Ep. 835: Attack Of The Screw Worms

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Caleb Hubbard of the Hubbard Urban Entymology Lab https://www.hubbardlab.com/ at New Mexico State University https://eppws.nmsu.edu/ and "Bubbly" Doug Duren https://www.dougduren.com/. Topics discussed: Stay tuned for twice a week MeatEater Podcast drops starting in March; come to the Safari Club International 2026 Convention on Feb. 19th to see Steve and Morgan Potter; a correction on Colorado wolf recovery; sous vide rewarming for frostbite; the ins and outs of the New World screw worm; how all warm blooded critters are potential hosts; being eaten alive; Doug's Sharing the Land https://www.sharingtheland.com/ organization; and more. The New World Screwworm Threat Survey: https://acesnmsu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eLjo05717Wzz1em The New World Screwworm is a serious pest threat to livestock and wildlife, and New Mexico is taking steps to stay proactive—not reactive. The survey gathers input from ranchers, producers, hunters, land stewards, and community members across New Mexico. We’re studying what people know, believe, and need regarding screwworm prevention and response. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:35Steven Rinella?

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• 1:21Steven Rinella?

  For over 40 years, the Conservation Fund has raced to protect at-risk land before it's lost. The forests, farmland, open spaces, and places that wildlife call home. They believe conservation shouldn't be a choice between protecting nature and supporting people. It should advance both in harmony. With over 9 million acres protected across all 50 states, the Conservation Fund secures the irreplaceable lands we love. Learn more at conservationfund.org.

• 2:06Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless.

• 2:13Speaker 04

  We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

• 2:15Steven Rinella?

  You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F I R S T L I T E dot com. Joined today by Caleb Hubbard, veterinarian entomologist of the Hubbard Entomology Lab at New Mexico State University. We're here to talk about the screw room. Can we call it epidemic pandemic? How it's going to kill everybody?

• 2:53Speaker 05

  No, no, I don't, I don't think.

• 2:55Steven Rinella?

  Like make it seem good, like make it seem vital.

• 2:58Speaker 05

  Well, I, I think one of the things is that I'm trying not to cause panic. They think that that's kind of the, the biggest thing. But it is a kind of a, a big problem. So, so the screw worm fly is this, you know, parasitic fly that feeds on living flesh. The U S had done a really good job of pushing it out of the United States, out of Mexico, down to Panama. We've kind of been holding it there for the last 20 or so years. But since 2023, we've essentially had cases of it that have been occurring. There's been 15,000 or so cases in Mexico. And as of November of this year, there was a case 60 miles from the U S border. So it's a, it's a concern.

• 3:37Steven Rinella?

  Coming to a cow near you.

• 3:38Speaker 05

  Correct. Yeah. And, and if you look on the USDA's APIS website, they say it's not a concern of, of getting into the U S, but we do have cases that are close. And so it's something that getting the information out there is kind of the, the biggest thing about it.

• 3:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. When I've read about in the news, they make it seem like, you know, when we reached out wanting to get someone about screw worms, reading about in the news, it's like moving at an alarming rate.

• 4:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:04Steven Rinella?

  Coming to a cow near you.

• 4:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, very much so, or a cow, or any wildlife, or humans, or Fido, your dog. So it, it'll pretty much feed on, on any vertebrate. They say even birds, but for the most part, it's going to be your, you know, your larger animals, your companion animals, things like that. But, but yeah.

• 4:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we're gonna dig in on that. That this is this is this is good in a veterinarian. It's just so folks know an entomologist. Explain what an entomologist is.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So an entomologist is someone that that studies insects or bugs in in different ways. Yeah, my background's veterinary entomology. So that means that I work with really all the all the pests that cause disease or, you know, are are problematic in animal in animals. Traditionally, we're working with, you know, livestock, so cattle poultry, things like that. But I'm actually a at New Mexico State, I'm hired as an urban entomologist. So that's all the creepy crawlies that kind of bother you in around your homes. So that's bedbugs, cockroaches, scorpions, anything like that. But I justify also that something like screw worm or or my background is in flies.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  You know, no one likes flies in their house. And so it's kind of like, you know, any of that interaction with humans. And so that's where, you know, I come in with all this kind of screw worm stuff.

• 5:23Steven Rinella?

  But you got you got just thrown hardcore into the screw worm situation, though.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  I I would say that I got thrown into it, but I I think I I initially volunteered and then was kind of voluntold of to kind of go through this.

• 5:35Steven Rinella?

  This is a major issue.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  It is. And and it's kind of one of those things of making myself kind of available to do whatever. You know, I'm new to New Mexico. I just moved to New Mexico in August. And I don't know, I I'm really enjoying the state overall, but I don't know where I heard this, or maybe I just came up with it, you know, New Mexico's number one at being last at everything. If it kind of kind of comes to education, if it comes to, you know, a lot of things like that.

• 6:01Steven Rinella?

  He's not ingratiating himself.

• 6:03Speaker 05

  No. So but but here's my thing, is that my goal here is to make New Mexico not that when it comes to screw worm. Is that we should be prepared, that we should be able to be.

• 6:17Speaker 05

  You know, be able to get this information out there, especially to, you know, a group of people that aren't being reached out to hunters and outdoorsmen in general. And so my goal with communicating all of this is to situate New Mexico in a place that we can be prepared, because we don't have the finances like Texas does. We don't have kind of the resources that our neighbors do. And so it's, you know, getting all of this information out there because, you know, I'm only one person. And so New Mexico, obviously, is a huge state. And we have a lot of economic activity when it comes to hunting and outdoors. And so it's reaching out to all of those people and kind of, I can't do it alone. And so that's kind of my, my goal here is to make

• 6:58Speaker 05

  New Mexico into a state that we can be an example for everybody else.

• 7:03Steven Rinella?

  All right. So we're gonna dig into heavy on screw arms. But first, we got to talk about a couple of things. This, so first, Doug, give me your hand. Phil, zoom in on this.

• 7:11Speaker 06

  Oh, I was right.

• 7:13Steven Rinella?

  I lost.

• 7:17Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Not yet.

• 7:19Speaker 07

  I was thought you were asking me to marry you or something.

• 7:21Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you one time. I was at, I was at the sheep show. Okay, Wild Sheep Foundation Convention, deal, trade show.

• 7:31Steven Rinella?

  And I'm doing this little thing, signing books, taking pictures and whatnot. And these dudes come up, and I had seen them around because they're all dressed up like gunfighters. Spurs.

• 7:41Speaker 07

  And you notice that kind of thing?

• 7:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. All dressed up like Wild West gunfighters. Well, this gal's carrying a stuffed raccoon around. Costumes. Pretty soon, I take note that they're in line to come up and chat.

• 7:56Steven Rinella?

  This gentleman explains what they do is they're the people that put on at a ghost town. See, they have their own Virginia City down there. Like, we have a Virginia City. We have a ghost town. They have one, too. So he says, Virginia City, and I'm thinking, ours, but he means theirs.

• 8:14Steven Rinella?

  Explains that they're the people that do the gun, they put on like the gunfight, the Wild West gunfight. And they happen to show up in their. Reenactors, yeah. Reenactors. Reenactors. So.

• 8:30Steven Rinella?

  He hands me this. Gives me his business card and I lose it. So this, I think. I, I think that he invented this. If you want, I lost his damn business card, but he's a gunfighter in Virginia City.

• 8:48Steven Rinella?

  Nevada and he runs around at in Reno and he dresses up like a gunfighter. I think that people can prove me wrong. I think he invented this. I'm holding the weasel here. Hold out your arm now, Doug. All right.

• 9:02Speaker 06

  It's a slap bracelet.

• 9:03Steven Rinella?

  Do it again. Here's a pine squirrel. You want the other arm or you?

• 9:11Steven Rinella?

  Now, I think he invented that.

• 9:14Speaker 06

  We need to have it sound here just for the, for the audio audience. Put it near the mic. Yep.

• 9:19Steven Rinella?

  If he invented that, he deserves a Nobel Prize in taxidermy, dude.

• 9:25Steven Rinella?

  My daughter is gonna lose her mind when she sees that. I wondered why I was here. Now I know. What do you think of that? I don't know. I think it looks good on me. These are slap, these are tube skinned. We got a tube skinned ermine, a tube skinned pine squirrel. Converted into slap bracelets. I think I met the inventor.

• 9:47Steven Rinella?

  But you can never trust a reenactor.

• 9:52Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I'm saying? When was the last? Tell me, when was the last time a reenactor? Cause, cause it's the, they, they inherently are living a lie. I know a couple of those guys. You can't trust a reenactor. Yeah, I don't know. I trust both of those guys. I'm joking mostly.

• 10:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay, Doug's here. So I did that. Oh, a couple of announcements to make.

• 10:23Steven Rinella?

  In three day, okay, I'm gonna be at, I was just talking about being at the Wild Sheep Show, the Sheep Show, Wild Sheep Foundation Show. If you on YouTube watched our, or wherever you watch stuff, our Tanzania hunts, the, the guy I was hunting in Tanzania with is Morgan Potter. He's the, the professional hunter I was with, great guy. Um, very funny, very smart, great guy. He and I are doing a talk at Safari Club International in, in Nashville, Tennessee. So Safari Club International has like a convention. I don't know what they call, yeah, I think they call it a convention, the SCI Show. Morgan and I are gonna do a talk, um, about our experiences, it kinda like from the perspective of someone that doesn't know anything,

• 11:07Steven Rinella?

  like an idiot, like me, an Africa idiot, and then an Africa expert. And we're gonna give a lecture at Safari Club on February 19th. Um, we're not, all, all the money, so you gotta get a ticket, but all the money goes to SCI. So what you gotta do is you gotta go on SCI's website and you gotta get, like you become a member and that allows you to go to the show. Then you'll see you can get a ticket to come to our talk. Again, doesn't go to me to Morgan, all the money goes to SCI, it's a nonprofit, um, hunting rights, some conservation work organization. Uh, check that out. So also, more news. Media podcast is going to two times weekly, starting March 9th.

• 11:49Steven Rinella?

  Somewhat, it's cringe wording, somewhat replacing Radio Live. We're gonna have, you're gonna have the interview show, which is like, right now, we're fixing to talk to this veterinarian entomologist. Well, you know who I want you to turn me on to? Do you have any colleagues who are, um, forensic entomologists that study like how to tell how long a guy's body's been laying there?

• 12:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I, I, it's an interesting field. There's only a, a couple of people that do forensic entomology. We did some forensic entomology, uh, where I did my PhD. My, uh, PhD advisor developed a class, um, and kinda did some of that. But there's really only, um, you know, five or six people that kinda do it, uh, as a career. There's one guy at Texas A&M, uh, Jeff Tomberlin, who kind of is one of the forensic entomology people. He's actually doing some stuff with poaching in Africa.

• 12:34Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 12:35Speaker 05

  And, yeah, yeah, and so they're-

• 12:36Steven Rinella?

  Are you buddies with him?

• 12:37Speaker 05

  I am, yeah, actually I have a call with him tomorrow.

• 12:40Steven Rinella?

  Can you-

• 12:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 12:42Steven Rinella?

  Grease the wheels a little bit for me?

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 12:43Steven Rinella?

  All right. Uh, you don't know any Neanderthal experts, do you?

• 12:48Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, no.

• 12:49Steven Rinella?

  Um-

• 12:51Steven Rinella?

  What was I getting at? Oh, we're splitting the show. So we're gonna have the regular interview show like we have now that we're gonna have a news show. So we're having a news and commentary show, which will come out every week, very close to being recorded. Okay? And the news and commentary show will allow us to, we're gonna be doing, it's the same crew from Radio Live, but we're gonna, much of the same individuals from Radio Live, but it's not beholden to a certain place in time, and it's gonna be new, current events dominated by current events. So you'll be able to get up to date news and commentary at the news show. So two drops per week. The energy that goes into Radio Live will transfer over to the news and commentary show.

• 13:35Steven Rinella?

  That all starts March 9th. We're also fixing up a brand new studio. So you'll see that there's like a new studio area too, um, in connection to all this. Got a correction.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  Really quick, sorry Steve, before we get into this. Can we get cell phones off the table? We're getting a little bit of fuzz.

• 13:50Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sorry.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  Thank you. No, you're good. I should have warned you before.

• 13:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, where's the correction that I said it was kinda dumb because it wasn't a good correction?

• 13:57Speaker 06

  Oh, here, let me find that.

• 13:59Steven Rinella?

  Where'd that go?

• 13:59Speaker 06

  Let me find that. I didn't put that in.

• 14:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, why not? I said I wanna talk about it, but it's dumb.

• 14:05Speaker 06

  I forgot to do that.

• 14:06Steven Rinella?

  Oh. Something about the wolf? No, here's a correction.

• 14:12Speaker 06

  No, it was, um...

• 14:13Steven Rinella?

  Colorado Wolf Recovery Goals, Episode 820 Correction. Okay? Ready for this? He even tells me that I can feel free to fact check this. And it's like, it's like a sort of correction. He says, "At the end of the episode, you guys were discussing Colorado's wolf reintroduction, episode, um, the end of episode 820." And Steve mentioned that CPW's, Colorado Parks and Wildlife's, goal for wolves is 30 to 50. He says this is only partially true. Okay? But he's right, this is a, this is a correction.

• 14:58Steven Rinella?

  The reintroduction goal in Colorado to reintroduce, the reintroduction goal is to put, to reintroduce 30 to 50, not to establish a population of 30 to 50. The goal is to cut 30 to 50 loose. Okay? Um...

• 15:17Steven Rinella?

  That's not the stated recovery goal. He goes on, this is me quoting him. In fact, there is no official number for a desired population in the finalized plan for a recovery goal. However, there are only guidelines for downlisting from the state endangered species list. Okay. If they have at least 50 wolves for four years, they can downlist to state threatened status. If they maintain a population of at least 150 wolves for two years, they will de-list from the state endangered species list.

• 16:02Steven Rinella?

  He goes on to say, I was saying that, and I stand by this, I was saying in Colorado,

• 16:09Steven Rinella?

  unless 60% of the people in Colorado move away,

• 16:15Steven Rinella?

  and those are replaced by Utahns and Nevadans or something, those are replaced by a different strain of human, you will never see a hunting season for wolves in Colorado.

• 16:29Steven Rinella?

  I stand by that. I gave that as a piece of opinion. He says, though, once the wolf is de-listed in Colorado, so that once they hit that 150 wolves for two years, he says, um, there is supposed to be, and I'm quoting here, consideration for making wolves a game species. But he goes on to say, and this is a wildlife professional, I don't want to give his name, this is a state wildlife professional that wrote this in. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, what do you call that nowadays? Out him. Dox him. Dox him, oh yeah. I'm gonna dox his brother.

• 17:09Steven Rinella?

  He says, but if we've learned anything from wolf policy in the past, there will be much litigation and hogwash to prevent management of wolves by hunting. So even though the stated number is a bit higher than Steve said, and there is in fact a provision in the plan to consider reclassification to a game species, it does seem likely that the wolf population will continue to increase significantly with no clear final goal having been set.

• 17:47Steven Rinella?

  Here's a correction from Florida that is, that is, that, that, that's a great, that's the kind of, see, pretty soon, we're gonna start a correction of the week contest. Yeah, I like that one. That guy could have, he was a winner. Yeah, yeah. He was a winner.

