other than that, I didn't have any
Speaker 1: more details other than the fact that he was being
Speaker 1: held on pretty serious charges. He was running a little
Speaker 1: met lab and some some involvement in a murder case
Speaker 1: in Alburquerque, something to do with a past girlfriend or
Speaker 1: or something of that nature. But he was being held
Speaker 1: on on both narcotics and homicide charges. So they led
Speaker 1: me down this you know, kind of sterile hallway and
Speaker 1: got me into an interrogation room where I sat, and
Speaker 1: then five minutes or so past and the door opens up,
Speaker 1: and here's this straggly looking character in a orange jump suit.
Speaker 1: He had what we call a transport belt around his
Speaker 1: waist with his handcuffs on attached to that transport belt,
Speaker 1: so you can't swing your arms at all. He's he's
Speaker 1: he's confined, kind of looked at me like, you know,
Speaker 1: absolute careless. He didn't have any regard for you know,
Speaker 1: what I was there for, obviously, But the officer that
Speaker 1: led him into the room explained that, you know, I
Speaker 1: was with game and Fish and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to him about some of the unsolved elk poachings
Speaker 1: we had in the White Mountains. And he reluctantly sat down,
Speaker 1: and he kind of just stared at me like he
Speaker 1: was looking through the back of my skull, and he
Speaker 1: had these kind of dark, steely looking eyes. He just
Speaker 1: you know, which was kind of rang the old socio
Speaker 1: path in my mind that this guy doesn't really care
Speaker 1: much about me or what he's about to tell me.
Speaker 1: So I introduced myself. Okay, I'm Sam Lowry. I'm with
Speaker 1: there as a and Fish and I. I know you're
Speaker 1: in here for things more serious than I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about, but I really wanted to visit
Speaker 1: with you a little bit about something you told the
Speaker 1: officers about your help poaching in Vernon. And he kind
Speaker 1: of let out a little sigh and sat back in
Speaker 1: his chair, almost almost relax a little more. He looked
Speaker 1: right at me, just again he's cold, shark like eyes
Speaker 1: and yeah, that was me that So what do you
Speaker 1: mean it was you? I mean what I was the
Speaker 1: one I have shot probably thirty elk up there, and
Speaker 1: you guys, you guys can never catch me. And I
Speaker 1: kind of leaned in and I wanted to find out
Speaker 1: why and so what was the cause? And and he
Speaker 1: stopped me and looked and said, I'll tell you one thing, though.
Speaker 1: You got a warden out there with angel wings. And
Speaker 1: I kind of paused myself, and I thought, what do
Speaker 1: you mean they're okay? What what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, one night, he said one of
Speaker 1: your guys was was after me. He darned here had me.
Speaker 1: And he said they played cat and mouse for a
Speaker 1: little while. And he came down this two track road
Speaker 1: where there was a big mud puddle, and he said,
Speaker 1: I was parked probably fifty yards from that, behind a
Speaker 1: big juniper tree. That dumb bastard got out of his
Speaker 1: truck and walked up to the mud puddle with his
Speaker 1: flashlight like he was some kind of hero. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I had made the decision, if he comes through that
Speaker 1: mud puddle, I'm gonna spray him. Yeah, I had to pause.
Speaker 1: I mean he probably saw my face. I said, spray him?
Speaker 1: What you know? What? What? What do you mean? He said,
Speaker 1: I have a newsy That's what I was shooting those
Speaker 1: elk with. And whether he came across on foot or
Speaker 1: in vehicle, that was going to be his last night.
Speaker 1: But strangely enough, that guy got in his truck and
Speaker 1: turned away. Maybe you knew I was down there, and
Speaker 1: I have chills on my neck telling you guys that story.
Speaker 1: I can remember just walking out of that room that
Speaker 1: day thinking, holy mackerel, that was me. Uh, whatever reasons,
Speaker 1: And I can't explain it to you why it didn't
Speaker 1: look like he had driven through that mud puddle, but
Speaker 1: he had, and he was fifty ft or fifty yards
Speaker 1: from me, ready to take me out. So we had
Speaker 1: talked a little more, you know, I was. I was.
Speaker 1: I was pretty much shot, no pun intended. I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, I just want to go home and
Speaker 1: hug my wife. But I tried to end the interview.
Speaker 1: There was no doubt in my mind it was him.
Speaker 1: He was on meth. He told me he was cooking
Speaker 1: meth up in a little cabin not far from where
Speaker 1: he was doing all the shooting. He was by himself,
Speaker 1: and he just liked to kill stuff. As he told me,
Speaker 1: I like to kill ship and no remorse, no, no, nothing.
Speaker 1: And I never did recover the coozy to match those
Speaker 1: bullets with, but I'll never forget them, you know. Walking
Speaker 1: him back down the hallway, and he kind of looked
Speaker 1: over his shoulder, looked back at me one more time,
Speaker 1: not knowing that I was at Angel was that game warden?
Speaker 1: It had wings at night. I never let him know
Speaker 1: that anyway. But he walked away and that was never
Speaker 1: to be seen again. Old Loki. Oh he ate the
Speaker 1: candy bar too. Okay, there you haveing ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: That's just one little sampling, one little sampling off of
Speaker 1: the Broader project. Again, like I said, it's five six
Speaker 1: hours long, sixteen stories. There's one of them. They're all good.
Speaker 1: So go out and get that's available now. That's for
Speaker 1: your listening. Cathy Ravens Books for your reading. That's for
Speaker 1: your listening. Yeah, well it's available for pre order right now, tomorrow,
Speaker 1: it's available. How it works, Yeah, it's a pre order
Speaker 1: now and I'll just magically show up mm hm as
Speaker 1: a download as a down one. Um, we're gonna continue.
Speaker 1: So when you hear that story and you go listen
Speaker 1: to the broader story, let us know about your crazy stories.
Speaker 1: Because when you send an email and just send it
Speaker 1: in and says like a crazy ass story as a
Speaker 1: subject line, and we might hunt you down because we
Speaker 1: like that kind of story, like you just heard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we liked working on this project. That was fun. Yeahs
Speaker 1: tracking people down was great. It makes you think about
Speaker 1: things all the time, though, because a lot of these
Speaker 1: stories involved like very micro like incidents and like just
Speaker 1: small things that happened that you know, make the whole
Speaker 1: day have a much different outcome. And so I know,
Speaker 1: when I'm out in the woods and just taking a
Speaker 1: step on a rock that's might be over a precipice
Speaker 1: or something, it makes me think twice. After hearing some
Speaker 1: of these stories. Yeah, it was Yan Yanni's in the
Speaker 1: Yanni's in the project. Because the people that listen to
Speaker 1: this show are familiar with may be familiar with a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes we had called the Meat Tree Part
Speaker 1: one and part two. We revisit that story and some
Speaker 1: aftermath issues from that story. And if that day hadn't happened,
Speaker 1: if that minute, that minute hadn't happened, where we had
Speaker 1: a very close encounter with a with a brown bear
Speaker 1: that Yanni smacked in the face with a set of
Speaker 1: track and polls um this book, this audio project wouldn't
Speaker 1: exist like that set me down the path of like
Speaker 1: being haunted by that day, set me down the path
Speaker 1: of kind of exploring what close calls due to a
Speaker 1: due to you and how they live in your mind.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Phil, that was great? We're good
Speaker 1: to move on? Where Korean standing? I'd say, yes, do people?
Speaker 1: Oh order this audio prize and feels not cut out
Speaker 1: for this job after all? To get it, you gotta
Speaker 1: go to Audible, You can go to Amazon, or you
Speaker 1: can go to our publisher, Penguin Random Houses website to
Speaker 1: pre order or just order whatever Meat Eat camp Fire Stories,
Speaker 1: Close Calls comes out July, but secure it now again.
Speaker 1: You can find it on Audible, you can find it
Speaker 1: on Amazon, you can find it at Penguin Random House
Speaker 1: website and get it Meat Eater camp Fire Stories. Close
Speaker 1: Calls fully available July twenty, available for pre order at
Speaker 1: any point. All right, Carmen, Um, do you do you
Speaker 1: have any close calls you need to make us aware
Speaker 1: of for our next project. No, I have not had
Speaker 1: any what I would consider close calls. But I do
Speaker 1: sometimes think back on ways that I've done things in
Speaker 1: the field and and know now that that was pretty
Speaker 1: stupid and not not very safety minded. So you mean
Speaker 1: in dealing with animals, Yeah, in dealing with animals, but yeah,
Speaker 1: mostly dealing with just getting around on the landscape. Like
Speaker 1: I think about the first job I had UM where
Speaker 1: we were using four wheelers a lot. It was in Alberta, Canada,
Speaker 1: and um in the Alberta Rockies, so super rugged terrain
Speaker 1: and people just kind of blast all over the place
Speaker 1: on a t V s there and so it kind
Speaker 1: of feels like I can go anywhere. But um, I
Speaker 1: mean I was, you know, flipping a TVs and we
Speaker 1: were doing some really not smart stuff, just just stretching
Speaker 1: when an ATV should be doing with more people on
Speaker 1: it than should be on it. That sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: snowmobiling too. I learned a snowmobile in the Northern main
Speaker 1: Woods and winter. So I was working with two guys
Speaker 1: who had been doing it their whole lives and basically
Speaker 1: learning on the fly, you know, blasting around at sixty
Speaker 1: miles an hour and again wrecking and flipping snowmobiles and
Speaker 1: all that. So so so the machinery's more expensive, more
Speaker 1: dangerous than the animals, oh, I would say, so yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My other, my other not smart traveling thing was m
Speaker 1: hitchhiking between our our field camp and town. I look
Speaker 1: back on that, I was like, I think I was
Speaker 1: nineteen or twenty. You're going in town to whoop it
Speaker 1: up ORGI groceries. But yeah, yeah, going into town all
Speaker 1: your days off and we just hitchhike. And um, I
Speaker 1: remember this one guy pulled over. It was me and
Speaker 1: a girl I was working with, and he just one
Speaker 1: of those instant creepy vibes out kind of h come
Speaker 1: out standing on the side of the road and he's
Speaker 1: trying to not think at all. He is a couple
Speaker 1: of biologists going into town against groceries. No older, older fellows.
Speaker 1: Here are some people that want to part. I've never
Speaker 1: told my parents this. I don't know if they'll listen,
Speaker 1: but yep, stopped, pulled over. I started to get into
Speaker 1: the front seat, and there were various things you'd get
Speaker 1: in a truck stop bathroom, like different colored condoms and loops,
Speaker 1: just thrown on the floor and in the backseat as
Speaker 1: my friend was getting oh, I hope knew, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that still in the package. And then
Speaker 1: as she was getting in, she she said, she told
Speaker 1: me there's a gun on the floor here, and there's
Speaker 1: a pistol in the in this car, on the floor,
Speaker 1: and just that combined with his vibe ready to go,
Speaker 1: ready for ready, yes, ready for any number of directions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we um, you know it's Tuesday. Go on anyway
Speaker 1: we did. I refused to get in, and he tried
Speaker 1: to convince us, but we waited for the next car. Um.
Speaker 1: I want to role play for a minute. Hold on,
Speaker 1: now be a good time to uh, let Carmen explain
Speaker 1: what she does. I want to role play real quick,
Speaker 1: too far? Okay, you want to cleanse the root words
Speaker 1: role play. I'm Carmen and she's the trucker. Yes, okay, ready,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get in. I've changed my mind,
Speaker 1: he says, just get in. Oh okay. So not being
Speaker 1: swab No, no, no, no, no, he was. He was
Speaker 1: strange and creepy. Okay. Yeah, that's all. That's It's just
Speaker 1: very quick roleplay. I appreciate keep it. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was what you I wasn't going to do what
Speaker 1: you worried. What's gonna happen? Okay, fill people in now
Speaker 1: moving on. So, uh way a million years ago when
Speaker 1: you came on the show, you were getting engaged. You
Speaker 1: were not getting engage. You were engaging in a long project.
Speaker 1: I think way back then. Let's see the second time
Speaker 1: I was on, I was I was starting on what
Speaker 1: is the Washington Predator Prey Project. Yeah, okay, break that down. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I am like I said that projects winding up.
Speaker 1: But it was a a project between a cooperation between
Speaker 1: the University of Washington and Washington Apartment of Fishing Wildlife
Speaker 1: UM basically in a nutshell, looking at how re colonizing
Speaker 1: wolves could be affecting a number of other species. Dear
Speaker 1: Elk of course, and then um cougars as well. And
Speaker 1: then the component that I mostly worked on was meso
Speaker 1: carnivores so bobcats and coyotes. Um, with sort of the
Speaker 1: explaining the word meso carnivores medium sized, medium side, what's
Speaker 1: the word for? Like what what's a little teeny one
Speaker 1: called one of the little guys? I don't know, smart cardiores?
Speaker 1: Smart car um? All right, go on, okay, so bobcats
Speaker 1: and coyotes so um. Basically just just looking at the premise,
Speaker 1: uh that with the return of wolves and with other
Speaker 1: any larger predators that are taking down larger prey, they
Speaker 1: could be creating This is kind of the theory behind
Speaker 1: the study. They could be creating um. Either food opportunities
Speaker 1: for meso carnivores because they can scavenge the deer carcasses,
Speaker 1: out carcasses, et cetera, and so that could be a
Speaker 1: benefit to the meusic carnivores. But it could also be
Speaker 1: what they call a fatal attraction because these music carnivores
Speaker 1: could be attracted to these spots and then they themselves
Speaker 1: get get killed by the bigger predator. Yeah. So basically
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Yeah, so is that the true definition of
Speaker 1: fatal attraction is that what that comes from. It's a movie, dude.
Speaker 1: It might just be applied to this, to this ecological
Speaker 1: uh theory. What's that movie about? That was Glenn Close?
Speaker 1: Oh that's my pills here? Come on, Bill laid down?
Speaker 1: I don't know's the sharing stone one? That's basic instinct?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Glenn Close gets very jealous and uh, you
Speaker 1: know it goes out the deep end, got it? That's
Speaker 1: the quick it's not about it's like not like a
Speaker 1: David Atton Burrow Navigate narrated. Um. You know what's interesting
Speaker 1: about the creating more food resources? Uh. We have a
Speaker 1: friend who likes to run his hounds, um, and he
Speaker 1: runs mountain lions mostly, but he also runs bobcats. And
Speaker 1: he was telling me that in December, when the season arts,
Speaker 1: you don't cut a lot of cat tracks, he says,
Speaker 1: because there's too many. There's still all the deer and
Speaker 1: elk carcasses from hunting season on the ground. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you kind of his theory is you kind of
Speaker 1: wait and as those deer and elk carcasses from late
Speaker 1: November get mopped up, then you start seeing cats spreading
Speaker 1: out more and they're not just stuck in one place
Speaker 1: feeding on some you know, carcass and gut pile. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean that that makes sense doing going to on
Speaker 1: on various other projects. Um, wolf clusters is what we
Speaker 1: call them. It's basically wolves that have had GPS colors on.
Speaker 1: They're taking a fix every two to four hours, and
Speaker 1: so you can then download those those GPS points on
Speaker 1: cheer computer run an algorithm that pulls out spots where
Speaker 1: GPS points have been sort of clumping up within a
Speaker 1: certain you know radius of you know, something like two
Speaker 1: hunters within a certain time frame. So basically the wolves
Speaker 1: were hanging out in this little spot for a while.
Speaker 1: So that's you guys have figured out how to do
Speaker 1: that automatically. Yeah, because it's gotta be every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be like an enormous amount of every two
Speaker 1: two to four hours. I mean you can hold did
Speaker 1: I word fifteen minutes come from? I think? So every
Speaker 1: two to four hours, So every two to four hours
Speaker 1: he like makes it drops a pin basically yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can set that that fixed rate is what
Speaker 1: that's called too. I mean you could do you can
Speaker 1: some projects just depending on what question you're trying to answer.
