Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And boy,
Speaker 1: we got a treat for you today. It is time
Speaker 1: to jump into a listener Maile episode purely about squirrels.
Speaker 1: That's right. We put out the two parter right about
Speaker 1: squirrels and they're they're they're bloody secrets and the mystery
Speaker 1: surrounding them and some of the the folkloric ideas that
Speaker 1: have risen up around them, and uh and what the
Speaker 1: science actually has to say. I like how you were like, oh,
Speaker 1: a two parter, right, as if you don't remember, and
Speaker 1: as if you haven't been thinking about squirrels in those
Speaker 1: two episodes every day since then. It's It's true. In
Speaker 1: my own house, it's been quite a squirrel odyssey since
Speaker 1: those episodes came out, because, uh the first episode I
Speaker 1: had my family listened to, and I think I I
Speaker 1: mentioned how we were watching a lot of squirrel activity
Speaker 1: at our bird feeders, and uh so a few different
Speaker 1: things occurred. So for starters, I was talking about about
Speaker 1: the scugs and was referring to the squirrels uh as
Speaker 1: an entire species as skugs. Yes, And in doing so
Speaker 1: I managed to get the words scug kind of like
Speaker 1: partially banned from my household. Well, me and my son
Speaker 1: were using it, and my wife she was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know this. This doesn't sound like a friendly term
Speaker 1: to use for squirrels, and and and you eventually convinced me.
Speaker 1: I still think of them as scugs, but I I
Speaker 1: catch myself and uh, and find myself referring to them
Speaker 1: as squirrels more often. So that term comes from we
Speaker 1: started using it in the episode because of that letter,
Speaker 1: but from Benjamin Franklin, uh, describing the squirrel, his pet squirrel, Mungo.
Speaker 1: I think that got killed by a dog, and he
Speaker 1: referred to squirrels in the letter as scugs. I think
Speaker 1: with if I'd stand the reasoning correctly, it seems to
Speaker 1: be that Franklin thought skug was like a common name
Speaker 1: applied to pet squirrels, the same way you might look
Speaker 1: at a bunch of dogs and say, look at all
Speaker 1: those rovers. Yeah. Yeah, so really we're we're It's like
Speaker 1: we've taken it upon ourselves, and our listeners have taken
Speaker 1: upon themselves themselves. Too to rebrand squirrels as skugs and
Speaker 1: uh And I guess part of it too for me
Speaker 1: is like realizing, like, Okay, this first grader, do I
Speaker 1: really want to to have him grow up and be
Speaker 1: the sort of person who refers to squirrels as scugs
Speaker 1: and nobody around him knows what he's talking about. I
Speaker 1: think people will know because of us. Possibly. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also have found that in response to those episodes, I've
Speaker 1: actually grown um more affectionate for the squirrels that feeded
Speaker 1: our bird feeder. I've I've made sure to put out
Speaker 1: water for them a lot because the bird fountain we have,
Speaker 1: the birds don't really mess with it all that much,
Speaker 1: but the squirrels will delicately, uh like lower themselves down
Speaker 1: to it and drink water from it. And it's so
Speaker 1: delightful to watch because you know, normally squirrels are just
Speaker 1: scurrying about, fighting with each other, you know, looking up
Speaker 1: for for predators, and they're just constant motion. But when
Speaker 1: they drink the water, there's something uh something precious about them.
Speaker 1: You appreciate them more because you know more about the
Speaker 1: violence and the predation and all that. Because it's because
Speaker 1: you can see the shadow. Now. Yeah, it's like when
Speaker 1: you when you see somebody's dark side. Uh, it's the
Speaker 1: anti hero effect in the movies, you know, where you
Speaker 1: suddenly by seeing the dark side, you actually care more
Speaker 1: about them. I should also say that our bird feed
Speaker 1: are eventually attracted a rat and I got to see
Speaker 1: or I got to It's not not like it's a
Speaker 1: special treat. But I witnessed a scuffle between a squirrel
Speaker 1: and a rat. Who won, Oh the squirrel. The squirrel
Speaker 1: drove the rat away, And I think part of that
Speaker 1: just comes down to like squirrel nature versus rat nature.
Speaker 1: Like the rat is gonna obviously gonna be A'm not
Speaker 1: have to find it with me. I'll come back and
Speaker 1: eat it during the night, and the squirrel. But the
Speaker 1: squirrel is more like, no, I'm eating this now, you
Speaker 1: will go away from me. So you didn't put them
Speaker 1: in a box and make them fight like that guy
Speaker 1: who wrote into Jama No, no, no no. I think
Speaker 1: we're still what what is cannon? Now? Are we saying cannon?
Speaker 1: Is that that didn't actually happen, and that was some
Speaker 1: fourteen year old making things up. I want to believe that,
Speaker 1: but who knows. Okay, Well, maybe we should get right
Speaker 1: into some of your excellent, wonderful messages about squirrels. Robert,
Speaker 1: would you like to read us this email from Diane
Speaker 1: to start us off here? All right, let's do it. Well, first,
Speaker 1: let's call the robot over here. I forgot Carney. Carney
Speaker 1: just covered in squirrels. All right, here we go, Diane writes, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, I just finished listening to The Bloody
Speaker 1: Beasts Part one. You're a very interesting discussion about squirrels
Speaker 1: that have been observed displaying carnivorous behavior. It brought to
Speaker 1: mind an incident I witnessed in the summer of two
Speaker 1: thousand four. I was on an archaeological excavation in the
Speaker 1: Orkney Islands and Archipelago between Scotland and Norway. At the moment,
Speaker 1: I can't recall which island my fellow archaeologist and I
Speaker 1: were on, but I think it was Papa Westry. As
Speaker 1: we were walking up a hill looking towards the sea,
Speaker 1: we saw a sheep nibbling on the flipper of a
Speaker 1: dead seal. What they washed up on the shore a
Speaker 1: bit odd, I grant you, but animals that live in
Speaker 1: environments that offer minimal resources such as many of the
Speaker 1: islands that make up the Orkneys, will find ways to
Speaker 1: supplement whatever their diet is lacking. I'm certain the sheep
Speaker 1: will never adapt to actually heading out to sea to
Speaker 1: hunt for a seal meal, but they have no qualms
Speaker 1: about eating those unfortunate enough to have died of other causes.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the meat eating squirrels are compensating for,
Speaker 1: but I look forward to hearing a part two. Thank
Speaker 1: you for consistently informative and entertaining shows, Dr Diane, And
Speaker 1: then she includes her last name, which we tend to
Speaker 1: edit out of the show, but I include that just
Speaker 1: because she's a doctor. It's worth noting. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: the story about the opportunistic carnivory of of sheep, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't make me wonder. Okay, so we believe that
Speaker 1: whales came from a former terrestrial tetrapod mammal that slowly
Speaker 1: over time adapted itself to a more and more aquatic
Speaker 1: lifestyle until until they just became fully water dwelling organisms.
Speaker 1: Could sheep do the same thing? And what would the
Speaker 1: cetacean equivalence of future sheep descendants be. What also makes
Speaker 1: me think back to our episode on on Cambrian life
Speaker 1: forms and getting into the idea of essentially the invention
Speaker 1: of predation. The the and that I put invention in
Speaker 1: quotation marks here because obviously simple organisms are not consciously
Speaker 1: inventing anything, but a trend emerges where one organism is
Speaker 1: simply consuming another. Yeah, and this is a hypothesis about
Speaker 1: what caused what's known as the Cambrian explosion. And there
Speaker 1: are some people who I think dispute to what extent
Speaker 1: it actually should be considered an explosion or not. But basically,
Speaker 1: during the Cambrian period, about five million years ago, we
Speaker 1: suddenly see this proliferation speciation events, many different animal body
Speaker 1: forms arising from previously out of you know, not much.
