Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy Wilson. And recently there's been
Speaker 1: a mild trend going on on social media thanks to
Speaker 1: post on boing boing um about Felicia the ferret who
Speaker 1: worked at the National Accelerator Laboratory. And it's a really
Speaker 1: fun story involving some very creative thinking um on the
Speaker 1: part of some people that were trying to solve some problems.
Speaker 1: But the more I read about it and that that facility,
Speaker 1: the more that I realized that this is one of
Speaker 1: those cool moments where science and animals meet and it's
Speaker 1: not horrible and scary and there aren't icky experiments, uh,
Speaker 1: which is hooray. Uh. So Felicia was a kickoff, but
Speaker 1: it's really sort of particle physics and animals meeting and
Speaker 1: how that happens. Yes, and very unique scenario. And then
Speaker 1: inteen seventies, the Fermy National Accelerator Laboratory, which is referred
Speaker 1: to as firm A Lab for short, is a US
Speaker 1: Department of Energy lab that's operated by the university's Research Association,
Speaker 1: and it's located in Batavia, Illinois. It's not far from Chicago,
Speaker 1: and it's on a site that's uh six thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred acres, which if you go by hectares, that's about
Speaker 1: two thousand, eight hundred uh. And the lab opened up
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties to address a nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: three Atomic Energy Commission recommendation for the US to develop
Speaker 1: a facility for nuclear physics research. And since that time,
Speaker 1: Ferma Lab has built several particle accelerators to conduct that research,
Speaker 1: and they've really become a place where people from all
Speaker 1: over the world come and study and work. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it you know, continues today. Yes, as of early Fermal
Speaker 1: Lab produces the world's most intense meme of neutrinos. The
Speaker 1: facility employs about two thousand people and the scientists who
Speaker 1: work their research dark matter, dark entered and the as
Speaker 1: yet unexplained phenomena of the universe. But in those early
Speaker 1: days they were focusing on getting the lab up and running,
Speaker 1: and of course, building a particle accelerator is fairly serious business.
Speaker 1: Is is is that's something you just kind of throw together. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are many challenges and very exacting specifications that have
Speaker 1: to be meant for everything to work perfectly. It is
Speaker 1: no good for sub atomic particles traveling through vacuum pipes
Speaker 1: to encounter a whole bunch of dust and debris along
Speaker 1: the way. But cleaning out the pipes used to construct
Speaker 1: the network that would eventually carry these particles into adam
Speaker 1: smashing collisions was a challenge. They were assembling a four
Speaker 1: mile course designed to carry a beam of energy around
Speaker 1: its seven seventy thousand times in one point six seconds,
Speaker 1: and this challenge of cleanliness was one that was met
Speaker 1: with a unique solution thanks to Robert Sheldon, who was
Speaker 1: a British scientist that was working at firm A Lab
Speaker 1: at the time. Originally a chemist, Robert Sheldon born November
Speaker 1: at three was a man who could innovate and think
Speaker 1: out of the box. He was known for all kinds
Speaker 1: of off the wall ideas at firm A Lab, including
Speaker 1: one which involved the construction of panels for a doodesic
Speaker 1: dome that was being built for it in v as
Speaker 1: part of the National Etcetera Accelerator Laboratories Bubble Chamber building
Speaker 1: and along with Hank Hinterberger, also from the National Accelerator
Speaker 1: lab Um, he worked in the Technical Services Group. Sheldon
Speaker 1: pitched this idea of using recycled garbage, specifically aluminum soda
Speaker 1: and beer cans to assemble these panels for the bubble
Speaker 1: chamber building. And once the cans were collected, the tops
Speaker 1: and bottoms would be cut off and then they would
Speaker 1: be stood together honeycomb style and then sandwich between layers
Speaker 1: of glass reinforced fiber plastic sheets. So this is really
Speaker 1: groundbreaking in terms of like building a scientific structure. Firm
Speaker 1: a Lab collected cans from employees and the community for
Speaker 1: the project, and by late July of nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: the panels were complete, more than a decade after they
Speaker 1: went into place. In nineteen two, they were covered with
Speaker 1: copper to address leaking issues that had developed over the years.