Speaker 1: You could have a really really fine scaled movement path
Speaker 1: of an animal because it could be getting a fixed
Speaker 1: rate every fifteen or thirty minutes or whatever. But for
Speaker 1: kill sites, they've they've done the stats and every two
Speaker 1: hours is is what you want? Really? And so does
Speaker 1: your does your program or wherever the hell just start
Speaker 1: It just starts spitting out way points where there's a
Speaker 1: cluster of activity. Yea, yeah in the morning. Um, you
Speaker 1: just download the latest batch of data you run. It's
Speaker 1: just a computer algorithm. It pulls out those, um those
Speaker 1: clusters and then you you put them on a map
Speaker 1: and you see, Okay, they spend time there. They spent
Speaker 1: time there, and they spent time there, and so there's
Speaker 1: my day. I'm gonna go out there and investigate these
Speaker 1: and it's this is um yeah they you know us
Speaker 1: this for cougars and and it's a common So how
Speaker 1: many days a week to get to go do that? Well,
Speaker 1: when I've been working on projects where that's been my
Speaker 1: full time job for some projects, it's going to going
Speaker 1: to kill sites just every days. Pretty lucky. That's one
Speaker 1: of my I would trade you jobs in a second
Speaker 1: man I'm not gonna lie. It's do you bring a
Speaker 1: lot of that? John Colem Are you trying? Not supposed to? Um?
Speaker 1: I got a lot of junk in my house. I've
Speaker 1: I've I've definitely reined it in a bit. But I've
Speaker 1: always been like that. I've always been picking up diction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because all that walking around you probably finding shed antlers
Speaker 1: and deadheads and oh yeah yeah, yeah, lots of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: So what do you when you go to all these
Speaker 1: kill sites? What are you looking for? Where the data
Speaker 1: points you're picking up there? Well, again that sort of
Speaker 1: just depends on the question, but usually if you're going
Speaker 1: to kill site, it's one of the main things you're
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out, is okay, what happened here? Well,
Speaker 1: let me back up, because one thing is for for wolves.
Speaker 1: I know, I don't remember what the rate is with cougars,
Speaker 1: but with wolves, it's about the clusters that you go
Speaker 1: to have a kill at them. So you might go,
Speaker 1: you know, to lots of clusters and they were just
Speaker 1: taking a nap. I mean, they sleep a ton, So
Speaker 1: you end up going to a lot of betting spots um,
Speaker 1: and so you might have just spent you know, half
Speaker 1: your day getting there, and it's a betting spot. But
Speaker 1: but you start to kind of put together a picture,
Speaker 1: especially if you go in order, and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: m this this clusters. It's winter and it's up on
Speaker 1: a sunny you know, south racing slope, up up on
Speaker 1: the ridge line. Oh, I bet that's going to be
Speaker 1: a betting area. Sure enough, you go there and it's
Speaker 1: a betting area. Usually then you see a cluster and
Speaker 1: it's down in some gnarly, thick looking uh you know,
Speaker 1: canion a hell whole, and you're like, oh, that's that one.
Speaker 1: I'm exciting about it. Oh yeah, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times I think what happens is the deer elk are
Speaker 1: getting chased and where they get hung up is down
Speaker 1: in these bottoms. So for example, I was um at
Speaker 1: a really cool killsite this winter. It was a really
Speaker 1: deep canyon just um you know, creaked down in the bottom,
Speaker 1: and I could reconstruct what happened just from from tracks
Speaker 1: in the snow. Another sign and there had been a
Speaker 1: moose that was fi on a willow um and kind
Speaker 1: of betting and whatever, and then you could see the
Speaker 1: wolves came down this really steep mountain side, and and
Speaker 1: there was a short sort of chase where all tracks
Speaker 1: came together. You could see where the moose had sort
Speaker 1: of leapt and been up to his belly in the
Speaker 1: snow heading down and it hits towards the bottom. And
Speaker 1: you know how when you're snow shooting in the winter
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you stepped too close to
Speaker 1: a log and you sunk into your hipped. That's what
Speaker 1: happened to the moose. So there was a blanket of
Speaker 1: snow from the mountain side to or you know, from
Speaker 1: the ground to this big, huge log, and it looked
Speaker 1: like the moose had just stepped in the wrong spot,
Speaker 1: gotten mired, and when the wolves overtook it, and so anyway,
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty killers. Do you think the moose knew at that
Speaker 1: point that the jig was up, like lost a wheel?
Speaker 1: It probably? Yeah. Do you find do you do you
Speaker 1: find um? Do you find where they ever like surplus
Speaker 1: killing events? Do you ever find at near searches? I've no,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that. It's not like when like when
Speaker 1: a mountainin gets into like a sheet pasture and just
Speaker 1: don't know at the bedding sides. Don't you also collect
Speaker 1: you're collecting fecal matter, right, so you can see what
Speaker 1: they've been eating in the percentage of alpha. Right, we
Speaker 1: got to collect on um. Yeah, I mean you can
Speaker 1: get so much information from collecting scot. You can do diet,
Speaker 1: you can do genetics. That's a lot of what we've
Speaker 1: been doing, and the status, the percentage of some high status.
Speaker 1: You can see who's getting the meat and who's well.
Speaker 1: And a cool thing about scott is you can see
Speaker 1: um from the type of scat. So if I'm arriving
Speaker 1: at a place where I think you can't it's not
Speaker 1: always easy, especially at wolf clusters to find the kill,
Speaker 1: especially in the summertime. In the summertime, because the clusters
Speaker 1: is too big, because they kind of go all over
Speaker 1: the place. They'll go and eat for a while and
Speaker 1: then they'll go sometimes the ways off in bed I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe I mean two. And if you're in
Speaker 1: a thick, broken up terrain, it can be tough. And
Speaker 1: so knowing that there's probably some amount of remains of
Speaker 1: an animal within a wide circle round a lot of
Speaker 1: scrounging and crawling and just looking for any sort of
Speaker 1: sign but um. But when I arrive at one of
Speaker 1: those clusters. And I see, I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: call it a carcass early carcass scat. So when they're
Speaker 1: the um, when they eat the organs first, and the
Speaker 1: breeder male and female usually get to eat the organs
Speaker 1: um because they're higher nutrition, and that then when they
Speaker 1: take a ship, it's really nasty. It's black and running
Speaker 1: because it's not bound together by hair, right, it's black
Speaker 1: and running, and so you know, okay, that's that there's
Speaker 1: a there's a decent chance that that's the breeder male
Speaker 1: or female, and that's they just ate the organs. So
Speaker 1: it's an early carcass scat. So we're getting close. And
Speaker 1: so then I often won't get excited, like a breaking
Speaker 1: car gets here somewhere and we just got to find it,
Speaker 1: like it runs right through them, it goes well. They
Speaker 1: I mean, they're usually there for a while. I don't
Speaker 1: know how lony long enough. Yeah, human babies have similar
Speaker 1: poops the first week of their lives. Yeah, it's even
Speaker 1: got a special name. It's not even called. My pet
Speaker 1: theory about um the organ the organ consumption. My pet
Speaker 1: theory is this is that I understand that there's like
Speaker 1: a nutritional load. Right, But I also liked the idea,
Speaker 1: and I think I maybe invented this. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: can eat it fast and you don't know when you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose it because someone else is going to show
Speaker 1: up and beat your ass, right, I think that's what
Speaker 1: makes so you're like you can just inhale the liver,
Speaker 1: that's correct, and then all of a sudden, then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, whoever else shows up, here's a grizzly.
Speaker 1: They don't get meat drunk from eating that. That's really
Speaker 1: that's I haven't read that, and you might be the
Speaker 1: first one. That's a good hypothesis. You should write that
Speaker 1: up in the senator. You watch like there's very few
Speaker 1: animals that are comfortable on a carcass, like the amount
Speaker 1: of energy they're expanding, whipping their head around and investigating
Speaker 1: every sound and every smell, like it's not like, okay,
Speaker 1: time to relax and eat. Carmen, do you ever show
Speaker 1: up on the when you when you're on the clusters,
Speaker 1: how often do you show up and bump them out
Speaker 1: of there? Well, we try, really really are not to
Speaker 1: do that, but we don't want to be affecting their behavior.
Speaker 1: Bumping them off a kill and if especially if you're
Speaker 1: doing a kill rate studying, need to be well, you
Speaker 1: always need to be really careful about that. But you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to accidentally affect their kill rate by following
Speaker 1: them so closely as they go around the woods that
Speaker 1: you're bumping them. So what like when you show up,
Speaker 1: usually how many hours have passed since they've moved on? Days? Yeah,
Speaker 1: for and and there's for different species and states. I
Speaker 1: would imagine there's different rules on how really you can
Speaker 1: go in. It would never be that you'd wake up.
Speaker 1: You would never wake up and see that there was
Speaker 1: a cluster from midnight and run out there. And by design,
Speaker 1: you don't do that, right by the design, it's it's
Speaker 1: always I mean, if we didn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: affecting their behavior, be really nice because very quickly, um
Speaker 1: you know with scavengers and that sort of thing, the
Speaker 1: longer it's been since the the kill event, the harder
Speaker 1: I gets to really accurately assess what's going on, because,
Speaker 1: um it, killside analysis is kind of one of those
Speaker 1: things that, um, it's easy until you start learning more
Speaker 1: and then you realize it's easy, except for when it's
Speaker 1: not because you don't really ever know if they are
Speaker 1: the ones that killed it. No, that's not true. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you're you're really really confident that they killed it, your
Speaker 1: animal of interest killed it. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: scavenging that goes on out there, and so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of just weird stuff that can happen to any
Speaker 1: animal you know, to die, and so it could always
Speaker 1: be a scavenging of it. When you to get to
Speaker 1: the meso predators, Um, are they often there? Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: Trying to think if I've ever come up on a
Speaker 1: kill and seen I've heard a cougar once, Um, I've
Speaker 1: seen bears coming up. I don't. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever come up on a kill. I mean we're usually
Speaker 1: kind of you know, on a snowmobile or we're crashing
Speaker 1: through the woods stuff like that. We're not we're not
Speaker 1: trying to sneak in especially summertime and bears are out.
Speaker 1: So relate the relate the work though to how to
Speaker 1: how do you then roll in the impacts on Kyle's bobcats. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have so it's not just so going to
Speaker 1: kill sites for for that question, the um putting up
Speaker 1: cameras was was one of the main goals. So we
Speaker 1: get to a kill and and put up a trail
Speaker 1: camera and um and leave it there at least a
Speaker 1: month trying to capture different different interactions between uh apex
Speaker 1: or large carnivores and music carnivores. You set it on video. No,
Speaker 1: it takes too much battery and memory to do that.
Speaker 1: But um, do you do like the clusters? Three three
Speaker 1: shot clusters shot clusters? So we usually have thousands of
Speaker 1: photos and that's that's always like a little just opening
Speaker 1: up a treasure box. Do you have software that sorts
Speaker 1: you all that? The project is going to use software?
Speaker 1: But um, I mean whenever I collect a camera, I
Speaker 1: certainly go through because I'm excited to see what's on it.
Speaker 1: So can you get in there and look at all
Speaker 1: those images? Yeah? Yeah, And so the other the other
Speaker 1: part of that is that we're trapping and collering. We
Speaker 1: were trapping and callering coyotes and bobcats so that we
Speaker 1: could and then the wolves and cougars are also colored
Speaker 1: in the area, and then um, they can use those
Speaker 1: different movement patterns to see how they might be avoiding
Speaker 1: each other on the landscape or not that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And then also collecting scats for genetic analysis for some
Speaker 1: different population demographics and that sort of thing. So and
Speaker 1: you were you were involved in putting the collars on them. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: so I was in charge of So my job on
Speaker 1: the project. I don't work for the state. I don't
Speaker 1: work well, I work for you dub. There's um some
Speaker 1: wonderful graduate students that are heading each section of the research,
Speaker 1: various research projects that are under the Washington Predator Prey umbrella,
Speaker 1: and you can, you know, look those up online. There's
Speaker 1: a website. But um, I was hired by you dub
Speaker 1: to run the fuel component of the Music Carnivore project. So, um,
Speaker 1: every season, our our our main goal was in the
Speaker 1: winter trapping bobcats and in the summer trapping coyotes. And
Speaker 1: how are you catching the bobcats with cage traps? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So it doesn't fly, No, it doesn't unless they are
Speaker 1: a very desperate kyot. I think the project we've got
Speaker 1: to study areas, and not in my study area, but
Speaker 1: the other one. Um, we were working with some trappers,
Speaker 1: so they caught a bobcat that they didn't want to take,
Speaker 1: they could contact us, we go over there and put
Speaker 1: a collar on it. Well, they contacted us once with
Speaker 1: a kyo that had gone to a have been super hungry.
Speaker 1: And are you guys, when you're rigging up those cage traps,
Speaker 1: are you guys using a like an audio element, like
Speaker 1: you put like a call, like a bird bird squawk
Speaker 1: mechanism or anything like that near it. I have used
Speaker 1: those before. Um, we didn't use those on this project, though.
Speaker 1: We were We were using visual little teddy bears, and
Speaker 1: not little teddy bears, but shiny stuff basically cat toys.
Speaker 1: I mean seriously, I've had cameras on on traps and
Speaker 1: I like to So I set my trap, I cover
Speaker 1: it with branches, get it all tucked in, real nice,
Speaker 1: and then just outside the door, I'll hang just a
Speaker 1: little ball of shiny uh you know monofilm. No, No, sorry, Um,
Speaker 1: what's that called bird tape? Really shiny bird tape? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, basically hanging that from monofilment so
Speaker 1: it can kind of blow in the breeze and hopefully
Speaker 1: catch the moonlight or whatever. And I have pictures and
Speaker 1: videos of cats playing with that, like a damn house
Speaker 1: cat before going into the trap, and what are you
Speaker 1: baiting the trap with order or use any meat? All
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff we use, uh, lots of just you know,
Speaker 1: lures and baits that you can get from fm T
Speaker 1: fur trappers or whatever. But you guys haven't done that
Speaker 1: because you see a lot of guys that use those
Speaker 1: cage traps will take little stuff to animals, but get
Speaker 1: really high quality eyes pull the pull the bad eyes
Speaker 1: off and put good eyes on it and place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I've seen that. Um. And then well in the
Speaker 1: back of the trap. I usually then hang some feathers
Speaker 1: to kind of catch the wind too, so I use
Speaker 1: the visual in the trap as well. And then whatever
Speaker 1: smelly stuff you know, and then um, what do you
Speaker 1: doing to mitigate your own scent with cats? Nothing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not. I mean you can just look at their
Speaker 1: skull and see they're not. They're not built for super
Speaker 1: super smelling like a coyotes. That's very judgmental, Yeah that is.
Speaker 1: But you know what they got squashed faces. You're the
Speaker 1: type of reads book title knows all about it. It's
Speaker 1: just physiology. When you're trapping cats, you're setting on signed
Speaker 1: Is it pretty important? My yeah, because we don't where
Speaker 1: we're trapping. It's not like there's a Bobcat around every corner.
Speaker 1: And so you can best case scenario, you see fresh sign,
Speaker 1: you set a trap, and they're still in the area
Speaker 1: for the next couple of days and happen. You know,
Speaker 1: to go buy your trap and detect it and go in.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you you see sign you set and they're
Speaker 1: not back for two weeks. They're cycling over in some
Speaker 1: other area of their their home range. We're fine that
Speaker 1: the bob cats have really big home ranges and made
Speaker 1: crazy movements. Um, it's pretty incredible. But yeah, so setting
Speaker 1: on sign is really important. So basically you just get
Speaker 1: to go out tracking and when you see something good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get the log a lot of hours out there
Speaker 1: wanting around. Are you by yourself mostly? Um, depends on
Speaker 1: the project. There's some some work that I've done where
Speaker 1: I'm mostly alone, um, and other's where I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1: We were, we were worked in teams. Yeah, and then um,
Speaker 1: when you run into people, are people kind of like
Speaker 1: curious what you're doing? Do you bother to explain it
Speaker 1: to them? And you try to act with you doing
Speaker 1: something else? No, I mean I'm yeah, No, I'm always
Speaker 1: happy to talk to the public if they come up
Speaker 1: and have questions or or whatever. And people do, and um,
Speaker 1: sometimes they share their stories and sometimes they're really out there.
Speaker 1: But I wanted Yeah, no, I definitely talked to whoever.
Speaker 1: And at the starty you've been working on is there
Speaker 1: do you feel that there was a um meaningful stuff
Speaker 1: came out of it Now that it's winding down, like,
Speaker 1: do you feel that like actionable meaningful. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: use the word data and my results. I was trying
Speaker 1: to get data. Data is great, Yeah, data data, but
Speaker 1: I didn't finish I didn't finish the sentence. I said data.
