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Speaker 1: Oh hey, everybody. Episode eighty four of T A C.

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Speaker 1: I just messed up the intro twice. At first I

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Speaker 1: said that this was the Mediator podcast, and then I said,

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Speaker 1: oh hey, dude, hey man, I'm getting progressively better and

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Speaker 1: worse at this the same time. I feel anyway, this

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Speaker 1: episode eighty four, it's a good one. It's about snakes.

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Speaker 1: Most of it's about snakes. At least. We had Harry W. Green,

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Speaker 1: who is a herpetologist, the first herpetologist ever on the show,

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Speaker 1: and he will not be the last. He is an

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Speaker 1: interesting gentleman. He's a professor and many other things which

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Speaker 1: you'll hear about in the interviews. Stick around to learn

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Speaker 1: about snakes and also his book, which is one of

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Speaker 1: the better books I've ever read. Hopefully you check that

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Speaker 1: out and pick it up. And I didn't. I went

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Speaker 1: on a little bit of a rant, which will hear soon,

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a rant. So there's a rant

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Speaker 1: about drawing the line. And then we had, of course

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Speaker 1: another Nozira sharp moment that's pretty damn good. But before

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Speaker 1: we get to that, I want to talk to you

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Speaker 1: guys about Meat Eater season eight. Meat Eater season eight

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Speaker 1: is now on Netflix, you guys know about Netflix. I

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Speaker 1: remember when Netflix was just where you had to like

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Speaker 1: get a CD out of it. It mailed you a

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Speaker 1: CD or DVD is probably what that was. They mail

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Speaker 1: your DVD and then you had to mail it backtone

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Speaker 1: or whatever. That was not so long ago. But now

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Speaker 1: it's a juggernaut. It's the Juggernaut platform that brings you many, many,

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Speaker 1: many good content projects. Paramount among them is meat. Each

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Speaker 1: season eight, it's an eight episode season includes lots of

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Speaker 1: really cool things that are near and dear to my heart.

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Speaker 1: Uh Mexico. CU's dear Maryland, seek a deer Maryland. And

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Speaker 1: of course this is very near and dear my heart

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Speaker 1: because that's my home territory. So I'm glad we went there.

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Speaker 1: But there you can go right now to Netflix and

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Speaker 1: binge to your heart's desire with Steve Ronella, Ryan Callahan.

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Speaker 1: You honest to tell us the whole crew out there

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Speaker 1: doing fun stuff and eating. So Netflix Mediator season eight,

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Speaker 1: check it out. Proud of the team for doing awesome

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Speaker 1: work on this one. So go binge or don't, whatever

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Speaker 1: you want to do. It's free country now. If you

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Speaker 1: go to first light dot com as we speak, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna learn about the Brookstown Sweater. We talked about the

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Speaker 1: Brookstown sweater here before. Brooks Down sweater is my favorite,

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Speaker 1: probably my favorite piece of cold weather gear from first

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Speaker 1: light the fact I have one and my wife, who's pregnant,

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Speaker 1: wears it all the time. She thinks this looks fashionable. Um,

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Speaker 1: it's It's only about ten point nine ounces, it's ultra light,

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Speaker 1: it's highly packable, perfect installations. Got a hundred grams of

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Speaker 1: DWR treated eight hundred PHIL three thirty seven point five downtech.

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Speaker 1: It's advanced active installation. I actually wore it on an

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Speaker 1: Elk hunt where it was warm in the morning and

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Speaker 1: a snowstorm blew in. I wore it in the hike

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Speaker 1: in and I wore for sitting in glassing. Uh for elk.

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Speaker 1: So I mean it is a it's a durable piece.

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Speaker 1: It's a lot of duality. You can wear it pretty

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Speaker 1: much anytime you need insulation. So go check out the

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Speaker 1: Brookstown sweater first. Like dot com. Okay, here's episode eighty

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Speaker 1: four coming at you. Let's go. I guess I grew

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Speaker 1: up on an older road, a pedal to the medals.

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Speaker 1: I always did what I've told until I found out

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Speaker 1: that my brand new closed a game second hand from

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Speaker 1: the rich kids next door. And I grew up fast.

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Speaker 1: I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a

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Speaker 1: thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen,

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Speaker 1: and now I just wanted to a real bad dream

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Speaker 1: or being and like I'm coming a part of the seams.

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Speaker 1: But thank you, Jack Daniel. No, Hey, everybody, welcome to

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Speaker 1: episode eighty four. I'm been O'Brien. Say Hi, Phil, Hello Phil.

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Speaker 1: You're just mentioning that you're going through a bit of

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Speaker 1: a uh, attitude adjustment here recently. Yeah, well, I feel

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Speaker 1: like I have to stick up for myself, uh to

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Speaker 1: you and also the people, the THHD listeners who are

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Speaker 1: write again with frankly just rude names for a mustache

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Speaker 1: they haven't even seen yet. They haven't even it's looking better.

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Speaker 1: It's looking better, Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's here. He's

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Speaker 1: kind of like a Henry Beauregard must The main problem

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Speaker 1: is the color. Yes, not it's best for men or whatever. Hair.

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Speaker 1: Jael just one of those coman coloring dye. Next thing,

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Speaker 1: you know, you're Phil from the TV Doctor. Phil. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm I'm looking more. I'm more of a mustache man

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Speaker 1: than Ryan Callahan. Yep, I will define the mustache for

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Speaker 1: this company and the generation. The generation. Yeah, that's what

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Speaker 1: I strive for. So anyway, a lot of you guys

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Speaker 1: have wrote in with like name Phil's mustache and most

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Speaker 1: of them meat, and so we're fighting back. I'm on

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Speaker 1: Phil side. It's the first time for everything. I guess.

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Speaker 1: I'm on Phil side. Stop saying offensive names about his mustache,

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Speaker 1: even though a lot of them are pretty funny. Sure,

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Speaker 1: I guess anyway, mustache, what's what's a November? Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: coming up soon. So are you gonna keep it for that? No?

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Speaker 1: I think November one. It's it's gone. All right, We'll

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Speaker 1: get your touching it and then pulling at it. It's

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Speaker 1: a problem. We'll get your mustache names in now because

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Speaker 1: we're not having this anymore. Make them nice, polite mustache names.

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Speaker 1: Get bastards, all right. We got a lot, we got

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Speaker 1: some things to address here. But today's guests is Harry W.

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Speaker 1: Green Uh, a wonderful man, a professor for a very

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Speaker 1: long time, and a herpetologist. Phil, you know what herpetologist

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Speaker 1: is vaguely because I've been mixing the podcast, but I

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Speaker 1: would not be able to define for you right now,

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Speaker 1: let's define herpetologist someone who specialized in the study of

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Speaker 1: reptiles and amphibians but slithers around. Herpetologist is into it. Um.

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Speaker 1: But Harry, who we had a great conversation. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: keep this uh intro segments short because I want to

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Speaker 1: get pretty much directly to the conversation with Harry, because

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Speaker 1: I think it's one of the best his books, his

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Speaker 1: particularly his his book you'll hear about in the interview

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Speaker 1: is is one of the best I've ever read. I

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Speaker 1: would say, I mean, it's just as great as he

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Speaker 1: calls an eccentric meditation on the outdoors. Um, and it's great.

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Speaker 1: So you hear about that coming up. But um, we've

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Speaker 1: got a couple of things to cover off on from

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Speaker 1: previous podcasts and I we're gonna we'll get to it.

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Speaker 1: But snakes, fill Are you afraid of snakes? Phil? Uh? No,

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Speaker 1: not not particularly unless they're kind of exotic looking and

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Speaker 1: move quickly. Do you have any stories about snakes? We

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Speaker 1: had any close run ins or do you have? You

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Speaker 1: been fairly No, nothing dangerous. No, I've never come across

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Speaker 1: a rattlesnake in the wild but I used to cash

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Speaker 1: little garter snakes in my backyard, and um, you know,

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Speaker 1: they did the whole thing at school. He had a

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Speaker 1: like a wildlife assembly and you have to hold the

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Speaker 1: boat constrict and I was into that. So no, I

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Speaker 1: don't have like a physical horror like horrific reaction. Well

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Speaker 1: I don't either. I'm not into them. I don't want

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Speaker 1: them to be crawling around wherever I am, but I

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Speaker 1: don't hear them at all. Yeah, but it turns out

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Speaker 1: pheel As you know that fear snakes is one of

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Speaker 1: the most common phobias in all of humanity. I have

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Speaker 1: that tracks that makes sense. And you're gonna hear from

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Speaker 1: Harry Green why he thinks that's true. Well, a lot

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Speaker 1: of studies will we'll back this up, and it's just

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Speaker 1: because and again Harry goes into this in some detail,

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Speaker 1: but it's because we've been around them for so long. Um,

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Speaker 1: they were on the savannahs of Africa when we were

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Speaker 1: becoming if you believe in all of this, becoming lower

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Speaker 1: hominids and turning into humans that we are today. And

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Speaker 1: so there's just a lot of history with snakes. So

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Speaker 1: it's interesting to learn about him, say and they're just

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Speaker 1: interesting animals. They slither not like many other beings that

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Speaker 1: you'll run into, So they're just an interesting, interesting creature.

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Speaker 1: I think we're all interested in them. There's some people

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Speaker 1: are Annie Razor, who has been on this podcast before

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Speaker 1: talking about Game of Thrones, wouldn't even be in the

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Speaker 1: podcast room, wouldn't even be in the office if we

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Speaker 1: had a snake in here. No, she was. I honestly

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Speaker 1: couldn't believe her reaction when we just started talking about snakes.

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Speaker 1: She was like, Nope, I'm not I don't want to

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Speaker 1: hear the words snake. Stop it. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: think about snakes. She was like, And honestly, if you're

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Speaker 1: thinking about bringing a snake into this office, you should

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Speaker 1: really let people know so they have a chance to

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Speaker 1: not be here. And I think she was talking about herself.

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Speaker 1: So throughout evolutionary history, we have learned to fear snakes,

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Speaker 1: and it has manifested itself in different ways. Annie is

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Speaker 1: an extreme example. I couldn't even get her in the

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Speaker 1: podcast to talk about snakes. So that's that. So we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about that with UM with Harry W. Green

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Speaker 1: and just a moment. But we got a bunch of emails.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for everybody's been writing into th hc ats medator

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Speaker 1: dot com with both your not so sharp moments, your names,

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Speaker 1: fulfills mustache, and just your general musing is about the show.

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Speaker 1: There's been lots and lots and lots of good emails.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to keep up. So if I have an

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Speaker 1: emailed you're back, I'm sorry, but I will get to it. UM.

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Speaker 1: I'm just happy to see everybody with feelings one way

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Speaker 1: or the other about the show. UM. I got one

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Speaker 1: from Brandon Hill that I wanted to read. Um, that's

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Speaker 1: really really interesting. I won't read the whole thing, but

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Speaker 1: he basically just says you've mentioned many times about finding

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Speaker 1: common ground and striving to not upset each other. I

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Speaker 1: think the one thing you have in address is where

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Speaker 1: we draw the line. I get it. There's no reason

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Speaker 1: to intentionally rub our grip and grin picks and the

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Speaker 1: faces of anton hunters and vegans. We shouldn't go out

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Speaker 1: of our way to be assholes to those that are

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Speaker 1: offended by what we love to do. But what is

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Speaker 1: wrong with being proud of your accomplishments and wanting to

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Speaker 1: share with your family and friends When do we say

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Speaker 1: to our opposition, you know what enough is enough? This

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Speaker 1: is what I do, this is my lifestyle. I'm proud

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Speaker 1: and I don't give a ship about your hurt feelings.

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Speaker 1: You suggested we should always be opening and evaluate and

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Speaker 1: compromise our values. I disagree. There has been. There's become

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Speaker 1: a point we put our foot down and you'll know more.

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Speaker 1: Otherwise we will slowly be bullied into the end of

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Speaker 1: that which we hold. So dear, that's pretty well staged,

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Speaker 1: pretty well stated. There's kind of things I think that

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Speaker 1: goes back to the Grip and Grins conversation. It does

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Speaker 1: yesterday last week, I mean, and it goes to last

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Speaker 1: week's from your conversation. It goes to the Bearer conversation

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Speaker 1: with Barry Gilbert. It goes all the way back to

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Speaker 1: the going to uh Berkeley and talking to vegans and

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Speaker 1: animal rights activists. There's a couple of things that that

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Speaker 1: Brandon says that just aren't I think if you would

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Speaker 1: go back and listen to my comments that just I

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Speaker 1: think aren't um they don't track with my views. I

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Speaker 1: don't there and I've said this many many times. There's

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Speaker 1: some things that I will not I will not bend on.

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Speaker 1: There are some things I believe to be true, and

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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna bend on doing them, talking about them,

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Speaker 1: promoting them, whatever they might be. Um, certainly gun rights

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Speaker 1: is one of those things. I believe in the Second Amendment.

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Speaker 1: But it's not that I wouldn't have a conversation somebody

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Speaker 1: that doesn't believe in the Second a moment, and I'm

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Speaker 1: not going to tell them within that conversation. Hey, be quiet.

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Speaker 1: I don't agree with you. And so I think Brandon's Brandon.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for writing in Brandon, and and I appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: But I think what you're saying there is just I

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Speaker 1: just think it's wrong. I don't agree. And the reason

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Speaker 1: I don't agree is within the conversation. I can have

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Speaker 1: strongly held beliefs, but if I'm going to approach a

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Speaker 1: conversation by saying like enough is enough, I don't want

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Speaker 1: to talk to you about this, I don't care what

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Speaker 1: you think. Is basically what you're saying about. I don't

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Speaker 1: give a shit about your hurt feelings. Just basically I

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Speaker 1: don't care what you think. This is not the way

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Speaker 1: that I that I go about things. There are some

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Speaker 1: things that I'm not gonna move on. When I talk

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Speaker 1: to Barry Gilbert, I wouldn't be like, you know what,

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Speaker 1: the North American midle of conservation. Yeah, that's fine, it

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Speaker 1: might suck, but like I'll address the reality that it's

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Speaker 1: not perfect. But I'm not gonna budge on the fact

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Speaker 1: that I think it's a prescription for a better wild

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Speaker 1: life and better conservation in this country. And so I

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Speaker 1: don't mistake if you're out there listening, don't mistake me

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Speaker 1: for some kind of push over snowflake. I just don't

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Speaker 1: do that, because that's not the case. Um I am.

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Speaker 1: The willingness to have a conversation in the modern sense

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Speaker 1: does not mean that you're going to fold to every

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Speaker 1: push against your ideologist. It doesn't. But it means you're

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Speaker 1: open to new ideas. And being open to new ideas

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean you have to sacrifice the ones you believe in.

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Speaker 1: And so we can do both things at the same time,

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Speaker 1: and we should do both things at the same time.

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Speaker 1: So that if the question is where do I draw

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Speaker 1: the line, I don't have a line. I'll talk to

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Speaker 1: any want about anything at any time, and there's no

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Speaker 1: line that I have to draw about my beliefs Now,

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Speaker 1: like I said, there's certainly beliefs that I hold that

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Speaker 1: I think that would be almost impossible for somebody to

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Speaker 1: talk me off of, Like hunting is valuable for wild life,

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Speaker 1: for human kind and for all of us. It's gonna

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Speaker 1: be hard to get me off of that one. But

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Speaker 1: I certainly let somebody try. Um. And I'll certainly if

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Speaker 1: someone makes a good point, I'll certainly think about it.

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Speaker 1: And if I feel the need to adjust my ideologies

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Speaker 1: or my beliefs on something, and I will. And so

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Speaker 1: in this common the pushback on liberals to say that,

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Speaker 1: oh uh, you're a snowflake if you bend to what

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Speaker 1: somebody thinks. Yeah. Fine. I think that the outraging machine

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Speaker 1: in this country is a bit off the rails. I

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Speaker 1: think people are trained that they can get what they

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Speaker 1: want through outrage, and we are developing Internet mobs and

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Speaker 1: we're not really understanding how they've come together or what

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Speaker 1: they can do. I think we're babies when it comes

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Speaker 1: to social media in the Internet. Then we're learning. But

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Speaker 1: all of that is to say, I don't have a line.

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Speaker 1: Where do I draw the line? I really care. There's

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Speaker 1: no line, there's no there's no person that could sit

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Speaker 1: in this room that I wouldn't talk to. There just isn't. Um,

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Speaker 1: There's plenty of people that I can think of that

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Speaker 1: I could talk to, and then I know we probably

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Speaker 1: wouldn't come to any agreement, but I'd want to talk

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Speaker 1: to him anyway, because understanding the other side of an

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Speaker 1: issue is as important as your own beliefs, in my opinion,

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Speaker 1: So maybe that's maybe that puts me directly in the

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Speaker 1: cross airs of people that think, um, they should be

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Speaker 1: proud about their beliefs and shout them from the rooftops.

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Speaker 1: If I guess, if you listen to this, you know

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Speaker 1: that I do too. But that doesn't I don't sacrifice.

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Speaker 1: I don't sacrifice anything because of that within a conversation.

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Speaker 1: So that's what I believe. What do you think about

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Speaker 1: all that, philm That was a bit of a rant.

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Speaker 1: If I deserve a ranted, it's been a while ranted

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Speaker 1: in a while. Yeah, So I deserve a rant every

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Speaker 1: once in a while. It's your show. You deserve deserve

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Speaker 1: whatever you want. What do you feel like that you

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Speaker 1: feel like you're learning anything from sitting in here and

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Speaker 1: all these conversations. Yeah, I mean, I'm entrenched into a

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Speaker 1: bunch of stuff that I had never really thought about

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Speaker 1: before working here. So it's been that's why I appreciate you,

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Speaker 1: because you're just like coming from a fresh perspective and

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Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff. Which again that's another point

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Speaker 1: I'll make People with fresh perspectives that aren't in your

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Speaker 1: aren't in your bubble, they're not in your echo chamber,

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Speaker 1: are important. So and people with heartened perspectives are important

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Speaker 1: to have in your life. That that don't believe what

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Speaker 1: you believe. I have lots of friends and family members

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Speaker 1: that we do not believe the same things. We often

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Speaker 1: argue about fairly important things. And my grandfather always said,

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Speaker 1: don't bring sex, religion, or politics to the dinner table.

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Speaker 1: I don't believe in that. I believe we should be

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Speaker 1: able to have those constructive conversations about very important subjects

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Speaker 1: without getting all spun up about them. Anyway, that's that

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Speaker 1: I was gonna give a brief answer to that question,

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Speaker 1: but I give a long answer. So anyway, if you're

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Speaker 1: listening to this and you and you just feel like

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Speaker 1: I need to push back on some of these folks

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Speaker 1: more or that take harder stances on subjects here there,

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Speaker 1: I mean I'm certainly going to be firm and the

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Speaker 1: things I know to be true, but I'm also looking

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Speaker 1: to be proven wrong at some level. I'm looking to

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Speaker 1: test my ideas and make sure they're strong enough to

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Speaker 1: last any battle, to last any debate, to last any argument.

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Speaker 1: Because if my ideas aren't good enough to last in

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Speaker 1: any conversation, then they're not good enough overall. So that's

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Speaker 1: the way I think about it. Hopefully this show reflects

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Speaker 1: that Um and Brandon's Brandon's comments weren't challenging to me,

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Speaker 1: but that it was a challenging question something I thought

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Speaker 1: about after I read it. Um, And so I'm not

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Speaker 1: gonna be bullied by anybody out of my beliefs. But

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean I'm gonna push them away if they

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Speaker 1: start to bully me. Um. So we'll see. We're going

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Speaker 1: to continue still to get some challenging people in this

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Speaker 1: room talking about crazy stuff and see where it goes. Um,

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Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna move on. I think, Philler, am

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Speaker 1: I gonna keep going. I think we should move on.

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Speaker 1: You get more to say. I thought you laid it

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Speaker 1: all out there. Though I laid it out. Here's another

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Speaker 1: message I got from Jesse. He said, I got a

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Speaker 1: real dilemma. I think you folks had help me with.

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Speaker 1: Here's the deal. I fella at my work died recently,

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Speaker 1: and his memorial services on rifle opener for elk. My

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Speaker 1: freezer is getting pretty low, and I've got plans to

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Speaker 1: be out at first light on opening day to replenish

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Speaker 1: my supply of elk meat. I wasn't particularly close with

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Speaker 1: the guy, but I did help him move a while

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Speaker 1: back and met his family a time or two. Can't

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Speaker 1: decide if I'd be an asshole for not going to

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Speaker 1: the funeral. I'm a student, so I've really only got

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Speaker 1: a few weekends to hunt, and even then my time

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Speaker 1: is limited. What do you think? It's really been weighing

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Speaker 1: on me, and I'm worried about what others, what others

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Speaker 1: around my shop will do if I don't go. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for the great podcast. Blah blah blah. This is a Phil. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're asking Dr Phil my opinion first. I'll give mine first.

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Speaker 1: I'll let you off fok on that one. Okay, a

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Speaker 1: guy died, man, thank you, that's my opinion. He's dead,

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Speaker 1: he's the man's got a family. He's got a family. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would say it would be that'd be a tough

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Speaker 1: look for you if you did not go to this memorial.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I get it, your hedge and you're like,

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Speaker 1: I only knew him a couple of times, but he's dead,

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Speaker 1: and he was a person yesterday dead, worked with him move.

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Speaker 1: That's close enough, like friends circle wise helping someone move.

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Speaker 1: Phil's never helped me move. No, never helped him. I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't if you. Yeah, I said, hey, Phil, well help me. No, No,

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Speaker 1: but you'd come to my funeral? I bet I think so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so yeah, man, I hope the funeral prior already

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Speaker 1: happened by the time you'll hear this, But I hope

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Speaker 1: you went, Jesse, And if you didn't, real guilty right now, Folding.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things where if you if you

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Speaker 1: have to ask yourself the question, you already know the answer.

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Speaker 1: You just yeah, you just don't want to already know

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Speaker 1: the don't want to hear someone else. We've all had

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Speaker 1: like a long distant aunt that died and you just don't.

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Speaker 1: You go to the funeral, but you don't go for

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Speaker 1: the ant. You go for the people that you know

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Speaker 1: who knew the aunt. So like just go and be

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Speaker 1: happy about it. And if you need to borrow some

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Speaker 1: meat from a friend, you'll probably find a friend. And

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Speaker 1: if that friend dies, goes his funeral, to go to

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Speaker 1: people's funerals, and then during the service you can sneak

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Speaker 1: over to his house and take his meat at Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he doesn't need anymore. Yeah, feels getting feels going dark, spicy,

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Speaker 1: it's getting spicy, it's going full heel on us if

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Speaker 1: you know what that like? Bill his character turn anyway,

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Speaker 1: go to the funeral, Jesse for for goodness sakes, man,

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Speaker 1: I love hunting and I love wild meats. That's all

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Speaker 1: I talk about. But um, if if a co worker died,

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Speaker 1: anyone here, immediate or I would go to the funeral

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Speaker 1: pretty much every time, even if it wasn't somebody that

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Speaker 1: I was super close with. So you know, I'll be

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Speaker 1: there for you, Phil, the worst happen, the worst happen,

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Speaker 1: they'll be there. You probably be standing, you know, on

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Speaker 1: the sidelines, thinking about all the hunting you could of course, dude,

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Speaker 1: I might be watching I might be watching hunting videos

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Speaker 1: on my phone at your funeral, yes, Or I might

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Speaker 1: be looking at onyx maps trying to figure out by

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Speaker 1: the best, the quicker route in because I don't have

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Speaker 1: as much time that that would make it even more special,

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Speaker 1: knowing how badly you didn't want to be there but

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Speaker 1: you were. Anyway, I might go hunting in the morning,

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Speaker 1: because people do. People have funerals in the morning. It's

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Speaker 1: usually I'd say around lunch. It's lunch, So I might

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Speaker 1: find a spot and I might go hunting in the morning.

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Speaker 1: And then if I kill an Elk, I wouldn't come. Wait, no,

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Speaker 1: I would still come. You just yelled at the guy.

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Speaker 1: If I killed Elk, I would market. I would market

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Speaker 1: and it was away point. And then quickly go to

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Speaker 1: the funeral and wash the blood. I probably watched the

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Speaker 1: blood off. Quickly go to the funeral and then come back. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think how bad you would feel if you went

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Speaker 1: out and you didn't get anything and you missed this

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Speaker 1: guy's funeral for enough. What if what if you missed

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Speaker 1: a giant bull like a hundred of yards and then

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Speaker 1: that was the guy looking down at You're saying karma, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I should have went to my funeral. Now you're feeling

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Speaker 1: poorly on many multiple levels. Anyway, go to the service.

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Speaker 1: Go to the service, please, Lord, go to the service.

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Speaker 1: Man's gotta draw a line. Phil. You know what I'm

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Speaker 1: saying now, this is where I draw the line. Man's

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Speaker 1: gotta draw the line. All right, Well, we're gonna get

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Speaker 1: into uh something you you all really love. We got

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Speaker 1: a lot of a lot a lot, a lot a

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Speaker 1: lot not so sharp moments, Phil, A lot of them, um,

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Speaker 1: hundreds of them in fact. So it's been hard for

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Speaker 1: me to sift through them. But they've all been very entertaining,

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Speaker 1: and we um we have a bit of an issue

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Speaker 1: to discuss around last week's not so sharp moment presented

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Speaker 1: by work sharp. There's a song. Are you aware of this, Phil?

413
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Speaker 1: A song by fella named cord Lund called My Truck

414
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Speaker 1: Got Stuck. Nope, I was not aware. It is basically,

415
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Speaker 1: if you listen to it. Several people sent this to me.