Speaker 1: So what does all this have to do with the ferrets. Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: Robert Sheldon thought out of the box when it came
Speaker 1: to cleaning out those pipes for the construction of the
Speaker 1: particle accelerator as well. So in the second half of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, when they had lots of pipes to
Speaker 1: clean and no easy way to do so, he had
Speaker 1: a bolt of inspiration. Sheldon recalled poachers in Britain running
Speaker 1: ferrets into rabbit burrows on English estates to retrieve bunnies.
Speaker 1: Because ferrets were silent, especially when compared to firearms, estate
Speaker 1: owners wouldn't even know that their game was being stolen. First,
Speaker 1: he made contact with the Brookfield Zoo to search for
Speaker 1: a ferret for this project, and then Felicia, as she
Speaker 1: came to be known, was acquired from a wild game
Speaker 1: and fur farm in gay Lord, Minnesota, for the sum
Speaker 1: of thirty five dollars. Because the spaces that needed cleaning
Speaker 1: were sometimes very small, they asked for the smallest ferret possible.
Speaker 1: Felicia was only about fifteen inches long and about four
Speaker 1: inches tall when standing on all fours, as opposed to
Speaker 1: raising up on her back legs as sometimes ferrets new.
Speaker 1: In an interview with the Chicago Sun Times in September
Speaker 1: of nine, Walter Pelzarski, a firm Alab mechanical designer and
Speaker 1: Felicia's boss, said, quote, Felicia is ideal for the work.
Speaker 1: The ferret is an animal filled with curiosity and seeks
Speaker 1: out holes and burrows. Its instinct is to find out
Speaker 1: what's at the other end of a burrow, or for
Speaker 1: that matter, a tube or a pipe. Felicia's diet was
Speaker 1: similar to what mink would be fed on far farms.
Speaker 1: We won't even get into animals raised for fur. That's
Speaker 1: a whole other loaded discussion, but it was mainly made
Speaker 1: up of chicken liver, raw meat, and fish heads. She
Speaker 1: also left hamburger and would get some sometimes as a
Speaker 1: special treat. And the scientists trained Felicia to travel through
Speaker 1: these pipes while wearing a small leather collar and a harness,
Speaker 1: and this collar and harness assembly was attached to a long,
Speaker 1: lightweight string that would unferral as Felicia made her way
Speaker 1: along the lengths of pipe, and she was trained for
Speaker 1: progressively longer and longer runs, eventually taking on assignments as
Speaker 1: long as three hundred feet because that was the length
Speaker 1: of the sections that were needed for assembly of the
Speaker 1: Mason lab. So a brief science aside, a mazon is
Speaker 1: any member of a family of subatomic particles composed of
Speaker 1: a quirk and an antiquark. That is, thanks to Mariam Webster,
Speaker 1: they are unstable that many of them can last for
Speaker 1: a few billions of a second, and that's long enough
Speaker 1: for particle accelerators, or that's long enough for particle detectors
Speaker 1: to find them. You can produce them by colliding high
Speaker 1: energy subatomic particles together. So that's what this machine that
Speaker 1: they were building was going to do. Uh. So they
Speaker 1: had trained Felicia to goo these distances, and once she
Speaker 1: was through a pipe, workers would attach a swab that
Speaker 1: was soaked with cleaning fluid to one end of the string,
Speaker 1: So she was at this point out of picture she
Speaker 1: was done with her part, and then they would pull
Speaker 1: that through the other side and it would remove stray
Speaker 1: steel particles and dust, and only after they were clean
Speaker 1: in this way could they be welded together. I think
Speaker 1: as this got kicked around social media, people thought that
Speaker 1: it was a ferret with like a cleaning duster cut
Speaker 1: type thing attached to her behind and she was running
Speaker 1: through and cleaning as she went. But that really wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a very feasible for an animal to do because
Speaker 1: of the weight of it, and she was so tiny
Speaker 1: and be uh, it's kind of high enough priority that
Speaker 1: you want human hands involved in it, right, So she
Speaker 1: was basically she was carrying the string that they would
Speaker 1: use to pull the cleaner through. She became very famous
Speaker 1: for a brief period in nineteen seventy one. She was
Speaker 1: even featured in a Time magazine article in October of
Speaker 1: that year, but her time in the spotlight wasn't all
