WEBVTT - Ep. 84: Pulling Pythons by the Tail and Being Afraid of Snakes with Herpetologist Harry W. Greene 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:03.040 Oh hey, everybody. Episode eighty four of T A C. 0:00:03.240 --> 0:00:05.080 I just messed up the intro twice. At first I 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:07.840 said that this was the Mediator podcast, and then I said, 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:14.040 oh hey, dude, hey man, I'm getting progressively better and 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.880 worse at this the same time. I feel anyway, this 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:19.960 episode eighty four, it's a good one. It's about snakes. 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.600 Most of it's about snakes. At least. We had Harry W. Green, 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.080 who is a herpetologist, the first herpetologist ever on the show, 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:31.080 and he will not be the last. He is an 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:34.879 interesting gentleman. He's a professor and many other things which 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.400 you'll hear about in the interviews. Stick around to learn 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:41.600 about snakes and also his book, which is one of 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:44.640 the better books I've ever read. Hopefully you check that 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:47.840 out and pick it up. And I didn't. I went 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.480 on a little bit of a rant, which will hear soon, 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:52.720 a little bit of a rant. So there's a rant 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.720 about drawing the line. And then we had, of course 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.440 another Nozira sharp moment that's pretty damn good. But before 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:01.680 we get to that, I want to talk to you 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:05.720 guys about Meat Eater season eight. Meat Eater season eight 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.880 is now on Netflix, you guys know about Netflix. I 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:10.600 remember when Netflix was just where you had to like 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:12.560 get a CD out of it. It mailed you a 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:16.320 CD or DVD is probably what that was. They mail 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.320 your DVD and then you had to mail it backtone 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.640 or whatever. That was not so long ago. But now 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:26.559 it's a juggernaut. It's the Juggernaut platform that brings you many, many, 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:30.679 many good content projects. Paramount among them is meat. Each 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:34.000 season eight, it's an eight episode season includes lots of 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:35.959 really cool things that are near and dear to my heart. 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:41.600 Uh Mexico. CU's dear Maryland, seek a deer Maryland. And 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:43.880 of course this is very near and dear my heart 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.520 because that's my home territory. So I'm glad we went there. 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:50.640 But there you can go right now to Netflix and 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:54.720 binge to your heart's desire with Steve Ronella, Ryan Callahan. 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.120 You honest to tell us the whole crew out there 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:02.960 doing fun stuff and eating. So Netflix Mediator season eight, 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:07.080 check it out. Proud of the team for doing awesome 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:11.120 work on this one. So go binge or don't, whatever 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:14.440 you want to do. It's free country now. If you 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.760 go to first light dot com as we speak, you're 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:20.519 gonna learn about the Brookstown Sweater. We talked about the 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.800 Brookstown sweater here before. Brooks Down sweater is my favorite, 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:28.040 probably my favorite piece of cold weather gear from first 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:30.560 light the fact I have one and my wife, who's pregnant, 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.840 wears it all the time. She thinks this looks fashionable. Um, 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:39.560 it's It's only about ten point nine ounces, it's ultra light, 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.639 it's highly packable, perfect installations. Got a hundred grams of 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:48.320 DWR treated eight hundred PHIL three thirty seven point five downtech. 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:53.720 It's advanced active installation. I actually wore it on an 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:57.320 Elk hunt where it was warm in the morning and 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:59.600 a snowstorm blew in. I wore it in the hike 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:04.119 in and I wore for sitting in glassing. Uh for elk. 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:06.560 So I mean it is a it's a durable piece. 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:09.440 It's a lot of duality. You can wear it pretty 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:11.680 much anytime you need insulation. So go check out the 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.640 Brookstown sweater first. Like dot com. Okay, here's episode eighty 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:25.000 four coming at you. Let's go. I guess I grew 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.400 up on an older road, a pedal to the medals. 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:31.520 I always did what I've told until I found out 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.800 that my brand new closed a game second hand from 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:38.000 the rich kids next door. And I grew up fast. 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:40.240 I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:42.920 thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.680 and now I just wanted to a real bad dream 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:49.640 or being and like I'm coming a part of the seams. 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:54.000 But thank you, Jack Daniel. No, Hey, everybody, welcome to 0:03:54.000 --> 0:04:01.040 episode eighty four. I'm been O'Brien. Say Hi, Phil, Hello Phil. 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:03.240 You're just mentioning that you're going through a bit of 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:08.000 a uh, attitude adjustment here recently. Yeah, well, I feel 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:13.000 like I have to stick up for myself, uh to 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:17.040 you and also the people, the THHD listeners who are 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.320 write again with frankly just rude names for a mustache 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:24.120 they haven't even seen yet. They haven't even it's looking better. 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.080 It's looking better, Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's here. He's 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.280 kind of like a Henry Beauregard must The main problem 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:36.480 is the color. Yes, not it's best for men or whatever. Hair. 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.960 Jael just one of those coman coloring dye. Next thing, 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:45.479 you know, you're Phil from the TV Doctor. Phil. Yeah, 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.120 I'm I'm looking more. I'm more of a mustache man 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.880 than Ryan Callahan. Yep, I will define the mustache for 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.000 this company and the generation. The generation. Yeah, that's what 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.240 I strive for. So anyway, a lot of you guys 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.720 have wrote in with like name Phil's mustache and most 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:03.720 of them meat, and so we're fighting back. I'm on 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:06.960 Phil side. It's the first time for everything. I guess. 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.320 I'm on Phil side. Stop saying offensive names about his mustache, 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.440 even though a lot of them are pretty funny. Sure, 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.880 I guess anyway, mustache, what's what's a November? Yeah, that's 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.400 coming up soon. So are you gonna keep it for that? No? 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.040 I think November one. It's it's gone. All right, We'll 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:29.440 get your touching it and then pulling at it. It's 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.479 a problem. We'll get your mustache names in now because 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.400 we're not having this anymore. Make them nice, polite mustache names. 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.880 Get bastards, all right. We got a lot, we got 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:46.200 some things to address here. But today's guests is Harry W. 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:50.600 Green Uh, a wonderful man, a professor for a very 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:54.680 long time, and a herpetologist. Phil, you know what herpetologist 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:59.520 is vaguely because I've been mixing the podcast, but I 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:01.560 would not be able to define for you right now, 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:05.039 let's define herpetologist someone who specialized in the study of 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:11.640 reptiles and amphibians but slithers around. Herpetologist is into it. Um. 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:16.000 But Harry, who we had a great conversation. We're gonna 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.039 keep this uh intro segments short because I want to 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.880 get pretty much directly to the conversation with Harry, because 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.240 I think it's one of the best his books, his 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.320 particularly his his book you'll hear about in the interview 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:29.240 is is one of the best I've ever read. I 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:31.400 would say, I mean, it's just as great as he 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.800 calls an eccentric meditation on the outdoors. Um, and it's great. 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.600 So you hear about that coming up. But um, we've 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:39.960 got a couple of things to cover off on from 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.280 previous podcasts and I we're gonna we'll get to it. 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.320 But snakes, fill Are you afraid of snakes? Phil? Uh? No, 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.120 not not particularly unless they're kind of exotic looking and 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:53.000 move quickly. Do you have any stories about snakes? We 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:54.520 had any close run ins or do you have? You 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.839 been fairly No, nothing dangerous. No, I've never come across 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:00.799 a rattlesnake in the wild but I used to cash 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:05.080 little garter snakes in my backyard, and um, you know, 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:06.839 they did the whole thing at school. He had a 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:09.400 like a wildlife assembly and you have to hold the 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.960 boat constrict and I was into that. So no, I 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:17.560 don't have like a physical horror like horrific reaction. Well 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.040 I don't either. I'm not into them. I don't want 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:21.960 them to be crawling around wherever I am, but I 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.280 don't hear them at all. Yeah, but it turns out 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:26.040 pheel As you know that fear snakes is one of 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.160 the most common phobias in all of humanity. I have 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.440 that tracks that makes sense. And you're gonna hear from 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.400 Harry Green why he thinks that's true. Well, a lot 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:38.480 of studies will we'll back this up, and it's just 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.480 because and again Harry goes into this in some detail, 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.400 but it's because we've been around them for so long. Um, 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:46.880 they were on the savannahs of Africa when we were 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:51.960 becoming if you believe in all of this, becoming lower 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:56.720 hominids and turning into humans that we are today. And 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:58.680 so there's just a lot of history with snakes. So 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:00.680 it's interesting to learn about him, say and they're just 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:05.520 interesting animals. They slither not like many other beings that 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.239 you'll run into, So they're just an interesting, interesting creature. 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.920 I think we're all interested in them. There's some people 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.920 are Annie Razor, who has been on this podcast before 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.360 talking about Game of Thrones, wouldn't even be in the 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:23.160 podcast room, wouldn't even be in the office if we 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.520 had a snake in here. No, she was. I honestly 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:29.640 couldn't believe her reaction when we just started talking about snakes. 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:31.160 She was like, Nope, I'm not I don't want to 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:33.040 hear the words snake. Stop it. I don't want to 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:35.240 think about snakes. She was like, And honestly, if you're 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:37.840 thinking about bringing a snake into this office, you should 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.240 really let people know so they have a chance to 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.600 not be here. And I think she was talking about herself. 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.679 So throughout evolutionary history, we have learned to fear snakes, 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:51.839 and it has manifested itself in different ways. Annie is 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:54.520 an extreme example. I couldn't even get her in the 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.839 podcast to talk about snakes. So that's that. So we're 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:01.560 gonna talk about that with UM with Harry W. Green 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:04.920 and just a moment. But we got a bunch of emails. 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.160 Thanks for everybody's been writing into th hc ats medator 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.720 dot com with both your not so sharp moments, your names, 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.520 fulfills mustache, and just your general musing is about the show. 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:16.000 There's been lots and lots and lots of good emails. 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:17.600 It's hard to keep up. So if I have an 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:22.199 emailed you're back, I'm sorry, but I will get to it. UM. 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.160 I'm just happy to see everybody with feelings one way 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.000 or the other about the show. UM. I got one 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:32.840 from Brandon Hill that I wanted to read. Um, that's 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:34.920 really really interesting. I won't read the whole thing, but 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:38.960 he basically just says you've mentioned many times about finding 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:42.520 common ground and striving to not upset each other. I 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:44.520 think the one thing you have in address is where 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.120 we draw the line. I get it. There's no reason 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.120 to intentionally rub our grip and grin picks and the 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.679 faces of anton hunters and vegans. We shouldn't go out 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:53.920 of our way to be assholes to those that are 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.360 offended by what we love to do. But what is 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:58.520 wrong with being proud of your accomplishments and wanting to 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:02.200 share with your family and friends When do we say 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.880 to our opposition, you know what enough is enough? This 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:07.840 is what I do, this is my lifestyle. I'm proud 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.280 and I don't give a ship about your hurt feelings. 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.080 You suggested we should always be opening and evaluate and 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:17.280 compromise our values. I disagree. There has been. There's become 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.600 a point we put our foot down and you'll know more. 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.560 Otherwise we will slowly be bullied into the end of 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.680 that which we hold. So dear, that's pretty well staged, 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.000 pretty well stated. There's kind of things I think that 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:33.600 goes back to the Grip and Grins conversation. It does 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:36.520 yesterday last week, I mean, and it goes to last 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.000 week's from your conversation. It goes to the Bearer conversation 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:40.880 with Barry Gilbert. It goes all the way back to 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.599 the going to uh Berkeley and talking to vegans and 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.920 animal rights activists. There's a couple of things that that 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.360 Brandon says that just aren't I think if you would 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:51.040 go back and listen to my comments that just I 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:56.280 think aren't um they don't track with my views. I 0:10:56.360 --> 0:11:01.160 don't there and I've said this many many times. There's 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.360 some things that I will not I will not bend on. 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.400 There are some things I believe to be true, and 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:13.240 I'm not gonna bend on doing them, talking about them, 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.520 promoting them, whatever they might be. Um, certainly gun rights 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:20.920 is one of those things. I believe in the Second Amendment. 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:23.839 But it's not that I wouldn't have a conversation somebody 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:25.679 that doesn't believe in the Second a moment, and I'm 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.400 not going to tell them within that conversation. Hey, be quiet. 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:32.800 I don't agree with you. And so I think Brandon's Brandon. 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:35.679 Thanks for writing in Brandon, and and I appreciate it. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:37.960 But I think what you're saying there is just I 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.200 just think it's wrong. I don't agree. And the reason 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.600 I don't agree is within the conversation. I can have 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:48.640 strongly held beliefs, but if I'm going to approach a 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:51.560 conversation by saying like enough is enough, I don't want 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:54.040 to talk to you about this, I don't care what 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:56.800 you think. Is basically what you're saying about. I don't 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.120 give a shit about your hurt feelings. Just basically I 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:01.319 don't care what you think. This is not the way 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:03.280 that I that I go about things. There are some 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:05.679 things that I'm not gonna move on. When I talk 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:07.199 to Barry Gilbert, I wouldn't be like, you know what, 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:10.440 the North American midle of conservation. Yeah, that's fine, it 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.719 might suck, but like I'll address the reality that it's 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:15.400 not perfect. But I'm not gonna budge on the fact 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:17.520 that I think it's a prescription for a better wild 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:21.600 life and better conservation in this country. And so I 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:25.040 don't mistake if you're out there listening, don't mistake me 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:29.480 for some kind of push over snowflake. I just don't 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:34.000 do that, because that's not the case. Um I am. 