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Speaker 1: It is if you listen to it, it is basically

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Speaker 1: the story that we read last week. So what are

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Speaker 1: you implying here? I'm not implying anything. Many people implied

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Speaker 1: it to me that we got duped. Oh okay, well

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Speaker 1: here's see. I would I would tend to kind of

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Speaker 1: be like my my, my eyebrows would be raised. But

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00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:58,360
Speaker 1: I did go to Elliott's Instagram, and I went all

423
00:22:58,359 --> 00:23:01,240
Speaker 1: the way back and he did. I mean, he didn't

424
00:23:01,240 --> 00:23:04,919
Speaker 1: post any photographic evidence of the trucks, but there is

425
00:23:05,320 --> 00:23:09,280
Speaker 1: evidence of this, like if this event actually happening, um

426
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:12,879
Speaker 1: on his Instagram. He talked about it before, like months

427
00:23:13,080 --> 00:23:16,360
Speaker 1: before he ever rode into th HC. So I don't

428
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:18,199
Speaker 1: think I don't I don't think he would make up

429
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:21,280
Speaker 1: the story. I trust Elliott. I'm not. I defended Elliott

430
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:23,720
Speaker 1: and all the correspondent stuff. Okay, Good said, Elliott is

431
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:34,000
Speaker 1: a stand up in divid here's the song. It's a

432
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:40,440
Speaker 1: nice tune. I like it so far. Brown Prairie that

433
00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:46,440
Speaker 1: had been for so long was very uney, very muny.

434
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:58,000
Speaker 1: Maybe it just inspired him in his pros. Sure, yes, um, anyway,

435
00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 1: we're on to you Elliott. Yeah. Well he's in good company.

436
00:24:02,320 --> 00:24:05,479
Speaker 1: Then he's not alone. Other people have had not so

437
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:08,640
Speaker 1: sharp moments. Yeah, that's true. No, I think I think

438
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 1: it's just a common thing that happens to you in Canada.

439
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:14,600
Speaker 1: Did trucks get stuck? All the trucks get stuck in Canada? Yeah,

440
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:16,639
Speaker 1: if you if you were to fly over in a

441
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: helicopter and airplane, it's just a graveyard of trucks. Trucks everywhere, everywhere,

442
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:24,680
Speaker 1: there's ones. There's one front endloader just going around endlessly.

443
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 1: The same guy, same thing, doing it for hundreds of years.

444
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:31,119
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm on the side of Elliot here. I

445
00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:33,080
Speaker 1: don't think he embellished that at all. I think it

446
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:35,119
Speaker 1: was completely true because he stopped in the middle of

447
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: the story to say it's true. It's very true. But

448
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 1: I know this sounds crazy, but it's true. But it's true.

449
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:43,440
Speaker 1: All right, Well, hit the jingle fill. We're up for

450
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:46,639
Speaker 1: the next not so sharp moment. Work sharp, not so

451
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: sharp moment, so you don't have Okay, this one some

452
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 1: Cody Gardner says, a long time THHD listener cool appreciated Cody.

453
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:02,400
Speaker 1: He's got a not so sharp moment. We will begin.

454
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:07,440
Speaker 1: When I was a child, I saw a movie where

455
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:11,160
Speaker 1: a kid owned a raccoon as a pet. M See

456
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,480
Speaker 1: where this one's going, PHILM this Poconhontas. I don't know.

457
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 1: He doesn't mention the movie. Okay, I can't think of

458
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:19,520
Speaker 1: any other movie that's a good that's a good pool,

459
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:21,400
Speaker 1: nice pool. I don't even think of any of those

460
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:25,119
Speaker 1: types of movies. This inspired a dream of owning my

461
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: own raccoon. How do you say raccoon? You say raccoon

462
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:31,639
Speaker 1: or raccoon. I say raccoon. Hit me too, I was

463
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:34,200
Speaker 1: trying to sauce it up there, and I said raccoon, raccoon.

464
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:37,960
Speaker 1: One day I asked a neighboring farmer for permission to

465
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:41,399
Speaker 1: go snag car up in an irrigation pond. I received

466
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:44,160
Speaker 1: permission to fish, but it came with a warning that

467
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:47,720
Speaker 1: at said pond there was a defensive raccoon that may

468
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:50,639
Speaker 1: have babies, and a stack of pipe next to the pond.

469
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: This I like. I like this already, and it's like

470
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:59,120
Speaker 1: a dragon tower. This this was my chance to fulfill

471
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:03,199
Speaker 1: my dream. I proceeded to investigate the suspect pipe. To

472
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: my delight, saw staring back from one of the pipes

473
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,920
Speaker 1: a small set of eyes. I reeled my hook into

474
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:13,719
Speaker 1: the end of the pipe and thrust my pole Jesus

475
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: and I gave it a twirl, and I and eagerly

476
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:25,959
Speaker 1: pulled my new best friend's tail first to the end

477
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:29,200
Speaker 1: of the pipe. At this moment, I was given the

478
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: opportunity to make a better decision, but failed in the

479
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 1: most epic fashion. The tail didn't look like I was expecting,

480
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 1: so I decided to straddle the pipe, grab the tail

481
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: with both hands, and lean over for closer inspection. The

482
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:46,960
Speaker 1: last thing I remember, as I focused into the darkness,

483
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:52,159
Speaker 1: straining my eyes and mouth a gape is the is

484
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:56,439
Speaker 1: the sight that wrenched dirty little cheerio puckered and eyes

485
00:26:56,480 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: that were poised at fire. What happened next still inspires nightmares.

486
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:04,120
Speaker 1: I was hit with a direct shot in the open mouth,

487
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:06,160
Speaker 1: up the nose, and in both eyes with the most

488
00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 1: vile substance in all of nature, skunk spray. See there's

489
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 1: a twist. Even that's good stuff. I gased in shock,

490
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: filling both lungs to capacity with a half atomized, blasting

491
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: steam of pure liquid terror, which sent me immediately wretching

492
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: to the ground, writhing in pain and feeling as though

493
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:30,959
Speaker 1: I had been galls in both eyes with a glowing

494
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,119
Speaker 1: red fire poker. I could not see at all, and

495
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:35,680
Speaker 1: when was unable to open my eyes and take a

496
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:39,679
Speaker 1: full breath, profuse vomiting quickly overtook me, and I truly

497
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:41,919
Speaker 1: feared for my life as I lay flailing in a

498
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,240
Speaker 1: mate of goat heads, wondering as a terrified child with

499
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: little life experience, which failed attempt at breathing would be

500
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: my last. A friend I had taken to fish with

501
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: me grabbed me by my ankle and drugged me. Kicking

502
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: and screaming between heaves through the mess of gold heads,

503
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 1: my own body explosions went into the pond. He then

504
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:06,880
Speaker 1: proceeded what he referred to as help, but I would

505
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:12,159
Speaker 1: call it more like waterboarding. At this point, I was

506
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:15,919
Speaker 1: consistently sucking pond water with every plunge, and spewing my

507
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: insides out every time I was jerked back to the

508
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 1: surface by the fistful of hair he so persistently held.

509
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 1: He probably would have preferred a dragon. I was again

510
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: in legitimate fear of the end. I made it home eventually,

511
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: and in a fitting end of the story. As I

512
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: entered my home, still shaken by the near death experience,

513
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: the first words of a compassion I heard from my

514
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 1: father was a stern command to get out. I lived

515
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: outside for a week until theycame fit to be in

516
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: the presence of others. But the shame, embarrassment, chilling memory

517
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: of this story still linger to this day. Yes, that

518
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 1: was that was a good one. Again, like the jingle

519
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: Phil not so sharp poem. So you don't have thanks

520
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: work sharp We're gonna Cody, We're gonna send you. We

521
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: should send you like a couple of cans of tomato

522
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: sauce or something. Yeah, can of a breeze for breeze,

523
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 1: but we're going to send you a work sharp field

524
00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: sharpener instead. Hopefully that makes it this, this gruesome childhood

525
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:25,719
Speaker 1: memory all the better. Thanks for writing in, everybody. Continue

526
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:27,720
Speaker 1: to write in at th HC at the media dot com.

527
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: Try to top Cody story. Hopefully there's not a song

528
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: about skunk spray somewhere that I don't know about. I'm

529
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: assuming there isn't. We're watching you, Cody, but we're watching

530
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:38,040
Speaker 1: you people. Plagiarism is not good. You got a drawline

531
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: somewhere now. Mr Harry W. Green, color State University, enjoy

532
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: I guess I grew up on all the road. Harry,

533
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: how's it going. Nice to meet you too, Thanks for

534
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: having me here at I'm getting some days avou going

535
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: back to college. A little late to our meeting, so

536
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: I felt like I was late to class across campus

537
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, I didn't know where I was. Much

538
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: like college. I was lost, and then I had to

539
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 1: find the building, So it really felt like I was

540
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 1: back back to my collegian days. Um. So we're here

541
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: at Colorado State University, and um, I always like to

542
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 1: have guests like describe their surroundings, but you know, we're

543
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 1: in your office. Um, but kind of just described how

544
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: you came to be at Colorado State because it's a

545
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: that's a long story, but the shorter version after your retirement. Right.

546
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 1: So I've been retired about two and a half years.

547
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: I'm married to another biologist. She mainly studies frogs and

548
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 1: the fungi they're killing frogs. I mainly study snakes. She's

549
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:44,959
Speaker 1: not retired yet and she has some close collaborators here

550
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: at Colorado State. So when she got our sabbatical leave,

551
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: that's where we decided to come. Yeah, so you were

552
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:55,960
Speaker 1: previously we were talking to your previously uh, East coast

553
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 1: dweller as I was and new to the West. Yeah,

554
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 1: although I grew up mostly in Texas and then I

555
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: worked in Berkeley for twenty years, So I really think

556
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: of myself as a Westerner, and uh, I think of

557
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: Texas as my home. Really, you just have to have

558
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 1: a good job, and she has a good job in

559
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: upstate New York. So, so you're telling me about an

560
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: elk hunt you got coming up to. Yeah, we're being guided.

561
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 1: We're gonna be taken up into the high country in

562
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 1: northwestern Colorado this Friday for about we don't know, probably

563
00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 1: five to seven days. That's beautiful. Yeah, friends, family, your

564
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 1: wife's coming along. You told me she's as much a

565
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 1: hunter as I am. So yeah, that's awesome. Um, I

566
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 1: guess we should should let people know. It struck me

567
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: that I hadn't heard I hadn't often heard the term

568
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: her patologist before reading some of your books and looking

569
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: at some of your works. So can you explain explain

570
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: what her patologist is her patologists as a person who

571
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: studies amphibians and reptiles. That's that's the shortest possible answer.

572
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: So there are lots of things about the biology of

573
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 1: amphippies and reptiles. One might study how they eat, how

574
00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 1: they how they reproduce, where they're found, whether the threats

575
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: to their persisted and sin in human dominated landscapes. Those

576
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: are all parts of herpetology, and most herpetologists also have

577
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:09,800
Speaker 1: some more general specially so like I'm an ecologist and

578
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:13,680
Speaker 1: revolutionary biologist, I mostly study behavior. Got and you've done

579
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: some interesting studies of of reptile behavior, specifically snakes that

580
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:19,239
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. But I was reading your

581
00:32:19,280 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: book Tracks and Shadows Field Biology is art and it

582
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 1: is Uh, it's striking, thank you it is. It's beautifully written. It. Um.

583
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:31,320
Speaker 1: I will say I'm like three chords of the way

584
00:32:31,360 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: through it, but from the very first chapter I was

585
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Yes, you goat. I mean, I

586
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: feel like when you're reading something like that. I read

587
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 1: a lot of like how to Loopold and some of

588
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:46,640
Speaker 1: your what you called eccentric meditations on the kind of

589
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: the natural world reminded me of of Liopold or somebody

590
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:56,240
Speaker 1: kind of with that kind of profundity, with with your experience. Um,

591
00:32:56,280 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 1: and so we should touch on that. But you start

592
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:03,480
Speaker 1: starting that book and the opening paragraphs talking about when

593
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: you first became interested in the natural world as a

594
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 1: kid wanted like a ranch in Texas, And there's some

595
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 1: lines in there you talk about kind of being just

596
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: intrigued and asking questions and give people an idea of

597
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 1: that time in your life, like when you're asking why

598
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: does that where are the ears on that turtle? Where?

599
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 1: Those types of things. Yeah, well it's actually a farm.

600
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: My mom grew up in uh fairly extreme poverty in

601
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: East Texas, outside a tiny town about two hours drive

602
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 1: east of Dallas. Her father was a World War One veteran.

603
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: They had six acres that that Lola, his new teenage bride,

604
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: had been given by her parents, and they had a

605
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: They had a plow horse, a jersey cow for milk,

606
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: a flock of chickens. They raised one pig a year.

607
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: There's no no electricity, no running water, raise one pig

608
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: a year, which you could only butcher in the winter

609
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: because there was no refrigeration, so they had to wait

610
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 1: for a really cold day. And and my little brother

611
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: and I by then, my mom had had moved off

612
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: married my dad, who was an Air Force officer, so

613
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 1: we traveled a lot, but we always came back to

614
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:07,920
Speaker 1: grandpa's farm whenever we could. And so my little brother

615
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: and I, as kids, didn't didn't didn't detect the poverty

616
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:15,880
Speaker 1: aspects of it, you know. We we just detected that

617
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: they lived close to the earth, and we watched what

618
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:22,959
Speaker 1: that meant. We watched. We knew where butter came from

619
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:26,720
Speaker 1: because my grandmother sat in the kitchen with a churn

620
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:30,359
Speaker 1: and a bag of of milk a cream, you know,

621
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: banging that poll up and down in that little ceramic churn,

622
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: making butter. And we we knew that poultry died for

623
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 1: us to eat them for dinner, because we watched my

624
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:45,359
Speaker 1: grandmother butcher the chickens. And one year we watched him

625
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:47,759
Speaker 1: butcher a pig. And we knew where milk came from

626
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: because Grandpa tried to teach us how to milk the cow.

627
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:54,799
Speaker 1: So we I grew up with that, And from my

628
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: earliest memories, I was always curious, you know. And and

629
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the book, you know, once finding a

630
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 1: box turtle and asking my mom where it's ears, you know, uh,

631
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:07,920
Speaker 1: looking at a pig being butchered, and already knowing what

632
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 1: an intestine was, and seeing that's an intestine, you know.

633
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,720
Speaker 1: So so I grew up with interest in natural history

634
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: and in kinds of animals. My my first taxonomic works

635
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,359
Speaker 1: were about, you know, how to tell jerseys from Holstein's,

636
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: from from angus and so forth. You know. Yeah, I mean,

637
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:26,360
Speaker 1: it just feels when I was reading that, it is

638
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:30,680
Speaker 1: it feels like there's certain kinds of upbrings that foster

639
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,919
Speaker 1: staff feeling right, that fostered that closeness, like you're saying,

640
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: to the closest to the dirt, to the natural world. Uh,

641
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:40,839
Speaker 1: you'd know, I would have. I would guess from reading

642
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 1: your book that that's kind of what led you down

643
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:44,600
Speaker 1: the path that you're on, that you've been on for

644
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 1: the last five six decades. Is there any Do you

645
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:50,560
Speaker 1: have any other moments or stories you can tell people

646
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: that kind of illustrate how you became to be so,

647
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: I mean, you spent your life traveling the world looking

648
00:35:57,560 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 1: for crazy reptiles and predators and things like that. You

649
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: have amazing stories of of pulling pythons by the tail

650
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: and jaguars and co streak and things like that. Then

651
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: that I found interesting. All of that came from somewhere. Yeah,

652
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 1: And and to some extent I don't even know the answer.

653
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:16,400
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a sort of love at first

654
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: sight thing. My parents weren't what would be called naturalists today.

655
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: In fact, at this point in my life, I'm really

656
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 1: reflecting back on the fact that my mother wanted to

657
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:29,799
Speaker 1: escape that poverty which I idolized as a little boy.

658
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 1: I once asked my mother, Mom, why didn't you marry

659
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:35,320
Speaker 1: somebody like Grandpa so we could live on a farm.

660
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:37,759
Speaker 1: And you know, my mother, I only late in her

661
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,239
Speaker 1: life sort of realized how desperately she worked to get

662
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,400
Speaker 1: out of that scene. So here, here, I was idolizing

663
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 1: something that you know, it wasn't idolizeable to her, but

664
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:50,200
Speaker 1: it it did put me around animals that it got

665
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 1: me to watching animals, and I loved it from the start.

666
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 1: And I'll say this from my parents. Their reaction was

667
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: to buy me books. So I had my first reptile

668
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:00,919
Speaker 1: book when I was seven years old, and so there

669
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 1: it was. You know, what I didn't have was any

670
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,880
Speaker 1: any inkling. There was a career until I was thirteen

671
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: years old. My father was stationed for one year near Norman, Oklahoma,

672
00:37:12,719 --> 00:37:14,800
Speaker 1: and he was taking classes at the University of Oklahoma.

673
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 1: He came home one night he said, son, I met

674
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 1: this I met this professor of zoology and he studies

675
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:21,880
Speaker 1: lizards and he wants to talk to you. So the

676
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: next day I wrote my little three speed at that time,

677
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: bicycle Down. I met this guy, Charles Carpenter, and I

678
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: came home that night and I said, boy, I'm going

679
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 1: to be a university professor. They get to keep lizards.

680
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 1: Because because when I walked in his office. You know,

681
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:36,720
Speaker 1: the thing that impressed me was he had these live lizard.

682
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 1: He had a live possum living in a cage gender

683
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: his desk, and I thought, what could be better than

684
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 1: living the tream? You got your Yeah, that's right, and

685
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:46,320
Speaker 1: he got paid, you know, And so that that was

686
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 1: what showed me there was a career path for me,

687
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: and that there's other transformative part in your life. We'll

688
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 1: hustle through this so we can get to all, like

689
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 1: we got a lot to cover. Um another point in

690
00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 1: life where you talk about being an ambulance driver and

691
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:05,400
Speaker 1: and being like an assistant mortician, all of these. I

692
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 1: will say that all of these reflections that you make

693
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:11,719
Speaker 1: in your book kind of all lead to somewhere that

694
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:15,759
Speaker 1: kind of the year hypothesis about the natural world and

695
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: conservation things like that. So I think, just so folks listening,

696
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,560
Speaker 1: but we get there. I'm kind of excited to get there.

697
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: So we're gonna work through this. But you talk about

698
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: how seeing you know, crying infants, like how seeing people

699
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:35,400
Speaker 1: die changed you at that early age, like it impacts

700
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,360
Speaker 1: you still today. You kind of describe that time in

701
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: your life for folks, Yeah, it happened accidentally. I was

702
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: such a nerd in high school. I published three signs

703
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: papers before I graduated from high school, but I didn't

704
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: hadn't had a date. And then I went off to

705
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: college and I was like, whoa, there's a whole new

706
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 1: world out here, you know, And so I that's why

707
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 1: at the end of my junior year in college I

708
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: had accumulatude one point eight nine g p A. That's

709
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:02,720
Speaker 1: a D plus average for three years of college. Because

710
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: I was having a really good time and my father

711
00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:08,120
Speaker 1: wasn't giving me a big enough allowance to have as

712
00:39:08,160 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 1: good a time as I wanted to have. So I

713
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 1: found out there was this job at the Locals tiny

714
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 1: town funeral home and it paid sixty dollars a month,

715
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: plus you got your room free. So I'd had a

716
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:21,359
Speaker 1: boy scout first aid class. I went down. Guy asked

717
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:22,759
Speaker 1: me if I had if I had a black tie

718
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,399
Speaker 1: in a white shirt, and I said yeah, and he goes,

719
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: be back here at one o'clock. You're hired. And the

720
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:30,399
Speaker 1: next thing I knew, I was loading a body off

721
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: out of a hospital bid onto onto a gurney. And

722
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:36,919
Speaker 1: for the long story short, for the next three years

723
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:39,440
Speaker 1: or so, first in this tiny Texas town and then

724
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:42,040
Speaker 1: in Fort Worth for a big ambulance company. I was

725
00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: an ambulance driver and ambulance met it before they were

726
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:47,919
Speaker 1: called E M T s. And this resulted in many, many,

727
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: many encounters with violence and with illness, with tragic deaths, uh,

728
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 1: all of which I sort of almost always took in stride,

729
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:02,320
Speaker 1: because I was brought up to just take things in stride.

730
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: You know. There were there were a couple of events,

731
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 1: and it's that that got me, but but mostly I

732
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:10,319
Speaker 1: just took it and stride. And when I look back

733
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: on it now decades later, I think two things that

734
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 1: did for me was impressed me with how how precious

735
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 1: life is and how permanent death is. And the other

736
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: thing was that this is in the late sixties. We

737
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:27,719
Speaker 1: we couldn't do much in the ambulance. I was later

738
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 1: in army medic, and I could do a lot more

739
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 1: things as a trained army medic that I could do

740
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 1: as a civilian ambulance driver. So I'm afraid we probably

741
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 1: made mistakes. Sometimes at the very least, we probably failed

742
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: to do things that might have saved a few people.

743
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: And that's haunting. But as a conservation by all just today.

744
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 1: I often think about that because I think the dilemma

745
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: facing conservation biologists and people in general in terms of

746
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: saving some some section of biodiversity, it's kind of like

747
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,839
Speaker 1: that we don't know everything we'd like to know, and

748
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: so the easy way out would be to take no

749
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:07,520
Speaker 1: risks because then you won't get criticized. I mean, I

750
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:10,919
Speaker 1: think our our our descendants may criticize us, why did

751
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: why did you let elephants go extinct on a global

752
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: basis on your watch? So we might have great grandchildren

753
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: who will look back and wonder why that. Yeah, they

754
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: all wonder why you in terms of because we're both

755
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:26,319
Speaker 1: conservationists at some level. I know we are, so they

756
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 1: might look back then, but right now not taking risk

757
00:41:29,080 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: because it's sort of the easy way out. Your your

758
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:34,239
Speaker 1: peers won't jump on you because you proposed a kind

759
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 1: of a crazy thing like place to scene rewilding in

760
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: the possibility of putting surrogate mammoths back in North America,

761
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 1: you know, And I often think that that that. I

762
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:44,719
Speaker 1: think that the lemma for conservationist is sort of like

763
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 1: the dilemma for an ambulance medic is you know you

764
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:50,399
Speaker 1: don't have you're not in in the r You don't

765
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:52,600
Speaker 1: have everything you wish you had. You don't know how

766
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:55,600
Speaker 1: to do certain procedures, you don't actually know what's going on.

767
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: You know. I once picked up a guy and the

768
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: only wound was a blood us caliber hole in his chest,

769
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:05,279
Speaker 1: who was sitting on accouch talking to me while his

770
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:07,799
Speaker 1: wife sat next to him. And he said, well, and

771
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:10,120
Speaker 1: the cops were interviewing him, and he said, well, the

772
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 1: wife and I here were arguing and she accidentally shot me.

773
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 1: And so I put him on the gurney and I

774
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:20,720
Speaker 1: emphasized there's no blood, it's a twenty two caliber slightly

775
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: bluish hole, is just blue skin. And the guy dies

776
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:27,440
Speaker 1: as we unload him at the hospital. So there might

777
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:30,240
Speaker 1: have been things that somebody with more advanced equipment training

778
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:33,040
Speaker 1: could have done. I didn't have that, you know, And

779
00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 1: I think conservation bio is kind of like that, you know. Yeah,

780
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: when I read that, it struck me like, man, you know,

781
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 1: we're all twenty year old aimulist drivers. We are, you

782
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:44,439
Speaker 1: are and so, and you have all these different views

783
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 1: about that that Ultimately we were talking earlier about values.

784
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,600
Speaker 1: You know, uh, what if it turns out that in

785
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 1: order to save the Channel Island gray fox, which is

786
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:59,240
Speaker 1: really cool and it's just an incredible animal. You know. Well,

787
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:03,760
Speaker 1: it turns out in vacy bald eagles were we're eating

788
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 1: the foxes. Why were they there? Because they were subsidized

789
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: by the feral pigs on the island, you know. So

790
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 1: there's a very complex ecological story. And if your values

791
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 1: are such that you think that that little uniquely evolved

792
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 1: dwarf Tamish Island gray fox that we're saving, you got

793
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:23,840
Speaker 1: to get rid of the eagles and the pigs. And

794
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:26,359
Speaker 1: how do you choose right? And with what? With what

795
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:29,400
Speaker 1: tools can you make that choice right? And it was

796
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 1: very acrimonious. And then what if you screw up? Boy,

797
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 1: if you screw up, you're gonna be on the nightly news.

798
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 1: You'll get a lot of money morning quarterbacking on on. So, Yeah,

799
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: for every celebration, like for every subbing, should we save

800
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 1: with the gray fox? Look at all the foxes? What

801
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 1: like what dirty business did you have to do to

802
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:49,919
Speaker 1: get there? Yeah, something like that. So I would say,

803
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 1: in a way when I look back on those on

804
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 1: that period of my life which is now decades ago,

805
00:43:55,600 --> 00:44:01,399
Speaker 1: it's the grittiness, the uncertainty, the need to in my view,

806
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 1: go ahead and act anyway, do the best you can,

807
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 1: say what you can say, say what you can say,

808
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: do the best you can what you got. I hope

809
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,680
Speaker 1: that you don't suffer too much for mistakes. Yeah, And

810
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,399
Speaker 1: I found it in reading your writing that that that's

811
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: what struck me, is like that at some point in

812
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:19,759
Speaker 1: my life, I live long enough and I've done enough,

813
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 1: I'll be able to meditate on the natural world in

814
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:23,920
Speaker 1: the way that you have, in the way that it's

815
00:44:23,920 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: been informed by all the moments in your life, and

816
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: in this case, moments that didn't really have much to

817
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:34,240
Speaker 1: do with the natural world. They didn't seem to anyway,

818
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 1: they didn't seem to, right, So like all this stuff

819
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 1: being intertwined is is interesting me. You You had a

820
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:42,759
Speaker 1: quote in the beginning of your book to um, I'm

821
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:44,720
Speaker 1: gonna give people out of beginning of the book stuff,

822
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:47,680
Speaker 1: so I'll have to go and get it and read it. Um,

823
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:51,719
Speaker 1: A journalist Bayard Taylor. Yeah, this is is a real

824
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:54,319
Speaker 1: good one. He liked nature to a princess fallen into

825
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:57,480
Speaker 1: the hands of robbers who cut off her fingers for

826
00:44:57,520 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: the sake of the jewels. She wears. Isn't that incredible?