Speaker 1: You know I'm talking about that. Yeah, it's getting I
Speaker 1: think that this this UM, the group of grad students
Speaker 1: that are and and wdf W employees that are working
Speaker 1: on this study are I'm really excited to see there.
Speaker 1: There's still in an analysis phase and um, you know,
Speaker 1: the results are not mine this year. But I'm just
Speaker 1: knowing these people. I'm they're going to do a great
Speaker 1: job thinking about the data that they're getting and being
Speaker 1: really thoughtful and and throw and and answer me important questions.
Speaker 1: And we've got a ton of data from this project.
Speaker 1: So are you doing that science e thing right now
Speaker 1: where um, you're not saying what happened because you guys
Speaker 1: got go with your little process and everything. I really
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it's it's hot. You can't really
Speaker 1: look at first of all, I've been involved heavily and
Speaker 1: all the other facets of the project for the Meso
Speaker 1: carnivores stuff. I mean we've just been out there busting
Speaker 1: it and collecting and collecting data, and so without analyzing
Speaker 1: it or at least, you know, visualizing that data with
Speaker 1: graphs and stuff, it's hard to say what kind of
Speaker 1: trends you might be pulling out. You gotta wait for
Speaker 1: the paper to come out. I think Steve was trying
Speaker 1: to ask you, are you doing one of those government
Speaker 1: science things where they give you the conclusion first and
Speaker 1: then they hire you to get the data that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've done all that show us that wolves are made
Speaker 1: of rainbow. Whatever they want, that's what they are you
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, no pressure, No, absolutely not. I I've
Speaker 1: um the integrity of the science that I've worked on,
Speaker 1: I think is a always been really Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: good scientists just out there trying to answer questions that
Speaker 1: they're interested in do you feel that, um, but do
Speaker 1: you feel that people are like they want to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that that wolves will bring us these beautiful trophic cascades,
Speaker 1: like they want to show that. We recently talked about
Speaker 1: a paper someone put out that was my goodness. Here's
Speaker 1: one thing about wolves is they really reduce car dear
Speaker 1: vehicle collisions. And in reading the paper, you're like you said, man,
Speaker 1: here's an interesting thing to do. I should show that
Speaker 1: it reduces car vehicle collisions because that'd be helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smelled like that. Yeah, I totally get what you're saying
Speaker 1: and getting it. And I've you know, seen that in
Speaker 1: papers and stuff, but my my has been I don't know,
Speaker 1: really solid good projects. So that was very much one
Speaker 1: I was going in with this assumption when I was
Speaker 1: reading this paper by this fellow, Jonah Kim, who looked
Speaker 1: at the advantages uh predators get by traveling um roads,
Speaker 1: uh you know, clean trails things like that. This is
Speaker 1: in Canada, so there's all sorts of like oil pipeline
Speaker 1: roads and and cut line roads and things like that.
Speaker 1: And so he put together the study where he looked
Speaker 1: at just the efficiency of travel in these areas and
Speaker 1: how that impacts the um pray species. And it was
Speaker 1: all very good stuff, but you kind of had this
Speaker 1: feeling that he was coming down to, so the solution
Speaker 1: is not killing wolves. It's make the country harder to travel,
Speaker 1: like putting up impediments on roads and trails that we
Speaker 1: make for to make life easier for us UM. And
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, well yeah, But then at the
Speaker 1: end he's like, however, this is not, uh like this
Speaker 1: golden solution to a complex problem. And he laid out
Speaker 1: the complexity of the issue and then came down to
Speaker 1: saying like, and if you're in a scenario where your
Speaker 1: prey species are so reduced that the predator species population
Speaker 1: UH has a distinct advantage, this is not the only
Speaker 1: thing that you can do the like, there will have
Speaker 1: to be some sort of lethal removal on your predator population.
Speaker 1: So in the end, it didn't feel like you were
Speaker 1: reading cancer research sponsored by the tobacco company exactly. So
Speaker 1: that's a shout out for lead author Jonah Time. I
Speaker 1: hope I'm saying your name right. That was a good paper.
Speaker 1: So Carmen, UH, two questions for you. Two more questions
Speaker 1: for you, UM, talk about catching the coyotes, like how
Speaker 1: you catching to put a collar on them? And then
Speaker 1: then I'm then I need to hear what you're doing
Speaker 1: next now that you're doing this, um, catching coyotes. That's
Speaker 1: probably my favorite kind of trapping, just because of the challenge.
Speaker 1: It's also in a lot of ways my least favorite,
Speaker 1: just because of um, well, it just kind of makes
Speaker 1: you feel bad on a lot of days. It's like
Speaker 1: you can't wait to get out there and check your traps,
Speaker 1: but man, I don't know things can foot Hold trapping
Speaker 1: is just it's kind of, um, it's a little harsh.
Speaker 1: It's a little harsh, and so we're we are foot
Speaker 1: hold trapping for coyotes. It's really the only practical way
Speaker 1: to catch canan's because they're so smart and they're so
Speaker 1: wary and um and so in that regard really fascinating
Speaker 1: because you're just having to, um work really hard to
Speaker 1: get to know the animals that are in the area
Speaker 1: that you're trying to trap, and you never really figure
Speaker 1: it out. They're always, you know, just throwing something new
Speaker 1: at you. Um. And so it's really interesting in that way,
Speaker 1: just I mean, from exactly how you set your trap
Speaker 1: to where you put your trap to what area of
Speaker 1: the mountain that you're you're trapping on? You gotta there's
Speaker 1: just so many different variables that you're trying to trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, and it's so frustrating. Victor's number three
Speaker 1: for coil, and then we use um they like the
Speaker 1: laminated jaws. They've got a rubber offset jaw. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I mean I could, I've could. You know, I often
Speaker 1: got my hand stuck in it for whatever reason, just
Speaker 1: not being careful and stuff, and it didn't you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel good, that's for sure, But it's not
Speaker 1: like it's breaking scanner. And then you do you ang
Speaker 1: kurt with like an earth anchor? Or do you use
Speaker 1: a steak? Um? We so we'd we'd use well, we
Speaker 1: used lots of things, um steaks. But in our area
Speaker 1: it's so rocky, the soil is so bad. It's really hard.
Speaker 1: You see these YouTube videos of guys catching coyouts and
Speaker 1: they're out in you know, corn fields where every single
Speaker 1: rock has been picked and the ground is so soft
Speaker 1: and loaming, and they're just like punk punk punk, you know,
Speaker 1: punch in a trap and two minutes we're out there
Speaker 1: in you know degree whether because we're having to trap
Speaker 1: in the summer because you can't do it in the
Speaker 1: winter where we are, so you're trapping in the summer,
Speaker 1: which is a whole another set of um difficulty because
Speaker 1: because we are trapping for research and so are our
Speaker 1: ethical standard for how we're treating these animals is different. Right,
Speaker 1: We've got this professional turn it out in a healthy condition, right,
Speaker 1: and so we're trying to do we're trying to especially
Speaker 1: on this project, I wanted to really raise the bar
Speaker 1: on our both of our well the capture element, so
Speaker 1: so making it as humane as we could, which is
Speaker 1: difficult with foothold trapping, and then also the handling part,
Speaker 1: so when you actually come up to an animal in
Speaker 1: the trap and then drug it and and do the handling, Um,
Speaker 1: those can be pretty rodeo ish and there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of just um, I don't know, cowboys
Speaker 1: culture around those handlings traditionally not I mean, that's not
Speaker 1: across the board by any means. But I think that
Speaker 1: that um, we're getting better at being really thoughtful about
Speaker 1: not only just getting our animal to live through that experience,
Speaker 1: but to um have it be as least stressful and
Speaker 1: painful for them as possible. So so we've been working
Speaker 1: really hard to raise the bar there um. But back
Speaker 1: to the different types of anchors. We so we tried
Speaker 1: steaks way too rocky, use earth acres, but the main
Speaker 1: the main thing we use is UM a grapple hook
Speaker 1: on a long chain which you buried down onto the trap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually or sometimes just kind of bury it in the bushes,
Speaker 1: under leaves and stuff behind it. But basically, what as
Speaker 1: you're selecting your exact trap site, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things you got to think about. Aside from just is
Speaker 1: this a good spot to catch kyo? Is there is
Speaker 1: it a likely spot? You've got to think about is
Speaker 1: there a drop off somewhere, because they could then you know,
Speaker 1: drag the grapple, and the grapple could get hung up
Speaker 1: and then they're off off the you know, cliff dangling
Speaker 1: from the trap. So you're thinking about that, You're thinking
Speaker 1: about shade because it's summertime. UM, You're thinking about human traffic,
Speaker 1: is this road too busy? That sort of thing. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of safety variables that have to come together.
Speaker 1: UM And so most of the time, what what ends
Speaker 1: up being the preferred um steaking method is to use
Speaker 1: a grapple, because then they can get off the road,
Speaker 1: get hung up in some shade, be a little bit
Speaker 1: away from from the road of people come by, whatever,
Speaker 1: and then you don't have some motor is freaking out
Speaker 1: or hurting the thing or calling the cops or whatever
Speaker 1: the hell exactly. And we're out there super early checking traps,
Speaker 1: so hopefully before people are there. But yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you work them up like you tranquilize them, put a
Speaker 1: collar on them. Yeah, take like biometric data off them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: take biometric data off so, um, we call it body measurements.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I went overboard, you went over but that's good,
Speaker 1: that's good. Um. Yeah, so you come up on the
Speaker 1: trap and um, with the grapple, it's always even more
Speaker 1: exciting because you sometimes you get to the trap and
Speaker 1: you see, oh, it's just not there. It doesn't look
Speaker 1: quite like I left it. And so then you're looking
Speaker 1: around in the bushes and it can actually be hard
Speaker 1: to spot the animals case they've usually just they're usually
Speaker 1: just frozen with fright and so you're uh, And our
Speaker 1: traps have a little transmitters on them, so if we
Speaker 1: have to, we can radio telemetry to find it. But
Speaker 1: usually if you just sort of follow the sign, you
Speaker 1: can find the animal pretty quickly and they're tangled up
Speaker 1: and they're um having the worst day of their life
Speaker 1: probably yeah. Yeah, And so we we work again really hard,
Speaker 1: just even with our body language and how we carry ourselves, um,
Speaker 1: to be as non threatening as we can be, but
Speaker 1: also confident. You don't want to it sounds kind of
Speaker 1: out there, but your body language matters in how they're
Speaker 1: going to perceive you, and so you want to be confident,
Speaker 1: but calm, you know, no big movements, certainly, no talking
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Um, So keeping them as calm
Speaker 1: as possible, and you just um, we get um are
Speaker 1: drugs pulled up and we use what's called a syringe
Speaker 1: pole and so it's basically a syringe on the end
Speaker 1: of a long pole so that you can uh you know,
Speaker 1: from a little bit of a distance administer the drug
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, wait for them to go to sleep,
Speaker 1: and then remove them from the trap and do a
Speaker 1: medical check and you know, get there their vitals recording
Speaker 1: and start putting the collar on. When you guys get
Speaker 1: by catch doing that like a skunk or whatever, do
Speaker 1: you do you have a way you release it or
Speaker 1: do you do you have to drug as well. It
Speaker 1: depends most bycatch. I try to just release um. Skunks
Speaker 1: are tricky, but I have found with them again, if
Speaker 1: you're really slow and calm, we hold up a charp
Speaker 1: in front of us and just slowly, calmly, if you
Speaker 1: can't walk up to the skunk. And then at the
Speaker 1: last second, this is where it gets kind of a rodeo.
Speaker 1: But you you throw the charp on it and then
Speaker 1: grab it, and then somebody takes it off and they spray,
Speaker 1: and if you get any of it on you, it's
Speaker 1: like getting When you do the throw, he's gonna he's
Speaker 1: gonna call it. He's gonna yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: so you get oh. Man, I always say it smells
Speaker 1: like getting punched in the face. When it's that much,
Speaker 1: it's just the rest of your day. You just got
Speaker 1: a headache. And I stopped smelling it so much after
Speaker 1: a while, but I know other people could smell it on.
Speaker 1: It gives you a headache. Yeah, it's powerful. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: nothing like the sweet, pleasant smell of a road kill skunk.
Speaker 1: You just drive by it sixty and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: a little skunky today. Yeah, I got I got two
Speaker 1: ounces of it in a jar in my fridge right now.
Speaker 1: But it's in a jar in a vac sealed bag,
Speaker 1: which is in a vac sealed bag. Is it pure? Pure?
Speaker 1: Pulled it out with a syringe. Oh yeah, okay, And
Speaker 1: so you know, it's like it looks like a cartoon
Speaker 1: skunk spray. It's like bright green. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy looking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's yeah, be careful with that. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm can use it as a joke on someone. I
Speaker 1: thought about injecting it into the pholstery of someone's car,
Speaker 1: but yeah, most like a call, do you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's a cool uh study done on breaking
Speaker 1: down skunk smell, like exactly why doesn't snake? And one
Speaker 1: of the interesting like chemical compounds um as as, like
Speaker 1: the sulfur um hydrogen bonds breakdown, they actually release more
Speaker 1: smell and their water soluble. So the harder you try
Speaker 1: to wash something out, the more intense the smell gets.
Speaker 1: And the theory is is that is to remind whatever
Speaker 1: came in contact with the skunk that they do not
Speaker 1: want to come in contact with another skin's like less
Speaker 1: you forget ye yep. So it's it's a multiday process
Speaker 1: for whoever comes in contact. But like eight different chemical
Speaker 1: compounds and two of which like very very rare on
Speaker 1: the planet. I want to get this when you when
Speaker 1: you approach it with the tart, you're you're holding up.
Speaker 1: So so if he takes a shot at you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the farthest you've ever had him take a shot
Speaker 1: at you? Not very far? They don't I don't think
Speaker 1: they want to waste that that spray. Give it to
Speaker 1: me like feet, I don't know, maybe ten ft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you've never been in a situation where you've been
Speaker 1: able to like try to pin his tail down, because
Speaker 1: that's supposed to work, right, They got to lift their
Speaker 1: tail to spray, is what everybody says, all the old
Speaker 1: old man wisdom. I mean, have you talked to anybody
Speaker 1: that's actually done that, because I don't see you being
Speaker 1: able to get close enough to pin the tail down.
Speaker 1: And I mean when we sew the tarp on it,
Speaker 1: we're trying to it's kind of chaotic because then you
Speaker 1: can't see it, but you're trying to pin everything down.
Speaker 1: But it's just it's just kind of it's just gonna
Speaker 1: go now, and like in fur trapper lore of old,
Speaker 1: it would be that if you could pull off heart
Speaker 1: shot with the twenty two, he's not going to spray,
Speaker 1: but everybody knows a brain shot he's gonna spray. But
Speaker 1: now guys use those like people use those big long
Speaker 1: poles and oh yeah, to try even to try to
Speaker 1: kill it, like damage Like people that are doing like
Speaker 1: damage control work and stuff, they give it an injection
Speaker 1: with a big long pole. I haven't seen that or
Speaker 1: done that. Yeah, it's dicey work, it is. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta handle those guys with care. And then when you
Speaker 1: go home, Um, is your husband like you smell like
Speaker 1: us skunk? Yeah? I say you got you got a
Speaker 1: skunk today, didn't you. I'm pretty sure I go home
Speaker 1: smelling like all kinds of stuff because I've been living,
Speaker 1: you know, using lures and everything all day. So what's
Speaker 1: the most you ever walked in one day? Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know how far. I don't really keep track of that.
Speaker 1: It's some pretty good tracks. Yeah, for work, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how far, especially doing wolf clusters and
Speaker 1: cougar clusters. You're hiking all over in the mountains, ma'am.
Speaker 1: Jealousy job. I like that job. UM. Okay, what's your
Speaker 1: new thing? Okay, so the new thing is UM is
Speaker 1: something we could be helpful with by promoting the business.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean we're it's it's I don't
Speaker 1: want to help you. I just don't know how well.