Speaker 1: that long. By December of nineteen seventy one, firm A
Speaker 1: Lab was ready to retire Felicia, and there's actually some
Speaker 1: slightly nebulous information regarding this retirement. Some sources say that
Speaker 1: Felicia had always been intended as attempts so that they
Speaker 1: could keep construction going on the lab while they worked
Speaker 1: on a long term solution for the need for pristine
Speaker 1: pipe works, but others hint that Felicia didn't work out
Speaker 1: as intended and that she stopped being really cooperative and
Speaker 1: they were going to need her to go longer distances
Speaker 1: than she was actually able to be trained for. In
Speaker 1: an article in the Aurora Beacon News in September of
Speaker 1: nineteen one, she is said to have made three successful
Speaker 1: three hundred foot runs, with nine more scheduled, and that
Speaker 1: certainly sounds like a finite number, like a plan that
Speaker 1: they had that was definitely temporary. However, in the very
Speaker 1: same article, lab technician Don Richieid is quoted as saying, quote,
Speaker 1: Felicia has saved me much time and effort will use
Speaker 1: her over and over again, and perhaps in other sections
Speaker 1: in the lab as time goes by. So it's a
Speaker 1: little contradictory in terms of what was actually uh the
Speaker 1: the catalyst of her retirement. In any case, the engineers
Speaker 1: at firm A Lab developed the robotic rig to do
Speaker 1: the same thing Felicia had been doing, and it ran
Speaker 1: on compressed air and control wires instead of liver and
Speaker 1: hamburger meat, and also didn't shed, and so Felicia no
Speaker 1: longer had to fret about staying tiny and she could
Speaker 1: lead a life of leisure. Uh. Sadly, however, Felicia's golden
Speaker 1: years of retirement were really not to be on ninety two,
Speaker 1: so late late in the following spring, the National Accelerator
Speaker 1: Lab announced in the Village Crier, which was sort of
Speaker 1: their internal newsletter, that Felicia had passed away that Sunday,
Speaker 1: May seven. Felicia was at the home of Charles Crows,
Speaker 1: who worked in the accelerator section of the Lab, and
Speaker 1: he would often care for Felicia in his home from
Speaker 1: time to time, as would Walter Pozarsky that we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: UH and Crows noticed that Felicia did not seem well
Speaker 1: on Sunday evening, and he took her to a vet
Speaker 1: Monday morning. Under the care of veterinary staff. Felicia really
Speaker 1: rallied and she seemed much improved by the following Tuesday morning.
Speaker 1: But that Tuesday afternoon, she was found dead when the
Speaker 1: vet staff came back from lunch, and a neck cropsy
Speaker 1: that they performed revealed that she had a ruptured abscess
Speaker 1: in her intestinal tract, which is not super common for ferrets.
Speaker 1: Although I could not find anything that suggested that her
Speaker 1: science work contributed to her death. I mean, as anyone
Speaker 1: who has animals nose, sometimes bizarre things just pop up.
Speaker 1: So that was felicious passing. But she left a really
Speaker 1: really huge mark on science, and she was at that time,
Speaker 1: like v one. She really was in tons of papers
Speaker 1: because it was so novel to have this high grade
Speaker 1: scientific facility being aided by a cute little animal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think people just really glommed onto that story well,
Speaker 1: and especially since ferrets don't have the reputation for being
Speaker 1: like the cleanest and nicest animals. I mean they are,
Speaker 1: they can be a little bidy and a little dirty.
Speaker 1: That would make all the ferret people. Man, all the
Speaker 1: faret people who are going to write us nasty letters.
Speaker 1: It like, that's one of the things that you hear
Speaker 1: is cautionary tales before people adapt ferrets, is that they
Speaker 1: do tend to take some care and maintenance to have
Speaker 1: them be kind and delightfully non melodious in your home. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, like any animal, I have met great ones
Speaker 1: and less than great ones, and a lot of that
Speaker 1: just has to do with the experience and knowledge of
Speaker 1: the person that raises them. Yes, so I think they're
Speaker 1: awfully cute. They are very cute. I wanted one very
Speaker 1: badly when I was a small child. So this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I know that that they're
Speaker 1: things to keep in mind everything. Keep getting a ferret.