• 18:02Speaker 06

  It was all my bad, cuz I put it in the notes, kinda not, not clearly.

• 18:06Steven Rinella?

  What did?

• 18:07Speaker 06

  Me, when I put the thirty to fifty goal, I put it under, like, uh,

• 18:12Steven Rinella?

  That's fine.

• 18:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'd put it under, no, well, I'm, that's, that, that's part of it, but the guy's right, so it's, it's, that's good. He, I mean, there are probably people in the audience saying, no, no, no, no, no, it's, and they're right, you guys are all right.

• 18:30Steven Rinella?

  Where was I?

• 18:31Speaker 06

  Florida.

• 18:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Here's a correction that would not win. Oh, we need to get, I was on a, I was on a, we need like a new, do we have our own email address for the podcast?

• 18:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:45Steven Rinella?

  What is it called?

• 18:46Speaker 06

  The Meat Eater Podcast at TheMeatEater.com.

• 18:49Steven Rinella?

  Where do those go?

• 18:50Speaker 06

  Uh, they all filter mainly to our community manager.

• 18:54Steven Rinella?

  But do we get all of those?

• 18:56Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:57Steven Rinella?

  We get all of those?

• 18:58Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:58Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 18:58Speaker 06

  Oh, no, I ask him to filter stuff.

• 19:01Steven Rinella?

  Well, don't.

• 19:04Speaker 06

  Well, you're,

• 19:05Steven Rinella?

  I don't know that he knows what I think is interesting. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, what is the, like, the risk would be, cuz no two, my wife doesn't think what I think is interesting is interesting. What's that?

• 19:14Speaker 06

  I've asked him to cast a wide net and send me, and forward me a bunch of different funky weird things. I think, I think, I think he knows.

• 19:22Steven Rinella?

  Cuz out of every ten things that I think is interesting, I tell my wife, she finds nine not interesting.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 19:27Steven Rinella?

  You can't trust.

• 19:30Steven Rinella?

  I'm not equating him to my wife, I'm just saying, like, you know, no two people are the same.

• 19:34Speaker 06

  That's true.

• 19:35Steven Rinella?

  Here's a not winner. This guy, in fact, would the opposite of win.

• 19:43Steven Rinella?

  Correction of the week. You're gonna correct his correction? I am.

• 19:47Speaker 06

  Take note, guys.

• 19:49Steven Rinella?

  He, his correction is titled, misrepresenting opposition to the Florida bear hunt.

• 19:57Steven Rinella?

  I enjoy, he goes on, I enjoy your show.

• 20:02Steven Rinella?

  Compliment sandwich. Right. I enjoy your show, but feel the need to offer you a new perspective on a story you recently reported on. As a resident of rural Florida, I'm surrounded by the controversy surrounding our state's recent black bear hunt. While you presented thoughtful views on the battle between those who support and oppose bear hunting in Florida, I feel you overlooked an important concept in the argument.

• 20:34Steven Rinella?

  He goes on, though I don't bear hunt, I'm a lifelong hunter and angler. In addition, my professional training is in fish and wildlife management, and my previous career had me frequently collaborating with wildlife managers nationwide. In addition, I currently work at an environmentally focused nonprofit, so I rub elbows with a diverse group of outdoor-minded individuals. He could win a composition.

• 21:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, this sounds like Midwest passive aggressive to me.

• 21:08Steven Rinella?

  Well, if he was going toe to toe with most of the people that write us a letter, he would win a composition award.

• 21:14Speaker 07

  Sure, sure.

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  Not to heck. Like I, I like, I prefer, like, when it looks like E E Cummings wrote it.

• 21:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:25Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 21:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:26Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 21:29Steven Rinella?

  While you report, did I say that already? Oh, okay. He goes on, while your reporting included key details behind the quote, "animal rights folks opposing the bear hunt," it left out a glaring reason why so many Floridians oppose it in general. The hunt is being broadcast as an example of animal populations outgrowing their habitat, when in most cases, it's actually a case of habitat being reduced around the animals.

• 22:05Steven Rinella?

  He goes on.

• 22:07Steven Rinella?

  See Doug, Doug's, Doug doesn't know where it's gonna fall.

• 22:11Speaker 07

  I read it, but now I've, I've forgotten everything.

• 22:14Steven Rinella?

  He doesn't know if he's gonna agree with him or not.

• 22:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, that's.

• 22:17Steven Rinella?

  It's gonna pit me against Doug. He goes on.

• 22:19Speaker 07

  Have an open mind about this.

• 22:21Steven Rinella?

  Outsiders have certainly heard of the development happening all across central Florida. But believe me, unless you have lived it, you have no way to comprehend the complete eradication of fish and wildlife habitat occurring daily throughout this state. He goes on. Florida's development friendly building codes allow for thousands of acres to be cleared and developed at an incredible pace. Make no mistake, this is no way environmentally sensible development. This is clear cut, corner to corner bulldozed, filled and compacted development seemingly everywhere.

• 23:02Steven Rinella?

  When developers clear land in Florida, no wildlife is left, nothing, not a bug, a bird, and certainly not a bear.

• 23:11Steven Rinella?

  I don't agree, I don't disagree with any of this. He hasn't gotten to the part.

• 23:15Speaker 07

  I'm waiting.

• 23:18Steven Rinella?

  He hasn't gotten to the correction yet. He's just laying the groundwork.

• 23:23Steven Rinella?

  Here's the clincher. Here's where he brings it home.

• 23:27Steven Rinella?

  Bear habitat is being removed at an unheard of pace.

• 23:34Steven Rinella?

  His words here. That's the majority of what's behind opposition to the hunt.

• 23:42Steven Rinella?

  Floridians, hunters and anglers alike, view wildlife policy in this state as a failure due to continued declining habitat, the likes of which have never been seen in the South. Many hunters I know oppose the bear hunt for this very reason. It's viewed as a cop out by the fish and wildlife managers and an excuse for declining habitat.

• 24:09Steven Rinella?

  It's important this opposition to the hunt is represented correctly because many of them are hunters themselves. Here's, here's why, here's where you're, no, no. If you still hunt deer and you still hunt turkeys and you still fish, you're, what you're saying isn't true. They're losing habitat too.

• 24:28Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 24:28Steven Rinella?

  So are you quitting all hunting? Out of protest for the state not getting a grip on development? How are you, how are you saying, oh no, I oppose having a bear season. But I support having a deer season. I support having turkey season.

• 24:48Steven Rinella?

  Come on.

• 24:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 24:49Steven Rinella?

  You, you, you just, no. It, it's just totally not true unless this guy writes in, if, if he writes in and says to me, oh no, here's a correction to your correction, to my correction. And it's that I have quit all hunting. I boycott any kind of hunting and fishing in Florida out of a protest. To rampant development in Florida, then I'll say, okay, I believe you. But there's no way that's true. You're not, it, it's like you're not willing intellectually, you're sort of holding out. That a bear is somehow different than a state managed game animal because of your perceptions.

• 25:27Speaker 07

  He's, the, or the, the animals are dealing with loss of habitat.

• 25:33Steven Rinella?

  They all are.

• 25:34Speaker 07

  Well, right. And so you have more animals.

• 25:39Speaker 07

  Competing or on less habitat, consequently you have overpopulation.

• 25:43Steven Rinella?

  You know why he's also wrong?

• 25:47Steven Rinella?

  He's also wrong because the, the, the, the total number of bears. If what he was saying was true. You would be, I mean, it is true. Like, I'm not.

• 25:57Speaker 07

  The premise, yeah.

• 25:58Steven Rinella?

  Development, like, yeah, development in Florida is out of control. From an environmental conservation standpoint, it's in rough shape. The state is in rough shape. Development's out of control. 100% but.

• 26:12Steven Rinella?

  That is not what the bears like right now. That is not what the bears are like bear numbers in Florida are growing.

• 26:20Steven Rinella?

  Bear numbers in Florida are growing. Yeah. Bear numbers in Florida. Bear numbers are black bear numbers in general around the country. Bears are moving into new places. Um, regionally, like they're moving in new places locally and they're new, moving into new places more broadly. So they're pretty adaptive. Yeah. It's taken them 150 years to figure out how to deal with people, but they're figuring it out. And like it, it, he, he's just mixing up two things.

• 26:47Speaker 00

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• 27:17Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got weather tech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in weather tech. Cause that way when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put weather tech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out. American made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay. They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weather tech.com. You need credit to buy, well, pretty much any big thing. So how do you get started?

• 28:02Steven Rinella?

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• 28:40Speaker 03

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• 28:55Steven Rinella?

  For over 40 years, the Conservation Fund has raced to protect at-risk land before it's lost, the forests, farmland, open spaces, and places that wildlife call home. They believe conservation shouldn't be a choice between protecting nature and supporting people. It should advance both in harmony. With over 9 million acres protected across all 50 states, the Conservation Fund secures the irreplaceable lands we love. Learn more at conservationfund.org. Another one.

• 29:35Steven Rinella?

  This is a little more science. You might like this one. We'll get to the whole screw room thing. Don't worry, dude.

• 29:44Steven Rinella?

  Alan Lozara, who's come on before, he's an ER doctor. He's an ER doctor and he's been on the show. He has a particular focus and done a lot of work in tree stand injuries. Very interesting guy. He wrote in, there's this new treatment coming out for frost-bitten hands and feet. The reason I'm bringing this up, because people that like to cook wild game, I mean cooks in general, but a lot of my buddies who are avid wild game cooks use sous vide machines, sous vide wands to hold water at a very specific temperature, right? Like if you're trying to hold, if I told you, hey, put water on your stove and

• 30:25Steven Rinella?

  hold a pot of water on your stove at 139 degrees for three days, you're not going to do that. If you put a sous vide apparatus in a pot of water and you set it at 39 degrees for three days, that son of a bitch is going to be 39 degrees for three days, 139 degrees for three days.

• 30:45Steven Rinella?

  There's some new stuff and it just was published in the academy, um, the academic emergency medicine journal about seemingly having great luck rewarming frozen body parts in sous vide baths.

• 31:01Steven Rinella?

  Cause you can get the perfect temperature.

• 31:03Speaker 07

  And hold it.

• 31:03Steven Rinella?

  And hold it.

• 31:06Steven Rinella?

  Cause anyone that's ever frozen your fingers, you stick them in hot water. That is not the way to go.

• 31:12Speaker 07

  No.

• 31:12Steven Rinella?

  Painful. So he's pointing out like he's not, Dr. Lozara is not suggesting.

• 31:19Speaker 07

  Comes a disclaimer. Yeah.

• 31:21Steven Rinella?

  But, okay. Um, re, this is from his, this is from the, the journal. Rewarming frost bitten tissue with skin to skin top contact or warm water. Okay. Treatment includes removing the person from the cold environment and rewarming frost bitten tissue with skin to skin contact or warm water immersion. Okay. Rubbing, no good.

• 31:49Steven Rinella?

  Typically in the emergency department or field, this is accomplished with a warm water bath that is frequently exchanged.

• 31:59Steven Rinella?

  To target a warm, to target a water temperature.

• 32:05Steven Rinella?

  Some bitch, you put it in.

• 32:06Speaker 07

  Because you have to exchange because it's, you're not holding the temperature.

• 32:09Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no. Check this out.

• 32:13Steven Rinella?

  You're trying, they'll, they'll, they're, they're, they're trying to get water at 98.6. I didn't know this.

• 32:19Speaker 07

  Hmm. Makes sense.

• 32:21Steven Rinella?

  So you freeze your hand, you freeze your fingers. The, the medical treatment would be to try to get water at 98.6, stick your hand in there. And then he says they're constantly swapping it out with new water. But there's a, a dry heat, no good. Like holding it to a fire, not advisable, rubbing it, not advisable. Skin to skin contact or a water bath at 98.6. He says typically in an emergency room setting, you're swapping out the water, swapping out the water, swapping out the water. Uh. Here, set your sous vide. At 98.6, just in the winter, turn it on. Put it in the garage.

• 32:59Speaker 07

  Go, yeah.

• 33:01Steven Rinella?

  Every time you freeze your fingers, come in.

• 33:05Steven Rinella?

  Dunk them in there. It sounds like a big whirlpool to me, yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, it kind of reminds me of Star Wars. Luke Skywalker, you know, he was on Hoth and they stuck him in that.

• 33:15Steven Rinella?

  Got wicked cold.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  It's called the back to tank. Yeah, okay, there you go. And it seems like, you know, they've just taken it from Star Wars. I'm sure these scientists were.

• 33:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they were, they were hot on the sous vide before anybody else was.

• 33:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:27Steven Rinella?

  Here's a quick comment and then we're all, then we're all in on screw worms. Speaking of Dr. Lazar, a guy just wrote in, he was listening way back into the, into the deep cuts. He was back in episode 192.

• 33:41Steven Rinella?

  With Dr. Alan Lazar. And episode 192 was called Bleeding Out. With Dr. Alan Lazar. In it, we had a discussion about blue gills. Biting men's nipples. I remember this. Okay. This guy wrote in from Michigan. He actually calls them blue gales. I wondered if that was a spelling error when I was reading the notes. And Brody said, do people in Michigan call them blue gales? And I'm like, I think they kind of a little bit do, but you'd also call them a gill. Yeah. But there is a little bit of a blue gale, no, blue gills, no, I can't think of that. I get what he's getting at, but I think it's a pretty clean blue gill. Yep. Blue gill. Or you'd say gills.

• 34:27Steven Rinella?

  This guy has this to say, he, he says, almost every man that swam in my grandpa's pond. Has had this happen to him. Me included.

• 34:43Steven Rinella?

  Is this a correction? No, it's like an observation.

• 34:47Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 34:47Steven Rinella?

  He's a fabricator.

• 34:48Speaker 06

  It was a note.

• 34:49Steven Rinella?

  He's a fabricator.

• 34:52Steven Rinella?

  It's a note. I'll, I'll critique it in a minute, but first I'll tell you what the notice. He says, the pond was stocked only with blue gills, which were fed little fish pellets by my grandparents. We attributed the nipple biting. To the similar appearance of these pellets to hard nipples in cold water.

• 35:14Steven Rinella?

  We believed the fish would mistake the nipple for a pellet and bite us. We would almost always come out of the water looking like a marathon runner who forgot to put tape on their nipples. This pond brings it even tighter to home. This pond happens to be just thirty minutes south of Ann Arbor where Dr. Lazara was working. Less you question the relevance. Um, I don't know. I don't think that's it. I think, I, I agree that that's your assumption, but plenty of nipples have been bitten in plenty of ponds that aren't fed. Wild, these are wild fish biting nipples.

• 35:55Speaker 07

  Body hair seems to attract them too. I've been bit like on different parts of my body in those kinds of ponds with.

• 36:07Steven Rinella?

  You ever been skinny dipping and had your pecker bit?

• 36:08Speaker 07

  No.

• 36:09Steven Rinella?

  Me neither.

• 36:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 06

  Lucky you guys.

• 36:13Steven Rinella?

  All right. Okay, back to screw worms.

• 36:18Speaker 07

  It always comes around, man.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Always does.

• 36:23Steven Rinella?

  How long, a- as screw worms are, screw worms are progressing north where as you explained.

• 36:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:30Steven Rinella?

  How long has there, like, what is the sort of, what is the early understanding of screw worms and how long have humans been talking about screw worms?