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:36.679 The willingness to have a conversation in the modern sense 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.560 does not mean that you're going to fold to every 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:42.640 push against your ideologist. It doesn't. But it means you're 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.280 open to new ideas. And being open to new ideas 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:47.880 doesn't mean you have to sacrifice the ones you believe in. 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:50.880 And so we can do both things at the same time, 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.920 and we should do both things at the same time. 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:57.520 So that if the question is where do I draw 0:12:57.559 --> 0:12:59.760 the line, I don't have a line. I'll talk to 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:03.640 any want about anything at any time, and there's no 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:07.200 line that I have to draw about my beliefs Now, 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.200 like I said, there's certainly beliefs that I hold that 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.480 I think that would be almost impossible for somebody to 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.520 talk me off of, Like hunting is valuable for wild life, 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:20.720 for human kind and for all of us. It's gonna 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:22.520 be hard to get me off of that one. But 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.040 I certainly let somebody try. Um. And I'll certainly if 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:29.240 someone makes a good point, I'll certainly think about it. 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.440 And if I feel the need to adjust my ideologies 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.800 or my beliefs on something, and I will. And so 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.000 in this common the pushback on liberals to say that, 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.800 oh uh, you're a snowflake if you bend to what 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:46.480 somebody thinks. Yeah. Fine. I think that the outraging machine 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:49.800 in this country is a bit off the rails. I 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:51.679 think people are trained that they can get what they 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:56.280 want through outrage, and we are developing Internet mobs and 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.839 we're not really understanding how they've come together or what 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.840 they can do. I think we're babies when it comes 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.760 to social media in the Internet. Then we're learning. But 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:08.360 all of that is to say, I don't have a line. 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:12.960 Where do I draw the line? I really care. There's 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:15.240 no line, there's no there's no person that could sit 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:21.040 in this room that I wouldn't talk to. There just isn't. Um, 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:22.840 There's plenty of people that I can think of that 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:24.520 I could talk to, and then I know we probably 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.400 wouldn't come to any agreement, but I'd want to talk 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.080 to him anyway, because understanding the other side of an 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:33.520 issue is as important as your own beliefs, in my opinion, 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:36.360 So maybe that's maybe that puts me directly in the 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:40.840 cross airs of people that think, um, they should be 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.160 proud about their beliefs and shout them from the rooftops. 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:44.440 If I guess, if you listen to this, you know 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:47.840 that I do too. But that doesn't I don't sacrifice. 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:52.200 I don't sacrifice anything because of that within a conversation. 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:53.880 So that's what I believe. What do you think about 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:55.240 all that, philm That was a bit of a rant. 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.080 If I deserve a ranted, it's been a while ranted 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.480 in a while. Yeah, So I deserve a rant every 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.240 once in a while. It's your show. You deserve deserve 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:07.520 whatever you want. What do you feel like that you 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:09.320 feel like you're learning anything from sitting in here and 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:13.600 all these conversations. Yeah, I mean, I'm entrenched into a 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:16.440 bunch of stuff that I had never really thought about 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:21.240 before working here. So it's been that's why I appreciate you, 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.680 because you're just like coming from a fresh perspective and 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.440 a lot of this stuff. Which again that's another point 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.680 I'll make People with fresh perspectives that aren't in your 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:32.920 aren't in your bubble, they're not in your echo chamber, 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:37.200 are important. So and people with heartened perspectives are important 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.280 to have in your life. That that don't believe what 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:41.480 you believe. I have lots of friends and family members 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.160 that we do not believe the same things. We often 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:48.480 argue about fairly important things. And my grandfather always said, 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.640 don't bring sex, religion, or politics to the dinner table. 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:53.880 I don't believe in that. I believe we should be 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:57.120 able to have those constructive conversations about very important subjects 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:01.240 without getting all spun up about them. Anyway, that's that 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:04.800 I was gonna give a brief answer to that question, 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:07.280 but I give a long answer. So anyway, if you're 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.120 listening to this and you and you just feel like 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:12.960 I need to push back on some of these folks 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:17.400 more or that take harder stances on subjects here there, 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:19.880 I mean I'm certainly going to be firm and the 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.840 things I know to be true, but I'm also looking 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:25.640 to be proven wrong at some level. I'm looking to 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.320 test my ideas and make sure they're strong enough to 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:34.080 last any battle, to last any debate, to last any argument. 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:36.200 Because if my ideas aren't good enough to last in 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:41.080 any conversation, then they're not good enough overall. So that's 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.320 the way I think about it. Hopefully this show reflects 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.840 that Um and Brandon's Brandon's comments weren't challenging to me, 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:48.760 but that it was a challenging question something I thought 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:53.000 about after I read it. Um, And so I'm not 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:55.360 gonna be bullied by anybody out of my beliefs. But 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.040 that doesn't mean I'm gonna push them away if they 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:00.640 start to bully me. Um. So we'll see. We're going 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:02.640 to continue still to get some challenging people in this 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:07.600 room talking about crazy stuff and see where it goes. Um, 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:10.000 all right, we're gonna move on. I think, Philler, am 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.719 I gonna keep going. I think we should move on. 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:14.800 You get more to say. I thought you laid it 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:18.600 all out there. Though I laid it out. Here's another 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.359 message I got from Jesse. He said, I got a 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.760 real dilemma. I think you folks had help me with. 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.080 Here's the deal. I fella at my work died recently, 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:33.800 and his memorial services on rifle opener for elk. My 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:37.600 freezer is getting pretty low, and I've got plans to 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:39.800 be out at first light on opening day to replenish 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:42.840 my supply of elk meat. I wasn't particularly close with 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:45.840 the guy, but I did help him move a while 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:49.160 back and met his family a time or two. Can't 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.760 decide if I'd be an asshole for not going to 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:54.920 the funeral. I'm a student, so I've really only got 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.280 a few weekends to hunt, and even then my time 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.640 is limited. What do you think? It's really been weighing 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:04.199 on me, and I'm worried about what others, what others 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.840 around my shop will do if I don't go. Thanks 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:13.600 for the great podcast. Blah blah blah. This is a Phil. Yeah, 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:16.800 you're asking Dr Phil my opinion first. I'll give mine first. 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.240 I'll let you off fok on that one. Okay, a 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:25.000 guy died, man, thank you, that's my opinion. He's dead, 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:30.120 he's the man's got a family. He's got a family. Yeah, 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:32.639 I would say it would be that'd be a tough 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:36.679 look for you if you did not go to this memorial. 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:39.080 I mean, I get it, your hedge and you're like, 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.720 I only knew him a couple of times, but he's dead, 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:45.920 and he was a person yesterday dead, worked with him move. 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:51.040 That's close enough, like friends circle wise helping someone move. 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:54.639 Phil's never helped me move. No, never helped him. I 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.800 wouldn't if you. Yeah, I said, hey, Phil, well help me. No, No, 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:00.800 but you'd come to my funeral? I bet I think so, yeah, 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.879 and so yeah, man, I hope the funeral prior already 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.200 happened by the time you'll hear this, But I hope 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:13.240 you went, Jesse, And if you didn't, real guilty right now, Folding. 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:15.199 It's one of those things where if you if you 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.080 have to ask yourself the question, you already know the answer. 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.159 You just yeah, you just don't want to already know 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:22.000 the don't want to hear someone else. We've all had 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.040 like a long distant aunt that died and you just don't. 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:26.679 You go to the funeral, but you don't go for 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:28.080 the ant. You go for the people that you know 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:33.679 who knew the aunt. So like just go and be 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.760 happy about it. And if you need to borrow some 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:38.240 meat from a friend, you'll probably find a friend. And 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:40.919 if that friend dies, goes his funeral, to go to 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.680 people's funerals, and then during the service you can sneak 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.200 over to his house and take his meat at Yeah, 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:52.840 he doesn't need anymore. Yeah, feels getting feels going dark, spicy, 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.760 it's getting spicy, it's going full heel on us if 0:19:56.760 --> 0:20:02.440 you know what that like? Bill his character turn anyway, 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:05.880 go to the funeral, Jesse for for goodness sakes, man, 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.880 I love hunting and I love wild meats. That's all 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:15.359 I talk about. But um, if if a co worker died, 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:18.320 anyone here, immediate or I would go to the funeral 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:21.720 pretty much every time, even if it wasn't somebody that 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:23.639 I was super close with. So you know, I'll be 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:27.120 there for you, Phil, the worst happen, the worst happen, 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:29.960 they'll be there. You probably be standing, you know, on 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:32.800 the sidelines, thinking about all the hunting you could of course, dude, 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:35.480 I might be watching I might be watching hunting videos 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:38.040 on my phone at your funeral, yes, Or I might 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.680 be looking at onyx maps trying to figure out by 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:42.280 the best, the quicker route in because I don't have 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:44.640 as much time that that would make it even more special, 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.119 knowing how badly you didn't want to be there but 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:49.880 you were. Anyway, I might go hunting in the morning, 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.240 because people do. People have funerals in the morning. It's 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:55.440 usually I'd say around lunch. It's lunch, So I might 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.600 find a spot and I might go hunting in the morning. 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.200 And then if I kill an Elk, I wouldn't come. Wait, no, 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:03.840 I would still come. You just yelled at the guy. 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.159 If I killed Elk, I would market. I would market 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:09.800 and it was away point. And then quickly go to 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:11.800 the funeral and wash the blood. I probably watched the 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.960 blood off. Quickly go to the funeral and then come back. Yeah, 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:16.520 I think how bad you would feel if you went 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.960 out and you didn't get anything and you missed this 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:23.639 guy's funeral for enough. What if what if you missed 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.040 a giant bull like a hundred of yards and then 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:31.280 that was the guy looking down at You're saying karma, Yeah, 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:33.320 I should have went to my funeral. Now you're feeling 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:38.439 poorly on many multiple levels. Anyway, go to the service. 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:41.640 Go to the service, please, Lord, go to the service. 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:45.120 Man's gotta draw a line. Phil. You know what I'm 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:50.520 saying now, this is where I draw the line. Man's 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:53.960 gotta draw the line. All right, Well, we're gonna get 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:57.679 into uh something you you all really love. We got 0:21:57.720 --> 0:21:59.760 a lot of a lot a lot, a lot a 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.960 lot not so sharp moments, Phil, A lot of them, um, 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:06.040 hundreds of them in fact. So it's been hard for 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:08.560 me to sift through them. But they've all been very entertaining, 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.560 and we um we have a bit of an issue 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:16.719 to discuss around last week's not so sharp moment presented 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:21.200 by work sharp. There's a song. Are you aware of this, Phil? 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:27.080 A song by fella named cord Lund called My Truck 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:31.719 Got Stuck. Nope, I was not aware. It is basically, 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:34.919 if you listen to it. Several people sent this to me. 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:38.160 It is if you listen to it, it is basically 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:41.080 the story that we read last week. So what are 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:44.520 you implying here? I'm not implying anything. Many people implied 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:47.720 it to me that we got duped. Oh okay, well 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:50.760 here's see. I would I would tend to kind of 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:53.520 be like my my, my eyebrows would be raised. But 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:58.360 I did go to Elliott's Instagram, and I went all 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:01.240 the way back and he did. I mean, he didn't 0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:04.919 post any photographic evidence of the trucks, but there is 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.280 evidence of this, like if this event actually happening, um 0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:12.879 on his Instagram. He talked about it before, like months 0:23:13.080 --> 0:23:16.360 before he ever rode into th HC. So I don't 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:18.199 think I don't I don't think he would make up 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:21.280 the story. I trust Elliott. I'm not. I defended Elliott 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:23.720 and all the correspondent stuff. Okay, Good said, Elliott is 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:34.000 a stand up in divid here's the song. It's a 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:40.440 nice tune. I like it so far. Brown Prairie that 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:46.440 had been for so long was very uney, very muny. 0:23:52.720 --> 0:23:58.000 Maybe it just inspired him in his pros. Sure, yes, um, anyway, 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:02.280 we're on to you Elliott. Yeah. Well he's in good company. 0:24:02.320 --> 0:24:05.479 Then he's not alone. Other people have had not so 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:08.640 sharp moments. Yeah, that's true. No, I think I think 0:24:08.680 --> 0:24:10.800 it's just a common thing that happens to you in Canada. 0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:14.600 Did trucks get stuck? All the trucks get stuck in Canada? Yeah, 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:16.639 if you if you were to fly over in a 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:20.399 helicopter and airplane, it's just a graveyard of trucks. Trucks everywhere, everywhere, 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:24.680 there's ones. There's one front endloader just going around endlessly. 0:24:24.880 --> 0:24:28.040 The same guy, same thing, doing it for hundreds of years. 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:31.119 So anyway, I'm on the side of Elliot here. I 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:33.080 don't think he embellished that at all. I think it 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:35.119 was completely true because he stopped in the middle of 0:24:35.119 --> 0:24:38.359 the story to say it's true. It's very true. But 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:40.840 I know this sounds crazy, but it's true. But it's true. 0:24:41.240 --> 0:24:43.440 All right, Well, hit the jingle fill. We're up for 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:46.639 the next not so sharp moment. Work sharp, not so 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:52.560 sharp moment, so you don't have Okay, this one some 0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:58.320 Cody Gardner says, a long time THHD listener cool appreciated Cody. 0:24:58.720 --> 0:25:02.400 He's got a not so sharp moment. We will begin. 