Speaker 1: Are you sure that wasn't people warding you off? It
Speaker 1: will just bite you. No, it was actual research and
Speaker 1: ferrets when I was old enough to do such a thing.
Speaker 1: Um Anyway, So, while Felicia is the most famous animal
Speaker 1: that they ever had on staff at firm A Lad,
Speaker 1: she's not the only animal they ever worked with. No.
Speaker 1: It turned out particle physicists really love animals, apparently, so,
Speaker 1: and when you have all of that acreage to work with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and most of these types of facilities, like those those
Speaker 1: pipe works and stuff, a lot of them are underground,
Speaker 1: so they still have all the above ground space to
Speaker 1: work with. UH. So six buffalo were moved into a
Speaker 1: fence theory like a pasture near Laboratory village in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, and their pr would say that, oh, they
Speaker 1: cut the grass for us uh and that herd was
Speaker 1: expanded in nineteen one and then continued to expand as
Speaker 1: new calves were born each year thanks to the ponds
Speaker 1: around the site. And many birds would stop by during migration,
Speaker 1: and we're welcomed and often observed by birdwatching enthusiasts on
Speaker 1: the staff. Canada geese and numerous duck species were frequent visitors.
Speaker 1: Herron's have been seen during summers, as well as sandpipers
Speaker 1: and other water birds. In an article in the Village
Speaker 1: Crier from October nineteen seventy or reported fifty seven species
Speaker 1: had been identified, No doubt many more have since then.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, they established a Canada East flock,
Speaker 1: beginning with five males and five females. At the time,
Speaker 1: the species was considered relatively rare yeah, and that's um
Speaker 1: Canada Insis maxima, which is the giant Canada goose, which
Speaker 1: is a little bit different. It has since rattied in
Speaker 1: its numbers going by my quick research, so they probably
Speaker 1: helped with that. UH. In v seven, the firm and
Speaker 1: lab group hosted their first national Audubon Bird count and
Speaker 1: they did several more after that, where if you don't
Speaker 1: know what that is, birdwatchers and bird experts will come
Speaker 1: and they will listen and visually get identification on birds
Speaker 1: and they'll count them all. And it's a way that
Speaker 1: they monitor UH species migration patterns and sort of the
Speaker 1: health and robustness of a species. In late nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: Mr and Mrs James Banister of St. Charles, Illinois gave
Speaker 1: the National Accelerator Lab the gift of a small herd
Speaker 1: of Scottish Highland cattle. The cattle had been hand raised
Speaker 1: by the Banisters and allegedly even responded to basic commands
Speaker 1: and we're very gentle and loving. The herd was given
Speaker 1: a twenty acre pasture to graze on and was retained
Speaker 1: by the Lab as a registered stock herd until ninety seven,
Speaker 1: when it moved to the Brookfield Zoo. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting story because kind of like what happened with the banisters.
Speaker 1: They started with a few, and they were so careful
Speaker 1: with them and really race them almost like pets. Uh.
Speaker 1: They really flourished, and then so they moved to the
Speaker 1: spot at the Accelerator Lab, and then they realized they
Speaker 1: really did not have the ability to care for them
Speaker 1: much away. The banisters had kind of hit their limit
Speaker 1: of what they could do. Uh, they did, so they
Speaker 1: moved to the Brookfield Zoo for more specialized care. Uh.
Speaker 1: And swans, barn owls, deer, butterflies, and even coyotes have
Speaker 1: found haven on Firmal labs lands throughout the years. They
Speaker 1: actually have an entire page on their site that's just
Speaker 1: about like the wildlife that visits them and the various
Speaker 1: animals that they've kept through the years. As for Felicia's legacy,
Speaker 1: not only was she very adorable and extreme helpful in
Speaker 1: her brief time at the facility, it's estimated that she
Speaker 1: saved them thousands of dollars with her runs through the tubes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could keep construction going and they didn't have that
Speaker 1: expense hemorrhage that happens with big construction product projects of
Speaker 1: a specialized nature where waiting actually costs you money while
Speaker 1: you solve problems. So she was really doing even though
Speaker 1: it seems like she didn't do that much. She did
Speaker 1: you know, a finite number of these runs cleaning out
Speaker 1: tubes prior to their welding assembly. That was time that
Speaker 1: they would have just sat there on their hands, paying
Speaker 1: people to like to do nothing, keep those welters ready
Speaker 1: just in case. So yeah, she really did do a
Speaker 1: great deal for science and again a great deal for
Speaker 1: Farret ambassadorship. Yes, obviously it didn't make it all the
Speaker 1: way to me. I do like ferrets. I like many animals.