827
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: I'm like, the that's incredible, incredible quote. It is, isn't it?

828
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: And I heard that, uh at a dinner for University

829
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:10,760
Speaker 1: California Press authors. So my my first book was about

830
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: snakes and it was published by them. And I was

831
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: at a dinner for authors and this famous historian of

832
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:18,439
Speaker 1: California history was given the banquet talk and he read

833
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 1: that quote and it just electrified me. I mean, I

834
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 1: was like a pencil the napkin, you know, and I

835
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 1: wrote it down then later burrowed into I actually found

836
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 1: copies of Buyer Taylor's books to buy, and I because

837
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 1: I wanted to read it in the original, you know,

838
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: I think that's incredible, incredible, It's incredible. And when he

839
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: first read it, it it strikes you as kind of like

840
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 1: an environmentalist metaphor, but it's it's I think it's deeper

841
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:44,640
Speaker 1: than that. I do too, and and that's that's why

842
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 1: I used it early in my book, because there is

843
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 1: a threat of violence that runs through my own life,

844
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: and I think we I think it inevitably runs through life,

845
00:45:56,080 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: and I think modern humans, especially in some ultras, go

846
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: to great links to deny that, to hide from it.

847
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,720
Speaker 1: That's one response to it. I I'm not putting that down.

848
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I've seen some violence i'd like to

849
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: hide from. Yeah, but I'd like to have not seen.

850
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 1: So I sort of get that. But in the end,

851
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 1: I think it may not service well in terms of conservation.

852
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: I would agree. And I think we've in the moderns

853
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: and the more modern like social media sense they have

854
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 1: there's a there's a this is a weird thing to

855
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 1: bring in a conversation, but there's a page on Instagram

856
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:32,799
Speaker 1: called Nature's Metal, and Nature's Metal is just some of

857
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:36,680
Speaker 1: the craziest, most carnal things you'd ever predator, you know, predators,

858
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:39,800
Speaker 1: ripping faces off, zebras. It's just like it's an expression

859
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: that nature is crazy and scary and brutal and death

860
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: defines it. And that's just just what it is. And

861
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: I think that is like a spasmatic, you know, response

862
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: to people whitewashing nature and then you know the like

863
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:58,879
Speaker 1: anthromomorphizing animals and like, so we've had this that thing

864
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 1: is being recognized within our culture, and we're pushing back

865
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:05,240
Speaker 1: on it in certain ways, trying to make sure people

866
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 1: are aware that in't you know, in Africa. Photos fars

867
00:47:10,600 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 1: are great, but you're not getting And I live right

868
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: by Yellowster National Park. That's a wonderful place, but it

869
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 1: is not nature and like in the way that that

870
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:24,279
Speaker 1: you really need to know it. Yes. And so when

871
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: I much later in life became a late onset deer hunter,

872
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:31,399
Speaker 1: one of the and honestly, uh, should I go ahead

873
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: and say something about this or did you want to

874
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:37,800
Speaker 1: know what you want? When when my friend David offered

875
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:41,720
Speaker 1: me the opportunity to teach to teach me to deer hunt. Uh,

876
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: And I had an old model ninety four Winchester which

877
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: my students at Berkeley had given me as a present.

878
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:49,439
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm the only Berkeley professor ever to get

879
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 1: given an old Winchester. But they knew at a certain

880
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 1: nostalgia from my Texas youth, and they actually knew that

881
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: I specifically wanted a pre sixty four model money for

882
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:02,160
Speaker 1: Winchester BEAUTIFU beautiful rifle. And so I got this card

883
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 1: one day in my mailbox and it said, uh, happy sabbatical. Uh,

884
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 1: this is good for one pre sixty four model ninety four.

885
00:48:08,560 --> 00:48:10,359
Speaker 1: You find it and we'll pay for it. And so

886
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 1: I walked into a Seattle gun shop and and said,

887
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 1: I'm looking for an old model linety four. And the

888
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 1: guy goes, there's a whole rack up and pick out

889
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: which one you like this? So I went through him,

890
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: you know, sticking my thumb to the receiver and trying

891
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: to get enough light to see the the riflings, and

892
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: and picked out the one I liked best. It turned

893
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:28,880
Speaker 1: out from the serial numbers made nineteen fifty, so I

894
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: had this old Winchester. I've been wanting to try deer

895
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:33,920
Speaker 1: hunting for a long time, but he didn't want to

896
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: be a bozo about it. I knew that, and also, ironically,

897
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: because my grandpa taught me firearm safety and marksmanship, I

898
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:43,839
Speaker 1: was a boy scout and I was a soldier, had

899
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:45,760
Speaker 1: lots of experience, and I had a lot of experience

900
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:50,200
Speaker 1: with gunshot wounds too. I knew a lot about firearms relatively,

901
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: but I'd never had a gun safety course, and I

902
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:55,399
Speaker 1: knew that you all, I thought that you had to

903
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:58,279
Speaker 1: take one to get a hunting license, so I kept

904
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:00,799
Speaker 1: putting it off year after year. Plus I didn't have

905
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: a mentor, and I felt we needed mentor. So my

906
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:06,880
Speaker 1: friend David this U t Austin professor David Hillis who

907
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:10,160
Speaker 1: who ranches and hunts. He calls me one September two

908
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: thousand nine. He goes, green, you've run out of excuses.

909
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:13,839
Speaker 1: So what are you talking about, David? And he said,

910
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 1: turns out in Texas if you were born in ninety seven,

911
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,399
Speaker 1: your grandfather, did you know? And I thought, God, that's weird.

912
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:23,359
Speaker 1: You know, that's kind of crazy. But okay, and he says, yeah,

913
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: I get yourself a Karen case and come on down

914
00:49:26,040 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 1: and I'll I'll teach it hunt. So I went down there,

915
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:32,280
Speaker 1: and I really didn't know how i'd react. I considered

916
00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:34,879
Speaker 1: the possibility that I would. I would kill one deer

917
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 1: and be disgusted and sell my old rifle. How old

918
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:43,640
Speaker 1: are you sixty four year old adult hunter? Will you? Yeah? Yeah,

919
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: that I had just turned sixty four in September, and

920
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:49,239
Speaker 1: this was in December. And so I go out kill

921
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:51,760
Speaker 1: my first dear, a few days later kill a second

922
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: dear with a borrowed scoped flatter shooting rifle, And in fact,

923
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 1: I end up feeling like it's maybe the most respectful

924
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:02,840
Speaker 1: thing I've ever done as a nature lover is to

925
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: own up to my omnivory and to participate like that.

926
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:11,760
Speaker 1: So that's that's what happened. That's it's worth. It's worth

927
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:14,759
Speaker 1: thinking about where you were in your life. You're a

928
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: tenured you know, academic who and I don't want to

929
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: generalize academics, but I've talked to a lot of them,

930
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 1: the ones that work at Berkeley specifically, and I'm headed

931
00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:30,239
Speaker 1: to Cornell next month. Um, being a hunter is not

932
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: probably how how will say, it's not like the prevailing

933
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:37,359
Speaker 1: thing to be. Um, it just doesn't see that way

934
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: to me. I'm sure there's there's pockets of all kinds

935
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:42,319
Speaker 1: of things, but it's just not not a thing to

936
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:44,400
Speaker 1: be your herpetologists. You travel the world, you've done all

937
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:47,839
Speaker 1: these things which will well she'll talk about, and you like,

938
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:50,600
Speaker 1: you've seen more of the natural world than than most

939
00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:57,040
Speaker 1: people of people, and you've like and you've found profundity

940
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:00,440
Speaker 1: in killing a deer in Texas Like out to me,

941
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:04,200
Speaker 1: is that's amazing, you know, at the at the age

942
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:07,360
Speaker 1: of sixty four, and you think that that adds some

943
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:11,839
Speaker 1: value to like hunting story because it because it's done

944
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:13,759
Speaker 1: that for you. You can talk about that a little bit,

945
00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:15,840
Speaker 1: like what it because it's been you know, a decade

946
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 1: or so then since you've been a hunter, right right,

947
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,879
Speaker 1: and so um, maybe I'll add a little thing about

948
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:25,280
Speaker 1: my wife at this point, because she's also an academic.

949
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:28,640
Speaker 1: So and it's true, there's there are certain stereotypes of academics,

950
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:32,120
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, and they're widely used by by

951
00:51:32,160 --> 00:51:36,160
Speaker 1: diverse people. Ken Brower, who's a very well known nature writer,

952
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:41,560
Speaker 1: he's David Brower's son. Uh. He makes fun of people

953
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:45,800
Speaker 1: who criticize classic notions of wilderness by calling them pale

954
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:49,479
Speaker 1: men and tweets. Okay, well, well, I'm writing a book

955
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:53,759
Speaker 1: now that directly confronts John Muir and Ed Abbey and

956
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 1: sort of that nation of wilderness because i think it's

957
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: got a serious problem and I'm trying to address that

958
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:01,360
Speaker 1: in this book. I've were worn tweet in my life,

959
00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:03,680
Speaker 1: you know. And I have a picture in the in

960
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 1: the manuscript the book of me with a backpack in

961
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:09,560
Speaker 1: pre Canyon, Utah, in the slick rap country, and I say,

962
00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:14,320
Speaker 1: pale skin true, no tweets in sight, you know. So uh,

963
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:16,960
Speaker 1: I know where the stereotype of academics comes comes from,

964
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:19,200
Speaker 1: because there, in fact, are a lot of academics who

965
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:23,480
Speaker 1: seem we could say, a little detached from other aspects

966
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:26,719
Speaker 1: of life. As many people do it, but probably not

967
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:29,520
Speaker 1: as many as most non academics think. Like there are

968
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:32,200
Speaker 1: a number of people in my department that hunt, and

969
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:34,799
Speaker 1: there are other people in my department who, although they

970
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:37,840
Speaker 1: don't hunt themselves, are totally fine with it and even

971
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 1: allow those of us to do on their land and

972
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: things like that. Yeah, and I'm aware of the prevailing like, oh,

973
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:45,640
Speaker 1: the new modern live when I when I walk on

974
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:49,400
Speaker 1: college campuses, I'm a little looking around, like for gender

975
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 1: pronoun signs and ship what's going on? I have that feeling.

976
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: I know that's not all of it, and I think

977
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 1: it's it's that's a good perspective for you too, and

978
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:01,400
Speaker 1: it's probably not fair. It's not fair at all, you know,

979
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:05,080
Speaker 1: as would be various other stereotypes in various other cultural

980
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:07,359
Speaker 1: context but we we all have we all have those.

981
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: Just like to address that when I when I was

982
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:12,640
Speaker 1: reading some of the stuff that that you had said

983
00:53:12,640 --> 00:53:15,000
Speaker 1: an NPR and Arkle and NPR just kind of going

984
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: back and forth with a professor friend of yours. That is,

985
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: I don't know IFULL say anti hunting, but some animal

986
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:24,320
Speaker 1: rights thoughts. Um, it struck me as like your place

987
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:26,719
Speaker 1: in life, how you got to where you are and

988
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:31,960
Speaker 1: where you are is quite the story, especially as a hunter. Um,

989
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 1: your first experiences with you know, when you walk up

990
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:36,360
Speaker 1: on a dead deer. You've seen dead things in the wild.

991
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 1: You've seen wild things, lots of dead things. Um, what

992
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: was what was that like? Uh? You know the craziest thing. Uh,

993
00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear the things that are not

994
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 1: really relevant. But I have no religious podcasts, aren't no

995
00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: religious beliefs and anymore. And so I walk up to

996
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 1: this dough that I've just shot with my old model

997
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: ninety four wind sister. Uh. And she it's almost dusk.

998
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:10,439
Speaker 1: I've shot. She she bounds out of sight left. She's

999
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,480
Speaker 1: seventy five yards away or so. And I know I've

1000
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 1: hit her, you know. And I know I'm supposed to

1001
00:54:16,120 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: wait thirty or forty five minutes to make sure she

1002
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: doesn't jump up if she's down, But it's getting dark

1003
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:23,960
Speaker 1: and I and so I do get up, all right,

1004
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: I lever in another round, put on half cock safety

1005
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: and walk looking for and I walked fifty yards in

1006
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:32,799
Speaker 1: there she is down and she's she's got her head

1007
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 1: up as if she'd been sleeping or taking a nap.

1008
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:40,000
Speaker 1: And literally, and of course, as you know, this is

1009
00:54:40,120 --> 00:54:44,040
Speaker 1: probably less than forty five seconds after I mean, in

1010
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 1: in five seconds, a deer goes a long way, you know,

1011
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: so this is not like this deer has been running

1012
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:50,319
Speaker 1: for a long time. And so as I walk up

1013
00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: to her, she fades and draws back down and I

1014
00:54:54,160 --> 00:54:56,360
Speaker 1: go over and touch a leg and she's dead. You know.

1015
00:54:56,440 --> 00:55:00,920
Speaker 1: I've actually made a good bread basket shot. And three

1016
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:02,680
Speaker 1: words popped into my head and I opened I don't

1017
00:55:02,680 --> 00:55:05,000
Speaker 1: screw this up and forget them. But one of them

1018
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 1: was sacred and like where did that come from? Gratitude

1019
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 1: was another one, and I can't remember the third and man,

1020
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 1: But to me, the most interesting is one is that

1021
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 1: I came up with the words sacred and they just

1022
00:55:17,040 --> 00:55:18,680
Speaker 1: it just popped into my mind. You know. It's a

1023
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 1: transformative experience for me. I felt, I felt extremely affected

1024
00:55:24,520 --> 00:55:26,360
Speaker 1: by the fact that I just killed this animal. And

1025
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: of course then we feel dressed at you know. And

1026
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:31,600
Speaker 1: and later it went back to the freezer in New

1027
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:34,280
Speaker 1: York and my family and people we invited for dinner

1028
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 1: eight that eight that deer and I I've always I

1029
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:39,680
Speaker 1: had already been on that That was the first time

1030
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:41,760
Speaker 1: I was on that ranch. I've been on that ranch many, many,

1031
00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:44,880
Speaker 1: many times since then. And I always think about the

1032
00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:48,880
Speaker 1: fact that when I eat meat from the Texas Hill Country,

1033
00:55:48,920 --> 00:55:51,680
Speaker 1: which is my favorite place on Earth, I'm more of

1034
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:54,880
Speaker 1: a participant and less of a spectator in my favorite

1035
00:55:54,880 --> 00:55:59,320
Speaker 1: place on Earth. Yeah, I think, Um, what is interesting

1036
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:03,919
Speaker 1: to me lately is the transformation. How satisfying the transformation

1037
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:07,920
Speaker 1: from a dead animal to like, say, a steak is

1038
00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:10,920
Speaker 1: for me. I recently got people that listen to the

1039
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:12,799
Speaker 1: podcast will know because I keep talking about it, but

1040
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 1: I really like it. I got a slicer like a

1041
00:56:15,080 --> 00:56:18,759
Speaker 1: meat commercial, like a Deli meat slicer, and we were

1042
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:20,720
Speaker 1: talking about the other day, like, why is it satisfy?

1043
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:23,000
Speaker 1: Why is it so satisfying to me to see this

1044
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 1: meat coming off the slicer ready to be made into

1045
00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:28,719
Speaker 1: lunch meat. That's an elk that I had killed. Why

1046
00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:31,279
Speaker 1: is that so satisfying? And somebody said, a friend of

1047
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:34,879
Speaker 1: mine said, um, because you're trans just another transformation. It's

1048
00:56:34,920 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: like another thing that you've done to take the part

1049
00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:41,640
Speaker 1: of that process, to transform this living thing into something

1050
00:56:41,680 --> 00:56:43,560
Speaker 1: that is so useful to you, and that's why it's

1051
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:47,920
Speaker 1: so satisfacing, and that's why probably right, absolutely, And so

1052
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 1: the first time you go through that Transformers process and

1053
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:52,960
Speaker 1: take it home and have a meal with your family

1054
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:55,360
Speaker 1: back in New York, I'm sure was a was a

1055
00:56:55,360 --> 00:56:57,759
Speaker 1: big deal. Well, and not like that. I paid more

1056
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 1: attention to all my food now than I used to,

1057
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:04,239
Speaker 1: even and including vegetables. I mean, I'm I'm much more

1058
00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: once I started deer hunting, I became much more interested

1059
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:11,880
Speaker 1: in eating locally, Like even since I moved before Colins,

1060
00:57:11,920 --> 00:57:14,520
Speaker 1: I've been picking raspberries here and then I buy peaches

1061
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: that the peaches here unbelievable, like most delicious peaches I've

1062
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 1: ever eaten in my life. I've been buying at the

1063
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 1: farmer's market here and for Colins every Saturday. And I'm

1064
00:57:23,920 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 1: I get a huge sense of satisfaction, pleasure, and some

1065
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:32,760
Speaker 1: kind of spiritual uh whatever out of knowing that these

1066
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 1: weren't you know, uh, packaged covered in nitrates all sorts

1067
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 1: of stuff. They weren't shipped from Chile. They're there from here,

1068
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 1: And I get a lot of pleasure in that, and

1069
00:57:44,880 --> 00:57:47,520
Speaker 1: and looking at my food that way, and looking at

1070
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:51,400
Speaker 1: me eating changed once I became a deer hunter. That's

1071
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: that's what happened to me when I really took on

1072
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: honting is like a part of my lifestyle. Then you

1073
00:57:57,240 --> 00:57:58,720
Speaker 1: start thinking like why am I Why don't have a

1074
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:02,560
Speaker 1: garden because gardens a very similar activity. It is, so

1075
00:58:02,600 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 1: why am I doing this? But not that gardening is

1076
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:08,280
Speaker 1: way easier. Well, I'm actually starting to think about gardening

1077
00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:13,640
Speaker 1: and I've never had any inclination in that direction before. Well,

1078
00:58:13,680 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: I get back to kind of your teachings and your

1079
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 1: time in the field as a herpetologist. But I read

1080
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 1: a thing one of your students at Cornell wants described

1081
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 1: you as the mythical her herpetological green giant. Oh my gosh,

1082
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 1: you remember that. No, I don't remember that. Somebody wrote

1083
00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:35,120
Speaker 1: that about you? Was that right? I don't know what

1084
00:58:35,240 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 1: that was about. When you were tired they had to

1085
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:41,439
Speaker 1: think called green Fest told me about that you're tired

1086
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:44,160
Speaker 1: from Cornell and they just threw a party. Yeah. So

1087
00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:47,080
Speaker 1: one of my former PhD students, man named Jonathan Lassos,

1088
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 1: who who at that time was a Harvard professor. There's

1089
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:52,760
Speaker 1: there's something you could stereotype and probably not the entirely

1090
00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:55,840
Speaker 1: fitting a man in an ascot. Yeah. Yeah, so. Uh

1091
00:58:56,600 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: but Jonathan who's also one of my dearest friends, he

1092
00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 1: and my wife basically organized a party for me and

1093
00:59:03,520 --> 00:59:07,520
Speaker 1: they invited about a dozen people to speak and uh

1094
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:10,560
Speaker 1: So it started Friday night with a party at my

1095
00:59:10,600 --> 00:59:14,400
Speaker 1: house where we served wild boar in Venison, and then

1096
00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:17,520
Speaker 1: all day Saturday there were there were talks out at

1097
00:59:17,520 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 1: the Laboratory of Ornithology, which is an institution on our

1098
00:59:20,120 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 1: campus on Southern Town. And so we invited a dozen

1099
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:26,960
Speaker 1: people that range from um, my boss at Berkeley who

1100
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:29,720
Speaker 1: was older than I am, too, a woman I first

1101
00:59:29,800 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 1: met when as a high school students she took my

1102
00:59:32,960 --> 00:59:35,360
Speaker 1: biology class and she's now a professor at Michigan State.

1103
00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:39,560
Speaker 1: So we had all the way from youth to almost elderly.

1104
00:59:39,640 --> 00:59:42,480
Speaker 1: We had men and women. They gave talks about what

1105
00:59:42,520 --> 00:59:46,600
Speaker 1: they do sort of to celebrate my retirement. It was

1106
00:59:46,640 --> 00:59:49,720
Speaker 1: it was extremely touching and I'm afraid I was in

1107
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 1: a bed of a days the whole time. Yeah. Well,

1108
00:59:52,040 --> 00:59:55,800
Speaker 1: I guess in the herpetology world, which I'm not familiar with, like,

1109
00:59:55,920 --> 00:59:57,520
Speaker 1: you had a big impact in your life. I mean,

1110
00:59:57,520 --> 01:00:01,880
Speaker 1: you've written hundreds of papers um, how many field studies

1111
01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 1: and books and things like that. Can you just give

1112
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:08,440
Speaker 1: people an idea of the breath of your work with

1113
01:00:08,640 --> 01:00:10,560
Speaker 1: I think snakes is probably the thing most people be

1114
01:00:10,600 --> 01:00:12,800
Speaker 1: interested in that you did a lot of work with them,

1115
01:00:13,000 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 1: Like I've mostly worked on snakes. So I got a

1116
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 1: master's and a PhD. And for those graduate degrees you

1117
01:00:20,200 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 1: have to do a piece of research. You have to

1118
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:24,280
Speaker 1: write a master's thesis for master three, and you have

1119
01:00:24,280 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: to write a doctoral dissertation. And the topics of both

1120
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:30,240
Speaker 1: of my graduate degrees had to do with snake biology,

1121
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:34,760
Speaker 1: and so I have especially interested in what and how

1122
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 1: snakes eat. So for example, I've I've looked in the

1123
01:00:39,160 --> 01:00:42,600
Speaker 1: stomachs of thousands of maybe even in tents of certainly

1124
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:46,280
Speaker 1: many thousand museum specimens to see what their last meal was,

1125
01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:50,440
Speaker 1: if there is one. So snakes don't snakes into eat

1126
01:00:50,440 --> 01:00:56,000
Speaker 1: big meals and therefore not so frequently. So just just

1127
01:00:56,160 --> 01:00:58,800
Speaker 1: by chance, if people go out and preserve a bunch

1128
01:00:58,800 --> 01:01:01,280
Speaker 1: of snakes and put the museum, only a relatively small

1129
01:01:01,320 --> 01:01:03,760
Speaker 1: fraction will wet food in their stomach because they don't

1130
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: eat so so on an average I probably get about

1131
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:09,440
Speaker 1: a ten percent return but I have looked at literally

1132
01:01:09,600 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: thousands of specimens all over the world in the world's

1133
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: great museums. I get the curative permission to make a

1134
01:01:14,800 --> 01:01:16,880
Speaker 1: little slip and then I look in the stomach. It's

1135
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 1: like Christmas, I never know what I'm gonna find you,

1136
01:01:19,120 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 1: what did you find with crazy? Like? Like, uh, um,

1137
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:28,479
Speaker 1: the largest meals that any snakes in the world eat

1138
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:32,560
Speaker 1: away upwards of a hundred forty two d of their

1139
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 1: own mass. So you look like kind of a und guy.

1140
01:01:38,320 --> 01:01:40,919
Speaker 1: So imagine you eating a two ur and seventy pound

1141
01:01:41,040 --> 01:01:46,120
Speaker 1: cheeseburger with no utensils and no arms. You literally walk

1142
01:01:46,240 --> 01:01:49,600
Speaker 1: your head around a two and seventy found cheeseburger and

1143
01:01:49,640 --> 01:01:52,280
Speaker 1: then crawl off with it. That's that's what That's what

1144
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:55,680
Speaker 1: vipers can do. And so I've I've spent and then

1145
01:01:55,760 --> 01:01:58,720
Speaker 1: sort of the second thing that I did and started

1146
01:01:58,720 --> 01:02:00,720
Speaker 1: doing was I wanted to watchnkes in the wild. I

1147
01:02:00,760 --> 01:02:03,880
Speaker 1: wanted to I wanted to see what they do. What's

1148
01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:06,280
Speaker 1: the craziest thing you found in a steaks gut? For? Like,

1149
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:09,840
Speaker 1: the craziest thing ever? WHOA, I've seen a lot of

1150
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:14,240
Speaker 1: crazy things, like five crazy things. This is interesting? Uh, Well,

1151
01:02:14,640 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 1: in an aquatic coral snake, which is a venomous cobra

1152
01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:20,080
Speaker 1: reality that lives in South America. I found five eels

1153
01:02:20,720 --> 01:02:22,840
Speaker 1: and they there were five of them there, and and

1154
01:02:22,880 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 1: one of them was only a tail left. It was

1155
01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:26,760
Speaker 1: the one that had been eating the longest ago, so

1156
01:02:26,800 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: it was the one most digested. And then as you

1157
01:02:29,160 --> 01:02:32,479
Speaker 1: went anteriorly in the gut, these items had been eaten

1158
01:02:32,520 --> 01:02:34,880
Speaker 1: more and more recently. And though it's recent one, it

1159
01:02:34,920 --> 01:02:37,320
Speaker 1: was a completely intact deal that's probably been eating just

1160
01:02:37,880 --> 01:02:40,560
Speaker 1: minutes before some biologists killed the squirrel snake and put

1161
01:02:40,560 --> 01:02:44,360
Speaker 1: it in the museum. That's pretty cool, right, that's um.

1162
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:48,480
Speaker 1: Another one that was very insightful was I found a

1163
01:02:48,680 --> 01:02:53,280
Speaker 1: Pacific rattlesnake from California that had eating a ground squirrel.