0:25:04.600 --> 0:25:07.440 When I was a child, I saw a movie where 0:25:07.480 --> 0:25:11.160 a kid owned a raccoon as a pet. M See 0:25:11.160 --> 0:25:14.480 where this one's going, PHILM this Poconhontas. I don't know. 0:25:14.520 --> 0:25:17.000 He doesn't mention the movie. Okay, I can't think of 0:25:17.040 --> 0:25:19.520 any other movie that's a good that's a good pool, 0:25:19.720 --> 0:25:21.400 nice pool. I don't even think of any of those 0:25:21.400 --> 0:25:25.119 types of movies. This inspired a dream of owning my 0:25:25.160 --> 0:25:28.359 own raccoon. How do you say raccoon? You say raccoon 0:25:28.440 --> 0:25:31.639 or raccoon. I say raccoon. Hit me too, I was 0:25:31.680 --> 0:25:34.200 trying to sauce it up there, and I said raccoon, raccoon. 0:25:35.200 --> 0:25:37.960 One day I asked a neighboring farmer for permission to 0:25:38.000 --> 0:25:41.399 go snag car up in an irrigation pond. I received 0:25:41.400 --> 0:25:44.160 permission to fish, but it came with a warning that 0:25:44.240 --> 0:25:47.720 at said pond there was a defensive raccoon that may 0:25:47.760 --> 0:25:50.639 have babies, and a stack of pipe next to the pond. 0:25:51.400 --> 0:25:53.280 This I like. I like this already, and it's like 0:25:53.280 --> 0:25:59.120 a dragon tower. This this was my chance to fulfill 0:25:59.200 --> 0:26:03.199 my dream. I proceeded to investigate the suspect pipe. To 0:26:03.280 --> 0:26:06.600 my delight, saw staring back from one of the pipes 0:26:06.640 --> 0:26:09.920 a small set of eyes. I reeled my hook into 0:26:09.920 --> 0:26:13.719 the end of the pipe and thrust my pole Jesus 0:26:15.240 --> 0:26:18.240 and I gave it a twirl, and I and eagerly 0:26:18.320 --> 0:26:25.959 pulled my new best friend's tail first to the end 0:26:26.000 --> 0:26:29.200 of the pipe. At this moment, I was given the 0:26:29.280 --> 0:26:32.080 opportunity to make a better decision, but failed in the 0:26:32.119 --> 0:26:35.600 most epic fashion. The tail didn't look like I was expecting, 0:26:36.080 --> 0:26:39.320 so I decided to straddle the pipe, grab the tail 0:26:39.400 --> 0:26:44.000 with both hands, and lean over for closer inspection. The 0:26:44.080 --> 0:26:46.960 last thing I remember, as I focused into the darkness, 0:26:46.960 --> 0:26:52.159 straining my eyes and mouth a gape is the is 0:26:52.200 --> 0:26:56.439 the sight that wrenched dirty little cheerio puckered and eyes 0:26:56.480 --> 0:27:00.399 that were poised at fire. What happened next still inspires nightmares. 0:27:01.080 --> 0:27:04.120 I was hit with a direct shot in the open mouth, 0:27:04.320 --> 0:27:06.160 up the nose, and in both eyes with the most 0:27:06.280 --> 0:27:12.000 vile substance in all of nature, skunk spray. See there's 0:27:12.000 --> 0:27:15.639 a twist. Even that's good stuff. I gased in shock, 0:27:15.800 --> 0:27:19.560 filling both lungs to capacity with a half atomized, blasting 0:27:19.720 --> 0:27:25.240 steam of pure liquid terror, which sent me immediately wretching 0:27:25.280 --> 0:27:28.040 to the ground, writhing in pain and feeling as though 0:27:28.560 --> 0:27:30.959 I had been galls in both eyes with a glowing 0:27:31.000 --> 0:27:34.119 red fire poker. I could not see at all, and 0:27:34.119 --> 0:27:35.680 when was unable to open my eyes and take a 0:27:35.720 --> 0:27:39.679 full breath, profuse vomiting quickly overtook me, and I truly 0:27:39.760 --> 0:27:41.919 feared for my life as I lay flailing in a 0:27:42.000 --> 0:27:45.240 mate of goat heads, wondering as a terrified child with 0:27:45.560 --> 0:27:48.840 little life experience, which failed attempt at breathing would be 0:27:48.920 --> 0:27:52.000 my last. A friend I had taken to fish with 0:27:52.040 --> 0:27:54.800 me grabbed me by my ankle and drugged me. Kicking 0:27:55.040 --> 0:27:58.720 and screaming between heaves through the mess of gold heads, 0:27:58.720 --> 0:28:03.800 my own body explosions went into the pond. He then 0:28:03.840 --> 0:28:06.880 proceeded what he referred to as help, but I would 0:28:06.920 --> 0:28:12.159 call it more like waterboarding. At this point, I was 0:28:12.200 --> 0:28:15.919 consistently sucking pond water with every plunge, and spewing my 0:28:16.000 --> 0:28:18.119 insides out every time I was jerked back to the 0:28:18.160 --> 0:28:22.520 surface by the fistful of hair he so persistently held. 0:28:22.880 --> 0:28:26.240 He probably would have preferred a dragon. I was again 0:28:26.280 --> 0:28:30.359 in legitimate fear of the end. I made it home eventually, 0:28:30.400 --> 0:28:32.840 and in a fitting end of the story. As I 0:28:32.960 --> 0:28:35.760 entered my home, still shaken by the near death experience, 0:28:36.119 --> 0:28:37.800 the first words of a compassion I heard from my 0:28:37.880 --> 0:28:42.880 father was a stern command to get out. I lived 0:28:42.880 --> 0:28:45.360 outside for a week until theycame fit to be in 0:28:45.400 --> 0:28:49.720 the presence of others. But the shame, embarrassment, chilling memory 0:28:49.720 --> 0:28:54.080 of this story still linger to this day. Yes, that 0:28:54.160 --> 0:28:56.920 was that was a good one. Again, like the jingle 0:28:57.000 --> 0:29:03.520 Phil not so sharp poem. So you don't have thanks 0:29:03.520 --> 0:29:06.680 work sharp We're gonna Cody, We're gonna send you. We 0:29:06.680 --> 0:29:09.360 should send you like a couple of cans of tomato 0:29:09.840 --> 0:29:14.280 sauce or something. Yeah, can of a breeze for breeze, 0:29:14.280 --> 0:29:16.040 but we're going to send you a work sharp field 0:29:16.080 --> 0:29:21.800 sharpener instead. Hopefully that makes it this, this gruesome childhood 0:29:21.800 --> 0:29:25.719 memory all the better. Thanks for writing in, everybody. Continue 0:29:25.760 --> 0:29:27.720 to write in at th HC at the media dot com. 0:29:28.040 --> 0:29:30.280 Try to top Cody story. Hopefully there's not a song 0:29:30.320 --> 0:29:32.920 about skunk spray somewhere that I don't know about. I'm 0:29:32.920 --> 0:29:35.240 assuming there isn't. We're watching you, Cody, but we're watching 0:29:35.240 --> 0:29:38.040 you people. Plagiarism is not good. You got a drawline 0:29:38.120 --> 0:29:44.560 somewhere now. Mr Harry W. Green, color State University, enjoy 0:29:48.080 --> 0:29:52.560 I guess I grew up on all the road. Harry, 0:29:52.560 --> 0:29:57.320 how's it going. Nice to meet you too, Thanks for 0:29:57.320 --> 0:30:00.880 having me here at I'm getting some days avou going 0:30:00.920 --> 0:30:03.680 back to college. A little late to our meeting, so 0:30:03.720 --> 0:30:07.200 I felt like I was late to class across campus 0:30:07.240 --> 0:30:09.520 I did. Yeah, I didn't know where I was. Much 0:30:09.560 --> 0:30:11.240 like college. I was lost, and then I had to 0:30:11.280 --> 0:30:13.120 find the building, So it really felt like I was 0:30:13.480 --> 0:30:17.280 back back to my collegian days. Um. So we're here 0:30:17.400 --> 0:30:21.200 at Colorado State University, and um, I always like to 0:30:21.240 --> 0:30:24.000 have guests like describe their surroundings, but you know, we're 0:30:24.040 --> 0:30:27.360 in your office. Um, but kind of just described how 0:30:27.400 --> 0:30:29.400 you came to be at Colorado State because it's a 0:30:29.480 --> 0:30:33.160 that's a long story, but the shorter version after your retirement. Right. 0:30:33.360 --> 0:30:35.080 So I've been retired about two and a half years. 0:30:35.680 --> 0:30:38.800 I'm married to another biologist. She mainly studies frogs and 0:30:38.880 --> 0:30:42.440 the fungi they're killing frogs. I mainly study snakes. She's 0:30:42.480 --> 0:30:44.959 not retired yet and she has some close collaborators here 0:30:44.960 --> 0:30:49.000 at Colorado State. So when she got our sabbatical leave, 0:30:49.960 --> 0:30:52.360 that's where we decided to come. Yeah, so you were 0:30:53.000 --> 0:30:55.960 previously we were talking to your previously uh, East coast 0:30:56.040 --> 0:30:59.280 dweller as I was and new to the West. Yeah, 0:30:59.320 --> 0:31:01.200 although I grew up mostly in Texas and then I 0:31:01.200 --> 0:31:03.960 worked in Berkeley for twenty years, So I really think 0:31:03.960 --> 0:31:06.800 of myself as a Westerner, and uh, I think of 0:31:06.840 --> 0:31:09.160 Texas as my home. Really, you just have to have 0:31:09.200 --> 0:31:10.640 a good job, and she has a good job in 0:31:10.720 --> 0:31:13.400 upstate New York. So, so you're telling me about an 0:31:13.400 --> 0:31:16.560 elk hunt you got coming up to. Yeah, we're being guided. 0:31:16.920 --> 0:31:18.720 We're gonna be taken up into the high country in 0:31:18.760 --> 0:31:21.760 northwestern Colorado this Friday for about we don't know, probably 0:31:21.840 --> 0:31:25.240 five to seven days. That's beautiful. Yeah, friends, family, your 0:31:25.240 --> 0:31:27.080 wife's coming along. You told me she's as much a 0:31:27.160 --> 0:31:31.680 hunter as I am. So yeah, that's awesome. Um, I 0:31:31.680 --> 0:31:35.160 guess we should should let people know. It struck me 0:31:35.200 --> 0:31:37.600 that I hadn't heard I hadn't often heard the term 0:31:37.640 --> 0:31:41.400 her patologist before reading some of your books and looking 0:31:41.440 --> 0:31:43.840 at some of your works. So can you explain explain 0:31:43.920 --> 0:31:46.600 what her patologist is her patologists as a person who 0:31:46.640 --> 0:31:50.200 studies amphibians and reptiles. That's that's the shortest possible answer. 0:31:50.360 --> 0:31:52.600 So there are lots of things about the biology of 0:31:52.640 --> 0:31:55.240 amphippies and reptiles. One might study how they eat, how 0:31:55.280 --> 0:31:59.240 they how they reproduce, where they're found, whether the threats 0:31:59.240 --> 0:32:02.520 to their persisted and sin in human dominated landscapes. Those 0:32:02.560 --> 0:32:06.600 are all parts of herpetology, and most herpetologists also have 0:32:06.760 --> 0:32:09.800 some more general specially so like I'm an ecologist and 0:32:09.800 --> 0:32:13.680 revolutionary biologist, I mostly study behavior. Got and you've done 0:32:13.680 --> 0:32:17.040 some interesting studies of of reptile behavior, specifically snakes that 0:32:17.080 --> 0:32:19.239 I want to talk about. But I was reading your 0:32:19.280 --> 0:32:23.920 book Tracks and Shadows Field Biology is art and it 0:32:24.040 --> 0:32:29.400 is Uh, it's striking, thank you it is. It's beautifully written. It. Um. 0:32:29.760 --> 0:32:31.320 I will say I'm like three chords of the way 0:32:31.360 --> 0:32:33.960 through it, but from the very first chapter I was 0:32:34.600 --> 0:32:38.800 thank you so much. Yes, you goat. I mean, I 0:32:38.840 --> 0:32:41.200 feel like when you're reading something like that. I read 0:32:41.240 --> 0:32:44.200 a lot of like how to Loopold and some of 0:32:44.240 --> 0:32:46.640 your what you called eccentric meditations on the kind of 0:32:46.640 --> 0:32:52.200 the natural world reminded me of of Liopold or somebody 0:32:52.280 --> 0:32:56.240 kind of with that kind of profundity, with with your experience. Um, 0:32:56.280 --> 0:32:58.120 and so we should touch on that. But you start 0:32:58.760 --> 0:33:03.480 starting that book and the opening paragraphs talking about when 0:33:03.520 --> 0:33:06.840 you first became interested in the natural world as a 0:33:06.920 --> 0:33:10.120 kid wanted like a ranch in Texas, And there's some 0:33:10.200 --> 0:33:12.440 lines in there you talk about kind of being just 0:33:12.800 --> 0:33:17.400 intrigued and asking questions and give people an idea of 0:33:17.440 --> 0:33:19.280 that time in your life, like when you're asking why 0:33:19.280 --> 0:33:21.200 does that where are the ears on that turtle? Where? 0:33:21.440 --> 0:33:23.840 Those types of things. Yeah, well it's actually a farm. 0:33:23.920 --> 0:33:26.720 My mom grew up in uh fairly extreme poverty in 0:33:26.720 --> 0:33:30.480 East Texas, outside a tiny town about two hours drive 0:33:30.560 --> 0:33:33.800 east of Dallas. Her father was a World War One veteran. 0:33:34.560 --> 0:33:38.480 They had six acres that that Lola, his new teenage bride, 0:33:38.720 --> 0:33:41.680 had been given by her parents, and they had a 0:33:41.960 --> 0:33:44.080 They had a plow horse, a jersey cow for milk, 0:33:44.160 --> 0:33:47.120 a flock of chickens. They raised one pig a year. 0:33:47.240 --> 0:33:50.960 There's no no electricity, no running water, raise one pig 0:33:51.000 --> 0:33:52.800 a year, which you could only butcher in the winter 0:33:52.920 --> 0:33:55.240 because there was no refrigeration, so they had to wait 0:33:55.240 --> 0:33:58.720 for a really cold day. And and my little brother 0:33:58.760 --> 0:34:00.920 and I by then, my mom had had moved off 0:34:00.960 --> 0:34:02.760 married my dad, who was an Air Force officer, so 0:34:02.800 --> 0:34:04.880 we traveled a lot, but we always came back to 0:34:04.920 --> 0:34:07.920 grandpa's farm whenever we could. And so my little brother 0:34:07.960 --> 0:34:12.880 and I, as kids, didn't didn't didn't detect the poverty 0:34:12.920 --> 0:34:15.880 aspects of it, you know. We we just detected that 0:34:15.960 --> 0:34:19.400 they lived close to the earth, and we watched what 0:34:19.560 --> 0:34:22.959 that meant. We watched. We knew where butter came from 0:34:23.000 --> 0:34:26.720 because my grandmother sat in the kitchen with a churn 0:34:27.440 --> 0:34:30.359 and a bag of of milk a cream, you know, 0:34:31.400 --> 0:34:34.360 banging that poll up and down in that little ceramic churn, 0:34:34.800 --> 0:34:39.080 making butter. And we we knew that poultry died for 0:34:39.160 --> 0:34:41.960 us to eat them for dinner, because we watched my 0:34:42.040 --> 0:34:45.359 grandmother butcher the chickens. And one year we watched him 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:47.759 butcher a pig. And we knew where milk came from 0:34:47.800 --> 0:34:50.200 because Grandpa tried to teach us how to milk the cow. 0:34:51.040 --> 0:34:54.799 So we I grew up with that, And from my 0:34:54.920 --> 0:34:58.440 earliest memories, I was always curious, you know. And and 0:34:58.520 --> 0:35:00.400 I mentioned in the book, you know, once finding a 0:35:00.680 --> 0:35:04.640 box turtle and asking my mom where it's ears, you know, uh, 0:35:05.320 --> 0:35:07.920 looking at a pig being butchered, and already knowing what 0:35:07.960 --> 0:35:10.440 an intestine was, and seeing that's an intestine, you know. 0:35:10.440 --> 0:35:13.720 So so I grew up with interest in natural history 0:35:13.760 --> 0:35:17.840 and in kinds of animals. My my first taxonomic works 0:35:17.840 --> 0:35:20.359 were about, you know, how to tell jerseys from Holstein's, 0:35:20.400 --> 0:35:24.399 from from angus and so forth. You know. Yeah, I mean, 0:35:24.440 --> 0:35:26.360 it just feels when I was reading that, it is 0:35:26.640 --> 0:35:30.680 it feels like there's certain kinds of upbrings that foster 0:35:31.840 --> 0:35:34.919 staff feeling right, that fostered that closeness, like you're saying, 0:35:34.960 --> 0:35:39.000 to the closest to the dirt, to the natural world. Uh, 0:35:39.080 --> 0:35:40.839 you'd know, I would have. I would guess from reading 0:35:40.880 --> 0:35:42.480 your book that that's kind of what led you down 0:35:42.560 --> 0:35:44.600 the path that you're on, that you've been on for 0:35:44.640 --> 0:35:48.640 the last five six decades. Is there any Do you 0:35:48.640 --> 0:35:50.560 have any other moments or stories you can tell people 0:35:50.560 --> 0:35:55.040 that kind of illustrate how you became to be so, 0:35:55.680 --> 0:35:57.520 I mean, you spent your life traveling the world looking 0:35:57.560 --> 0:36:01.080 for crazy reptiles and predators and things like that. You 0:36:01.120 --> 0:36:05.520 have amazing stories of of pulling pythons by the tail 0:36:05.560 --> 0:36:07.480 and jaguars and co streak and things like that. Then 0:36:08.040 --> 0:36:12.279 that I found interesting. All of that came from somewhere. Yeah, 0:36:12.320 --> 0:36:14.880 And and to some extent I don't even know the answer. 0:36:14.920 --> 0:36:16.400 I mean, it was a sort of love at first 0:36:16.400 --> 0:36:20.640 sight thing. My parents weren't what would be called naturalists today. 0:36:20.719 --> 0:36:22.680 In fact, at this point in my life, I'm really 0:36:22.719 --> 0:36:24.680 reflecting back on the fact that my mother wanted to 0:36:24.840 --> 0:36:29.799 escape that poverty which I idolized as a little boy. 0:36:30.160 --> 0:36:33.000 I once asked my mother, Mom, why didn't you marry 0:36:33.000 --> 0:36:35.320 somebody like Grandpa so we could live on a farm. 0:36:35.400 --> 0:36:37.759 And you know, my mother, I only late in her 0:36:37.760 --> 0:36:40.239 life sort of realized how desperately she worked to get 0:36:40.280 --> 0:36:43.400 out of that scene. So here, here, I was idolizing 0:36:43.440 --> 0:36:47.880 something that you know, it wasn't idolizeable to her, but 0:36:47.920 --> 0:36:50.200 it it did put me around animals that it got 0:36:50.239 --> 0:36:52.560 me to watching animals, and I loved it from the start. 0:36:52.960 --> 0:36:55.560 And I'll say this from my parents. Their reaction was 0:36:55.600 --> 0:36:58.440 to buy me books. So I had my first reptile 0:36:58.440 --> 0:37:00.919 book when I was seven years old, and so there 0:37:00.920 --> 0:37:04.640 it was. You know, what I didn't have was any 0:37:04.719 --> 0:37:07.880 any inkling. There was a career until I was thirteen 0:37:07.960 --> 0:37:12.520 years old. My father was stationed for one year near Norman, Oklahoma, 0:37:12.719 --> 0:37:14.800 and he was taking classes at the University of Oklahoma. 0:37:14.840 --> 0:37:16.359 He came home one night he said, son, I met 0:37:16.360 --> 0:37:19.000 this I met this professor of zoology and he studies 0:37:19.080 --> 0:37:21.880 lizards and he wants to talk to you. So the 0:37:21.960 --> 0:37:24.640 next day I wrote my little three speed at that time, 0:37:24.680 --> 0:37:27.640 bicycle Down. I met this guy, Charles Carpenter, and I 0:37:27.680 --> 0:37:29.080 came home that night and I said, boy, I'm going 0:37:29.160 --> 0:37:31.360 to be a university professor. They get to keep lizards. 0:37:32.000 --> 0:37:34.360 Because because when I walked in his office. You know, 0:37:34.400 --> 0:37:36.720 the thing that impressed me was he had these live lizard. 0:37:36.760 --> 0:37:38.920 He had a live possum living in a cage gender 0:37:38.960 --> 0:37:40.960 his desk, and I thought, what could be better than 0:37:41.480 --> 0:37:44.120 living the tream? You got your Yeah, that's right, and 0:37:44.120 --> 0:37:46.320 he got paid, you know, And so that that was 0:37:46.360 --> 0:37:48.400 what showed me there was a career path for me, 0:37:49.200 --> 0:37:52.520 and that there's other transformative part in your life. We'll 0:37:52.560 --> 0:37:54.080 hustle through this so we can get to all, like 0:37:54.520 --> 0:37:58.120 we got a lot to cover. Um another point in 0:37:58.160 --> 0:38:01.160 life where you talk about being an ambulance driver and 0:38:01.160 --> 0:38:05.400 and being like an assistant mortician, all of these. I 0:38:05.440 --> 0:38:07.680 will say that all of these reflections that you make 0:38:08.200 --> 0:38:11.719 in your book kind of all lead to somewhere that 0:38:12.280 --> 0:38:15.759 kind of the year hypothesis about the natural world and 0:38:15.840 --> 0:38:19.000 conservation things like that. So I think, just so folks listening, 0:38:19.000 --> 0:38:22.560 but we get there. I'm kind of excited to get there. 0:38:22.560 --> 0:38:25.000 So we're gonna work through this. But you talk about 0:38:26.120 --> 0:38:31.120 how seeing you know, crying infants, like how seeing people 0:38:31.160 --> 0:38:35.400 die changed you at that early age, like it impacts 0:38:35.400 --> 0:38:38.360 you still today. You kind of describe that time in 0:38:38.400 --> 0:38:42.360 your life for folks, Yeah, it happened accidentally. I was 0:38:42.400 --> 0:38:44.640 such a nerd in high school. I published three signs 0:38:44.840 --> 0:38:47.520 papers before I graduated from high school, but I didn't 0:38:47.520 --> 0:38:49.960 hadn't had a date. And then I went off to 0:38:50.000 --> 0:38:53.160 college and I was like, whoa, there's a whole new 0:38:53.200 --> 0:38:55.799 world out here, you know, And so I that's why 0:38:55.840 --> 0:38:57.480 at the end of my junior year in college I 0:38:57.520 --> 0:39:00.239 had accumulatude one point eight nine g p A. That's 0:39:00.239 --> 0:39:02.720 a D plus average for three years of college. Because 0:39:02.719 --> 0:39:05.960 I was having a really good time and my father 0:39:06.040 --> 0:39:08.120 wasn't giving me a big enough allowance to have as 0:39:08.160 --> 0:39:10.279 good a time as I wanted to have. So I 0:39:10.320 --> 0:39:12.880 found out there was this job at the Locals tiny 0:39:12.920 --> 0:39:15.920 town funeral home and it paid sixty dollars a month, 0:39:15.920 --> 0:39:18.600 plus you got your room free. So I'd had a 0:39:18.640 --> 0:39:21.359 boy scout first aid class. I went down. Guy asked 0:39:21.360 --> 0:39:22.759 me if I had if I had a black tie 0:39:22.800 --> 0:39:25.399 in a white shirt, and I said yeah, and he goes, 0:39:25.440 --> 0:39:28.520 be back here at one o'clock. You're hired. And the 0:39:28.640 --> 0:39:30.399 next thing I knew, I was loading a body off 0:39:30.520 --> 0:39:33.960 out of a hospital bid onto onto a gurney. And 0:39:34.480 --> 0:39:36.919 for the long story short, for the next three years 0:39:37.000 --> 0:39:39.440 or so, first in this tiny Texas town and then 0:39:39.440 --> 0:39:42.040 in Fort Worth for a big ambulance company. I was 0:39:42.080 --> 0:39:44.719 an ambulance driver and ambulance met it before they were 0:39:44.760 --> 0:39:47.919 called E M T s. And this resulted in many, many, 0:39:48.000 --> 0:39:55.080 many encounters with violence and with illness, with tragic deaths, uh, 0:39:55.360 --> 0:39:58.880 all of which I sort of almost always took in stride, 0:39:58.920 --> 0:40:02.320 because I was brought up to just take things in stride. 0:40:02.320 --> 0:40:04.680 You know. There were there were a couple of events, 0:40:04.719 --> 0:40:07.759 and it's that that got me, but but mostly I 0:40:07.800 --> 0:40:10.319 just took it and stride. And when I look back 0:40:10.360 --> 0:40:13.600 on it now decades later, I think two things that 0:40:13.719 --> 0:40:17.920 did for me was impressed me with how how precious 0:40:18.000 --> 0:40:21.120 life is and how permanent death is. And the other 0:40:21.200 --> 0:40:24.680 thing was that this is in the late sixties. We 0:40:24.680 --> 0:40:27.719 we couldn't do much in the ambulance. I was later 0:40:27.800 --> 0:40:29.560 in army medic, and I could do a lot more 0:40:29.640 --> 0:40:31.520 things as a trained army medic that I could do 0:40:31.880 --> 0:40:36.600 as a civilian ambulance driver. So I'm afraid we probably 0:40:36.640 --> 0:40:40.520 made mistakes. Sometimes at the very least, we probably failed 0:40:40.520 --> 0:40:43.600 to do things that might have saved a few people. 0:40:43.719 --> 0:40:47.680 And that's haunting. But as a conservation by all just today. 0:40:48.200 --> 0:40:50.640 I often think about that because I think the dilemma 0:40:50.719 --> 0:40:54.640 facing conservation biologists and people in general in terms of 0:40:54.680 --> 0:40:58.680 saving some some section of biodiversity, it's kind of like 0:40:58.760 --> 0:41:01.839 that we don't know everything we'd like to know, and 0:41:01.880 --> 0:41:04.040 so the easy way out would be to take no 0:41:04.239 --> 0:41:07.520 risks because then you won't get criticized. I mean, I 0:41:07.520 --> 0:41:10.919 think our our our descendants may criticize us, why did 0:41:11.000 --> 0:41:13.520 why did you let elephants go extinct on a global 0:41:13.560 --> 0:41:17.400 basis on your watch? So we might have great grandchildren 0:41:17.400 --> 0:41:21.120 who will look back and wonder why that. Yeah, they 0:41:21.120 --> 0:41:23.560 all wonder why you in terms of because we're both 0:41:23.640 --> 0:41:26.319 conservationists at some level. I know we are, so they 0:41:26.400 --> 0:41:29.040 might look back then, but right now not taking risk 0:41:29.080 --> 0:41:31.040 because it's sort of the easy way out. Your your 0:41:31.080 --> 0:41:34.239 peers won't jump on you because you proposed a kind 0:41:34.239 --> 0:41:36.480 of a crazy thing like place to scene rewilding in 0:41:36.520 --> 0:41:40.000 the possibility of putting surrogate mammoths back in North America, 0:41:40.040 --> 0:41:42.520 you know, And I often think that that that. I 0:41:42.600 --> 0:41:44.719 think that the lemma for conservationist is sort of like 0:41:45.160 --> 0:41:48.239 the dilemma for an ambulance medic is you know you 0:41:48.280 --> 0:41:50.399 don't have you're not in in the r You don't 0:41:50.440 --> 0:41:52.600 have everything you wish you had. You don't know how 0:41:52.600 --> 0:41:55.600 to do certain procedures, you don't actually know what's going on. 0:41:56.239 --> 0:41:58.239 You know. I once picked up a guy and the 0:41:58.320 --> 0:42:01.960 only wound was a blood us caliber hole in his chest, 0:42:02.480 --> 0:42:05.279 who was sitting on accouch talking to me while his 0:42:05.320 --> 0:42:07.799 wife sat next to him. And he said, well, and 0:42:07.840 --> 0:42:10.120 the cops were interviewing him, and he said, well, the 0:42:10.160 --> 0:42:13.279 wife and I here were arguing and she accidentally shot me. 