• 36:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:41Steven Rinella?

  And where had they been talking about screw worms?

• 36:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, so it, it's called primary screw worm or new world screw worm because it's a, a problem of the Americas. And so, um, the first kind of like true documented case was actually in French Guyana in a penal colony. So in eighteen fifty-eight, uh, the French kind of noted, oh, hey, yeah, we have these prisoners that are being eaten alive by something.

• 37:05Steven Rinella?

  Or humans.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, humans. We have no idea what it is. Um, and so they send in this guy Cockrell who ended up like realizing that they were fly maggots and kind of described it there. And then it kind of went dormant, um, for. I guess whatever that math would be 60 or 70 years. And so then it was the 1930s in the US that we started documenting these cases where we were seeing cattle that were being infested. And so pretty much since about the 30s is kind of like when it's been on our radar of being this big problem. And then from the 30s to about the early 1970s was kind of the heyday

• 37:48Speaker 05

  of control. They developed this thing called sterile insect technique to get rid of the flies. And then since the 70s, at least in the US, we pushed it out and then kind of have had to work with different, different governments. So we worked with the Mexican government to kind of build a facility to release sterile flies to push it out of Mexico. And then it was 2001 or 2002 that we worked with the Panamanian government to essentially our one sterile fly production facility is down in Panama. And all of the flies are essentially going there to be released to kind of control it from moving northward essentially.

• 38:29Steven Rinella?

  So a normal, a normal maggot, people associate maggots with eating on dead stuff.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  Correct. Yeah.

• 38:37Steven Rinella?

  But this is a maggot that'll eat on living.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:42Steven Rinella?

  But why won't a nor, why does a normal maggot, I'm sure there's many kinds.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I recently heard a guy called Disco Rice.

• 38:56Steven Rinella?

  Why does a normal maggot want, why does he want dead stuff?

• 39:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I, this is, this is one thing that I, I tell my students or anybody, why questions are hard, right? Because it, it goes down to there's a why, and I can tell you, you know, I don't necessarily know if we completely know why one maggot is going to be specialized for dead tissue. And, and a lot of it does have to do with, you know, if you're thinking about a normal maggot that you would see, they're not actually feeding on the tissue. They're feeding on the bacteria and they're feeding on kind of. All the gross decomposing material that's there. And so that's what they're actually using. So like I did my PhD working on house flies and we would kind of create this, what we called larval media is essentially how we made new house flies. And really it's just a combination of,

• 39:44Speaker 05

  you know, like bran and alfalfa and yeast and kind of, it smells good until you put flies in it. But all we're doing is creating a bacteria and yeast soup essentially so that the maggots can feed on that. And so that, I don't know if we actually know like what, what exactly it is, but.

• 40:00Steven Rinella?

  So they're after whatever else is going on, like, like what I keep calling a normal maggots.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:07Steven Rinella?

  They're after whatever's going on.

• 40:11Steven Rinella?

  From the decomposition process, not necessarily digesting rotten protein.

• 40:16Speaker 05

  Correct. Yeah. And, and they're doing, they're doing a combination of, of all of that. But yeah, that what differentiates them is, is kind of, it really has to do just with that one's feeding on, on living tissue. You know, it's, it's a fascinating thing that there's actually a, a therapy. It's called medical maggot therapy that they, and there's a, there's a guy, Ron Sherman, who was the first person to get maggots FDA approved to put them into wounds to actually clean out wounds. So he developed these.

• 40:47Steven Rinella?

  What kind of maggots that?

• 40:48Speaker 05

  So that's a, it's Lucilius arachnoid. It's just like a, a common green blowfly that you would see. And they found that, again, they're not feeding on living tissue. And there's been some different studies that have shown that the maggots are just as good as a doctorate, or better at cleaning up the edges of decomposing wounds.

• 41:06Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't say much for you guys.

• 41:08Speaker 07

  Just as good as a doctor.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  Well, you know.

• 41:10Speaker 07

  It's like lyrics coming out of this guy over here.

• 41:13Speaker 05

  Well, you know, it's one of those things like I at least, I'm a PhD, not an MD. So I'm just throwing shade at them. So it's okay.

• 41:19Steven Rinella?

  No, I got you.

• 41:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:20Steven Rinella?

  Uh, just, I, I don't want to stay too long on the normal kind of maggots, but the, the more commonly available maggots.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:28Steven Rinella?

  In your local ditch, but um, in your local summertime ditch. Is you know, you know, the peculiar like as much of the stench you just said like you could make a maggot medium.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 41:40Steven Rinella?

  What was in the maggot medium you make?

• 41:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, so so for for house flies, which isn't going to be blowflies, that's a whole other thing, and we can talk about that. The housefly stuff is bran, alfalfa, yeast, and dried milk.

• 41:53Steven Rinella?

  You say it smells OK?

• 41:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, it smells like you're baking until you put flies in it and then.

• 41:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, why do they? Why do? Why do the like? When you look at a rotten thing.

• 42:05Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 42:05Steven Rinella?

  Laying there in your mind, it's like what you're smelling.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 42:09Steven Rinella?

  Is the rot.

• 42:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:12Steven Rinella?

  Right? But you put maggots on it, it creates its own stench.

• 42:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, and and I'll be honest, I don't know if the your traditional or run of the mill blowfly maggots are producing this like terrible odor.

• 42:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 42:27Speaker 05

  That is one thing, though, about primary screw worm, that there is a specific odor that comes off of the larvae that attracts more flies to that wound so that they will lay more eggs. But I can't actually speak to what is what exactly that is. I think some of it, you know, if you're if you're thinking about it, is they're churning up all of those like volatile things, right? So if you just have something.

• 42:50Steven Rinella?

  In your case, the thing that smells like baking until you put the maggots on it. So what are they doing that's making it stink?

• 42:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, so so some of that just has to do with the ladder process that we're dealing with it. And so pretty much the entire time that the maggots are in their their little container, they're fine. What we do is we take advantage of their biology. So when they're getting ready to to pupate or kind of form that chrysalis like a butterfly would, they look for a dark, dry place to kind of hide out. And so what we do is we say, hey.

• 43:22Steven Rinella?

  Like the cracks in Yanis's old doghouse.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Is we say, hey, we want to take advantage of this, so we dump water on them. And we say, and we essentially force them out of their container into a secondary container that then we can just collect them all up and essentially. Cleanly pick them up. So really what the odor is, is a combination of the maggots. Now we have rotting material that had maggots in it. Some of the maggots have died and started decomposing. Up until that point, you end up not having a super terrible odor. I will also say though, that like I'm pretty nose blind at this point. I've been working with, with, with flies for over a decade and anytime that I've had people come in, they're like, oh no, this is terrible. And I'm like, there's very particular smells that I'm bothered by, but fly maggots is not necessarily one of them. Uh, so.

• 44:09Steven Rinella?

  No, I, I could probably go toe to toe with you on nose blindness. We were texting yesterday. There's this machine we're going to talk about.

• 44:17Steven Rinella?

  The nasal raider. You ever hear of this? Is that what it's called? There's a way. There's a machine. I'm not kidding you. We're going to have, we're going to talk all about it coming up.

• 44:29Steven Rinella?

  If you get, let's say you're a municipal.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  Nasal ranger.

• 44:34Steven Rinella?

  Nasal ranger. Let's say you get a stench complaint. This, this is the craziest thing. There's a thing called the nasal ranger. You can go buy it.

• 44:44Steven Rinella?

  Someone calls and says, man, my neighbors, whatever they got going on, right?

• 44:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:48Steven Rinella?

  Stinks. Hog farming, beetle works, cleaning skulls, whatever. You gotta complain sewage.

• 44:56Steven Rinella?

  But it's sort of like, it's, it's like a little bit subjective.

• 44:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:59Steven Rinella?

  Like I could go over there and be like, I don't see what the problem is. My wife would go over there and be like, good lord, that's a problem, right? So the nasal ranger, you, it's a machine. You put over your nose and there's a little meter that meters that you're breathing fairly.

• 45:17Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 45:18Steven Rinella?

  You can't breathe too little. You can't breathe too much. So it's like, you gotta breathe. Sucking on that sucker in a way that is like holding the needle in the right spot. So you're breathing like a normal person.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  It's the opposite of a breathalyzer.

• 45:32Steven Rinella?

  And it's, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Breathalyzer. Yeah. Breathalyzer is like blow, blow. And you're like.

• 45:40Speaker 07

  Like a guy, like a guy who's experienced that.

• 45:43Steven Rinella?

  This is so old. I could tell it without, hope I don't get him in trouble. I'm not gonna say who it is. Did I already say who it is?

• 45:48Speaker 07

  No.

• 45:50Steven Rinella?

  I have a buddy. I have a buddy who claimed in the old days, long ago, he had claimed to developed a.

• 46:00Steven Rinella?

  Breathalyzer evading breath technique. He felt that he was able to channel secretly channel fresh air up through his nose.

• 46:11Steven Rinella?

  Feed the breathalyzer. Without drawing into his inner self.

• 46:19Steven Rinella?

  Do you follow me? Guy went to some dead shows.

• 46:23Steven Rinella?

  Without letting the air come in and find out what all is going on inside of him.

• 46:28Speaker 06

  Did he have like a separate diaphragm and lung cavity?

• 46:33Steven Rinella?

  It was a breathing technique. At least at that.

• 46:36Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 46:36Steven Rinella?

  I'm not gonna name the guy.

• 46:39Steven Rinella?

  Why would that get him in trouble? No, if he was saying, if he were to get breathalyzed. Oh, yeah. By a law enforcement officer, he was saying. Can't catch me because I have a way I I have a way that they don't know I'm doing it, but I'm funneling in gusts of fresh air into my nose, straight out my mouth.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  It's like those didgeridoo players that do the circular breathing, you know?

• 47:04Steven Rinella?

  Circular breathing. The nasal ranger. It then puts a number to the stench. Okay. How does it do that? I haven't finished the video yet. Okay. Based on your breathing. Based on your particular breathing. No, no, it's like. There's a woman that there's a whole video where she's demonstrating how it works. You go to the stinky area.

• 47:26Steven Rinella?

  She says you can go stay I'm staying five feet from the hog farm. Because the neighbor's fence goes up to the hog farm. So I can stand in the neighbor. I can stay in the yard. Put my nasal ranger on. And the meter makes sure you're breathing at a norm like what would be the a normal person's breathing? Meaning you can't go.

• 47:49Steven Rinella?

  Because that's not normal. Right?

• 47:53Steven Rinella?

  And you can't go like this for you people just listening. I'm plugging my nose. Yeah. Because that's not normal. So the nasal ranger makes you do a normal breath. It seems like it's a little superhero or something.

• 48:06Speaker 04

  Nasal ranger.

• 48:07Steven Rinella?

  You do a normal breath and it's got these carbon filters on and whatnot and it spits out. A stench rank.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 48:19Steven Rinella?

  It's fascinating.

• 48:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, you know, you were talking about forensic entomology before and traditionally, we do think about it from this, you know, telling when, you know, we call it kind of the period of insect activity, not when, when they died, but it's, most of the forensic cases that people are working on aren't body cases. They're, they're working on cases of lawsuits and so they're hired by a legal team of, you know, someone my PhD advisor over the years had worked on, oh, poultry farm is being sued by a, you know, a group of homeowners and they're saying poultry farm's producing flies and smell. And so he's kind of an expert witness and goes out there, does trapping and does all of this stuff. And so we think about it from that case as, you know, this, that's really what people

• 49:03Speaker 05

  that do forensic entomology will do. A lot of those cases are stored product pest things or, you know, a home that is infested with termites for, let's say, and, you know, there was a negligent home inspector that didn't actually look to see and so they'll bring in someone and say, oh no, this termite infestation's been here for 10 years. So they, they did that. Then there are the people that are testifying in court on saying like, yes, we collected these maggots and we can tell that they were two days old or, or whatever. And so that means that the body was put here on, you know, June 14th or whatever.

• 49:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Years ago, I was renting a house and there was a basement I wasn't supposed to utilize, but we would utilize it. And so I was, I was down there all the time and I knew what was down there. Down there is all kinds of cockroach killer boxes. One day I call them and I said, man, there's a bad cockroach problem in our house. Oh, we've never seen that. And I couldn't be like, come on.

• 50:08Steven Rinella?

  I'm in the basement.

• 50:12Steven Rinella?

  I had to just take it.

• 50:14Speaker 00

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• 50:44Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. Listen, we're all trying to save up for something. I got buddies saving up to buy their new house.

• 51:28Steven Rinella?

  I got people eyeing a new boat. I know buddies that are trying to switch out trucks and get an upgrade in their truck, whatever. People are always saving up for stuff. In reality, though, we see that it can be hard to actually save money. But that's what's great about the OnePay app. It makes saving money easy. First, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending. You choose categories, okay? Like Walmart, gas, or dining, and then get rewarded when you spend in those categories. So you're rewarded for what you're already buying. And with high-yield savings, your money keeps growing. Download the OnePay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 52:12Speaker 03

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• 52:28Steven Rinella?

  For over 40 years, the Conservation Fund has raced to protect at-risk land before its loss, the forests, farmland, open spaces, and places that wildlife call home. They believe that people and nature depend on each other, so they act quickly to secure at-risk land before it's permanently lost, working alongside communities to help shape a future where people and nature thrive together. The result is more than protected land. It's thriving wildlife, working forests and farms, clean water, vibrant communities, and outdoor places people can enjoy for generations to come. With over 9 million acres protected

• 53:11Steven Rinella?

  across all 50 states, the Conservation Fund's approach gets real lasting results. Learn more about how they do it at conservationfund.org.

• 53:25Steven Rinella?

  So, we got the magazine done, dead stuff. The screw worm. Hit me with the life cycle of how a screw worm works. Like, I'm assuming he's got to have an entry point, like a wound.

• 53:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And so, the female screw worm fly, the one that's going to lay the eggs, they're looking for a wound or an orifice of some kind. So, you know, you can think mouth, nose, you know, anus, vulva, those are kind of the places that we're traditionally seeing them in cattle at least. And so, they're looking for those, but we, and so, they will lay in those locations, but the bigger concern is a wound. And that wound could be anything from an animal that, you know, you run it through a chute and it, you know, it gets cut, or it could be a, you know, an antler that's fallen off, and so, you have this open kind of spot, or, yeah, so, anything like that. And so, any of these locations

• 54:22Speaker 05

  that could be open, the literature says, kind of, even something like a tick bite location is enough. And so, they're attracted to these open wounds, female comes in.

• 54:33Speaker 05

  Dumps a bunch of eggs. She'll lay

• 54:35Steven Rinella?

  On that little wound.

• 54:36Speaker 05

  On that little wound. Those eggs hatch in 12 to 24 hours. They start then those maggots essentially they're super, super small. You can't actually see them or you can, but most people, if they were looking at an animal, wouldn't be able to see it. They start burrowing into the skin.

• 54:52Steven Rinella?

  So not a big old disco rice style.

• 54:55Speaker 05

  No, no. So, so initially they're like, I could see them, but when we're talking to people, we generally say that they probably would go undetected for two to three days. And so, yeah. And so, and so they're pretty small.

• 55:07Steven Rinella?

  You would just look

• 55:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:08Steven Rinella?

  At a distance and just see a festering wound.