1164
01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:56,320
Speaker 1: And the really interesting thing about vipers they have these

1165
01:02:56,360 --> 01:02:59,560
Speaker 1: long folding fangs and they have this tissue destructive cocktail

1166
01:02:59,720 --> 01:03:02,080
Speaker 1: venom that are made on a gland on each side

1167
01:03:02,080 --> 01:03:04,840
Speaker 1: of their head, you know. And basically, when a rattlesnake

1168
01:03:05,160 --> 01:03:07,960
Speaker 1: or any viper wants to kill a prey at him

1169
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:10,720
Speaker 1: like a rabbit or a squirrel, it waits an ambush,

1170
01:03:10,960 --> 01:03:16,120
Speaker 1: it launches itself, it stabs these two hypodermic needles into

1171
01:03:16,120 --> 01:03:21,440
Speaker 1: the prey simultaneously compresses these two glands. It's essentially like

1172
01:03:21,520 --> 01:03:24,240
Speaker 1: it has a pair of hypodermic needles and the barrels

1173
01:03:24,240 --> 01:03:27,960
Speaker 1: filled with digestive and immobilizing cocktail. And so the rattlesnake

1174
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:31,880
Speaker 1: goes like that, squirts in and releases almost instantly in

1175
01:03:31,880 --> 01:03:34,840
Speaker 1: a fraction of a second, minimizing the chance the rabbit

1176
01:03:34,880 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 1: of the squirrel might hurt it, and the rabbit of

1177
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:39,960
Speaker 1: squirrel goes bounding off. One time, I one time we

1178
01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:43,560
Speaker 1: watched a rattlesnake bite a rabbit and the rabbit hopped

1179
01:03:44,760 --> 01:03:48,320
Speaker 1: ninety yards before it fell over. It took the rattlesnake

1180
01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: almost three hours to find the rabbit, and it tracked

1181
01:03:51,400 --> 01:03:54,560
Speaker 1: the exact path of the rabbit. Turns out, rattlesnakes are

1182
01:03:54,560 --> 01:03:58,440
Speaker 1: putting a tracker molecule in their prey with the venom,

1183
01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:02,919
Speaker 1: and so it followed like the rabbit wind. It's it's

1184
01:04:02,960 --> 01:04:06,520
Speaker 1: smell or sense with its tongue, which is an older

1185
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:10,000
Speaker 1: an odor carrier. There's a special organ in the roof

1186
01:04:10,040 --> 01:04:12,560
Speaker 1: of the mouth where the where the actual sensing happens,

1187
01:04:12,560 --> 01:04:15,720
Speaker 1: and the tongue carries in these odor molecules. So rattlesnake

1188
01:04:15,760 --> 01:04:18,040
Speaker 1: strikes the rabbit. The rabbit goes bounding off on this

1189
01:04:18,240 --> 01:04:21,760
Speaker 1: very irregular path over a rocky slope, and the rattlesnake

1190
01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:24,040
Speaker 1: takes this. The rattlesnake only about this big. It takes

1191
01:04:24,120 --> 01:04:29,200
Speaker 1: three hours, and I held my hands up. It takes

1192
01:04:29,200 --> 01:04:32,360
Speaker 1: it almost three hours, and it follows the precise security

1193
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:35,720
Speaker 1: path of this rabbit. But the time it finds the rabbit,

1194
01:04:35,720 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 1: the rabbit is not only dead, but it's being digested

1195
01:04:38,360 --> 01:04:41,960
Speaker 1: from the inside out because the rabbit with its dying heartbeats,

1196
01:04:42,000 --> 01:04:44,280
Speaker 1: it's like it's like if you injected meat with a

1197
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:47,600
Speaker 1: tender riser. It's in like actually some recipes you do

1198
01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: inject meat with butter or whatever. Well, the rattlesnake has

1199
01:04:51,640 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 1: just injected two glands fulls of this the jestive enzyme

1200
01:04:57,240 --> 01:04:59,919
Speaker 1: cocktail and the rabbit, And as the rabbit bounds off dying,

1201
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:04,000
Speaker 1: its own heartbeats are circulating these digestive enzymes throughout its tissue.

1202
01:05:04,400 --> 01:05:07,480
Speaker 1: So when the rattlesnake finally gets there and starts to

1203
01:05:07,520 --> 01:05:10,760
Speaker 1: walk its head over this meal that's maybe fifty of

1204
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:15,240
Speaker 1: its mass, the rabbit is already digestion is already well underway.

1205
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:18,800
Speaker 1: It's an incredible thing. How's that? I don't know what

1206
01:05:18,920 --> 01:05:27,400
Speaker 1: kind of species keep going? I read that, Um, I

1207
01:05:27,400 --> 01:05:29,280
Speaker 1: guess we should. I just asked, like the obvious question,

1208
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:31,320
Speaker 1: what's the most frightening encounter you've had with a snake?

1209
01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:36,240
Speaker 1: With a snake? Uh? That's actually pretty easy, because I've

1210
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:41,000
Speaker 1: almost never frightened of snakes. So I'm I'm long ago

1211
01:05:41,080 --> 01:05:46,240
Speaker 1: got over sort of macho showing off. In fact, um,

1212
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:49,120
Speaker 1: I've actually calculated how risky is it to manhandle a

1213
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:51,160
Speaker 1: vnom a snake? Pick it up, show off the fangs

1214
01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:55,760
Speaker 1: to the nearest uh fellow teenager, preferably a girl, you know.

1215
01:05:55,840 --> 01:05:57,720
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's sort of the old macho approach

1216
01:05:57,760 --> 01:06:00,480
Speaker 1: to venomous snakes, as you you man all of all that.

1217
01:06:00,480 --> 01:06:02,600
Speaker 1: When we now know that that's a stupid risk, it's

1218
01:06:02,640 --> 01:06:04,640
Speaker 1: not necessary, it's really hard on the snakes. We don't

1219
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:07,479
Speaker 1: do it anymore. And I got over that, and so

1220
01:06:08,280 --> 01:06:11,520
Speaker 1: I've I've generally had a sort of risk adversitive, respectful

1221
01:06:11,520 --> 01:06:14,600
Speaker 1: approach to studying venomous snakes my whole life. But when

1222
01:06:14,640 --> 01:06:18,400
Speaker 1: I first started working in Costa Rica in about all

1223
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:21,640
Speaker 1: of my venomous snake experience was with with pit vipers,

1224
01:06:21,680 --> 01:06:24,600
Speaker 1: mostly rattlesnakes in the US, which are in fact pretty

1225
01:06:24,640 --> 01:06:26,800
Speaker 1: easy to deal with. I mean, we could have a

1226
01:06:26,800 --> 01:06:29,240
Speaker 1: big rattlesnake in this room where we're sitting vid a

1227
01:06:29,280 --> 01:06:31,840
Speaker 1: snake hook. We could just keep talking. I mean, it's

1228
01:06:31,880 --> 01:06:35,040
Speaker 1: just it's just not that hard if you're respectful in

1229
01:06:35,120 --> 01:06:38,920
Speaker 1: what you're doing to work with us pitt vipers. So

1230
01:06:38,920 --> 01:06:41,720
Speaker 1: I get to Costa Rica and there's this really big snake.

1231
01:06:41,760 --> 01:06:44,120
Speaker 1: There's two of them, actually, but one of them, one

1232
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:46,320
Speaker 1: of them, the more common it's called was used to

1233
01:06:46,320 --> 01:06:49,200
Speaker 1: be called a fertilence. Costa Ricans called them tertio pelo,

1234
01:06:49,280 --> 01:06:52,440
Speaker 1: which means velvet in Spanish. It's a massive snake. The

1235
01:06:52,440 --> 01:06:54,240
Speaker 1: big females are like six and a half to seven

1236
01:06:54,240 --> 01:06:57,360
Speaker 1: ft long. The head is the exaggerating to say it

1237
01:06:57,360 --> 01:06:59,200
Speaker 1: was as big as my hand, but it's a big head,

1238
01:06:59,240 --> 01:07:02,320
Speaker 1: really long. Aang's very toxic venom. It's the most dangerous

1239
01:07:02,320 --> 01:07:04,640
Speaker 1: snake in terms of killing people in Costa Rica by far.

1240
01:07:05,160 --> 01:07:07,720
Speaker 1: And I had no fuel experience with him, and so

1241
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:11,160
Speaker 1: I really wanted to catch one, and I was I

1242
01:07:11,240 --> 01:07:13,080
Speaker 1: was at some part of this preserve where I was working,

1243
01:07:13,080 --> 01:07:14,960
Speaker 1: and somebody came and said, Harry, they've spotted a big

1244
01:07:14,960 --> 01:07:17,880
Speaker 1: fertile lance and in this little swamp below the bat tree,

1245
01:07:18,360 --> 01:07:21,439
Speaker 1: this place I knew, so so with my my assistant time,

1246
01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:24,200
Speaker 1: I literally jogged about a kilometer about a half mile

1247
01:07:24,240 --> 01:07:26,960
Speaker 1: over there, and I couldn't find it. So then I

1248
01:07:27,000 --> 01:07:29,160
Speaker 1: walked back to where i'd been in just a few

1249
01:07:29,160 --> 01:07:30,720
Speaker 1: minutes later they kind and they go, we spotted it.

1250
01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:33,840
Speaker 1: So we jogged another jogged this kilometer again and I

1251
01:07:33,880 --> 01:07:36,560
Speaker 1: sort of stumbled down this long slope and there's a

1252
01:07:36,560 --> 01:07:39,640
Speaker 1: big fertile lance and it's it's it's lying on the

1253
01:07:39,680 --> 01:07:44,720
Speaker 1: surface of this of this mud. And so I'm a

1254
01:07:44,720 --> 01:07:48,360
Speaker 1: little out of you know, I'm I wasn't thinking clearly,

1255
01:07:49,120 --> 01:07:51,360
Speaker 1: and so I have my big snake hook and I

1256
01:07:51,400 --> 01:07:55,800
Speaker 1: just slog into the mud and the snake draws back

1257
01:07:55,840 --> 01:07:58,760
Speaker 1: into a striking pose right at my feet, almost when

1258
01:07:58,760 --> 01:08:01,160
Speaker 1: I barely touched with the hook, and I'm and I'm

1259
01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:03,760
Speaker 1: thinking that I'm going well, actually, so what I thought

1260
01:08:03,840 --> 01:08:05,520
Speaker 1: was that I would go out like as if as

1261
01:08:05,560 --> 01:08:08,040
Speaker 1: a rattlesnake, and I would lift it on my snake

1262
01:08:08,080 --> 01:08:10,919
Speaker 1: hook over on the dry land and then I would

1263
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:13,400
Speaker 1: bag it and I'd find some way to get it.

1264
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:16,919
Speaker 1: So I slog out of the mud. It's it's crawling

1265
01:08:16,960 --> 01:08:18,760
Speaker 1: away from me. I touched it with my snake hook,

1266
01:08:18,920 --> 01:08:21,160
Speaker 1: and it whips around right at my feet and it's

1267
01:08:21,479 --> 01:08:23,960
Speaker 1: is facing up at me like like it's ready to strike,

1268
01:08:24,560 --> 01:08:27,800
Speaker 1: and and I was completely taken aback, and I the

1269
01:08:27,880 --> 01:08:30,520
Speaker 1: first thing I noticed was that I couldn't move. My

1270
01:08:30,520 --> 01:08:34,920
Speaker 1: my legs were stuck. I had gotten in just over

1271
01:08:34,960 --> 01:08:37,680
Speaker 1: my knees and I couldn't move. And the second thing

1272
01:08:37,720 --> 01:08:39,960
Speaker 1: I actually remember thinking, I wish I had a pistol,

1273
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:43,160
Speaker 1: but I didn't, and so I raised my snake hook

1274
01:08:43,200 --> 01:08:47,120
Speaker 1: over my head and I thought, if if it's strikes,

1275
01:08:47,200 --> 01:08:50,040
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to I'm going to try to

1276
01:08:50,560 --> 01:08:54,599
Speaker 1: disable it with a blow. And instead it just turned

1277
01:08:54,640 --> 01:08:57,240
Speaker 1: around and took off into this one. The chances you

1278
01:08:57,280 --> 01:08:59,920
Speaker 1: could have disabled it, I don't know. I don't know.

1279
01:09:00,080 --> 01:09:01,920
Speaker 1: Fortunately we didn't have to. We didn't have to answer

1280
01:09:01,960 --> 01:09:04,479
Speaker 1: that because it just went away, which is what even

1281
01:09:04,520 --> 01:09:07,920
Speaker 1: really dangerous snakes almost always want to do. And I

1282
01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:10,280
Speaker 1: was I was so mired that somebody had to get

1283
01:09:10,280 --> 01:09:14,439
Speaker 1: a tree branch to get me out and Uh, that's

1284
01:09:14,479 --> 01:09:16,920
Speaker 1: the most uneasy I've been in in my life. I'm

1285
01:09:17,000 --> 01:09:19,639
Speaker 1: uneasy just listening to and that that happened a long

1286
01:09:19,680 --> 01:09:23,559
Speaker 1: time ago, and I've never done anything that's stupid Again,

1287
01:09:23,600 --> 01:09:26,960
Speaker 1: would have been a mis snakes, Is there how much

1288
01:09:26,960 --> 01:09:29,640
Speaker 1: of you thought about and read about just kind of

1289
01:09:29,680 --> 01:09:32,200
Speaker 1: our our relationship to stakes, the way we see them,

1290
01:09:32,640 --> 01:09:34,960
Speaker 1: kind of like their place in our culture throughout history

1291
01:09:35,280 --> 01:09:40,000
Speaker 1: a lot. It's a big theme in my current writing

1292
01:09:40,000 --> 01:09:42,280
Speaker 1: and research, And so how would you boil that down

1293
01:09:42,280 --> 01:09:44,599
Speaker 1: for folks, Like, what's the best way to think about

1294
01:09:44,640 --> 01:09:47,920
Speaker 1: how um humans approached snakes and and kind of the

1295
01:09:47,960 --> 01:09:50,240
Speaker 1: way that they are in our psyche? Because when I

1296
01:09:50,280 --> 01:09:53,280
Speaker 1: pictured that snake curled up and ready to strike you,

1297
01:09:53,360 --> 01:09:57,080
Speaker 1: it's demonic in my mind. Yeah. So, when I was

1298
01:09:57,080 --> 01:09:59,720
Speaker 1: writing my first book, which was about snakes as a

1299
01:09:59,720 --> 01:10:02,559
Speaker 1: review doing all this natural history literature, you know, I

1300
01:10:02,600 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 1: basically wanted to read everything I could find about all

1301
01:10:06,200 --> 01:10:08,800
Speaker 1: the snakes in the world in terms of what they do.

1302
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:11,719
Speaker 1: And so I was just winnowing all this natural history

1303
01:10:11,720 --> 01:10:13,479
Speaker 1: literature over the last hundred and fifty years or so

1304
01:10:13,520 --> 01:10:17,800
Speaker 1: about snakes, and I encountered something I didn't expect, which

1305
01:10:17,960 --> 01:10:22,440
Speaker 1: was that every major group of primates, which is to say, lemurs,

1306
01:10:22,520 --> 01:10:25,559
Speaker 1: tar Sear's New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, and apes,

1307
01:10:25,840 --> 01:10:30,000
Speaker 1: including us, every major group of primates, I found observations

1308
01:10:30,040 --> 01:10:33,160
Speaker 1: of them both killing and being killed by snakes. And

1309
01:10:33,200 --> 01:10:35,960
Speaker 1: what what I thought was so fascinating was it it

1310
01:10:36,040 --> 01:10:38,840
Speaker 1: wasn't just the one. So if it was just that

1311
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:42,240
Speaker 1: snakes are really dangerous to us, well fine, you know,

1312
01:10:42,400 --> 01:10:47,160
Speaker 1: so are cape buffalo. Yeah yeah, so fine, you know,

1313
01:10:47,200 --> 01:10:50,240
Speaker 1: I get spiders, you know. But it turned out it's

1314
01:10:50,280 --> 01:10:53,120
Speaker 1: not just that, it's that also not only humans, but

1315
01:10:53,200 --> 01:10:57,280
Speaker 1: other primates. They're attracted to snakes. They mobbed them, sometimes

1316
01:10:57,280 --> 01:10:59,599
Speaker 1: they pick up sticks and kill them, they throw stuff

1317
01:10:59,640 --> 01:11:02,800
Speaker 1: at them, sometimes they eat them. So it turns out

1318
01:11:03,080 --> 01:11:06,759
Speaker 1: capuchin monkeys in Brazil basically distinguished two kinds of snakes.

1319
01:11:07,000 --> 01:11:10,240
Speaker 1: One kind of snake is vipers, coral snakes and the

1320
01:11:10,280 --> 01:11:13,640
Speaker 1: mimics that look like them, and boas and all the

1321
01:11:13,720 --> 01:11:16,920
Speaker 1: other snakes several dozen species that a herpetologist would say

1322
01:11:16,920 --> 01:11:19,880
Speaker 1: are many different kinds, there's just one kind. They're the

1323
01:11:19,960 --> 01:11:23,040
Speaker 1: kind that's not a boa of viper or that's not dangerous,

1324
01:11:24,400 --> 01:11:27,920
Speaker 1: that's right. And so these Capuchian monkeys they find type.

1325
01:11:28,040 --> 01:11:31,960
Speaker 1: The first type, they make a big commotion, they throw stuff,

1326
01:11:32,000 --> 01:11:33,880
Speaker 1: they get sticks, they even kind of take sticks and

1327
01:11:33,960 --> 01:11:36,559
Speaker 1: jab them at the viper and the crevice. The other

1328
01:11:36,640 --> 01:11:40,320
Speaker 1: kind is grab and eat and throw the carcass down

1329
01:11:40,360 --> 01:11:43,519
Speaker 1: half eat. So even a non human primate like a

1330
01:11:43,600 --> 01:11:46,720
Speaker 1: capuchin that so so there and you when you get

1331
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:48,680
Speaker 1: the people, it's all the place you have. Sure you

1332
01:11:48,720 --> 01:11:50,400
Speaker 1: have people that hate snakes, but then you have the

1333
01:11:50,479 --> 01:11:53,600
Speaker 1: whole cultures that deify them. You know, they're people. You

1334
01:11:53,640 --> 01:11:56,560
Speaker 1: don't kill cobras in India. You know people in the

1335
01:11:56,560 --> 01:11:59,240
Speaker 1: Eastern US who handle rattlesnakes as part of their scriptural

1336
01:11:59,640 --> 01:12:02,160
Speaker 1: and turn reportation of the Bible. You know. So there's

1337
01:12:02,600 --> 01:12:07,679
Speaker 1: there's this what I find fascinating ambivalence. And I think

1338
01:12:07,880 --> 01:12:11,439
Speaker 1: the reason is that, on the one hand, if you

1339
01:12:11,479 --> 01:12:15,840
Speaker 1: don't see the snake that either wants to eat you

1340
01:12:16,200 --> 01:12:20,240
Speaker 1: or is scared of you, you can get hurt really badly,

1341
01:12:20,680 --> 01:12:23,639
Speaker 1: really quickly. Your whole life can change and maybe end

1342
01:12:23,720 --> 01:12:27,680
Speaker 1: in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, a

1343
01:12:27,760 --> 01:12:31,719
Speaker 1: snake is about the easiest vertebrate animal to disable on Earth.

1344
01:12:31,760 --> 01:12:35,320
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically one long vertebral column, a good

1345
01:12:35,360 --> 01:12:39,160
Speaker 1: hard blow any place along that column. You've you've got

1346
01:12:39,160 --> 01:12:41,680
Speaker 1: a disabled snake, and you can eat it. It's a

1347
01:12:41,720 --> 01:12:45,160
Speaker 1: fine chocolate protein. So I think that that's at the

1348
01:12:45,160 --> 01:12:47,800
Speaker 1: heart of it, that it goes way back. So I

1349
01:12:47,800 --> 01:12:50,640
Speaker 1: I give talks on this, this this general topic, and

1350
01:12:50,680 --> 01:12:53,280
Speaker 1: I call it the seventy five million year old Deadly

1351
01:12:53,360 --> 01:12:57,280
Speaker 1: Dialogue because snakes are about a hundred million years old

1352
01:12:58,120 --> 01:13:00,479
Speaker 1: and primates are about seventy five million years old. So

1353
01:13:00,600 --> 01:13:04,960
Speaker 1: every since primates have been on Earth, we've only been

1354
01:13:05,000 --> 01:13:08,600
Speaker 1: around almost apiens actually only a few hundred thousand years.

1355
01:13:08,640 --> 01:13:11,800
Speaker 1: So we have this long history and it's a it's

1356
01:13:11,800 --> 01:13:15,360
Speaker 1: a heritage, you know, and it's it's a fraught one.

1357
01:13:15,680 --> 01:13:18,160
Speaker 1: It's it's it's fraught with both the possibility of an

1358
01:13:18,200 --> 01:13:22,400
Speaker 1: easy meal, it's fraught with a certain fascination. I mean,

1359
01:13:22,439 --> 01:13:28,280
Speaker 1: what the heck, no legs, two penises. I mean, that's ah,

1360
01:13:28,840 --> 01:13:32,880
Speaker 1: there you go. Well, there used to be one that

1361
01:13:32,920 --> 01:13:36,560
Speaker 1: said snakes have something extra big picture of a snake penis,

1362
01:13:36,600 --> 01:13:39,920
Speaker 1: but uh so there you know, it's a very fraught relationship.

1363
01:13:40,479 --> 01:13:44,679
Speaker 1: And uh many people think that we are innately afraid

1364
01:13:44,720 --> 01:13:47,040
Speaker 1: of snakes. I think that's probably not true. I think

1365
01:13:47,080 --> 01:13:51,240
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear we we we have built in mechanisms

1366
01:13:51,240 --> 01:13:53,880
Speaker 1: that make it easier to recognize snakes than other things.

1367
01:13:54,920 --> 01:13:57,639
Speaker 1: But I think the fear part probably gets connected within

1368
01:13:57,720 --> 01:14:01,639
Speaker 1: an individual based on experience, teach, so forth. I think

1369
01:14:01,640 --> 01:14:05,520
Speaker 1: those connections are made right the Serpent. Like most cartoons,

1370
01:14:05,560 --> 01:14:07,840
Speaker 1: my son watches a thing called the Gruffalo and the

1371
01:14:07,840 --> 01:14:10,200
Speaker 1: snake comes out. He goes, Oh, a snake. He doesn't know.

1372
01:14:10,320 --> 01:14:13,519
Speaker 1: He he grew up in UH for his first two

1373
01:14:13,560 --> 01:14:15,240
Speaker 1: years in Texas and then moved to Montany. He's never

1374
01:14:15,320 --> 01:14:17,760
Speaker 1: seen a snake. I've never had an instance to talk

1375
01:14:17,800 --> 01:14:20,679
Speaker 1: to him about a snake. Yet when he sees one

1376
01:14:21,400 --> 01:14:25,080
Speaker 1: on a show that is kind of a it's not

1377
01:14:25,120 --> 01:14:27,080
Speaker 1: a bad or good snakes. Snakes just a character in

1378
01:14:27,120 --> 01:14:31,720
Speaker 1: the little thing he's watching. He's he's fascinated. He and

1379
01:14:31,800 --> 01:14:33,800
Speaker 1: when when a fox walks out, he doesn't go look

1380
01:14:33,840 --> 01:14:36,600
Speaker 1: a fox. But when a snake comes out, I don't know.

1381
01:14:36,640 --> 01:14:37,840
Speaker 1: Like I said, I don't know if it's just the

1382
01:14:37,920 --> 01:14:40,280
Speaker 1: nature of what it is or how it looks or

1383
01:14:40,320 --> 01:14:44,120
Speaker 1: how it moves, and it's the unique characteristics. There are

1384
01:14:44,120 --> 01:14:49,160
Speaker 1: definitely features that define snakiness and UH. One study, for example,

1385
01:14:50,040 --> 01:14:52,160
Speaker 1: involved this has been done with both children and with

1386
01:14:52,439 --> 01:14:55,960
Speaker 1: macaques kind of monkey. Um, you show him a screen

1387
01:14:56,400 --> 01:15:00,639
Speaker 1: that has like nine different images and they images vary

1388
01:15:00,680 --> 01:15:03,240
Speaker 1: from flowers to mushrooms, to spiders to snakes, a bunch

1389
01:15:03,280 --> 01:15:06,760
Speaker 1: of stuff. And then, uh, you set this up so

1390
01:15:06,800 --> 01:15:09,920
Speaker 1: that the subject as they're called, is rewarded for picking

1391
01:15:09,960 --> 01:15:12,519
Speaker 1: out something they're shown. So they're shown something and said,

1392
01:15:12,800 --> 01:15:17,040
Speaker 1: until pick this out. What turns out if you give

1393
01:15:17,160 --> 01:15:21,400
Speaker 1: a child or a macaque a second or more, they

1394
01:15:21,400 --> 01:15:24,200
Speaker 1: can pick pick out with equal facility a spider, a mushroom,

1395
01:15:24,320 --> 01:15:26,800
Speaker 1: or snake. If you cut it down to about six

1396
01:15:26,880 --> 01:15:29,840
Speaker 1: hundred milliseconds, it's just over half a second. They can

1397
01:15:29,880 --> 01:15:33,080
Speaker 1: still pick out spiders and snakes. If you cut it

1398
01:15:33,120 --> 01:15:35,360
Speaker 1: down to three hundred milliseconds, so only about a quarter

1399
01:15:35,360 --> 01:15:38,559
Speaker 1: of a second, they can only pick out snakes, which

1400
01:15:38,560 --> 01:15:40,960
Speaker 1: is just consistent with lots of other studies that suggest

1401
01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:44,519
Speaker 1: we have some sort of recognition mechanisms at the level

1402
01:15:44,560 --> 01:15:49,240
Speaker 1: of brains, like, yeah, that's right, that's right. And many

1403
01:15:49,280 --> 01:15:50,880
Speaker 1: of us who worked in the field, and this has

1404
01:15:50,880 --> 01:15:53,360
Speaker 1: happened to me. I once was working coaster RecA. The

1405
01:15:53,400 --> 01:15:56,160
Speaker 1: other big viper there is called a bushmaster. It's even bigger.

1406
01:15:57,120 --> 01:16:00,280
Speaker 1: It's it's doesn't cause nearly as many accidents, but it's

1407
01:16:00,280 --> 01:16:02,519
Speaker 1: a massive it's the biggest viper in the world. And

1408
01:16:02,560 --> 01:16:05,759
Speaker 1: I had a radio transmitter in one we surgically implanted,

1409
01:16:05,880 --> 01:16:07,720
Speaker 1: and so I was looking for that that snake. It

1410
01:16:07,760 --> 01:16:09,680
Speaker 1: was a smallish one, like four or five ft long.