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:16.480 And so I put him on the gurney and I 0:42:16.800 --> 0:42:20.720 emphasized there's no blood, it's a twenty two caliber slightly 0:42:20.760 --> 0:42:24.520 bluish hole, is just blue skin. And the guy dies 0:42:24.560 --> 0:42:27.440 as we unload him at the hospital. So there might 0:42:27.480 --> 0:42:30.240 have been things that somebody with more advanced equipment training 0:42:30.239 --> 0:42:33.040 could have done. I didn't have that, you know, And 0:42:33.080 --> 0:42:35.719 I think conservation bio is kind of like that, you know. Yeah, 0:42:35.920 --> 0:42:37.880 when I read that, it struck me like, man, you know, 0:42:37.920 --> 0:42:42.319 we're all twenty year old aimulist drivers. We are, you 0:42:42.360 --> 0:42:44.439 are and so, and you have all these different views 0:42:44.440 --> 0:42:47.680 about that that Ultimately we were talking earlier about values. 0:42:47.760 --> 0:42:51.600 You know, uh, what if it turns out that in 0:42:51.719 --> 0:42:54.719 order to save the Channel Island gray fox, which is 0:42:54.920 --> 0:42:59.240 really cool and it's just an incredible animal. You know. Well, 0:42:59.239 --> 0:43:03.760 it turns out in vacy bald eagles were we're eating 0:43:03.800 --> 0:43:07.600 the foxes. Why were they there? Because they were subsidized 0:43:07.640 --> 0:43:09.880 by the feral pigs on the island, you know. So 0:43:09.920 --> 0:43:13.920 there's a very complex ecological story. And if your values 0:43:13.920 --> 0:43:17.840 are such that you think that that little uniquely evolved 0:43:18.080 --> 0:43:21.680 dwarf Tamish Island gray fox that we're saving, you got 0:43:21.680 --> 0:43:23.840 to get rid of the eagles and the pigs. And 0:43:23.880 --> 0:43:26.359 how do you choose right? And with what? With what 0:43:26.440 --> 0:43:29.400 tools can you make that choice right? And it was 0:43:29.680 --> 0:43:33.160 very acrimonious. And then what if you screw up? Boy, 0:43:33.200 --> 0:43:36.000 if you screw up, you're gonna be on the nightly news. 0:43:37.000 --> 0:43:40.200 You'll get a lot of money morning quarterbacking on on. So, Yeah, 0:43:40.480 --> 0:43:42.640 for every celebration, like for every subbing, should we save 0:43:42.680 --> 0:43:45.319 with the gray fox? Look at all the foxes? What 0:43:45.880 --> 0:43:47.960 like what dirty business did you have to do to 0:43:47.960 --> 0:43:49.919 get there? Yeah, something like that. So I would say, 0:43:50.320 --> 0:43:53.000 in a way when I look back on those on 0:43:53.040 --> 0:43:55.000 that period of my life which is now decades ago, 0:43:55.600 --> 0:44:01.399 it's the grittiness, the uncertainty, the need to in my view, 0:44:01.640 --> 0:44:03.960 go ahead and act anyway, do the best you can, 0:44:04.880 --> 0:44:06.759 say what you can say, say what you can say, 0:44:07.080 --> 0:44:10.200 do the best you can what you got. I hope 0:44:10.200 --> 0:44:12.680 that you don't suffer too much for mistakes. Yeah, And 0:44:12.760 --> 0:44:15.399 I found it in reading your writing that that that's 0:44:15.400 --> 0:44:17.759 what struck me, is like that at some point in 0:44:17.800 --> 0:44:19.759 my life, I live long enough and I've done enough, 0:44:19.800 --> 0:44:22.520 I'll be able to meditate on the natural world in 0:44:22.520 --> 0:44:23.920 the way that you have, in the way that it's 0:44:23.920 --> 0:44:27.080 been informed by all the moments in your life, and 0:44:27.280 --> 0:44:30.600 in this case, moments that didn't really have much to 0:44:30.680 --> 0:44:34.240 do with the natural world. They didn't seem to anyway, 0:44:34.280 --> 0:44:36.520 they didn't seem to, right, So like all this stuff 0:44:36.520 --> 0:44:40.080 being intertwined is is interesting me. You You had a 0:44:40.200 --> 0:44:42.759 quote in the beginning of your book to um, I'm 0:44:42.800 --> 0:44:44.720 gonna give people out of beginning of the book stuff, 0:44:44.880 --> 0:44:47.680 so I'll have to go and get it and read it. Um, 0:44:47.719 --> 0:44:51.719 A journalist Bayard Taylor. Yeah, this is is a real 0:44:51.760 --> 0:44:54.319 good one. He liked nature to a princess fallen into 0:44:54.320 --> 0:44:57.480 the hands of robbers who cut off her fingers for 0:44:57.520 --> 0:44:59.680 the sake of the jewels. She wears. Isn't that incredible? 0:44:59.640 --> 0:45:03.440 I'm like, the that's incredible, incredible quote. It is, isn't it? 0:45:03.600 --> 0:45:07.120 And I heard that, uh at a dinner for University 0:45:07.160 --> 0:45:10.760 California Press authors. So my my first book was about 0:45:10.760 --> 0:45:12.520 snakes and it was published by them. And I was 0:45:12.560 --> 0:45:15.480 at a dinner for authors and this famous historian of 0:45:15.520 --> 0:45:18.439 California history was given the banquet talk and he read 0:45:18.480 --> 0:45:21.040 that quote and it just electrified me. I mean, I 0:45:21.080 --> 0:45:25.400 was like a pencil the napkin, you know, and I 0:45:25.719 --> 0:45:28.440 wrote it down then later burrowed into I actually found 0:45:28.480 --> 0:45:31.040 copies of Buyer Taylor's books to buy, and I because 0:45:31.040 --> 0:45:32.480 I wanted to read it in the original, you know, 0:45:32.680 --> 0:45:37.160 I think that's incredible, incredible, It's incredible. And when he 0:45:37.160 --> 0:45:38.640 first read it, it it strikes you as kind of like 0:45:38.680 --> 0:45:42.400 an environmentalist metaphor, but it's it's I think it's deeper 0:45:42.400 --> 0:45:44.640 than that. I do too, and and that's that's why 0:45:44.640 --> 0:45:47.000 I used it early in my book, because there is 0:45:47.000 --> 0:45:49.640 a threat of violence that runs through my own life, 0:45:50.920 --> 0:45:55.080 and I think we I think it inevitably runs through life, 0:45:56.080 --> 0:46:00.520 and I think modern humans, especially in some ultras, go 0:46:00.600 --> 0:46:03.440 to great links to deny that, to hide from it. 0:46:04.080 --> 0:46:06.720 That's one response to it. I I'm not putting that down. 0:46:06.800 --> 0:46:09.120 I mean, I've I've seen some violence i'd like to 0:46:09.200 --> 0:46:11.400 hide from. Yeah, but I'd like to have not seen. 0:46:11.560 --> 0:46:13.680 So I sort of get that. But in the end, 0:46:13.719 --> 0:46:16.759 I think it may not service well in terms of conservation. 0:46:17.560 --> 0:46:20.560 I would agree. And I think we've in the moderns 0:46:20.600 --> 0:46:22.920 and the more modern like social media sense they have 0:46:23.000 --> 0:46:25.279 there's a there's a this is a weird thing to 0:46:25.320 --> 0:46:29.120 bring in a conversation, but there's a page on Instagram 0:46:29.160 --> 0:46:32.799 called Nature's Metal, and Nature's Metal is just some of 0:46:32.840 --> 0:46:36.680 the craziest, most carnal things you'd ever predator, you know, predators, 0:46:36.760 --> 0:46:39.800 ripping faces off, zebras. It's just like it's an expression 0:46:39.800 --> 0:46:44.160 that nature is crazy and scary and brutal and death 0:46:44.200 --> 0:46:46.560 defines it. And that's just just what it is. And 0:46:46.600 --> 0:46:49.920 I think that is like a spasmatic, you know, response 0:46:50.000 --> 0:46:54.600 to people whitewashing nature and then you know the like 0:46:54.760 --> 0:46:58.879 anthromomorphizing animals and like, so we've had this that thing 0:46:58.960 --> 0:47:02.040 is being recognized within our culture, and we're pushing back 0:47:02.960 --> 0:47:05.240 on it in certain ways, trying to make sure people 0:47:05.239 --> 0:47:10.600 are aware that in't you know, in Africa. Photos fars 0:47:10.600 --> 0:47:13.480 are great, but you're not getting And I live right 0:47:13.480 --> 0:47:16.520 by Yellowster National Park. That's a wonderful place, but it 0:47:16.600 --> 0:47:20.560 is not nature and like in the way that that 0:47:20.640 --> 0:47:24.279 you really need to know it. Yes. And so when 0:47:24.320 --> 0:47:27.160 I much later in life became a late onset deer hunter, 0:47:27.840 --> 0:47:31.399 one of the and honestly, uh, should I go ahead 0:47:31.400 --> 0:47:32.759 and say something about this or did you want to 0:47:32.840 --> 0:47:37.800 know what you want? When when my friend David offered 0:47:37.800 --> 0:47:41.720 me the opportunity to teach to teach me to deer hunt. Uh, 0:47:41.880 --> 0:47:44.120 And I had an old model ninety four Winchester which 0:47:44.120 --> 0:47:46.120 my students at Berkeley had given me as a present. 0:47:46.800 --> 0:47:49.439 I'm sure I'm the only Berkeley professor ever to get 0:47:49.680 --> 0:47:52.480 given an old Winchester. But they knew at a certain 0:47:52.520 --> 0:47:55.759 nostalgia from my Texas youth, and they actually knew that 0:47:55.800 --> 0:47:59.120 I specifically wanted a pre sixty four model money for 0:47:59.239 --> 0:48:02.160 Winchester BEAUTIFU beautiful rifle. And so I got this card 0:48:02.200 --> 0:48:05.960 one day in my mailbox and it said, uh, happy sabbatical. Uh, 0:48:06.000 --> 0:48:08.520 this is good for one pre sixty four model ninety four. 0:48:08.560 --> 0:48:10.359 You find it and we'll pay for it. And so 0:48:10.680 --> 0:48:13.960 I walked into a Seattle gun shop and and said, 0:48:14.000 --> 0:48:15.799 I'm looking for an old model linety four. And the 0:48:15.840 --> 0:48:17.440 guy goes, there's a whole rack up and pick out 0:48:17.480 --> 0:48:18.960 which one you like this? So I went through him, 0:48:19.200 --> 0:48:21.719 you know, sticking my thumb to the receiver and trying 0:48:21.719 --> 0:48:24.640 to get enough light to see the the riflings, and 0:48:24.640 --> 0:48:26.640 and picked out the one I liked best. It turned 0:48:26.680 --> 0:48:28.880 out from the serial numbers made nineteen fifty, so I 0:48:28.920 --> 0:48:31.799 had this old Winchester. I've been wanting to try deer 0:48:31.880 --> 0:48:33.920 hunting for a long time, but he didn't want to 0:48:33.920 --> 0:48:38.480 be a bozo about it. I knew that, and also, ironically, 0:48:38.560 --> 0:48:41.640 because my grandpa taught me firearm safety and marksmanship, I 0:48:41.680 --> 0:48:43.839 was a boy scout and I was a soldier, had 0:48:43.880 --> 0:48:45.760 lots of experience, and I had a lot of experience 0:48:45.760 --> 0:48:50.200 with gunshot wounds too. I knew a lot about firearms relatively, 0:48:50.320 --> 0:48:53.200 but I'd never had a gun safety course, and I 0:48:53.280 --> 0:48:55.399 knew that you all, I thought that you had to 0:48:55.440 --> 0:48:58.279 take one to get a hunting license, so I kept 0:48:58.320 --> 0:49:00.799 putting it off year after year. Plus I didn't have 0:49:00.840 --> 0:49:03.520 a mentor, and I felt we needed mentor. So my 0:49:03.560 --> 0:49:06.880 friend David this U t Austin professor David Hillis who 0:49:06.960 --> 0:49:10.160 who ranches and hunts. He calls me one September two 0:49:10.160 --> 0:49:12.400 thousand nine. He goes, green, you've run out of excuses. 0:49:12.520 --> 0:49:13.839 So what are you talking about, David? And he said, 0:49:14.080 --> 0:49:17.279 turns out in Texas if you were born in ninety seven, 0:49:18.280 --> 0:49:20.399 your grandfather, did you know? And I thought, God, that's weird. 0:49:20.480 --> 0:49:23.359 You know, that's kind of crazy. But okay, and he says, yeah, 0:49:23.360 --> 0:49:26.040 I get yourself a Karen case and come on down 0:49:26.040 --> 0:49:28.640 and I'll I'll teach it hunt. So I went down there, 0:49:28.640 --> 0:49:32.280 and I really didn't know how i'd react. I considered 0:49:32.320 --> 0:49:34.879 the possibility that I would. I would kill one deer 0:49:34.920 --> 0:49:37.719 and be disgusted and sell my old rifle. How old 0:49:37.760 --> 0:49:43.640 are you sixty four year old adult hunter? Will you? Yeah? Yeah, 0:49:43.719 --> 0:49:46.200 that I had just turned sixty four in September, and 0:49:46.200 --> 0:49:49.239 this was in December. And so I go out kill 0:49:49.360 --> 0:49:51.760 my first dear, a few days later kill a second 0:49:51.800 --> 0:49:57.680 dear with a borrowed scoped flatter shooting rifle, And in fact, 0:49:57.800 --> 0:50:01.040 I end up feeling like it's maybe the most respectful 0:50:01.080 --> 0:50:02.840 thing I've ever done as a nature lover is to 0:50:02.920 --> 0:50:06.480 own up to my omnivory and to participate like that. 0:50:07.560 --> 0:50:11.760 So that's that's what happened. That's it's worth. It's worth 0:50:12.320 --> 0:50:14.759 thinking about where you were in your life. You're a 0:50:14.840 --> 0:50:20.480 tenured you know, academic who and I don't want to 0:50:20.800 --> 0:50:23.200 generalize academics, but I've talked to a lot of them, 0:50:23.200 --> 0:50:26.040 the ones that work at Berkeley specifically, and I'm headed 0:50:26.080 --> 0:50:30.239 to Cornell next month. Um, being a hunter is not 0:50:30.360 --> 0:50:34.160 probably how how will say, it's not like the prevailing 0:50:34.239 --> 0:50:37.359 thing to be. Um, it just doesn't see that way 0:50:37.360 --> 0:50:39.600 to me. I'm sure there's there's pockets of all kinds 0:50:39.600 --> 0:50:42.319 of things, but it's just not not a thing to 0:50:42.320 --> 0:50:44.400 be your herpetologists. You travel the world, you've done all 0:50:44.440 --> 0:50:47.839 these things which will well she'll talk about, and you like, 0:50:47.920 --> 0:50:50.600 you've seen more of the natural world than than most 0:50:50.640 --> 0:50:57.040 people of people, and you've like and you've found profundity 0:50:57.120 --> 0:51:00.440 in killing a deer in Texas Like out to me, 0:51:00.560 --> 0:51:04.200 is that's amazing, you know, at the at the age 0:51:04.200 --> 0:51:07.360 of sixty four, and you think that that adds some 0:51:07.560 --> 0:51:11.839 value to like hunting story because it because it's done 0:51:11.840 --> 0:51:13.759 that for you. You can talk about that a little bit, 0:51:13.800 --> 0:51:15.840 like what it because it's been you know, a decade 0:51:15.920 --> 0:51:19.200 or so then since you've been a hunter, right right, 0:51:19.320 --> 0:51:22.879 and so um, maybe I'll add a little thing about 0:51:22.920 --> 0:51:25.280 my wife at this point, because she's also an academic. 0:51:25.440 --> 0:51:28.640 So and it's true, there's there are certain stereotypes of academics, 0:51:28.680 --> 0:51:32.120 you know, and uh, and they're widely used by by 0:51:32.160 --> 0:51:36.160 diverse people. Ken Brower, who's a very well known nature writer, 0:51:36.239 --> 0:51:41.560 he's David Brower's son. Uh. He makes fun of people 0:51:41.600 --> 0:51:45.800 who criticize classic notions of wilderness by calling them pale 0:51:45.880 --> 0:51:49.479 men and tweets. Okay, well, well, I'm writing a book 0:51:49.520 --> 0:51:53.759 now that directly confronts John Muir and Ed Abbey and 0:51:53.800 --> 0:51:56.000 sort of that nation of wilderness because i think it's 0:51:56.000 --> 0:51:58.360 got a serious problem and I'm trying to address that 0:51:58.440 --> 0:52:01.360 in this book. I've were worn tweet in my life, 0:52:01.840 --> 0:52:03.680 you know. And I have a picture in the in 0:52:03.719 --> 0:52:06.239 the manuscript the book of me with a backpack in 0:52:06.320 --> 0:52:09.560 pre Canyon, Utah, in the slick rap country, and I say, 0:52:09.680 --> 0:52:14.320 pale skin true, no tweets in sight, you know. So uh, 0:52:14.360 --> 0:52:16.960 I know where the stereotype of academics comes comes from, 0:52:17.000 --> 0:52:19.200 because there, in fact, are a lot of academics who 0:52:19.239 --> 0:52:23.480 seem we could say, a little detached from other aspects 0:52:23.520 --> 0:52:26.719 of life. As many people do it, but probably not 0:52:26.800 --> 0:52:29.520 as many as most non academics think. Like there are 0:52:29.520 --> 0:52:32.200 a number of people in my department that hunt, and 0:52:32.239 --> 0:52:34.799 there are other people in my department who, although they 0:52:34.800 --> 0:52:37.840 don't hunt themselves, are totally fine with it and even 0:52:38.800 --> 0:52:40.680 allow those of us to do on their land and 0:52:40.719 --> 0:52:43.560 things like that. Yeah, and I'm aware of the prevailing like, oh, 0:52:43.719 --> 0:52:45.640 the new modern live when I when I walk on 0:52:45.719 --> 0:52:49.400 college campuses, I'm a little looking around, like for gender 0:52:49.440 --> 0:52:53.440 pronoun signs and ship what's going on? I have that feeling. 0:52:53.640 --> 0:52:56.040 I know that's not all of it, and I think 0:52:56.080 --> 0:52:58.880 it's it's that's a good perspective for you too, and 0:52:58.880 --> 0:53:01.400 it's probably not fair. It's not fair at all, you know, 0:53:02.200 --> 0:53:05.080 as would be various other stereotypes in various other cultural 0:53:05.120 --> 0:53:07.359 context but we we all have we all have those. 0:53:07.760 --> 0:53:09.960 Just like to address that when I when I was 0:53:10.440 --> 0:53:12.640 reading some of the stuff that that you had said 0:53:12.640 --> 0:53:15.000 an NPR and Arkle and NPR just kind of going 0:53:15.000 --> 0:53:17.600 back and forth with a professor friend of yours. That is, 0:53:17.880 --> 0:53:20.200 I don't know IFULL say anti hunting, but some animal 0:53:20.280 --> 0:53:24.320 rights thoughts. Um, it struck me as like your place 0:53:24.360 --> 0:53:26.719 in life, how you got to where you are and 0:53:26.760 --> 0:53:31.960 where you are is quite the story, especially as a hunter. Um, 0:53:32.120 --> 0:53:34.359 your first experiences with you know, when you walk up 0:53:34.360 --> 0:53:36.360 on a dead deer. You've seen dead things in the wild. 0:53:36.400 --> 0:53:41.000 You've seen wild things, lots of dead things. Um, what 0:53:41.040 --> 0:53:44.960 was what was that like? Uh? You know the craziest thing. Uh, 0:53:46.400 --> 0:53:47.880 I don't want to hear the things that are not 0:53:47.920 --> 0:53:51.480 really relevant. But I have no religious podcasts, aren't no 0:53:51.560 --> 0:53:54.960 religious beliefs and anymore. And so I walk up to 0:53:55.000 --> 0:53:59.279 this dough that I've just shot with my old model 0:53:59.360 --> 0:54:05.880 ninety four wind sister. Uh. And she it's almost dusk. 0:54:06.640 --> 0:54:10.439 I've shot. She she bounds out of sight left. She's 0:54:10.440 --> 0:54:13.480 seventy five yards away or so. And I know I've 0:54:13.520 --> 0:54:16.120 hit her, you know. And I know I'm supposed to 0:54:16.120 --> 0:54:18.080 wait thirty or forty five minutes to make sure she 0:54:18.160 --> 0:54:20.680 doesn't jump up if she's down, But it's getting dark 0:54:20.719 --> 0:54:23.960 and I and so I do get up, all right, 0:54:24.120 --> 0:54:26.680 I lever in another round, put on half cock safety 0:54:27.280 --> 0:54:30.440 and walk looking for and I walked fifty yards in 0:54:30.480 --> 0:54:32.799 there she is down and she's she's got her head 0:54:32.880 --> 0:54:36.160 up as if she'd been sleeping or taking a nap. 0:54:36.800 --> 0:54:40.000 And literally, and of course, as you know, this is 0:54:40.120 --> 0:54:44.040 probably less than forty five seconds after I mean, in 0:54:43.800 --> 0:54:45.960 in five seconds, a deer goes a long way, you know, 0:54:46.040 --> 0:54:48.040 so this is not like this deer has been running 0:54:48.040 --> 0:54:50.319 for a long time. And so as I walk up 0:54:50.320 --> 0:54:54.120 to her, she fades and draws back down and I 0:54:54.160 --> 0:54:56.360 go over and touch a leg and she's dead. You know. 0:54:56.440 --> 0:55:00.920 I've actually made a good bread basket shot. And three 0:55:01.000 --> 0:55:02.680 words popped into my head and I opened I don't 0:55:02.680 --> 0:55:05.000 screw this up and forget them. But one of them 0:55:05.120 --> 0:55:10.200 was sacred and like where did that come from? Gratitude 0:55:10.239 --> 0:55:12.200 was another one, and I can't remember the third and man, 0:55:12.400 --> 0:55:14.120 But to me, the most interesting is one is that 0:55:14.239 --> 0:55:16.960 I came up with the words sacred and they just 0:55:17.040 --> 0:55:18.680 it just popped into my mind. You know. It's a 0:55:18.760 --> 0:55:23.600 transformative experience for me. I felt, I felt extremely affected 0:55:24.520 --> 0:55:26.360 by the fact that I just killed this animal. And 0:55:26.400 --> 0:55:28.480 of course then we feel dressed at you know. And 0:55:28.480 --> 0:55:31.600 and later it went back to the freezer in New 0:55:31.680 --> 0:55:34.280 York and my family and people we invited for dinner 0:55:34.320 --> 0:55:38.200 eight that eight that deer and I I've always I 0:55:38.200 --> 0:55:39.680 had already been on that That was the first time 0:55:39.680 --> 0:55:41.760 I was on that ranch. I've been on that ranch many, many, 0:55:41.800 --> 0:55:44.880 many times since then. And I always think about the 0:55:44.920 --> 0:55:48.880 fact that when I eat meat from the Texas Hill Country, 0:55:48.920 --> 0:55:51.680 which is my favorite place on Earth, I'm more of 0:55:51.680 --> 0:55:54.880 a participant and less of a spectator in my favorite 0:55:54.880 --> 0:55:59.320 place on Earth. Yeah, I think, Um, what is interesting 0:55:59.360 --> 0:56:03.919 to me lately is the transformation. How satisfying the transformation 0:56:04.000 --> 0:56:07.920 from a dead animal to like, say, a steak is 0:56:08.040 --> 0:56:10.920 for me. I recently got people that listen to the 0:56:10.920 --> 0:56:12.799 podcast will know because I keep talking about it, but 0:56:12.840 --> 0:56:15.040 I really like it. I got a slicer like a 0:56:15.080 --> 0:56:18.759 meat commercial, like a Deli meat slicer, and we were 0:56:18.800 --> 0:56:20.720 talking about the other day, like, why is it satisfy? 0:56:20.760 --> 0:56:23.000 Why is it so satisfying to me to see this 0:56:23.120 --> 0:56:26.120 meat coming off the slicer ready to be made into 0:56:26.200 --> 0:56:28.719 lunch meat. That's an elk that I had killed. Why 0:56:28.760 --> 0:56:31.279 is that so satisfying? And somebody said, a friend of 0:56:31.320 --> 0:56:34.879 mine said, um, because you're trans just another transformation. It's 0:56:34.920 --> 0:56:39.160 like another thing that you've done to take the part 0:56:39.200 --> 0:56:41.640 of that process, to transform this living thing into something 0:56:41.680 --> 0:56:43.560 that is so useful to you, and that's why it's 0:56:43.560 --> 0:56:47.920 so satisfacing, and that's why probably right, absolutely, And so 0:56:48.000 --> 0:56:50.080 the first time you go through that Transformers process and 0:56:50.080 --> 0:56:52.960 take it home and have a meal with your family 0:56:53.040 --> 0:56:55.360 back in New York, I'm sure was a was a 0:56:55.360 --> 0:56:57.759 big deal. Well, and not like that. I paid more 0:56:57.800 --> 0:57:00.640 attention to all my food now than I used to, 0:57:00.800 --> 0:57:04.239 even and including vegetables. I mean, I'm I'm much more 0:57:04.440 --> 0:57:07.400 once I started deer hunting, I became much more interested 0:57:07.440 --> 0:57:11.880 in eating locally, Like even since I moved before Colins, 0:57:11.920 --> 0:57:14.520 I've been picking raspberries here and then I buy peaches 0:57:14.560 --> 0:57:18.960 that the peaches here unbelievable, like most delicious peaches I've 0:57:19.000 --> 0:57:20.600 ever eaten in my life. I've been buying at the 0:57:20.640 --> 0:57:23.920 farmer's market here and for Colins every Saturday. And I'm 0:57:23.920 --> 0:57:27.040 I get a huge sense of satisfaction, pleasure, and some 0:57:27.120 --> 0:57:32.760 kind of spiritual uh whatever out of knowing that these 0:57:32.800 --> 0:57:39.600 weren't you know, uh, packaged covered in nitrates all sorts 0:57:39.600 --> 0:57:42.680 of stuff. They weren't shipped from Chile. They're there from here, 0:57:42.720 --> 0:57:44.880 And I get a lot of pleasure in that, and 0:57:44.880 --> 0:57:47.520 and looking at my food that way, and looking at 0:57:47.600 --> 0:57:51.400 me eating changed once I became a deer hunter. That's 0:57:51.440 --> 0:57:54.200 that's what happened to me when I really took on 0:57:54.280 --> 0:57:57.200 honting is like a part of my lifestyle. Then you 0:57:57.240 --> 0:57:58.720 start thinking like why am I Why don't have a 0:57:58.800 --> 0:58:02.560 garden because gardens a very similar activity. It is, so 0:58:02.600 --> 0:58:05.360 why am I doing this? But not that gardening is 0:58:05.400 --> 0:58:08.280 way easier. Well, I'm actually starting to think about gardening 0:58:08.760 --> 0:58:13.640 and I've never had any inclination in that direction before. Well, 0:58:13.680 --> 0:58:17.800 I get back to kind of your teachings and your 0:58:17.840 --> 0:58:21.120 time in the field as a herpetologist. But I read 0:58:21.160 --> 0:58:25.800 a thing one of your students at Cornell wants described 0:58:25.840 --> 0:58:30.400 you as the mythical her herpetological green giant. Oh my gosh, 0:58:30.680 --> 0:58:33.040 you remember that. No, I don't remember that. Somebody wrote 0:58:33.040 --> 0:58:35.120 that about you? Was that right? I don't know what 0:58:35.240 --> 0:58:37.280 that was about. When you were tired they had to 0:58:37.360 --> 0:58:41.439 think called green Fest told me about that you're tired 0:58:41.440 --> 0:58:44.160 from Cornell and they just threw a party. Yeah. So 0:58:44.320 --> 0:58:47.080 one of my former PhD students, man named Jonathan Lassos, 0:58:47.120 --> 0:58:49.680 who who at that time was a Harvard professor. There's 0:58:49.720 --> 0:58:52.760 there's something you could stereotype and probably not the entirely 0:58:52.760 --> 0:58:55.840 fitting a man in an ascot. Yeah. Yeah, so. Uh 0:58:56.600 --> 0:58:59.320 but Jonathan who's also one of my dearest friends, he 0:58:59.680 --> 0:59:03.480 and my wife basically organized a party for me and 0:59:03.520 --> 0:59:07.520 they invited about a dozen people to speak and uh 0:59:07.920 --> 0:59:10.560 So it started Friday night with a party at my 0:59:10.600 --> 0:59:14.400 house where we served wild boar in Venison, and then 0:59:14.560 --> 0:59:17.520 all day Saturday there were there were talks out at 0:59:17.520 --> 0:59:20.040 the Laboratory of Ornithology, which is an institution on our 0:59:20.120 --> 0:59:23.360 campus on Southern Town. And so we invited a dozen 0:59:23.360 --> 0:59:26.960 people that range from um, my boss at Berkeley who 0:59:27.000 --> 0:59:29.720 was older than I am, too, a woman I first 0:59:29.800 --> 0:59:32.120 met when as a high school students she took my 0:59:32.960 --> 0:59:35.360 biology class and she's now a professor at Michigan State. 