• 55:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And so that, and that's the whole thing. And so the, those maggots will hatch again. For some reason, the larvae start producing this, this odor that then draws in more flies that will then lay more eggs in that wound. Yeah. So, so that's actually something that's really interesting. The scientist, John Welch, who's kind of dedicated his life for the last 60 or so years doing this, in the mid 90s, he actually trained a dog to detect screw worm kind of infestations. Yeah. And so, yeah. So there's like a little bit of work there. It's kind of a fascinating thing. It's kind of like people will use dogs to detect bedbugs and things like that as well.

• 55:46Steven Rinella?

  No kidding.

• 55:48Speaker 05

  So then those larvae kind of continue to develop. They go through what we call these larval instars or larval stages. So that's like a five to seven day period. And so here, I don't know, this would be bad for the audience, but so those would be, yeah. So those would be maggots that are

• 56:05Steven Rinella?

  Zoom in on this.

• 56:06Speaker 05

  That would be three, three to four, three to four days old. And so

• 56:14Speaker 05

  And again, so those would be

• 56:16Steven Rinella?

  These are significant. Like it'd be the biggest one in here, just for people that are not watching but listening. The biggest one in here would be barely suitable as ice fish and bait.

• 56:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, and so those are probably three to four days old, and so they'll kind of be in this wound for five to seven days. During that time, again, they're attracting more and more adults that are laying eggs, and so you can get all these different life stages. At that point, they say, hey, we're ready to kind of become an adult fly, so they crawl out of the wound and into the soil, where they then pupate. So again, that chrysalis type of a thing that you'd have with a butterfly. They hang out in that stage for, you know, six to eight days, and then they emerge kind of as adults. And so

• 57:15Speaker 05

  depending on the temperature, you can kind of, you know, it's a two to three week kind of total life cycle. But one thing is, is that with an infested animal, like you can, you can kill an infested animal in five to seven days. And so it's

• 57:29Steven Rinella?

  And it's what, what is killing, like if you ran, let's say we take a cow.

• 57:39Steven Rinella?

  A cow gets nick from barbed wire. Or pick, give me, give me the most common reason you'd see on your, on cattle. What's the most common reason you'd see a cut on a cow?

• 57:47Speaker 07

  You know, barbed wire is a good one.

• 57:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay. It gets hung up in the barbed wire.

• 57:51Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 57:51Steven Rinella?

  Gets a couple of cuts on it.

• 57:52Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 57:55Steven Rinella?

  The fly finds it.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 57:57Steven Rinella?

  They get on it. It dies in two weeks.

• 58:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:01Steven Rinella?

  It could, right?

• 58:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:03Steven Rinella?

  You do an autopsy. Someone does an autopsy.

• 58:06Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 58:06Steven Rinella?

  They're like, like what, what, what actually killed it?

• 58:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, it's kind of like with, with anything, right? There, there could be a number of different things. So we, depending on where you were, you know, where that site was, and they burrow in, you know, you could be eating.

• 58:22Steven Rinella?

  They burrow.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's, that's part of the reason that the name screw worm exists is, one, the larvae have these ridges on them that kind of look like a screw would. The other thing is, is that they, they say they screw into the, the wound. Essentially, they're burrowing their way through the cavity of the animal. And so

• 58:39Steven Rinella?

  I was thinking of somehow, I was thinking more of them like

• 58:42Speaker 05

  No.

• 58:42Steven Rinella?

  Like on the surface, yeah, like the hide or something.

• 58:45Speaker 05

  No, and, and

• 58:46Steven Rinella?

  So they go

• 58:46Speaker 05

  So they're going straight in.

• 58:48Steven Rinella?

  They're diving in.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, and so they could be eating vital organs. They could be doing anything like that. The other thing that we think about

• 58:53Steven Rinella?

  But they could see, they could get in there and be like, like Eating lung.

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, so what happened, so we had a, we had an outbreak of screw worm in the Florida Keys in 2016.

• 59:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 59:04Speaker 05

  Um, it's the last time that we had a, an outbreak in the US.

• 59:08Steven Rinella?

  Also, this is not like.

• 59:09Speaker 05

  So, yes and no. It was the first time that we'd had an outbreak. We still don't know where the flies came from. Like, it's this whole wild kind of thing of, yes, yeah, maybe, I'm, I'm not gonna say anything.

• 59:21Steven Rinella?

  That's called, that's called reckless?

• 59:23Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, very much so. Can, can we retract that from the record?

• 59:26Steven Rinella?

  I don't even know what. It's just reckless. I don't even need a second word on that.

• 59:30Speaker 05

  So, yes and no. So, to answer your question, there are incursions that occur all the time. But the thing is, is that in 2016, we didn't have this kind of like, you know, this kind of infantry, essentially, that was moving forward that's super close to the US. This was kind of like, it popped up and then we were able to wipe it out.

• 59:49Steven Rinella?

  In cattle?

• 59:50Speaker 05

  Uh, no, so it popped up in key deer. And so what happened?

• 59:53Steven Rinella?

  Which is a threatened?

• 59:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a threatened or an endangered species. And so what ended up happening there is that they, the, the people, you know, they're essentially like pets down there. And so there are people kind of just like saw them.

• 1:00:07Steven Rinella?

  Can you hold that thought for me? So I want people, but if you're listening and you're not familiar with key deer, keys deer, key deer, not to be mistaken with coos deer.

• 1:00:15Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:00:15Steven Rinella?

  There's this little, little teeny shitting whitetail that's like, like.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  They're cute.

• 1:00:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but he's no more afraid of the waters of muskrat. I mean, they'll swim around. You should go check them out. Like, a little teeny deer, but they're like a, nowadays, in the old days, you would have called them subspecies. I think now you'd call them an ecotype. Um, an eco, a whitetail ecotype down in the Keys, there aren't many, they get, you can't hunt them. They get hit by cars. They haven't been hunted in so long, they're very tame, but it's like a, but a, but a species of concern. For sure, they'll blink out.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  Yep. And so what ended up happening was it kind of went undetected or unreported for a while. And then people started noticing, hey, why, why is, you know, my, my pet deer stumbling around?

• 1:01:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:01:09Speaker 05

  And what they ended up realizing was when they checked out the first couple of animals was that screw worm had essentially gone laid eggs, uh, near the antlers and had burrowed their way through the skull of the animals. And we're eating the brains of the key deer.

• 1:01:24Steven Rinella?

  On his pedicle, like the antler base.

• 1:01:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Steven Rinella?

  You're kidding.

• 1:01:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I have some, some wild photos that are just kind of.

• 1:01:31Steven Rinella?

  Here, send them to Phil.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:01:33Speaker 07

  So.

• 1:01:34Steven Rinella?

  Phil wants to see me.

• 1:01:36Speaker 07

  You were talking about, let's say a cow got stuck in some barbed wire and she got a cut on her leg. And so that's a long ways from the brain as opposed to a deer getting it in the antler and it's going right into the brain. How long does that take to, I mean, what, what's that process?

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. So some of it is you, you potentially wouldn't have, you know, complete migration in, in that location. What would be the best way for me to send the?

• 1:02:02Speaker 07

  Oh, sorry.

• 1:02:03Speaker 04

  I don't know. Uh, if you're on a thread with, with Corinne, you can send them to her and then she can forward them on.

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  Okay. Can I just give, cause I don't, I don't, I'm not connected to the internet or anything here. Okay. Yeah. Can I just give you my computer and you can just send this PowerPoint over?

• 1:02:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah, man.

• 1:02:20Speaker 05

  Um, so.

• 1:02:21Steven Rinella?

  You know what we're thinking about doing? You got some good photos?

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Steven Rinella?

  So we do this calendar series.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  Um, we did like effed up, uh, deer stands.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. Have one in my house.

• 1:02:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you do?

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Steven Rinella?

  I don't want, I'm getting out of the calendar business.

• 1:02:39Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:41Steven Rinella?

  But we might do one last calendar called F'd Up Wildlife Diseases.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Steven Rinella?

  And it's just every month, it's a picture of a terrible wildlife disease.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Steven Rinella?

  And that's gonna kind of close out the series, because no one will buy it.

• 1:02:53Speaker 05

  I don't know. You're gonna have a bunch of entomologists that want to buy it.

• 1:02:55Steven Rinella?

  The problem is with the series is every year, like, people buy them a little bit.

• 1:03:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Steven Rinella?

  A little bit less all the time.

• 1:03:03Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:03:03Steven Rinella?

  Because calendars are fading out.

• 1:03:04Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:05Steven Rinella?

  But to have a calendar that was so disgusting, you follow me?

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Steven Rinella?

  So disgusting that no one bought it.

• 1:03:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Steven Rinella?

  It would just end the calendar.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  Maybe, or it becomes really, really popular.

• 1:03:17Steven Rinella?

  No, it's gonna end it. F'd Up Wildlife Diseases.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Steven Rinella?

  That will put January, it can be screw worm.

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it could be. It could be screw worm, you know, it could be blue tongue, it could be EHB.

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  You could do a whole calendar off like one slide I'm looking at.

• 1:03:31Steven Rinella?

  Just, the calendar was called One F'd Up Wildlife Disease.

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. But do we want to put this in the video version, or are we gonna, okay?

• 1:03:43Steven Rinella?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:03:44Speaker 07

  It's gonna get some kind of warning.

• 1:03:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, YouTube's not gonna push it, and Reeve is gonna be mad.

• 1:03:47Steven Rinella?

  There's a question I wanted to ask you earlier that we back up to. We got you so whacked out now by this.

• 1:03:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:03:52Steven Rinella?

  We'll get pictures drawn. But there's a question I wanted to ask you earlier.

• 1:03:56Steven Rinella?

  What, can you explain real quick? We have a thing, we, like, like, what are the, um,

• 1:04:06Steven Rinella?

  you know, like a meat bee? We call them a meat bee?

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:04:09Steven Rinella?

  Like, let's say you're cleaning fresh, you're cleaning fresh fish, okay? Or you're eating a burger on your yard. The bee that comes to that.

• 1:04:18Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:19Steven Rinella?

  His motivation is nothing like a fly, right?

• 1:04:23Speaker 05

  Yes and no. Um, you know, they're looking for a protein source. So depending on, on what it is, so, so there are things, there's a bunch of different species that could be wasps that will feed on meat. There are things called vulture bees, actually, um, that will feed on decomposing material and stuff like that. I had, I had a colleague in California that did some work on them. So again, they're looking for a food source. So it's gonna be a similar thing, depending.

• 1:04:46Steven Rinella?

  But he's not looking to lay his, like,

• 1:04:47Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 1:04:48Steven Rinella?

  If a fly comes to a fresh fish, he's never looking. He's he's not looking to eat the fish.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  Depending. It depends on the fly. And so obviously, you're gonna have some organisms that are gonna, you know, your blowflies are gonna be looking for a, you know, a place to lay their eggs.

• 1:05:02Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:05:03Speaker 05

  But then some of your standard, you know, run-of-the-mill, your your housefly or something like that, it might be coming there to lay eggs, or it could just be coming there to, you know, to feed as well, you know?

• 1:05:13Steven Rinella?

  And he might eat fresh fish.

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Steven Rinella?

  And then he might later come back and be like, no, I'm gonna lay my eggs on it, now that it's rotten.

• 1:05:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:05:20Speaker 05

  And and so, again, it's gonna be a, it, that's the one problem with with anything is that there's nuance in in all of these. And so you are gonna have some stuff with, uh, you know, any of these blowflies or a lot of the blowflies that are coming in to look for, you know, a place to lay their eggs. Um, and you will see that, you know, uh, we've done some forensic work where, you know, we're putting a a dead pig out in the environment and and then collecting maggots and stuff like that for our forensic entomology class. Um, and you will see, you'll see blowflies that are showing up within, you know, two minutes of us unloading it from a truck.

• 1:05:55Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:05:56Speaker 05

  Um, and then they, those guys are looking for a place to, uh, lay eggs. They're attracted to the, you know, the smell of death, the decomposition, everything like that. But once the body cavity and everything like that opens up, you're going to get egg lay, but you also are just gonna get them feeding on secretions and everything like that that that exists there as well. So.

• 1:06:16Steven Rinella?

  How many species of fly in the US?

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:06:20Steven Rinella?

  Um, I don't know how you guys would divide it up. Like, I know that you have like Diphtera, so you have, you know, little midges and noceums and but like, but how many species of fly are out there? Like, visible, clearly visible flies?

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  Well, I I don't know if I could tell you a, a number.

• 1:06:42Steven Rinella?

  It's like that many.

• 1:06:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And and again, the, uh, diversity of them, you know, it it, you know, goes from everything to a mosquito, which you you know, you could see, uh, to your horseflies, right? Like, so in in and then you have, you know, noceums, your Kilkoides or your Lepiconops, you know, these biting midges that are transmitting, um, pathogens and things like that. And so, yeah.

• 1:07:03Steven Rinella?

  It's just like dozens and dozens.

• 1:07:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, or hun- thousands, probably.

• 1:07:06Steven Rinella?

  Thousand, no kidding.

• 1:07:07Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so, in, and again, in the US, I couldn't tell you exactly. I'm not someone that does. Fly systematics of kind of understanding all the relatedness, but you know, yeah, there's, there's a ton of them.

• 1:07:19Steven Rinella?

  Perhaps thousands of flies.

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Steven Rinella?

  All right. So when we got y'all screwed up with trying to get the pictures, you were laying out,

• 1:07:28Steven Rinella?

  talking about the, the key deer.

• 1:07:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Steven Rinella?

  Is it fucking keys or key? I think it's key.

• 1:07:33Speaker 05

  I think it's key deer.

• 1:07:33Steven Rinella?

  Key deer.

• 1:07:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Steven Rinella?

  You were laying that out and we're talking about the getting into the brain.

• 1:07:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Steven Rinella?

  Doug was bringing up, let's say, let's say a cow gets a cut on its.

• 1:07:41Speaker 07

  Leg.

• 1:07:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 07

  Or something.

• 1:07:42Steven Rinella?

  It's hip. No, so there's no like, you know, you can't, he's not in the lungs, he's not in the brain.

• 1:07:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And, and so again, in, in those types of situations, you probably, it's just going to be invading that tissue there. It's not going to migrate and, and move. It's not like it's targeting the brain or something like that. It's, it's just looking for an open, an open wound. So wherever that open wound is, and then that is essentially then at that point going to be expanding out. So you're just going to have this cavity that is forming. And a lot of times what ends up happening is that if it's not something where it's like complete consumption, um, it's actually the, you know, a secondary bacterial infection that ends up being the problem. And so, you know, just, just think of a.

• 1:08:21Steven Rinella?

  So it could wind up with a fever.

• 1:08:22Speaker 05

  Exactly. And, and again, like what, what you'll see clinically in animals is kind of, you know, a lot of those standard like failure to thrive symptoms that you would see, you know, drooping head, animals that are isolating, um, kind of a lot of these things, you know, oh, a very specific odor that's coming out of it. Um, and then wounds that essentially, you know, might even look small on the surface, but it's a deep cavity um, that, that's going inwards. And again, all of that is just opening up for, you know, secondary bacterial infection. So.

• 1:08:52Speaker 07

  So do they, um, like horn flies, face flies, you know, stuff that I've dealt with, with cattle, do these, are they also attracted to like eyes and nose and that they're around the head all the time?