1411
01:16:09,880 --> 01:16:12,760
Speaker 1: Had two other experienced herpetologists with me, and it was

1412
01:16:12,800 --> 01:16:15,760
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day. Well you know, you

1413
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:19,000
Speaker 1: can see, and all of a sudden, I knew there

1414
01:16:19,040 --> 01:16:21,840
Speaker 1: was a huge bush master that I just bumped my

1415
01:16:21,960 --> 01:16:24,760
Speaker 1: right foot against. And I knew it at some preconscious

1416
01:16:24,840 --> 01:16:28,920
Speaker 1: level because I I screamed an expletive and had to

1417
01:16:28,960 --> 01:16:31,040
Speaker 1: shove this even bigger guy to my left out of

1418
01:16:31,040 --> 01:16:34,040
Speaker 1: the way, because I knew that I just woke up

1419
01:16:34,080 --> 01:16:36,760
Speaker 1: this like seven seven a half foot bushmaster on my

1420
01:16:36,880 --> 01:16:38,960
Speaker 1: right foot, and it was drawing back. I don't think

1421
01:16:38,960 --> 01:16:40,439
Speaker 1: it was drawing back to strike. I think it was

1422
01:16:40,800 --> 01:16:44,360
Speaker 1: I had literally woken it up. We're both drawing back.

1423
01:16:44,360 --> 01:16:47,320
Speaker 1: We were making equally appropriate responses, you know, But I

1424
01:16:47,400 --> 01:16:50,840
Speaker 1: know that recognition and that action skipped all sorts of

1425
01:16:50,880 --> 01:16:56,719
Speaker 1: conscious functions. Do you feel like we've had other Violetis

1426
01:16:56,800 --> 01:16:59,640
Speaker 1: on that spend a lot of time around a certain species,

1427
01:16:59,760 --> 01:17:02,439
Speaker 1: you whether it's a grizzly bear or something else, and

1428
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:05,000
Speaker 1: they always seem to have different feelings for the thing

1429
01:17:05,080 --> 01:17:07,599
Speaker 1: that they've studied. Where where do you land with snakes?

1430
01:17:07,920 --> 01:17:13,439
Speaker 1: You have an affection for them? Yeah, yeah, I you

1431
01:17:13,479 --> 01:17:17,040
Speaker 1: know snakes that A thing that's tough about snakes is

1432
01:17:17,160 --> 01:17:20,800
Speaker 1: that you can't read them very well. So they don't

1433
01:17:20,800 --> 01:17:24,360
Speaker 1: have eyelids, they don't have lips like mammals, do you know.

1434
01:17:24,439 --> 01:17:27,799
Speaker 1: So I love I especially love dogs. I have two labs,

1435
01:17:27,840 --> 01:17:30,120
Speaker 1: you know, and and I you know, I talked to

1436
01:17:30,160 --> 01:17:32,799
Speaker 1: them all the time. I love them dearly. I'm totally

1437
01:17:32,840 --> 01:17:35,920
Speaker 1: distraught if anything's wrong with either one, you know. And

1438
01:17:35,960 --> 01:17:38,040
Speaker 1: it's it's a little harder to get that way about

1439
01:17:38,080 --> 01:17:40,760
Speaker 1: snakes because you don't get as much affect. You don't

1440
01:17:41,120 --> 01:17:43,000
Speaker 1: you don't feel that. And I think a lot of us,

1441
01:17:43,040 --> 01:17:46,519
Speaker 1: including me, I used to think there wasn't much in there.

1442
01:17:47,000 --> 01:17:49,800
Speaker 1: And just in the last ten years or so, twenty years,

1443
01:17:50,240 --> 01:17:55,480
Speaker 1: but last time especially, we've discovered parental care. We've discovered

1444
01:17:55,520 --> 01:17:58,960
Speaker 1: what's called aloe parenting. That's when one mom takes care

1445
01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:02,160
Speaker 1: of somebody else's babies, so it turns out rattlesnakes have

1446
01:18:02,200 --> 01:18:09,040
Speaker 1: aloe parenting. We've discovered uh snakes modifying their ambush environment

1447
01:18:10,400 --> 01:18:12,680
Speaker 1: to solve a problem that may not actually occur for

1448
01:18:12,720 --> 01:18:16,160
Speaker 1: several days. So here here's an example that this is.

1449
01:18:16,240 --> 01:18:17,920
Speaker 1: This is maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen in

1450
01:18:17,920 --> 01:18:20,519
Speaker 1: the field. I was watching a big blacktail rattlesnake in

1451
01:18:20,520 --> 01:18:24,360
Speaker 1: the Chericogo Mountains of Arizona. It was actually male number forty,

1452
01:18:24,760 --> 01:18:28,400
Speaker 1: and he's in the one I wrote down radio collared

1453
01:18:28,640 --> 01:18:30,960
Speaker 1: fifty black tail ratle snakes in Arizona. Well, they're not

1454
01:18:31,040 --> 01:18:33,080
Speaker 1: collared because you can't put a collar on snake, but

1455
01:18:34,439 --> 01:18:37,879
Speaker 1: implants implant. Yeah, And we so that's how we discovered

1456
01:18:37,880 --> 01:18:39,920
Speaker 1: parental care and them and stuff, because we were watching

1457
01:18:39,960 --> 01:18:42,680
Speaker 1: these moms, these pregnant moms, and we thought they were

1458
01:18:42,720 --> 01:18:44,400
Speaker 1: just going to give birth and their babies to leave,

1459
01:18:44,400 --> 01:18:47,160
Speaker 1: because that's what we all knew happened. And they gave

1460
01:18:47,200 --> 01:18:49,519
Speaker 1: birth and they didn't they didn't leave. They stayed with

1461
01:18:49,560 --> 01:18:51,880
Speaker 1: their babies and all this cool stuff happened, you know.

1462
01:18:51,920 --> 01:18:54,840
Speaker 1: And then it turns out ten days after birth, the

1463
01:18:54,840 --> 01:18:56,760
Speaker 1: baby said there's getting the first time that the whole

1464
01:18:56,800 --> 01:18:59,760
Speaker 1: thing ends. Then, so we document all that, but the

1465
01:19:00,080 --> 01:19:03,360
Speaker 1: slowly mind blowing this thing. As we were watching this

1466
01:19:03,400 --> 01:19:06,280
Speaker 1: big male and he was cruising through a little shady,

1467
01:19:06,320 --> 01:19:09,240
Speaker 1: cobbled dry stream bed, and all of a sudden, he

1468
01:19:09,360 --> 01:19:14,320
Speaker 1: stops abruptly and he starts tongue flicking meticulously about two

1469
01:19:14,360 --> 01:19:18,439
Speaker 1: square yards of leaf litter, which I later found had

1470
01:19:18,479 --> 01:19:21,600
Speaker 1: a chipmunk trail going right through it. I found the runway,

1471
01:19:21,680 --> 01:19:23,920
Speaker 1: but we didn't know that first. So he tonue flicks

1472
01:19:23,960 --> 01:19:26,280
Speaker 1: for thirteen minutes. I've got my stop watch running, I'm

1473
01:19:26,280 --> 01:19:30,880
Speaker 1: watching with binoculars, my collaborator, the Tusun physicians watching, and

1474
01:19:30,920 --> 01:19:34,200
Speaker 1: then he after thirteen minutes, he he coils into the

1475
01:19:34,280 --> 01:19:37,800
Speaker 1: stereotyped ambush posture that a viper uses when it's gonna

1476
01:19:37,840 --> 01:19:40,519
Speaker 1: sit and wait for something to come by. And they

1477
01:19:40,520 --> 01:19:44,479
Speaker 1: may wait, incidentally, for days or even weeks for that

1478
01:19:44,840 --> 01:19:48,320
Speaker 1: animal to come by. So he gets already. And that

1479
01:19:48,520 --> 01:19:50,320
Speaker 1: was cool to watch, but we knew that's what they did.

1480
01:19:50,400 --> 01:19:52,719
Speaker 1: What happened next, though, was there was a dead fern,

1481
01:19:53,400 --> 01:19:56,400
Speaker 1: a brown dried fern, about eight inches right in front

1482
01:19:56,439 --> 01:19:59,400
Speaker 1: of his face, who was right in his prospective strike path.

1483
01:20:00,000 --> 01:20:01,519
Speaker 1: It would beat as if you got set up. I

1484
01:20:01,640 --> 01:20:04,120
Speaker 1: was just to ambush a deer, and then there's there's

1485
01:20:04,120 --> 01:20:09,160
Speaker 1: all these saplings in the way this snake is cut exactly,

1486
01:20:09,200 --> 01:20:11,879
Speaker 1: you know, and that's what he did. So we're watching,

1487
01:20:11,920 --> 01:20:14,040
Speaker 1: you know, and all of a sudden he reaches out

1488
01:20:14,080 --> 01:20:17,519
Speaker 1: with this very stereotype posture. It looks sort of like

1489
01:20:17,560 --> 01:20:20,080
Speaker 1: a shepherd's crook, and it's what Mayo rattlesnakes used to

1490
01:20:20,120 --> 01:20:22,839
Speaker 1: fight with other rattlesnakes. So if you look up on YouTube,

1491
01:20:22,880 --> 01:20:25,439
Speaker 1: just look for rattlesnakes fighting, you'll see what I'm talking about.

1492
01:20:25,479 --> 01:20:27,439
Speaker 1: They rise up in the air and they push each

1493
01:20:27,439 --> 01:20:30,519
Speaker 1: other down, and they use the stereotype little cook in

1494
01:20:30,560 --> 01:20:32,920
Speaker 1: their neck for the pushing down parts, like arm wrestling.

1495
01:20:33,479 --> 01:20:35,320
Speaker 1: But this guy did it, and he pushed the fern

1496
01:20:35,360 --> 01:20:37,880
Speaker 1: out of the way. He bent the fern down and

1497
01:20:37,920 --> 01:20:41,320
Speaker 1: then went back into his ambush posture. And I was like, no,

1498
01:20:41,400 --> 01:20:43,840
Speaker 1: what he's gonna believe me because I didn't have a

1499
01:20:43,920 --> 01:20:46,200
Speaker 1: video camera. And I turned to Dave and I said,

1500
01:20:47,000 --> 01:20:48,920
Speaker 1: what you just see? And he said, wow, he built

1501
01:20:49,000 --> 01:20:50,720
Speaker 1: he bent that fern down. I go, yeah, and then

1502
01:20:50,760 --> 01:20:53,200
Speaker 1: I'm writing my notes, you know. A few years later,

1503
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:56,120
Speaker 1: a former post doc mind ruling Clark as a professor

1504
01:20:56,120 --> 01:20:59,480
Speaker 1: at San Diego State. Now he started using remote videography

1505
01:20:59,520 --> 01:21:03,400
Speaker 1: to study rattlesnake behavior, and he got video of multiple

1506
01:21:03,479 --> 01:21:08,080
Speaker 1: rattlesnakes making these ambush tunnels through brush in California. And

1507
01:21:08,120 --> 01:21:11,200
Speaker 1: so they're trying to ambush California ground squirrels, and they'll

1508
01:21:11,200 --> 01:21:13,800
Speaker 1: stick their body out and kind of beat, beat in

1509
01:21:13,840 --> 01:21:17,320
Speaker 1: all directions and sort of form this little hollow in

1510
01:21:17,360 --> 01:21:21,080
Speaker 1: the brush where they're gonna strike squirrel. They're hunting. They're

1511
01:21:21,120 --> 01:21:23,160
Speaker 1: hunting in there, and as you say, it's a perfect analogy,

1512
01:21:23,200 --> 01:21:27,439
Speaker 1: they're perfect. Who would I believed it? I mean, if

1513
01:21:27,479 --> 01:21:30,040
Speaker 1: I told you panda did that, you might think it's true.

1514
01:21:30,080 --> 01:21:32,680
Speaker 1: And if I told you I'm a cat or a chimpanzee,

1515
01:21:32,720 --> 01:21:34,920
Speaker 1: did it. Sure? But this is a rattlesnake. It does

1516
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:38,080
Speaker 1: not have a big brain, and it's and it's doing

1517
01:21:38,080 --> 01:21:41,200
Speaker 1: all this cool stuff. Do you feel like one thing

1518
01:21:41,200 --> 01:21:43,519
Speaker 1: that strikes me about like the your proximity of these

1519
01:21:43,520 --> 01:21:47,600
Speaker 1: at these creatures, and like knowing them so much, what

1520
01:21:47,680 --> 01:21:49,960
Speaker 1: do you what do you think about their place in

1521
01:21:50,000 --> 01:21:53,160
Speaker 1: the natural world? What did you I'm sure you've thought

1522
01:21:53,160 --> 01:21:55,160
Speaker 1: about that at length I have, And what about their

1523
01:21:55,200 --> 01:21:57,519
Speaker 1: place in our world? That that would be the second

1524
01:21:57,560 --> 01:22:02,640
Speaker 1: question we could ask. I mean, it's pretty clear, uh,

1525
01:22:02,680 --> 01:22:06,120
Speaker 1: they are predators, you know. And so actually their predators

1526
01:22:06,120 --> 01:22:08,559
Speaker 1: sort of out of proportion to their body size because

1527
01:22:08,600 --> 01:22:11,360
Speaker 1: they can eat things so big. So, for example, I

1528
01:22:11,680 --> 01:22:16,679
Speaker 1: mentioned bushmasters in Costa Rica. The bushmaster might weigh four

1529
01:22:16,760 --> 01:22:19,880
Speaker 1: to ten pounds. It eats the same prey that a

1530
01:22:19,960 --> 01:22:25,200
Speaker 1: thirty five pound oscilotte eats. Okay, so a western diamondback rattlesnake,

1531
01:22:25,360 --> 01:22:28,800
Speaker 1: a big western back rattlesnake, might weigh four or five

1532
01:22:28,920 --> 01:22:31,280
Speaker 1: or really big one, maybe ten pounds. It's eating the

1533
01:22:31,280 --> 01:22:33,799
Speaker 1: same thing that a bobcat our coyote eats that outweighs

1534
01:22:33,800 --> 01:22:36,200
Speaker 1: it by a factor of like four or something. That's

1535
01:22:36,240 --> 01:22:39,040
Speaker 1: because there's a snake, you know. And so they are

1536
01:22:39,080 --> 01:22:42,720
Speaker 1: at the same level in a food pyramid or a

1537
01:22:42,760 --> 01:22:45,479
Speaker 1: food web as a mammal that weighs several times what

1538
01:22:45,600 --> 01:22:48,439
Speaker 1: they do, so they play important roles like that. We're

1539
01:22:48,439 --> 01:22:50,880
Speaker 1: actually still kind of finding out what they do. And

1540
01:22:50,920 --> 01:22:55,360
Speaker 1: the coolest thing lately is it turns out their seed dispersers,

1541
01:22:55,400 --> 01:22:58,559
Speaker 1: so you know, uh, plants, when they make seeds and

1542
01:22:58,680 --> 01:23:00,400
Speaker 1: fruit and all that, we might think they make it

1543
01:23:00,479 --> 01:23:02,600
Speaker 1: so we can have tasty breakfast. But the plant is

1544
01:23:02,680 --> 01:23:06,479
Speaker 1: really dispersing its offspring when it makes fruit, you know,

1545
01:23:06,640 --> 01:23:09,040
Speaker 1: it hopes, it hopes that something will eat the fruit,

1546
01:23:09,960 --> 01:23:12,800
Speaker 1: pass it through its gut, and the seeds will go through,

1547
01:23:13,040 --> 01:23:15,720
Speaker 1: get pooped out, and go somewhere else. That's how it

1548
01:23:15,960 --> 01:23:19,400
Speaker 1: that's how that's that's how it disperses. That's how it says.

1549
01:23:19,400 --> 01:23:21,439
Speaker 1: It's kids off to college. It was a term that

1550
01:23:21,600 --> 01:23:26,760
Speaker 1: somebody used recently, ecosystems services absolutely, and I was like that,

1551
01:23:26,920 --> 01:23:29,439
Speaker 1: like click something in my head, like yeah, man, yeah,

1552
01:23:29,479 --> 01:23:31,120
Speaker 1: all of these things are doing a service to the

1553
01:23:31,760 --> 01:23:34,599
Speaker 1: that's right. So it turns out we discovered accidentally one

1554
01:23:34,640 --> 01:23:37,240
Speaker 1: of my former students when we were looking at the

1555
01:23:37,360 --> 01:23:41,960
Speaker 1: museum guts. Uh, they're all these black things, these little

1556
01:23:41,960 --> 01:23:45,240
Speaker 1: black dots in the gut of these desert rattlesnakes. What

1557
01:23:45,240 --> 01:23:48,880
Speaker 1: we're really looking at, we think is fur and teeth

1558
01:23:48,920 --> 01:23:52,120
Speaker 1: and digested mammal. And he showed it to me through

1559
01:23:52,160 --> 01:23:54,120
Speaker 1: a microscope and I went, I don't know, maybe their

1560
01:23:54,200 --> 01:23:56,880
Speaker 1: seeds whatever didn't didn't hit me. And then he calls

1561
01:23:56,920 --> 01:23:59,680
Speaker 1: me back in and he he shows me out of

1562
01:23:59,720 --> 01:24:01,719
Speaker 1: the holding. So this is the end of the gut,

1563
01:24:02,479 --> 01:24:04,360
Speaker 1: and I don't know how just I'm going to describe

1564
01:24:04,360 --> 01:24:07,000
Speaker 1: it to you, but what word. It looked like this.

1565
01:24:07,640 --> 01:24:10,479
Speaker 1: There was a little little seedling coming of it. So

1566
01:24:10,600 --> 01:24:15,040
Speaker 1: we found germinated seeds in the colons of these rattlesnakes.

1567
01:24:15,240 --> 01:24:18,840
Speaker 1: These rattlesnakes are eating kangaroo rats, which have pouches. So

1568
01:24:18,920 --> 01:24:21,240
Speaker 1: the kangaroo rat goes around picking up all these seeds,

1569
01:24:21,240 --> 01:24:24,000
Speaker 1: stuffing its pouch like a hamster goes into its burrow,

1570
01:24:24,360 --> 01:24:26,559
Speaker 1: takes all it out and has a little cache. You know,

1571
01:24:27,120 --> 01:24:30,120
Speaker 1: the plant is hoping that some fraction of those seeds

1572
01:24:30,120 --> 01:24:33,599
Speaker 1: won't ever actually get eaten and will germinate in this nice, cool,

1573
01:24:33,680 --> 01:24:37,240
Speaker 1: dark moist place. That's the plant's bet. You know, Well,

1574
01:24:37,280 --> 01:24:40,400
Speaker 1: if that plant, if the seeds from that plant end

1575
01:24:40,479 --> 01:24:42,800
Speaker 1: up in the pouch of a kangaroo rat that gets

1576
01:24:42,840 --> 01:24:45,560
Speaker 1: eaten by a sidewinder, which is not a very big rattlesnake,

1577
01:24:45,960 --> 01:24:49,440
Speaker 1: that plant just hit the dispersal jackpot because the sidewinder

1578
01:24:49,479 --> 01:24:52,120
Speaker 1: rattlesnake has a home range radius of like five to

1579
01:24:52,160 --> 01:24:54,719
Speaker 1: ten times what the kangaroo rat is just rolling around

1580
01:24:54,760 --> 01:24:57,479
Speaker 1: the ground dropping seat. That's right, that's right. So there's

1581
01:24:57,479 --> 01:25:00,200
Speaker 1: another ecosystem service for you. I love that term. I

1582
01:25:00,200 --> 01:25:02,799
Speaker 1: don't know why it struck me, like, yes, because we're

1583
01:25:02,840 --> 01:25:07,639
Speaker 1: thinking about biodiversity, that's thinking about what you know, we're

1584
01:25:07,680 --> 01:25:09,680
Speaker 1: we're not very serviceable creatures when it comes to a

1585
01:25:09,720 --> 01:25:12,000
Speaker 1: lot of things that we do. But when you start

1586
01:25:12,040 --> 01:25:14,679
Speaker 1: thinking about the game that we pursue and the way

1587
01:25:14,720 --> 01:25:16,880
Speaker 1: we think about elk and stuff like that, there every

1588
01:25:16,920 --> 01:25:19,200
Speaker 1: animal you see as a service, that service to the

1589
01:25:19,200 --> 01:25:23,280
Speaker 1: elk and vice versa. And so that second question which

1590
01:25:23,320 --> 01:25:25,240
Speaker 1: you inspired me to bring up, though, we could also

1591
01:25:25,240 --> 01:25:26,840
Speaker 1: talk about, well, what what would be the place of

1592
01:25:26,960 --> 01:25:29,840
Speaker 1: rattlesnakes in our lives? You know? And of course one

1593
01:25:29,880 --> 01:25:33,759
Speaker 1: response was their their potential death threat, so we should

1594
01:25:33,760 --> 01:25:37,760
Speaker 1: get rid of them whenever possible. In fact, uh, we

1595
01:25:37,880 --> 01:25:40,160
Speaker 1: now know why you die from rattlesnake bite. We know

1596
01:25:40,320 --> 01:25:42,560
Speaker 1: how to know how to prevent it. Snake bite is

1597
01:25:42,600 --> 01:25:45,920
Speaker 1: a very low public health problem in this country. It's

1598
01:25:45,920 --> 01:25:48,439
Speaker 1: a huge public health problem in some countries, but that's

1599
01:25:48,439 --> 01:25:51,800
Speaker 1: because of lack of adequate medical carecter. So once you

1600
01:25:51,800 --> 01:25:54,320
Speaker 1: you know, when I try to teach people to appreciate rattlesnakes,

1601
01:25:54,320 --> 01:25:57,240
Speaker 1: I always start out by admitting the danger and being

1602
01:25:57,320 --> 01:25:59,320
Speaker 1: very candid about it. So I think that's the way

1603
01:25:59,360 --> 01:26:01,560
Speaker 1: to go. I think that's the way to go with

1604
01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:03,960
Speaker 1: the elephants, with bison and anything that could hurt you,

1605
01:26:04,120 --> 01:26:06,360
Speaker 1: is to start out by being honest about not trying

1606
01:26:06,400 --> 01:26:08,360
Speaker 1: to hide from it, and then you talk about how

1607
01:26:08,400 --> 01:26:11,439
Speaker 1: you can ameliorate those dangers, and then you can enjoy

1608
01:26:11,520 --> 01:26:13,880
Speaker 1: this incredible stuff. Like I can see the look on

1609
01:26:13,920 --> 01:26:15,760
Speaker 1: your face when I'm telling you about the rabbit going

1610
01:26:15,760 --> 01:26:18,600
Speaker 1: one yards and then then then she finds it and

1611
01:26:18,640 --> 01:26:20,240
Speaker 1: eats it, and she just got one third of her

1612
01:26:20,240 --> 01:26:23,519
Speaker 1: annual grocery bill in one predation event. How can you

1613
01:26:23,600 --> 01:26:25,800
Speaker 1: not marvel at that? I just like, how can you

1614
01:26:25,840 --> 01:26:27,840
Speaker 1: not think your world is richer? I took the wrong

1615
01:26:27,960 --> 01:26:31,120
Speaker 1: damn job. Should have been a herpetize something I told

1616
01:26:31,120 --> 01:26:32,880
Speaker 1: my wife, like a couple of weeks can shake it. Well,

1617
01:26:33,240 --> 01:26:35,040
Speaker 1: what what? What do you think about the future? So

1618
01:26:35,080 --> 01:26:36,840
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the wild left biologists?

1619
01:26:37,040 --> 01:26:40,720
Speaker 1: You know why? It's because there's so much understanding that

1620
01:26:40,800 --> 01:26:43,200
Speaker 1: you miss or well, I guess I put it the

1621
01:26:43,240 --> 01:26:45,720
Speaker 1: other way. There's so much out there that you could know,

1622
01:26:46,320 --> 01:26:48,200
Speaker 1: You know so much of the intricacy of the natural

1623
01:26:48,240 --> 01:26:51,400
Speaker 1: world that you could know, and it informs everything that

1624
01:26:51,439 --> 01:26:54,320
Speaker 1: you do, everything that you do. And that's why I

1625
01:26:54,360 --> 01:26:56,519
Speaker 1: like Tracks and Shadows so much, because it was like

1626
01:26:56,600 --> 01:27:00,280
Speaker 1: kind of a transcendental meditation of all the thing is

1627
01:27:00,360 --> 01:27:04,200
Speaker 1: kind of in a gumbo, like all the experiences connect

1628
01:27:04,360 --> 01:27:07,599
Speaker 1: to each other, and you can live a more enlightened

1629
01:27:07,640 --> 01:27:11,400
Speaker 1: life if you understand a snake and what it does

1630
01:27:11,400 --> 01:27:14,200
Speaker 1: for ecosystem and how it germinates a seed and how

1631
01:27:14,240 --> 01:27:16,439
Speaker 1: that seed comes from a mouse, and how that mouse

1632
01:27:16,600 --> 01:27:18,599
Speaker 1: ate seed and how that plant hops to do those things,

1633
01:27:19,280 --> 01:27:23,160
Speaker 1: and those understandings are seminal to our lot, like there

1634
01:27:23,240 --> 01:27:25,800
Speaker 1: they are what we are. Um. Yeah, And I think

1635
01:27:25,840 --> 01:27:30,240
Speaker 1: when you become a more candid, blatant participant, I mean

1636
01:27:30,680 --> 01:27:33,920
Speaker 1: I think a lot of especially you know, first world

1637
01:27:34,040 --> 01:27:38,679
Speaker 1: modern humanity, is we've we've ironically distanced ourselves from nature.

1638
01:27:38,920 --> 01:27:41,000
Speaker 1: I'd say ironic because I think some of the real

1639
01:27:41,080 --> 01:27:45,160
Speaker 1: champions of environmentalism, on the one hand, bemoan that we're

1640
01:27:45,200 --> 01:27:47,799
Speaker 1: dis junct from nature. And then there then they don't.