0:59:35.400 --> 0:59:39.560 So we had all the way from youth to almost elderly. 0:59:39.640 --> 0:59:42.480 We had men and women. They gave talks about what 0:59:42.520 --> 0:59:46.600 they do sort of to celebrate my retirement. It was 0:59:46.640 --> 0:59:49.720 it was extremely touching and I'm afraid I was in 0:59:49.760 --> 0:59:51.840 a bed of a days the whole time. Yeah. Well, 0:59:52.040 --> 0:59:55.800 I guess in the herpetology world, which I'm not familiar with, like, 0:59:55.920 --> 0:59:57.520 you had a big impact in your life. I mean, 0:59:57.520 --> 1:00:01.880 you've written hundreds of papers um, how many field studies 1:00:01.880 --> 1:00:04.880 and books and things like that. Can you just give 1:00:04.920 --> 1:00:08.440 people an idea of the breath of your work with 1:00:08.640 --> 1:00:10.560 I think snakes is probably the thing most people be 1:00:10.600 --> 1:00:12.800 interested in that you did a lot of work with them, 1:00:13.000 --> 1:00:16.960 Like I've mostly worked on snakes. So I got a 1:00:17.000 --> 1:00:20.160 master's and a PhD. And for those graduate degrees you 1:00:20.200 --> 1:00:21.880 have to do a piece of research. You have to 1:00:21.920 --> 1:00:24.280 write a master's thesis for master three, and you have 1:00:24.280 --> 1:00:27.200 to write a doctoral dissertation. And the topics of both 1:00:27.240 --> 1:00:30.240 of my graduate degrees had to do with snake biology, 1:00:30.560 --> 1:00:34.760 and so I have especially interested in what and how 1:00:34.880 --> 1:00:39.120 snakes eat. So for example, I've I've looked in the 1:00:39.160 --> 1:00:42.600 stomachs of thousands of maybe even in tents of certainly 1:00:42.640 --> 1:00:46.280 many thousand museum specimens to see what their last meal was, 1:00:47.960 --> 1:00:50.440 if there is one. So snakes don't snakes into eat 1:00:50.440 --> 1:00:56.000 big meals and therefore not so frequently. So just just 1:00:56.160 --> 1:00:58.800 by chance, if people go out and preserve a bunch 1:00:58.800 --> 1:01:01.280 of snakes and put the museum, only a relatively small 1:01:01.320 --> 1:01:03.760 fraction will wet food in their stomach because they don't 1:01:03.760 --> 1:01:07.000 eat so so on an average I probably get about 1:01:07.040 --> 1:01:09.440 a ten percent return but I have looked at literally 1:01:09.600 --> 1:01:11.960 thousands of specimens all over the world in the world's 1:01:12.000 --> 1:01:14.800 great museums. I get the curative permission to make a 1:01:14.800 --> 1:01:16.880 little slip and then I look in the stomach. It's 1:01:16.920 --> 1:01:18.760 like Christmas, I never know what I'm gonna find you, 1:01:19.120 --> 1:01:25.560 what did you find with crazy? Like? Like, uh, um, 1:01:25.640 --> 1:01:28.479 the largest meals that any snakes in the world eat 1:01:29.240 --> 1:01:32.560 away upwards of a hundred forty two d of their 1:01:32.560 --> 1:01:37.800 own mass. So you look like kind of a und guy. 1:01:38.320 --> 1:01:40.919 So imagine you eating a two ur and seventy pound 1:01:41.040 --> 1:01:46.120 cheeseburger with no utensils and no arms. You literally walk 1:01:46.240 --> 1:01:49.600 your head around a two and seventy found cheeseburger and 1:01:49.640 --> 1:01:52.280 then crawl off with it. That's that's what That's what 1:01:52.440 --> 1:01:55.680 vipers can do. And so I've I've spent and then 1:01:55.760 --> 1:01:58.720 sort of the second thing that I did and started 1:01:58.720 --> 1:02:00.720 doing was I wanted to watchnkes in the wild. I 1:02:00.760 --> 1:02:03.880 wanted to I wanted to see what they do. What's 1:02:03.880 --> 1:02:06.280 the craziest thing you found in a steaks gut? For? Like, 1:02:06.320 --> 1:02:09.840 the craziest thing ever? WHOA, I've seen a lot of 1:02:09.840 --> 1:02:14.240 crazy things, like five crazy things. This is interesting? Uh, Well, 1:02:14.640 --> 1:02:17.280 in an aquatic coral snake, which is a venomous cobra 1:02:17.440 --> 1:02:20.080 reality that lives in South America. I found five eels 1:02:20.720 --> 1:02:22.840 and they there were five of them there, and and 1:02:22.880 --> 1:02:24.840 one of them was only a tail left. It was 1:02:24.840 --> 1:02:26.760 the one that had been eating the longest ago, so 1:02:26.800 --> 1:02:29.120 it was the one most digested. And then as you 1:02:29.160 --> 1:02:32.479 went anteriorly in the gut, these items had been eaten 1:02:32.520 --> 1:02:34.880 more and more recently. And though it's recent one, it 1:02:34.920 --> 1:02:37.320 was a completely intact deal that's probably been eating just 1:02:37.880 --> 1:02:40.560 minutes before some biologists killed the squirrel snake and put 1:02:40.560 --> 1:02:44.360 it in the museum. That's pretty cool, right, that's um. 1:02:44.400 --> 1:02:48.480 Another one that was very insightful was I found a 1:02:48.680 --> 1:02:53.280 Pacific rattlesnake from California that had eating a ground squirrel. 1:02:54.080 --> 1:02:56.320 And the really interesting thing about vipers they have these 1:02:56.360 --> 1:02:59.560 long folding fangs and they have this tissue destructive cocktail 1:02:59.720 --> 1:03:02.080 venom that are made on a gland on each side 1:03:02.080 --> 1:03:04.840 of their head, you know. And basically, when a rattlesnake 1:03:05.160 --> 1:03:07.960 or any viper wants to kill a prey at him 1:03:08.000 --> 1:03:10.720 like a rabbit or a squirrel, it waits an ambush, 1:03:10.960 --> 1:03:16.120 it launches itself, it stabs these two hypodermic needles into 1:03:16.120 --> 1:03:21.440 the prey simultaneously compresses these two glands. It's essentially like 1:03:21.520 --> 1:03:24.240 it has a pair of hypodermic needles and the barrels 1:03:24.240 --> 1:03:27.960 filled with digestive and immobilizing cocktail. And so the rattlesnake 1:03:28.040 --> 1:03:31.880 goes like that, squirts in and releases almost instantly in 1:03:31.880 --> 1:03:34.840 a fraction of a second, minimizing the chance the rabbit 1:03:34.880 --> 1:03:36.960 of the squirrel might hurt it, and the rabbit of 1:03:37.000 --> 1:03:39.960 squirrel goes bounding off. One time, I one time we 1:03:40.000 --> 1:03:43.560 watched a rattlesnake bite a rabbit and the rabbit hopped 1:03:44.760 --> 1:03:48.320 ninety yards before it fell over. It took the rattlesnake 1:03:48.760 --> 1:03:51.400 almost three hours to find the rabbit, and it tracked 1:03:51.400 --> 1:03:54.560 the exact path of the rabbit. Turns out, rattlesnakes are 1:03:54.560 --> 1:03:58.440 putting a tracker molecule in their prey with the venom, 1:03:58.480 --> 1:04:02.919 and so it followed like the rabbit wind. It's it's 1:04:02.960 --> 1:04:06.520 smell or sense with its tongue, which is an older 1:04:07.400 --> 1:04:10.000 an odor carrier. There's a special organ in the roof 1:04:10.040 --> 1:04:12.560 of the mouth where the where the actual sensing happens, 1:04:12.560 --> 1:04:15.720 and the tongue carries in these odor molecules. So rattlesnake 1:04:15.760 --> 1:04:18.040 strikes the rabbit. The rabbit goes bounding off on this 1:04:18.240 --> 1:04:21.760 very irregular path over a rocky slope, and the rattlesnake 1:04:21.840 --> 1:04:24.040 takes this. The rattlesnake only about this big. It takes 1:04:24.120 --> 1:04:29.200 three hours, and I held my hands up. It takes 1:04:29.200 --> 1:04:32.360 it almost three hours, and it follows the precise security 1:04:32.640 --> 1:04:35.720 path of this rabbit. But the time it finds the rabbit, 1:04:35.720 --> 1:04:38.360 the rabbit is not only dead, but it's being digested 1:04:38.360 --> 1:04:41.960 from the inside out because the rabbit with its dying heartbeats, 1:04:42.000 --> 1:04:44.280 it's like it's like if you injected meat with a 1:04:44.320 --> 1:04:47.600 tender riser. It's in like actually some recipes you do 1:04:47.680 --> 1:04:51.560 inject meat with butter or whatever. Well, the rattlesnake has 1:04:51.640 --> 1:04:57.200 just injected two glands fulls of this the jestive enzyme 1:04:57.240 --> 1:04:59.919 cocktail and the rabbit, And as the rabbit bounds off dying, 1:05:00.040 --> 1:05:04.000 its own heartbeats are circulating these digestive enzymes throughout its tissue. 1:05:04.400 --> 1:05:07.480 So when the rattlesnake finally gets there and starts to 1:05:07.520 --> 1:05:10.760 walk its head over this meal that's maybe fifty of 1:05:10.800 --> 1:05:15.240 its mass, the rabbit is already digestion is already well underway. 1:05:15.520 --> 1:05:18.800 It's an incredible thing. How's that? I don't know what 1:05:18.920 --> 1:05:27.400 kind of species keep going? I read that, Um, I 1:05:27.400 --> 1:05:29.280 guess we should. I just asked, like the obvious question, 1:05:29.320 --> 1:05:31.320 what's the most frightening encounter you've had with a snake? 1:05:31.560 --> 1:05:36.240 With a snake? Uh? That's actually pretty easy, because I've 1:05:36.360 --> 1:05:41.000 almost never frightened of snakes. So I'm I'm long ago 1:05:41.080 --> 1:05:46.240 got over sort of macho showing off. In fact, um, 1:05:46.280 --> 1:05:49.120 I've actually calculated how risky is it to manhandle a 1:05:49.200 --> 1:05:51.160 vnom a snake? Pick it up, show off the fangs 1:05:51.200 --> 1:05:55.760 to the nearest uh fellow teenager, preferably a girl, you know. 1:05:55.840 --> 1:05:57.720 I mean that's that's sort of the old macho approach 1:05:57.760 --> 1:06:00.480 to venomous snakes, as you you man all of all that. 1:06:00.480 --> 1:06:02.600 When we now know that that's a stupid risk, it's 1:06:02.640 --> 1:06:04.640 not necessary, it's really hard on the snakes. We don't 1:06:04.640 --> 1:06:07.479 do it anymore. And I got over that, and so 1:06:08.280 --> 1:06:11.520 I've I've generally had a sort of risk adversitive, respectful 1:06:11.520 --> 1:06:14.600 approach to studying venomous snakes my whole life. But when 1:06:14.640 --> 1:06:18.400 I first started working in Costa Rica in about all 1:06:18.440 --> 1:06:21.640 of my venomous snake experience was with with pit vipers, 1:06:21.680 --> 1:06:24.600 mostly rattlesnakes in the US, which are in fact pretty 1:06:24.640 --> 1:06:26.800 easy to deal with. I mean, we could have a 1:06:26.800 --> 1:06:29.240 big rattlesnake in this room where we're sitting vid a 1:06:29.280 --> 1:06:31.840 snake hook. We could just keep talking. I mean, it's 1:06:31.880 --> 1:06:35.040 just it's just not that hard if you're respectful in 1:06:35.120 --> 1:06:38.920 what you're doing to work with us pitt vipers. So 1:06:38.920 --> 1:06:41.720 I get to Costa Rica and there's this really big snake. 1:06:41.760 --> 1:06:44.120 There's two of them, actually, but one of them, one 1:06:44.160 --> 1:06:46.320 of them, the more common it's called was used to 1:06:46.320 --> 1:06:49.200 be called a fertilence. Costa Ricans called them tertio pelo, 1:06:49.280 --> 1:06:52.440 which means velvet in Spanish. It's a massive snake. The 1:06:52.440 --> 1:06:54.240 big females are like six and a half to seven 1:06:54.240 --> 1:06:57.360 ft long. The head is the exaggerating to say it 1:06:57.360 --> 1:06:59.200 was as big as my hand, but it's a big head, 1:06:59.240 --> 1:07:02.320 really long. Aang's very toxic venom. It's the most dangerous 1:07:02.320 --> 1:07:04.640 snake in terms of killing people in Costa Rica by far. 1:07:05.160 --> 1:07:07.720 And I had no fuel experience with him, and so 1:07:07.880 --> 1:07:11.160 I really wanted to catch one, and I was I 1:07:11.240 --> 1:07:13.080 was at some part of this preserve where I was working, 1:07:13.080 --> 1:07:14.960 and somebody came and said, Harry, they've spotted a big 1:07:14.960 --> 1:07:17.880 fertile lance and in this little swamp below the bat tree, 1:07:18.360 --> 1:07:21.439 this place I knew, so so with my my assistant time, 1:07:21.440 --> 1:07:24.200 I literally jogged about a kilometer about a half mile 1:07:24.240 --> 1:07:26.960 over there, and I couldn't find it. So then I 1:07:27.000 --> 1:07:29.160 walked back to where i'd been in just a few 1:07:29.160 --> 1:07:30.720 minutes later they kind and they go, we spotted it. 1:07:30.760 --> 1:07:33.840 So we jogged another jogged this kilometer again and I 1:07:33.880 --> 1:07:36.560 sort of stumbled down this long slope and there's a 1:07:36.560 --> 1:07:39.640 big fertile lance and it's it's it's lying on the 1:07:39.680 --> 1:07:44.720 surface of this of this mud. And so I'm a 1:07:44.720 --> 1:07:48.360 little out of you know, I'm I wasn't thinking clearly, 1:07:49.120 --> 1:07:51.360 and so I have my big snake hook and I 1:07:51.400 --> 1:07:55.800 just slog into the mud and the snake draws back 1:07:55.840 --> 1:07:58.760 into a striking pose right at my feet, almost when 1:07:58.760 --> 1:08:01.160 I barely touched with the hook, and I'm and I'm 1:08:01.160 --> 1:08:03.760 thinking that I'm going well, actually, so what I thought 1:08:03.840 --> 1:08:05.520 was that I would go out like as if as 1:08:05.560 --> 1:08:08.040 a rattlesnake, and I would lift it on my snake 1:08:08.080 --> 1:08:10.919 hook over on the dry land and then I would 1:08:11.320 --> 1:08:13.400 bag it and I'd find some way to get it. 1:08:13.840 --> 1:08:16.919 So I slog out of the mud. It's it's crawling 1:08:16.960 --> 1:08:18.760 away from me. I touched it with my snake hook, 1:08:18.920 --> 1:08:21.160 and it whips around right at my feet and it's 1:08:21.479 --> 1:08:23.960 is facing up at me like like it's ready to strike, 1:08:24.560 --> 1:08:27.800 and and I was completely taken aback, and I the 1:08:27.880 --> 1:08:30.520 first thing I noticed was that I couldn't move. My 1:08:30.520 --> 1:08:34.920 my legs were stuck. I had gotten in just over 1:08:34.960 --> 1:08:37.680 my knees and I couldn't move. And the second thing 1:08:37.720 --> 1:08:39.960 I actually remember thinking, I wish I had a pistol, 1:08:40.880 --> 1:08:43.160 but I didn't, and so I raised my snake hook 1:08:43.200 --> 1:08:47.120 over my head and I thought, if if it's strikes, 1:08:47.200 --> 1:08:50.040 I'm going to try to I'm going to try to 1:08:50.560 --> 1:08:54.599 disable it with a blow. And instead it just turned 1:08:54.640 --> 1:08:57.240 around and took off into this one. The chances you 1:08:57.280 --> 1:08:59.920 could have disabled it, I don't know. I don't know. 1:09:00.080 --> 1:09:01.920 Fortunately we didn't have to. We didn't have to answer 1:09:01.960 --> 1:09:04.479 that because it just went away, which is what even 1:09:04.520 --> 1:09:07.920 really dangerous snakes almost always want to do. And I 1:09:07.960 --> 1:09:10.280 was I was so mired that somebody had to get 1:09:10.280 --> 1:09:14.439 a tree branch to get me out and Uh, that's 1:09:14.479 --> 1:09:16.920 the most uneasy I've been in in my life. I'm 1:09:17.000 --> 1:09:19.639 uneasy just listening to and that that happened a long 1:09:19.680 --> 1:09:23.559 time ago, and I've never done anything that's stupid Again, 1:09:23.600 --> 1:09:26.960 would have been a mis snakes, Is there how much 1:09:26.960 --> 1:09:29.640 of you thought about and read about just kind of 1:09:29.680 --> 1:09:32.200 our our relationship to stakes, the way we see them, 1:09:32.640 --> 1:09:34.960 kind of like their place in our culture throughout history 1:09:35.280 --> 1:09:40.000 a lot. It's a big theme in my current writing 1:09:40.000 --> 1:09:42.280 and research, And so how would you boil that down 1:09:42.280 --> 1:09:44.599 for folks, Like, what's the best way to think about 1:09:44.640 --> 1:09:47.920 how um humans approached snakes and and kind of the 1:09:47.960 --> 1:09:50.240 way that they are in our psyche? Because when I 1:09:50.280 --> 1:09:53.280 pictured that snake curled up and ready to strike you, 1:09:53.360 --> 1:09:57.080 it's demonic in my mind. Yeah. So, when I was 1:09:57.080 --> 1:09:59.720 writing my first book, which was about snakes as a 1:09:59.720 --> 1:10:02.559 review doing all this natural history literature, you know, I 1:10:02.600 --> 1:10:06.200 basically wanted to read everything I could find about all 1:10:06.200 --> 1:10:08.800 the snakes in the world in terms of what they do. 1:10:09.520 --> 1:10:11.719 And so I was just winnowing all this natural history 1:10:11.720 --> 1:10:13.479 literature over the last hundred and fifty years or so 1:10:13.520 --> 1:10:17.800 about snakes, and I encountered something I didn't expect, which 1:10:17.960 --> 1:10:22.440 was that every major group of primates, which is to say, lemurs, 1:10:22.520 --> 1:10:25.559 tar Sear's New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, and apes, 1:10:25.840 --> 1:10:30.000 including us, every major group of primates, I found observations 1:10:30.040 --> 1:10:33.160 of them both killing and being killed by snakes. And 1:10:33.200 --> 1:10:35.960 what what I thought was so fascinating was it it 1:10:36.040 --> 1:10:38.840 wasn't just the one. So if it was just that 1:10:38.880 --> 1:10:42.240 snakes are really dangerous to us, well fine, you know, 1:10:42.400 --> 1:10:47.160 so are cape buffalo. Yeah yeah, so fine, you know, 1:10:47.200 --> 1:10:50.240 I get spiders, you know. But it turned out it's 1:10:50.280 --> 1:10:53.120 not just that, it's that also not only humans, but 1:10:53.200 --> 1:10:57.280 other primates. They're attracted to snakes. They mobbed them, sometimes 1:10:57.280 --> 1:10:59.599 they pick up sticks and kill them, they throw stuff 1:10:59.640 --> 1:11:02.800 at them, sometimes they eat them. So it turns out 1:11:03.080 --> 1:11:06.759 capuchin monkeys in Brazil basically distinguished two kinds of snakes. 1:11:07.000 --> 1:11:10.240 One kind of snake is vipers, coral snakes and the 1:11:10.280 --> 1:11:13.640 mimics that look like them, and boas and all the 1:11:13.720 --> 1:11:16.920 other snakes several dozen species that a herpetologist would say 1:11:16.920 --> 1:11:19.880 are many different kinds, there's just one kind. They're the 1:11:19.960 --> 1:11:23.040 kind that's not a boa of viper or that's not dangerous, 1:11:24.400 --> 1:11:27.920 that's right. And so these Capuchian monkeys they find type. 1:11:28.040 --> 1:11:31.960 The first type, they make a big commotion, they throw stuff, 1:11:32.000 --> 1:11:33.880 they get sticks, they even kind of take sticks and 1:11:33.960 --> 1:11:36.559 jab them at the viper and the crevice. The other 1:11:36.640 --> 1:11:40.320 kind is grab and eat and throw the carcass down 1:11:40.360 --> 1:11:43.519 half eat. So even a non human primate like a 1:11:43.600 --> 1:11:46.720 capuchin that so so there and you when you get 1:11:46.720 --> 1:11:48.680 the people, it's all the place you have. Sure you 1:11:48.720 --> 1:11:50.400 have people that hate snakes, but then you have the 1:11:50.479 --> 1:11:53.600 whole cultures that deify them. You know, they're people. You 1:11:53.640 --> 1:11:56.560 don't kill cobras in India. You know people in the 1:11:56.560 --> 1:11:59.240 Eastern US who handle rattlesnakes as part of their scriptural 1:11:59.640 --> 1:12:02.160 and turn reportation of the Bible. You know. So there's 1:12:02.600 --> 1:12:07.679 there's this what I find fascinating ambivalence. And I think 1:12:07.880 --> 1:12:11.439 the reason is that, on the one hand, if you 1:12:11.479 --> 1:12:15.840 don't see the snake that either wants to eat you 1:12:16.200 --> 1:12:20.240 or is scared of you, you can get hurt really badly, 1:12:20.680 --> 1:12:23.639 really quickly. Your whole life can change and maybe end 1:12:23.720 --> 1:12:27.680 in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, a 1:12:27.760 --> 1:12:31.719 snake is about the easiest vertebrate animal to disable on Earth. 1:12:31.760 --> 1:12:35.320 I mean, it's basically one long vertebral column, a good 1:12:35.360 --> 1:12:39.160 hard blow any place along that column. You've you've got 1:12:39.160 --> 1:12:41.680 a disabled snake, and you can eat it. It's a 1:12:41.720 --> 1:12:45.160 fine chocolate protein. So I think that that's at the 1:12:45.160 --> 1:12:47.800 heart of it, that it goes way back. So I 1:12:47.800 --> 1:12:50.640 I give talks on this, this this general topic, and 1:12:50.680 --> 1:12:53.280 I call it the seventy five million year old Deadly 1:12:53.360 --> 1:12:57.280 Dialogue because snakes are about a hundred million years old 1:12:58.120 --> 1:13:00.479 and primates are about seventy five million years old. So 1:13:00.600 --> 1:13:04.960 every since primates have been on Earth, we've only been 1:13:05.000 --> 1:13:08.600 around almost apiens actually only a few hundred thousand years. 1:13:08.640 --> 1:13:11.800 So we have this long history and it's a it's 1:13:11.800 --> 1:13:15.360 a heritage, you know, and it's it's a fraught one. 1:13:15.680 --> 1:13:18.160 It's it's it's fraught with both the possibility of an 1:13:18.200 --> 1:13:22.400 easy meal, it's fraught with a certain fascination. I mean, 1:13:22.439 --> 1:13:28.280 what the heck, no legs, two penises. I mean, that's ah, 1:13:28.840 --> 1:13:32.880 there you go. Well, there used to be one that 1:13:32.920 --> 1:13:36.560 said snakes have something extra big picture of a snake penis, 1:13:36.600 --> 1:13:39.920 but uh so there you know, it's a very fraught relationship. 1:13:40.479 --> 1:13:44.679 And uh many people think that we are innately afraid 1:13:44.720 --> 1:13:47.040 of snakes. I think that's probably not true. I think 1:13:47.080 --> 1:13:51.240 it's pretty clear we we we have built in mechanisms 1:13:51.240 --> 1:13:53.880 that make it easier to recognize snakes than other things. 1:13:54.920 --> 1:13:57.639 But I think the fear part probably gets connected within 1:13:57.720 --> 1:14:01.639 an individual based on experience, teach, so forth. I think 1:14:01.640 --> 1:14:05.520 those connections are made right the Serpent. Like most cartoons, 1:14:05.560 --> 1:14:07.840 my son watches a thing called the Gruffalo and the 1:14:07.840 --> 1:14:10.200 snake comes out. He goes, Oh, a snake. He doesn't know. 1:14:10.320 --> 1:14:13.519 He he grew up in UH for his first two 1:14:13.560 --> 1:14:15.240 years in Texas and then moved to Montany. He's never 1:14:15.320 --> 1:14:17.760 seen a snake. I've never had an instance to talk 1:14:17.800 --> 1:14:20.679 to him about a snake. Yet when he sees one 1:14:21.400 --> 1:14:25.080 on a show that is kind of a it's not 1:14:25.120 --> 1:14:27.080 a bad or good snakes. Snakes just a character in 1:14:27.120 --> 1:14:31.720 the little thing he's watching. He's he's fascinated. He and 1:14:31.800 --> 1:14:33.800 when when a fox walks out, he doesn't go look 1:14:33.840 --> 1:14:36.600 a fox. But when a snake comes out, I don't know. 1:14:36.640 --> 1:14:37.840 Like I said, I don't know if it's just the 1:14:37.920 --> 1:14:40.280 nature of what it is or how it looks or 1:14:40.320 --> 1:14:44.120 how it moves, and it's the unique characteristics. There are 1:14:44.120 --> 1:14:49.160 definitely features that define snakiness and UH. One study, for example, 1:14:50.040 --> 1:14:52.160 involved this has been done with both children and with 1:14:52.439 --> 1:14:55.960 macaques kind of monkey. Um, you show him a screen 1:14:56.400 --> 1:15:00.639 that has like nine different images and they images vary 1:15:00.680 --> 1:15:03.240 from flowers to mushrooms, to spiders to snakes, a bunch 1:15:03.280 --> 1:15:06.760 of stuff. And then, uh, you set this up so 1:15:06.800 --> 1:15:09.920 that the subject as they're called, is rewarded for picking 1:15:09.960 --> 1:15:12.519 out something they're shown. So they're shown something and said, 1:15:12.800 --> 1:15:17.040 until pick this out. What turns out if you give 1:15:17.160 --> 1:15:21.400 a child or a macaque a second or more, they 1:15:21.400 --> 1:15:24.200 can pick pick out with equal facility a spider, a mushroom, 1:15:24.320 --> 1:15:26.800 or snake. If you cut it down to about six 1:15:26.880 --> 1:15:29.840 hundred milliseconds, it's just over half a second. They can 1:15:29.880 --> 1:15:33.080 still pick out spiders and snakes. If you cut it 1:15:33.120 --> 1:15:35.360 down to three hundred milliseconds, so only about a quarter 1:15:35.360 --> 1:15:38.559 of a second, they can only pick out snakes, which 1:15:38.560 --> 1:15:40.960 is just consistent with lots of other studies that suggest 1:15:41.040 --> 1:15:44.519 we have some sort of recognition mechanisms at the level 1:15:44.560 --> 1:15:49.240 of brains, like, yeah, that's right, that's right. And many 1:15:49.280 --> 1:15:50.880 of us who worked in the field, and this has 1:15:50.880 --> 1:15:53.360 happened to me. I once was working coaster RecA. The 1:15:53.400 --> 1:15:56.160 other big viper there is called a bushmaster. It's even bigger. 