• 1:09:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So, so horn flies, not as much. Sometimes you, sometimes you will, uh, see them in and around the, the head. You know, I guess that's where the, you know, with horn flies, but generally you're seeing horn flies like on the back of the animal and everything's like that. Um, so yeah, these guys, they, they will be because they're going to be attracted to, you know, the nose and the mouth and, and things like that. But, um, it, it's really they're looking for those kind of open, uh, wounds.

• 1:09:33Speaker 07

  But so, yeah, those aren't wounds.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:35Speaker 07

  So it's a little bit different. I'm not face flies.

• 1:09:37Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 1:09:38Speaker 07

  Horn flies.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Speaker 07

  But, um, so that's different.

• 1:09:42Speaker 07

  Uh, okay. What I'm, the other thing, and I asked you about this before, being a, this is gonna, weird question, but, um, I was a Catholic boy, you know, and, and when, when,

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  you sure, you sure you want to talk about this here, Doug?

• 1:09:58Speaker 07

  Let's just talk about this quickly. And I remember the nun saying there was a purpose for everything, right?

• 1:10:04Speaker 05

  Oh, okay. I thought we were, yeah, nevermind.

• 1:10:06Speaker 07

  And so the purpose of, and you can, and I've, I've thought about that. There's a lot of things that, you know, didn't make sense to me then, but that always made sense to me. Like, there's a purpose for everything, right? Mosquitoes have a purpose, flies have a purpose, uh, you know, maggots, decompose, decomposition, all of those sort of things. I'm-

• 1:10:26Speaker 05

  This is a very human-centric perspective.

• 1:10:31Speaker 07

  Right, but, but what's the purpose? I mean, isn't it like an evolution? There, isn't there, what's the purpose of this?

• 1:10:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's the thing that's, it's funny, and you, you posed this before, and it's, you know, kind of, most of the time, if you ask an entomologist, or you ask someone, it's like, oh, you know, should we just get rid of all the mosquitoes? They'll talk about ecosystem services, bats, and whatever else it's eating, right? Like, what would, what would be the cost of getting rid of mosquitoes? Exactly, yeah. And, and, and someone can, you can steel man an argument. Um, kind of, again, this, this USDA researcher, John Welch, had, he, who has worked on this, he's like, my goal is to get rid of them. He's like, I don't see any purpose for them. He wants to pray God. Yeah, yeah, very much so. Uh, and, but he's, he's worked his entire career, you know, I, I remember seeing him talk after, uh, the key deer kind of thing in the Florida

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  Keys, and he was at a conference, and he broke down crying at how, like, horrible it was, just seeing these animals that, you know, they're collecting up animals that are staggering around, that they're having to euthanize. And, and again, he's like, he's like, my goal is, if I could, I would get rid of them. So- History, I mean, just- Yeah. History has not been kind to that sentiment. Correct, yeah. But I want to talk, so the key deer deal.

• 1:11:46Steven Rinella?

  We kind of, we didn't finish the story.

• 1:11:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Steven Rinella?

  There's still, there's not right now, a whole bunch of key deer getting killed by screw worms.

• 1:11:53Speaker 05

  Correct, yeah.

• 1:11:54Steven Rinella?

  What happened?

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, um, back in the 1930s, uh...

• 1:11:59Steven Rinella?

  No, we're just in 2016.

• 1:12:00Speaker 05

  Yes, correct, correct.

• 1:12:01Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:12:02Speaker 05

  But, what, what essentially, uh, happened, this goes back to the 30s and the 40s and the 50s, how we eradicated it originally, um, is that these two USDA scientists came up with this idea called sterile insect technique.

• 1:12:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:12:12Speaker 05

  And pretty much it takes advantage of the screw worm's biology. So what they figured out was that female flies only mate once. And so if you can produce a bunch of male flies, and you can throw them out in the environment, they'll meet up with a female, mate with her, and since she only mates once, and she got the signal that she mated, she's not ever going to produce, uh, viable offspring.

• 1:12:34Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:35Speaker 05

  And so, what they essentially did in 2016 is, uh, they went in and they did a bunch of sterile, uh, releases of flies, and they knocked the population out and they completely eradicated screw worm from Florida Keys, using this sterile insect.

• 1:12:49Steven Rinella?

  How were they sterilizing them?

• 1:12:50Speaker 05

  Uh, cobalt, um, and it's a, essentially, it's a radioactive cobalt that they're using, and they're radiating, um, flies, uh, and some of it is like a process that I, I was, you know, we were, we were kind of going through this thing. But yeah, so they're producing, um, down in Panama currently, about 110 million flies a week.

• 1:13:09Steven Rinella?

  That's radiating them.

• 1:13:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, and so they're irradiating them to the, uh, and, and again, they're using, um, a radioactive isotope, uh, and people are currently...

• 1:13:20Steven Rinella?

  And you zap them just enough to kind of kill his nuts.

• 1:13:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, um, and, and so that's, that's what they're doing. And again, these two scientists first were, were playing around, trying to figure out like, how they could do it, what they were doing. Uh, there was some previous work that had shown that you could do this, um, in a, in another fly species. They were like, hey, can we try it with screw worm? Um, and they were able to figure out, you know, it is, it's kind of like that fine line between, uh... Sterile flies and non-sterile flies and over time, they actually had, they've had mistakes where they didn't sterilize the flies appropriately. That happened down in Mexico.

• 1:13:55Steven Rinella?

  Didn't zap good enough.

• 1:13:56Speaker 05

  Correct, yeah, and so currently, we only have this one sterile fly facility. There was one in Mexico when we were trying to eradicate it that they've now taken offline. That was producing 500 million flies a week. And so, yeah, and so, and again, we're just flooding the environment with these flies. Any, to essentially be like, hey, we want to find any female fly and so they can mate and then we wipe them out that way. It's a brilliant technique. It's just kind of like, over time with everything, right? It's this evolutionary adaptation of, you know, over time, we've had our sterile flies that don't compete. And so then they've had to change the strain that they've used.

• 1:14:39Speaker 05

  So they've gone and essentially collected new flies, colonized them. It's this whole kind of like fascinating process that they're doing. But that's kind of been the game plan. And so that's what they did back.

• 1:14:49Steven Rinella?

  Going to an area where there's a blow up.

• 1:14:51Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:14:52Steven Rinella?

  Dumping millions of.

• 1:14:54Speaker 05

  Correct, of sterile flies.

• 1:14:59Steven Rinella?

  Uh, okay, we got what looks to be my dog on the right.

• 1:15:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, I gotta ask you, I'll tell you.

• 1:15:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 06

  Describe to the audience.

• 1:15:11Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, I got a question. I got, not a question, but the other day, you're the perfect audience for this. You guys both are the perfect audience for this. The other day, I'm talking about my buddy Kevin Murphy. He's talking about when he's a kid, working on a, working on a farm.

• 1:15:28Steven Rinella?

  And I said, what was your, like, what were your responsibilities? He's talking about working on the farm when he was a little kid.

• 1:15:35Steven Rinella?

  And he was talking about, one of the things they would do is he would work on the, they were experimenting with artificial insemination. They had a bull.

• 1:15:45Steven Rinella?

  There's nothing to do with one flies.

• 1:15:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Steven Rinella?

  If you ever heard this or not. This might be common practice. They had a bull.

• 1:15:53Steven Rinella?

  They rerouted this bull's pecker.

• 1:16:00Steven Rinella?

  You follow me?

• 1:16:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:16:01Steven Rinella?

  So it was going off backward. Rerouted his pecker surgically. Had a vet come in.

• 1:16:09Speaker 06

  Like just flipped around.

• 1:16:10Steven Rinella?

  Yep, they took out, there's like a, they took out like, they took out like the pecker, it's not a, it's not a baculum.

• 1:16:19Steven Rinella?

  But like the rigid structure, took it, removed it to the point where a guy was able to keep it.

• 1:16:24Speaker 06

  Why?

• 1:16:25Steven Rinella?

  Removed it and rerouted it. Then. They would hang a giant, imagine a necklace that's like a ballpoint pen.

• 1:16:37Steven Rinella?

  Hanging on his neck.

• 1:16:39Speaker 06

  Why?

• 1:16:40Steven Rinella?

  An ink blotter hanging on his neck.

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  Poor guy.

• 1:16:44Steven Rinella?

  You turn him out with the cows. He can tell when a cow's in heat.

• 1:16:49Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:50Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. He jumps up there, but he's been rerouted. So it doesn't do anybody any good. Does him good, but not the cow any good. But when he jumps up there, he ink blots her.

• 1:17:04Steven Rinella?

  With his ink blotter.

• 1:17:05Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:17:06Steven Rinella?

  Then, all the kid's gotta do is he's looks out and eh, there's another cow with an ink blot on her. She must be ripe.

• 1:17:14Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:17:15Speaker 07

  And then they're doing AI.

• 1:17:16Steven Rinella?

  AI.

• 1:17:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Steven Rinella?

  You, have you ever heard of that?

• 1:17:19Speaker 07

  I had not. I was thinking, well, this must be a new way of gathering semen from, but makes nothing but sense. If you're doing AI, I mean, old ways, just let that bull out there.

• 1:17:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's the.

• 1:17:32Speaker 07

  That's the old way, Steve.

• 1:17:35Steven Rinella?

  Um, so neither of you guys ever heard of that? No.

• 1:17:38Speaker 07

  No, it's.

• 1:17:39Steven Rinella?

  Very interesting, man. Very interesting. You're gonna make like a movie about that.

• 1:17:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, we would just stand and watch the cows and go, oh, she's ready.

• 1:17:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:49Speaker 07

  You know, I mean, it was a daily, daily thing.

• 1:17:52Steven Rinella?

  I thought that was really something.

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• 1:20:08Steven Rinella?

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• 1:21:06Steven Rinella?

  So releasing all these flies, millions. Now about this, the process here of putting the steriles out, can you give me an estimate? And maybe you can't. Like, take the key to your situation. So you're on Big Piney or whatever, one of those keys, one of those keys.

• 1:21:24Steven Rinella?

  This is probably impossible, say, like, how many?

• 1:21:29Steven Rinella?

  To be effective,

• 1:21:32Steven Rinella?

  do you need to put so many flies out that the majority of the flies on the landscape are your doctored flies? Or will a percent ultimately do it?

• 1:21:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I couldn't tell you what that number is actually going to be. One thing that's actually interesting about them is that they The flies exist in kind of a relatively low adult number, like 200 to 300 per square mile type of a thing.

• 1:22:00Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And so it's one of the, and actually I just, I just learned this when I was in a workshop.

• 1:22:05Steven Rinella?

  More deer than that.

• 1:22:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so it was something that I recently learned when we were, when we were doing a workshop. And, and so again, you're just, you're just hammering that environment. And so, yeah, maybe, maybe there is, I, I wouldn't even want to estimate how many adult flies are in that environment. And again, you're just, let's just, just dump as many as we can. So like in the

• 1:22:28Steven Rinella?

  But it could theoretically be that on a property, on an island, on a whatever, that there could be just like as, as low as like some number of hundreds of males.

• 1:22:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:41Steven Rinella?

  But you could go there and be like, I'm gonna put thousands.

• 1:22:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And that would be the kind of the idea. And again,

• 1:22:46Steven Rinella?

  Overwhelming.

• 1:22:46Speaker 05

  They're proof of concept with any of this. They actually, when they were testing all of this, they did it on the island of Curacao to wipe out the screw worm problems that were there. And so they actually started

• 1:22:57Steven Rinella?

  Thinking of the director.

• 1:22:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, I actually, I couldn't tell you exactly where it is.

• 1:23:01Speaker 06

  Curacao, it's in the Caribbean.

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  Okay. And, and again, they were using this as kind of this, okay, well, flies aren't moving in, so we can see what we can do, kind of in this situation.

• 1:23:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do not worry about new ones coming across.

• 1:23:15Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah. And so with, with this situation, again, like in the Florida Keys situation, I was just looking, they dumped 180, 188 million flies. And, and so, yeah, so over about a one month, or a couple month period. And yeah, they're just hammering that environment.

• 1:23:36Steven Rinella?

  They're just gone.

• 1:23:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Steven Rinella?

  But dudes that are living there have to be walking out. And it's gotta be like, seems like there's flies everywhere.

• 1:23:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, that's something that I've, I've asked some people about. It's kind of like, well, if, if we get screw worm in the US, I, you Are people gonna be okay with this idea? Just because it because they kind of will do two different things. And it's kind of an interesting situation when we think about public's perception of science in general, right? It's kind of a change over time. The way that they release these either is with ground release chambers where they essentially their boxes that are full of these pupae, or they drop them from airplanes. And so they release them out of airplanes, out of the back of airplanes.

• 1:24:18Steven Rinella?

  Adults.

• 1:24:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, the adults. And so and then they'll fall to the ground.

• 1:24:22Steven Rinella?

  And so new kind of chemtrails.

• 1:24:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, and you know, it's they do that in California for Mediterranean fruit fly. You know, they're releasing, you know, multiple hundred million flies a week in California to control Mediterranean fruit fly. So it's it's something that is done. It's just not something that a lot of people know about. And so and also something that's really small versus, you know, here's here's an adult fly. It's your standard kind of blowfly size.

• 1:24:48Speaker 07

  So it's the same technique with the fruit flies.

• 1:24:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:24:52Speaker 07

  That you're it's sterile flies, still still.

• 1:24:56Speaker 05

  Stable sterile males.

• 1:24:57Steven Rinella?

  Because I would never if I saw that dude hanging around. No, I think I would recognize him as not being a normal one.

• 1:25:03Speaker 05

  So and and again.

• 1:25:04Steven Rinella?

  Electric blue.

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, and and so those are one thing that's interesting is that they actually will change color depending on what they they feed on. So it's kind of a really strange thing. We have in the US, though, a very closely related fly that looks nearly identical. And so it's kind of a challenge when it when it comes down to it of differentiating them. You can do it, not that difficult if you look at it underneath the microscope. But, you know, we have this secondary screw worm that is common. It doesn't feed on living flesh. It doesn't do anything like that. And so we end up kind of that's one of the problems that you end up running into is identifying them and putting out traps to try to monitor for them.

• 1:25:47Speaker 07

  Got it.

• 1:25:48Speaker 05

  Is the attractant that the USDA has essentially developed also attracts all the blowflies because it's essentially just a combination of a bunch of chemicals that then mimic rotting flesh essentially. So.

• 1:26:01Steven Rinella?

  If you now, when you go in, like, let's say you go into a community.

• 1:26:07Steven Rinella?

  Agricultural community.

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:11Steven Rinella?

  And you're like, hey, y'all got a, you know, there's a, there's a screw worm outbreak.

• 1:26:15Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:26:16Steven Rinella?

  And we're gonna, we're gonna dump 200 million sterile flies.

• 1:26:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:23Steven Rinella?

  How many days is it until all those sterile flies are gone?

• 1:26:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, I, I couldn't put a number, uh, on it. There, there is specific kind of criteria of when you can call an area eradicated that they do. Um, so for an area to be, you know, free of no.

• 1:26:45Steven Rinella?

  How long will those bugs live?

• 1:26:48Speaker 05

  Um, so an adult fly in the environment will live a few weeks.

• 1:26:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:26:53Speaker 05

  Um, and, and so, and again, it'll just continually propagate. And so what, and that's part of the reason.

• 1:26:59Steven Rinella?

