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Speaker 1: Hey, if you're wondering why this episode of Cow's Weekend

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Speaker 1: Review has been served up to you when you thought

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Speaker 1: you were just subscribing to the Meat Eater podcast, it's

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Speaker 1: because we're playing dirty pool in the podcast space. I

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Speaker 1: promised to never do this to you again for the

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Speaker 1: next year. Let's say, uh maast six months year, I

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Speaker 1: won't do this to you again. Well, all I'm doing

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Speaker 1: is we're serving us in here even though you don't subscribe,

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Speaker 1: because I honestly believe that you will be glad to

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Speaker 1: find out about it. So I'm violating some trust by

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Speaker 1: wedging in a show you don't subscribe to into here,

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Speaker 1: but I'm doing it with your own best interest because

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Speaker 1: I think you're gonna come out thinking like man, Cal's

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Speaker 1: Weekend Review is the perfect compliment to the Meat Eater podcast.

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Speaker 1: Cal being Ryan cal Callahan, who's always on the Mediator

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Speaker 1: podcast anyway. So if you like media podcast, no one

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Speaker 1: probably like Cal. Right, Cal, I hope. So he's sitting

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Speaker 1: right here playing dirty pool with me, So tell them

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Speaker 1: what they ought to do. Cal, Like, you're gonna listen

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Speaker 1: to the show. It'll start in a minute. You'll know

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Speaker 1: it starts because it's like a Newsy sound intro, and

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Speaker 1: then you'll listen to the show and you'll be like,

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Speaker 1: holy smokes, this is the greatest show I've ever listened to.

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Speaker 1: And then you will you will track that show down

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Speaker 1: wherever podcasts are available to be streamed or downloaded, same

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Speaker 1: way you track down the Meat Eat podcast. And you're

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Speaker 1: gonna subscribe and leave me a review. Yeah, click the

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Speaker 1: right most star. We're getting write whatever the hell you want.

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Speaker 1: Just make sure you click the right most star and

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Speaker 1: then say whatever you Felix and we don't care about

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Speaker 1: that part, uh is it? Enjoy Cal's We Can Review,

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Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening from me to

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Speaker 1: do his World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is

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Speaker 1: Kel's We Can Review with rutting Kel Kelly and now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: telling in addition to old, dried up dumb. Today, I'm

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: tell you about my world. How As it turns out,

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Speaker 1: I'm still recovering from my turkey hunt in the spring

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Speaker 1: Green Hills outside of Nashville, Tennessee. I woke up the

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

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

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Speaker 1: of reasons. One is being in your mid thirties, it

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Speaker 1: just doesn't feel great to question your ability to clean yourself.

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Speaker 1: And then there's the simple creepy feeling of discovering parasites

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Speaker 1: on yourself. On my way home from Tennessee, um sitting

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Speaker 1: Nashville Airport, this is where it gets real exciting. Hacking

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Speaker 1: away at my emails and the Delta lounge, I feel

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Speaker 1: an itch and find a tick embedded on the back

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Speaker 1: of my arm. Thought, man, that sucks. Then I felt

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Speaker 1: another drop out of my rapidly receding hairline and onto

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Speaker 1: my shoulder. This was enough tick activity to get me

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Speaker 1: fully grossed out, up out of my seat into action.

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Speaker 1: So there I am completely stripped naked in the bathroom

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Speaker 1: of the Delta Lounge performing a full on tick check

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Speaker 1: where I find a tick embedded in my screw them.

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Speaker 1: I only bring this up because I am big on

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Speaker 1: honesty and quite sincerely. When a man finds a disease

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Speaker 1: carrying parasite and what the old timers would call your

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Speaker 1: soft parts, it's a real sinking feeling. Ticks attached themselves

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Speaker 1: to hosts by questing, which is climbing to advantage point

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Speaker 1: that allow them to either grab or drop onto an

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Speaker 1: animal as they pass by. Ticks can carry a number

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Speaker 1: of diseases, most notable being limes disease and Rocky Mountain

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Speaker 1: spotted fever, which are both bacterial infections that are introduced

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Speaker 1: to humans through contact with the offending tick. Ticks need

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Speaker 1: to be attached for twenty four hours or longer in

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Speaker 1: order to transmit so catch Mearly prevalence of tick born

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Speaker 1: illnesses is steadily increasing in the US. For instance, there's

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Speaker 1: been an over three x increase in confirmed limes cases

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Speaker 1: since now onto fish yea For those of you waiting

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Speaker 1: on the Minnesota white fish record to be broken, it's

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Speaker 1: been a long time of coming. Quick facts about the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: twenty two inches and girt. In Montana, we'd call that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: take a look at the case of Michael ray Hinson,

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Speaker 1: not to be confused with the wonderful Texas musician Mike A. P. Hinson.