1:15:57.120 --> 1:16:00.280 It's it's doesn't cause nearly as many accidents, but it's 1:16:00.280 --> 1:16:02.519 a massive it's the biggest viper in the world. And 1:16:02.560 --> 1:16:05.759 I had a radio transmitter in one we surgically implanted, 1:16:05.880 --> 1:16:07.720 and so I was looking for that that snake. It 1:16:07.760 --> 1:16:09.680 was a smallish one, like four or five ft long. 1:16:09.880 --> 1:16:12.760 Had two other experienced herpetologists with me, and it was 1:16:12.800 --> 1:16:15.760 in the middle of the day. Well you know, you 1:16:15.840 --> 1:16:19.000 can see, and all of a sudden, I knew there 1:16:19.040 --> 1:16:21.840 was a huge bush master that I just bumped my 1:16:21.960 --> 1:16:24.760 right foot against. And I knew it at some preconscious 1:16:24.840 --> 1:16:28.920 level because I I screamed an expletive and had to 1:16:28.960 --> 1:16:31.040 shove this even bigger guy to my left out of 1:16:31.040 --> 1:16:34.040 the way, because I knew that I just woke up 1:16:34.080 --> 1:16:36.760 this like seven seven a half foot bushmaster on my 1:16:36.880 --> 1:16:38.960 right foot, and it was drawing back. I don't think 1:16:38.960 --> 1:16:40.439 it was drawing back to strike. I think it was 1:16:40.800 --> 1:16:44.360 I had literally woken it up. We're both drawing back. 1:16:44.360 --> 1:16:47.320 We were making equally appropriate responses, you know, But I 1:16:47.400 --> 1:16:50.840 know that recognition and that action skipped all sorts of 1:16:50.880 --> 1:16:56.719 conscious functions. Do you feel like we've had other Violetis 1:16:56.800 --> 1:16:59.640 on that spend a lot of time around a certain species, 1:16:59.760 --> 1:17:02.439 you whether it's a grizzly bear or something else, and 1:17:02.600 --> 1:17:05.000 they always seem to have different feelings for the thing 1:17:05.080 --> 1:17:07.599 that they've studied. Where where do you land with snakes? 1:17:07.920 --> 1:17:13.439 You have an affection for them? Yeah, yeah, I you 1:17:13.479 --> 1:17:17.040 know snakes that A thing that's tough about snakes is 1:17:17.160 --> 1:17:20.800 that you can't read them very well. So they don't 1:17:20.800 --> 1:17:24.360 have eyelids, they don't have lips like mammals, do you know. 1:17:24.439 --> 1:17:27.799 So I love I especially love dogs. I have two labs, 1:17:27.840 --> 1:17:30.120 you know, and and I you know, I talked to 1:17:30.160 --> 1:17:32.799 them all the time. I love them dearly. I'm totally 1:17:32.840 --> 1:17:35.920 distraught if anything's wrong with either one, you know. And 1:17:35.960 --> 1:17:38.040 it's it's a little harder to get that way about 1:17:38.080 --> 1:17:40.760 snakes because you don't get as much affect. You don't 1:17:41.120 --> 1:17:43.000 you don't feel that. And I think a lot of us, 1:17:43.040 --> 1:17:46.519 including me, I used to think there wasn't much in there. 1:17:47.000 --> 1:17:49.800 And just in the last ten years or so, twenty years, 1:17:50.240 --> 1:17:55.480 but last time especially, we've discovered parental care. We've discovered 1:17:55.520 --> 1:17:58.960 what's called aloe parenting. That's when one mom takes care 1:17:58.960 --> 1:18:02.160 of somebody else's babies, so it turns out rattlesnakes have 1:18:02.200 --> 1:18:09.040 aloe parenting. We've discovered uh snakes modifying their ambush environment 1:18:10.400 --> 1:18:12.680 to solve a problem that may not actually occur for 1:18:12.720 --> 1:18:16.160 several days. So here here's an example that this is. 1:18:16.240 --> 1:18:17.920 This is maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen in 1:18:17.920 --> 1:18:20.519 the field. I was watching a big blacktail rattlesnake in 1:18:20.520 --> 1:18:24.360 the Chericogo Mountains of Arizona. It was actually male number forty, 1:18:24.760 --> 1:18:28.400 and he's in the one I wrote down radio collared 1:18:28.640 --> 1:18:30.960 fifty black tail ratle snakes in Arizona. Well, they're not 1:18:31.040 --> 1:18:33.080 collared because you can't put a collar on snake, but 1:18:34.439 --> 1:18:37.879 implants implant. Yeah, And we so that's how we discovered 1:18:37.880 --> 1:18:39.920 parental care and them and stuff, because we were watching 1:18:39.960 --> 1:18:42.680 these moms, these pregnant moms, and we thought they were 1:18:42.720 --> 1:18:44.400 just going to give birth and their babies to leave, 1:18:44.400 --> 1:18:47.160 because that's what we all knew happened. And they gave 1:18:47.200 --> 1:18:49.519 birth and they didn't they didn't leave. They stayed with 1:18:49.560 --> 1:18:51.880 their babies and all this cool stuff happened, you know. 1:18:51.920 --> 1:18:54.840 And then it turns out ten days after birth, the 1:18:54.840 --> 1:18:56.760 baby said there's getting the first time that the whole 1:18:56.800 --> 1:18:59.760 thing ends. Then, so we document all that, but the 1:19:00.080 --> 1:19:03.360 slowly mind blowing this thing. As we were watching this 1:19:03.400 --> 1:19:06.280 big male and he was cruising through a little shady, 1:19:06.320 --> 1:19:09.240 cobbled dry stream bed, and all of a sudden, he 1:19:09.360 --> 1:19:14.320 stops abruptly and he starts tongue flicking meticulously about two 1:19:14.360 --> 1:19:18.439 square yards of leaf litter, which I later found had 1:19:18.479 --> 1:19:21.600 a chipmunk trail going right through it. I found the runway, 1:19:21.680 --> 1:19:23.920 but we didn't know that first. So he tonue flicks 1:19:23.960 --> 1:19:26.280 for thirteen minutes. I've got my stop watch running, I'm 1:19:26.280 --> 1:19:30.880 watching with binoculars, my collaborator, the Tusun physicians watching, and 1:19:30.920 --> 1:19:34.200 then he after thirteen minutes, he he coils into the 1:19:34.280 --> 1:19:37.800 stereotyped ambush posture that a viper uses when it's gonna 1:19:37.840 --> 1:19:40.519 sit and wait for something to come by. And they 1:19:40.520 --> 1:19:44.479 may wait, incidentally, for days or even weeks for that 1:19:44.840 --> 1:19:48.320 animal to come by. So he gets already. And that 1:19:48.520 --> 1:19:50.320 was cool to watch, but we knew that's what they did. 1:19:50.400 --> 1:19:52.719 What happened next, though, was there was a dead fern, 1:19:53.400 --> 1:19:56.400 a brown dried fern, about eight inches right in front 1:19:56.439 --> 1:19:59.400 of his face, who was right in his prospective strike path. 1:20:00.000 --> 1:20:01.519 It would beat as if you got set up. I 1:20:01.640 --> 1:20:04.120 was just to ambush a deer, and then there's there's 1:20:04.120 --> 1:20:09.160 all these saplings in the way this snake is cut exactly, 1:20:09.200 --> 1:20:11.879 you know, and that's what he did. So we're watching, 1:20:11.920 --> 1:20:14.040 you know, and all of a sudden he reaches out 1:20:14.080 --> 1:20:17.519 with this very stereotype posture. It looks sort of like 1:20:17.560 --> 1:20:20.080 a shepherd's crook, and it's what Mayo rattlesnakes used to 1:20:20.120 --> 1:20:22.839 fight with other rattlesnakes. So if you look up on YouTube, 1:20:22.880 --> 1:20:25.439 just look for rattlesnakes fighting, you'll see what I'm talking about. 1:20:25.479 --> 1:20:27.439 They rise up in the air and they push each 1:20:27.439 --> 1:20:30.519 other down, and they use the stereotype little cook in 1:20:30.560 --> 1:20:32.920 their neck for the pushing down parts, like arm wrestling. 1:20:33.479 --> 1:20:35.320 But this guy did it, and he pushed the fern 1:20:35.360 --> 1:20:37.880 out of the way. He bent the fern down and 1:20:37.920 --> 1:20:41.320 then went back into his ambush posture. And I was like, no, 1:20:41.400 --> 1:20:43.840 what he's gonna believe me because I didn't have a 1:20:43.920 --> 1:20:46.200 video camera. And I turned to Dave and I said, 1:20:47.000 --> 1:20:48.920 what you just see? And he said, wow, he built 1:20:49.000 --> 1:20:50.720 he bent that fern down. I go, yeah, and then 1:20:50.760 --> 1:20:53.200 I'm writing my notes, you know. A few years later, 1:20:53.240 --> 1:20:56.120 a former post doc mind ruling Clark as a professor 1:20:56.120 --> 1:20:59.480 at San Diego State. Now he started using remote videography 1:20:59.520 --> 1:21:03.400 to study rattlesnake behavior, and he got video of multiple 1:21:03.479 --> 1:21:08.080 rattlesnakes making these ambush tunnels through brush in California. And 1:21:08.120 --> 1:21:11.200 so they're trying to ambush California ground squirrels, and they'll 1:21:11.200 --> 1:21:13.800 stick their body out and kind of beat, beat in 1:21:13.840 --> 1:21:17.320 all directions and sort of form this little hollow in 1:21:17.360 --> 1:21:21.080 the brush where they're gonna strike squirrel. They're hunting. They're 1:21:21.120 --> 1:21:23.160 hunting in there, and as you say, it's a perfect analogy, 1:21:23.200 --> 1:21:27.439 they're perfect. Who would I believed it? I mean, if 1:21:27.479 --> 1:21:30.040 I told you panda did that, you might think it's true. 1:21:30.080 --> 1:21:32.680 And if I told you I'm a cat or a chimpanzee, 1:21:32.720 --> 1:21:34.920 did it. Sure? But this is a rattlesnake. It does 1:21:34.960 --> 1:21:38.080 not have a big brain, and it's and it's doing 1:21:38.080 --> 1:21:41.200 all this cool stuff. Do you feel like one thing 1:21:41.200 --> 1:21:43.519 that strikes me about like the your proximity of these 1:21:43.520 --> 1:21:47.600 at these creatures, and like knowing them so much, what 1:21:47.680 --> 1:21:49.960 do you what do you think about their place in 1:21:50.000 --> 1:21:53.160 the natural world? What did you I'm sure you've thought 1:21:53.160 --> 1:21:55.160 about that at length I have, And what about their 1:21:55.200 --> 1:21:57.519 place in our world? That that would be the second 1:21:57.560 --> 1:22:02.640 question we could ask. I mean, it's pretty clear, uh, 1:22:02.680 --> 1:22:06.120 they are predators, you know. And so actually their predators 1:22:06.120 --> 1:22:08.559 sort of out of proportion to their body size because 1:22:08.600 --> 1:22:11.360 they can eat things so big. So, for example, I 1:22:11.680 --> 1:22:16.679 mentioned bushmasters in Costa Rica. The bushmaster might weigh four 1:22:16.760 --> 1:22:19.880 to ten pounds. It eats the same prey that a 1:22:19.960 --> 1:22:25.200 thirty five pound oscilotte eats. Okay, so a western diamondback rattlesnake, 1:22:25.360 --> 1:22:28.800 a big western back rattlesnake, might weigh four or five 1:22:28.920 --> 1:22:31.280 or really big one, maybe ten pounds. It's eating the 1:22:31.280 --> 1:22:33.799 same thing that a bobcat our coyote eats that outweighs 1:22:33.800 --> 1:22:36.200 it by a factor of like four or something. That's 1:22:36.240 --> 1:22:39.040 because there's a snake, you know. And so they are 1:22:39.080 --> 1:22:42.720 at the same level in a food pyramid or a 1:22:42.760 --> 1:22:45.479 food web as a mammal that weighs several times what 1:22:45.600 --> 1:22:48.439 they do, so they play important roles like that. We're 1:22:48.439 --> 1:22:50.880 actually still kind of finding out what they do. And 1:22:50.920 --> 1:22:55.360 the coolest thing lately is it turns out their seed dispersers, 1:22:55.400 --> 1:22:58.559 so you know, uh, plants, when they make seeds and 1:22:58.680 --> 1:23:00.400 fruit and all that, we might think they make it 1:23:00.479 --> 1:23:02.600 so we can have tasty breakfast. But the plant is 1:23:02.680 --> 1:23:06.479 really dispersing its offspring when it makes fruit, you know, 1:23:06.640 --> 1:23:09.040 it hopes, it hopes that something will eat the fruit, 1:23:09.960 --> 1:23:12.800 pass it through its gut, and the seeds will go through, 1:23:13.040 --> 1:23:15.720 get pooped out, and go somewhere else. That's how it 1:23:15.960 --> 1:23:19.400 that's how that's that's how it disperses. That's how it says. 1:23:19.400 --> 1:23:21.439 It's kids off to college. It was a term that 1:23:21.600 --> 1:23:26.760 somebody used recently, ecosystems services absolutely, and I was like that, 1:23:26.920 --> 1:23:29.439 like click something in my head, like yeah, man, yeah, 1:23:29.479 --> 1:23:31.120 all of these things are doing a service to the 1:23:31.760 --> 1:23:34.599 that's right. So it turns out we discovered accidentally one 1:23:34.640 --> 1:23:37.240 of my former students when we were looking at the 1:23:37.360 --> 1:23:41.960 museum guts. Uh, they're all these black things, these little 1:23:41.960 --> 1:23:45.240 black dots in the gut of these desert rattlesnakes. What 1:23:45.240 --> 1:23:48.880 we're really looking at, we think is fur and teeth 1:23:48.920 --> 1:23:52.120 and digested mammal. And he showed it to me through 1:23:52.160 --> 1:23:54.120 a microscope and I went, I don't know, maybe their 1:23:54.200 --> 1:23:56.880 seeds whatever didn't didn't hit me. And then he calls 1:23:56.920 --> 1:23:59.680 me back in and he he shows me out of 1:23:59.720 --> 1:24:01.719 the holding. So this is the end of the gut, 1:24:02.479 --> 1:24:04.360 and I don't know how just I'm going to describe 1:24:04.360 --> 1:24:07.000 it to you, but what word. It looked like this. 1:24:07.640 --> 1:24:10.479 There was a little little seedling coming of it. So 1:24:10.600 --> 1:24:15.040 we found germinated seeds in the colons of these rattlesnakes. 1:24:15.240 --> 1:24:18.840 These rattlesnakes are eating kangaroo rats, which have pouches. So 1:24:18.920 --> 1:24:21.240 the kangaroo rat goes around picking up all these seeds, 1:24:21.240 --> 1:24:24.000 stuffing its pouch like a hamster goes into its burrow, 1:24:24.360 --> 1:24:26.559 takes all it out and has a little cache. You know, 1:24:27.120 --> 1:24:30.120 the plant is hoping that some fraction of those seeds 1:24:30.120 --> 1:24:33.599 won't ever actually get eaten and will germinate in this nice, cool, 1:24:33.680 --> 1:24:37.240 dark moist place. That's the plant's bet. You know, Well, 1:24:37.280 --> 1:24:40.400 if that plant, if the seeds from that plant end 1:24:40.479 --> 1:24:42.800 up in the pouch of a kangaroo rat that gets 1:24:42.840 --> 1:24:45.560 eaten by a sidewinder, which is not a very big rattlesnake, 1:24:45.960 --> 1:24:49.440 that plant just hit the dispersal jackpot because the sidewinder 1:24:49.479 --> 1:24:52.120 rattlesnake has a home range radius of like five to 1:24:52.160 --> 1:24:54.719 ten times what the kangaroo rat is just rolling around 1:24:54.760 --> 1:24:57.479 the ground dropping seat. That's right, that's right. So there's 1:24:57.479 --> 1:25:00.200 another ecosystem service for you. I love that term. I 1:25:00.200 --> 1:25:02.799 don't know why it struck me, like, yes, because we're 1:25:02.840 --> 1:25:07.639 thinking about biodiversity, that's thinking about what you know, we're 1:25:07.680 --> 1:25:09.680 we're not very serviceable creatures when it comes to a 1:25:09.720 --> 1:25:12.000 lot of things that we do. But when you start 1:25:12.040 --> 1:25:14.679 thinking about the game that we pursue and the way 1:25:14.720 --> 1:25:16.880 we think about elk and stuff like that, there every 1:25:16.920 --> 1:25:19.200 animal you see as a service, that service to the 1:25:19.200 --> 1:25:23.280 elk and vice versa. And so that second question which 1:25:23.320 --> 1:25:25.240 you inspired me to bring up, though, we could also 1:25:25.240 --> 1:25:26.840 talk about, well, what what would be the place of 1:25:26.960 --> 1:25:29.840 rattlesnakes in our lives? You know? And of course one 1:25:29.880 --> 1:25:33.759 response was their their potential death threat, so we should 1:25:33.760 --> 1:25:37.760 get rid of them whenever possible. In fact, uh, we 1:25:37.880 --> 1:25:40.160 now know why you die from rattlesnake bite. We know 1:25:40.320 --> 1:25:42.560 how to know how to prevent it. Snake bite is 1:25:42.600 --> 1:25:45.920 a very low public health problem in this country. It's 1:25:45.920 --> 1:25:48.439 a huge public health problem in some countries, but that's 1:25:48.439 --> 1:25:51.800 because of lack of adequate medical carecter. So once you 1:25:51.800 --> 1:25:54.320 you know, when I try to teach people to appreciate rattlesnakes, 1:25:54.320 --> 1:25:57.240 I always start out by admitting the danger and being 1:25:57.320 --> 1:25:59.320 very candid about it. So I think that's the way 1:25:59.360 --> 1:26:01.560 to go. I think that's the way to go with 1:26:01.600 --> 1:26:03.960 the elephants, with bison and anything that could hurt you, 1:26:04.120 --> 1:26:06.360 is to start out by being honest about not trying 1:26:06.400 --> 1:26:08.360 to hide from it, and then you talk about how 1:26:08.400 --> 1:26:11.439 you can ameliorate those dangers, and then you can enjoy 1:26:11.520 --> 1:26:13.880 this incredible stuff. Like I can see the look on 1:26:13.920 --> 1:26:15.760 your face when I'm telling you about the rabbit going 1:26:15.760 --> 1:26:18.600 one yards and then then then she finds it and 1:26:18.640 --> 1:26:20.240 eats it, and she just got one third of her 1:26:20.240 --> 1:26:23.519 annual grocery bill in one predation event. How can you 1:26:23.600 --> 1:26:25.800 not marvel at that? I just like, how can you 1:26:25.840 --> 1:26:27.840 not think your world is richer? I took the wrong 1:26:27.960 --> 1:26:31.120 damn job. Should have been a herpetize something I told 1:26:31.120 --> 1:26:32.880 my wife, like a couple of weeks can shake it. Well, 1:26:33.240 --> 1:26:35.040 what what? What do you think about the future? So 1:26:35.080 --> 1:26:36.840 I want to go back to the wild left biologists? 1:26:37.040 --> 1:26:40.720 You know why? It's because there's so much understanding that 1:26:40.800 --> 1:26:43.200 you miss or well, I guess I put it the 1:26:43.240 --> 1:26:45.720 other way. There's so much out there that you could know, 1:26:46.320 --> 1:26:48.200 You know so much of the intricacy of the natural 1:26:48.240 --> 1:26:51.400 world that you could know, and it informs everything that 1:26:51.439 --> 1:26:54.320 you do, everything that you do. And that's why I 1:26:54.360 --> 1:26:56.519 like Tracks and Shadows so much, because it was like 1:26:56.600 --> 1:27:00.280 kind of a transcendental meditation of all the thing is 1:27:00.360 --> 1:27:04.200 kind of in a gumbo, like all the experiences connect 1:27:04.360 --> 1:27:07.599 to each other, and you can live a more enlightened 1:27:07.640 --> 1:27:11.400 life if you understand a snake and what it does 1:27:11.400 --> 1:27:14.200 for ecosystem and how it germinates a seed and how 1:27:14.240 --> 1:27:16.439 that seed comes from a mouse, and how that mouse 1:27:16.600 --> 1:27:18.599 ate seed and how that plant hops to do those things, 1:27:19.280 --> 1:27:23.160 and those understandings are seminal to our lot, like there 1:27:23.240 --> 1:27:25.800 they are what we are. Um. Yeah, And I think 1:27:25.840 --> 1:27:30.240 when you become a more candid, blatant participant, I mean 1:27:30.680 --> 1:27:33.920 I think a lot of especially you know, first world 1:27:34.040 --> 1:27:38.679 modern humanity, is we've we've ironically distanced ourselves from nature. 1:27:38.920 --> 1:27:41.000 I'd say ironic because I think some of the real 1:27:41.080 --> 1:27:45.160 champions of environmentalism, on the one hand, bemoan that we're 1:27:45.200 --> 1:27:47.799 dis junct from nature. And then there then they don't. 1:27:47.800 --> 1:27:50.519 They're there whole kinds of activities they don't want to 1:27:50.520 --> 1:27:54.320 participate in, which are actually being part of nature instead 1:27:54.320 --> 1:27:57.840 of being it indirectly, you know, they're their environmentalism at 1:27:57.920 --> 1:28:03.000 some level, kind of hatchment. That's right. I believe that's true. 1:28:03.400 --> 1:28:07.840 They become somewhat more spectators than participants. And so as 1:28:07.920 --> 1:28:10.160 you can tell if from reading my book. And there's 1:28:10.160 --> 1:28:13.040 a reason why it's the next last chapter because and 1:28:13.080 --> 1:28:15.200 it's called Born Again Predator and so here here I 1:28:15.280 --> 1:28:18.920 spent my whole life studying predators and thinking about what 1:28:19.000 --> 1:28:23.479 that entails, ecologically, psychologically, all these things. And then I 1:28:23.560 --> 1:28:26.960 then I get to go there. And I tried to 1:28:26.960 --> 1:28:29.720 tell the reader what it was like to have had 1:28:29.720 --> 1:28:32.519 the life I've had and then to go there, And 1:28:32.560 --> 1:28:35.280 I hope I succeeded in en showing that it was. 1:28:35.560 --> 1:28:39.840 It was really transformative to me. It really, Uh it was. 1:28:40.000 --> 1:28:43.400 It was. It was a life enhancing experience and has 1:28:43.400 --> 1:28:45.800 been ever since. Yeah, I've read as many accounts as 1:28:45.840 --> 1:28:48.639 I give my hands on that's similar to yours, kind 1:28:48.680 --> 1:28:51.040 of of what the natural world gives and what you 1:28:51.080 --> 1:28:53.439 give it and kind of a life lived like that. 1:28:53.520 --> 1:28:56.240 And I think this was one of the best I've 1:28:56.280 --> 1:28:59.320 ever read. And you had I wrote something down. I 1:28:59.320 --> 1:29:01.479 wanted to make sure miss that you wrote that our 1:29:01.560 --> 1:29:07.080 psyches are linked to predators. With wildness like or like 1:29:07.280 --> 1:29:09.400 the way that we are, like the reason we think 1:29:09.439 --> 1:29:15.519 about even charismatic megafaunal or the opposite. You know, we 1:29:15.600 --> 1:29:18.160 think about them in different ways. You know, they're they're 1:29:18.160 --> 1:29:21.080 connected to us in different ways. Some people I think 1:29:21.400 --> 1:29:24.880 that manifests itself in like a sympathy. We're talking before 1:29:24.880 --> 1:29:27.280 you hit record about sympathy, right, they have a sympathy 1:29:27.320 --> 1:29:31.679 for bears or a sympathy for UH predators and other people. 1:29:31.760 --> 1:29:36.519 There's like an understanding that leads to empathy that allows 1:29:36.520 --> 1:29:38.599 you to kind of understand their place a little bit better. 1:29:39.040 --> 1:29:41.080 And some people, I just I would imagine use their 1:29:41.280 --> 1:29:44.479 disconnect via fear. You know. So there's lots of ways 1:29:44.479 --> 1:29:46.599 you can do. You can link to a predator, but 1:29:46.880 --> 1:29:49.040 talk about that for you, like what what that means 1:29:49.120 --> 1:29:52.439 to be linked to a predator with with a psyche? Yeah, 1:29:52.479 --> 1:29:54.840 and to the prey to I mean, we we are 1:29:54.920 --> 1:29:56.920 potential prey and we used to be. We're not so 1:29:56.960 --> 1:29:58.720 much in the United States anymore, al though in some 1:29:58.800 --> 1:30:02.800 places you might still be. Yeah. And so you know, 1:30:02.840 --> 1:30:05.360 I told you I'm interested in the book I'm writing now. 1:30:05.400 --> 1:30:08.759 I'm interested in especially in this world world word wild 1:30:09.880 --> 1:30:12.760 because in the US, and I think it really is 1:30:12.800 --> 1:30:15.759 fair to say it's a it's an especially North American 1:30:15.880 --> 1:30:20.800 environmentalist twentieth century perspective. We've and twenty one now, we 1:30:20.800 --> 1:30:24.120 we tended to define wildness in terms of whether or 1:30:24.120 --> 1:30:26.559 not people are sort of functionally part of it all. 1:30:27.320 --> 1:30:29.920 We've defined them out of it. And you know, the 1:30:29.960 --> 1:30:31.719 first thing you can say is, well, how about words 1:30:31.760 --> 1:30:36.760 like Shoshone and Comanche and things like that. Um. But 1:30:36.840 --> 1:30:39.880 another thing is that, uh, like we were talking about earlier, 1:30:39.880 --> 1:30:43.599 there's this irony of wanting bemoaning that we're not part 1:30:43.600 --> 1:30:46.559 of nature, that we're dis junct. In fact, the masthead 1:30:46.600 --> 1:30:48.400 for Friends of the Earth back when I, as a 1:30:48.439 --> 1:30:51.439 Berkeley professor said not man apart, which is a line 1:30:51.439 --> 1:30:55.200 from a Robertson Jeffer's point, not man apart bemoaning being 1:30:55.240 --> 1:30:58.439 apart from nature. And yet we've done all this stuff 1:30:58.960 --> 1:31:01.719 that keeps us, I think, makes us ever more distant 1:31:01.760 --> 1:31:06.479 from the fact that we are inevitably, ultimately functioning parts 1:31:06.520 --> 1:31:09.400 of ecosystems. You know, food goes in, food goes out. 1:31:09.960 --> 1:31:12.040 If there's a lot of it, we're gonna eat. If 1:31:12.080 --> 1:31:14.320 there's a lot of us, we're gonna be eating a 1:31:14.360 --> 1:31:16.280 lot of things of one sort or another, and a 1:31:16.280 --> 1:31:18.559 lot of stuff is gonna come out, and we're gonna 1:31:18.560 --> 1:31:20.439 have to deal with both of that. And we've we've 1:31:20.479 --> 1:31:23.519 done these things, especially as modern first world people, to 1:31:23.720 --> 1:31:27.439 almost like hide from that. And so I'm I'm all 1:31:27.479 --> 1:31:30.200 for getting people back out in nature. I don't make 1:31:30.240 --> 1:31:32.800 fun of vegans. I don't. I don't make fun of 1:31:32.800 --> 1:31:35.880 other people's life choices, especially about ethical issues, you know. 1:31:36.360 --> 1:31:38.639 But and so I think there's ways that they can 1:31:38.680 --> 1:31:40.920 do it too. I mean they can, they can farm, 1:31:41.240 --> 1:31:44.160 they can they can admit that if you if you 1:31:44.360 --> 1:31:46.640 clear a place to make a soy feel or an 1:31:46.680 --> 1:31:50.040 almond orchard, there'll be almost no biodiversity left, and those 1:31:50.080 --> 1:31:52.840 animals will not go somewhere else. We'd all like to 1:31:52.880 --> 1:31:55.599 hope that they go somewhere else. They mostly don't make 1:31:55.720 --> 1:31:57.240 that point in your book as well as say like 1:31:57.360 --> 1:32:00.599 we think that that all these organisms when if we, 1:32:01.000 --> 1:32:02.879 you know, we're a bit of a virus or a bacteria, 1:32:02.920 --> 1:32:04.679 we move into a place and we clear it off 1:32:04.720 --> 1:32:07.920 and we kind of remove its natural way. Like there's 1:32:07.920 --> 1:32:11.920 almost there's no in our country, no undisturbed dirt that 1:32:11.960 --> 1:32:14.160 I can think of even in wilderness there these are 1:32:14.360 --> 1:32:18.559 these are yeah to some extent. And so you know, 1:32:18.680 --> 1:32:20.840 we we define native as some length of time that 1:32:20.920 --> 1:32:23.639 we've we've prescribed. Oh that's native. Is this many years? 