  But they can't because they're sterile.

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  You know, correct. And so, and that's what you are looking for. But there's going to be some individuals that mated with a, you know, a non-sterile fly. Um, and so that's why you kind of have to do these releases over and over. Um, and while you're doing that, you're monitoring and looking for, um, if the flies you are collecting, if they're sterile or if they're not sterile.

• 1:27:21Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:22Speaker 05

  Um, and so that's, that's part of the process as well. And so it's kind of a continued release over time. It's not just like, you know, let's just drop all these flies this one time. You want to continue to do it because you're going to, in essence, miss some of them at some points, at some points.

• 1:27:36Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Why is there, and I know that, you know, the press will kind of, they like, I don't mean it's a negative way, but people will look and there's a sensational quality to it.

• 1:27:48Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:27:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay, there's like flesh eating flies, right? There's a sensational quality to it. People are going to read it. But.

• 1:27:57Steven Rinella?

  From talking to you, it seems like it's almost a non-problem if it's so easily remedied. Like, is there a scenario in which you could get, like, do you, is there a scenario in which you could go haywire? To where you're not able to produce enough to catch it?

• 1:28:13Speaker 05

  So that's part of the problem is that, yeah, we, the USDA and kind of researchers in general have, we've relied on sterile insect technique and that's been the, the whole focus of everything like that. But we can't say that it's a non-problem because currently us doing sterile releases isn't controlling the problem.

• 1:28:33Steven Rinella?

  Where is it not, where is it not controlling the problem?

• 1:28:35Speaker 05

  Um, in Mexico. That, so the thing is, is that it, if sterile releases were controlling the issue initially, it never would have moved out of Panama. Um, and so it moved out of Panama and then since 2023, it's been moving its way up through Mexico. Um, and so we're doing sterile releases in Mexico. And the big concern really when it comes down to it, and again, it's not a concern as it is more of an infrastructure problem, is that we have one facility that's producing flies, you know, the, the Kopeck facility in Panama is producing a hundred, 110 million flies a week. Um, but if it gets into the US, we're going to need five or 600 million flies a week. And part of the problem is, is that we're, we now have to, you know, it's like when you build infrastructure for anything,

• 1:29:18Speaker 05

  is that we're, at this point, we're, oh shit, if it gets here, this is a problem. But it's a two, three year lag time to build a facility to be able to produce flies. Because this isn't a, oh hey, let's just bring in these flies. It has to be, you, you have radiation. You, you know, all of the security clearance and security kind of protocols and safety that go into, you know, having, you know, nuclear, uh, you know, radioactive elements in an area to irradiate flies is something. And then it's also the idea of. Well, we're now bringing flies that aren't sterile into this environment. And one thing as a researcher that's very challenging is that the USDA has essentially

• 1:30:02Speaker 05

  said, hey, we're the ones that are doing this. We're, we're working on this problem. And so like no one in the U.S. can bring flies to do actual research here in the U.S. because they don't want it getting out. Okay. And so the USDA has kind of put this, this block on that. And I totally understand they want to be able to control the situation. And it's been, hey, you know, we have this thing that works. No one needs to worry about it. But now they're like, okay, let's do something. They just put out a call for, you know, they, they dedicated a hundred million dollars to try to get researchers to apply to try to do something. If it's extension, if it's outreach, if it's actually doing monitoring for, for things like that, but it.

• 1:30:44Speaker 05

  But the only tool right now, the only known tool to combat is the sterile. Correct. And, and that's part of the concern is that that's not working. And that's where we put all, we put all our eggs in that one basket. And so now it's what do we do? And the other thing is that back in the day, you know, I, I had a couple of students that I talked to them, they, they come from beef cattle background in New Mexico. And they're like, oh yeah, my grandparents talked about, you know, during caving season, because that's another place that you'll see it as in, in the navel. And so during caving season, they would go out, they would, they described it to me as, as that purple stuff, whatever it was, or some, you know, organ phosphate or something like that, that they were applying. And it did great. The problem is, is that all of those products have, because we haven't had it be a problem,

• 1:31:28Speaker 05

  they've all been taken off of EPA registry. They've been taken off of, you know, FDA registry. So currently we have two products that are under emergency use that can be used in animals. And there is nothing else that's developed or licensed to even treat animals with. And so it's a, it's kind of this multi-pronged approach. And then from the insecticide side to try to control them, no one's worked with Screwworm. And so on a label, if it doesn't say that you can use it on Screwworm, you can't use it on Screwworm. And so you have to follow what the label says. So if it says it's for horn flies and face flies and stable flies and house flies, great. But if you end up. Using it for screw worm, well, you're now breaking the law. And so it's a

• 1:32:11Steven Rinella?

  Why is that? Like, I know that on chemical compounds, when you get a patent on a chemical compound, you're actually patenting the application.

• 1:32:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, and with, with some of that, yeah.

• 1:32:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so who says you can't use it?

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  The EPA. So the EPA is

• 1:32:25Steven Rinella?

  So the EPA is not, not the manufacturer, patent holder.

• 1:32:29Speaker 05

  No, and so

• 1:32:30Steven Rinella?

  You're violating federal law.

• 1:32:31Speaker 05

  Correct. When they get that license, it will say on the label, this is used for termites.

• 1:32:36Steven Rinella?

  So this is used for permitted for use in.

• 1:32:38Speaker 05

  Exactly. And so that's the problem is that, you know, we have lots of products that are probably effective. But again, none of us have been able to do the work. And there's, you know, talking to my USDA colleagues, they're like, yeah, uh, there's a whole lot of work that we don't know, like even standards, just like behavior stuff, you know, a lot of my work that, that I do is insect and animal behavior. And so it's, you know, we don't necessarily know how they move, how they're interacting, like in, because we kind of put all of our eggs in this one basket. And also, when we did all this work, we did it all in South America. And so it, we have a very different climate, you know, in New Mexico, in Southern New Mexico, in the, the tip of Texas is, is reservoirs where, you know, screw room would continually develop because it doesn't get cold enough during

• 1:33:23Speaker 05

  that period of time. The rest of the US, you know, luckily, like here in Montana, if screw room showed up, it might be an issue during the summer, but it's going to die out in the winter.

• 1:33:32Steven Rinella?

  It'll kill them.

• 1:33:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, it'll kill them in the winter. But that's the big problem with those southern states and, or, you know, that those southwestern states. And so there's a lot of these different things that we don't know that we're kind of like, all right, what do we do now? And so it's kind of rushing to figure out, like, what can we do? What can we not do? And again, we have to follow all of the, you know, all of the laws that exist. And so if it's, if it's cattle, or if it's, you know, a big concern is that it, it's, if it gets into wildlife, what do you do? Then this runs rampant, right?

• 1:34:03Steven Rinella?

  Has anybody drawn a line? Um, well, I'll explain what I'm getting at through a different thing. I, I, I had a buddy of mine that worked on a project years ago. They were trying to draw a line at what could possibly be the northward spread of the Burmese python.

• 1:34:22Steven Rinella?

  And it would just be that you would put them in burrows.

• 1:34:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:25Steven Rinella?

  Like in, make enclosures, put them in burrows and then see if they carved out in the spring or not.

• 1:34:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Steven Rinella?

  Right. Cause that's the thing. It's like, at a point it's too cold. They can't overwinter.

• 1:34:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:35Steven Rinella?

  Um, what, what would be the line along the US?

• 1:34:38Speaker 05

  Um, and.

• 1:34:38Steven Rinella?

  Or have you guys really refined?

• 1:34:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, no. So, so that's something that, again, there, a lot of it is, it's funny, up until maybe, honestly, probably the last year, there wasn't a whole lot of, there was like all the historical old work that was done. It was really hard to find though, you know, even from a teaching perspective, if we're trying to talk about Screw Room, I'm like trying to pull images and stuff like this and it's, you know, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. Um, and so a lot of this stuff wasn't.

• 1:35:03Steven Rinella?

  Like old references, the things that may or may not have.

• 1:35:05Speaker 05

  Exactly. And, and some of that had to do with like the USDA is like, eh, it's down in Panama. Like we don't like, the effort that we're going to put in to prepare all of this new material, it isn't a issue for us at this moment. So when it comes to, uh, kind of the expansion, like there, there were cases that it potentially would get up to Canada. Um, and really though, you're going to see a kind of this centralized, um, you know, up through, up through Colorado, uh, Utah.

• 1:35:38Steven Rinella?

  No good.

• 1:35:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so, and so you will see it in those locations. Again, it, our biggest concern now at this point is, uh, livestock movement because obviously we have animals that are, that are moving and they get shipped from, you know, let's say New Mexico, and then they get shipped over to Colorado or they get shipped to Montana or they, you know, who knows? And then it's, well, we imported a case. And so then it exists in this area. And so it may not stick around, but if you have an impact where, you know, there, I know that back in the thirties, there was in one section of Texas, Screw Room killed 188,000 cows, um, in, in one year.

• 1:36:18Steven Rinella?

  Are you serious?

• 1:36:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. And.

• 1:36:20Steven Rinella?

  What, what timeframe was that again?

• 1:36:21Speaker 05

  That was in 1933 in one year.

• 1:36:22Steven Rinella?

  Thirty-three.

• 1:36:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so when, when we first started seeing it and so.

• 1:36:26Steven Rinella?

  Damn.

• 1:36:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so it's a, it is a. Big concern, and again, it's it's that problem of stopping forward progress. And that's where, you know, talking about this idea of, is it a concern? It is a concern because at the moment, we haven't been able to completely stop forward progress. And so it's, you know, part of my whole thing here is to be able to communicate because it it isn't something of, well, hopefully it doesn't ever come to the US and I don't have to deal with it. Right. But if it does, we need a whole lot of people to be able to identify, oh, hey, this looks weird. Hey, I can submit a sample to, you know, to confirm that that's what it is.

• 1:37:07Speaker 05

  And then we can, you know, you know, the USDA has kind of put out their their game plan on what they would do, like quarantine in an area so that you restrict animal movement and things like that for that period of time.

• 1:37:18Steven Rinella?

  So the animals are going to be more likely, the animals are going to be more likely to move at long distances than the flies flying around.

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  Correct. Yeah. So so the literature says that like these flies can fly 10 to 15 miles.

• 1:37:30Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:37:31Speaker 05

  In practice, I will, we'll say, you know, it's the one thing that science says and what happens practically. Like there's some studies that show that house flies will fly 20 kilometers. And it's like one mercury capture study that someone did, it's like, no, they're going to fly, you know, 100 yards to your your neighbor's farm, you know? And so the movement doesn't exist. And and again, like Schrumpf has relatively narrow tolerances for temperature. One thing that's interesting about them is they won't fly over bodies of water.

• 1:37:59Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:37:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, they'll fly along it. So like a riparian area. But if like, the reason that we had, we stopped the movement eastward at a different point.

• 1:38:08Steven Rinella?

  Keys.

• 1:38:09Speaker 05

  Again.

• 1:38:10Steven Rinella?

  I, you know, I gotta tell you about, this will be interesting too. And this is kind of applicable. Man, like in, in sort of the immediate post nine 11 era. I was working on a magazine piece where I was at a, a.

• 1:38:29Steven Rinella?

  I was at like a convention. Oh, they call it a stock detective convention that dealt in livestock theft and but it had this whole biosecurity element to it.

• 1:38:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:42Steven Rinella?

  They had found in Afghanistan. When they're doing all their raids on Al Qaeda areas. They had found where they were like swapping information about livestock diseases. Okay, like they were at least exploring the idea of a biohazard livestock thing. So this guy was there and he presented. And I sat in on the presentation and they ran models. Of say a person went to a stockyard and I can't remember where the stockyard was. I mean, it was somewhere in the central US, like Kansas, whatever.

• 1:39:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:20Steven Rinella?

  They're like, say a terrorist went to a stockyard and they ran a scenario where he swabbed the nose. He swabs a half dozen cows. At a stockyard with an anthrax form.

• 1:39:33Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:33Steven Rinella?

  And they ran a model.

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:39:35Steven Rinella?

  About. It's explosion, you know, and it was like alarming.

• 1:39:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:41Steven Rinella?

  Right, like movement of animals, you know. Um, it kind of makes me think of this. Where with the thing in the keys.

• 1:39:50Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:51Steven Rinella?

  Like.

• 1:39:53Steven Rinella?

  Do you ever have, I don't want to give anybody any ideas out there.

• 1:39:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:39:56Steven Rinella?

  I don't know how many Al Qaeda dudes listen to the show, but like. Has anybody ever brought this up that it could just be like a, a, like a economic weapon?

• 1:40:06Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, and, and that's something that we see with, you know, it's a concern with any of these either invasive species that we think of, you know, it's bioterrorism at that point. Um, and, and it is, it's, it's thinking about the movement of if it's screw worm, if it's, um, you know, what a, a big thing is cattle fever tick, um, which is a, a huge deal. And so like, if you were to move those into the US, that's going to, you know, or, or even bringing in, um. You know, a thing that I think is kind of relevant is, you know, with blue tongue virus, which is transmitted by these biting midges, you know, when we have outbreaks, you know, currently there are some weird dynamics of blue tongue going on in Europe, like you

• 1:40:49Speaker 05

  end up halting trade because of those things and the economic damage and kind of, you know, the downstream consequences that exist are are present. And so it is something that is, it is thought about what that really looks like. I don't know, you know, it's, I'm not sitting in on those meetings of people strategizing.

• 1:41:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like is it even plausible or not?

• 1:41:12Speaker 05

  I think it would be plausible, right? I think that if you were to do that, it would just be a matter of, you know, with something like that, you'd have to start a colony and you'd have to do all this stuff to then get them to then bring them to the US and what that would look like.

• 1:41:27Steven Rinella?

  Take some level of expertise.

• 1:41:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:41:29Steven Rinella?

  You know, a while back, that was a few weeks, a few months ago, maybe, the Trump administration floated the idea that like they're trying to, you know, they like attacked egg prices, right? The Trump administration was like trying to like lower beef prices and there was this conversation of, and I don't even know, Doug might know how this works, but there's this conversation of, well, let's bring more beef from Argentina, let's bring more beef from Mexico.

• 1:41:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:57Steven Rinella?

  Uh, this has a plan and all that, right? I mean, like you show up with a truckload, like you show up at the Douglas, Arizona crossing.

• 1:42:07Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:42:08Steven Rinella?

  And I don't know, I don't know how it works, but presumably you show up with a truckload of cows.

• 1:42:11Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:12Steven Rinella?

  Our guys, customs or whatever the veterinarian

• 1:42:16Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:42:17Steven Rinella?

  aspect of customs in.

• 1:42:18Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:42:19Steven Rinella?

  That's gotta be a real question, right?

• 1:42:20Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:42:21Steven Rinella?

  Like where'd they come from and?

• 1:42:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. So all the animal ports of entry are currently closed due to screw worm with Mexico.

• 1:42:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they are?

• 1:42:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. So.

• 1:42:28Steven Rinella?

  So that was kind of a non idea. Like I guess you could bring packaged meat in.

• 1:42:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. So you could do something like that. And one thing, again, I'm, I'm new to New Mexico, but one thing that is interesting, you know, I guess for everybody is that New Mexico has the largest animal port of entry anywhere in the US. So we import more than 50% of the cattle that come across from Mexico at the Santa Teresa border crossing, near El Paso.