Speaker 1: I'll explain it what I'll explain what it is and
Speaker 1: then you can see. But it's UM. We're calling it
Speaker 1: Home Range Wildlife Research and it's a nonprofit that uh
Speaker 1: that we're starting, and it's UM going to be sort
Speaker 1: of three different prongs. So I'm in charge of the
Speaker 1: research components. So that will be just doing either research
Speaker 1: that we feel like it's important and want to do
Speaker 1: UM and we're really UM driven to do research is
Speaker 1: going to be applicable and is immediately uh needed, so
Speaker 1: UM not just sort of what's interesting but UM. So
Speaker 1: that's one component. Then a workshop component for for young
Speaker 1: biologists just field skills, because we have found over the years,
Speaker 1: you know, having UM wildlife texts come, a lot of
Speaker 1: them are maybe just fresh out of college and and
Speaker 1: maybe even grew up in the city and don't have
Speaker 1: those sort of basic technical skills that they need to
Speaker 1: a feel confident be be focused on collecting good, clean
Speaker 1: data and see aren't gonna be rolling for four wheelers
Speaker 1: and costing projects money. Um, So some workshops based around
Speaker 1: that and doing some you know, hopefully some tracking workshops
Speaker 1: animal track and sign and just various skills that that
Speaker 1: people might want before they start heading into the field.
Speaker 1: And then a community science um field because we live
Speaker 1: in a place where we feel like if the community
Speaker 1: is invested in your research, you're going to have better outcomes.
Speaker 1: But also we have a lot of um, you know,
Speaker 1: hardcore recreators in the area, and so I say there's
Speaker 1: somebody going out to um hike in the wilderness or whatever,
Speaker 1: and where we need a camera out there or something
Speaker 1: we can be using community science to that kind of
Speaker 1: community science. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And where were you guys
Speaker 1: out what's what's the name of the outfit? Going to
Speaker 1: be again Home Range Wildlife Research. Yeah, and you're going
Speaker 1: to operate out of where you're currently at Winthrop Winthrop Washington,
Speaker 1: and you'll start local there and then who knows what'll happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I imagine that will be local for for quite a
Speaker 1: while where we've all been working on that landscape for
Speaker 1: for a long time, and we're invested in it, and
Speaker 1: we've spent so much time in the field there that
Speaker 1: UM it feels like that's a really good foundation for
Speaker 1: for our research because UM, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of value in having scientists that are good naturalists and
Speaker 1: that are out there UM and and noticing changes over
Speaker 1: time on the landscape and picking up those patterns of
Speaker 1: what's going on out there. When will you get started? UM?
Speaker 1: We are. We're still in an early phase of figuring
Speaker 1: out and and UM pulling together the nonprofits so the
Speaker 1: just the sort of structure of it UM. But we're
Speaker 1: all we're starting to write curriculum and write I'm working
Speaker 1: on a proposal for UM links in and Wildfire project UM.
Speaker 1: And then we've got a community science project that's going
Speaker 1: to launch this this summer looking at UM natural food
Speaker 1: availability for for bears coupled with UH how that the
Speaker 1: whether there's good natural food ability or not a season,
Speaker 1: how that affects human bear interactions getting into trash stuff
Speaker 1: like that. That's cool. Yeah, and then you're gonna do
Speaker 1: that project I was talking about where you go and
Speaker 1: see if bobcats like to eat on gut piles and
Speaker 1: that's why you can't find them in early December, right,
Speaker 1: the importance of hunters the bobcats. Yeah, I won't test
Speaker 1: the hypothesis that you got to eat the organs quick. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. So with this new thing, are you gonna
Speaker 1: have are you to like have like a You'll you'll
Speaker 1: be a full time Yeah, you'll be a full time
Speaker 1: salaried person. Yep, that's the plan. Just took ten years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here you are, ye arrived, hopefully almost forty and and
Speaker 1: you have some grant writing in your background. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've all got Yeah, for sure that'll be Yeah. My
Speaker 1: question when I when I heard about this is how
Speaker 1: comfortable are you asking people for money? Yeah? Comfortable? No,
Speaker 1: not me, no, no no, but hopefully our board will
Speaker 1: be comfortable. You're gonna have a board. Yeah, you legally
Speaker 1: have to have a board as a nonprofit. Yeah. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's cool man. Yeah, that's great. Full time job, make
Speaker 1: your own job. That is the moral of the story,
Speaker 1: and that is I think what's going to be needing
Speaker 1: to happen for for wildlife Bilo just more and more
Speaker 1: because it's just it's the field is really flooded and
Speaker 1: so it's hard to get jobs, just from a competitive standpoint,
Speaker 1: and also, um, because there's so many people wanting to
Speaker 1: do that field work, there's um, well it's hard to
Speaker 1: get paid. Well, they'll do it for nothing, Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I mean, it's just pretty intriguing. Oh.
Speaker 1: The folks that I worked with on the Grizz study
Speaker 1: there in Idaho, it was just like they created their
Speaker 1: own jobs and then had to recreate their lifestyles in
Speaker 1: order to do those jobs. And it's yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a passion passion deal for sure. It's it's not a
Speaker 1: it's a tough way to make a living for sure.
Speaker 1: So it's not a meritocracy exactly. That's just what you
Speaker 1: said at the beginning. But it's not at all. You
Speaker 1: have to have you have to come from a family
Speaker 1: with money, don't you, Yeah, basically, or just oh to
Speaker 1: be able to be able to that's interesting points can't
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, it's it's I think it's being talked
Speaker 1: about more ever, and it's just your podcast is rich,
Speaker 1: are they? I'm assuming not. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people who's but I mean, you know, my brothers included,
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people who are. We're certainly
Speaker 1: not rich who slugged it out and pulled it off.
Speaker 1: But it's like becoming a writer, you gotta commit yourself
Speaker 1: to spending a bunch of years living below the pot
Speaker 1: with like living below the poverty line and not be
Speaker 1: seducted by a plan B. So yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: that's a gravy way to do it. I had someone
Speaker 1: explained to me one time that like to be an
Speaker 1: Olympic skier. They're saying, it's it's in large measure, it's
Speaker 1: a function of your family's finances because either can ski
Speaker 1: six months a year, or you go live in New
Speaker 1: Zealand and you ski twelve months a year, And the
Speaker 1: people that can ski twelve months a year have a
Speaker 1: leg up on the people of the ski six and
Speaker 1: the people that do that are people from wealthy families.
Speaker 1: And it's undeniable. But I mean, I don't want to like,
Speaker 1: I would hate to say that point and then discredit people,
Speaker 1: many people that I know personally that slugged it out
Speaker 1: and tell us about your brother. I missed that part.
Speaker 1: You said something about your brother, just that they most
Speaker 1: certainly were not coming from a wealthy background, and and
Speaker 1: did it you know, starting out doing like creal surveys
Speaker 1: for a dollar an hour whatever. Yeah, and then eventually
Speaker 1: through like sheer will, sheer force of will got there,
Speaker 1: but it takes forever. Yeah. Yeah, and so that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of what is happening in wildlife for sure, And
Speaker 1: there are definitely people that slug it out, but um
Speaker 1: it does leave a lot of people out and we're
Speaker 1: missing out on on attracting the best and the brightest.
Speaker 1: So do you think you're gonna approach this from a
Speaker 1: project standpoint or you're just going to try to have
Speaker 1: a fund that people can apply for grants to. UM.
Speaker 1: I think we'll do some just general fundraising to start out,
Speaker 1: especially UM like we need to raise money to UM,
Speaker 1: you know, just start up costs, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But then definitely for different projects, be applying for different
Speaker 1: specific grants. Identify a project, try to rally some folks
Speaker 1: around it. Yeah, and then you guys can use your
Speaker 1: expertise to say why this is exactly so let project
Speaker 1: worth preson, right, So just sort of like for the
Speaker 1: benefit of all mankind, yeah, exactly, and in the wildlife, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, best of luck man, thank you.
Speaker 1: Let's know, we'd be helpful. I don't know what we
Speaker 1: do if something comes up. All right, exactly, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Foxes for minutes. Everybody talk about Fox, Fox, Foxes, Fox,
Speaker 1: and I okay, get uh, Kathy, give us you can
Speaker 1: you give us like a kind of your bio, a
Speaker 1: quick bio. Sure. I was one of those who tried
Speaker 1: to leg it out. I guess. I have my undergraduate
Speaker 1: degrees from Missoula and my doctorate in biology from Montana
Speaker 1: State University. Here I was a part granger in a
Speaker 1: wildland firefighter for many many years did firefighting. Yeah, long time,
Speaker 1: and even after I finished my doctorate, I was on
Speaker 1: the lines hard to give it up, like like seasonal firefighting. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I was just living by myself, trying to use
Speaker 1: my PhD, trying to find one of those just piles
Speaker 1: of job applications to fill out for getting a university position.
Speaker 1: I had started at the University of Montana, but it
Speaker 1: was a part time. It was a contract, you know,
Speaker 1: like a post doc. In fact, it might have been
Speaker 1: called a post doc, but they called me it should
Speaker 1: have been called a post doc. I guess they called
Speaker 1: me an assistant professor. And I was looking for professor ships.
Speaker 1: And then five did you do graduate work in bald eagles? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. My doctor was in bald egos. That's right.
Speaker 1: What at looking at? So throughout this term evolutionarily significant units,
Speaker 1: which is the scientific term for species, what we casually
Speaker 1: call species, but species is right, it's not a dynamic process.
Speaker 1: Species are constantly changing, their hybridizing, and they're moving, they're becoming.
Speaker 1: They're on a pathway, they're on an evolution nine pathway.
Speaker 1: So technically they're The Endangered Species Act is about the
Speaker 1: species are defined in that Act as evolutionarily significant units.
Speaker 1: But nobody wanted to call the Act anything that had
Speaker 1: the word evolution in it for obvious reasons. Right, all
Speaker 1: led up, rowled up even today, and also it sounds complicated,
Speaker 1: but the evolutionary significant unit is how species are defined
Speaker 1: by scientists. So it's looking at the pathways of the
Speaker 1: bald eagles and is there just one species of bald
Speaker 1: eagles in North America? And no, of course there's not.
Speaker 1: Because they mate according to size, so you can figure
Speaker 1: and you know that a female won't mate with a
Speaker 1: larger male. I'm looking at Carmen because she knows this,
Speaker 1: but maybe you know. I've heard that, but I've never
Speaker 1: understood the signal males from Alaska, so a female and
Speaker 1: smaller in the south West like Arizona. So a female
Speaker 1: from Arizona is not going to be she doesn't have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to mate everywhere in North America because those
Speaker 1: boys up north are going to be larger than her,
Speaker 1: and she will not mate with a larger male. So
Speaker 1: they are on a separate pathway. Of course, the size,
Speaker 1: So size does make a difference. You guys already knew that,
Speaker 1: but we've been telling you it doesn't. But it does.
Speaker 1: And so females absolutely choose their mates based on size.
Speaker 1: And if the sizes are separating distinctively, then then yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a point where they crossed, like a threshold of incompatibility, correct,
Speaker 1: and then they will they will eventually. Then eventually, if
Speaker 1: you took one from Arizona, if you took a female
Speaker 1: from Arizona and put her in Southeast Alaska, she might
Speaker 1: just she might never reproduce. Yeah, that's right, just Aaron, huh,
Speaker 1: just because the size differences, she's not gonna make Yep,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, that's right. So she doesn't want to.
Speaker 1: You notice that's true of all the hawks. You see
Speaker 1: hawks all the time here. You're probably I don't know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know, you didn't haven't noticed the size differences.
Speaker 1: So it's like falcons. You've noticed that the female is
Speaker 1: much bigger than the male. And then when you start
Speaker 1: looking at hawks, like red tails of females bigger but
Speaker 1: not much bigger, and eagles so a little bit closer.
Speaker 1: But the more ferocious of a hunter they are as
Speaker 1: a bird of prey, the greater the differences size difference
Speaker 1: between the sexes. We need your hypothesis on that because
Speaker 1: scientists don't really know the reason for that, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of hypotheses. But eagles are understand that. So
Speaker 1: eagles are a little bit probably the more ferocious. Certain
Speaker 1: So what's the most ferocious bird of prey that you
Speaker 1: can think of? The ones that really go after meat
Speaker 1: versus just dead stuff on, yes, exactly, the falcons, they're
Speaker 1: just only going to eat meat, live things, fast things,
Speaker 1: big things. So golden eagles, falcons, they have a huge
Speaker 1: size dimorphism diameting two and morph meaning size. So there's
Speaker 1: two different sizes, one for the males and one for
Speaker 1: the females. Humans are dimorphic. Males are bigger than females.
Speaker 1: Because humans, the males are bigger than females, and because
Speaker 1: scientists tend to be humans. We look at the world
Speaker 1: human centric, and when animals have the opposite, so that
Speaker 1: the females are bigger than the males, we call that
Speaker 1: reverse dimorphism. So the bird of prey have a reverse
Speaker 1: sexual dimorphism. Females are bigger than the males. In humans,
Speaker 1: males are beta than Have you ever read that Neanderthals
Speaker 1: didn't have sexual dimorphs as much sexual dimorphisms as we did,
Speaker 1: that they were like, oh I didn't. But I am
Speaker 1: reading and shocked at how much we are prejudiced against Neanderthals.
Speaker 1: And you know there was a time they were just
Speaker 1: I mean just data just came out a week ago
Speaker 1: showing that all those things we said about them not
Speaker 1: engaging in art and not having a sense of a statics,
Speaker 1: that's all just crap. I joked, We're gonna someday soon
Speaker 1: find out that they had laptops. They keep getting like,
Speaker 1: they keep getting it, they keep getting better and better
Speaker 1: every every day. It's like out Neanderthals had bicycles. It's
Speaker 1: like every day. It's like, oh they were into art,
Speaker 1: Oh they were poets. Yeah right, you are right, but
Speaker 1: they they hung out in Europe for six hundred thousand years. Man,
Speaker 1: like everybody's like older dumb. It's like, dude, they had
Speaker 1: a long run. They were so diverse. Prejudice against off
Speaker 1: the land in every way imaginable. That's right. So clam
Speaker 1: diving exactly, the Neanderthals with swimmers here, that's how much
Speaker 1: time they spent the really advanced. Just because they're extinct
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I mean, I'm totally with you. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you think that, because you're right that people thought they
Speaker 1: were just a dumb mass caveman because they're Neanderthals, and
Speaker 1: we use it as an insult, but it's really they
Speaker 1: like European people, but Americans maybe, I know my European
Speaker 1: graduate students didn't think Neandertal was an insult, especially if
Speaker 1: they had more respect for him. Well, because they're named
Speaker 1: after the neander Valley, so that's where the first and
Speaker 1: they were kicking around in the same round. To them,
Speaker 1: it was like it was like their ancestors. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. To get back to the bird thing a
Speaker 1: little bit because it's cool. I want your hypothesis Sundays.
Speaker 1: I have one, but I'll make sure i'm getting it right. Um, Okay,
Speaker 1: as you go up, So if you go look at
Speaker 1: what's in't that family? That would be like a like
Speaker 1: a not for give me a not. Eagles are the
Speaker 1: least ferocious ones. They can survive just scavenging technical I mean,
Speaker 1: just hang out at the local look at the look
Speaker 1: at the salmon that they eat. I mean they're not
Speaker 1: really fishing like an osprey very much. I mean they're
Speaker 1: they're getting the salmon that are sort of slow moving
Speaker 1: dead after they've already spawned their bright red they're on
Speaker 1: the surface. So they're not for as hunters, so they
Speaker 1: have less sexual Maybe define like ferocious because it seems
Speaker 1: like it's it's no no, But define it as like
Speaker 1: as the way you're using it's kind of coming out
Speaker 1: like as in the more energy they'll expand to get food. Right, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know about energy, but I mean they're taking
Speaker 1: the most difficult targets. So peregrine and eagles are real hunters. Technically,
Speaker 1: a bald eagle as a scavenger, they don't even have
Speaker 1: to physiologically, they're not obligated by their genetics or by
Speaker 1: their physiology to hunt. They can just like you did.
Speaker 1: You say, hang out at the dump. That's right. They
Speaker 1: can hang out at the sitting next to the stream
Speaker 1: and eat the dead salmon. That's right. Is going to
Speaker 1: catch live fish, Yeah, and then they wait till the
Speaker 1: osprey brings it to its nest, and then the bald
Speaker 1: eagle steals it from the osprey nest when it's already dead.