Speaker 1: So where does all of this sudden animal diversity come from?
Speaker 1: One hypothesis is, well, it was the introduction of predation
Speaker 1: that suddenly set off these evolutionary arms races and drove
Speaker 1: animals to evolve defenses in the different kinds of defenses
Speaker 1: they evolved, or predation tactics they evolved, Uh, gave rise
Speaker 1: to all this diversity of life. Hey, and speaking of
Speaker 1: Cambrian life forms, our store has a new T shirt
Speaker 1: slash sticker slash wherever you want to put this image. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's our logo. Uh. You know that abstract symbol that
Speaker 1: we have surrounded by Cambrian life forms in some agency. Robert,
Speaker 1: I love your dedication to plugging merch and that that
Speaker 1: is right. Remember that we've got merch. If you've got
Speaker 1: money and you want to spend it on some of
Speaker 1: our org go go merch up, go to our store.
Speaker 1: It's fun stuff. We wouldn't but we would not have
Speaker 1: it in the store if if we didn't think it
Speaker 1: was fun. Okay, here's another message we got. This one
Speaker 1: is from our listener, Victoria. Victoria rights, Hi, Robert and Joe.
Speaker 1: One of my first jobs, about fifteen years ago, was
Speaker 1: as an animal care attendant at the Toronto Wildlife Center,
Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization that treats and rehabilitates sick and injured wildlife.
Speaker 1: I learned a healthy fear of squirrels while I was there.
Speaker 1: Whenever we were handling squirrels, we would wear thick leather gloves,
Speaker 1: often layered over chain mail gloves. I once got bit
Speaker 1: through the gloves. Thankfully, they did their job pretty well,
Speaker 1: but I could still sometimes feel the bite years later,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there for this particular incident, and so my
Speaker 1: second hand memory of the story may be exaggerated, but
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But I remember a story of
Speaker 1: a time when a sparrow got loose in the room
Speaker 1: where the squirrels cages were. The staff member working in
Speaker 1: their grabbed a net to recapture the loose bird, but
Speaker 1: before they were able to catch the fugitive, it landed
Speaker 1: on the outside of a squirrel cage. The squirrel inside
Speaker 1: managed to grab the sparrow through the cage bars and
Speaker 1: eat its face. Another interesting observation about unexpected carnivores from
Speaker 1: that job. At one point we noticed that all of
Speaker 1: the edmun staff at the organization were vegetarian or vegan,
Speaker 1: while all of the animal care staff were meat eaters.
Speaker 1: The prevailing theory is that when you work closely with
Speaker 1: the animals, you realize that they'd eat you if they
Speaker 1: had a chance, so you don't feel bad about eating
Speaker 1: their brethren. Looking forward to your next episode, Victoria, well
Speaker 1: that's a wonderful story. I mean, it does also make
Speaker 1: me think back to some of the the differences between
Speaker 1: wild squirrels and squirrels and captivity. So conceivably, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of reading into I have no idea how long
Speaker 1: these squirrels had been in uh, in their cages, but
Speaker 1: if they had been deprived of any you know, natural
Speaker 1: ways to take in certain nutrients, they may have been
Speaker 1: essentially starved for them. So of wish you would talk
Speaker 1: into a bird face that is so metal it ate
Speaker 1: the bird's face. Well, you know, we're attached to faces
Speaker 1: as as humans, but we have to kind of strip
Speaker 1: away our our our human complications here and realize the
Speaker 1: face is delicious. Yeah, yeah, all right, here's another one.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Nathan. Nathan writes and says,
Speaker 1: love the show, guys, keep up the great work. I'm
Speaker 1: a local pharmacist here in Atlanta and had to show
Speaker 1: you the squirrel video I took at my house in
Speaker 1: Grant Park. My favorite episodes are the Squirrel double part
Speaker 1: and the two thousand one episode. Also really like the
Speaker 1: salamander interview. Since I'm a biology lover, uh, feel free
Speaker 1: to hit me up if you have any drug questions.
Speaker 1: Thanks Nate. And then Nate attaches a video that appears
Speaker 1: to be a squirrel going to town on a barbecue
Speaker 1: rib bone. Now one thing that's true. I think there
Speaker 1: was a blog for a while that was just like
Speaker 1: Bones of Atlanta that was like just images discarded bones
Speaker 1: of discarded barbecue bones on the sidewalk. So I mean,
Speaker 1: there's good barbecue restaurants here, so people often will walk
Speaker 1: around with a clamshell full of barbecue and just throw
Speaker 1: the bones down. Well, let's see Grant Park. Which which
Speaker 1: barbecue restaurant would it have been? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: uh no, I don't know the answer. But they're they're like,
Speaker 1: there's barbecue restaurants near you know, my walking the dog
Speaker 1: can sometimes be perilous because like there's just barbecue rib
Speaker 1: bones and chicken bones and stuff like that hanging out.
Speaker 1: And this appears to be a video of a squirrel
Speaker 1: that got its hands on a rib bone and it's
Speaker 1: just gnawing like there's no tomorrow. This is This reminds
Speaker 1: me again of what we're talking about with squirrels eating
Speaker 1: the flesh of road kill and the artificial, uh nature
Speaker 1: of that situation. This is a very This is a
Speaker 1: similar situation like due to human civilization, we not only
Speaker 1: have dead animals killed in the road, we also have
Speaker 1: lots of roadside bones with flesh still hanging off the
Speaker 1: bone and some delicious you know, red sauce as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: next message. This is actually one of a genre of
Speaker 1: messages that we got from listeners who wanted to correct
Speaker 1: something I said. So I said, uh, squirrels are now
Speaker 1: found pretty much everywhere except Antarctica. And some of our
Speaker 1: New Zealander listeners disagreed, they said. For example, Liam writes
Speaker 1: in saying I love your show so much and all
Speaker 1: the shows on the How Stuff Works Network, but I
Speaker 1: absolutely had to let you know that there are no
Speaker 1: squirrels here in little old New Zealand, and I myself
Speaker 1: have never seen one. So jealous you see them every day.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great work, and thanks for giving me
Speaker 1: great podcast to fall asleep to every night. I hope
Speaker 1: you did not fall asleep during the squirrel Castration myth episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: because man, what kind of dreams would that produce? Oh?
Speaker 1: Now here's a question for everybody. If there are no
Speaker 1: squirrels in New Zealand, that also means there are no
Speaker 1: squirrels in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie.
Speaker 1: Oh no, but I'm trying to think back. I recently
Speaker 1: reread The Hobbit with my son. I can't remember if
Speaker 1: Tolkien ever mentioned squirrels, Like there are a lot of
Speaker 1: scenes of you know, our characters traveling through woodland areas.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking surely he mentioned squirrels at some point or another.
Speaker 1: Surely he did. I'd love to hear from anyone out
Speaker 1: there who can who can answer that question for me?