• 1:42:50Steven Rinella?

  And it's closed because of screw worm.

• 1:42:51Speaker 05

  It's, so all of the border crossings are. So Douglas, Columbus, any of them in Texas. We currently are not importing animals from Mexico.

• 1:43:00Steven Rinella?

  No kidding.

• 1:43:01Speaker 05

  Because of screw worm. So what that looks like in. Different ways. I, I don't know. I'm not an economist, so I, I can't speak to some of that. But what it, it, yeah, they're, they're currently closed. And so, uh, and when they do reopen. Who made, whose call is that to me? USDA? It's, yeah, it's AFIS's call. Um, and I think that, you know, there are going to be some downstream consequences, you know, I have a, I have a colleague who, um, you know, works with, you know, he works in, in cattle and he was talking about, you know, just the drivers that, you know, would be bringing those animals across to then truck them, you know, the border's been closed for multiple months and it's like, they had to go find new jobs because that was their job. So what's going to happen when the ports open back up?

• 1:43:46Speaker 05

  Are they just gonna, you know, they all have new jobs, you know, it's kind of like when, Yeah, I got you. You know, when the, when the government fired all these USDA employees, it's like, oh, hey, we know, we actually needed those people, but like they can't just sit there. So they went and found new jobs. Did they doze a bunch of screw room guys? So not, uh, I think they, they tried with a lot of these things. They were like, oh yeah, you've been here for, you know, cause it was all these temporary employees. So if it was screw room or it was high pathavian influenza, um, they were like, oh yeah, we need to fire all these people. And they're like, oh no, we need those people. And so they like, they fired them and then like took away their government emails and then brought them back. And it like I, you know, I'm, I'm very good friends with the people that run the screw room lab and it's been a very, and a lot of just USDA.

• 1:44:30Speaker 05

  I got a handful of buddies. They're like, oh shit, we fired him? Yeah. Call him back. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and, and that's kind of the whole thing, right? And, and so it is, it's, there's a lot of these infrastructure pieces that we don't know what it's going to look like. And there's a lot of people that want that border to open. Um, but the, and there's going to be policies. So like currently the, the process will be, you know, the animals are already dipped with cumifos when they come across the border anyways, like to, to deal with cattle fever tick, um, or other ectoparasites. Um, but they're going to be treating them with ivermectin, um, and moving them across the border when that ends up opening. COVID medication? That's a joke. Yeah. Uh, for us, it's one of these things that it's like, it's a, it's been something

• 1:45:13Speaker 05

  that has been used for so long in both human and, and animal, uh, production systems. And so, but there are going to be all of these different things that go on. But yeah, currently the borders are shut down, um, because of that. So they're.

• 1:45:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, what that looks like moving forward. I know that there's like rumblings that people want it to open, but it also doesn't seem like we're anywhere near that actually being the case.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

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• 1:47:31Steven Rinella?

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• 1:48:28Steven Rinella?

  Let's jump to an area, let's jump into an area where there's like high rates. Okay, like a real trouble spot.

• 1:48:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:38Steven Rinella?

  We can talk about it with cattle, but it's like in an area that has screw worm, it's got, it's somewhat indiscriminate, right?

• 1:48:45Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:48:45Steven Rinella?

  Like you mean like, there's not like a deer strain and a cow strain. It's like all things get hit.

• 1:48:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I focus, I've focused mostly on cattle here.

• 1:48:55Steven Rinella?

  Pull that picture back, because I saw a dog.

• 1:48:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, correct. And so in Mexico currently, the, if you look at the distribution of, and that middle one's a video too, if you click on it.

• 1:49:05Speaker 04

  I can't.

• 1:49:06Speaker 05

  Oh, you can't? Okay. No, it's okay. Yeah, so, so in Mexico, the number one infestation is in cattle. Number two is in dogs. And part of that though-

• 1:49:17Steven Rinella?

  Is his brain pan opened up?

• 1:49:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. And so, and then that-

• 1:49:22Steven Rinella?

  They got through the bone?

• 1:49:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, so they're just chewing through everything.

• 1:49:25Steven Rinella?

  They can chew through your bones.

• 1:49:27Speaker 05

  I don't know exactly how that all looks, to be completely honest, but yeah, it's not great. And so again, so it is, it's indiscriminate.

• 1:49:37Steven Rinella?

  That looks a lot like my dog's head.

• 1:49:38Speaker 05

  I talk, I talk a lot about cattle, but that's because, that's the thing that we look at, right? Like, we're looking at animals, we're running them through a chute, we're doing all of that. Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:47Speaker 06

  That deer's like a lie.

• 1:49:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's a key deer that has its brain-

• 1:49:53Speaker 05

  Essentially eaten.

• 1:49:54Speaker 06

  So it's alive with like a hole in its skull.

• 1:49:57Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:49:58Speaker 06

  And its brain exposed.

• 1:50:00Speaker 05

  Not typical too.

• 1:50:01Speaker 06

  That is the beautiful.

• 1:50:02Speaker 05

  But they didn't get in on him. They didn't get in on him because he dropped his antlers. No, no. So, so that's just a, a, a scratch or a wound. Yeah. And so again, it's, it's one of these things that I, my concern, and again, like wanting to communicate to a group, you know, a group of outdoors people is that we're not looking at animals, you know, we're not looking at wildlife. Yeah. Because we're, you know, we're not rounding up deer and running them through a chute to inspect them, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah. You don't take a drive, you know, no one's taking a drive every morning. You see how the herd's doing. Exactly. And, and so the problem is, is that, yeah, it's going to get into wildlife and it's going to run rampant in wildlife because wildlife are going to get to places people can't get to. Sure.

• 1:50:46Speaker 05

  Um, and then it's going to exist and you're going to have animals that die and then those maggots are going to crawl off, pupate, emerge as adults and they're going to infect some other animals and it's going to be this, you know, propagating issue. Yeah. Like it could live in a deer herd. Correct. It could live in a deer herd somewhere for some period of time before a stockman realizes. Correct. Yeah. And, and so, and that's kind of the, the concern. And so in Mexico, you know, I, talking to these veterinarians that we brought up for this training, um, they were saying, like, we asked about wildlife. They're like, oh yeah, 100% is in wildlife. We just, we can't, we can't document those cases. Um, and so because of that, it, it is, it's this kind of,

• 1:51:31Speaker 05

  this area that kind of exists that we don't really know what to do with. And even when it comes to, um, you know, outreach and, and stuff like that, we can go to a, you know, cattleman's association meeting. We can talk to brand inspectors. We can do a lot of that type of stuff. But when it comes to communicating to a bunch of hunters, um, or outdoors people in general, it's a more challenging kind of environment to be able to communicate to them, to develop. You know, different tools to be able to, you know, do that, you know, a couple of colleagues of mine. Were putting together a survey for New Mexico where we went to survey hunters. You know, kind of outdoors people, cattle producers and the general public.

• 1:52:12Speaker 05

  I recognize that there's a certain type of person that answers surveys, but it is still one of these things that we want to be able to do that.

• 1:52:18Steven Rinella?

  Survey, do you answer surveys?

• 1:52:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it could be, that could be the first question.

• 1:52:22Speaker 07

  Everyone that I get.

• 1:52:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it is something.

• 1:52:25Steven Rinella?

  Hundred percent people.

• 1:52:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52:28Speaker 05

  It, it's something that in the next couple of weeks, that, that's something that we're gonna put out to try to just see what people know, what people don't know.

• 1:52:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, tell people what to look for, like you're out in the woods, you're out running around, whatever. And then here you see a blank.

• 1:52:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, and so some of that is gonna be challenging, right? Because if you, if you see a dead animal and you see maggots, you'll see that, right? Like, that's just gonna happen with a decomposing animal. And so, some of it is just a matter of, if you see that, that's something that you should be reporting.

• 1:52:59Steven Rinella?

  A dead animal maggots.

• 1:53:00Speaker 05

  A dead animal with maggots.

• 1:53:01Steven Rinella?

  You saw us just this morning report a dead owl in a tree.

• 1:53:04Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah, and so, but again, it's, it's one of these things that it will be especially important if and when Screw Room gets here. But it is going to be kind of a early reporting thing as well. So depending on the, the state that you're in. I had, oh yeah. In New Mexico, at all of our extension offices, I know Arizona's doing a similar thing. We have these collection kits that people can request or, or get. And pretty much what it comes with is a set of tweezers.

• 1:53:36Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:53:37Speaker 05

  It comes with a vial that has 70% ethanol in it. And then it comes with a QR code and it pretty much says, collect maggots from these different locations. And then essentially you can then submit it to the New Mexico Department of Ag.

• 1:53:51Steven Rinella?

  From live stuff?

• 1:53:52Speaker 05

  No, from, and from dead things as well. I, I think that it's one of these things that we're looking more for a living animal that has things in it. But for hunters, you know.

• 1:54:03Steven Rinella?

  You're not gonna get that.

• 1:54:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, you just harvest a deer and you immediately look it over.

• 1:54:07Speaker 05

  Exactly. Well, and that's, and that's really where, you know, I'm trying to communicate is, yeah, you're gonna be looking at animals in a way that the rest of us aren't, right? And, and again. Where especially in southern New Mexico where you know, we have a number of those exotics and everything like that, it's going to be something that people are handling those animals because they've harvested them to look them over, look for maggots, anything like that. And so obviously, if you were to come across an animal and it's just skull and bones in the, you know, am I saying that you should collect maggots? Probably not, but it also wouldn't hurt. You know, part of the New Mexico Department of Ag and, you know, ag agencies in general across the country, part of what they're doing right now is processing

• 1:54:52Speaker 05

  samples. If it's adult flies, if it's maggots.

• 1:54:55Steven Rinella?

  Just to monitor.

• 1:54:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, just to monitor.

• 1:54:57Steven Rinella?

  Are you seeing the wildlife agencies take interest yet? Or is it mostly the ag community?

• 1:55:00Speaker 05

  So it's mostly the ag community. So in New Mexico, we Fish and Wildlife put out kind of a call. It was an email to anyone that drew a tag last year, essentially saying, hey, be on the lookout for this. I don't know of any other agencies that are currently doing that, though. I think that it is a really great thing to kind of be able to do that. So like, I got an email, a colleague of mine got an email and was like, oh, okay, actually, they're doing something. But that's part of the challenge is because it is this whole other group that we don't traditionally interface with. And so it's getting those people involved. And the other challenge is that, you know, every state has their own

• 1:55:43Speaker 05

  state response. Obviously, it's all governed by the USDA, but what Texas is doing and what New Mexico is doing and what Arizona is doing, what California is doing, they're all slightly different. And a lot of that has to do with kind of funding structures and where stuff like that is, is coming from. And so, and the way that people are developing things. And so, again, my kind of call is, is if you see something, say something in a lot of ways, because I think that it's, it's something that is going to be a concern. And if you're concerned about the environment, you're concerned about the, the health of wildlife, you know, that's a, that's a big concern in, on that front.

• 1:56:23Steven Rinella?

  You know, we have a lot of conversations about.

• 1:56:27Steven Rinella?

  Mortality events with wildlife.

• 1:56:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:29Steven Rinella?

  And there's this question of like, is it a population level impact? Meaning someone might look and say lead ammunition can lead to some raptor death because they're ingesting fragments of lead from carcasses they scavenge that are left by hunters.

• 1:56:43Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:43Steven Rinella?

  And someone might counter that by saying that happens is not a population level impact.

• 1:56:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:48Steven Rinella?

  Or wind turbines, you know, on certain bird species. It might be like, yes, for sure, but it's not a population level impact. The same way you'd look and you'd say here, like, man, cars hit and kill a lot of deer.

• 1:57:00Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:01Steven Rinella?

  Right? Most every week you see a new dead deer somewhere around

• 1:57:06Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:06Steven Rinella?

  these neighborhoods that we're in right now.

• 1:57:07Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:57:08Steven Rinella?

  But it's not a population level impact. Um.

• 1:57:13Steven Rinella?

  In in your opinion, is it possible to have population level impacts on wildlife? Considering that it has that this stuff needs to be wounded?

• 1:57:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I I couldn't say like truly, I I think some of it. Be what that really looks like. I think if it were to just run rampant, you potentially would see that, you know, I I'm thinking about, you know, like oryx in New Mexico or something like that. I could see a population level impact there, right?

• 1:57:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Speaker 05

  Um, are you going to see that in an area?

• 1:57:44Steven Rinella?

  Where you have a thing that's confined to a relatively small area anyways? And it's not a huge population anyways.

• 1:57:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, or you know, or we're talking pronghorn populations in New Mexico or anything like that.

• 1:57:52Steven Rinella?

  That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, in a, in a, in a reduced vulnerable population.

• 1:57:57Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:57:57Steven Rinella?

  A population level impact could be four adults.

• 1:57:59Speaker 05

  Correct. And and so that's where I think you're going to see impacts. Do I think that it's there's going to be a population level impact to whitetail deer? No, probably not.

• 1:58:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like it's like it's additive mortality.

• 1:58:11Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:58:11Steven Rinella?

  For some populations like the key deer.

• 1:58:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:58:13Steven Rinella?

  Losing a handful of mature animals is a hit.

• 1:58:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, and so I think they lost 150 deer or something like that, which is a huge number with what the population is.

• 1:58:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 1:58:23Speaker 05

  And so I I can't speak to to that from the that. And I also don't know if anyone has ever tried modeling it or anything like that. We we say that it'll have an impact on wildlife, but that's the challenge is that how do you actually? You know, it hasn't been here for like in being endemic for 50 plus years. And so. What that looks like, how they were modeling, how they were doing any of that, it's completely changed. And so, yeah, I don't know. I can't definitively say, but some of these more vulnerable populations, I could imagine it being a concern. And then that's going to change, you know, tag allocation and anything else like that.

• 1:59:08Speaker 05

  And so it's going to be a kind of concern overall.

• 1:59:11Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:59:13Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 1:59:15Steven Rinella?

  We mentioned getting on dogs in Mexico on dogs. Is that mostly like, are they seeing it on, that's just like feral dogs, street dogs?

• 1:59:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:24Steven Rinella?

  Not so much pets?

• 1:59:25Speaker 05

  No, so you'll see it in pets as well.

• 1:59:28Steven Rinella?

  You might have your dog come home and be like, what in the world?

• 1:59:30Speaker 05

  Correct. And so that's actually something that currently, whenever an animal is brought from a endemic zone in Mexico, across the border, the animals are supposed to have a certified vet inspection.

• 1:59:43Steven Rinella?

  And that's one of the things they would look for.

• 1:59:44Speaker 05

  And that's one of the, so that's the reason that it currently exists for companion animals is so that screw them, because screw them coming across and, and that, you know, some people are very concerned about that's how screw them would get here is because, you know, we already have.

• 2:00:00Steven Rinella?

  My buddy, I don't want to rat him out and the dog's dead anyways, it was so long ago. He smuggled a Mexico dog home.

• 2:00:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:07Steven Rinella?

  Named it number seven and died long ago.

• 2:00:11Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:00:13Steven Rinella?

  But you wouldn't be able to waterboard it out of me who did it though.

• 2:00:15Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:00:16Speaker 06

  What about, uh, wild hogs?

• 2:00:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Speaker 06

  I know in Texas.

• 2:00:20Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, correct.

• 2:00:21Speaker 06

  There's a huge fear around.