1:32:23.680 --> 1:32:26.600 Well that's that's just a thing that we've said. And 1:32:26.680 --> 1:32:31.439 so at some point I wonder how do we how 1:32:31.520 --> 1:32:33.760 we put all that stuff together? You know, how how 1:32:33.840 --> 1:32:36.160 we get to a point where we really understand what 1:32:36.240 --> 1:32:40.080 we are within nature? And whether it's I often look 1:32:40.120 --> 1:32:43.559 at somebody smarter than me. I once read it like 1:32:43.600 --> 1:32:45.919 if you're flying in a plane, say you're over Yellowstone 1:32:46.000 --> 1:32:48.519 National Park, they'll be the splendor. And I fly over 1:32:48.960 --> 1:32:52.639 these areas a lot. There's it's like it seems pristine 1:32:52.640 --> 1:32:55.960 and untouched. And as you move towards Los Angeles, it 1:32:56.040 --> 1:32:59.160 seems as if the earth has gotten some sort of sickness. 1:33:00.360 --> 1:33:02.559 And as you move towards Los Angeles, the sickness gets 1:33:02.600 --> 1:33:05.720 increasingly evident. And as you get to Los Angeles, it 1:33:05.760 --> 1:33:09.800 looks like some bacteria has grown in an area and 1:33:09.840 --> 1:33:11.720 it looks very unhealthy. If you are if you were 1:33:11.720 --> 1:33:15.360 to like if an alien came down, And so for me, 1:33:15.560 --> 1:33:19.360 I think that's true, but that doesn't there's echoes environmentalism 1:33:19.360 --> 1:33:21.840 in that thought. But for me, I feel like, yes, 1:33:22.000 --> 1:33:25.360 I we are that. But how do I make sure 1:33:25.400 --> 1:33:29.519 I understand my peace and that greater giant organism That 1:33:29.640 --> 1:33:31.840 gets just getting a little deep. But how do I 1:33:31.880 --> 1:33:35.120 understand my peace of that greater giant organism than I am? 1:33:35.160 --> 1:33:37.360 I don't. I don't hate myself for being a part 1:33:37.360 --> 1:33:39.000 of it. How do I be a better part of it? 1:33:39.040 --> 1:33:40.920 And what does it all mean? And I think the 1:33:41.000 --> 1:33:44.920 environmentalist might say, like, I hate humans for being what 1:33:45.040 --> 1:33:48.240 they are, and I'm sure you don't intend to, and 1:33:48.320 --> 1:33:50.760 I certainly I want to say that. I'm I don't 1:33:50.760 --> 1:33:53.720 mean to stereotype all environmentalists is one thing, and I 1:33:54.240 --> 1:33:56.040 get all that, but I think there is a brand 1:33:56.080 --> 1:33:59.759 of a segment of environmentalism, And especially in the US, 1:34:00.280 --> 1:34:02.439 I don't think you would see it nearly as much 1:34:02.439 --> 1:34:05.440 in Latin America if you were talking to conservation, conservation 1:34:05.479 --> 1:34:07.400 by all just the nature lovers there, I don't think 1:34:07.439 --> 1:34:09.519 you'd see as much in Europe. It's it's a sort 1:34:09.520 --> 1:34:14.599 of a privileged notion of you know, that's that's if 1:34:14.600 --> 1:34:17.080 we could it all be like that, and we would 1:34:17.160 --> 1:34:20.160 only take pictures and leave only footprints, and I've kind 1:34:20.200 --> 1:34:22.799 of think that that's that's that's not the way forward. 1:34:23.120 --> 1:34:25.320 So I think we all start with realizing that we 1:34:25.400 --> 1:34:30.400 can't escape our presence and and all this sort of like, uh, 1:34:30.520 --> 1:34:34.400 it's sort of like anthropophobic or something, you know, it's 1:34:34.240 --> 1:34:37.439 it's a and I find I just can't embrace that. 1:34:37.520 --> 1:34:39.400 I mean, I am a person. I had a mother 1:34:39.439 --> 1:34:41.920 and father I have I'm married to somebody, I have 1:34:41.960 --> 1:34:43.680 a brother, I have a niece I love. I mean, 1:34:44.840 --> 1:34:46.400 you say you want to get rid of five out 1:34:46.400 --> 1:34:48.320 of the seven billion people on Earth right now, Well, 1:34:48.320 --> 1:34:50.640 which five billion would you pick? You know you're going 1:34:50.680 --> 1:34:52.200 to be the privilege one that gets to say so 1:34:52.240 --> 1:34:54.639 I I just it's not that I don't understand feeling 1:34:54.680 --> 1:34:56.599 like that. I just don't think it gets us very far. 1:34:56.960 --> 1:34:59.799 And so I want to push us starting by admitting 1:34:59.800 --> 1:35:02.479 that we're all part of nature. We never were apart 1:35:02.520 --> 1:35:05.160 from it. We still eat, we still poop, we still 1:35:05.200 --> 1:35:08.080 you know, we're all part of it. And now what 1:35:08.439 --> 1:35:10.559 can we do to preserve as much of the rest 1:35:10.600 --> 1:35:13.719 of this biological heritage that four billion years of evolution 1:35:13.720 --> 1:35:15.960 have left us with? You know that we can all 1:35:16.240 --> 1:35:18.320 how can we make it so that your grandkids might 1:35:18.360 --> 1:35:21.519 at least have the option of deciding whether they're excited 1:35:21.560 --> 1:35:25.120 about seeing a rattlesnake or an elephant. Wouldn't it wouldn't 1:35:25.479 --> 1:35:28.519 just just twelve thousand years ago, there were five or 1:35:28.520 --> 1:35:32.639 six kinds of elephant relatives in the United States. They're 1:35:32.760 --> 1:35:35.360 just that's less than twice the age of a bristle 1:35:35.439 --> 1:35:37.800 colmb pine tree. So forget about the end of the 1:35:37.800 --> 1:35:40.759 place to seem being ancient, it was only twelve thousand 1:35:40.880 --> 1:35:43.679 years ago. The last mammoth on Earth was about thirty 1:35:44.320 --> 1:35:47.040 years ago, about the time Babylon was being sacked. So 1:35:47.240 --> 1:35:49.679 we used to have a much more diverse world. It's 1:35:49.920 --> 1:35:54.320 we're simplifying it at a horrifically fast pace. Wouldn't it 1:35:54.360 --> 1:35:56.880 be terrible if there are no elephants lefted? How would 1:35:56.880 --> 1:35:59.160 you like to have to tell your grandkids, Wow, we 1:35:59.360 --> 1:36:02.400 used to have the thing called elephants. No ship, we 1:36:02.439 --> 1:36:05.040 really did. They had this, They had a trunk. They 1:36:05.080 --> 1:36:07.280 weren't just in pictures. We had them, but we don't anymore. 1:36:07.600 --> 1:36:09.680 You wouldn't it be that's the I think that's the 1:36:09.680 --> 1:36:12.680 worst outcome. What a stain the worst outcome And and 1:36:13.800 --> 1:36:16.759 I think of you know, people that don't agree with hunting, 1:36:16.840 --> 1:36:19.960 like I think that hunting might lead to less elephants, 1:36:21.080 --> 1:36:24.040 if done right, it's a prescription for more. It might be, 1:36:24.640 --> 1:36:27.080 it might be I think that. I think the elephant 1:36:27.080 --> 1:36:31.559 thing in particular is very complex. But the fact is 1:36:32.000 --> 1:36:34.960 every elephant will die too, just like I was talking 1:36:34.960 --> 1:36:37.240 about that earlier with there you know, every bird will die. 1:36:37.320 --> 1:36:39.479 I think I didn't quite finish my thought about the birds. 1:36:39.479 --> 1:36:42.400 But here's these three billion birds killed by cats. All 1:36:42.439 --> 1:36:46.040 those birds are gonna die anyway. So the issue is when, 1:36:47.000 --> 1:36:49.280 how frequently, and what will be the consequence of the 1:36:49.320 --> 1:36:51.960 particular way that they die, And that's that's what we 1:36:52.000 --> 1:36:55.760 want to know. If if cats are killing birds at 1:36:55.760 --> 1:36:58.880 a rate that is causing birds to plummet in terms 1:36:58.920 --> 1:37:02.160 of sustainable population, that's a really big deal. If cats 1:37:02.160 --> 1:37:04.560 are a source of mortality of birds, but bird populations 1:37:04.560 --> 1:37:07.080 were remaining constant, that would be a very different picture. 1:37:07.920 --> 1:37:10.080 And so I don't feel like I'm in a point 1:37:10.080 --> 1:37:12.960 to position to prescribe what we should do for most 1:37:13.000 --> 1:37:15.800 of these problems. But I think starting by admitting that 1:37:15.880 --> 1:37:20.160 we are inevitably part of nature is really important and 1:37:20.200 --> 1:37:24.880 I think getting out and participating, fishing, gardening, farming, hunting, 1:37:26.479 --> 1:37:29.559 those are those are ways of of really owning up 1:37:29.560 --> 1:37:32.360 to the fact that we are indeed participants. Yes, I 1:37:32.400 --> 1:37:36.920 read another paper that you were called Rewilding our Lives. 1:37:37.360 --> 1:37:40.120 It's great, and you said there's a couple of questions 1:37:40.160 --> 1:37:41.479 you ask, But the most point in one, I think 1:37:41.560 --> 1:37:44.479 is how wild a world do we want as opposed 1:37:44.479 --> 1:37:47.320 to how wild a world we will tolerate. I think 1:37:47.360 --> 1:37:51.639 that's an interesting juxtaposition, because we all in our minds 1:37:51.680 --> 1:37:56.160 want this Yellowstone National Park wild world that's both accessible 1:37:56.200 --> 1:38:00.639 to us but also wild. Does it really those two 1:38:00.680 --> 1:38:03.400 things will come at odds they could, they will adeptably, 1:38:03.439 --> 1:38:07.320 and so I think we've got to negotiate a whole 1:38:07.320 --> 1:38:10.160 set of relationships, you know. And I sort of imagined 1:38:10.200 --> 1:38:14.200 that that that conceptually it would be almost like concentric 1:38:14.240 --> 1:38:17.800 circles outward from pure wildness. But I would say that 1:38:17.880 --> 1:38:21.040 even pure wildness on both places, most places on Earth 1:38:22.479 --> 1:38:25.439 have a place for human presence, and the issue is 1:38:25.479 --> 1:38:27.800 how much presence, what are we doing there and so forth. 1:38:28.120 --> 1:38:31.559 So I think the only places that were ever wild 1:38:31.640 --> 1:38:34.240 in the sense of take only pictures and leave only footprints, 1:38:34.240 --> 1:38:38.280 where the pollar, the polls, even the Inner Sahara has 1:38:38.320 --> 1:38:40.280 had people that work there, you know. So I I 1:38:40.360 --> 1:38:44.080 really am interested in exploring the difference between this kind 1:38:44.080 --> 1:38:47.120 of pure wilderness notion in which people don't really have 1:38:47.160 --> 1:38:49.960 any place at all. That's the key thing at all. 1:38:50.720 --> 1:38:54.200 Nobody denies that if you put tens of thousands of 1:38:54.240 --> 1:38:58.320 people living in Yellowstone will lose a lot. I'm not 1:38:58.560 --> 1:39:03.360 arguing for that, but I am arguing that that, Um, 1:39:03.479 --> 1:39:05.880 people have always been parts of all this. Yeah, there's 1:39:05.960 --> 1:39:08.960 levels to it, right. So somebody described Yellows to me 1:39:09.040 --> 1:39:12.160 like an ambassador for the natural world. There's people who 1:39:12.160 --> 1:39:15.879 would never have the wherewithal to understand what you understand 1:39:15.880 --> 1:39:19.160 from your your years of work. Um, you just don't 1:39:19.160 --> 1:39:21.679 have the interest in it. Different people have different interests. 1:39:21.680 --> 1:39:25.040 Some people have more urban interests and that's what they 1:39:25.040 --> 1:39:27.840 do their cultural society. They like to be around these 1:39:28.160 --> 1:39:31.479 buzzing hives of energy, human energy. They don't they don't 1:39:31.479 --> 1:39:33.400 long for things that that you and I probably long for, 1:39:33.479 --> 1:39:36.040 which is being alone or being with a few people 1:39:36.080 --> 1:39:39.040 out in the middle of nowhere. So like Yellowstone becomes 1:39:39.040 --> 1:39:42.160 an ambassador for those those folks. They can go and 1:39:42.200 --> 1:39:43.920 see it, and that's just a level of kind of 1:39:43.920 --> 1:39:46.840 the natural world. It's kind of like the top level 1:39:47.040 --> 1:39:49.040 that you can see, but there's so many deeper things 1:39:49.040 --> 1:39:51.400 that you can get into. And for somebody like me, 1:39:51.640 --> 1:39:54.719 I just over the last couple of years, I've realized 1:39:54.800 --> 1:39:57.960 that I can't really operate without deeper levels of understanding. 1:39:58.280 --> 1:40:01.400 And that's just me. That's not everybody, but my I'm 1:40:01.400 --> 1:40:03.880 not happy without that, you know if I and hunting 1:40:03.960 --> 1:40:05.559 is just a good way for me to find a 1:40:05.560 --> 1:40:08.720 deeper level of understand absolutely, But for herpetology is another way. 1:40:11.040 --> 1:40:14.720 And you've you've had some crazy some crazy uh that 1:40:14.840 --> 1:40:16.920 you had a jaguar story too, didn't you. From being 1:40:16.920 --> 1:40:20.320 in Costa Rica, I've been around jaguar's a fair amount. 1:40:20.800 --> 1:40:23.840 I've only actually seen one once and it was just 1:40:23.840 --> 1:40:26.720 just fleeting. My crossed the trail in front of us 1:40:26.720 --> 1:40:29.439 at night and we it's squinted at us through it 1:40:29.520 --> 1:40:32.920 in our flashlight and then it disappeared. You know, many times, 1:40:33.000 --> 1:40:36.559 especially in their early in the eighties where I worked, 1:40:36.600 --> 1:40:39.920 it was not uncommon to find their droppings and sometimes 1:40:40.000 --> 1:40:43.360 really fresh. I mean you you almost imagined you could 1:40:43.360 --> 1:40:46.200 see steam coming up you know. And jaguar droppings are big. 1:40:46.600 --> 1:40:50.040 I mean, that's we're talking big, you know. And often 1:40:50.080 --> 1:40:53.000 you can see that this one is all peckory for 1:40:53.320 --> 1:40:55.200 or this one's got a sloth claw and it or 1:40:55.240 --> 1:40:57.679 something like that and so, and they're in their tracks. 1:40:57.760 --> 1:41:01.200 Jaguar tracks are really splay. I'm like puma track. So 1:41:01.360 --> 1:41:04.040 puma tracks tend to be more parallel sided. And a 1:41:04.520 --> 1:41:07.519 big puma might have a footprint like something like that, 1:41:07.560 --> 1:41:10.960 you know, for it, And a big jaguar track because 1:41:11.000 --> 1:41:13.760 they tend to occur and moisture habitats and walk on 1:41:15.240 --> 1:41:17.040 their toes. Their toes are kind of splayed. So a 1:41:17.040 --> 1:41:19.200 big jaguar track is it. I mean, I can only 1:41:19.200 --> 1:41:21.320 imagine a tiger track. I've never seen. I've never been 1:41:21.360 --> 1:41:26.200 around tigers. I wish, But yeah, do you do you 1:41:26.240 --> 1:41:28.479 think of you know, I think I keep going back 1:41:28.479 --> 1:41:33.040 to tracks and shadows because it it just was. It 1:41:33.160 --> 1:41:37.760 struck me in a lot of ways. Um, it took 1:41:37.760 --> 1:41:40.000 you a long time to get there, right, that you 1:41:40.040 --> 1:41:41.559 had to take a lot of When I was reading 1:41:41.560 --> 1:41:44.040 and I was thinking of the concept of you had 1:41:44.040 --> 1:41:45.360 to you had to spend a lot of time and 1:41:45.439 --> 1:41:50.120 like micro moments like a lot of studying, you know, 1:41:50.600 --> 1:41:52.800 SCAT and these things you're talking about that like really 1:41:52.840 --> 1:41:54.760 on the ground moments, and there was like there must 1:41:54.760 --> 1:41:56.040 have been a time in your life where you were 1:41:56.080 --> 1:41:57.880 able to take it to a macro level and start 1:41:58.000 --> 1:42:02.000 started to think about it. You're overall understanding of the 1:42:02.080 --> 1:42:06.000 things you've learned from those micro instances. Can you give 1:42:06.040 --> 1:42:08.880 people a like, was there a moment where you start 1:42:08.920 --> 1:42:10.599 to think, Man, I gotta write this book. I gotta 1:42:10.760 --> 1:42:14.800 meditate on everything I've learned, everything I've done, because I think, 1:42:15.400 --> 1:42:19.200 to me, at least that's an interesting inspection. Well, by coincidence, 1:42:19.200 --> 1:42:25.479 it involves Montana the answer. So, um, it's the early eighties. Uh, 1:42:25.600 --> 1:42:27.920 I'm a I'm an assistant professor coming up for ten 1:42:28.000 --> 1:42:30.479 year pretty soon at Berkeley. I'm writing signed papers because 1:42:30.520 --> 1:42:32.680 that's the pint of the realm, that's what that's the 1:42:32.760 --> 1:42:35.880 last stage of doing scientific scholarship is to publish a 1:42:35.920 --> 1:42:38.479 peer reviewed paper. So that's what I'm doing, and that's 1:42:38.520 --> 1:42:40.800 that's my job to do that. But I am in 1:42:40.840 --> 1:42:44.960 my early thirties. I'm out of the army. I'm so 1:42:45.000 --> 1:42:46.920 glad I didn't have to go to Vietnam at the 1:42:47.000 --> 1:42:50.080 last minute. You know, I'm I already had the amblean stuff. 1:42:50.800 --> 1:42:53.759 I've been divorced twice, and all these things are swirling around, 1:42:53.760 --> 1:42:56.120 you know, and I'm thinking, God, I want to write 1:42:56.160 --> 1:42:59.160 something else, you know, I want to write about what 1:42:59.280 --> 1:43:01.880 this other stuff means. And a friend gives me a 1:43:01.880 --> 1:43:06.040 book called A River Runs Through It by Norman McClay. Yeah, 1:43:06.080 --> 1:43:08.760 and I it's just a little book, you know, it's 1:43:08.800 --> 1:43:11.679 actually three stories, but it's the title novella. I think 1:43:12.439 --> 1:43:15.120 that that blew my mind. I just I read it 1:43:15.120 --> 1:43:18.640 in one sitting, and I I saw the possibility of 1:43:18.760 --> 1:43:22.559 non uh, because I had thought, well, you know, if 1:43:22.560 --> 1:43:24.360 you want to write about these life and death things, 1:43:24.400 --> 1:43:27.280 you gotta write fiction. And I know Hemingway or I 1:43:27.280 --> 1:43:29.120 don't know Jim har I didn't know about Jim Harrison 1:43:29.160 --> 1:43:32.640 yet at that point, and so I had this misconception 1:43:32.680 --> 1:43:34.200 that I would never do that because I don't know 1:43:34.200 --> 1:43:36.120 how to write, and I couldn't see myself writing fiction. 1:43:36.320 --> 1:43:38.000 And then I read A River Runs Through It, which 1:43:38.040 --> 1:43:42.240 is only scarcely fiction, it's you know, and I saw 1:43:42.320 --> 1:43:44.640 what he could. There's a single paragraph in which, in 1:43:44.680 --> 1:43:47.559 the middle of a paragraph, his brother abruptly gets killed 1:43:47.560 --> 1:43:50.160 in an alley, and I thought to myself, that's how 1:43:50.160 --> 1:43:52.320 it really is. That's that's how when you get the 1:43:52.360 --> 1:43:55.439 phone call from your mom and you think she's calling 1:43:55.479 --> 1:43:57.760 to tell you to invite you for dinner, and it 1:43:57.760 --> 1:44:00.680 turns out Marsha has been murdered, her first lover has 1:44:00.680 --> 1:44:04.519 been murdered. That's what that's what that's what literature can do. 1:44:04.960 --> 1:44:07.280 I saw that McLean did that in that paragraph, you know, 1:44:07.439 --> 1:44:10.000 just going along. It's a Presbyterian father. I went, I 1:44:10.040 --> 1:44:13.920 went fly fishing, and my brother was killed in an alley. 1:44:14.120 --> 1:44:17.360 You know, Jesus, you know this is this is something. 1:44:17.640 --> 1:44:23.240 So Norman McClain by then was an elderly retired English 1:44:23.240 --> 1:44:25.840 professor at the University of Chicago, and you probably know 1:44:25.880 --> 1:44:29.480 all this. Many publishers turned down that book, and Chicago 1:44:29.640 --> 1:44:32.120 published it as the first worst work of fiction, the 1:44:32.200 --> 1:44:34.960 University of Chicago Press, and every published and at first 1:44:34.960 --> 1:44:38.000 it started out slow, and then eventually, you know, gazillions 1:44:38.040 --> 1:44:40.680 and all these languages and stuff. So I knew the 1:44:40.800 --> 1:44:44.680 editor at Chicago at that time, and I this is 1:44:44.720 --> 1:44:47.680 before so we're talking snail mail, and I write her 1:44:47.720 --> 1:44:49.479 and I go, oh my god, Susan, I just read 1:44:49.560 --> 1:44:52.240 the most incredible book from your press. The River runs 1:44:52.240 --> 1:44:54.600 through it. And I went on for like three paragraphs 1:44:54.600 --> 1:44:58.960 about why this book just captured me, and she writes 1:44:59.000 --> 1:45:00.800 me back. A couple weeks later, I get back from 1:45:00.840 --> 1:45:03.280 her and she goes, well, Norman comes in to get 1:45:03.320 --> 1:45:05.479 his royalty check from time to time, and I showed 1:45:05.560 --> 1:45:09.040 him your letter and he says, this guy can write. 1:45:09.120 --> 1:45:12.320 He should write a book. And so she says, Norman 1:45:12.360 --> 1:45:14.519 thinks she should write a book. So then I I've 1:45:14.600 --> 1:45:16.800 got an address, and I wrote to Norman McLain. I said, 1:45:16.840 --> 1:45:19.280 Dr McLaine, I'm I'm coming to Chicago to do some 1:45:19.320 --> 1:45:21.040 snake work at the Field Museum, but I'd like to 1:45:21.080 --> 1:45:23.240 take you out to dinner. And he writes me back. 1:45:23.280 --> 1:45:25.280 He says, I'll take you to dinner to the Faculty Club. 1:45:25.720 --> 1:45:27.839 So I get on a plane, I fly to Chicago. 1:45:28.320 --> 1:45:30.000 I do my work in the Field Museum looking at 1:45:30.000 --> 1:45:32.360 the stomach contents, and I have dinner with Norman McClean. 1:45:32.439 --> 1:45:35.320 He's like eighty years old. And the first thing he 1:45:35.360 --> 1:45:38.280 tells me that surprised me is that he's written another book. 1:45:38.560 --> 1:45:40.040 And I go, oh, really, what's it about? And he 1:45:40.080 --> 1:45:43.040 says it's called young Men in Fire and I go, oh, wow, 1:45:43.080 --> 1:45:45.360 what's that about. Oh, it's about this tragic fire, you know. 1:45:45.720 --> 1:45:47.720 And he says, but I've got about another year's worth 1:45:47.760 --> 1:45:49.559 of work to do on it. And that was that 1:45:49.640 --> 1:45:51.599 took me back, because I thought that great writers had 1:45:51.640 --> 1:45:54.320 just spilled from their pen, you know, and here he's 1:45:54.320 --> 1:45:56.759 telling me he's finished the manuscript, but he's got another 1:45:56.880 --> 1:45:59.439 year of work to do on it. So and then 1:45:59.479 --> 1:46:01.000 I thought, well, you know, I'm gonna have dinner and 1:46:01.000 --> 1:46:03.840 I'm gonna tell him about going into burning buildings and 1:46:04.120 --> 1:46:06.479 saving people and all this stuff, you know, being an 1:46:06.520 --> 1:46:09.880 amulist driver. And he he didn't seem very interested in it. 1:46:10.080 --> 1:46:12.599 And several times during the dinner he said, why don't 1:46:12.600 --> 1:46:14.280 you write up? He said, why do you want to 1:46:14.280 --> 1:46:16.600 work with those goddamn rattlesnakes? Why don't you go right 1:46:16.640 --> 1:46:19.920 about that? He was very he was very uh, he 1:46:20.040 --> 1:46:23.559 sort of veered between erudite professor and vulgar cowboy. And 1:46:23.600 --> 1:46:25.040 he says, why do you why do you want to 1:46:25.040 --> 1:46:27.720 work those goddamn rattlesnakes? You should go write about that. 1:46:28.200 --> 1:46:31.240 And on the plane back to California, I thought, you know, 1:46:31.280 --> 1:46:33.920 he's right, I'm not ready to write about that. I 1:46:33.960 --> 1:46:37.040 don't think I don't know myself remotely well enough to 1:46:37.080 --> 1:46:40.280 write about this life and death stuff. But I'm gonna 1:46:40.320 --> 1:46:44.120 write a book about snakes that tries to go modestly 1:46:44.200 --> 1:46:47.000 in that direction. So my Snake Book starts out with 1:46:47.040 --> 1:46:50.600 my dinner with Norman McClain. So in the in the prologue, 1:46:51.160 --> 1:46:55.360 Norman McClaine poses the question to me, why snakes? And 1:46:55.400 --> 1:46:57.560 then I wrote the chapters to my Snake Book. So 1:46:57.600 --> 1:46:59.800 there were little essays at the start of each chapter 1:47:00.200 --> 1:47:03.120 that we're about the topic, but more personal. And these 1:47:03.240 --> 1:47:05.680 essays run through the book, and they ended an epilogue 1:47:05.680 --> 1:47:11.080 which gave my best answer in to the question why snakes. 