Speaker 1: And if there are no, then what does that mean
Speaker 1: for those movies? Don't we need to go back in
Speaker 1: like the next big wave of c g I that
Speaker 1: is applied to those films that've got to add some
Speaker 1: c g I squirrels to make it right. What is
Speaker 1: the Elfish word for squirrel? Scooky doo or something. Probably
Speaker 1: school Doc should take a break, Robert, let's do. Let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and we'll come back with more
Speaker 1: squirrel emails. That's all this episode is going to be. Alright,
Speaker 1: We're back, Okay. We got an amazing message, a couple
Speaker 1: of messages from our listener Bevy uh Betty. Betty really
Speaker 1: brought it. So she writes, Hi, guys, I'm writing with
Speaker 1: some thoughts about your episode on squirrels. However, let me
Speaker 1: start off by saying I'm a huge fan of your show.
Speaker 1: I listened to an absolutely adore a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: pod casts in the house stuff Works family, but you
Speaker 1: guys are definitely one of my faves. All thank you.
Speaker 1: That's some high praise because the house stuff Works network
Speaker 1: has so many wonderful shows. Well, thank you, Betty, Betty Rights.
Speaker 1: I volunteer at a wildlife shelter for about eight hours
Speaker 1: a week and right now in the Pacific Northwest at least,
Speaker 1: it is the height of baby season for Eastern gray
Speaker 1: and Douglas squirrels. In fact, now that our baby possums
Speaker 1: are all grown up, our nursery is currently exclusively filled
Speaker 1: with baby squirrels and one chip month, most of the
Speaker 1: babies ended up with us because they were orphaned, though
Speaker 1: in some unfortunate cases they were brought in by well
Speaker 1: meaning folks who didn't realize the parents were likely just
Speaker 1: off gathering food. Yeah, this is a common Uh. This
Speaker 1: is a common thing that comes up with with wildlife
Speaker 1: rescue groups. Is that a lot of times you people
Speaker 1: think they're doing the right thing by bringing the animal in,
Speaker 1: while in reality they should have perhaps just waited for
Speaker 1: the the the parent to to do its thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess don't do that. Uh so. Picking up
Speaker 1: with Betty's message, I have some theory about why squirrels
Speaker 1: are sometimes mistakenly thought to be castrated, although the fact
Speaker 1: that their testicles only descenduring mating season is probably a
Speaker 1: larger factor in the myth than what's contained in my hypotheses. However,
Speaker 1: the following may help outline some contributing factors that can
Speaker 1: help explain why some hunters claim to have observed fresh
Speaker 1: castration wounds on juvenile males. Basically, I have four ideas,
Speaker 1: which are as follows man four ideas about squirrel castration.
Speaker 1: This is rich number one, at least in juveniles. The
Speaker 1: anuses of both sexes don't really look like anuses. Instead,
Speaker 1: they look like small red dots and are located directly
Speaker 1: beneath the genitals, right near where one might expect the
Speaker 1: testicles to be. Though it would be a strange mistake
Speaker 1: to make, I suppose it would be possible that the
Speaker 1: untrained eye could mistake the anus for a small scab
Speaker 1: resulting from a recent castration, especially if you were already
Speaker 1: expecting to find such a wound. The fact that the
Speaker 1: alleged castration wounds have and described as being remarkably cleanly cut.
Speaker 1: Makes it even more likely that the surprisingly unanosy appearance
Speaker 1: of the anus could be misinterpreted as the remains of
Speaker 1: a juvenile's testicles. That sounds reasonable, I'd say, uh, point
Speaker 1: number one already a home run. Number two. Why am
Speaker 1: I so intimately acquainted with the appearance of squirrel butts,
Speaker 1: you might ask, Well, when caring for baby squirrels, you
Speaker 1: have to be sure to regularly stimulate each baby's anus
Speaker 1: slash genitals in order to help them poop slash p
Speaker 1: We typically do this using a wet cotton ball to
Speaker 1: gently wipe the squirrels bellies, but in the wild the
Speaker 1: mother uses her tongue to achieve the same result. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's even possible, although probably a bit of a stretch,
Speaker 1: that some misinterpreted castration wounds were the result of accidental
Speaker 1: biting on the mother's part. This makes sense as well.
Speaker 1: This is a solid there. And both of these really
Speaker 1: drive home the fact that if you are watching any
Speaker 1: wild animal, or even a domestic animal, and you are
Speaker 1: just expecting very anthropomorphic or sort of beatrics Potter story
Speaker 1: book um behavior, you're going to be disappointed because these
Speaker 1: are animals, and they're going to behave as such. They're
Speaker 1: then they're not going to behave necessarily like you expect
Speaker 1: them too. Well. Also like charging animal behaviors with associations
Speaker 1: to human taboos, because like the idea of a mother
Speaker 1: licking that their offsprings anus, that that's like so weird
Speaker 1: in the human context that you see an animal doing
Speaker 1: that and you think like there must be something sinister
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, yeah, indeed. Um, speaking of which, I'm
Speaker 1: definitely hoping that we get to do a Thanksgiving episode
Speaker 1: on poop eating and animals, because this is another example
Speaker 1: of something that is certainly a taboo and human circles,
Speaker 1: but there's some wonderful examples from the animal world in
Speaker 1: which it is regularly practiced and is a part of
Speaker 1: being a healthy young member of that species. We already
Speaker 1: smash the cuteness of squirrels into oblivion. We're about to
Speaker 1: take bunnies from you as well. No, no, no, I
Speaker 1: take that back. Squirrels are still cute. They're still cute,
Speaker 1: even though they sometimes the flesh and brains and whatever. Alright,
Speaker 1: So back to Bevy's email number three point number three.
Speaker 1: In the episode, I believe that you expressed doubt at
Speaker 1: the theory that some of the misinterpreted wounds were the
Speaker 1: result of other baby squirrels trying to suckle on the
Speaker 1: mail's mistaking their privates for mother's nipples. It's possible that
Speaker 1: I made that doubt up, though, no. I That was
Speaker 1: what one one author wrote into jama when they were
Speaker 1: having the big late nineteenth century squirrel castration debate. One
Speaker 1: author wrote in with this as a hypothesis, and I
Speaker 1: was trying I couldn't quite tell if the person who
Speaker 1: wrote this was joking, because it sounded like it might
Speaker 1: be a joke, but he was saying, like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it's other squirrels in the nest trying to get nutrition
Speaker 1: and mistaking well, you know, so here picking up with
Speaker 1: Bebby's email. It's possible that I made this doubt up,
Speaker 1: though I was trying to clean up some particularly rank
Speaker 1: possum poop while I was listening to the episode, so
Speaker 1: I was understandably a bit distracted. However, I think that
Speaker 1: it's actually a valid theory to consider. Although I haven't
Speaker 1: observed it myself, I've heard from other volunteers at the
Speaker 1: shelter that it's relatively common for possum infants to try
Speaker 1: to suckle on each other if they have no mother present.
Speaker 1: I've never heard or seen of this behavior in baby squirrels,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely a possibility. Well that's interesting, so maybe
Speaker 1: that that writer was not joking. Number four. My final
Speaker 1: note regarding squirrel castration is that, at least in juveniles,
Speaker 1: male and female squirrels look very similar. Interestingly to me
Speaker 1: at least, though maybe I'm just weird. This does not
Speaker 1: mean that a male's penis is hard to spot, but
Speaker 1: actually the reverse females instead look a bit like they
Speaker 1: have penises. I'm not quite sure why that is, since
Speaker 1: it seems less likely that females would have volvas that
Speaker 1: protrude from the body than it would be for males
Speaker 1: to have penises that stayed close to the body. Well,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be that crazy. I mean, I think we've
Speaker 1: talked about hyenas on this show before, and I have
Speaker 1: a similar situation, with female hyenas being the larger of
Speaker 1: the species and having some similar characteristics with their their
Speaker 1: sex organs. Yeah uh so, she continues, I don't know
Speaker 1: if the sexes remain difficult to differentiate once they reach adulthood.