• 2:00:23Speaker 05

  So.

• 2:00:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, around screw arms.

• 2:00:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. So that's it.

• 2:00:27Steven Rinella?

  Screws like hogs?

• 2:00:28Speaker 06

  And wild hog hosts.

• 2:00:29Speaker 05

  Well, just think about, you know, them, you know, interacting, wounding themselves or others and then kind of what that's going to do and then the movement, right?

• 2:00:37Steven Rinella?

  They all got a problem.

• 2:00:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:00:38Speaker 06

  And they're like in so many Texas, like suburban, urban areas.

• 2:00:43Speaker 05

  And it's funny, you know, when we've, when I've been in strategy meetings about like, all right, well, what happens, because it'll probably get to Texas first, is just with that really exposed border and where the cases are, it'll probably get into Texas first. And so we're like, all right. It's probably more of a concern for us to deal with, you know, Screwworm coming from Texas than it is from Mexico. And so we're kind of thinking from that, that eastern side of our state where we have a bunch of cattle production.

• 2:01:09Steven Rinella?

  Texans are coming.

• 2:01:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, we have a, we have a bunch of cattle production and there's a huge wild hog problem there. And so we're like, all right, this is a, this is a place that we need to be able to monitor and kind of deal with when it comes to a lot of that is, yeah, so, so wild hogs are, are definitely a concern. And it's kind of like, all right, well, what do we do with them? Uh, just, you know, it's, it's already a problem just from their damage, let alone from now they're going to be carrying Screwworm around.

• 2:01:36Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. What do you got, Doug?

• 2:01:40Speaker 07

  I got a new band name. It's called The New World Screwworms.

• 2:01:44Steven Rinella?

  That's like heavy metal. It's like, it's like Guar.

• 2:01:46Speaker 07

  And the album is called Problem of the Americas. I, uh,

• 2:01:51Steven Rinella?

  That's a good album.

• 2:01:56Speaker 07

  I, uh,

• 2:01:59Steven Rinella?

  I could see a band, Problem of the Americas. Yeah.

• 2:02:03Speaker 07

  That's what I,

• 2:02:03Steven Rinella?

  Wouldn't be death metal.

• 2:02:04Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:05Steven Rinella?

  Screwworm is hardcore.

• 2:02:07Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:02:07Steven Rinella?

  Hardcore death metal.

• 2:02:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:02:09Steven Rinella?

  Like the kind of stuff you, when you want your kids to listen to. That's the kind of music Screwworm makes.

• 2:02:15Speaker 07

  Beyond that, I, I thought when I saw this, uh, title and started reading a little bit about it, I'm like, well, this ought to be interesting. And it's been fascinating.

• 2:02:25Steven Rinella?

  You came down here thinking you wouldn't be interested? I thought, I had you come because I knew you'd be interested.

• 2:02:29Speaker 07

  Well,

• 2:02:32Speaker 07

  I didn't know how interested I would be. The whole thing with cattle, I mean, I've, you know, like, uh,

• 2:02:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I know you're out of the biz.

• 2:02:37Speaker 07

  You cut the antler, I'm sorry, the horns off, I just remember this, blue coat was the blue stuff that would spray.

• 2:02:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Doug was a stockman, but he retired.

• 2:02:47Speaker 07

  Yeah. But, so you cut the horns off of cows and then in, you know, if you do it too, or too late in the spring, then the flies get in there and then the mag, but the maggots do a really great job of cleaning up all of the, I mean, it's just all these weird things you saw in life and death on the farm kind of stuff, right?

• 2:03:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:07Speaker 07

  And so those were all the images that were going through my head. And, um, yeah, I think I've had, I've had everything else answered.

• 2:03:15Steven Rinella?

  Doug, you um, you're going on a speaking, you have some speaking engagements coming up. We're gonna discuss screw worm.

• 2:03:21Speaker 07

  Well, I'm gonna try to, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna try to work it into these.

• 2:03:25Speaker 06

  Perform screw worm.

• 2:03:26Steven Rinella?

  There you go.

• 2:03:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:03:27Speaker 06

  Incorporate that to your musical repertoire.

• 2:03:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, where are you gonna speak Doug?

• 2:03:31Speaker 07

  I'm doing some fun stuff, uh, I will be at Pheasant Fest, as I have been for the last several years, and talking on the Habitat stage about working with the Fish and Wildlife Service, um, on a, on a project in our, on our farm. And I'm also talking on the path to the upland stage about making a contribution to conservation and building a conservation resume. Uh, the other couple of talks are really, you know, kinda fun. One of them is, uh, all of the, uh, county conservationists and the state come together for a convention every year, and then they bring in all these other people, and I'm gonna be the keynote speaker there, talking about working with landowners, um, to move conservation forward.

• 2:04:14Speaker 07

  And then, um, in north, north, uh, northern Illinois, a forestry association, sort of the same idea that if we're gonna do anything on a landscape level, we really need to involve, uh, private landowners, and a great way to do that is through sharing land and getting things done on, uh, private property, like burns and that sort of stuff, where you need a lot of people for a short period of time. Um, that's one of the things that we're gonna be talking about there is getting people involved with conservation on private land.

• 2:04:48Steven Rinella?

  Do you have a way, if people wanna check in, um, if people wanna track the activities of Bubbly Doug, where do they go to find out where you're gonna be if someone wants to come meet you or hear you?

• 2:04:58Speaker 07

  Uh, sharingland.com, um.

• 2:05:02Steven Rinella?

  And you'll have an events calendar?

• 2:05:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's an events calendar there, and, and then on my website, dougduren.com, uh, there's an events calendar there too. Uh, you can follow me on Instagram and, you know, ignore the stuff that you don't wanna read about and pay attention to, pay attention to the stuff that you do, you know?

• 2:05:22Steven Rinella?

  And then where do people, what's the best resource for people that want to read up on Screwworm?

• 2:05:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, so I guess a couple of things that the USDA and AFIS have done a really good job at kind of putting out a lot of really good resources kind of over time. And so if you just, you know, Google Screwworm, you'll end up finding some different, some different resources there. If you're kind of interested in what's going on in New Mexico, specifically or in kind of some of these southern states. So you can go to my website, hubbardlab.com.

• 2:05:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, how'd you wind up with a lab named after you?

• 2:05:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, uh, so, well, that's my last name.

• 2:06:01Steven Rinella?

  Well, I got that. So you founded the lab?

• 2:06:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:06:05Steven Rinella?

  Cause we have a guy on like Monty, he has, he has his lab, they call it the Monty's shop. But yeah, like, yeah, he's a researcher that has his own shop.

• 2:06:12Speaker 05

  I, I will say that I'm just not creative. And so it was one of those things of.

• 2:06:16Steven Rinella?

  But you founded, I don't mean how you want, I don't mean why it's named that, but you came in.

• 2:06:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:21Steven Rinella?

  You came in and founded like an entomology lab.

• 2:06:24Speaker 05

  Correct. Yeah. So I got hired as an assistant professor at New Mexico State. And so part of my job is I'm 75% research. And so with that was starting a lab to do different, different projects. And so, um, you know, we do everything from scorpions, Arizona bark scorpions to cockroaches to, you know, we'll probably do some kissing bug work. We do have a lot of housefly stuff. Um, we're doing a bunch of Screwworm stuff as well.

• 2:06:48Steven Rinella?

  How many grad students are floating in and around your?

• 2:06:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, so currently I've only been here a couple of months. And so I, I have my first student that's going to be starting here in about a year, but she's an excellent undergrad. I have a technician, I have a couple undergrads. So it's five or six of us, we're kind of expanding out. Currently, um, I will say that that's one thing that's fascinating is running a lab. If anyone hasn't talked about this, it's, it's more like a business than I ever thought because it's finding the money to pay these people, it's supervising them, it's kind of coming up with all that stuff. Um, and so, yeah, and so I got, I got hired to kind of do a lot of. Just cool work and then screw room kind of popped up and it's like, all right, that's where I'm going to shift my focus.

• 2:07:30Speaker 05

  Um, at least for the time being. Um, and so, yeah, so hubbardlab.com, um, on Instagram, it's NMSU. Uh, urban entomology, um. You put on nasty, do you put up nasty disease photos on there? So, so we're, we're kind of, we're, we're in that building stage currently where, where, you know, I, we're just going to be talking about some of the projects and I, but I think over time we probably will just kind of informational stuff about screw or, or anything like that. Um, and, and so, yeah, I, I will say though, if you're looking for specific information, you know, on what is directly going on. USDA kind of updates it on, on cases that are currently going on. They keep it up to date weekly. Um, AFIS does.

• 2:08:13Speaker 05

  Um, and so there's a, a number of decent resources that I can provide some of the links and, and stuff like that. If that's something that, um, people want, I guess. Two of the other things that I would say though, is one, the biggest thing that people can do is share this information, right? Um, you know, I, I've been asked like, all right, how can we prepare? How can we do anything like that? Just like anything, it's getting the information out there. Um, because that's the, that's the biggest thing, you know? South Texas. Correct. Southern New Mexico, Southern Arizona, presumably Southern California. Yeah. And, and so that's, that's going to be one of these things and, but it's important for everybody to know, you know, we, we had imported cases, um, in Maryland in a human, you know?

• 2:08:53Speaker 05

  And so it's a, uh, yeah. And so that was, that was a case, you'll, you can look at the news headlines. It was maybe October or something like that. There was a guy that came back. Um, from an endemic country that had screw arm, like in his arm or something like that. Um, yes, it's great. Man. But again, it's a, it's a concern. And so it's not just something that we should be focused in, in Southern New Mexico or, or South Texas. And so getting that information out there. So that's how it could have hit the, the Florida Keys. Yeah. And, and again. Some dude coming in. Yeah. And, and there may be, I, I heard some rumbling that they actually figured it out. I. From what I knew, they had never figured out exactly where it came from or how the incursion occurred, because it is, it's kind of strange. It just like popped up in the Florida Keys

• 2:09:38Speaker 05

  and then we didn't see it anywhere else. But it's just one of these things of getting out there, you know, talking, you know, we all elected a bunch of people, right? You know, and you know, it's great. You you had our our Senator in a couple of weeks ago. And I I really enjoyed kind of listening to his philosophy when it comes to, you know, the outdoors and conservation and everything like that. But I think that it's important to communicate with our elected officials and tell them, hey, this isn't something that is just a concern for this group of people, or it's out of sight, it's out of mind, because it's down in Mexico. You know, we, you know, there's a saying that like, parasites don't have borders, right? Like, they're just gonna hop right across. And so we, we need to be able to do that. And so communicating with your elected officials,

• 2:10:23Speaker 05

  even if it's not finding funding to fund some of the research or anything else like that, it's just saying, hey, this is something that's important to me or could be important. Yeah. And so I think that that's kind of the the big takeaways on finding information, communicating that kind of overall. I guess two other things, I guess I would say is, you know, if you want to support kind of our ongoing work, you can, you can donate on my website to kind of our efforts, if it's urban entomology, if it's screw worm, if it's anything like that. Or there's just, you know, there's, it doesn't have to be me. There are lots of other people that are trying to do. But you'll take it.

• 2:11:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. What it comes down to is, you know, we're trying to, especially in New Mexico, I will say, is that we're kind of, you know, grassroots effort on trying to get out, communicate. We don't have the backing like a state like Texas does. And that's something for me, is that I don't want New Mexico to be left behind. And

• 2:11:26Speaker 05

  It in a lot of ways is just kind of like that that ugly stepchild, right? And and so I want to be able to advocate for the state and be able to put out as much good information and as much good research as any of the other, you know, well-funded and kind of backed states, you know, Texas and California. And so that's why I'm out spending my time communicating this because it's it's something that I may not be from New Mexico, but I call myself a New Mexican at this point. And so, yes, I recognize I started the podcast by talking about, you know, New Mexico not being graded a lot of things, but my whole goal is to make sure that we we are prepared as we possibly can.

• 2:12:08Speaker 05

  And then the last thing is, is that I do want to hear from people on their what their knowledge of Screw Room, how concerned they are, because one thing that we want to be able to do is develop educational material and, you know, material that will resonate with people, if it's producers, if it's hunters, if it's the general public.

• 2:12:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:28Speaker 05

  And we can't get that without feedback.

• 2:12:30Steven Rinella?

  And so to get early detection.

• 2:12:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. And because that's going to be that that's going to be the biggest thing is the buy-in, right? We need to get people to buy in. And if it's cattle producers, well, we need to get cattle producers to report it. Cattle prices are super high. Is a cattle producer going to want to say, hey, I have this thing and they can't move their animals?

• 2:12:46Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 2:12:46Speaker 05

  You know, and so that's where getting hunters involved, you know, explaining to cattle producers, hey, this is this, we recognize that, you know, a lot of people have echoes of the way that the most recent pandemic was kind of handled and you can have your own opinions on how that was handled. But that's not the goal here is to kind of it is to control it and then let's get back to normal. And there's a lot of, I think, learning that can be taken from how we handled COVID. And I know that the government is kind of taking, you know, the government doesn't do a good job at taking opinions, but I will say from the meetings I've been in, people are recognizing, hey, Let's not do what we did before if and when it gets here.

• 2:13:30Steven Rinella?

  No, let's listen to people.

• 2:13:32Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:13:32Steven Rinella?

  Taking a diverse set of viewpoints.

• 2:13:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's where it comes down to getting that information from people of, hey, I want to know if you don't care at all. You know, it's like there are some people that aren't concerned about CWD, right? And so with something like that, I want to hear from people and see where their concern is. Because if I'm, I'm employed and I paid by the taxpayers in New Mexico. So I am here to answer to them and to develop information for them. Overall.

• 2:14:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Okay, Caleb Hubbard, veterinarian entomologist. The first one we've ever had on the show.

• 2:14:08Steven Rinella?

  Maybe the last.

• 2:14:10Speaker 05

  Maybe.

• 2:14:11Steven Rinella?

  Not because you did a bad job.

• 2:14:12Speaker 05

  Well.

• 2:14:12Steven Rinella?

  We're going to switch to a forensic entomologist from there.

• 2:14:16Speaker 05

  I will say Jeff does a kind of a combination of everything. He does forensics, he does veterinary entomology.

• 2:14:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so yeah, so not, not the last.

• 2:14:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Potentially.

• 2:14:25Steven Rinella?

  Veteran.

• 2:14:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:26Steven Rinella?

  It's just, we've been at it a long time.

• 2:14:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:28Steven Rinella?

  We've only had one on, I'm a statistics man.

• 2:14:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:31Steven Rinella?

  You know what I mean? What are the odds?

• 2:14:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, you know, you had Dr. Schmidt, you know, with the pain index and everything.

• 2:14:38Steven Rinella?

  We've had other entomologists.

• 2:14:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you had, you had one another. He's, he's a fascinating guy.

• 2:14:42Steven Rinella?

  No one knows if we didn't talk about it. We also had a guest on who happens to be an aquatic entomologist, but he wasn't there to talk about that.

• 2:14:49Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 2:14:50Steven Rinella?

  So let me redo it. Dr. Caleb Hubbard, one of many entomologists. You have heard from and will hear from on the Meteor Podcast. Of the, you can't, so many entomologists can't keep them straight. From the Hubbard Entomology Lab at New Mexico State University. And also the beautiful and lovely Doug Duren. Thanks for joining.

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