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: Authorities found the oscar in deplorable conditions with parasitic hole

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

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Speaker 1: apparently a common problem encountered by aquarium enthusiasts. Good thing

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Speaker 1: for handsome. New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David determined

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Speaker 1: that animal cruelty statutes don't apply to fish. As the

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Speaker 1: d A stated, we take a very dim view of

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: for fish, check this one out. It probably goes without

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Speaker 1: saying that fish in the desert are rare, but would

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

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Speaker 1: gnome fish on Earth. The Devil's Whole, located not all

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: into the aquifer millennia go to the surface. What could

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

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Speaker 1: the Devil's Hole is a series lee protected place ten

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Speaker 1: foot fences, highly controlled, highly monitched. In two thousand sixteen,

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Speaker 1: small group of board drunk and armed desert dwellers decided,

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Speaker 1: for reasons unknown, to go for a swim. The boys

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Speaker 1: get through the fence and in short order we've gotten

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Speaker 1: the illegal Skinny Dipper and Devil's Hole. This Skinny Dipper

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Speaker 1: is a convicted felon in possession of a shotgun. During

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Speaker 1: a swim, he manages to step onto the small shelf

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Speaker 1: of rock that is the epicenter of life at Devil's Hole.

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Speaker 1: When the National Park Service crew is made aware of

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Speaker 1: this violation, they show up to investigate. As it turns out,

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Speaker 1: and it looks as though the disturbance of the pool

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Speaker 1: and Devil's Hole resulted in the death of a rare

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Speaker 1: pup fish. When I say rare, I mean the Devil's

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Speaker 1: Whole pupfish is one of the rarest fish on the planet.

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Speaker 1: This tiny, shimmery blue fish is only found there in

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Speaker 1: the waters of Devil's Hole. The Devil's Whole pupfish has

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: And should mind you, but imagine you live in Nevada

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: basically been sentenced to live in Las Vegas. And that

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: alligator gar a couple of guys on brazos who every

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Speaker 1: landed a seven foot seven inch alligator gar, weighing in

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Speaker 1: at a hundred and ninety eight pounds. The head alone

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Speaker 1: weight twenty five. Now this sounds like a beast, but

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

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

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Speaker 1: the Cretaceous period, meaning alligator gar have been swimming for

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: same time. Obviously, the gar is still around and the

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Speaker 1: Mosesaur isn't. And that's how we get the term living fossil.

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Speaker 1: Some of our favorite living fossils horseshoe crabs, snapping turtles, possums,

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Speaker 1: and the tastiest evolved, the American prong horn antelope. Here's

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Speaker 1: a few more fun facts about the gar. Scales that

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Speaker 1: stretch are called a lasmoid scales. Scales that don't ganoid

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Speaker 1: scales car have ganoid scales. They can hack a serious

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Speaker 1: bite without effect. One reason the gar may have stood

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Speaker 1: the test time is. In addition to regular old fish gills,

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Speaker 1: the gar has a specialized swim bladder that acts like

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Speaker 1: a lung. This specialized swim bladder allows the guard to

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Speaker 1: sit air from the surface. Because of this, the guard

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Speaker 1: can inhabit low oxygen water other fish can't. I just

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Speaker 1: flipped a few flies at another gar species, the spotted

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Speaker 1: gar down in Texas a few weeks ago on the

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Speaker 1: Lino River. Really need fish, you should definitely check them out.

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Speaker 1: White public lands, as I was saying, Nevada has a

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Speaker 1: good chunk of them. But soon the Sheep Range mountains

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Speaker 1: that is which you can see from the airplane wind

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Speaker 1: when you're landing in Vegas may soon be closed off

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Speaker 1: to the public. Ouch Right now, the US military is

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Speaker 1: asking for an additional two thousand acres of the mountain

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Speaker 1: range for bombing practice. That's the size of two thousand,

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Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty Disneylands if you include the new

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Speaker 1: Star Wars expansion. There are a few problems with this,

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Speaker 1: one being that these mountains happen to be some of

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Speaker 1: the best desert big horn sheep habitat in the world.

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Speaker 1: Once upon a time, it's estimated that we had around

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Speaker 1: two million big horn sheep. That's both rocky mountain and

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Speaker 1: desert big horns. Thanks to unregulated market hunting, habitat loss,

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Speaker 1: and disease, the ladder of which remains the primary threat

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Speaker 1: to sheep, that number was whittled down to roughly fifteen

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Speaker 1: thousand by nineteen hundred. Now we're back up to around

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Speaker 1: seventy THO. Sure, not perfect, but we're out of the

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Speaker 1: big Horn dark ages and getting there. Any sheep that's

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Speaker 1: still on the mountain is there because we fought for it.