Speaker 1: Since adult squirrels are vicious little monsters whose butts I
Speaker 1: luckily don't have to deal with on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: But if they do, then in the very specific case
Speaker 1: of Hunter kills a male squirrel with descended testicles and
Speaker 1: then compares it side by side with a female, it
Speaker 1: might be conceivable to maybe think that the female was
Speaker 1: a male without testicles. Combine this with the possibility of
Speaker 1: misinterpreting the appearance of the anus, and you've got yourself
Speaker 1: an urban legend in the making. I apologize for such
Speaker 1: a long email, but your episode was absolutely fascinating and
Speaker 1: completely sparked my interest. Keep up the good work, Bevy.
Speaker 1: Oh and then Betty also shared some photos from the
Speaker 1: shelter with us, and then another follow up from Bevy quote,
Speaker 1: I have an update on my email. I asked some
Speaker 1: of my fellow volunteers about squirrels suckling on each other,
Speaker 1: and it turns out it's quite common. In fact, we
Speaker 1: had to split a group of siblings up yesterday for
Speaker 1: that very reason. Well, I don't think the suckling would
Speaker 1: create raised areas on the skin, it could definitely explain
Speaker 1: scabs and other injuries. On the genitals of juveniles. And
Speaker 1: that concludes Bevy's massive dissertation on squirrel anuses and genitals. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's great, That's exactly the kind of field report we
Speaker 1: were looking for. This was an awesome listener, Male Bevy,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Now I just have to go
Speaker 1: back to our discussion of of barbecue bones for a second.
Speaker 1: And isn't it interesting that you know that that some
Speaker 1: humans might be thinking, Oh, I'm so creeped out because
Speaker 1: squirrels are actually eating meat. We the species that have
Speaker 1: streets literally littered with the bones of the creatures that
Speaker 1: we consume, as as sometimes it's just mere snacks. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems a little absurd, doesn't it. Well, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: like I'm waiting to get on the bus and I
Speaker 1: throw my barbecue bones on the sidewalk, and that's normal,
Speaker 1: but if a squirrel comes and picks it up, that's weird.
Speaker 1: All right? I have one I want to read here
Speaker 1: from Tony. Tony says I was very pleasantly surprised to
Speaker 1: see two recent episodes dealing slowly with squirrels. I've only
Speaker 1: listened to the first at the time I am writing this,
Speaker 1: but I had to immediately send up this email. My
Speaker 1: girlfriend and I recently moved into a new home to
Speaker 1: the horror music and discovered a fair amount of squirrels
Speaker 1: roaming the property. Thinking they were adorable, we begin feeding them,
Speaker 1: much to the chagrin of my family members, who told
Speaker 1: us we'd regret it. We ignore there weren't in warnings
Speaker 1: and continued to put out a buffet of choices each day,
Speaker 1: corn seeds and unsalted in the shell peanuts. We bought
Speaker 1: it just for them. To make a long story short,
Speaker 1: the squirrels have become very demanding, and on some mornings
Speaker 1: there will be no fewer than six or seven on
Speaker 1: our deck begging for food. They'll run along the window
Speaker 1: sill or sit on our lawn chairs. In some cases
Speaker 1: of particularly aggressive squirrel will scratch at the door or
Speaker 1: even jump onto the screen and climb around until we
Speaker 1: provide nourishment. In the first attacked attached picture, you will
Speaker 1: see a black squirrel on its hind legs begging, and
Speaker 1: in the second a squirrel is on the screen which
Speaker 1: you can't really see, making for a fascinating image. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the informative and entertaining shows. I'm off to listen
Speaker 1: to part two now, uh, and that was Tony from
Speaker 1: a suburb of Chicago. We never heard from Tony again too,
Speaker 1: so I did not know if the squirrels eventually just
Speaker 1: burst into the house like Night of a Living Dead
Speaker 1: and just consumed everybody they got him. Now he mentioned
Speaker 1: this photo. This is a photo of a squirrel climbing
Speaker 1: on the outside of a screen door. But you can't
Speaker 1: see the screen in the photo, so it just looks
Speaker 1: like a squirrel hovering upside down in the hair with
Speaker 1: its belly exposed. This is pretty good. Yeah, I like it. Uh.
Speaker 1: I feel sort of the same way with the squirrel
Speaker 1: feedings that we're going on at our house up because
Speaker 1: for a while I would when I would go to
Speaker 1: put out the meal worms, I think all they would
Speaker 1: have to hear is just the sound of the the
Speaker 1: aluminum container that we keep them keep the food in.
Speaker 1: And then six or seven would come and they would
Speaker 1: and they would be like a scuffle, Like which squirrel
Speaker 1: we'd even watched, you know, mused to see, like which
Speaker 1: squirrel is kind of the alpha squirrel just able to
Speaker 1: fight off all the others. So is it gonna be
Speaker 1: the you know, the slightly red faced squirrel or the
Speaker 1: blondie squirrel. It's certainly not going to be the warble
Speaker 1: covered squirrel because we have gotten to see a couple
Speaker 1: of those there. They we mentioned those in those episodes
Speaker 1: about how the bot flies will affect them and they'll
Speaker 1: have these warbles in which the larva are growing. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've seen a couple of those. It was also
Speaker 1: very interesting to observe them the week or two before
Speaker 1: my family went on a trip to Costa Rica. Costa
Speaker 1: Rica being one of the parts of the world where
Speaker 1: you will encounter the human bot fly that we that
Speaker 1: we discussed in the episode, So you know, you couldn't
Speaker 1: help but think in the back of your mind, like like, oh, God,
Speaker 1: is this gonna happened to me? Am I going to
Speaker 1: come back from Costa Rica with with giant warbles in
Speaker 1: my neck full of larval spawn. Fortunately didn't happen, Like
Speaker 1: that would have made a good episode though, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: figured it was like, well, it would probably be good
Speaker 1: for the show if I got a bottle fly. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, we could even bust out some video of it.
Speaker 1: But thankfully I didn't have to make that. That choice. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a little sore at Nature for denying us hashtag content. Alright,
Speaker 1: this next message comes to us from our listener, Emily.
Speaker 1: She writes, good afternoon, guys, huge fan of the show.
Speaker 1: I especially loved your squirrel episodes as I was listening
Speaker 1: to you discuss the possibly carnivorous squirrels hunting down and
Speaker 1: eating deer. And to be clear, we we didn't really
Speaker 1: believe that story. No, that was the one that came
Speaker 1: to us via the Russian media as right. But Emily writes,
Speaker 1: first of all, I believe it. I then remembered that
Speaker 1: last winter where I live in northern Wisconsin, it was
Speaker 1: quite a tough one for our wildlife friends. It was
Speaker 1: bitterly cold, we had several feet of snow, and the
Speaker 1: winter was very long. It continue you to snow well
Speaker 1: into May. The deer population had had a particularly hard
Speaker 1: time around the time where vegetation should have been returning.
Speaker 1: The deer found only frozen dirt. They started starving off.
Speaker 1: The deer were desperate, and we observed some odd behaviors
Speaker 1: from them. The strangest was the deer appeared to become carnivorous.