1641
01:27:47,800 --> 01:27:50,519
Speaker 1: They're there whole kinds of activities they don't want to

1642
01:27:50,520 --> 01:27:54,320
Speaker 1: participate in, which are actually being part of nature instead

1643
01:27:54,320 --> 01:27:57,840
Speaker 1: of being it indirectly, you know, they're their environmentalism at

1644
01:27:57,920 --> 01:28:03,000
Speaker 1: some level, kind of hatchment. That's right. I believe that's true.

1645
01:28:03,400 --> 01:28:07,840
Speaker 1: They become somewhat more spectators than participants. And so as

1646
01:28:07,920 --> 01:28:10,160
Speaker 1: you can tell if from reading my book. And there's

1647
01:28:10,160 --> 01:28:13,040
Speaker 1: a reason why it's the next last chapter because and

1648
01:28:13,080 --> 01:28:15,200
Speaker 1: it's called Born Again Predator and so here here I

1649
01:28:15,280 --> 01:28:18,920
Speaker 1: spent my whole life studying predators and thinking about what

1650
01:28:19,000 --> 01:28:23,479
Speaker 1: that entails, ecologically, psychologically, all these things. And then I

1651
01:28:23,560 --> 01:28:26,960
Speaker 1: then I get to go there. And I tried to

1652
01:28:26,960 --> 01:28:29,720
Speaker 1: tell the reader what it was like to have had

1653
01:28:29,720 --> 01:28:32,519
Speaker 1: the life I've had and then to go there, And

1654
01:28:32,560 --> 01:28:35,280
Speaker 1: I hope I succeeded in en showing that it was.

1655
01:28:35,560 --> 01:28:39,840
Speaker 1: It was really transformative to me. It really, Uh it was.

1656
01:28:40,000 --> 01:28:43,400
Speaker 1: It was. It was a life enhancing experience and has

1657
01:28:43,400 --> 01:28:45,800
Speaker 1: been ever since. Yeah, I've read as many accounts as

1658
01:28:45,840 --> 01:28:48,639
Speaker 1: I give my hands on that's similar to yours, kind

1659
01:28:48,680 --> 01:28:51,040
Speaker 1: of of what the natural world gives and what you

1660
01:28:51,080 --> 01:28:53,439
Speaker 1: give it and kind of a life lived like that.

1661
01:28:53,520 --> 01:28:56,240
Speaker 1: And I think this was one of the best I've

1662
01:28:56,280 --> 01:28:59,320
Speaker 1: ever read. And you had I wrote something down. I

1663
01:28:59,320 --> 01:29:01,479
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure miss that you wrote that our

1664
01:29:01,560 --> 01:29:07,080
Speaker 1: psyches are linked to predators. With wildness like or like

1665
01:29:07,280 --> 01:29:09,400
Speaker 1: the way that we are, like the reason we think

1666
01:29:09,439 --> 01:29:15,519
Speaker 1: about even charismatic megafaunal or the opposite. You know, we

1667
01:29:15,600 --> 01:29:18,160
Speaker 1: think about them in different ways. You know, they're they're

1668
01:29:18,160 --> 01:29:21,080
Speaker 1: connected to us in different ways. Some people I think

1669
01:29:21,400 --> 01:29:24,880
Speaker 1: that manifests itself in like a sympathy. We're talking before

1670
01:29:24,880 --> 01:29:27,280
Speaker 1: you hit record about sympathy, right, they have a sympathy

1671
01:29:27,320 --> 01:29:31,679
Speaker 1: for bears or a sympathy for UH predators and other people.

1672
01:29:31,760 --> 01:29:36,519
Speaker 1: There's like an understanding that leads to empathy that allows

1673
01:29:36,520 --> 01:29:38,599
Speaker 1: you to kind of understand their place a little bit better.

1674
01:29:39,040 --> 01:29:41,080
Speaker 1: And some people, I just I would imagine use their

1675
01:29:41,280 --> 01:29:44,479
Speaker 1: disconnect via fear. You know. So there's lots of ways

1676
01:29:44,479 --> 01:29:46,599
Speaker 1: you can do. You can link to a predator, but

1677
01:29:46,880 --> 01:29:49,040
Speaker 1: talk about that for you, like what what that means

1678
01:29:49,120 --> 01:29:52,439
Speaker 1: to be linked to a predator with with a psyche? Yeah,

1679
01:29:52,479 --> 01:29:54,840
Speaker 1: and to the prey to I mean, we we are

1680
01:29:54,920 --> 01:29:56,920
Speaker 1: potential prey and we used to be. We're not so

1681
01:29:56,960 --> 01:29:58,720
Speaker 1: much in the United States anymore, al though in some

1682
01:29:58,800 --> 01:30:02,800
Speaker 1: places you might still be. Yeah. And so you know,

1683
01:30:02,840 --> 01:30:05,360
Speaker 1: I told you I'm interested in the book I'm writing now.

1684
01:30:05,400 --> 01:30:08,759
Speaker 1: I'm interested in especially in this world world word wild

1685
01:30:09,880 --> 01:30:12,760
Speaker 1: because in the US, and I think it really is

1686
01:30:12,800 --> 01:30:15,759
Speaker 1: fair to say it's a it's an especially North American

1687
01:30:15,880 --> 01:30:20,800
Speaker 1: environmentalist twentieth century perspective. We've and twenty one now, we

1688
01:30:20,800 --> 01:30:24,120
Speaker 1: we tended to define wildness in terms of whether or

1689
01:30:24,120 --> 01:30:26,559
Speaker 1: not people are sort of functionally part of it all.

1690
01:30:27,320 --> 01:30:29,920
Speaker 1: We've defined them out of it. And you know, the

1691
01:30:29,960 --> 01:30:31,719
Speaker 1: first thing you can say is, well, how about words

1692
01:30:31,760 --> 01:30:36,760
Speaker 1: like Shoshone and Comanche and things like that. Um. But

1693
01:30:36,840 --> 01:30:39,880
Speaker 1: another thing is that, uh, like we were talking about earlier,

1694
01:30:39,880 --> 01:30:43,599
Speaker 1: there's this irony of wanting bemoaning that we're not part

1695
01:30:43,600 --> 01:30:46,559
Speaker 1: of nature, that we're dis junct. In fact, the masthead

1696
01:30:46,600 --> 01:30:48,400
Speaker 1: for Friends of the Earth back when I, as a

1697
01:30:48,439 --> 01:30:51,439
Speaker 1: Berkeley professor said not man apart, which is a line

1698
01:30:51,439 --> 01:30:55,200
Speaker 1: from a Robertson Jeffer's point, not man apart bemoaning being

1699
01:30:55,240 --> 01:30:58,439
Speaker 1: apart from nature. And yet we've done all this stuff

1700
01:30:58,960 --> 01:31:01,719
Speaker 1: that keeps us, I think, makes us ever more distant

1701
01:31:01,760 --> 01:31:06,479
Speaker 1: from the fact that we are inevitably, ultimately functioning parts

1702
01:31:06,520 --> 01:31:09,400
Speaker 1: of ecosystems. You know, food goes in, food goes out.

1703
01:31:09,960 --> 01:31:12,040
Speaker 1: If there's a lot of it, we're gonna eat. If

1704
01:31:12,080 --> 01:31:14,320
Speaker 1: there's a lot of us, we're gonna be eating a

1705
01:31:14,360 --> 01:31:16,280
Speaker 1: lot of things of one sort or another, and a

1706
01:31:16,280 --> 01:31:18,559
Speaker 1: lot of stuff is gonna come out, and we're gonna

1707
01:31:18,560 --> 01:31:20,439
Speaker 1: have to deal with both of that. And we've we've

1708
01:31:20,479 --> 01:31:23,519
Speaker 1: done these things, especially as modern first world people, to

1709
01:31:23,720 --> 01:31:27,439
Speaker 1: almost like hide from that. And so I'm I'm all

1710
01:31:27,479 --> 01:31:30,200
Speaker 1: for getting people back out in nature. I don't make

1711
01:31:30,240 --> 01:31:32,800
Speaker 1: fun of vegans. I don't. I don't make fun of

1712
01:31:32,800 --> 01:31:35,880
Speaker 1: other people's life choices, especially about ethical issues, you know.

1713
01:31:36,360 --> 01:31:38,639
Speaker 1: But and so I think there's ways that they can

1714
01:31:38,680 --> 01:31:40,920
Speaker 1: do it too. I mean they can, they can farm,

1715
01:31:41,240 --> 01:31:44,160
Speaker 1: they can they can admit that if you if you

1716
01:31:44,360 --> 01:31:46,640
Speaker 1: clear a place to make a soy feel or an

1717
01:31:46,680 --> 01:31:50,040
Speaker 1: almond orchard, there'll be almost no biodiversity left, and those

1718
01:31:50,080 --> 01:31:52,840
Speaker 1: animals will not go somewhere else. We'd all like to

1719
01:31:52,880 --> 01:31:55,599
Speaker 1: hope that they go somewhere else. They mostly don't make

1720
01:31:55,720 --> 01:31:57,240
Speaker 1: that point in your book as well as say like

1721
01:31:57,360 --> 01:32:00,599
Speaker 1: we think that that all these organisms when if we,

1722
01:32:01,000 --> 01:32:02,879
Speaker 1: you know, we're a bit of a virus or a bacteria,

1723
01:32:02,920 --> 01:32:04,679
Speaker 1: we move into a place and we clear it off

1724
01:32:04,720 --> 01:32:07,920
Speaker 1: and we kind of remove its natural way. Like there's

1725
01:32:07,920 --> 01:32:11,920
Speaker 1: almost there's no in our country, no undisturbed dirt that

1726
01:32:11,960 --> 01:32:14,160
Speaker 1: I can think of even in wilderness there these are

1727
01:32:14,360 --> 01:32:18,559
Speaker 1: these are yeah to some extent. And so you know,

1728
01:32:18,680 --> 01:32:20,840
Speaker 1: we we define native as some length of time that

1729
01:32:20,920 --> 01:32:23,639
Speaker 1: we've we've prescribed. Oh that's native. Is this many years?

1730
01:32:23,680 --> 01:32:26,600
Speaker 1: Well that's that's just a thing that we've said. And

1731
01:32:26,680 --> 01:32:31,439
Speaker 1: so at some point I wonder how do we how

1732
01:32:31,520 --> 01:32:33,760
Speaker 1: we put all that stuff together? You know, how how

1733
01:32:33,840 --> 01:32:36,160
Speaker 1: we get to a point where we really understand what

1734
01:32:36,240 --> 01:32:40,080
Speaker 1: we are within nature? And whether it's I often look

1735
01:32:40,120 --> 01:32:43,559
Speaker 1: at somebody smarter than me. I once read it like

1736
01:32:43,600 --> 01:32:45,919
Speaker 1: if you're flying in a plane, say you're over Yellowstone

1737
01:32:46,000 --> 01:32:48,519
Speaker 1: National Park, they'll be the splendor. And I fly over

1738
01:32:48,960 --> 01:32:52,639
Speaker 1: these areas a lot. There's it's like it seems pristine

1739
01:32:52,640 --> 01:32:55,960
Speaker 1: and untouched. And as you move towards Los Angeles, it

1740
01:32:56,040 --> 01:32:59,160
Speaker 1: seems as if the earth has gotten some sort of sickness.

1741
01:33:00,360 --> 01:33:02,559
Speaker 1: And as you move towards Los Angeles, the sickness gets

1742
01:33:02,600 --> 01:33:05,720
Speaker 1: increasingly evident. And as you get to Los Angeles, it

1743
01:33:05,760 --> 01:33:09,800
Speaker 1: looks like some bacteria has grown in an area and

1744
01:33:09,840 --> 01:33:11,720
Speaker 1: it looks very unhealthy. If you are if you were

1745
01:33:11,720 --> 01:33:15,360
Speaker 1: to like if an alien came down, And so for me,

1746
01:33:15,560 --> 01:33:19,360
Speaker 1: I think that's true, but that doesn't there's echoes environmentalism

1747
01:33:19,360 --> 01:33:21,840
Speaker 1: in that thought. But for me, I feel like, yes,

1748
01:33:22,000 --> 01:33:25,360
Speaker 1: I we are that. But how do I make sure

1749
01:33:25,400 --> 01:33:29,519
Speaker 1: I understand my peace and that greater giant organism That

1750
01:33:29,640 --> 01:33:31,840
Speaker 1: gets just getting a little deep. But how do I

1751
01:33:31,880 --> 01:33:35,120
Speaker 1: understand my peace of that greater giant organism than I am?

1752
01:33:35,160 --> 01:33:37,360
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't hate myself for being a part

1753
01:33:37,360 --> 01:33:39,000
Speaker 1: of it. How do I be a better part of it?

1754
01:33:39,040 --> 01:33:40,920
Speaker 1: And what does it all mean? And I think the

1755
01:33:41,000 --> 01:33:44,920
Speaker 1: environmentalist might say, like, I hate humans for being what

1756
01:33:45,040 --> 01:33:48,240
Speaker 1: they are, and I'm sure you don't intend to, and

1757
01:33:48,320 --> 01:33:50,760
Speaker 1: I certainly I want to say that. I'm I don't

1758
01:33:50,760 --> 01:33:53,720
Speaker 1: mean to stereotype all environmentalists is one thing, and I

1759
01:33:54,240 --> 01:33:56,040
Speaker 1: get all that, but I think there is a brand

1760
01:33:56,080 --> 01:33:59,759
Speaker 1: of a segment of environmentalism, And especially in the US,

1761
01:34:00,280 --> 01:34:02,439
Speaker 1: I don't think you would see it nearly as much

1762
01:34:02,439 --> 01:34:05,440
Speaker 1: in Latin America if you were talking to conservation, conservation

1763
01:34:05,479 --> 01:34:07,400
Speaker 1: by all just the nature lovers there, I don't think

1764
01:34:07,439 --> 01:34:09,519
Speaker 1: you'd see as much in Europe. It's it's a sort

1765
01:34:09,520 --> 01:34:14,599
Speaker 1: of a privileged notion of you know, that's that's if

1766
01:34:14,600 --> 01:34:17,080
Speaker 1: we could it all be like that, and we would

1767
01:34:17,160 --> 01:34:20,160
Speaker 1: only take pictures and leave only footprints, and I've kind

1768
01:34:20,200 --> 01:34:22,799
Speaker 1: of think that that's that's that's not the way forward.

1769
01:34:23,120 --> 01:34:25,320
Speaker 1: So I think we all start with realizing that we

1770
01:34:25,400 --> 01:34:30,400
Speaker 1: can't escape our presence and and all this sort of like, uh,

1771
01:34:30,520 --> 01:34:34,400
Speaker 1: it's sort of like anthropophobic or something, you know, it's

1772
01:34:34,240 --> 01:34:37,439
Speaker 1: it's a and I find I just can't embrace that.

1773
01:34:37,520 --> 01:34:39,400
Speaker 1: I mean, I am a person. I had a mother

1774
01:34:39,439 --> 01:34:41,920
Speaker 1: and father I have I'm married to somebody, I have

1775
01:34:41,960 --> 01:34:43,680
Speaker 1: a brother, I have a niece I love. I mean,

1776
01:34:44,840 --> 01:34:46,400
Speaker 1: you say you want to get rid of five out

1777
01:34:46,400 --> 01:34:48,320
Speaker 1: of the seven billion people on Earth right now, Well,

1778
01:34:48,320 --> 01:34:50,640
Speaker 1: which five billion would you pick? You know you're going

1779
01:34:50,680 --> 01:34:52,200
Speaker 1: to be the privilege one that gets to say so

1780
01:34:52,240 --> 01:34:54,639
Speaker 1: I I just it's not that I don't understand feeling

1781
01:34:54,680 --> 01:34:56,599
Speaker 1: like that. I just don't think it gets us very far.

1782
01:34:56,960 --> 01:34:59,799
Speaker 1: And so I want to push us starting by admitting

1783
01:34:59,800 --> 01:35:02,479
Speaker 1: that we're all part of nature. We never were apart

1784
01:35:02,520 --> 01:35:05,160
Speaker 1: from it. We still eat, we still poop, we still

1785
01:35:05,200 --> 01:35:08,080
Speaker 1: you know, we're all part of it. And now what

1786
01:35:08,439 --> 01:35:10,559
Speaker 1: can we do to preserve as much of the rest

1787
01:35:10,600 --> 01:35:13,719
Speaker 1: of this biological heritage that four billion years of evolution

1788
01:35:13,720 --> 01:35:15,960
Speaker 1: have left us with? You know that we can all

1789
01:35:16,240 --> 01:35:18,320
Speaker 1: how can we make it so that your grandkids might

1790
01:35:18,360 --> 01:35:21,519
Speaker 1: at least have the option of deciding whether they're excited

1791
01:35:21,560 --> 01:35:25,120
Speaker 1: about seeing a rattlesnake or an elephant. Wouldn't it wouldn't

1792
01:35:25,479 --> 01:35:28,519
Speaker 1: just just twelve thousand years ago, there were five or

1793
01:35:28,520 --> 01:35:32,639
Speaker 1: six kinds of elephant relatives in the United States. They're

1794
01:35:32,760 --> 01:35:35,360
Speaker 1: just that's less than twice the age of a bristle

1795
01:35:35,439 --> 01:35:37,800
Speaker 1: colmb pine tree. So forget about the end of the

1796
01:35:37,800 --> 01:35:40,759
Speaker 1: place to seem being ancient, it was only twelve thousand

1797
01:35:40,880 --> 01:35:43,679
Speaker 1: years ago. The last mammoth on Earth was about thirty

1798
01:35:44,320 --> 01:35:47,040
Speaker 1: years ago, about the time Babylon was being sacked. So

1799
01:35:47,240 --> 01:35:49,679
Speaker 1: we used to have a much more diverse world. It's

1800
01:35:49,920 --> 01:35:54,320
Speaker 1: we're simplifying it at a horrifically fast pace. Wouldn't it

1801
01:35:54,360 --> 01:35:56,880
Speaker 1: be terrible if there are no elephants lefted? How would

1802
01:35:56,880 --> 01:35:59,160
Speaker 1: you like to have to tell your grandkids, Wow, we

1803
01:35:59,360 --> 01:36:02,400
Speaker 1: used to have the thing called elephants. No ship, we

1804
01:36:02,439 --> 01:36:05,040
Speaker 1: really did. They had this, They had a trunk. They

1805
01:36:05,080 --> 01:36:07,280
Speaker 1: weren't just in pictures. We had them, but we don't anymore.

1806
01:36:07,600 --> 01:36:09,680
Speaker 1: You wouldn't it be that's the I think that's the

1807
01:36:09,680 --> 01:36:12,680
Speaker 1: worst outcome. What a stain the worst outcome And and

1808
01:36:13,800 --> 01:36:16,759
Speaker 1: I think of you know, people that don't agree with hunting,

1809
01:36:16,840 --> 01:36:19,960
Speaker 1: like I think that hunting might lead to less elephants,

1810
01:36:21,080 --> 01:36:24,040
Speaker 1: if done right, it's a prescription for more. It might be,

1811
01:36:24,640 --> 01:36:27,080
Speaker 1: it might be I think that. I think the elephant

1812
01:36:27,080 --> 01:36:31,559
Speaker 1: thing in particular is very complex. But the fact is

1813
01:36:32,000 --> 01:36:34,960
Speaker 1: every elephant will die too, just like I was talking

1814
01:36:34,960 --> 01:36:37,240
Speaker 1: about that earlier with there you know, every bird will die.

1815
01:36:37,320 --> 01:36:39,479
Speaker 1: I think I didn't quite finish my thought about the birds.

1816
01:36:39,479 --> 01:36:42,400
Speaker 1: But here's these three billion birds killed by cats. All

1817
01:36:42,439 --> 01:36:46,040
Speaker 1: those birds are gonna die anyway. So the issue is when,

1818
01:36:47,000 --> 01:36:49,280
Speaker 1: how frequently, and what will be the consequence of the

1819
01:36:49,320 --> 01:36:51,960
Speaker 1: particular way that they die, And that's that's what we

1820
01:36:52,000 --> 01:36:55,760
Speaker 1: want to know. If if cats are killing birds at

1821
01:36:55,760 --> 01:36:58,880
Speaker 1: a rate that is causing birds to plummet in terms

1822
01:36:58,920 --> 01:37:02,160
Speaker 1: of sustainable population, that's a really big deal. If cats

1823
01:37:02,160 --> 01:37:04,560
Speaker 1: are a source of mortality of birds, but bird populations

1824
01:37:04,560 --> 01:37:07,080
Speaker 1: were remaining constant, that would be a very different picture.

1825
01:37:07,920 --> 01:37:10,080
Speaker 1: And so I don't feel like I'm in a point

1826
01:37:10,080 --> 01:37:12,960
Speaker 1: to position to prescribe what we should do for most

1827
01:37:13,000 --> 01:37:15,800
Speaker 1: of these problems. But I think starting by admitting that

1828
01:37:15,880 --> 01:37:20,160
Speaker 1: we are inevitably part of nature is really important and

1829
01:37:20,200 --> 01:37:24,880
Speaker 1: I think getting out and participating, fishing, gardening, farming, hunting,

1830
01:37:26,479 --> 01:37:29,559
Speaker 1: those are those are ways of of really owning up

1831
01:37:29,560 --> 01:37:32,360
Speaker 1: to the fact that we are indeed participants. Yes, I

1832
01:37:32,400 --> 01:37:36,920
Speaker 1: read another paper that you were called Rewilding our Lives.

1833
01:37:37,360 --> 01:37:40,120
Speaker 1: It's great, and you said there's a couple of questions

1834
01:37:40,160 --> 01:37:41,479
Speaker 1: you ask, But the most point in one, I think

1835
01:37:41,560 --> 01:37:44,479
Speaker 1: is how wild a world do we want as opposed

1836
01:37:44,479 --> 01:37:47,320
Speaker 1: to how wild a world we will tolerate. I think

1837
01:37:47,360 --> 01:37:51,639
Speaker 1: that's an interesting juxtaposition, because we all in our minds

1838
01:37:51,680 --> 01:37:56,160
Speaker 1: want this Yellowstone National Park wild world that's both accessible

1839
01:37:56,200 --> 01:38:00,639
Speaker 1: to us but also wild. Does it really those two

1840
01:38:00,680 --> 01:38:03,400
Speaker 1: things will come at odds they could, they will adeptably,

1841
01:38:03,439 --> 01:38:07,320
Speaker 1: and so I think we've got to negotiate a whole

1842
01:38:07,320 --> 01:38:10,160
Speaker 1: set of relationships, you know. And I sort of imagined

1843
01:38:10,200 --> 01:38:14,200
Speaker 1: that that that conceptually it would be almost like concentric

1844
01:38:14,240 --> 01:38:17,800
Speaker 1: circles outward from pure wildness. But I would say that

1845
01:38:17,880 --> 01:38:21,040
Speaker 1: even pure wildness on both places, most places on Earth

1846
01:38:22,479 --> 01:38:25,439
Speaker 1: have a place for human presence, and the issue is

1847
01:38:25,479 --> 01:38:27,800
Speaker 1: how much presence, what are we doing there and so forth.

1848
01:38:28,120 --> 01:38:31,559
Speaker 1: So I think the only places that were ever wild

1849
01:38:31,640 --> 01:38:34,240
Speaker 1: in the sense of take only pictures and leave only footprints,

1850
01:38:34,240 --> 01:38:38,280
Speaker 1: where the pollar, the polls, even the Inner Sahara has

1851
01:38:38,320 --> 01:38:40,280
Speaker 1: had people that work there, you know. So I I

1852
01:38:40,360 --> 01:38:44,080
Speaker 1: really am interested in exploring the difference between this kind

1853
01:38:44,080 --> 01:38:47,120
Speaker 1: of pure wilderness notion in which people don't really have

1854
01:38:47,160 --> 01:38:49,960
Speaker 1: any place at all. That's the key thing at all.

1855
01:38:50,720 --> 01:38:54,200
Speaker 1: Nobody denies that if you put tens of thousands of

1856
01:38:54,240 --> 01:38:58,320
Speaker 1: people living in Yellowstone will lose a lot. I'm not

1857
01:38:58,560 --> 01:39:03,360
Speaker 1: arguing for that, but I am arguing that that, Um,

1858
01:39:03,479 --> 01:39:05,880
Speaker 1: people have always been parts of all this. Yeah, there's

1859
01:39:05,960 --> 01:39:08,960
Speaker 1: levels to it, right. So somebody described Yellows to me

1860
01:39:09,040 --> 01:39:12,160
Speaker 1: like an ambassador for the natural world. There's people who

1861
01:39:12,160 --> 01:39:15,879
Speaker 1: would never have the wherewithal to understand what you understand

1862
01:39:15,880 --> 01:39:19,160
Speaker 1: from your your years of work. Um, you just don't

1863
01:39:19,160 --> 01:39:21,679
Speaker 1: have the interest in it. Different people have different interests.

1864
01:39:21,680 --> 01:39:25,040
Speaker 1: Some people have more urban interests and that's what they

1865
01:39:25,040 --> 01:39:27,840
Speaker 1: do their cultural society. They like to be around these

1866
01:39:28,160 --> 01:39:31,479
Speaker 1: buzzing hives of energy, human energy. They don't they don't

1867
01:39:31,479 --> 01:39:33,400
Speaker 1: long for things that that you and I probably long for,

1868
01:39:33,479 --> 01:39:36,040
Speaker 1: which is being alone or being with a few people

1869
01:39:36,080 --> 01:39:39,040
Speaker 1: out in the middle of nowhere. So like Yellowstone becomes

1870
01:39:39,040 --> 01:39:42,160
Speaker 1: an ambassador for those those folks. They can go and

1871
01:39:42,200 --> 01:39:43,920
Speaker 1: see it, and that's just a level of kind of

1872
01:39:43,920 --> 01:39:46,840
Speaker 1: the natural world. It's kind of like the top level

1873
01:39:47,040 --> 01:39:49,040
Speaker 1: that you can see, but there's so many deeper things

1874
01:39:49,040 --> 01:39:51,400
Speaker 1: that you can get into. And for somebody like me,

1875
01:39:51,640 --> 01:39:54,719
Speaker 1: I just over the last couple of years, I've realized

1876
01:39:54,800 --> 01:39:57,960
Speaker 1: that I can't really operate without deeper levels of understanding.