1:47:11.680 --> 1:47:14.320 When I finished the Snake Book, by then it was 1:47:14.360 --> 1:47:17.360 fifteen years later and I was ready to start thinking 1:47:17.400 --> 1:47:19.479 about that one. So that's how it happened. Sorry, I 1:47:19.520 --> 1:47:25.360 was such a long story, but I think they had 1:47:25.439 --> 1:47:29.760 to admit that it was the deadliness of it was 1:47:29.800 --> 1:47:34.680 the violence, and it was it was me commsily, inarticulately, 1:47:35.439 --> 1:47:40.559 never quite conclusively, grappling with having a kid die in 1:47:40.600 --> 1:47:43.639 my arms and trying to save people with gunshot ones 1:47:43.680 --> 1:47:46.519 their chest and stuff, you know, and and you know, 1:47:46.560 --> 1:47:48.519 when you go out and you watch a rattlesnakes strike 1:47:48.520 --> 1:47:50.960 a rabbit, you can kind of you can kind of 1:47:51.000 --> 1:47:53.439 at least shed all that human stuff and you can 1:47:53.479 --> 1:47:58.160 confront what is surely nake. It's surely violence. It is 1:47:58.240 --> 1:48:01.400 it's a violent act that you it doesn't have all 1:48:01.400 --> 1:48:03.320 that other baggage. And so you can just sit there 1:48:03.360 --> 1:48:07.080 and and think about that. You know, life, life, death, 1:48:07.240 --> 1:48:10.160 one life left, you know, all the stuff. So that 1:48:10.240 --> 1:48:12.360 was the It's a little more complicated, but that was 1:48:12.400 --> 1:48:17.040 the answer to the Snake book. Catharsis of something absolutely 1:48:17.280 --> 1:48:20.800 absolutely and both books were cathartic. I mean, there was 1:48:20.840 --> 1:48:22.920 no doubt that writing Snakes, even though I was only 1:48:23.280 --> 1:48:26.960 sort of tangentially dealing with these things. And in the 1:48:27.000 --> 1:48:29.519 epilogue of Snakes, I talked only a little bit, only 1:48:29.560 --> 1:48:32.439 as much as I needed to and as unsentimentally as 1:48:32.479 --> 1:48:34.880 I could about some of the experiences I had as 1:48:34.880 --> 1:48:39.920 a young man. And then yeah, and then I was 1:48:39.920 --> 1:48:44.040 ready to like take take a deep breath and go okay. 1:48:44.560 --> 1:48:48.160 And actually, one more thing is that back when I decided, 1:48:48.200 --> 1:48:50.160 when I met Norman McLain and decided I wasn't ready 1:48:50.200 --> 1:48:52.000 to write it. I did. I was worried I would 1:48:52.000 --> 1:48:55.759 forget stuff. And so right after we word processing came along, 1:48:55.800 --> 1:49:00.000 and you know, keyboards, I wrote a stream of conscious 1:49:00.080 --> 1:49:04.440 this memoir one summer. I just tried to remember dialogue 1:49:04.520 --> 1:49:09.479 and smells and sounds and the relatively little emotion that 1:49:09.520 --> 1:49:11.599 I did feel that I was aware of, and I 1:49:11.640 --> 1:49:15.040 wrote it all down, just without worrying at all about 1:49:15.040 --> 1:49:17.000 the quality of the pros, and I put it in 1:49:17.040 --> 1:49:20.080 a spiral notebook and stuck in a file cant and 1:49:20.160 --> 1:49:22.519 like literally ten fifteen years later, when I started trying 1:49:22.560 --> 1:49:25.720 to write tracks and shadows, I pulled that out and 1:49:25.760 --> 1:49:27.760 I had things in there that I I fear I 1:49:27.800 --> 1:49:30.240 would not have remembered fifteen years later. It's like a 1:49:30.960 --> 1:49:33.559 strange time machine to pull that out, and I think, now, 1:49:33.600 --> 1:49:36.200 I'm you know, gosh, if you traveled ten years back 1:49:36.200 --> 1:49:39.639 in time and interviewed yourself, you're like, wow, Yeah, there's 1:49:39.640 --> 1:49:43.439 an interesting idiot there, Like, well, I wonder what he's 1:49:43.439 --> 1:49:45.120 going to get into. Yeah, well, maybe you're going to 1:49:45.200 --> 1:49:47.720 write a book. I hope someday. Have you thought about that? 1:49:47.760 --> 1:49:49.880 I have, and I thought about it in much the 1:49:49.920 --> 1:49:53.240 way that you have thought about it, and kind of like, 1:49:53.439 --> 1:49:56.240 at what stage in your life are you ready to 1:49:56.520 --> 1:50:00.000 reflect and introspect and what at what points in your 1:50:00.160 --> 1:50:03.719 for you ready to just like study and and sift 1:50:04.080 --> 1:50:07.479 and look through things and learn things. And that's why 1:50:07.479 --> 1:50:09.439 when I was reading your book, that's what I was 1:50:09.479 --> 1:50:12.320 thinking of. I'm like, here's a person who's done all 1:50:12.360 --> 1:50:15.320 these things and is spilling them out, but in such 1:50:15.320 --> 1:50:20.639 a way that leads to this conclusion, which is informed 1:50:20.640 --> 1:50:22.559 by all these experiences. You know, and if you were 1:50:22.720 --> 1:50:24.360 if you would have wrote that book when you were thirty, 1:50:24.360 --> 1:50:27.040 it wouldn't have been as good as it is. And 1:50:27.040 --> 1:50:29.240 and so I think about that as a writer, you know, 1:50:29.800 --> 1:50:33.720 and writing is so damn painful. It's the worst. I 1:50:33.800 --> 1:50:35.400 talked to writers on this podcast all the times. It's 1:50:35.439 --> 1:50:37.800 like it's it's like, what's writing like for you? I'm like, well, 1:50:37.800 --> 1:50:40.599 what's the worst thing? Ever? It's really wonderful too, though, 1:50:40.640 --> 1:50:44.559 Oh it's I mean like pain and and and pain 1:50:44.640 --> 1:50:46.800 is wonderful in lots of ways, especially when it's like 1:50:46.840 --> 1:50:49.880 some artistic pain. It's almost like writing is the pain, 1:50:49.960 --> 1:50:52.640 and writing is what makes it good. Um, So I 1:50:52.640 --> 1:50:54.840 think about that and I'll write a book one day 1:50:54.880 --> 1:50:58.439 that that maybe meditates on all the things and and 1:50:58.560 --> 1:51:01.200 try and try to do that. But I I'm not there, 1:51:01.200 --> 1:51:03.880 just quite yet. I don't want to rush it. Yeah, well, 1:51:03.880 --> 1:51:05.599 I hope you make it the end of Tracks and Shadows, 1:51:05.880 --> 1:51:08.439 I will. I got one two chapters. In fact, I 1:51:08.520 --> 1:51:14.519 read the last chapter the Cowboy. I do well, go 1:51:14.640 --> 1:51:16.840 pick up Tracks and Shadows. That's just the one that 1:51:16.880 --> 1:51:18.120 I liked the most. But there's a lot of other 1:51:18.160 --> 1:51:20.439 books by Mr Harry Green here that you should go 1:51:20.479 --> 1:51:22.439 pick up and and then learn about his life. It's 1:51:22.439 --> 1:51:25.160 a pretty badass. Thanks. All right, Thanks Harry. Great talking 1:51:25.160 --> 1:51:27.479 to you too. Yeah, I hope we hope we go 1:51:27.520 --> 1:51:29.640 for a hike someday we're gonna go, Yeah, with an 1:51:29.640 --> 1:51:34.400 elk at the end. We should do that, well, hopefully 1:51:34.400 --> 1:51:37.719 and elk maybe. Or if I was gonna encounter Rattlesnake, 1:51:37.760 --> 1:51:39.720 I'd be I'd be comfortable with you there. But what 1:51:39.760 --> 1:51:42.640 do I do now? As I'll tell you, I have 1:51:42.720 --> 1:51:45.080 one rattlesnake story because I lived in Texas and hunted 1:51:45.120 --> 1:51:49.320 in Texas, UH for four years. I was hunting access 1:51:49.360 --> 1:51:52.400 to her in the hill country. A couple of years ago, 1:51:52.720 --> 1:51:55.840 and I was sitting there was it was during, it 1:51:55.880 --> 1:51:57.680 was during, well they don't have a rut but there 1:51:57.760 --> 1:52:00.880 was some rutting access here around me, and there was 1:52:00.920 --> 1:52:03.840 just roaring access there a hundred yards. I got my 1:52:03.840 --> 1:52:07.519 bow and I'm like I kept working in on him, 1:52:07.560 --> 1:52:09.280 and he'd be chasing the dough and working on me 1:52:09.439 --> 1:52:11.040 chasing the dough. I'm like, man, I'm just gonna sit down. 1:52:11.320 --> 1:52:13.760 I'm just gonna calm down, sit down, Maybe he'll come 1:52:13.800 --> 1:52:17.400 walking by. So I sat down just up against this 1:52:17.640 --> 1:52:19.559 old scrub boak tree and put my feet out. I 1:52:19.560 --> 1:52:22.280 had snake boots on up to my knees. I sat 1:52:22.360 --> 1:52:25.920 there and uh, about five minutes go by and this box, 1:52:26.160 --> 1:52:27.960 you know, I could see him two hundred yards away, 1:52:28.000 --> 1:52:31.320 just running in his thick mesquite and I could see him, 1:52:31.400 --> 1:52:32.680 and I was like, well, I'm just not gonna I'm 1:52:32.680 --> 1:52:35.519 just gonna hope that he comes over here. And just 1:52:35.560 --> 1:52:38.160 about that time, I I felt something kind of like 1:52:38.200 --> 1:52:41.360 touching my hip and I just reached down to like 1:52:41.720 --> 1:52:45.320 brush my jacket away, and I looked back down and 1:52:45.360 --> 1:52:49.600 there was like a six ft rattlesnake that had that 1:52:49.680 --> 1:52:52.080 had breached my knee and was crawling over my boot. 1:52:52.200 --> 1:52:56.720 His rattle was about at my and my first all was, 1:52:56.760 --> 1:53:01.640 oh cool, a snake. And then slowly as he was 1:53:01.680 --> 1:53:03.599 like making his way down my boot and up over 1:53:03.640 --> 1:53:08.040 the foot and down, and then I quickly switched my mind, 1:53:08.040 --> 1:53:10.880 hold ship, Oh my god, what do I do? And 1:53:11.000 --> 1:53:12.960 I and I just sat there long enough to let 1:53:13.000 --> 1:53:16.280 him kind of get over my boot. And I ran 1:53:16.400 --> 1:53:18.880 like a little girl for like three yards and I 1:53:18.880 --> 1:53:22.280 turned back and he didn't even he just kept on going. 1:53:22.880 --> 1:53:24.920 He turned and looked at me kind of like in 1:53:24.960 --> 1:53:27.160 an annoyed fashion, and I wish he would have just 1:53:27.240 --> 1:53:30.000 chilled out, but he didn't try to. He didn't coil 1:53:30.040 --> 1:53:32.120 to strike or anything. Just you have to remember one month. 1:53:32.160 --> 1:53:36.040 This one, I want to say it was in June, 1:53:36.840 --> 1:53:39.920 so that that quite possibly they tend to mate a 1:53:39.920 --> 1:53:41.880 little later than that. But they also have some spring 1:53:41.920 --> 1:53:46.120 mating in western dinadbacks that that quite possibly, based on size, 1:53:46.160 --> 1:53:50.320 it was almost certainly a male, and when they're they 1:53:50.479 --> 1:53:54.439 can distinguish. I don't actually know where they can even 1:53:54.439 --> 1:53:58.880 perceive that where a nonreceptive female has been so rattlesnakes 1:53:58.880 --> 1:54:01.360 generally don't breed every year of the females, it takes 1:54:01.400 --> 1:54:03.360 them more than one year to building up fat to 1:54:03.360 --> 1:54:05.960 make a litter, so only at most every other year, 1:54:06.040 --> 1:54:08.200 sometimes only every three or four years. A female is 1:54:08.240 --> 1:54:11.240 receptive to breed that summer to produce a litter the 1:54:11.240 --> 1:54:14.559 next summer. So that's their that's their social system. And 1:54:14.640 --> 1:54:17.880 so because females, if you imagine that there the sex 1:54:18.000 --> 1:54:21.080 ratio is equal in any one summer, there's a lot 1:54:21.120 --> 1:54:24.839 more males looking for females and there are receptive females, right, 1:54:24.920 --> 1:54:28.679 And so when males are on the trail, females they 1:54:28.760 --> 1:54:32.400 stop eating. They just sound familiar, so they're just like 1:54:32.520 --> 1:54:35.920 they're just going run, and so they try they crawl 1:54:36.000 --> 1:54:39.200 these long, fairly straight routes. It turns out, if you're 1:54:39.200 --> 1:54:41.520 looking for a trail and you don't know where it is, 1:54:41.680 --> 1:54:43.760 a straight line is like that is like the right 1:54:43.760 --> 1:54:48.480 search strategy. You just cut a direction that's right. And 1:54:48.520 --> 1:54:51.040 so that's what they do. And so I've watched them 1:54:51.040 --> 1:54:53.920 many times. A male rattlesnake during the breeding season is 1:54:53.960 --> 1:54:59.240 just like crawling about a about a body length a minute, flicking, flicking, clicking, flicking, 1:54:59.240 --> 1:55:01.440 flicking enough act. Really a few times seen one when 1:55:01.440 --> 1:55:04.120 he encountered a trail, because then everything changes. He starts 1:55:04.360 --> 1:55:07.960 crawling in this very circuitous much slower, and if you 1:55:08.040 --> 1:55:10.040 keep with him, you'll find him. He'll locate a female. 1:55:10.080 --> 1:55:12.520 You know, so this I wouldn't be surprised if that guy, 1:55:12.880 --> 1:55:16.040 he couldn't have cared less about you. You didn't smell 1:55:16.040 --> 1:55:18.640 like a rabbit or a squirrel, you didn't act threatening, 1:55:19.360 --> 1:55:22.840 and you weren't a receptive female. So you were just 1:55:23.560 --> 1:55:27.680 there were just one more like nose rock or log 1:55:27.840 --> 1:55:29.600 or what? Do you feel that when there's a snake 1:55:29.640 --> 1:55:32.080 on top of you crawling right, there's a little bit 1:55:32.080 --> 1:55:34.160 of a helpless this feeling, But then you realize, like 1:55:35.640 --> 1:55:39.280 he's got all the power really in this situation. But 1:55:39.400 --> 1:55:41.240 you know what if he had if you had been 1:55:41.920 --> 1:55:44.240 like say, just a few feet away, and you'd tossed 1:55:44.240 --> 1:55:47.520 a stick or something, and he snapped into that big 1:55:47.680 --> 1:55:51.440 exaggerated strike coil and started buzzing like crazy, the big long, 1:55:51.560 --> 1:55:54.560 slow tongue flick when they as long as you, as 1:55:54.600 --> 1:55:56.960 long as you were, like, let's say, if you really 1:55:56.960 --> 1:56:00.720 want to be super careful ten feet away, nothing's gonna 1:56:00.720 --> 1:56:04.120 happen the ral snake you've seen unless you're standing on 1:56:04.160 --> 1:56:06.560 it when you see it, are putting your hand on 1:56:06.600 --> 1:56:09.120 it when you see it. It's pretty much not dangerous 1:56:09.160 --> 1:56:11.200 to you anymore. It's it's the one you haven't seen 1:56:11.280 --> 1:56:14.480 that that could hurt you, or the one you interfere with. 1:56:16.880 --> 1:56:19.400 A huge fraction of snake bites in the US, not 1:56:19.520 --> 1:56:21.840 in Senegal or India, but but in the US, a 1:56:21.880 --> 1:56:25.400 huge fraction of snake bites are people purposely messing with 1:56:25.440 --> 1:56:27.880 a snake? You think snakes to have an opinion of us? 1:56:28.800 --> 1:56:32.640 I think they. I think they just want to avoid us. Yeah, 1:56:32.920 --> 1:56:35.720 I don't think they much like anything else. Yeah, there's 1:56:35.760 --> 1:56:38.280 no predatory I wonder how I was thinking. I wonder 1:56:38.240 --> 1:56:40.200 if the snake has an opinion of what's going on, 1:56:41.280 --> 1:56:43.040 because he looked I remember looking at it, like look 1:56:43.080 --> 1:56:45.960 pretty annoyed the situation, Like, well, I'm going probably, like 1:56:46.000 --> 1:56:48.960 you said, I'm going to find receptive female and anything 1:56:49.000 --> 1:56:51.960 isn't that is annoying to me. Yeah. We had, uh 1:56:52.160 --> 1:56:54.520 you know what you read. We had fifty snakes with 1:56:54.640 --> 1:56:56.840 radios in them, and the one we had the most 1:56:56.880 --> 1:57:00.000 experience with it was a female. She was a young, 1:57:00.000 --> 1:57:02.160 an adult female. When we first put a radio in her, 1:57:02.200 --> 1:57:04.640 and we watched her for twelve years. So twelve years 1:57:04.720 --> 1:57:07.240 later she was a very senior female and we had 1:57:07.280 --> 1:57:10.200 I think it was five and sixty nine encounters with her. 1:57:10.400 --> 1:57:12.960 I wasn't in on all of them, but me and 1:57:13.000 --> 1:57:17.800 my collaborator and UM, I think during that twelve years 1:57:17.880 --> 1:57:20.320 we had to catch her three or four more times 1:57:20.320 --> 1:57:24.440 to change her batteries basically, but our our whole handling 1:57:24.440 --> 1:57:27.600 protocol was super gentle. So I don't think I ever 1:57:27.640 --> 1:57:30.560 heard that snake rattle during all the times we captured her, 1:57:30.720 --> 1:57:32.880 anesthetized or put her radio and released her and so. 1:57:33.800 --> 1:57:36.440 And the significance of that is that, uh, one time 1:57:36.520 --> 1:57:38.440 I was looking for and I was by myself, and 1:57:38.440 --> 1:57:41.360 I had the radio antenna and I had her signal, 1:57:41.400 --> 1:57:43.480 and it was getting louder and louder, so I knew 1:57:43.480 --> 1:57:46.360 as closer and closer, and I was looking ahead, looking ahead, 1:57:46.600 --> 1:57:49.480 and I'd start walking from different directions and I'd always 1:57:49.520 --> 1:57:52.320 get the same vector to the last signals pointing at 1:57:52.320 --> 1:57:55.280 this juniper tree, and I was looking at my binoculars 1:57:55.320 --> 1:57:58.160 under it, and I couldn't see her. And I find 1:57:58.160 --> 1:58:01.360 a side as improbably is. It seemed to me that 1:58:01.400 --> 1:58:04.680 she was somehow buried under the duff, under the litter, 1:58:04.800 --> 1:58:07.400 under the tree. So I took the antenna off and 1:58:07.480 --> 1:58:09.120 was going to use the cable as a really short 1:58:09.200 --> 1:58:11.720 distance detector. And I crawled all the way around the 1:58:11.800 --> 1:58:15.120 juniper tween in my hands and knees, poking the cable 1:58:15.400 --> 1:58:18.800 at the ground and nothing. I can't find a goddamn snake. 1:58:18.880 --> 1:58:21.600 So I I finally sit up right against the trunk. 1:58:21.640 --> 1:58:24.160 It was sort of a big tree with drooping limbs, 1:58:24.400 --> 1:58:26.200 and I sit up with my head kind of among 1:58:26.280 --> 1:58:30.600 the limbs, and I literally started daydreaming about a book 1:58:30.640 --> 1:58:33.120 called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, because it 1:58:33.160 --> 1:58:35.440 made me think about something called a gumption trap, where 1:58:35.440 --> 1:58:38.040 you're you're not you're not making head away because you're 1:58:38.040 --> 1:58:40.280 making a false assumption about what you're doing. So I 1:58:40.400 --> 1:58:42.800 was saying and thinking, what what is my false assumption? 1:58:43.000 --> 1:58:45.480 And I had this weird sensation. I tilted my head 1:58:45.560 --> 1:58:48.760 slightly to the left and female one was sitting on 1:58:48.800 --> 1:58:52.720 a limb right next to my face. Her head was 1:58:53.120 --> 1:58:56.320 literally three or four or five inches from my face, 1:58:57.960 --> 1:59:00.320 and she didn't so much as flick her tongue, she 1:59:00.360 --> 1:59:03.000 didn't rattle, she didn't flick her tongue, she didn't bite me, 1:59:03.120 --> 1:59:06.160 she didn't do anything, And of course I I just 1:59:07.440 --> 1:59:11.800 very slowly moved away. And when I walked away, she 1:59:11.840 --> 1:59:15.320 was still sitting there with that movie. So I think 1:59:15.360 --> 1:59:20.360 it's possible. I don't want to like overly anthropomorphize the situation, 1:59:20.440 --> 1:59:22.880 but I think it's certainly reasonable to think that I 1:59:22.960 --> 1:59:25.760 never taught her to be afraid of me. I'm not 1:59:25.840 --> 1:59:29.200 saying we were pals. I'm not saying she recognized me, 1:59:30.200 --> 1:59:33.160 But I think it's it's I never taught her to 1:59:33.240 --> 1:59:34.960 be afraid of me. And I think if every time 1:59:35.000 --> 1:59:37.320 I had encountered that snake, I had pinned her down 1:59:37.320 --> 1:59:38.680 and picked her up by the head and showed her 1:59:38.720 --> 1:59:41.120 fangs off to somebody and kind of roughed her up, 1:59:41.160 --> 1:59:43.640 I think she would have been a much more defensive 1:59:43.680 --> 1:59:47.640 snake in the presence of whatever ME meant to her. 1:59:47.880 --> 1:59:49.560 And I think I could have ended up getting bitten 1:59:49.560 --> 1:59:53.120 out of the face, which would have been Would you 1:59:53.360 --> 1:59:55.520 think they have this this predatory of the molecule you 1:59:55.600 --> 1:59:59.280 mentioned when they're so they got a tracker molecule, they're 1:59:59.360 --> 2:00:03.440 using that kind of sophisticated biological markers they got to 2:00:03.520 --> 2:00:08.120 know you. They gotta understand like different, you know, things 2:00:08.120 --> 2:00:10.760 in their environment that that are similar and repetitive. They 2:00:10.840 --> 2:00:13.360 got to know that. Absolutely. It only makes sense. It 2:00:13.800 --> 2:00:16.560 makes sense, it would be it would be unparsimonious to 2:00:16.600 --> 2:00:19.000 think otherwise. Wo, we don't want to be that. No, 2:00:19.120 --> 2:00:21.320 we don't want to do that. We don't. Well, thank you, Harry, 2:00:21.440 --> 2:00:24.760 appreciate everything. And and uh, let's go mess around some 2:00:24.760 --> 2:00:26.960 snakes together, pleasure and learn something. I'll get I'll get 2:00:27.000 --> 2:00:28.680 up to Montana sometimes. It's one of the few states 2:00:28.720 --> 2:00:31.280 I've never been in, so it's just just wonderful. Get 2:00:31.320 --> 2:00:33.360 up there. You're not too far away. Come see us, 2:00:33.360 --> 2:00:42.880 all right, Harry, I guess that's it. That's all thanks 2:00:42.920 --> 2:00:47.560 to Harry Green. H great interview man, one of my favorites. Uh, 2:00:48.200 --> 2:00:50.879 I think you know, unlike other recent interviews, I connected 2:00:50.920 --> 2:00:52.879 with Harry and a lot of things. I really appreciate 2:00:52.920 --> 2:00:56.720 his views on the outdoors. I really appreciate his experience 2:00:56.720 --> 2:00:58.640 with snakes and some of the things he taught me there. 2:00:58.680 --> 2:01:01.640 But just a good dude that I'd want to hang 2:01:01.640 --> 2:01:04.000 out with as much as possible. So if we can 2:01:04.040 --> 2:01:07.160 have them on again, there's there's a whole life's worth 2:01:07.200 --> 2:01:09.760 of experiences we have yet to down earth with Harry, 2:01:09.760 --> 2:01:11.920 so hopefully we can do that at some point soon. 2:01:11.960 --> 2:01:13.720 But thank you to him, thank you to his wife 2:01:13.760 --> 2:01:15.760 for letting me bor him for a while in color 2:01:15.840 --> 2:01:18.920 State University for let me get lost in their campus 2:01:19.560 --> 2:01:22.120 uh while I was there. And then also thanks to 2:01:22.200 --> 2:01:24.600 Cody Gardner for writing in with your not a sharp moment. 2:01:25.280 --> 2:01:28.080 Thanks to everyone that has been filling THHD at the 2:01:28.120 --> 2:01:31.600 Metator dot com with a bunch of stuff. Before we go, 2:01:31.800 --> 2:01:35.080 you should definitely continue to watch the Back forty. You 2:01:35.120 --> 2:01:37.800 go to the Mediator YouTube channel the Meteor dot com 2:01:37.920 --> 2:01:40.880 you can watch the Back forty with Mark Kenyon. Mark 2:01:40.920 --> 2:01:44.040 Kenyon we bought a property sixty four acres in Michigan 2:01:44.040 --> 2:01:47.040 and Mark Kenyon is working right now as we speak 2:01:47.080 --> 2:01:49.240 to try to kill a deer on it and also 2:01:49.320 --> 2:01:52.480 manage it for biodiversity. So it's a fun show. I've 2:01:52.480 --> 2:01:55.000 been working hard with Mark on it, so I appreciate 2:01:55.000 --> 2:01:57.320 if you guys went over there and watch that at 2:01:57.360 --> 2:02:00.280 the Mediator YouTube channel or the Metior dot com. I 2:02:00.360 --> 2:02:03.360 really would. And also another piece of content I work 2:02:03.440 --> 2:02:05.800 on every week that I really think is great is 2:02:05.840 --> 2:02:10.200 Remy warrants Cutting the Distance, Cutting the Distances, the podcast 2:02:10.280 --> 2:02:13.920 that will make you better pretty much any hunting tactic, 2:02:14.240 --> 2:02:16.800 mostly Western hunting tactics with Remy. Remy does a great 2:02:16.840 --> 2:02:21.440 job storytelling, he's a great job of giving tips and tactics, 2:02:21.800 --> 2:02:26.120 melding that altogether, and a beautiful gumbo of hunting advice. 2:02:26.480 --> 2:02:30.520 So go anywhere you can download podcasts or the meet 2:02:30.760 --> 2:02:36.160 dot com check out Cutting the Distance. Those are my two. 2:02:36.520 --> 2:02:38.000 If you want to know what I'm working on every week, 2:02:38.000 --> 2:02:41.120 it's THC and those two things. That's what it's spent 2:02:41.240 --> 2:02:44.560 most of my time doing. So um proud of those 2:02:44.680 --> 2:02:46.880 those contact projects, proud of the proud of Remy and 2:02:46.960 --> 2:02:50.200 Mark and all the hard work of everybody here to 2:02:50.240 --> 2:02:52.800 meet either team. So we're gonna see you next week 2:02:53.720 --> 2:02:59.960 in our next Whiskey and Ethics on Baiting. Soe then, 2:02:59.360 --> 2:03:05.080 because I ain't go a week without doing run, oh 2:03:05.120 --> 2:03:16.080 without run, drinking out and run a wrong drinking in Heaven, 2:03:29.560 --> 2:03:32.760 don't sit in at the bostould start the row root 2:03:33.160 --> 2:03:36.920 I'm feeling lagging. Hold on out barros shoes all down 2:03:37.000 --> 2:03:38.120 the one