Speaker 1: There were many reports of deer eating birds and squirrels,
Speaker 1: So if squirrels turned to hunting deer, the deer turned
Speaker 1: to hunting squirrels. The forest is a rough place, and
Speaker 1: she shares some videos she found online. Again, I'm a
Speaker 1: huge fan. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you, Emily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've actually heard about deer eating meat before, and and
Speaker 1: not not predation and hunting, but like scavenging from carcasses.
Speaker 1: It's surprising how many animals we think of as purely
Speaker 1: herbivorous will dive into some meat if, if, if, nature
Speaker 1: drives them to it. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it's all energy, right,
Speaker 1: all right, here's another one. This one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Merle. Merle writes in and says Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: I just finished loosten to both squirrel episodes and found
Speaker 1: them entertaining and informative. I trapped squirrels for a living.
Speaker 1: I know this sounds an odd job for the twenty
Speaker 1: one century. However, it is also a very important job.
Speaker 1: Ground squirrels, as implied by their name, it dig a
Speaker 1: long and deep burrows. This is a fine way to
Speaker 1: avoid predators and is excellent out in the wilderness. The
Speaker 1: problem occurs when they burrow into our levies and dams,
Speaker 1: when our waterway structures become unstable, flooding and mass property
Speaker 1: damage occurs, as well as possible loss of life. While
Speaker 1: I don't hate squirrels, I recognize the need to manage
Speaker 1: their population. Just to note, I live trap. Anything that
Speaker 1: isn't a ground squirrel is released. Love the show. Now,
Speaker 1: I love that bit of insight, and it just sort
Speaker 1: of the uh, the real world ramifications of of squirrel
Speaker 1: activity and that it is going to become necessary to
Speaker 1: to to check their populations in some instances. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can certainly see how that would be a big problem
Speaker 1: when they're when you're talking about levies and damns. Though,
Speaker 1: I just got a horrible parallel thought, which is, like,
Speaker 1: I bet there's some there's some squirrel control going on
Speaker 1: in like California golf courses, right, Oh yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of unnatural things going on with with
Speaker 1: California golf courses. I'm picturing Caddyshack, but it's a but
Speaker 1: it's a ground squirrel. Oh yeah, Caddyshack. Well, the Catty
Speaker 1: Shack gives it. Uh, you know, I'm not much nicer
Speaker 1: we can relate to Caddy Shack. There's very little in
Speaker 1: the golfing world I can relate to, but I can
Speaker 1: relate to catty shack ground squirrels groove into yacht rock,
Speaker 1: chewing up golf courses on the West coast behind. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm on the squirrel side all right. This one is
Speaker 1: from our listener, Trey Uh. Trey says, you're welcome to
Speaker 1: share any of this info. Keep doing a great job.
Speaker 1: I am from western North Carolina, near Tennessee. I grew
Speaker 1: up with very old school grandparents. The first story is
Speaker 1: the skug hunt. We spent a lot of time hunting
Speaker 1: or cutting down trees. On several occasions, during droughts, we
Speaker 1: would witness migrations. The floor would appear to be alive
Speaker 1: with so many gray squirrels on the move. Papa said
Speaker 1: they would chase down prey as a pack. I never
Speaker 1: witnessed them killing anything, but Papal would never lie. The
Speaker 1: second story is about squirrels and castration. When it comes
Speaker 1: down to, dominant squirrels are amazing. I've witnessed on four
Speaker 1: occasions fights happening in the trees. Everything was a target,
Speaker 1: but the goal was to knock the other squirrel off
Speaker 1: to be eaten by the dogs. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'd put that much consciousness into it. Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: put the dogs there. Yeah, But anyway, some of them
Speaker 1: were smart enough to pick the terrain and would lure
Speaker 1: the other squirrels to their doom. Waiting below was the
Speaker 1: faithful dog watching for the falling easy prey. I've witnessed
Speaker 1: it many locations because squirrels do a chattering noise before
Speaker 1: the attack. Also watch a few videos on skinning and
Speaker 1: cleaning squirrels. The testicles do rise into the abdomen. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes they do. Uh, Trey says. The squirrel inferret story
Speaker 1: is most likely BS. We certainly hope so a cape squirrel.
Speaker 1: Given the opportunity, We'll put somebody in the hospital from scratches.
Speaker 1: These deep lacerations often need stitches. I was shocked about
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon story about squirrels climbing on people. I was.
Speaker 1: I was shocked by this story as I was there
Speaker 1: to witness it a little. Luckily nobody was hurt. Now
Speaker 1: I'm a little curious about Papa's story about the floor
Speaker 1: of the forest being covered in squirrels. I mean it
Speaker 1: sounds like the ending to um like a Tennessee based
Speaker 1: a weird fiction story. From like the thirties. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: what's that movie is like Willard where the dad from
Speaker 1: Back to the Future is controlling an army Crispin Glover. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that one. I remember thinking he was creepy
Speaker 1: in it. So if Crispin Glover controls an army of
Speaker 1: rats to do as bidding witch actor controls an army
Speaker 1: of squirrels, oh, you would have like a it would
Speaker 1: be a squirrel lord. Maybe. I think Christopher Walkin could
Speaker 1: play that role. Maybe how about Tim Curry the skug Lord. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Tim Curry could have played the scug Lord at least
Speaker 1: a few decades back. Um, this reminds me In Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons, you have these creatures called cranium rats. They're yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty great because they're they're essentially just each one
Speaker 1: individually is just a rat, and they're the product of
Speaker 1: the elipids, the mind ful airs, and they you know,
Speaker 1: they'll go around and they're kind of spies for the elithids.
Speaker 1: One cranium rat not the big of a deal. But
Speaker 1: if you have two cranium rats, well they have the
Speaker 1: pooled mind of two creatures. Three cranium rats have the
Speaker 1: pooled mind of three creatures. If you have a swarm
Speaker 1: of cranium rats, then you have they all have one
Speaker 1: collective mind, and then they take on all these additional
Speaker 1: psionic powers, so that they become quite a difficult creature
Speaker 1: to encounter if you encounter enough of them. I wonder
Speaker 1: if you could have a similar situation if the elithids
Speaker 1: were working on the surface, you could have cranium squirrels
Speaker 1: sending you know, big big rugs of squirrels sending I
Speaker 1: kick fireballs that their enemies. You're gonna work this into
Speaker 1: your next campaign. If they ever get back to the surface,
Speaker 1: they're all stuck in the under dark, so it's just
Speaker 1: gonna be probably rats from here on out. It could
Speaker 1: be cranium ground squirrels burrow all the way down. Okay,
Speaker 1: that could work. Yeah, I'll go with that. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: we need to take another quick break and when we
Speaker 1: come back we will finish up our exploration of listener
Speaker 1: mail about squirrels. Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: You know, we were just talking about dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of ironic that our next bit of
Speaker 1: listener mail comes to us from Lisa I believe or
Speaker 1: Lease l I s e. I guess that's Lease or
Speaker 1: Lisa at any rate, She says, quote, I just finished
Speaker 1: listening to part one of this and wanted to thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to come up with some creepy color text
Speaker 1: for my next RPG run, Fate Core, if you're keeping track,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. I'm not familiar with that one,
Speaker 1: but I mean, there are a lot of of RPG
Speaker 1: gaming systems out there, and scheming carnivorous squirrels are just
Speaker 1: the ticket. Looking forward to addering deer corpses and have
Speaker 1: had that have had their sinews not out around the landscape,
Speaker 1: and squirrels hunting snakes and hoarding bones will also work
Speaker 1: really well. Excellent. I'm glad anytime we can inspire an
Speaker 1: RPG campaign. I feel like we've we've done a good job.