1877
01:39:58,280 --> 01:40:01,400
Speaker 1: And that's just me. That's not everybody, but my I'm

1878
01:40:01,400 --> 01:40:03,880
Speaker 1: not happy without that, you know if I and hunting

1879
01:40:03,960 --> 01:40:05,559
Speaker 1: is just a good way for me to find a

1880
01:40:05,560 --> 01:40:08,720
Speaker 1: deeper level of understand absolutely, But for herpetology is another way.

1881
01:40:11,040 --> 01:40:14,720
Speaker 1: And you've you've had some crazy some crazy uh that

1882
01:40:14,840 --> 01:40:16,920
Speaker 1: you had a jaguar story too, didn't you. From being

1883
01:40:16,920 --> 01:40:20,320
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica, I've been around jaguar's a fair amount.

1884
01:40:20,800 --> 01:40:23,840
Speaker 1: I've only actually seen one once and it was just

1885
01:40:23,840 --> 01:40:26,720
Speaker 1: just fleeting. My crossed the trail in front of us

1886
01:40:26,720 --> 01:40:29,439
Speaker 1: at night and we it's squinted at us through it

1887
01:40:29,520 --> 01:40:32,920
Speaker 1: in our flashlight and then it disappeared. You know, many times,

1888
01:40:33,000 --> 01:40:36,559
Speaker 1: especially in their early in the eighties where I worked,

1889
01:40:36,600 --> 01:40:39,920
Speaker 1: it was not uncommon to find their droppings and sometimes

1890
01:40:40,000 --> 01:40:43,360
Speaker 1: really fresh. I mean you you almost imagined you could

1891
01:40:43,360 --> 01:40:46,200
Speaker 1: see steam coming up you know. And jaguar droppings are big.

1892
01:40:46,600 --> 01:40:50,040
Speaker 1: I mean, that's we're talking big, you know. And often

1893
01:40:50,080 --> 01:40:53,000
Speaker 1: you can see that this one is all peckory for

1894
01:40:53,320 --> 01:40:55,200
Speaker 1: or this one's got a sloth claw and it or

1895
01:40:55,240 --> 01:40:57,679
Speaker 1: something like that and so, and they're in their tracks.

1896
01:40:57,760 --> 01:41:01,200
Speaker 1: Jaguar tracks are really splay. I'm like puma track. So

1897
01:41:01,360 --> 01:41:04,040
Speaker 1: puma tracks tend to be more parallel sided. And a

1898
01:41:04,520 --> 01:41:07,519
Speaker 1: big puma might have a footprint like something like that,

1899
01:41:07,560 --> 01:41:10,960
Speaker 1: you know, for it, And a big jaguar track because

1900
01:41:11,000 --> 01:41:13,760
Speaker 1: they tend to occur and moisture habitats and walk on

1901
01:41:15,240 --> 01:41:17,040
Speaker 1: their toes. Their toes are kind of splayed. So a

1902
01:41:17,040 --> 01:41:19,200
Speaker 1: big jaguar track is it. I mean, I can only

1903
01:41:19,200 --> 01:41:21,320
Speaker 1: imagine a tiger track. I've never seen. I've never been

1904
01:41:21,360 --> 01:41:26,200
Speaker 1: around tigers. I wish, But yeah, do you do you

1905
01:41:26,240 --> 01:41:28,479
Speaker 1: think of you know, I think I keep going back

1906
01:41:28,479 --> 01:41:33,040
Speaker 1: to tracks and shadows because it it just was. It

1907
01:41:33,160 --> 01:41:37,760
Speaker 1: struck me in a lot of ways. Um, it took

1908
01:41:37,760 --> 01:41:40,000
Speaker 1: you a long time to get there, right, that you

1909
01:41:40,040 --> 01:41:41,559
Speaker 1: had to take a lot of When I was reading

1910
01:41:41,560 --> 01:41:44,040
Speaker 1: and I was thinking of the concept of you had

1911
01:41:44,040 --> 01:41:45,360
Speaker 1: to you had to spend a lot of time and

1912
01:41:45,439 --> 01:41:50,120
Speaker 1: like micro moments like a lot of studying, you know,

1913
01:41:50,600 --> 01:41:52,800
Speaker 1: SCAT and these things you're talking about that like really

1914
01:41:52,840 --> 01:41:54,760
Speaker 1: on the ground moments, and there was like there must

1915
01:41:54,760 --> 01:41:56,040
Speaker 1: have been a time in your life where you were

1916
01:41:56,080 --> 01:41:57,880
Speaker 1: able to take it to a macro level and start

1917
01:41:58,000 --> 01:42:02,000
Speaker 1: started to think about it. You're overall understanding of the

1918
01:42:02,080 --> 01:42:06,000
Speaker 1: things you've learned from those micro instances. Can you give

1919
01:42:06,040 --> 01:42:08,880
Speaker 1: people a like, was there a moment where you start

1920
01:42:08,920 --> 01:42:10,599
Speaker 1: to think, Man, I gotta write this book. I gotta

1921
01:42:10,760 --> 01:42:14,800
Speaker 1: meditate on everything I've learned, everything I've done, because I think,

1922
01:42:15,400 --> 01:42:19,200
Speaker 1: to me, at least that's an interesting inspection. Well, by coincidence,

1923
01:42:19,200 --> 01:42:25,479
Speaker 1: it involves Montana the answer. So, um, it's the early eighties. Uh,

1924
01:42:25,600 --> 01:42:27,920
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm an assistant professor coming up for ten

1925
01:42:28,000 --> 01:42:30,479
Speaker 1: year pretty soon at Berkeley. I'm writing signed papers because

1926
01:42:30,520 --> 01:42:32,680
Speaker 1: that's the pint of the realm, that's what that's the

1927
01:42:32,760 --> 01:42:35,880
Speaker 1: last stage of doing scientific scholarship is to publish a

1928
01:42:35,920 --> 01:42:38,479
Speaker 1: peer reviewed paper. So that's what I'm doing, and that's

1929
01:42:38,520 --> 01:42:40,800
Speaker 1: that's my job to do that. But I am in

1930
01:42:40,840 --> 01:42:44,960
Speaker 1: my early thirties. I'm out of the army. I'm so

1931
01:42:45,000 --> 01:42:46,920
Speaker 1: glad I didn't have to go to Vietnam at the

1932
01:42:47,000 --> 01:42:50,080
Speaker 1: last minute. You know, I'm I already had the amblean stuff.

1933
01:42:50,800 --> 01:42:53,759
Speaker 1: I've been divorced twice, and all these things are swirling around,

1934
01:42:53,760 --> 01:42:56,120
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm thinking, God, I want to write

1935
01:42:56,160 --> 01:42:59,160
Speaker 1: something else, you know, I want to write about what

1936
01:42:59,280 --> 01:43:01,880
Speaker 1: this other stuff means. And a friend gives me a

1937
01:43:01,880 --> 01:43:06,040
Speaker 1: book called A River Runs Through It by Norman McClay. Yeah,

1938
01:43:06,080 --> 01:43:08,760
Speaker 1: and I it's just a little book, you know, it's

1939
01:43:08,800 --> 01:43:11,679
Speaker 1: actually three stories, but it's the title novella. I think

1940
01:43:12,439 --> 01:43:15,120
Speaker 1: that that blew my mind. I just I read it

1941
01:43:15,120 --> 01:43:18,640
Speaker 1: in one sitting, and I I saw the possibility of

1942
01:43:18,760 --> 01:43:22,559
Speaker 1: non uh, because I had thought, well, you know, if

1943
01:43:22,560 --> 01:43:24,360
Speaker 1: you want to write about these life and death things,

1944
01:43:24,400 --> 01:43:27,280
Speaker 1: you gotta write fiction. And I know Hemingway or I

1945
01:43:27,280 --> 01:43:29,120
Speaker 1: don't know Jim har I didn't know about Jim Harrison

1946
01:43:29,160 --> 01:43:32,640
Speaker 1: yet at that point, and so I had this misconception

1947
01:43:32,680 --> 01:43:34,200
Speaker 1: that I would never do that because I don't know

1948
01:43:34,200 --> 01:43:36,120
Speaker 1: how to write, and I couldn't see myself writing fiction.

1949
01:43:36,320 --> 01:43:38,000
Speaker 1: And then I read A River Runs Through It, which

1950
01:43:38,040 --> 01:43:42,240
Speaker 1: is only scarcely fiction, it's you know, and I saw

1951
01:43:42,320 --> 01:43:44,640
Speaker 1: what he could. There's a single paragraph in which, in

1952
01:43:44,680 --> 01:43:47,559
Speaker 1: the middle of a paragraph, his brother abruptly gets killed

1953
01:43:47,560 --> 01:43:50,160
Speaker 1: in an alley, and I thought to myself, that's how

1954
01:43:50,160 --> 01:43:52,320
Speaker 1: it really is. That's that's how when you get the

1955
01:43:52,360 --> 01:43:55,439
Speaker 1: phone call from your mom and you think she's calling

1956
01:43:55,479 --> 01:43:57,760
Speaker 1: to tell you to invite you for dinner, and it

1957
01:43:57,760 --> 01:44:00,680
Speaker 1: turns out Marsha has been murdered, her first lover has

1958
01:44:00,680 --> 01:44:04,519
Speaker 1: been murdered. That's what that's what that's what literature can do.

1959
01:44:04,960 --> 01:44:07,280
Speaker 1: I saw that McLean did that in that paragraph, you know,

1960
01:44:07,439 --> 01:44:10,000
Speaker 1: just going along. It's a Presbyterian father. I went, I

1961
01:44:10,040 --> 01:44:13,920
Speaker 1: went fly fishing, and my brother was killed in an alley.

1962
01:44:14,120 --> 01:44:17,360
Speaker 1: You know, Jesus, you know this is this is something.

1963
01:44:17,640 --> 01:44:23,240
Speaker 1: So Norman McClain by then was an elderly retired English

1964
01:44:23,240 --> 01:44:25,840
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Chicago, and you probably know

1965
01:44:25,880 --> 01:44:29,480
Speaker 1: all this. Many publishers turned down that book, and Chicago

1966
01:44:29,640 --> 01:44:32,120
Speaker 1: published it as the first worst work of fiction, the

1967
01:44:32,200 --> 01:44:34,960
Speaker 1: University of Chicago Press, and every published and at first

1968
01:44:34,960 --> 01:44:38,000
Speaker 1: it started out slow, and then eventually, you know, gazillions

1969
01:44:38,040 --> 01:44:40,680
Speaker 1: and all these languages and stuff. So I knew the

1970
01:44:40,800 --> 01:44:44,680
Speaker 1: editor at Chicago at that time, and I this is

1971
01:44:44,720 --> 01:44:47,680
Speaker 1: before so we're talking snail mail, and I write her

1972
01:44:47,720 --> 01:44:49,479
Speaker 1: and I go, oh my god, Susan, I just read

1973
01:44:49,560 --> 01:44:52,240
Speaker 1: the most incredible book from your press. The River runs

1974
01:44:52,240 --> 01:44:54,600
Speaker 1: through it. And I went on for like three paragraphs

1975
01:44:54,600 --> 01:44:58,960
Speaker 1: about why this book just captured me, and she writes

1976
01:44:59,000 --> 01:45:00,800
Speaker 1: me back. A couple weeks later, I get back from

1977
01:45:00,840 --> 01:45:03,280
Speaker 1: her and she goes, well, Norman comes in to get

1978
01:45:03,320 --> 01:45:05,479
Speaker 1: his royalty check from time to time, and I showed

1979
01:45:05,560 --> 01:45:09,040
Speaker 1: him your letter and he says, this guy can write.

1980
01:45:09,120 --> 01:45:12,320
Speaker 1: He should write a book. And so she says, Norman

1981
01:45:12,360 --> 01:45:14,519
Speaker 1: thinks she should write a book. So then I I've

1982
01:45:14,600 --> 01:45:16,800
Speaker 1: got an address, and I wrote to Norman McLain. I said,

1983
01:45:16,840 --> 01:45:19,280
Speaker 1: Dr McLaine, I'm I'm coming to Chicago to do some

1984
01:45:19,320 --> 01:45:21,040
Speaker 1: snake work at the Field Museum, but I'd like to

1985
01:45:21,080 --> 01:45:23,240
Speaker 1: take you out to dinner. And he writes me back.

1986
01:45:23,280 --> 01:45:25,280
Speaker 1: He says, I'll take you to dinner to the Faculty Club.

1987
01:45:25,720 --> 01:45:27,839
Speaker 1: So I get on a plane, I fly to Chicago.

1988
01:45:28,320 --> 01:45:30,000
Speaker 1: I do my work in the Field Museum looking at

1989
01:45:30,000 --> 01:45:32,360
Speaker 1: the stomach contents, and I have dinner with Norman McClean.

1990
01:45:32,439 --> 01:45:35,320
Speaker 1: He's like eighty years old. And the first thing he

1991
01:45:35,360 --> 01:45:38,280
Speaker 1: tells me that surprised me is that he's written another book.

1992
01:45:38,560 --> 01:45:40,040
Speaker 1: And I go, oh, really, what's it about? And he

1993
01:45:40,080 --> 01:45:43,040
Speaker 1: says it's called young Men in Fire and I go, oh, wow,

1994
01:45:43,080 --> 01:45:45,360
Speaker 1: what's that about. Oh, it's about this tragic fire, you know.

1995
01:45:45,720 --> 01:45:47,720
Speaker 1: And he says, but I've got about another year's worth

1996
01:45:47,760 --> 01:45:49,559
Speaker 1: of work to do on it. And that was that

1997
01:45:49,640 --> 01:45:51,599
Speaker 1: took me back, because I thought that great writers had

1998
01:45:51,640 --> 01:45:54,320
Speaker 1: just spilled from their pen, you know, and here he's

1999
01:45:54,320 --> 01:45:56,759
Speaker 1: telling me he's finished the manuscript, but he's got another

2000
01:45:56,880 --> 01:45:59,439
Speaker 1: year of work to do on it. So and then

2001
01:45:59,479 --> 01:46:01,000
Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, I'm gonna have dinner and

2002
01:46:01,000 --> 01:46:03,840
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell him about going into burning buildings and

2003
01:46:04,120 --> 01:46:06,479
Speaker 1: saving people and all this stuff, you know, being an

2004
01:46:06,520 --> 01:46:09,880
Speaker 1: amulist driver. And he he didn't seem very interested in it.

2005
01:46:10,080 --> 01:46:12,599
Speaker 1: And several times during the dinner he said, why don't

2006
01:46:12,600 --> 01:46:14,280
Speaker 1: you write up? He said, why do you want to

2007
01:46:14,280 --> 01:46:16,600
Speaker 1: work with those goddamn rattlesnakes? Why don't you go right

2008
01:46:16,640 --> 01:46:19,920
Speaker 1: about that? He was very he was very uh, he

2009
01:46:20,040 --> 01:46:23,559
Speaker 1: sort of veered between erudite professor and vulgar cowboy. And

2010
01:46:23,600 --> 01:46:25,040
Speaker 1: he says, why do you why do you want to

2011
01:46:25,040 --> 01:46:27,720
Speaker 1: work those goddamn rattlesnakes? You should go write about that.

2012
01:46:28,200 --> 01:46:31,240
Speaker 1: And on the plane back to California, I thought, you know,

2013
01:46:31,280 --> 01:46:33,920
Speaker 1: he's right, I'm not ready to write about that. I

2014
01:46:33,960 --> 01:46:37,040
Speaker 1: don't think I don't know myself remotely well enough to

2015
01:46:37,080 --> 01:46:40,280
Speaker 1: write about this life and death stuff. But I'm gonna

2016
01:46:40,320 --> 01:46:44,120
Speaker 1: write a book about snakes that tries to go modestly

2017
01:46:44,200 --> 01:46:47,000
Speaker 1: in that direction. So my Snake Book starts out with

2018
01:46:47,040 --> 01:46:50,600
Speaker 1: my dinner with Norman McClain. So in the in the prologue,

2019
01:46:51,160 --> 01:46:55,360
Speaker 1: Norman McClaine poses the question to me, why snakes? And

2020
01:46:55,400 --> 01:46:57,560
Speaker 1: then I wrote the chapters to my Snake Book. So

2021
01:46:57,600 --> 01:46:59,800
Speaker 1: there were little essays at the start of each chapter

2022
01:47:00,200 --> 01:47:03,120
Speaker 1: that we're about the topic, but more personal. And these

2023
01:47:03,240 --> 01:47:05,680
Speaker 1: essays run through the book, and they ended an epilogue

2024
01:47:05,680 --> 01:47:11,080
Speaker 1: which gave my best answer in to the question why snakes.

2025
01:47:11,680 --> 01:47:14,320
Speaker 1: When I finished the Snake Book, by then it was

2026
01:47:14,360 --> 01:47:17,360
Speaker 1: fifteen years later and I was ready to start thinking

2027
01:47:17,400 --> 01:47:19,479
Speaker 1: about that one. So that's how it happened. Sorry, I

2028
01:47:19,520 --> 01:47:25,360
Speaker 1: was such a long story, but I think they had

2029
01:47:25,439 --> 01:47:29,760
Speaker 1: to admit that it was the deadliness of it was

2030
01:47:29,800 --> 01:47:34,680
Speaker 1: the violence, and it was it was me commsily, inarticulately,

2031
01:47:35,439 --> 01:47:40,559
Speaker 1: never quite conclusively, grappling with having a kid die in

2032
01:47:40,600 --> 01:47:43,639
Speaker 1: my arms and trying to save people with gunshot ones

2033
01:47:43,680 --> 01:47:46,519
Speaker 1: their chest and stuff, you know, and and you know,

2034
01:47:46,560 --> 01:47:48,519
Speaker 1: when you go out and you watch a rattlesnakes strike

2035
01:47:48,520 --> 01:47:50,960
Speaker 1: a rabbit, you can kind of you can kind of

2036
01:47:51,000 --> 01:47:53,439
Speaker 1: at least shed all that human stuff and you can

2037
01:47:53,479 --> 01:47:58,160
Speaker 1: confront what is surely nake. It's surely violence. It is

2038
01:47:58,240 --> 01:48:01,400
Speaker 1: it's a violent act that you it doesn't have all

2039
01:48:01,400 --> 01:48:03,320
Speaker 1: that other baggage. And so you can just sit there

2040
01:48:03,360 --> 01:48:07,080
Speaker 1: and and think about that. You know, life, life, death,

2041
01:48:07,240 --> 01:48:10,160
Speaker 1: one life left, you know, all the stuff. So that

2042
01:48:10,240 --> 01:48:12,360
Speaker 1: was the It's a little more complicated, but that was

2043
01:48:12,400 --> 01:48:17,040
Speaker 1: the answer to the Snake book. Catharsis of something absolutely

2044
01:48:17,280 --> 01:48:20,800
Speaker 1: absolutely and both books were cathartic. I mean, there was

2045
01:48:20,840 --> 01:48:22,920
Speaker 1: no doubt that writing Snakes, even though I was only

2046
01:48:23,280 --> 01:48:26,960
Speaker 1: sort of tangentially dealing with these things. And in the

2047
01:48:27,000 --> 01:48:29,519
Speaker 1: epilogue of Snakes, I talked only a little bit, only

2048
01:48:29,560 --> 01:48:32,439
Speaker 1: as much as I needed to and as unsentimentally as

2049
01:48:32,479 --> 01:48:34,880
Speaker 1: I could about some of the experiences I had as

2050
01:48:34,880 --> 01:48:39,920
Speaker 1: a young man. And then yeah, and then I was

2051
01:48:39,920 --> 01:48:44,040
Speaker 1: ready to like take take a deep breath and go okay.

2052
01:48:44,560 --> 01:48:48,160
Speaker 1: And actually, one more thing is that back when I decided,

2053
01:48:48,200 --> 01:48:50,160
Speaker 1: when I met Norman McLain and decided I wasn't ready

2054
01:48:50,200 --> 01:48:52,000
Speaker 1: to write it. I did. I was worried I would

2055
01:48:52,000 --> 01:48:55,759
Speaker 1: forget stuff. And so right after we word processing came along,

2056
01:48:55,800 --> 01:49:00,000
Speaker 1: and you know, keyboards, I wrote a stream of conscious

2057
01:49:00,080 --> 01:49:04,440
Speaker 1: this memoir one summer. I just tried to remember dialogue

2058
01:49:04,520 --> 01:49:09,479
Speaker 1: and smells and sounds and the relatively little emotion that

2059
01:49:09,520 --> 01:49:11,599
Speaker 1: I did feel that I was aware of, and I

2060
01:49:11,640 --> 01:49:15,040
Speaker 1: wrote it all down, just without worrying at all about

2061
01:49:15,040 --> 01:49:17,000
Speaker 1: the quality of the pros, and I put it in

2062
01:49:17,040 --> 01:49:20,080
Speaker 1: a spiral notebook and stuck in a file cant and

2063
01:49:20,160 --> 01:49:22,519
Speaker 1: like literally ten fifteen years later, when I started trying

2064
01:49:22,560 --> 01:49:25,720
Speaker 1: to write tracks and shadows, I pulled that out and

2065
01:49:25,760 --> 01:49:27,760
Speaker 1: I had things in there that I I fear I

2066
01:49:27,800 --> 01:49:30,240
Speaker 1: would not have remembered fifteen years later. It's like a

2067
01:49:30,960 --> 01:49:33,559
Speaker 1: strange time machine to pull that out, and I think, now,

2068
01:49:33,600 --> 01:49:36,200
Speaker 1: I'm you know, gosh, if you traveled ten years back

2069
01:49:36,200 --> 01:49:39,639
Speaker 1: in time and interviewed yourself, you're like, wow, Yeah, there's

2070
01:49:39,640 --> 01:49:43,439
Speaker 1: an interesting idiot there, Like, well, I wonder what he's

2071
01:49:43,439 --> 01:49:45,120
Speaker 1: going to get into. Yeah, well, maybe you're going to

2072
01:49:45,200 --> 01:49:47,720
Speaker 1: write a book. I hope someday. Have you thought about that?

2073
01:49:47,760 --> 01:49:49,880
Speaker 1: I have, and I thought about it in much the

2074
01:49:49,920 --> 01:49:53,240
Speaker 1: way that you have thought about it, and kind of like,

2075
01:49:53,439 --> 01:49:56,240
Speaker 1: at what stage in your life are you ready to

2076
01:49:56,520 --> 01:50:00,000
Speaker 1: reflect and introspect and what at what points in your

2077
01:50:00,160 --> 01:50:03,719
Speaker 1: for you ready to just like study and and sift

2078
01:50:04,080 --> 01:50:07,479
Speaker 1: and look through things and learn things. And that's why

2079
01:50:07,479 --> 01:50:09,439
Speaker 1: when I was reading your book, that's what I was

2080
01:50:09,479 --> 01:50:12,320
Speaker 1: thinking of. I'm like, here's a person who's done all

2081
01:50:12,360 --> 01:50:15,320
Speaker 1: these things and is spilling them out, but in such

2082
01:50:15,320 --> 01:50:20,639
Speaker 1: a way that leads to this conclusion, which is informed

2083
01:50:20,640 --> 01:50:22,559
Speaker 1: by all these experiences. You know, and if you were

2084
01:50:22,720 --> 01:50:24,360
Speaker 1: if you would have wrote that book when you were thirty,

2085
01:50:24,360 --> 01:50:27,040
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been as good as it is. And

2086
01:50:27,040 --> 01:50:29,240
Speaker 1: and so I think about that as a writer, you know,

2087
01:50:29,800 --> 01:50:33,720
Speaker 1: and writing is so damn painful. It's the worst. I

2088
01:50:33,800 --> 01:50:35,400
Speaker 1: talked to writers on this podcast all the times. It's

2089
01:50:35,439 --> 01:50:37,800
Speaker 1: like it's it's like, what's writing like for you? I'm like, well,

2090
01:50:37,800 --> 01:50:40,599
Speaker 1: what's the worst thing? Ever? It's really wonderful too, though,

2091
01:50:40,640 --> 01:50:44,559
Speaker 1: Oh it's I mean like pain and and and pain

2092
01:50:44,640 --> 01:50:46,800
Speaker 1: is wonderful in lots of ways, especially when it's like

2093
01:50:46,840 --> 01:50:49,880
Speaker 1: some artistic pain. It's almost like writing is the pain,

2094
01:50:49,960 --> 01:50:52,640
Speaker 1: and writing is what makes it good. Um, So I

2095
01:50:52,640 --> 01:50:54,840
Speaker 1: think about that and I'll write a book one day

2096
01:50:54,880 --> 01:50:58,439
Speaker 1: that that maybe meditates on all the things and and

2097
01:50:58,560 --> 01:51:01,200
Speaker 1: try and try to do that. But I I'm not there,

2098
01:51:01,200 --> 01:51:03,880
Speaker 1: just quite yet. I don't want to rush it. Yeah, well,

2099
01:51:03,880 --> 01:51:05,599
Speaker 1: I hope you make it the end of Tracks and Shadows,

2100
01:51:05,880 --> 01:51:08,439
Speaker 1: I will. I got one two chapters. In fact, I

2101
01:51:08,520 --> 01:51:14,519
Speaker 1: read the last chapter the Cowboy. I do well, go

2102
01:51:14,640 --> 01:51:16,840
Speaker 1: pick up Tracks and Shadows. That's just the one that

2103
01:51:16,880 --> 01:51:18,120
Speaker 1: I liked the most. But there's a lot of other

2104
01:51:18,160 --> 01:51:20,439
Speaker 1: books by Mr Harry Green here that you should go

2105
01:51:20,479 --> 01:51:22,439
Speaker 1: pick up and and then learn about his life. It's

2106
01:51:22,439 --> 01:51:25,160
Speaker 1: a pretty badass. Thanks. All right, Thanks Harry. Great talking

2107
01:51:25,160 --> 01:51:27,479
Speaker 1: to you too. Yeah, I hope we hope we go

2108
01:51:27,520 --> 01:51:29,640
Speaker 1: for a hike someday we're gonna go, Yeah, with an

2109
01:51:29,640 --> 01:51:34,400
Speaker 1: elk at the end. We should do that, well, hopefully

2110
01:51:34,400 --> 01:51:37,719
Speaker 1: and elk maybe. Or if I was gonna encounter Rattlesnake,

2111
01:51:37,760 --> 01:51:39,720
Speaker 1: I'd be I'd be comfortable with you there. But what

2112
01:51:39,760 --> 01:51:42,640
Speaker 1: do I do now? As I'll tell you, I have

2113
01:51:42,720 --> 01:51:45,080
Speaker 1: one rattlesnake story because I lived in Texas and hunted

2114
01:51:45,120 --> 01:51:49,320
Speaker 1: in Texas, UH for four years. I was hunting access

2115
01:51:49,360 --> 01:51:52,400
Speaker 1: to her in the hill country. A couple of years ago,

2116
01:51:52,720 --> 01:51:55,840
Speaker 1: and I was sitting there was it was during, it

2117
01:51:55,880 --> 01:51:57,680
Speaker 1: was during, well they don't have a rut but there

2118
01:51:57,760 --> 01:52:00,880
Speaker 1: was some rutting access here around me, and there was

2119
01:52:00,920 --> 01:52:03,840
Speaker 1: just roaring access there a hundred yards. I got my

2120
01:52:03,840 --> 01:52:07,519
Speaker 1: bow and I'm like I kept working in on him,

2121
01:52:07,560 --> 01:52:09,280
Speaker 1: and he'd be chasing the dough and working on me

2122
01:52:09,439 --> 01:52:11,040
Speaker 1: chasing the dough. I'm like, man, I'm just gonna sit down.