Speaker 1: H me too, I love them all crazy animal lady.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was really cool. Initially I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it would be cool to do an episode on Felicia,
Speaker 1: And then as I read more and more about the facility,
Speaker 1: I realized, like, they really have a whole animal connection
Speaker 1: and they do have a mindset of like giving back
Speaker 1: to the environment and you know, furthering species that need assistance,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of awesome. So that's uh, firm a
Speaker 1: lab and their love of animals. Yes, I do like that.
Speaker 1: It's a science story with animals that does not involve like,
Speaker 1: no unsettling experiments or torture at any kind. No dogs
Speaker 1: in space to make everyone cry. No, it's good, no crying.
Speaker 1: Do you also have some listener mail? I do, uh.
Speaker 1: This comes to us from our listener page, and she says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Tracy and Holly. I was just listening to the podcast
Speaker 1: on the Phoenician alphabet and was surprised to hear towards
Speaker 1: the end that it was sometimes written left to right
Speaker 1: and then right to left on alternating lines. I'm, by
Speaker 1: no means an expert in this field, but like one
Speaker 1: of you said, I'd often wondered as a kid why
Speaker 1: we didn't write that way in English, and that was
Speaker 1: you did said? That was me. That just made more
Speaker 1: sense to you know, save your eyestraam uh. And years later,
Speaker 1: page says, when I went to rob Anui, which is
Speaker 1: of course Easter Island, I read a bit of trivia
Speaker 1: that said that their native language used to be written
Speaker 1: back and forth and was one of the few languages
Speaker 1: in the world that could be written like that. I'm
Speaker 1: much more intelligent to hear of another. Thank you, yes,
Speaker 1: Wrongo Wrongo, which is how I think it's pronounced. Is
Speaker 1: indeed a boost feedin UH language, as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: not really commonly spoken anymore. I think now the people
Speaker 1: that live on Easter Island speak Spanish is their primary language,
Speaker 1: and some learn good native language UM later on in life.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if even the native language still
Speaker 1: does that when they learn it. I know the old
Speaker 1: version did the back and forth lines. UH and Page
Speaker 1: also sent us a picture of her cat who had
Speaker 1: just had some facial surgery done. And she's got this
Speaker 1: awesome partial shaved mohawk situation, and she looks like a
Speaker 1: total punk rock cat and she's very, very cute. We've
Speaker 1: gotten so many great cat pictures. I love it. It's
Speaker 1: like crazy Cat Lady Heaven in my inbox. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it so even if I don't call out
Speaker 1: and mention your cat by name, like I'm enjoying all
Speaker 1: of them. I promise you it makes a day so
Speaker 1: fun to start. Yes, looking at everybody's animals. You can
Speaker 1: send us other animals too, are like a mama got faret,
Speaker 1: send me pictures. They are so photogenic. Yes, I would
Speaker 1: much rather get to work and have lots of animal pictures.
Speaker 1: Than eighteen contradictory pronunciations. For some word that we've pronounced
Speaker 1: in an episode, it happens. We do our best, but
Speaker 1: it happens. If you would like to write to us
Speaker 1: and share your animal pictures or your thoughts, you can
Speaker 1: do so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also connect with us on Twitter at misston history
Speaker 1: and on Facebook dot com slash History class stuff. You
Speaker 1: can find our tumbler at missed in history dot tumbler
Speaker 1: dot com, and you can look us up on Pinterest
Speaker 1: as well. UH. If you would like to learn more
Speaker 1: about the topic we talked about today, you can go
Speaker 1: to our website and type in the words particle accelerators
Speaker 1: in the search bar, and you will get the article
Speaker 1: how Adam Smashers Work, which does indeed mention firm lab
Speaker 1: uh in the article. If you would like to learn
Speaker 1: about that, or really just about anything else your mind
Speaker 1: can conjure, you can visit our website, and that is
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
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