Speaker 1: The Monsters of Reality once again outstripped. The surprising and
Speaker 1: wonderful nature of the monster is in the Monster Manual. Indeed,
Speaker 1: though I guess the deer corpses, that's probably not. That's
Speaker 1: probably not reality? Is it probably not? Probably not? Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the fun when this comes from our listener, Erica.
Speaker 1: Erica writes Hello. First, I want to say I love
Speaker 1: your podcast so much and listen to it all the
Speaker 1: time at work. It's wonderful and I'm so happy you
Speaker 1: guys are making it well. Thank you for listening, Erica.
Speaker 1: She writes, growing up, I watched Arthur on PBS all
Speaker 1: the time. Robert, you know the show, Ah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know of it, Arthur the Ardvark. I think my son
Speaker 1: has watched it a little bit. Is he's the guy
Speaker 1: with glasses? Yeah, yeah, he has glasses sweaters. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think if I remember correctly, he may have been
Speaker 1: one that was one of the books about him was
Speaker 1: a Reading Rainbow book back in the day, and uh,
Speaker 1: and then it eventually became its own series. I feel
Speaker 1: like the same thing happened with The Magic School Bus. Okay,
Speaker 1: I could be it could be wrong on Arthur, though,
Speaker 1: some of my fellow Reading Rainbow viewers will have to
Speaker 1: China on that well. Erica says, uh, I watched Arthur
Speaker 1: on PBS all the time growing up. And as soon
Speaker 1: as you mentioned in part one that you were looking
Speaker 1: for horror movies about squirrels, it came to mind, not
Speaker 1: the movie yet, she just said. It's referring to Arthur. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one episode focuses on this movie called The Squirrels, also
Speaker 1: the title of the episode from season ten. Most of
Speaker 1: the characters watched it, and they were all afraid of
Speaker 1: squirrels for a while until they got over it and
Speaker 1: learned a valuable lesson about irrational fears. The next movie
Speaker 1: they all decided to watch is called The Birds. So
Speaker 1: in case you're interested in finding a recreation of the
Speaker 1: Squirrels or making your own, it would be a good
Speaker 1: jumping off point. Have a great day. Oh you know,
Speaker 1: I actually we're we are recording this episode before Halloween,
Speaker 1: and I think I may just have to look up
Speaker 1: that episode to show my son, because you know, Halloween
Speaker 1: is this weird time where we're kind of encouraging all
Speaker 1: these uh, you know, terrifying ideas and all, and uh
Speaker 1: it is a good reminder, I think, at least for
Speaker 1: for young children, that you know, we're we're engaging, we're
Speaker 1: leaning into a lot of irrational fears this Halloween, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't necessarily need to live in fear
Speaker 1: of the scugs. This this is kind of a tangent,
Speaker 1: but at what age do you generally think kids start
Speaker 1: learning to enjoy being scared, like telling the difference between
Speaker 1: like unpleasant fear and pleasant fear. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: mean just going boo happens pretty early. So I feel
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're versions of it that kick in
Speaker 1: reasonably young, because ultimately, like what's a what's a jump scare?
Speaker 1: What are any of these things but false positives? Right?
Speaker 1: All right? This next one comes to us from Dan. Hello, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: was excited to see your episodes on squirrels pop up
Speaker 1: in my feed and I immediately knew I had to
Speaker 1: write you to share a personal squirrel experience that makes
Speaker 1: me shutter to this day. About fifteen years ago, I
Speaker 1: lived in an apartment which had an old but functional
Speaker 1: grill on the back deck. There's a squirrel that lived
Speaker 1: near the apartment, which I came to no one's site.
Speaker 1: The squirrel seemed to enjoy being very disruptive around our
Speaker 1: apartment area. It would frequently go on our back deck
Speaker 1: and chew things up or knock over plants. Maintaining bird
Speaker 1: feeders was an impossibility. If we were grilling, I had
Speaker 1: to keep a watchful eye because the squirrel would sneak
Speaker 1: up and take food. I responded by frequently throwing acorns
Speaker 1: or small pebbles at it. The longer we lived there,
Speaker 1: the more I threw them with bad intent. One day
Speaker 1: I went out to use the grill, I turned the
Speaker 1: valve on the propane tank. I momentarily thought I heard
Speaker 1: something a little unusual, but I didn't think much of it.
Speaker 1: This obviously was poor thinking on my part. I then
Speaker 1: turned on the grill burner and proceeded to try to
Speaker 1: light the grill with the grill lighter and then a
Speaker 1: gas lighter, to no avail. After probably close to two
Speaker 1: minutes of stubbornly trying to light the grill, I decided
Speaker 1: to investigate why it wasn't lighting. I turned off the
Speaker 1: grill burner and I honed in on the unusual sound
Speaker 1: I had heard, which was still clearly there. With a
Speaker 1: lump in my throat, I looked underneath the grill, and
Speaker 1: what I saw shook me to my core. The grill
Speaker 1: gas line, which consisted of a tough synthetic rubber coated
Speaker 1: coating over a not insubstantial metal core, had probably nickel
Speaker 1: sized holes chewed through its side near where it connects
Speaker 1: to the burners. Gas was visibly and rapidly pouring out
Speaker 1: of the hole and spreading into an all around the
Speaker 1: enclosed area at the bottom of the grill. Several other
Speaker 1: bite marks were also apparent on the line. I rushed
Speaker 1: to turn off the tank valve and then stood way
Speaker 1: back from the grill to let the gas dissipate, all
Speaker 1: the while shocked that I had not blown myself up.
Speaker 1: As I stood there, wide eyed, I looked into the
Speaker 1: backyard and I saw my nemesis perched on two legs,
Speaker 1: watching me intently. The scientific part of my mind tends
Speaker 1: to think that this must have been a coincidence, as
Speaker 1: the squirrel had a proven chewing history, and it frequently
Speaker 1: was in our backyard anyway. However, I cannot help but
Speaker 1: consider that maybe the squirrel had grown tired of my
Speaker 1: continued harassment and had decided to get even. Thanks for reading.
Speaker 1: I love the show. Keep up the great work yours, sincerely, Dan.
Speaker 1: I was on the edge of my seat. Dan. Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, we received that email what several weeks back.
Speaker 1: So I hope Dans still okay and the squirrels, or
Speaker 1: at least he's worked it out with the squirrel nation. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this was supposed to be fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: But maybe you squirrels might have a long memory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or the the there is the memory of the individual squirrel.
Speaker 1: But remember the cranium squirrels. They're they're going to hold
Speaker 1: the grudges. Okay, This next message is from our listener
Speaker 1: Amelia Amelia Rights, Hey, Joe and Robert, your podcast on
Speaker 1: squirrels was illuminating. Thanks to your efforts at day K
Speaker 1: long mystery has been solved. Let me explain. As an undergrad,
Speaker 1: I took a lot of walks along the bluff outside
Speaker 1: my campus early my freshman year. On one of these walks,
Speaker 1: I saw something extraordinary, A fuzzy mammal, alarmingly flat and wide,
Speaker 1: scurrying across the quad. I was so surprised by this
Speaker 1: weird road and I thought I'd misidentified a rat or
Speaker 1: gray squirrel. Subsequent sightings, however, laid waste my doubts. There
Speaker 1: were dozens of them, typically clustered along the tree line
Speaker 1: behind my dorm. A friend reported similar sightings, chalking it
Speaker 1: up to common squirrels that had been run over and
Speaker 1: inexplicably survived. I had my doubts about this conclusion and
Speaker 1: began searching in vain for online information on what I
Speaker 1: dubbed the pancake squirrel. When college ended, I moved to
Speaker 1: an apartment in the same area. I continued to see
Speaker 1: pancake squirrels hustling through parks and even around a nearby Corey.