Speaker 1: That's what. Yeah, you know, Ben Franklin didn't like eagles
Speaker 1: because these guys are really good naturalist. He knew. I
Speaker 1: read the letter that he wrote to his daughter. I
Speaker 1: wrote to the museum there and asked him if they
Speaker 1: would send me a copy of because I was tired
Speaker 1: of just hearing the rumors about it, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to read the whole thing, not take it out of context. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he was kind of joking, but he was also serious.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was sort of joking about the turkey,
Speaker 1: but he he wanted he did believe, and he knew
Speaker 1: that bald eagle's scavengers. I mean, he knew that although
Speaker 1: it was beautiful, it was not a bird that was
Speaker 1: really capable of hunting. It wasn't really a bird that
Speaker 1: if we wanted to use a symbol of a really
Speaker 1: fierce nation of people, it was a good symbol if
Speaker 1: you were going to like head people across to the
Speaker 1: west Land that you didn't own but belonged to Native
Speaker 1: American nations and you were going to steal their land,
Speaker 1: then the bald eagle was a great, great symbol for that.
Speaker 1: And that's actually what the I sis did, right, So
Speaker 1: bald eagle ended up being good, but they didn't want
Speaker 1: it to be that. They thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be like the big fierce hunter, the noble. It's an
Speaker 1: real noble. Old eagles are, I guess more noble you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to mess with one. I think bald eagles
Speaker 1: got a lot of their most recent cache because they
Speaker 1: were it was for such a long time, it was
Speaker 1: rare to see one. And I think that's gonna wear
Speaker 1: off now. And I think that you know, because growing
Speaker 1: up and be like you know, so it's so sorry,
Speaker 1: it's like tree right there every day for the last
Speaker 1: what ten twenty years? Yeah, I think that it's like
Speaker 1: it's cache. It's cache will be diminished by its success.
Speaker 1: There's a bald eagle that lives essentially right here, right
Speaker 1: here at the office. Like it goes from. We have
Speaker 1: a little cut hay field here just to the west
Speaker 1: of US, and there's some power poles right there, and
Speaker 1: it'll sit on those power poles. And then I'll jump
Speaker 1: across to the north side of the interstate and sit
Speaker 1: right there too. Yeah, it's I would assume, yeah, it keeps,
Speaker 1: but that you know, the speaking of their caches. So
Speaker 1: in the seventies when they got covered by DDT, the
Speaker 1: United States and a lot of nonprofits, they spent so
Speaker 1: much money. They're so trying to help the bird recuperate.
Speaker 1: There are so many graduate students in this country that
Speaker 1: you know, we're just like this huge club. We belong
Speaker 1: to people who got their doctor. It's working on bald
Speaker 1: eagle because endless a pot of money to work on
Speaker 1: bald eagles endless, and the osprey got like nothing, and
Speaker 1: they ended up recovering faster anyway. I mean, the the
Speaker 1: osprey is just really a well suited bird for this country.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're amazing fisherman. I mean, they are just
Speaker 1: amazing fishermen. They're talented birds, and they have really great
Speaker 1: common sense. I mean they don't waste their time fighting
Speaker 1: with a big a bird that's much bigger than them.
Speaker 1: If the bald eago wants the fish, baldigo can get
Speaker 1: the fish. The ospity just goes and gets another fish.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's easier to just go there. Just that talented,
Speaker 1: they'll just go get another fish rather than fight over
Speaker 1: Like you see all the birds fighting at carcasses, but
Speaker 1: osprey don't hang out of carcasses. They're like their own
Speaker 1: the ones that fish that well, So they just fish.
Speaker 1: They've done really really well in this country, and and
Speaker 1: they don't eat trash or scavenge like and they have
Speaker 1: high sexual dimorphism or how Yeah, they have a degree
Speaker 1: of sexual dimorphism. That's right, but it eagles still will have. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think eagles have a little bit more. Even osprea
Speaker 1: are only eating fish of course, and not chasing down mammals.
Speaker 1: So the ones that are chasing down mammals and big
Speaker 1: mammals and golden eagle will take a deer. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've certainly seen them chasing after I've seen them chasing
Speaker 1: after deer. They chase me, and but I'm not quite
Speaker 1: as all the time they hate me um, So they
Speaker 1: have a lot of sexual dimorphism. But you never noticed
Speaker 1: that the females were always bigger than the males. I've
Speaker 1: heard that, but no, I haven't noticed. And the first
Speaker 1: I think, if I was looking at him in a nest,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to tell you who is who.
Speaker 1: Probably my problem. But because they don't have they don't
Speaker 1: have the remarkable differences in coloration that like most birds
Speaker 1: would you most birds that you know that there's a
Speaker 1: male and females because they have different colors and they're
Speaker 1: the same size. So it's good. You're looking at some
Speaker 1: English sparrow eating your crumbs from your scone underneath the
Speaker 1: table at the cafe or whatever. He's got a big
Speaker 1: black throat patch. You're like, that's the male. But but
Speaker 1: I'm not looking at size, right, because they're just looking
Speaker 1: at coloration at tweet birds are pretty much like the
Speaker 1: most extreme version being like a pheasant, right, like everybody
Speaker 1: on the planet can tell you a male peasant from
Speaker 1: female peasant, well by coloration. If you're hunting at least,
Speaker 1: we hope you know that. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like it's not color. That's true. I hadn't. I've
Speaker 1: forgotten that because because I don't spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time looking at tweete birds, because there's so many hawks
Speaker 1: where I live, and there's not a lot of little
Speaker 1: birds around very long. But blue birds come in. But
Speaker 1: then the castrels clean them up boom boom boom instantly,
Speaker 1: which is so much fun to watch. Oh yeah, incredib
Speaker 1: castals are so amazing, aren't they. Yeah? Yeah, But I
Speaker 1: don't put out bird feeders or anything to attract birds
Speaker 1: to come there, so that because you just learn them
Speaker 1: into their desks, learn them into their tractions. You know.
Speaker 1: I gotta email the other week talking about big bird seed,
Speaker 1: like you know, like big pharma and how big bird
Speaker 1: seed big the big birds seeds in conjunction with Autobahn
Speaker 1: to keep the perpetuation of feeding birds out there, even
Speaker 1: though it's it's providing this endless death cycle. Don't even
Speaker 1: Bozeman anymore. You must know that even when I was
Speaker 1: a grad student here we get a great what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: but I get a lot of value. We have a
Speaker 1: little bird, We have a modest little bird feeder way
Speaker 1: high up in the air, so it's not adding to
Speaker 1: the bear problem. And whatever in My children get a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of We get a lot of education opportunities.
Speaker 1: We keep a running list. We keep a running list
Speaker 1: that we constantly update of what we see in our yard,
Speaker 1: see or here from our yard. So there's things on
Speaker 1: the list that we've never seen what we heard it
Speaker 1: from the yard. And I'll give up my bird feeder
Speaker 1: when they pry it for my cold had hands change.
Speaker 1: So this winter the modest little bird feeder. You look
Speaker 1: at your modest little bird feeder, and you can tell me,
Speaker 1: or you can tell Carmen about the hawks that should
Speaker 1: be in Florida for the winter but decided not to
Speaker 1: go because they're hanging out at your bird feet. Are
Speaker 1: they're not at my bird feeder? Are you sure you're
Speaker 1: not seeing red tails that didn't migrate, Well, they're on
Speaker 1: my list, but that's not what they're doing. They're riding
Speaker 1: the thermals on the hill behin they're supposed to have
Speaker 1: migrated though. Well, I can't tell you that they they're
Speaker 1: in the winter. I just know around my list. If
Speaker 1: the list is going to get which will be fun.
Speaker 1: You want to set up a science study. I got
Speaker 1: a science study for you. I'll pull my bird feeder
Speaker 1: down and you tell me that that caused birds the leaf.
Speaker 1: It's just like, like it's a lot of value. Very modest,
Speaker 1: little high upbird feeder. Um. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of value for the kids, just as them to the list.
Speaker 1: I have problem with people feeding birds, But what's funny
Speaker 1: is that everybody used to feed birds a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and put a little food out for foxes and things too.
Speaker 1: It suddenly became like we're not supposed to be feeding animals,
Speaker 1: and the birds are the last ones, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody like a fed bear is a dead bear. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they just say that mostly because it rhymes, but I
Speaker 1: think maybe they also think you shouldn't be feeding bears.
Speaker 1: There's a limit to that though. I mean, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you live in the middle of nowhere and there's not
Speaker 1: any other houses around you, what different I mean for
Speaker 1: a hundred miles or bears aren't going to go more
Speaker 1: than twenty five. Does it really matter if you let
Speaker 1: bears eat food on your property? Probably not. But if
Speaker 1: you're in Yellowstone National Park at a campground, you don't
Speaker 1: want bears coming around where there's food, so you can't
Speaker 1: really be attracting bears at a campground. It's trouble, but
Speaker 1: it depends on It's a very individual thing. But you
Speaker 1: talk to your grandma and I bet that generation they
Speaker 1: used to feed squirrels and stuff like that and chipmunks.
Speaker 1: And I think in England you're not even supposed to
Speaker 1: feed birds anymore. I'm pretty or about that. I think
Speaker 1: I read that in Hella McDonald's new book Vesper Flights,
Speaker 1: and so, yeah, they're coming for your bird feeder. They
Speaker 1: are coming for that. Until they finished meeting my thought.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you heard. It's modest. It's a modest.
Speaker 1: It was way up high. Feeding animals is not in
Speaker 1: vogue for sure, But it seems like the stuff that
Speaker 1: makes the paper are the folks that have gone that
Speaker 1: are making up for a lot of their neighbors not
Speaker 1: feeding right, Like some lady in Florida was getting like
Speaker 1: truckloads of Costco chickens to feed alligators in her back
Speaker 1: and stuff and barrels of feed. You know, we recently
Speaker 1: had on our website. I don't know if you've seen it.
Speaker 1: Um it's really something. There's a white tail fawn swimming.
Speaker 1: He's got himself in a lake. Some hunters the sea wall,
Speaker 1: so it's like the fawns out and you can't get
Speaker 1: up on the beach because there's a sea wall, and
Speaker 1: so he's swimming parallel to the sea wall. And a
Speaker 1: bald eagle combs down and very like, very deliberately, like
Speaker 1: it's done. It knew what it was doing. It comes
Speaker 1: down and lands on its head and drowns that thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it knew it wasn't sitting there and it
Speaker 1: happened to drown. It came down and drowned that fat
Speaker 1: and then drug it up on the beach and ate it.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. It was really interesting and definitely not saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's very normal, but it was very deliberate in it,
Speaker 1: kind of like it knew that it was drowning something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I knew you were going to say it sat
Speaker 1: on its head. So I do think it's pretty expected
Speaker 1: for a because they're large birds and they throw their
Speaker 1: weight around. Think about again and think about a pagrine falcon.
Speaker 1: They're relatively small compared to a bald eagle, and they
Speaker 1: don't throw their weight around. They have great eyesight, they're talented.
Speaker 1: They're fast, Prairie falcon, nothing's faster, but throwing the weight
Speaker 1: around thing fits perfectly with your fierceness. They're not fierce,
Speaker 1: they're just they're slow. Their eyesight isn't as good as
Speaker 1: a foul. Yeah, paragan foul guns are fierce. Like that
Speaker 1: added mass when they do the steep or the stoop,
Speaker 1: you know where they drop out of this guy on
Speaker 1: their victim. That's got to be tremendous. And you think
Speaker 1: about it like hunting, So you hunt if are you
Speaker 1: going to use are you going to go for knockdown power?
Speaker 1: If let's say you've got a two seventy, are you
Speaker 1: going to go for knockdown power and put like one
Speaker 1: eighty grain white in? Or you're gonna go I'm going
Speaker 1: to get something. Maybe it's not legal to buy it,
Speaker 1: but you're going to load your own. And you know
Speaker 1: that you're a straight shooter, and you know that you're
Speaker 1: a great shot. You know that it's going to be
Speaker 1: a long shot, so low down to like one grain
Speaker 1: weight so it doesn't kick the hell out of you
Speaker 1: when you shoot. That's what I mean by mass, but weight,
Speaker 1: like somebody putting in one eighty grain weight in a
Speaker 1: two seventy because they need knockdown power because they're not
Speaker 1: going to make a good shot. That's the word, thank you,
Speaker 1: that's the word. I need it. It's vanesse. Doesn't with
Speaker 1: like the physics of something dropping out of the sky
Speaker 1: super fast. Don't know if you know, No, so U
Speaker 1: Red Tails picked up a skunk on my property the
Speaker 1: other day and I wasn't really thrilled about it, and
Speaker 1: she dropped She did come back and get it in
Speaker 1: case you're a Red Tail fan, but she dropped it right.
Speaker 1: And it was a baby. It was just a few weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she killed it though. But I picked up the carcass
Speaker 1: from the ground because she dropped it on this little
Speaker 1: trail and I thought that I was going to bring
Speaker 1: it over by the dan so the mom could see.
Speaker 1: I wondered how they would react to the baby, the
Speaker 1: dead baby skunk. But anyway I saw with the I
Speaker 1: wondered if she would recognize that that was hers orf
Speaker 1: there would be any kind of reaction, But the Red
Speaker 1: Tail came and snatched it back from me before I
Speaker 1: got to do anything. But anyway, the skunk, it was
Speaker 1: dead right she dropped it. She had managed to get
Speaker 1: her claws right through its head. I mean that's talent
Speaker 1: she doesn't. You don't need any weight. If you've got
Speaker 1: that much finesse, it's dead like that second. If she
Speaker 1: had tried to grab it from its mass, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been dad. Maybe having extra weight would have helped.
Speaker 1: But red tails are really good hunters. I mean you
Speaker 1: see them pick up snakes. They're really good. That's a
Speaker 1: good point. That can't be easy. So she redtails have finesse,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter how much weight they have. A
Speaker 1: bald eagle that doesn't have finesse because they're used to
Speaker 1: killing things that are road kill uses their bulk, their mass.
Speaker 1: They're the one eighty grain weights in your two sevent
Speaker 1: day basically excusing their book. I know you guys don't
Speaker 1: go for knockdown power because that's not what you advertise.
Speaker 1: Probably I like things that yeah I should big, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should, I should what would be regarded as a
Speaker 1: heavy rifle. Yeah, but it doesn't. Yeah. I used to
Speaker 1: load my own, and so I would always load down, down, down,
Speaker 1: lower than what I could buy in the market, because
Speaker 1: I don't want to if it hurts me more than
Speaker 1: it hurts what's dead. You don't want to lose your
Speaker 1: ba thing? Yeah, why hunt? If you're like arms going
Speaker 1: to fall off? I want to keep Can you take
Speaker 1: it off? Can you take it up? Offline? Arguing about
Speaker 1: the birds because I want to keep moving and what
Speaker 1: am I supposed to do? Saying if you got If
Speaker 1: you want to argue about birds more, you'll have to
Speaker 1: call Kathy up later. Oh yeah, no problem, I know
Speaker 1: where she lives. No, I'm am I arguing I don't know,
Speaker 1: all right, So, uh that's a big digression. Valuable. No,
Speaker 1: it's my fault, not my fault. I'm glad I did it.
Speaker 1: It was prompted by me, But I want to keep
Speaker 1: moving forward. That was just Cathy's bio. By the way,
Speaker 1: that now you know who I am? Yeah, um, okay,
Speaker 1: walk me through and whatever way makes sense, walk me
Speaker 1: through how we got from that? Here? You are studying
Speaker 1: bald eagles too. You got a brand new book about
Speaker 1: about not foxes, but a fox based on a fox.
Speaker 1: It's really important to distinguish between foxes and a fox.
Speaker 1: So scientists do research, gather information so that you can
Speaker 1: enlighten us. Staring up Karmen again about foxes, just like
Speaker 1: sociologists are studying about humans. But when you write a book,
Speaker 1: a novel, you're not trying to show us about your
Speaker 1: You've got a protagonist who's one human. My book isn't
Speaker 1: about foxes in general. It's not encyclopedic information about a
Speaker 1: particular species. It's about one particular fox. But it is
Speaker 1: important for us to start realizing that we shouldn't just generalize.