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Speaker 1: That's certainly true of the sheep range big horns. For decades,

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Speaker 1: conservation organizations such as Well Chief Foundation have worked their

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Speaker 1: asses off to conserve the sheep range. And it's six

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Speaker 1: hundred desert bighorn habitat improvements, water improvements, and plenty of

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Speaker 1: other hot, sweaty work. We're talking hundreds of regular folks

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Speaker 1: donting time and money on behalf of wildlife. Let's not

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Speaker 1: piss that away. Get off your butts and act now.

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Speaker 1: Call your elected officials if you care about desert bighorns

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Speaker 1: and public access of wild places. I understand the needs

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Speaker 1: of national defense, but let's play the long game here.

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Speaker 1: What's wild should stay wild. We're not going to run

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Speaker 1: out of degraded landscapes, so don't worry about that and

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Speaker 1: the war on wild cheap. Now we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about things that should be and things that shouldn't be

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Speaker 1: up near our northern border with Canada. Out in Lake

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Speaker 1: Superior is Ile Royal National Park. Ile Royal is a

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

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Speaker 1: a car free Michigan wilderness where, at least now days,

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Speaker 1: moose and wolves room Somewhat mysteriously. Moose first showed up

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: in nine having crossed an ice bridge between mainland Ontario

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Speaker 1: and the island. Things have been up and down since then.

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Speaker 1: The wolf population got as high as fifty, but recently

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

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Speaker 1: moose are kicking acts at a current estimated population of

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

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

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Speaker 1: preparing to deliver twenty or thirty more Over, the next

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Speaker 1: five years at a cost of two million dollars. You

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Speaker 1: might wonder why we'd be flying animals back and forth

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: common in past decades, which allowed some sporadic coming and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: left the island on you guessed at an ice bridge.

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: Are we smarter now? We're just different on the floor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: National Preserve, researchers captured a seventeen foot female python that

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Speaker 1: weighed over a hundred and forty pounds and held seventy

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Speaker 1: three eggs. They caught it using the Judas method In

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Speaker 1: the Bible of Judas portrays Jesus in Florida. Judas was

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Speaker 1: a male python with the tracking device that they released

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Speaker 1: so he could go out and do what male pythons

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Speaker 1: want to do, which is fine females, given some time

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: by the U. S Geological Survey and Everglades National Park,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: per year over West to Florida. A few states. You've

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Speaker 1: got Texas, SA they're all proud and beautiful rattlesnakes, oil rigs,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that the individual did so for a distinctly ceremonial or

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Speaker 1: ritualistic purpose. End quote. You know there's a joke in

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Speaker 1: the archaeological community. Is something you've dug up doesn't make sense,

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Speaker 1: Call it ritualistic or ceremonial, and move on. The thing

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Speaker 1: is I can think of a few things I've ingested

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Speaker 1: that we're certainly not ceremonial or ritualistic, though they'd still

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Speaker 1: make it tough for anyone to propose a likely explanation

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Speaker 1: for my behavior from our technology desk, engineers at Cornell

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Speaker 1: Lab of Ornithology have created, at the request of a

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Speaker 1: professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at the

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Speaker 1: University of California Davis, a sage grouse femba. The request

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Speaker 1: for these lovely robotic ladies of the sage was inspired

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Speaker 1: by the desire to understand sage grouse breeding habits, specifically

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Speaker 1: how man made disturbances affect breeding efforts on and around

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Speaker 1: lex which are communal breeding areas where male sage grouse

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Speaker 1: compete for females through elaborate sexual displays. Scientists remotely drive

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Speaker 1: these robotic bird renditions, which sport an external frame that's

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Speaker 1: wrapped with female sage grouse skin and feathers, and further

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Speaker 1: fitted with all terrain wheels. The mechanized love birds are

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Speaker 1: fitted with camera to capture male behavior up close and personal,

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Speaker 1: sometimes too close. Streading males have repeatedly mounted and attempted

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Speaker 1: to breathe these female robots. Then again, they've also been

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Speaker 1: reported to mount an old, dried up cow patty, tough

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Speaker 1: times for sage grouse love making. And lastly, a word

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Speaker 1: from that wonderful Texas musician I mentioned earlier, Mica p

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Speaker 1: Handsome again. Don't confuse him with Michael Ray Handsome, the

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Speaker 1: guy who neglected his pet fish, Graham Paws born on

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Speaker 1: a cold summer's day. No New Chicago any special place

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Speaker 1: thanks to tuning in next week. Find out more about

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Speaker 1: all this fascinating information at the meat eater dot com

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Speaker 1: and email me at ask Cal at the meat eater

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Speaker 1: dot com