Speaker 1: Not until I listened to your podcast and grew curious
Speaker 1: about the California ground squirrel did I discover my answer.
Speaker 1: Following your first episode, I googled California ground squirrel and
Speaker 1: immediately recognized by beloved pancakes. I didn't know that the
Speaker 1: species lived in Portland, Oregon, but the local population seems
Speaker 1: to be thriving. Thanks again for helping solve a mystery
Speaker 1: and keep up the good work. Sincerely, Amelia, I'm glad
Speaker 1: we could dispel the notion of essentially zombie squirrels flat
Speaker 1: zombie squirrels. Uh. You know, it is interesting, how just
Speaker 1: noting the differences in squirrel species. I recently rewatched the
Speaker 1: horror film It follows. Oh, it's a great one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: after the three years of trying to get my my
Speaker 1: wife to watch it, she finally gave in and and
Speaker 1: loved it. But there's a scene where one of the
Speaker 1: characters is in a swimming pool in the backyard, and
Speaker 1: she's staring up at the trees and the sky, and
Speaker 1: there's a scene where a squirrel is making its way
Speaker 1: across a power line or something, or you know, a
Speaker 1: telephone line. And instantly what what occurs to me is
Speaker 1: like that is not like the squirrels we have here. Like,
Speaker 1: clearly this is a Michigan squirrel. It's um, it's it's
Speaker 1: a slightly different species of some sort. I haven't checked
Speaker 1: to see exactly which species it is, but it's clearly
Speaker 1: not the same creature that we have here in the
Speaker 1: Georgian environment. You know, Robert, you have just made me
Speaker 1: think I have a mission now in life, and the
Speaker 1: mission is to make squirrels a spooky animal. You know,
Speaker 1: they're inherently spooky animals. There's the bat, there's the spider,
Speaker 1: there's the wolf, the children of the night, the animals
Speaker 1: that are automatically associated with Halloween and spooky times and
Speaker 1: vampires and all that. We gotta make squirrels one of
Speaker 1: those animals. We've got to get them into the club. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you can do it safely without endangering species, because
Speaker 1: that's unfortunately the other side of it, right, is animals
Speaker 1: that have long been considered spooky have often suffered for it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, certainly. I don't want to encourage squirrel culling
Speaker 1: the way that would be like wolf culling. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, has it has it really harmed? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, has it harmed bats? It probably has.
Speaker 1: It's definitely harmed bats. Yeah. But if you if we
Speaker 1: established it as like squirrels are dark but somehow holy creatures,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, they should not be messed with, but
Speaker 1: they represent something you know, dark and foreboding, then I
Speaker 1: think I could get on board with that. All right,
Speaker 1: We have one last listener mail for you here, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty long one, so we're going to break
Speaker 1: this one up. Okay, Robert, do you want to go
Speaker 1: first to start reading? And uh when I when I
Speaker 1: can't go anymore, I'll tag out. This comes to us
Speaker 1: from Mako Dear Stuff to blow your mind. Hello. My
Speaker 1: name is Macho. I'm nineteen years old, and about a
Speaker 1: year ago I started listening to your show as my
Speaker 1: first regular podcast and have been a frequent listener ever since.
Speaker 1: I've listened to episodes from throughout the show's history and
Speaker 1: love the work by all your shows various hosts. I
Speaker 1: have greatly appreciated all the wonderful information, conversation, and humor
Speaker 1: of the episodes, and I have just felt a real
Speaker 1: connection to the show since it's right up my alley.
Speaker 1: My whole life, I have spent many hours of every
Speaker 1: day engaging with the world and learn about all the
Speaker 1: wonderful things in it through books, documentaries, walks, exploration, artistic outlets, conversation,
Speaker 1: and Wikipedia. I have always been fascinated with many scientific, natural, cultural,
Speaker 1: and historical topics and have always loved storytelling and fiction.
Speaker 1: I've filled my head with information about the many wonderful
Speaker 1: things in this world and universe and always thought to
Speaker 1: learn more about them. That's why the show feels right
Speaker 1: at my alley. In the last couple of years, I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to read, walk, create, an explore as
Speaker 1: much as I used to or as much as I
Speaker 1: would like to, But listening to your show as I
Speaker 1: go about my daily routine has helped to fill in
Speaker 1: some of the gaps. For that, I am truly grateful. Anyways,
Speaker 1: today I wanted to share some experiences I have on
Speaker 1: the subject of your recent episode Squirrels. My Family and
Speaker 1: I currently live in the San Joaquin part of Central
Speaker 1: Valley with our flock of several hundred free range chickens,
Speaker 1: and have so for four summers. This is our fourth.
Speaker 1: In our time here, we have experienced nothing short of
Speaker 1: terror at the hands of the squirrels. First, a little context.
Speaker 1: The squirrels around here are a our California ground squirrels.
Speaker 1: They are not chiefly our boreal squirrels. They usually live
Speaker 1: in fairly open, dry areas and and dig deep, winding
Speaker 1: burrows in the ground that instant concentrations can deform the
Speaker 1: local area. In their regular environment, wetlands and oak woodland
Speaker 1: check the squirrel's ability to dig burrows and provide habitats
Speaker 1: for squirrel predators. The problem is that of California's wetlands
Speaker 1: have been destroyed, and much of the valley's oak trees too,
Speaker 1: in their place has risen endless wide open farmland and
Speaker 1: semi urban areas that have proven prime squirrel habitat as well.
Speaker 1: Many squirrel predators rattlesnakes, hawks, coyotes have been accidentally or
Speaker 1: purposely driven out. The result is a place like ours.
Speaker 1: On the property we live on, there are thousands of
Speaker 1: squirrels and tens of thousands more along nearby canals and
Speaker 1: in neighboring fields. This is obviously a problem for many reasons,
Speaker 1: but even more since they prey on our baby chickens.
Speaker 1: The from the smallest chicks to the ones of pushing adults.