Speaker 1: We have tended to generalize animals and put them all
Speaker 1: in one big clumps, yet it keeps us from empathizing
Speaker 1: with them. I think you'll feel the same when you
Speaker 1: think about other groups of people. But when we when
Speaker 1: we put people or animals in a big group, when
Speaker 1: we generalize, it keeps us from empathizing. And when we empathize,
Speaker 1: then we can really understand and accept and respect them
Speaker 1: and understand that they're a little bit closer to humans
Speaker 1: than we thought that they were. So my book is
Speaker 1: about an individual fox, and it is important to understand
Speaker 1: the difference between the generic generic fox. For I mean,
Speaker 1: there's lots of things that are true about foxes that
Speaker 1: I believe are true. I've read them in in in
Speaker 1: my textbook that I use in my classes, and so
Speaker 1: Foxes do have an instinct to evade, for example, something
Speaker 1: flying overhead, like a golden eagle, but my particular fox didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean I would watch him run down the hill
Speaker 1: and I've got a bald ego nest on the cliff there,
Speaker 1: and he just would just be bouncing around and I
Speaker 1: mean he just you know, animals do have individual personalities
Speaker 1: like that was a blind spot for that fox. Yeah, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's not I'm not trying to change how you
Speaker 1: feel about all foxes. I don't want you to think that, oh,
Speaker 1: it's not true that foxes evade. It's what's true of
Speaker 1: the generic fox. It's important that we have when we
Speaker 1: get in scientific information. We're talking about, you know, the
Speaker 1: ones under the high part of the Bell curve, and
Speaker 1: we assume that people know that there's outliers, but some
Speaker 1: people forget that their outliers and think that everything is
Speaker 1: the same. We know that humans have outliers to them
Speaker 1: in the room with like four outliers or so, so
Speaker 1: you know, humans are outliers, but we forget that's true
Speaker 1: of other species as well. Outlines humans like humans are
Speaker 1: kind of generally monogamous. They generally reproduce. But that's certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, not the case. I think humans scientifically speaking
Speaker 1: are hair and harem breeding species, Isn't that right? I
Speaker 1: mean they're harem breeders, but Mormons are monogamous, maybe, I guess,
Speaker 1: but not humans in general, we're harem breeders. Signed I
Speaker 1: mean biologically that I know what you mean. You mean,
Speaker 1: regress is like a sociological like a sociological overlay, a
Speaker 1: cultural overlay. Yeah, you should read EO. Wilson's socio Biology
Speaker 1: another but yeah, but I don't know, man, I was
Speaker 1: reading this thing about how, um that doesn't apply in
Speaker 1: your house that human in human females, Um, there's no
Speaker 1: outward visual. There's no outward visual to tell someone that
Speaker 1: they're in heat. Okay, if you just if you want
Speaker 1: to talk like like purely, like a million terms, there's
Speaker 1: no outward visual and it's not like a seasonal thing.
Speaker 1: It's not like once a year females. Yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 1: so viable, like it would be like a human female
Speaker 1: would be sexually viable twelve times a year, not one
Speaker 1: time a year like some wild animals. And at higher
Speaker 1: latitudes and then um, the temperature changes. You know that.
Speaker 1: But it's not outward I'm just telling you. I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you my of the vaginal fluids. Can you say
Speaker 1: that on your radio show outward visual displays? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: baboons Yeah, But on baboons for instance, there's like an
Speaker 1: outward visual display. So someone was saying, like I just
Speaker 1: read this thing time explaining monogamy and and staying at home. Okay,
Speaker 1: And it would be that you couldn't like a bull Elk.
Speaker 1: Let's take a bull Elk. Okay, he knows as long
Speaker 1: as he shows up in September around the cows, he's
Speaker 1: not missing anything. If he goes off into his own
Speaker 1: zone in November and stays out there and has no
Speaker 1: interaction with cows at all, totally antisocial, hides out, antisocial,
Speaker 1: he's not like he knows, he's not missing out on
Speaker 1: breeding up. You're right, But with a human it want
Speaker 1: to be in that that you could be missing out
Speaker 1: and in your absence there could be things going on
Speaker 1: that you don't want to know about. So that compelled
Speaker 1: people to spend their entire time together. Wouldn't that just
Speaker 1: compel one guy to like Genghis Khan, to have more
Speaker 1: females around him. When I say that we're harem breeders.
Speaker 1: I don't mean in the last two or three hundred four.
Speaker 1: Humans have been on the planet for hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of year, so I mean the history of home sapiens.
Speaker 1: And I'm not even telling I'm just saying, like a
Speaker 1: thing I read, the thing I read, So never mind.
Speaker 1: What was I saying? There's a there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: fun stuff we can tell. Oh, you're talking about outliers
Speaker 1: and I was trying to say. I was trying to
Speaker 1: make like some general things about humans, like, sorry, I forget,
Speaker 1: sorry forget that there are outliers. There are outliers and humans. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you're right, and sorry about that. So we start talking
Speaker 1: about monogamy and you were just because you picked a
Speaker 1: weird thing as to be an outlier, and actually, let
Speaker 1: should have picked something different. But like marshmallows, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: generally like marshmallows. People like sweet things, and then there's
Speaker 1: some people that don't like sweet stuff. That's safer, good shob.
Speaker 1: People like a certain kinds of food, and then every
Speaker 1: once in a while you run into people that don't
Speaker 1: like that kind of food, or people are basically all
Speaker 1: the same sizes and then there's like some people born
Speaker 1: that are like seven or eight feet tall, some people
Speaker 1: that are very short. So are you holding out? I
Speaker 1: want to I want to help out here? Are you
Speaker 1: holding out? The fox? And fox? And I could be
Speaker 1: like a wild outlier? Oh he's yeah, he's an outlier,
Speaker 1: not super wild outliers. I mean, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: research that was done in Rush over fifty year period
Speaker 1: and shows that um Dr Balovs research, and so far
Speaker 1: it's not a huge outlier. I doubt he's even one
Speaker 1: in a million. It's just that in my experience, in
Speaker 1: my very short life, and I've always had foxes on
Speaker 1: my property for for a long time anyway, I've not
Speaker 1: been able to get this to work with a relationship
Speaker 1: like that with another fox. But I haven't seen a
Speaker 1: million foxes, you know, a couple of dozen. So maybe
Speaker 1: he's one in a thousand or something like that, but
Speaker 1: he's not that that kind of personality. Isn't that rare? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he could be one in twenty four because the research
Speaker 1: shows that foxes are relatively easy to domesticate, almost as
Speaker 1: easy as dogs. So Dr Baliot was able to do
Speaker 1: it with about fifty generations that's pretty quick. Okay, lay
Speaker 1: out the fox, lay out the scenario. So the scenario
Speaker 1: is this little fox starts coming around my house like
Speaker 1: all the time at the same time, and I had
Speaker 1: right he was it was four fifteen. He was watching
Speaker 1: the sun. He was. He's really sensitive to the sun
Speaker 1: and kind of jerry manders whole life routines around like
Speaker 1: he doesn't like the sun in his eyes, but he
Speaker 1: does like the sun on his body when he's sun bathing,
Speaker 1: and um, he doesn't like to walk into it, so
Speaker 1: he does things according to the sun. First. A little
Speaker 1: sorry when you say little was was it a young No?
Speaker 1: But he was certainly a run I'm guessing I was
Speaker 1: guessing about six pounds, and um, you think he is
Speaker 1: at a run of a litter? Yeah, absolutely. I mean
Speaker 1: the fact that he couldn't talk. And then when you
Speaker 1: see when you go and see like a certain rock
Speaker 1: that he used to stand on all the time, and
Speaker 1: I have photos of all four ft on that rock,
Speaker 1: and then you go and look at how small that
Speaker 1: rock is, and you just, yeah, yeah, he was a
Speaker 1: real small fox. Foxes are smaller in the in the Rockies,
Speaker 1: then they're going to be in England and probably even
Speaker 1: in a more moderate climate than in in Washington State.
Speaker 1: Organ they're they're small in the Rockies. Everything smaller here
Speaker 1: because the growing seasons and they can't is short and
Speaker 1: they can't eat as much. So he was a small
Speaker 1: fox for sure. Um and he planned his life around
Speaker 1: the sun pretty much. But I think that he had
Speaker 1: decided he wanted me in his life. He wanted a person.
Speaker 1: There wasn't any other choice around for him besides me,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really want to have anything to do
Speaker 1: with him, but he wore me down, and eventually I
Speaker 1: really believe he became what I would call my best friend.
Speaker 1: We were together every day every day for years. I
Speaker 1: mean just I read to him and we walked around together,
Speaker 1: and then we played games together. But it took a
Speaker 1: while to get to that. No, but I do keep
Speaker 1: um egg yokes outside, not very close to my house.
Speaker 1: But when I was just eating egg whites in the
Speaker 1: days before you could just buy the whites, I would
Speaker 1: separate them out so I wasn't eating egg yolks every day.
Speaker 1: I would put egg yolks out by a tree about
Speaker 1: three from my house, and so he would eat those
Speaker 1: once in a while, but not many he would come
Speaker 1: by and eat like one. The magpies ate most of them,
Speaker 1: And I don't think that he ever associated those egg
Speaker 1: yolks with me. Um. So no, then I don't think.
Speaker 1: I was pretty careful not to put things in my
Speaker 1: mouth in front of him. Even if I was just
Speaker 1: drinking tea while I was sitting on the steps with him,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even drink it while he was watching. I
Speaker 1: didn't want him to see me put stuff in my mouth,
Speaker 1: So there was as food with me. But there was
Speaker 1: a day, like a day when you first took note,
Speaker 1: like you first registered his presence, the first time that
Speaker 1: I realized he was odd and something was going to
Speaker 1: happen when he wasn't just like some air and animal.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's always foxes and badgers and skunks around
Speaker 1: in Deer. That day happened when I was hanging out
Speaker 1: outside and I have I always have scabby knee, so
Speaker 1: I have the scab knee, and this huge house fly
Speaker 1: was playing with my scabs, sucking all this blood and
Speaker 1: playing with the blood, and I was like blowing it
Speaker 1: to try to get it off my knee. Falling off
Speaker 1: the cliffs, climbing up the cliffs. No, no, no, climbing
Speaker 1: up well, that was from a fall when I was jogging,
Speaker 1: or I shouldn't have been jogging by myself, and took
Speaker 1: a little bit of a role. But climbing the cliffs
Speaker 1: are jogging on trails that I shouldn't be jogging on.
Speaker 1: So I was playing with that fly and then I
Speaker 1: just kept playing. The fly wouldn't give up, so he
Speaker 1: would just get off my knee when I would blow
Speaker 1: really hard, and then he would take a few reconnaissance
Speaker 1: laps and then boom right back on my scab again,
Speaker 1: start pulling up the blood again. This nasty little arms,
Speaker 1: so to speak. They don't really have arms, I know,
Speaker 1: you know that. And I just got totally obsessed with
Speaker 1: his fly and forgot about everything else, and I was
Speaker 1: just staring at this house fly. Then I looked up
Speaker 1: and there was a fox like two like arms length
Speaker 1: away from me. It was him, and he didn't even
Speaker 1: know I was there. He was like staring at that
Speaker 1: fly on my knee. He was just obsessed with that fly,
Speaker 1: and I was obsessed with the fly. And at that
Speaker 1: point I didn't know what to do because he was
Speaker 1: so close. So I just said fox and then finally
Speaker 1: he looked up at me. And when he looked up
Speaker 1: at me, he turned his nose down, so that you know,
Speaker 1: the snout will be in the way if you're trying
Speaker 1: to look eye to eye. He turned down and then
Speaker 1: we were totally eye to eye. The width of six
Speaker 1: pound animal. His eyes are just about the same with
Speaker 1: as ours are. Another reason I don't think it's one
Speaker 1: in a million for fox in a human type. I
Speaker 1: mean their eyes. You know, I have a skunk that's
Speaker 1: almost the same size, hanging around all the time, almost
Speaker 1: the same size as as that fox. But there are
Speaker 1: there's no way you'd ever look eye to eye. I
Speaker 1: mean you can barely even see the eyes on a
Speaker 1: skunk or so small and their heads so small and there,
Speaker 1: and their eyes are so close together. So fox, when
Speaker 1: I'm sitting and he's standing standing on all fours, his
Speaker 1: eyes are the same height as mine and the same
Speaker 1: with this mind. So we were just eye to eye
Speaker 1: for just the longest time. And that moment, that was
Speaker 1: the moment that I knew there was no going back. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean I tried, but there was not. When you're
Speaker 1: that close. I mean, he could have reached out and
Speaker 1: swatted me. I could have, you know, reached grabbed his
Speaker 1: little neck and strangled him. But we we were just
Speaker 1: that close, just staring at each other, and then I
Speaker 1: locked him in. He locked me, and I think he
Speaker 1: knew he had me and I had him. At that point,
Speaker 1: I started taking stuff out of my pockets, tapping them
Speaker 1: on the woodsteps, like geodes and feathers, every mostly all
Speaker 1: natural things. I had some brass because I keep I
Speaker 1: don't just let my brass hang out, so I had
Speaker 1: some brass in my pocket. I took that out too,
Speaker 1: told him I didn't use it to shoot the dear,
Speaker 1: let's hang out the walk. I had that, so I
Speaker 1: took that out and tapped it. But you know, brass
Speaker 1: is pretty if you roll it in the sun, so
Speaker 1: I did that. He liked that, and he liked the rocks.
Speaker 1: He really liked the feathers that were in my pockets.
Speaker 1: And then I just moved away and let him did
Speaker 1: show well he's not He was really curious about them.
Speaker 1: I eventually moved away a couple of meters and just
Speaker 1: let him knows everything that was there, and he just
Speaker 1: I kept him coming back for days, just putting my
Speaker 1: little trinkets out in front of him and letting him
Speaker 1: show his interest. Then I worried that, well, it was
Speaker 1: getting boring for me, and he had a very short
Speaker 1: attention span, so he would look for a little while
Speaker 1: and then he put his head up, can themselves yes.
Speaker 1: So I started reading to him after that, and then
Speaker 1: he was really good about that. He liked it absolutely,
Speaker 1: he stayed. I mean I timed him quite a lot,
Speaker 1: and I he averaged eighteen minutes, so that he didn't
Speaker 1: like it a lot. I mean he wouldn't sit for
Speaker 1: a very long period time. At eighteen minutes is pretty
Speaker 1: long for that's about as long as a person can say, okay,
Speaker 1: explain like I understand reading to it, but explained it
Speaker 1: just of that I was making it. So the reason
Speaker 1: it's noise, I mean, the reason I was reading is
Speaker 1: because I just wasn't used to talking about just myself
Speaker 1: telling stories, and that's boring and that's hard to do.
Speaker 1: So I got something that was easy to read. And
Speaker 1: then you talk for a certain amount of time and
Speaker 1: look hold up the pictures so he knows you're trying
Speaker 1: to communicate, and then you stop and then you look
Speaker 1: at him. Count to fifteen to yourself so that he
Speaker 1: realizes that you are trying to communicate. If you just
Speaker 1: make noise, he thinks you're just ignoring him. That you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a person who's making noise. I mean you
Speaker 1: you have to do it in that pattern as if
Speaker 1: you're trying to communicate. And I kept up that pattern
Speaker 1: and he got used to that pattern, so he knew
Speaker 1: I was trying to communicate with him. And he had
Speaker 1: every reason to want me hanging around him because I
Speaker 1: have hands and big, bad tools. And he knew I
Speaker 1: hated feral cats. I mean he watched me chase them away.
Speaker 1: He didn't know about the bad words I was saying
Speaker 1: to those cats, but he knew I hated Ferrell cats,
Speaker 1: and he hated Ferrell And there was protection there, reduced predator.
Speaker 1: He got to hang out in the sunshine in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day because I was there. Normally Fox
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to just you know, not with dogs
Speaker 1: and feral cats around and eagles. So he got a
Speaker 1: huge advantage from being my friend. Huge. Okay, but what
Speaker 1: is he eating all this time? Oh, he was a
Speaker 1: great hunter, So he's eating lots and lots and lots
Speaker 1: of voles, mostly voles. That's I think that's Chapter three
Speaker 1: of the book is called Vole Forest, and it explains
Speaker 1: how I accidentally he got a huge forest filled with
Speaker 1: voles on my property. I didn't mean to, but I
Speaker 1: was just to make a long story short, I just
Speaker 1: wasn't paying attention to my property and I had this massive,
Speaker 1: massive amount of voles. I mean they run over my
Speaker 1: feet while I was walking. I mean one of them
Speaker 1: gave birth on my boot while I'm not kidding, just
Speaker 1: because just because the grassload and there was so it
Speaker 1: ended up just growing too high with the weeds those
Speaker 1: kind of woody things, and then it lays down and
Speaker 1: creates that kind of like that sort of buffer between
Speaker 1: the ground and the animals that hunt voles from the
Speaker 1: air aren't going to go in through woody things that
Speaker 1: are thorny, and animals that take skunks take bowls, foxes
Speaker 1: take fowls, badgers, animals that come in from the side,
Speaker 1: especially animals that pounds like a fox, they can't get
Speaker 1: in either. So the voles just start proliferating and proliferating
Speaker 1: and proliferating until this is huge amount of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were just everywhere so that really attracted him. But
Speaker 1: he was a good hunter anyway. Even after I figured
Speaker 1: out how to kind of limit the vols a little bit,
Speaker 1: he was a terrific hunter. There were days when he
Speaker 1: had five bals piled up by my front doorsteps. He
Speaker 1: would wait, he would hunt. Yeah, I thought that he
Speaker 1: was giving them to me, But he wasn't. But I
Speaker 1: thought he was. Was it just the same you feel
Speaker 1: it was a safe place to portal. It was just
Speaker 1: because he figured out the only place the magpies wouldn't
Speaker 1: steal them. Magpies were really aggressive, and they'll come to
Speaker 1: my steps, but they won't come right to the door.