2123
01:52:11,320 --> 01:52:13,760
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna calm down, sit down, Maybe he'll come

2124
01:52:13,800 --> 01:52:17,400
Speaker 1: walking by. So I sat down just up against this

2125
01:52:17,640 --> 01:52:19,559
Speaker 1: old scrub boak tree and put my feet out. I

2126
01:52:19,560 --> 01:52:22,280
Speaker 1: had snake boots on up to my knees. I sat

2127
01:52:22,360 --> 01:52:25,920
Speaker 1: there and uh, about five minutes go by and this box,

2128
01:52:26,160 --> 01:52:27,960
Speaker 1: you know, I could see him two hundred yards away,

2129
01:52:28,000 --> 01:52:31,320
Speaker 1: just running in his thick mesquite and I could see him,

2130
01:52:31,400 --> 01:52:32,680
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, I'm just not gonna I'm

2131
01:52:32,680 --> 01:52:35,519
Speaker 1: just gonna hope that he comes over here. And just

2132
01:52:35,560 --> 01:52:38,160
Speaker 1: about that time, I I felt something kind of like

2133
01:52:38,200 --> 01:52:41,360
Speaker 1: touching my hip and I just reached down to like

2134
01:52:41,720 --> 01:52:45,320
Speaker 1: brush my jacket away, and I looked back down and

2135
01:52:45,360 --> 01:52:49,600
Speaker 1: there was like a six ft rattlesnake that had that

2136
01:52:49,680 --> 01:52:52,080
Speaker 1: had breached my knee and was crawling over my boot.

2137
01:52:52,200 --> 01:52:56,720
Speaker 1: His rattle was about at my and my first all was,

2138
01:52:56,760 --> 01:53:01,640
Speaker 1: oh cool, a snake. And then slowly as he was

2139
01:53:01,680 --> 01:53:03,599
Speaker 1: like making his way down my boot and up over

2140
01:53:03,640 --> 01:53:08,040
Speaker 1: the foot and down, and then I quickly switched my mind,

2141
01:53:08,040 --> 01:53:10,880
Speaker 1: hold ship, Oh my god, what do I do? And

2142
01:53:11,000 --> 01:53:12,960
Speaker 1: I and I just sat there long enough to let

2143
01:53:13,000 --> 01:53:16,280
Speaker 1: him kind of get over my boot. And I ran

2144
01:53:16,400 --> 01:53:18,880
Speaker 1: like a little girl for like three yards and I

2145
01:53:18,880 --> 01:53:22,280
Speaker 1: turned back and he didn't even he just kept on going.

2146
01:53:22,880 --> 01:53:24,920
Speaker 1: He turned and looked at me kind of like in

2147
01:53:24,960 --> 01:53:27,160
Speaker 1: an annoyed fashion, and I wish he would have just

2148
01:53:27,240 --> 01:53:30,000
Speaker 1: chilled out, but he didn't try to. He didn't coil

2149
01:53:30,040 --> 01:53:32,120
Speaker 1: to strike or anything. Just you have to remember one month.

2150
01:53:32,160 --> 01:53:36,040
Speaker 1: This one, I want to say it was in June,

2151
01:53:36,840 --> 01:53:39,920
Speaker 1: so that that quite possibly they tend to mate a

2152
01:53:39,920 --> 01:53:41,880
Speaker 1: little later than that. But they also have some spring

2153
01:53:41,920 --> 01:53:46,120
Speaker 1: mating in western dinadbacks that that quite possibly, based on size,

2154
01:53:46,160 --> 01:53:50,320
Speaker 1: it was almost certainly a male, and when they're they

2155
01:53:50,479 --> 01:53:54,439
Speaker 1: can distinguish. I don't actually know where they can even

2156
01:53:54,439 --> 01:53:58,880
Speaker 1: perceive that where a nonreceptive female has been so rattlesnakes

2157
01:53:58,880 --> 01:54:01,360
Speaker 1: generally don't breed every year of the females, it takes

2158
01:54:01,400 --> 01:54:03,360
Speaker 1: them more than one year to building up fat to

2159
01:54:03,360 --> 01:54:05,960
Speaker 1: make a litter, so only at most every other year,

2160
01:54:06,040 --> 01:54:08,200
Speaker 1: sometimes only every three or four years. A female is

2161
01:54:08,240 --> 01:54:11,240
Speaker 1: receptive to breed that summer to produce a litter the

2162
01:54:11,240 --> 01:54:14,559
Speaker 1: next summer. So that's their that's their social system. And

2163
01:54:14,640 --> 01:54:17,880
Speaker 1: so because females, if you imagine that there the sex

2164
01:54:18,000 --> 01:54:21,080
Speaker 1: ratio is equal in any one summer, there's a lot

2165
01:54:21,120 --> 01:54:24,839
Speaker 1: more males looking for females and there are receptive females, right,

2166
01:54:24,920 --> 01:54:28,679
Speaker 1: And so when males are on the trail, females they

2167
01:54:28,760 --> 01:54:32,400
Speaker 1: stop eating. They just sound familiar, so they're just like

2168
01:54:32,520 --> 01:54:35,920
Speaker 1: they're just going run, and so they try they crawl

2169
01:54:36,000 --> 01:54:39,200
Speaker 1: these long, fairly straight routes. It turns out, if you're

2170
01:54:39,200 --> 01:54:41,520
Speaker 1: looking for a trail and you don't know where it is,

2171
01:54:41,680 --> 01:54:43,760
Speaker 1: a straight line is like that is like the right

2172
01:54:43,760 --> 01:54:48,480
Speaker 1: search strategy. You just cut a direction that's right. And

2173
01:54:48,520 --> 01:54:51,040
Speaker 1: so that's what they do. And so I've watched them

2174
01:54:51,040 --> 01:54:53,920
Speaker 1: many times. A male rattlesnake during the breeding season is

2175
01:54:53,960 --> 01:54:59,240
Speaker 1: just like crawling about a about a body length a minute, flicking, flicking, clicking, flicking,

2176
01:54:59,240 --> 01:55:01,440
Speaker 1: flicking enough act. Really a few times seen one when

2177
01:55:01,440 --> 01:55:04,120
Speaker 1: he encountered a trail, because then everything changes. He starts

2178
01:55:04,360 --> 01:55:07,960
Speaker 1: crawling in this very circuitous much slower, and if you

2179
01:55:08,040 --> 01:55:10,040
Speaker 1: keep with him, you'll find him. He'll locate a female.

2180
01:55:10,080 --> 01:55:12,520
Speaker 1: You know, so this I wouldn't be surprised if that guy,

2181
01:55:12,880 --> 01:55:16,040
Speaker 1: he couldn't have cared less about you. You didn't smell

2182
01:55:16,040 --> 01:55:18,640
Speaker 1: like a rabbit or a squirrel, you didn't act threatening,

2183
01:55:19,360 --> 01:55:22,840
Speaker 1: and you weren't a receptive female. So you were just

2184
01:55:23,560 --> 01:55:27,680
Speaker 1: there were just one more like nose rock or log

2185
01:55:27,840 --> 01:55:29,600
Speaker 1: or what? Do you feel that when there's a snake

2186
01:55:29,640 --> 01:55:32,080
Speaker 1: on top of you crawling right, there's a little bit

2187
01:55:32,080 --> 01:55:34,160
Speaker 1: of a helpless this feeling, But then you realize, like

2188
01:55:35,640 --> 01:55:39,280
Speaker 1: he's got all the power really in this situation. But

2189
01:55:39,400 --> 01:55:41,240
Speaker 1: you know what if he had if you had been

2190
01:55:41,920 --> 01:55:44,240
Speaker 1: like say, just a few feet away, and you'd tossed

2191
01:55:44,240 --> 01:55:47,520
Speaker 1: a stick or something, and he snapped into that big

2192
01:55:47,680 --> 01:55:51,440
Speaker 1: exaggerated strike coil and started buzzing like crazy, the big long,

2193
01:55:51,560 --> 01:55:54,560
Speaker 1: slow tongue flick when they as long as you, as

2194
01:55:54,600 --> 01:55:56,960
Speaker 1: long as you were, like, let's say, if you really

2195
01:55:56,960 --> 01:56:00,720
Speaker 1: want to be super careful ten feet away, nothing's gonna

2196
01:56:00,720 --> 01:56:04,120
Speaker 1: happen the ral snake you've seen unless you're standing on

2197
01:56:04,160 --> 01:56:06,560
Speaker 1: it when you see it, are putting your hand on

2198
01:56:06,600 --> 01:56:09,120
Speaker 1: it when you see it. It's pretty much not dangerous

2199
01:56:09,160 --> 01:56:11,200
Speaker 1: to you anymore. It's it's the one you haven't seen

2200
01:56:11,280 --> 01:56:14,480
Speaker 1: that that could hurt you, or the one you interfere with.

2201
01:56:16,880 --> 01:56:19,400
Speaker 1: A huge fraction of snake bites in the US, not

2202
01:56:19,520 --> 01:56:21,840
Speaker 1: in Senegal or India, but but in the US, a

2203
01:56:21,880 --> 01:56:25,400
Speaker 1: huge fraction of snake bites are people purposely messing with

2204
01:56:25,440 --> 01:56:27,880
Speaker 1: a snake? You think snakes to have an opinion of us?

2205
01:56:28,800 --> 01:56:32,640
Speaker 1: I think they. I think they just want to avoid us. Yeah,

2206
01:56:32,920 --> 01:56:35,720
Speaker 1: I don't think they much like anything else. Yeah, there's

2207
01:56:35,760 --> 01:56:38,280
Speaker 1: no predatory I wonder how I was thinking. I wonder

2208
01:56:38,240 --> 01:56:40,200
Speaker 1: if the snake has an opinion of what's going on,

2209
01:56:41,280 --> 01:56:43,040
Speaker 1: because he looked I remember looking at it, like look

2210
01:56:43,080 --> 01:56:45,960
Speaker 1: pretty annoyed the situation, Like, well, I'm going probably, like

2211
01:56:46,000 --> 01:56:48,960
Speaker 1: you said, I'm going to find receptive female and anything

2212
01:56:49,000 --> 01:56:51,960
Speaker 1: isn't that is annoying to me. Yeah. We had, uh

2213
01:56:52,160 --> 01:56:54,520
Speaker 1: you know what you read. We had fifty snakes with

2214
01:56:54,640 --> 01:56:56,840
Speaker 1: radios in them, and the one we had the most

2215
01:56:56,880 --> 01:57:00,000
Speaker 1: experience with it was a female. She was a young,

2216
01:57:00,000 --> 01:57:02,160
Speaker 1: an adult female. When we first put a radio in her,

2217
01:57:02,200 --> 01:57:04,640
Speaker 1: and we watched her for twelve years. So twelve years

2218
01:57:04,720 --> 01:57:07,240
Speaker 1: later she was a very senior female and we had

2219
01:57:07,280 --> 01:57:10,200
Speaker 1: I think it was five and sixty nine encounters with her.

2220
01:57:10,400 --> 01:57:12,960
Speaker 1: I wasn't in on all of them, but me and

2221
01:57:13,000 --> 01:57:17,800
Speaker 1: my collaborator and UM, I think during that twelve years

2222
01:57:17,880 --> 01:57:20,320
Speaker 1: we had to catch her three or four more times

2223
01:57:20,320 --> 01:57:24,440
Speaker 1: to change her batteries basically, but our our whole handling

2224
01:57:24,440 --> 01:57:27,600
Speaker 1: protocol was super gentle. So I don't think I ever

2225
01:57:27,640 --> 01:57:30,560
Speaker 1: heard that snake rattle during all the times we captured her,

2226
01:57:30,720 --> 01:57:32,880
Speaker 1: anesthetized or put her radio and released her and so.

2227
01:57:33,800 --> 01:57:36,440
Speaker 1: And the significance of that is that, uh, one time

2228
01:57:36,520 --> 01:57:38,440
Speaker 1: I was looking for and I was by myself, and

2229
01:57:38,440 --> 01:57:41,360
Speaker 1: I had the radio antenna and I had her signal,

2230
01:57:41,400 --> 01:57:43,480
Speaker 1: and it was getting louder and louder, so I knew

2231
01:57:43,480 --> 01:57:46,360
Speaker 1: as closer and closer, and I was looking ahead, looking ahead,

2232
01:57:46,600 --> 01:57:49,480
Speaker 1: and I'd start walking from different directions and I'd always

2233
01:57:49,520 --> 01:57:52,320
Speaker 1: get the same vector to the last signals pointing at

2234
01:57:52,320 --> 01:57:55,280
Speaker 1: this juniper tree, and I was looking at my binoculars

2235
01:57:55,320 --> 01:57:58,160
Speaker 1: under it, and I couldn't see her. And I find

2236
01:57:58,160 --> 01:58:01,360
Speaker 1: a side as improbably is. It seemed to me that

2237
01:58:01,400 --> 01:58:04,680
Speaker 1: she was somehow buried under the duff, under the litter,

2238
01:58:04,800 --> 01:58:07,400
Speaker 1: under the tree. So I took the antenna off and

2239
01:58:07,480 --> 01:58:09,120
Speaker 1: was going to use the cable as a really short

2240
01:58:09,200 --> 01:58:11,720
Speaker 1: distance detector. And I crawled all the way around the

2241
01:58:11,800 --> 01:58:15,120
Speaker 1: juniper tween in my hands and knees, poking the cable

2242
01:58:15,400 --> 01:58:18,800
Speaker 1: at the ground and nothing. I can't find a goddamn snake.

2243
01:58:18,880 --> 01:58:21,600
Speaker 1: So I I finally sit up right against the trunk.

2244
01:58:21,640 --> 01:58:24,160
Speaker 1: It was sort of a big tree with drooping limbs,

2245
01:58:24,400 --> 01:58:26,200
Speaker 1: and I sit up with my head kind of among

2246
01:58:26,280 --> 01:58:30,600
Speaker 1: the limbs, and I literally started daydreaming about a book

2247
01:58:30,640 --> 01:58:33,120
Speaker 1: called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, because it

2248
01:58:33,160 --> 01:58:35,440
Speaker 1: made me think about something called a gumption trap, where

2249
01:58:35,440 --> 01:58:38,040
Speaker 1: you're you're not you're not making head away because you're

2250
01:58:38,040 --> 01:58:40,280
Speaker 1: making a false assumption about what you're doing. So I

2251
01:58:40,400 --> 01:58:42,800
Speaker 1: was saying and thinking, what what is my false assumption?

2252
01:58:43,000 --> 01:58:45,480
Speaker 1: And I had this weird sensation. I tilted my head

2253
01:58:45,560 --> 01:58:48,760
Speaker 1: slightly to the left and female one was sitting on

2254
01:58:48,800 --> 01:58:52,720
Speaker 1: a limb right next to my face. Her head was

2255
01:58:53,120 --> 01:58:56,320
Speaker 1: literally three or four or five inches from my face,

2256
01:58:57,960 --> 01:59:00,320
Speaker 1: and she didn't so much as flick her tongue, she

2257
01:59:00,360 --> 01:59:03,000
Speaker 1: didn't rattle, she didn't flick her tongue, she didn't bite me,

2258
01:59:03,120 --> 01:59:06,160
Speaker 1: she didn't do anything, And of course I I just

2259
01:59:07,440 --> 01:59:11,800
Speaker 1: very slowly moved away. And when I walked away, she

2260
01:59:11,840 --> 01:59:15,320
Speaker 1: was still sitting there with that movie. So I think

2261
01:59:15,360 --> 01:59:20,360
Speaker 1: it's possible. I don't want to like overly anthropomorphize the situation,

2262
01:59:20,440 --> 01:59:22,880
Speaker 1: but I think it's certainly reasonable to think that I

2263
01:59:22,960 --> 01:59:25,760
Speaker 1: never taught her to be afraid of me. I'm not

2264
01:59:25,840 --> 01:59:29,200
Speaker 1: saying we were pals. I'm not saying she recognized me,

2265
01:59:30,200 --> 01:59:33,160
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's I never taught her to

2266
01:59:33,240 --> 01:59:34,960
Speaker 1: be afraid of me. And I think if every time

2267
01:59:35,000 --> 01:59:37,320
Speaker 1: I had encountered that snake, I had pinned her down

2268
01:59:37,320 --> 01:59:38,680
Speaker 1: and picked her up by the head and showed her

2269
01:59:38,720 --> 01:59:41,120
Speaker 1: fangs off to somebody and kind of roughed her up,

2270
01:59:41,160 --> 01:59:43,640
Speaker 1: I think she would have been a much more defensive

2271
01:59:43,680 --> 01:59:47,640
Speaker 1: snake in the presence of whatever ME meant to her.

2272
01:59:47,880 --> 01:59:49,560
Speaker 1: And I think I could have ended up getting bitten

2273
01:59:49,560 --> 01:59:53,120
Speaker 1: out of the face, which would have been Would you

2274
01:59:53,360 --> 01:59:55,520
Speaker 1: think they have this this predatory of the molecule you

2275
01:59:55,600 --> 01:59:59,280
Speaker 1: mentioned when they're so they got a tracker molecule, they're

2276
01:59:59,360 --> 02:00:03,440
Speaker 1: using that kind of sophisticated biological markers they got to

2277
02:00:03,520 --> 02:00:08,120
Speaker 1: know you. They gotta understand like different, you know, things

2278
02:00:08,120 --> 02:00:10,760
Speaker 1: in their environment that that are similar and repetitive. They

2279
02:00:10,840 --> 02:00:13,360
Speaker 1: got to know that. Absolutely. It only makes sense. It

2280
02:00:13,800 --> 02:00:16,560
Speaker 1: makes sense, it would be it would be unparsimonious to

2281
02:00:16,600 --> 02:00:19,000
Speaker 1: think otherwise. Wo, we don't want to be that. No,

2282
02:00:19,120 --> 02:00:21,320
Speaker 1: we don't want to do that. We don't. Well, thank you, Harry,

2283
02:00:21,440 --> 02:00:24,760
Speaker 1: appreciate everything. And and uh, let's go mess around some

2284
02:00:24,760 --> 02:00:26,960
Speaker 1: snakes together, pleasure and learn something. I'll get I'll get

2285
02:00:27,000 --> 02:00:28,680
Speaker 1: up to Montana sometimes. It's one of the few states

2286
02:00:28,720 --> 02:00:31,280
Speaker 1: I've never been in, so it's just just wonderful. Get

2287
02:00:31,320 --> 02:00:33,360
Speaker 1: up there. You're not too far away. Come see us,

2288
02:00:33,360 --> 02:00:42,880
Speaker 1: all right, Harry, I guess that's it. That's all thanks

2289
02:00:42,920 --> 02:00:47,560
Speaker 1: to Harry Green. H great interview man, one of my favorites. Uh,

2290
02:00:48,200 --> 02:00:50,879
Speaker 1: I think you know, unlike other recent interviews, I connected

2291
02:00:50,920 --> 02:00:52,879
Speaker 1: with Harry and a lot of things. I really appreciate

2292
02:00:52,920 --> 02:00:56,720
Speaker 1: his views on the outdoors. I really appreciate his experience

2293
02:00:56,720 --> 02:00:58,640
Speaker 1: with snakes and some of the things he taught me there.

2294
02:00:58,680 --> 02:01:01,640
Speaker 1: But just a good dude that I'd want to hang

2295
02:01:01,640 --> 02:01:04,000
Speaker 1: out with as much as possible. So if we can

2296
02:01:04,040 --> 02:01:07,160
Speaker 1: have them on again, there's there's a whole life's worth

2297
02:01:07,200 --> 02:01:09,760
Speaker 1: of experiences we have yet to down earth with Harry,

2298
02:01:09,760 --> 02:01:11,920
Speaker 1: so hopefully we can do that at some point soon.

2299
02:01:11,960 --> 02:01:13,720
Speaker 1: But thank you to him, thank you to his wife

2300
02:01:13,760 --> 02:01:15,760
Speaker 1: for letting me bor him for a while in color

2301
02:01:15,840 --> 02:01:18,920
Speaker 1: State University for let me get lost in their campus

2302
02:01:19,560 --> 02:01:22,120
Speaker 1: uh while I was there. And then also thanks to

2303
02:01:22,200 --> 02:01:24,600
Speaker 1: Cody Gardner for writing in with your not a sharp moment.

2304
02:01:25,280 --> 02:01:28,080
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone that has been filling THHD at the

2305
02:01:28,120 --> 02:01:31,600
Speaker 1: Metator dot com with a bunch of stuff. Before we go,

2306
02:01:31,800 --> 02:01:35,080
Speaker 1: you should definitely continue to watch the Back forty. You

2307
02:01:35,120 --> 02:01:37,800
Speaker 1: go to the Mediator YouTube channel the Meteor dot com

2308
02:01:37,920 --> 02:01:40,880
Speaker 1: you can watch the Back forty with Mark Kenyon. Mark

2309
02:01:40,920 --> 02:01:44,040
Speaker 1: Kenyon we bought a property sixty four acres in Michigan

2310
02:01:44,040 --> 02:01:47,040
Speaker 1: and Mark Kenyon is working right now as we speak

2311
02:01:47,080 --> 02:01:49,240
Speaker 1: to try to kill a deer on it and also

2312
02:01:49,320 --> 02:01:52,480
Speaker 1: manage it for biodiversity. So it's a fun show. I've

2313
02:01:52,480 --> 02:01:55,000
Speaker 1: been working hard with Mark on it, so I appreciate

2314
02:01:55,000 --> 02:01:57,320
Speaker 1: if you guys went over there and watch that at

2315
02:01:57,360 --> 02:02:00,280
Speaker 1: the Mediator YouTube channel or the Metior dot com. I

2316
02:02:00,360 --> 02:02:03,360
Speaker 1: really would. And also another piece of content I work

2317
02:02:03,440 --> 02:02:05,800
Speaker 1: on every week that I really think is great is

2318
02:02:05,840 --> 02:02:10,200
Speaker 1: Remy warrants Cutting the Distance, Cutting the Distances, the podcast

2319
02:02:10,280 --> 02:02:13,920
Speaker 1: that will make you better pretty much any hunting tactic,

2320
02:02:14,240 --> 02:02:16,800
Speaker 1: mostly Western hunting tactics with Remy. Remy does a great

2321
02:02:16,840 --> 02:02:21,440
Speaker 1: job storytelling, he's a great job of giving tips and tactics,

2322
02:02:21,800 --> 02:02:26,120
Speaker 1: melding that altogether, and a beautiful gumbo of hunting advice.

2323
02:02:26,480 --> 02:02:30,520
Speaker 1: So go anywhere you can download podcasts or the meet

2324
02:02:30,760 --> 02:02:36,160
Speaker 1: dot com check out Cutting the Distance. Those are my two.

2325
02:02:36,520 --> 02:02:38,000
Speaker 1: If you want to know what I'm working on every week,

2326
02:02:38,000 --> 02:02:41,120
Speaker 1: it's THC and those two things. That's what it's spent

2327
02:02:41,240 --> 02:02:44,560
Speaker 1: most of my time doing. So um proud of those

2328
02:02:44,680 --> 02:02:46,880
Speaker 1: those contact projects, proud of the proud of Remy and

2329
02:02:46,960 --> 02:02:50,200
Speaker 1: Mark and all the hard work of everybody here to

2330
02:02:50,240 --> 02:02:52,800
Speaker 1: meet either team. So we're gonna see you next week

2331
02:02:53,720 --> 02:02:59,960
Speaker 1: in our next Whiskey and Ethics on Baiting. Soe then,

2332
02:02:59,360 --> 02:03:05,080
Speaker 1: because I ain't go a week without doing run, oh

2333
02:03:05,120 --> 02:03:16,080
Speaker 1: without run, drinking out and run a wrong drinking in Heaven,

2334
02:03:29,560 --> 02:03:32,760
Speaker 1: don't sit in at the bostould start the row root

2335
02:03:33,160 --> 02:03:36,920
Speaker 1: I'm feeling lagging. Hold on out barros shoes all down

2336
02:03:37,000 --> 02:03:38,120
Speaker 1: the one