Speaker 1: The squirrels have attacked countless chicks. Although they often attack
Speaker 1: them in the open, what they'll usually do is way
Speaker 1: behind vegetation fences or and in their burrows and pop
Speaker 1: out at chicks. They'll grab them with their claws and
Speaker 1: bite them on their arms and legs, main nerves to
Speaker 1: disable them before dragging them back to their burrows, who
Speaker 1: are just violently dismembering them where they are. Either way,
Speaker 1: they essentially chew them to death. Think Pennywise, remember that
Speaker 1: opening scene from it. That's essentially what happens. Wow, So
Speaker 1: the chicks are peering in the storm storm, the sewer,
Speaker 1: the sewer grade and uh this saying like my boat. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll pick up from here. Mako continues, but the similarities
Speaker 1: don't in there. Remember the burrows, Well, they're all over
Speaker 1: the yard, hundreds of burrows that form a sewer like
Speaker 1: system across the property. It's like a dairy with five
Speaker 1: hundred pennywise is, that's hairy the town and in it
Speaker 1: d e r r y with five hundred pennywise is,
Speaker 1: and the death toll is about the same. Our chickens
Speaker 1: are free range, so being picked off by predators now
Speaker 1: and then is pretty much unavoidable, but the squirrels have
Speaker 1: proven to be something else entirely. Keep in mind before
Speaker 1: I continue, that we only have a few hundred chickens
Speaker 1: at any given moment. Although it is often difficult to
Speaker 1: determine cause of death, especially with disappeared chicks, by carefully
Speaker 1: examining the clues of each disappearance and considering the likelihood
Speaker 1: of all possible causes, we have determined that the squirrels
Speaker 1: have most likely killed an excess of a hundred chickens
Speaker 1: over four summers. That is more than all other predators combined,
Speaker 1: and that list has, at various points included opossums, coyotes, dogs, humans, cats, snakes, eagles, hawks, falcons,
Speaker 1: unidentified mammalian creatures, raccoons, ants, and more, including the unstoppable
Speaker 1: force of nature the ghost hawk. All of them are outsiders,
Speaker 1: though if a chicken is surrounded by two dozen coyotes,
Speaker 1: they're going to be up a tree faster than you
Speaker 1: can shout yote. If a chicken is surrounded by two
Speaker 1: dozen squirrels, though, they won't realize something is wrong until
Speaker 1: it's too late. Why shouldn't they. These are the same
Speaker 1: animals that eat out of seed piles with them, and
Speaker 1: the squirrels have used this to their advantage. Robert, you
Speaker 1: you were talking about a study we looked at in
Speaker 1: the episode that that mentioned something about this, right, the
Speaker 1: the insinuation predation. Yes, yeah, that that that definitely came up. Yes,
Speaker 1: where the squirrels just sort of gets you used to
Speaker 1: them because they're like, Oh, I'm just harmless, little squirrel.
Speaker 1: I'll hang out right next to you. Yeah, I forget that.
Speaker 1: The fact terminology a bit of something to the effect
Speaker 1: of cultivating prey tolerance or something to that effect. Okay,
Speaker 1: picking up in Mako's message, Um, squirrels have used that
Speaker 1: to their advantage. Groups have lost half their members. Big
Speaker 1: rooster chicks have been killed defending their siblings. One time,
Speaker 1: three members of a group were killed in twenty four
Speaker 1: hours and a fourth was permanently disabled. Another time, a
Speaker 1: tree fell and chicks that went near the tree started
Speaker 1: disappearing moms have fended off multiple squirrels that corralled their
Speaker 1: baby simultaneously. An entire group of eleven was systematically hunted
Speaker 1: and killed, the only time this has ever happened in
Speaker 1: our flocks history. So many chicks have been killed by
Speaker 1: the squirrels, it has stunted the population growth significantly, and
Speaker 1: they don't stop at the chicks. We've found countless songbirds, rabbits,
Speaker 1: small snakes, and most commonly California ground squirrels killed by
Speaker 1: the squirrels. Of course, we've taken many preventative measures with
Speaker 1: some success, and killed many hundreds of squirrels with little
Speaker 1: effect on their numbers. One of the problems is how
Speaker 1: tenacious the squirrels are. There was one instance where a
Speaker 1: squirrel had a struggling chick bigger than its head in
Speaker 1: its mouth, and I saw it. I gave chase, yelling
Speaker 1: at it, but the squirrel did not drop the baby.
Speaker 1: When I've done the same with coyotes, they'll usually drop
Speaker 1: whatever chicken they're holding. The squirrel, however, just kept jumping
Speaker 1: over foot deep poles and tree roots and eventually diving
Speaker 1: under a fence, still carrying the baby. The tenacity isn't invincible, though.
Speaker 1: When we put seed out for the chickens, they eat
Speaker 1: relatively slowly and don't stand a chance against the squirrels
Speaker 1: that can just shove a whole scoopful in their cheek
Speaker 1: in their cheek pouches. However, the squirrels and other birds
Speaker 1: can start foraging about an hour and a half earlier
Speaker 1: in the mornings than the squirrels can, so we can
Speaker 1: put food out early in the morning so our birds
Speaker 1: won't starve. One o their help we've gotten in the
Speaker 1: battle against the squirrels is from a local Egret. When
Speaker 1: Egret has learned to wait in the fields when the
Speaker 1: grass is long and fork the squirrels as they exit
Speaker 1: their burrows. It will then fly off with the swarming
Speaker 1: road and presumably to slide it down its gullets somewhere. Well,
Speaker 1: that's probably the most positive note I can leave off on,
Speaker 1: so I'll cut this short, but I would like to
Speaker 1: weigh in on the king of the rats debate. I
Speaker 1: believe it was Joe who said that the squirrels could
Speaker 1: be considered king since they have an altitude advantage. However,
Speaker 1: if you take a walk in the woods at night
Speaker 1: in places like here, guess what you'll hear chittering and
Speaker 1: skittering and squeaking in the tree canopies all around you.
Speaker 1: Rats the rats in the trees. Well, this is a
Speaker 1: lie full email. I like, really a nice summary of
Speaker 1: just nature unbalanced, you know, just talking about the in general,
Speaker 1: how the the California wilds have been unbalanced. And then
Speaker 1: if you have, you know, some sort of domesticated farm
Speaker 1: activity with an outside species, what does that do to
Speaker 1: the surrounding predators? Yeah, well, a farm is an unnatural ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and when you try to do some kind of like
Speaker 1: farming that's not clearly surrounded by boundaries that keep it
Speaker 1: separate from the rest of the the surrounding ecosystem, which
Speaker 1: you ultimately cannot do. I mean, if nothing else, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with potential pathogens and whatnot. So
Speaker 1: I mean that's just that's just part of the exercise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but still a lovely tale. I enjoyed hearing all of it.
Speaker 1: A lovely tale of slaughter. Thus is the life of
Speaker 1: the squirrel? All right? So that you have it. Bunch
Speaker 1: of listener mails and some additional host comments about squirrels
Speaker 1: a k a. The scugs. Um, I hope you enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: and certainly if you have additional insights and field reports
Speaker 1: of squirrels, uh right in, we'd love to hear here
Speaker 1: here from you. We probably won't do another devoted uh
Speaker 1: you know, dedicated squirrel listener mail episode, but we'll do
Speaker 1: more listener mails so we may touch touching on the
Speaker 1: subject again in the future. Yeah, this has been fascinating,
Speaker 1: especially to hear from people who have a lot of
Speaker 1: hands on experience with the world of the wild scugs.
Speaker 1: So thank you for getting in touch and as always,
Speaker 1: keep those messages coming. In the meantime, head on over
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. That's where you'll find
Speaker 1: all the episodes of the podcast, going back all the
Speaker 1: way to the very beginning. You'll find links out to
Speaker 1: our very social media accounts. You'll find that tab for
Speaker 1: our store where you can find that cool Cambrian logo
Speaker 1: we were talking about. And you know, at some point
Speaker 1: I would love to get a Scug shirt in there.
Speaker 1: I know we've had some some listener requests for some
Speaker 1: Scug merchandise. Uh you know, I don't know, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: maybe you know, something looks like a slay er T
Speaker 1: shirt except it's scugs. I don't know that's good. Yes,
Speaker 1: if they do lend themselves well to that sort of interpretation,
Speaker 1: but but we'll see, we'll work on that, We'll work
Speaker 1: on getting that in place. Huge things. As always to
Speaker 1: our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison, if
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us directly
Speaker 1: to let us know feedback about this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hi, let us know how you found out about
Speaker 1: the show where you listen from that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
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