Speaker 1: That's like the limit for magpies. So he would put
Speaker 1: them right up the door so that the magpies wouldn't
Speaker 1: steal them, and he would keep hunting until he had
Speaker 1: so men enough to fill his whole mouth. Then he
Speaker 1: would gather them all up and run them up the
Speaker 1: hill to where the kids were, because he was helping
Speaker 1: feed them. But if he had to just run up
Speaker 1: and down, up and down every time he killed one,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be very efficient. So he liked to pile
Speaker 1: his dead things up and then grab them and then
Speaker 1: bring them up the hill, so he wasn't giving them
Speaker 1: to me. He was just he was just leaving them
Speaker 1: there because magpies wouldn't eat anything on my doorstep. You
Speaker 1: knew that, but I didn't. Yeah, you mentioned it was
Speaker 1: how vain I was present from the fox. You mentioned
Speaker 1: how short lived they are. Yeah, yeah, I was a
Speaker 1: little bit if I think if you'd I came here
Speaker 1: with what you said, But it's like it's like a
Speaker 1: few years, right, Yeah, like about a guess. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I would have I would have thrown out seven or
Speaker 1: eight years. I don't know why, probably in his do
Speaker 1: But they're wild animals don't live very long. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably one reason why their personalities might be
Speaker 1: a little bit different than human personalities. You think back
Speaker 1: to what your life was like when you were a
Speaker 1: twenty year old. You were talking about crazy things that
Speaker 1: you've done, but and how you think about those near
Speaker 1: death experiences. But you think about those near death experiences
Speaker 1: differently based on what decade you are in your life.
Speaker 1: But they don't have like decades of their life. They
Speaker 1: it's short lived animals, But for us humans, a twenty
Speaker 1: year old human has a little bit different person. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't change the person's genetics. It's the exact same person,
Speaker 1: but your personality changes when you're twenty versus when you're eighty.
Speaker 1: Probably your idea about what a near death experience is,
Speaker 1: even your idea about the passage of time exactly, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And I read somewhere with someone who was trying to
Speaker 1: capture when we hear that of whatever, a fly or whatever,
Speaker 1: some aquatic insect has a day or two days right
Speaker 1: as it emerges, and and someone's describing, though I can't
Speaker 1: hear who was talking about this with their talking about
Speaker 1: when you go to swat a fly, right, So in
Speaker 1: your mind you're like it's fast like right, but the
Speaker 1: flies mine. It's like there's this um, there's this thing
Speaker 1: that's that's coming that I'll eventually but I'll eventually need
Speaker 1: to take into consideration and avoid. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: like it's tripped like who you know, who really knows,
Speaker 1: but like it's it's like it's comprehension of time is
Speaker 1: thousands of light years away, there's up there, it's going
Speaker 1: to hit the earth. Yeah, that's right. You look at trees,
Speaker 1: you know, you look at trees that are hundreds of
Speaker 1: years old, like is it you know, not that it's
Speaker 1: regarding time, but just whatever the experience is, isn't you know?
Speaker 1: We're sort of built in. I think that we're born,
Speaker 1: and we pretty quickly get a grasp of kind of
Speaker 1: what a year is. We quickly get to grasp of
Speaker 1: when people die, and we start to measure because we
Speaker 1: have a like there's a fair sense like if you're
Speaker 1: live right now, you know you're going to be around
Speaker 1: eighty and you start taking that stuff off, man, I know,
Speaker 1: and then you realize that it's it's unavoidable, and there
Speaker 1: comes this awareness of things are things going by time
Speaker 1: going back differently and you're burning a fuse and I
Speaker 1: don't know what you know? Maybe you know now better,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what a fox. I don't know
Speaker 1: if a fox is aware that it's it's taken, I don't,
Speaker 1: but it seems like it would be innate. I think
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons why humans have often set
Speaker 1: themselves apart from other animals and always forget even your
Speaker 1: even your students, even your undergraduate students in the middle
Speaker 1: of a biology class, forget that humans are animals and
Speaker 1: there's only six kingdom of life, and there's an animal
Speaker 1: kingdom and where in it, there's not a separate kingdom
Speaker 1: for humans. So we are animals, but people forget that.
Speaker 1: But one way that we have been different from most
Speaker 1: of the animals that are around in modern America is
Speaker 1: that we're so much longer lived. And that's that's even
Speaker 1: more drastic because maybe a hundred or two hundred years
Speaker 1: ago we lived maybe sixty years, and now it's eighty.
Speaker 1: But maybe it's going to be even longer than that.
Speaker 1: But the lifespan of the animals hasn't changed, so we
Speaker 1: are separating ourselves a little bit in terms of our longevity.
Speaker 1: Bears can live for years, grisly bears, large animals can,
Speaker 1: But we're wiping out the larger animals because they threaten us.
Speaker 1: So there aren't a lot of large animals around. But
Speaker 1: you know, bison our large animals, and they probably don't
Speaker 1: live more than a sixteen years. So we do live
Speaker 1: a lot longer. And if the length that you live
Speaker 1: changes your personality, then it would give you a reason
Speaker 1: to believe that humans we have a little bit different
Speaker 1: personality than foxes. It doesn't mean that other animals don't
Speaker 1: have a personality, and I think that I don't believe
Speaker 1: that humans are the only animals that have certain personality traits.
Speaker 1: I think that anthropomorphism is just been mischaracterized and it's
Speaker 1: based on assumptions that just don't make any ense anymore.
Speaker 1: I want to talk, Well, you got to define it,
Speaker 1: but I want to talk about anthropomorphism, but first I
Speaker 1: want to talk and maybe you answered it. Uh what
Speaker 1: what's the fox's lifespan? Just a few years? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you get into this routine with this thing and it's
Speaker 1: like you know that it's no, it's won't last, that's right,
Speaker 1: And I and I thought that was really stupid. I
Speaker 1: remember I was jogging and thinking to myself, this is
Speaker 1: really really dumb. Why am I spending all this I
Speaker 1: was spending a lot of time. I mean, my whole
Speaker 1: life was pretty much geared around you have to be
Speaker 1: home at four or fifteen. Um, that's just insane. An
Speaker 1: animal that's just going to be gone on the blink
Speaker 1: of an eye. But you know, in Paradise Valley there's
Speaker 1: all those rainbows out there, and double rainbows are really common.
Speaker 1: And I was jogging on this trail and suddenly this
Speaker 1: rainbow came up and then it doubled and you can
Speaker 1: see end to end. You can still see Ndan from
Speaker 1: my house, but I could see Undan from where I
Speaker 1: was jogging because it's so open country out there. And
Speaker 1: then I really lies that a rainbow, I mean, how
Speaker 1: long does that last? And I stopped to watch it.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't just like, oh, it's I'm not
Speaker 1: going to waste my time with a rainbow because because
Speaker 1: it's short lived. And I just and that that made
Speaker 1: up my mind. I thought, that's so stupid to worry
Speaker 1: about how long something lives when a rainbow doesn't. And
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one. When you're up in the
Speaker 1: mountains and you look down you can see cars, I
Speaker 1: mean they just stop. People that are like going ninety
Speaker 1: miles an hour to get to the airport and they're like,
Speaker 1: at whatever, miss people just stop when they see the
Speaker 1: double rainbows do that and these you know, people have
Speaker 1: seen hundreds of rainbows and they just stop. Anyway, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter how long it lives. How does the fox?
Speaker 1: Can you tell you? Are you afraid of ruining those
Speaker 1: story if you tell how the fox dies? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: am glad you asked I'm not telling you how the
Speaker 1: fox died. Listen, we got real numbers here. And these
Speaker 1: people is reading the book right now. There you go,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, Carmen is reading the boat. Do you
Speaker 1: want to I'll find out. I don't want to know
Speaker 1: how the thoughts did the talk about anthropomorphism, because that's
Speaker 1: what everybody's gonna say. That's what a guy like me
Speaker 1: is going to say. They're gonna say, oh, you're anthropomorphiz Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know everybody. I mean, I've heard that so many times.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's your unapologetic of course. I mean as
Speaker 1: a part grinder, as a professor and you know, students,
Speaker 1: and that a word is a really it's a ward
Speaker 1: that a lot of people in the public like to
Speaker 1: say because they think that it's really pedantic. I think,
Speaker 1: but it's only just now becoming pedantic. I think people
Speaker 1: think it makes them sound sophisticated and pro science if
Speaker 1: they accuse everybody of being anthropomorphic. But I think we
Speaker 1: need to first, you got it, You first got to identify.
Speaker 1: You have to if it means that you are crediting
Speaker 1: human traits to an animal that's not human, so human
Speaker 1: human trait might be for example, this is. One of
Speaker 1: my students gave me this. Um. She said that Adam
Speaker 1: and Eve experienced or exhibited modesty, and she said, that's
Speaker 1: a trait that we think only humans have. You mean
Speaker 1: when they covered themselves with leaves. Yeah, I never I
Speaker 1: needed one of my undergraduates explain that to me. And
Speaker 1: I really loved that. It was part of it had
Speaker 1: to do with sort of like Neanderthals. But it's a
Speaker 1: question that I used to ask. They were introduced to
Speaker 1: shame Bible person, so maybe it's shame, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were. They were made to feel shame. Okay, they're
Speaker 1: made to feel shame, and so that's a human trait.
Speaker 1: And then if you see two little chipmunks mating, um,
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, they're just out there mating and
Speaker 1: they don't care that all these people are standing around
Speaker 1: watching because they don't. They have no shame. They experience
Speaker 1: no shame. But really, but that's voyeur. I'm a part
Speaker 1: of the humansitionism. Apart the voy is you're the voyrus
Speaker 1: for watching the animals or exhibitionists between the and role
Speaker 1: play and exhibit. This is the most risk ay episode
Speaker 1: of the Medior podcast. Will go walk out and protest.
Speaker 1: He's like, I did sign up for this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm a family. Now this is what I want. You
Speaker 1: all went to the University of Montana, finally going to
Speaker 1: direction that Phil can get on board with. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: uh the giant red squirrels that overran the campus on
Speaker 1: the University of Montana. That exact scene you just described
Speaker 1: played out many times during my stamped at you m
Speaker 1: you went to You have m too, writing, you studied
Speaker 1: writing them good school, you went to them. So now
Speaker 1: I don't know what that makes. It makes us grizz
Speaker 1: because you're wrong to the undergraduate school. So even when
Speaker 1: I'm in my regalia, maybe I shouldn't say this on there,
Speaker 1: my regalias from the University of Montana, my own to
Speaker 1: graduate school instead of my PhD. Because I just think
Speaker 1: you always belonged to under gradgate school, don't you. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never I don't look at those
Speaker 1: institutions in that way. I felt. I felt it was
Speaker 1: very transactional and like I don't have any sort of
Speaker 1: when they call about fundraising, do you just help everybody? No,
Speaker 1: I just have things I'm dedicated to. But it's like
Speaker 1: I just viewed it as a transactional relationship. Like I
Speaker 1: I you know, I go to Whale Entire here in town. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: Like I don't imagine Whale Entire calling me wanting me
Speaker 1: to send them extra money. Like we engage in a
Speaker 1: transaction and the transaction is done. Don't call me later
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, you know you had your oil
Speaker 1: change here and bought tires here. How about now just
Speaker 1: sending us money for nothing? It was I feel it
Speaker 1: was very transactional. But I want to get back. When
Speaker 1: I dropped out of the University of Montana, nobody ever
Speaker 1: called and said, hey, really missed you in class. Did
Speaker 1: you go back? I never did. No. No, Mom listens
Speaker 1: to these two and so back. You know. Okay, anthropomorphism,
Speaker 1: so you know what it means. So you get what
Speaker 1: it means now where you're sorry, Yeah, I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure everybody. I want to make sure everybody's tracking.
Speaker 1: So if you pretend that an animal has a certain quality,
Speaker 1: a certain personality trait, people think you're pretending that it
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly Then they say you're being anthropomorphic because it's
Speaker 1: not possible that an animal could possibly feel loyalty or pain.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I give an example. You are
Speaker 1: at about Buffalo, so you'll know this example from my book.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with Dr Hornaday's work? Okay, doky, So
Speaker 1: I've read Horniday's journals. I love them. That's another plug.
Speaker 1: Dr Hornaday's journals are fantastic. And so he emerged as
Speaker 1: a very controversial figure. He did. But you know, his
Speaker 1: family called me when I finished publishing an article about him.
Speaker 1: They said it was the best piece they've ever It
Speaker 1: wasn't just about him, it was about Buffalo, but they
Speaker 1: said it was the best piece they've ever read about him.
Speaker 1: And I was not trying to be complimentary. I was
Speaker 1: very objective. I mean I talked about all his warts.
Speaker 1: There were many of them. He had a lot of prejudices,
Speaker 1: but he did a lot of important things. Anyway, Buffalo cows,
Speaker 1: the females were getting when they were getting shot a
Speaker 1: lot in the late eighteen hundreds. When one falls from
Speaker 1: a bullet, then the other ones just all kind of
Speaker 1: stand around. And Hornaday said, these animals are complicit in
Speaker 1: their own I mean, he wanted to save them. He
Speaker 1: was furious, but still he said they're complicit in their
Speaker 1: own extinction because there. He called them stupid brutes because
Speaker 1: they just stand around and one's gone down. The hunters,
Speaker 1: probably on the Tutu train, are just going to keep shooting,
Speaker 1: and they're going to shoot all of them. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the hide hunters would even manipulate that. And so how
Speaker 1: and why don't you believe some of the stories that
Speaker 1: say that they simply had loyalty. Now, when that character
Speaker 1: was his name Custer, when Custer um did his last retreat,
Speaker 1: unning retreat, everybody tried to turn that into his They
Speaker 1: call it his stand, even though he was doing a
Speaker 1: running retreat because it was considered honorable to stand in
Speaker 1: the face of danger. It makes you loyal and brave
Speaker 1: because he was a human, and that's a human trait.
Speaker 1: But if an animal stands with her comrades, she's an idiot.
Speaker 1: They're foolish, you see. He Hornaday wasn't able to see that.
Speaker 1: It's possible that buffalo might have other characteristics, that they
Speaker 1: might just be simply standing with their comrades because they're royal.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer, but Hornaday doesn't know the
Speaker 1: answer either. I mean, both Horniday and I are working
Speaker 1: from a bias and from very limited data. And there's
Speaker 1: really no way to know. I mean, sometimes science doesn't
Speaker 1: have an answer for you. You just have to use
Speaker 1: your instincts, in your common sense. But neither Horniday nor
Speaker 1: I know what's going on. Really, we could both be wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't know, But all I know is that he
Speaker 1: didn't consider it, and I I just throw that out
Speaker 1: as a possibility. That's what I mean by anthropomorphism. So
Speaker 1: if I were to say those buffalo aren't stupid, they're
Speaker 1: just they're there because they're loyal. They're standing with their
Speaker 1: comments because they're loyal, then you, if you're pedantic, would
Speaker 1: say to me, so anthropomorphic, Raven, get the hell out
Speaker 1: of here. But but couldn't you Also, because we often
Speaker 1: talk about um and teacher trying to teach our kids that,
Speaker 1: you know, the animals not being stupid, that's like this
Speaker 1: human thing we want to we want to attribute to it.
Speaker 1: It's just being an animal. So is there another version
Speaker 1: where they're not they're not being anthropomorphic, but they're just
Speaker 1: being buffalo? Yeah, I think that, Well, go ahead here,
Speaker 1: But you wrote a wonderful book on buffalo. By the way,
Speaker 1: that's another plug I want to put in this. One
Speaker 1: of the books I own it's great. I rebel against Okay, one,
Speaker 1: I discourage my kids from like outrageous anthropomorphism. I discourage that.
Speaker 1: I also even more vehemently discourage them from describing animals
Speaker 1: as stupid. If something doesn't run away, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: how is it benefits You're not a risk. Why is
Speaker 1: it beneficial for it to expend all kinds of energy
Speaker 1: and put itself in the in the way of potential
Speaker 1: harm by running headlong into some other area to get
Speaker 1: away from something that's not risky. So when you say,
Speaker 1: like the turkeys in our yard are stupid because it
Speaker 1: does stand there, um, maybe be really stupid for it
Speaker 1: to run away from something that's not threatening it and
Speaker 1: then it lands in the neighbor's fence and gets eaten
Speaker 1: by the neighbor's dog because it's retreating from something that
Speaker 1: pollses no risk. Anyways, maybe the turkey is really smart
Speaker 1: and doesn't run away, and that's perfect. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the first step that we have to take. And in
Speaker 1: Hornaday's time, animals were always considered I mean, if they
Speaker 1: had a personality, even those stupidity is not technically a personality.
Speaker 1: It was always to negate the ability the animal and
Speaker 1: to say they're stupid and that they're dumb. And I
Speaker 1: agree with what both of you guys are saying. We
Speaker 1: need to get people and kids, especially away from the
Speaker 1: idea of constantly calling animals dumb when they you see skunks,
Speaker 1: uh getting run over by cars all the time? They're
Speaker 1: so dumb? Why are they? Because they can't evolve fast
Speaker 1: enough to realize that humans used to walk and then
Speaker 1: drag dogs with them, which are a little faster, and
Speaker 1: then horses, and in like a hundred years, we now
Speaker 1: have semi trucks do in a hundred miles an hour
Speaker 1: on the same trail that humans used to walk on.
Speaker 1: Skunks can't evolve fast enough. We can't either. It's not
Speaker 1: that they're stupid, it's just that they haven't evolved with
Speaker 1: semi trucks coming across the highway like this at these
Speaker 1: outrageous speeds. But we do have a bad habit of
Speaker 1: calling animals stupid when um, they do things that we
Speaker 1: don't Underlike you just explain to your kids why would
Speaker 1: it make sense? But I mean, how could they possibly
Speaker 1: know that that's something like a semi truck even exist?
Speaker 1: How could they possibly know that anything could move that
Speaker 1: fast on the road, so we should stop calling them stupid.
Speaker 1: So if you as an academic, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: what do you do you call yourself an academic? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, I've had trence, Sure, I know what
Speaker 1: you mean. I mean I I don't generally identify myself
Speaker 1: with labels because I generally prefer to identify myself with
Speaker 1: verbs rather than nouns. But yes, I teach at the
Speaker 1: universe the anthropomorphic. The anthropomorphism accusation being that you're training. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it's one animal. It's just one animal.
Speaker 1: I'm not accusing you of going against your training. I'm
Speaker 1: saying that, well, to do a work like this, no doubt,
Speaker 1: people from your world, from your professional world, we'll look
Speaker 1: at a work like this and maybe without reading it,
Speaker 1: but at the surface examination, it would be that you've
Speaker 1: gone over to the other side. Of course, of course,
Speaker 1: do you care that they think that? Um, I just
Speaker 1: expected it. I knew from that. I mean, I hid
Speaker 1: my relationship with the fox for ages and ages and ages.
Speaker 1: And I remember starting conversations with people that worked in
Speaker 1: the academy with me, and I would say something in
Speaker 1: the middle of a conversation, I might slip in something
Speaker 1: like oh and fox and I and then someone that
Speaker 1: a colleague, a close colleague, would say, just just as
Speaker 1: long as you're not being anthropomorphic, go ahead with your story.
Speaker 1: And you're like, gosh, oh, oh, absolutely a dirty secret,
Speaker 1: secret secret. Absolutely, I mean it's a taboo, it absolutely is.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I'm ready for it. But I
Speaker 1: understand that I've been listening to that complaint for a
Speaker 1: long time. But you asked if there's a middle ground,
Speaker 1: and of course there is a middle ground. It's just
Speaker 1: to say that there's a less of a separation between
Speaker 1: humans and other animals than we previously believed. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that Whoman's and other animals have the exact same
Speaker 1: personality in the same emotions. There's so many animals. A
Speaker 1: worm is different than a beetle, is different than a
Speaker 1: bird in every bird species different. I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: we have this huge separation. Humans are way over here
Speaker 1: and all the other animals are there. It can't be
Speaker 1: possible that with the little differences in DNA that there
Speaker 1: are between the humans and chimps, it can't be possible
Speaker 1: that all of these traits that we think only belong
Speaker 1: to humans, and that chimps just simply eat and sleep
Speaker 1: and defecate and have sex. I mean, it's just not possible.
Speaker 1: Some of the things that we believe our only human traits,
Speaker 1: those have to recruit to other animals as well because
Speaker 1: our DNA. I mean, we're all related, as Darwin has
Speaker 1: told us. And if you guys haven't read Darwin yet,
Speaker 1: I there's a lot of plugs for him in my book.
Speaker 1: And I do try to explain as it fits in
Speaker 1: and very gently because the book's not encyclopedic and it's
Speaker 1: not like lecturing. It's a story. But I do have
Speaker 1: to mention Darwin once in a while because I have
Speaker 1: been trained biology and I think Darwin's work is amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: One way to describe your book, would you say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's about a woman's relationship with a fox. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: what um? What do you like? What did you want
Speaker 1: to accomplish with it? What would be like the deeper
Speaker 1: explanation of what the book is. It's really about how
Speaker 1: humans should fit into nature, how it's part of us
Speaker 1: and we're part of it, and we should stop using
Speaker 1: that old fashioned term mother nature as though it's some
Speaker 1: authoritarian figure. Um, you don't like mother Nature. Nature is
Speaker 1: a community. It's not an individual that we should revere
Speaker 1: and be afraid of an honor. We are part of nature.
Speaker 1: We fit into it, and if we fit into it
Speaker 1: as a community, of course we have responsibilities, but it's
Speaker 1: not something that we should revere and hold up over ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's our birthright. We're animals and we should fit ourselves.
Speaker 1: Let you run this by I'm working on a new
Speaker 1: tagline for you know, just my general Brandon what I do.
Speaker 1: And it goes like this, Mother Nature is my co pilot.
Speaker 1: That's good? You like that? Or is that too much
Speaker 1: reverence for Mother Nature? So how about um, how about
Speaker 1: God isn't my co pilot, He's the pilot. That's what
Speaker 1: our piloted Voyagers. When I worked at Voyagers National Park.
Speaker 1: That was that was on the airplane that we We
Speaker 1: had to take ships everywhere because we had Voyagers and
Speaker 1: Apostle Islands and Ile Royal So of course that's how
Speaker 1: you got around. Um, Mother Nature, are you seriously thinking
Speaker 1: about doing that? It's okay, I just I think Mother
Speaker 1: Nature kind of scares I mean, so your mother is
Speaker 1: probably some sweet little old lady. Right, but mother Nature
Speaker 1: does make it seem like, keep in mind, you're honest,
Speaker 1: is pagan? Yeah they are. They on the soulstaces. They
Speaker 1: drag logs around their house and whatnot. What's your business
Speaker 1: a tagline for what? Oh? Just my brand here within
Speaker 1: the meat eater, brandy brand, my personal brand. Oh but
Speaker 1: you're totally within meat eater. Oh yeah, he like yeah,
Speaker 1: he like, um, mother nature. He's like he makes materials.
Speaker 1: He's he like content producer, he like produces ideas and materials.
Speaker 1: You guys use that word mother nature a lot, huh.
Speaker 1: In the book I'm currently writing, which explores children and
Speaker 1: nature and how they relate. Um, I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about the perils of looking down at nature,
Speaker 1: and I talked a lot about the perils of looking up.
Speaker 1: And I tried to explore what I'm not a master
Speaker 1: at this, but I try to explore ways of how
Speaker 1: to encourage your children to see it like an idea island.
Speaker 1: And that's so right, that's the book. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a more important part of the book. Are equally important part.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, friendship is really important, friendship in general,
Speaker 1: and then inner species friendship. But yeah, I want people
Speaker 1: to feel like they fit in with nature, that it's not.
Speaker 1: I forgot about the fact that some people look down
Speaker 1: in nature, and that I don't know very many people
Speaker 1: that do. But I understand that's so Really that comes
Speaker 1: from something a little bit. When I described looking down
Speaker 1: at it, I think that it would be it manifests
Speaker 1: more is very willing to be dismissive of it, right,
Speaker 1: and that where the most important species in the world,
Speaker 1: and we're in charge of everything, and we have dominion
Speaker 1: over everything. You don't find me people who would say, like,
Speaker 1: I hate nature. No, but an action and action uh,
Speaker 1: And an outside observer might look at certain actions and
Speaker 1: be like, man, that guy is not like nature. Sure,
Speaker 1: all the development that's going on around um Bozeman and
Speaker 1: then the valley and all over Montana. Some people, if
Speaker 1: you say, can we have a little bit of regulation
Speaker 1: here so that we keep a little bit of open space,
Speaker 1: so that we don't kill every living thing that's not
Speaker 1: human or dog or cat, And then people would say,
Speaker 1: would accuse you of not putting humans first. And so
Speaker 1: I understand that. I mean there are people and you'd argue,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, I am I'm thinking about humans right now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you're trying to teach your kids. So that
Speaker 1: makes is it a kid's book? No, it's it's for
Speaker 1: growing it's for growing ups. Yeah, but that's right, it's
Speaker 1: for it's for growing ups who have kids in their lives. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and my book is that doesn't need to be your kids,
Speaker 1: but like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's that
Speaker 1: would be perfect. I mean, that's that sounds a lot
Speaker 1: like what I'm what I thought I did with Fox exactly,
Speaker 1: helping people to realize we're part of it and don't
Speaker 1: look down don't and definitely don't look up at it either,
Speaker 1: because I mean I have to revere it. We are it. Okay,
Speaker 1: give people the big plug, how to find it, how
Speaker 1: to find more about you? If you don't, do you
Speaker 1: want any found out about I know you're I know
Speaker 1: from from Cindy, you're publisher. I know you're very private. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you don't even like to do this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff I have, right, this might be my first pot
Speaker 1: I think I've done some pods. This is my first
Speaker 1: big studio thing. Now I have a website, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't have but it won't help you. I mean, I like,
Speaker 1: I just paid for the domain name and it just
Speaker 1: sits there, so there's no point in me giving you that. Um,
Speaker 1: but you can buy the book at Barnes and Noble
Speaker 1: if you're in Bozeman Country bookshelf, and if you're not
Speaker 1: one of those people that wants Jeff Bezos to stay
Speaker 1: in space, you can get it from Amazon. And I think, um,
Speaker 1: I do want to say one more thing. You can
Speaker 1: be really diplomatic. No, I want to say one more thing.
Speaker 1: There's a way you go what you say anywhere books
Speaker 1: are sold. Anywhere books are sold. I wanted to say
Speaker 1: one more thing where you can if you just want
Speaker 1: to listen to it, you can get that audio. It's
Speaker 1: called you can get an audio book. And I just
Speaker 1: found out yesterday you can. Did you do your own read? No?
Speaker 1: But I listened to the girl who didn't read, and
Speaker 1: I listened to they did. But I I a few
Speaker 1: of them. You know, winding wind finally are the same words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I listened to it. She got windy and
Speaker 1: windy mixed up. Don't you're spelled the same? Don't let
Speaker 1: some person you know I don't. I don't like your
Speaker 1: publishers a dear friend of mine, and I owe a
Speaker 1: lot of my I owe a lot of my career
Speaker 1: in life to her. It was her decision. If it
Speaker 1: was her decision, I'll fight with her about it. If
Speaker 1: they should not have loved that, you should that should
Speaker 1: not have happened. You should read your own damn book.
Speaker 1: You need a professional studio, though, I thought that was
Speaker 1: the deal, and so it was the time of COVID
Speaker 1: that was the problem. It was taped during COVIE. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that was the only problem. M I
Speaker 1: think they never considered having me made it, but we
Speaker 1: did have to hire a guy with it who had
Speaker 1: a student. You might have needed to practice for a
Speaker 1: long time and had a studio. No, I know you
Speaker 1: have to practice because I make videos for my students,
Speaker 1: and you have to keep going over getting repeating everything
Speaker 1: over and over because you noticed you said something wrong
Speaker 1: or there was too much of a pause there and whatever.
Speaker 1: So it takes a long time. No, wait, one more
Speaker 1: thing audio and and the download onto the little machines
Speaker 1: that you can read from. You can do that. I
Speaker 1: just found that out yesterday. So anywhere books are sold,
Speaker 1: anywhere books are sold even Amazon, Amazon, And so that's right, No,
Speaker 1: thanks everybody who buys it for sure. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's more so, Um, you're becoming uh, all of this
Speaker 1: is making you become less of a hermit. Well, do
Speaker 1: you think you're gonna go back into hiding? Not you're hiding.
Speaker 1: Do you think you're going to become do you do
Speaker 1: you imagine? Now I'll being more. I just have plug
Speaker 1: about hermits and such um and you'll read this in
Speaker 1: my book. Also, people who live away from other people.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to hide from people. We don't dislike people.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to get away from people. We just
Speaker 1: love the things that people get rid of. And that's
Speaker 1: why I want to live in a place where I
Speaker 1: can sit outside and watch the badgers and the skunks
Speaker 1: and the eagles and the foxes, and where it's quiet
Speaker 1: and I can hear what I want to hear, like
Speaker 1: the wind, and I don't have to see trucks coming
Speaker 1: by all day long. It's not because I don't like humans.
Speaker 1: It's because I love the things that humans get rid of.
Speaker 1: And if I was really misanthropic, I would live in
Speaker 1: a city. Because if you really dislike humans, then you
Speaker 1: want to live where there's a lot of humans so
Speaker 1: that you can torture them and whatever the hell you
Speaker 1: do around. Yeah. So the bad guys who don't like
Speaker 1: people are the ones that live where there's people, right,
Speaker 1: The people that are really I don't like people, they
Speaker 1: live in cities like the country. Yeah, that's a seed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it needs work, but that's a good seed of an idea.
Speaker 1: I like that. There's your tagline, n't but I've been
Speaker 1: working on that idea. There's something there, man, I think
Speaker 1: there is for sure, don't you know. It's a compelling point.
Speaker 1: Gonna I'm gonna like land bed and unpack that one. Good.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. I've never thought about humans getting
Speaker 1: rid of silence, but it's true, getting rid of silence.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things about where we live
Speaker 1: is the silence. And there was like a death metal
Speaker 1: band that covers the sound of silence, No Sound of
Speaker 1: Silence Disturbed. The name of the Kathy Raven, the title
Speaker 1: of the book, Easy to Remember, Box and I, Box
Speaker 1: and I and then Carmen van Bianci third appearance on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Her new company will not a company. Her
Speaker 1: new nonprofit will be called Home Range wildlife research. How
Speaker 1: do you How do you do you want people going
Speaker 1: and looking you up on social media and stuff? Or
Speaker 1: do you hate that kind of stuff? I don't have
Speaker 1: any of that. Good for you. Let's competition for my account.
Speaker 1: Um do you care to have people find you? Well? Uh,
Speaker 1: we do have a website home range dot org and
Speaker 1: that's the way to go. You don't want them like
Speaker 1: emailing you and stuff like that. Oh they can email me,
Speaker 1: and not so badly that you want to give out
Speaker 1: your email address. I wouldn't do that. Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 1: There's got to be contact us at home range dot org. True, Yes,
Speaker 1: I have a home range email. Oh there you go
Speaker 1: and you check. So someone wants to reach out to
Speaker 1: you and say, hey, I got a study idea for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a budding young biologist on your job. Yep, I
Speaker 1: got a wolf story to tell you about. Or I
Speaker 1: got a good jillion dollars and I'm looking to put
Speaker 1: it in a nonprofit especially those Ye Yes, home range
Speaker 1: dot org. Okay, fox and I home range dot org
Speaker 1: two very different things, but both worthwhile checking out. Thank
Speaker 1: you everybody,