Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Guess the Predator - The Deaths of Noah and Connor Barthe About this episode Wes concocts a little whodunit for this episode wherein he challenges us all to guess what got into the room where two young brothers lie sleeping.
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Transcript 14,558 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:12 Jeff Larson? Hello, everybody. Welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our bear biologist Wes Larson with us. Hello. Grizkid on Instagram.
0:22 Wes Larson? Yeah.
0:22 Mike Smith? He's a human biologist who specializes in bears.
0:26 Wes Larson? Correct. We don't want anyone getting confused.
0:28 Jeff Larson? Wes, you weren't quite famous enough to go to like the Diddy parties when they were really big, right?
0:34 Mike Smith? No, you know, it's one of my biggest regrets that I couldn't be at those parties.
0:38 Jeff Larson? Well, now it's, turns out it's good. You never win.
0:40 Mike Smith? Yeah, I still regret it.
0:43 Mike Smith? Just kidding. I do not.
0:47 Mike Smith? Yeah, I never got the invite to those parties.
0:49 Jeff Larson? You got famous a little too late.
0:51 Mike Smith? I'm not famous enough still. If there were the equivalent of that, I still wouldn't get invited.
0:56 Jeff Larson? And then I'm Jeff Larson and we have Mike Smith, who's our best friend.
1:00 Wes Larson? And you guys also didn't go to those parties. All three of us are clear.
1:04 Jeff Larson? None of us have gone to a Diddy party. Yeah.
1:07 Mike Smith? I will neither confirm nor deny.
1:10 Wes Larson? Oh, okay. Mike's keeping it mysterious. I like it.
1:14 Jeff Larson? I mean, if you went to one, you'd be like one of the people getting used for stuff.
1:19 Mike Smith? Yeah. Yeah. Used for stuff. Yeah, that would be me.
1:23 Wes Larson? That's one that I've, I've actively avoided learning much about that because I'm just like, this is one thing, one more thing that I just can't have in my brain, you know? Like, I know it was really bad and that was enough for me. Diddy's a bad guy. Good with just kind of knowing that and that he did really bad things to people.
1:40 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:41 Wes Larson? There's just a lot of stuff. You gotta keep a lot of things in your brain.
1:44 Jeff Larson? Keep track of, yeah.
1:45 Mike Smith? CEO of Baby Oil. He is pretty happy about those parties.
1:50 Jeff Larson? Have you seen the clip of Ellen DeGeneres where it's just like a bunch of little kids and she's like, "I have a surprise for you." And then P. Diddy walks out and he's just like dancing.
2:04 Jeff Larson? In retrospect, it's just the worst video ever.
2:07 Wes Larson? Yeah, that is bad.
2:09 Mike Smith? All right. You were talking about a story you had in store.
2:12 Wes Larson? It actually does involve little kids and horrible things happening to them. So.
2:17 Jeff Larson? Oh, man.
2:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, unfortunately, that was a good segue to the story. This is kind of a new episode format. I'm gonna call this a whodunit episode, and it was one where I purposely didn't tell you guys anything about that the perpetrator of this attack today. And we're not gonna put it in the title of the episode either. It's gonna be titled like a whodunit mystery. And I I'm leaving this, this could be a human perpetrator, or it could be animal. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna tell you guys where this took place. And then you guys are each gonna give a guess of what species, be it human or animal, was involved.
2:55 Mike Smith? Oh, cool. Well, hold on. Let me put on my little Hercule Poirot mustache.
3:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
3:02 Mike Smith? All right.
3:02 Jeff Larson? Suss this out.
3:04 Wes Larson? So this one takes place in New Brunswick, the province of New Brunswick, Canada, which is essentially if you just keep going through Maine, it's like the hat that sits on top of Maine. That's New Brunswick.
3:16 Jeff Larson? Is there Brunswick?
3:17 Wes Larson? I don't know if there's an old Brunswick or just Brunswick, but this is New Brunswick. So again, think of Maine, and you have a pretty similar kind of environment.
3:29 Mike Smith? I'm ready for a new Maine, if I'm being honest.
3:32 Wes Larson? New Maine.
3:32 Jeff Larson? We got New Hampshire.
3:34 Wes Larson? Yeah, exactly. Old Hampshire. It was pissed. All right, what's your guess? New Brunswick.
3:41 Jeff Larson? What's our guess for what?
3:43 Wes Larson? For the perpetrator of this this attack.
3:46 Jeff Larson? Oh, like what's it gonna be?
3:47 Mike Smith? Stephen King.
3:49 Wes Larson? He lives up there, right? Any species of animal.
3:51 Mike Smith? Weird guy.
3:52 Wes Larson? Or a person. And if you're guessing person, you just say person. If you're guessing animal, you guess like what kind of animal? New Brunswick, Canada.
4:00 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna guess a black bear.
4:02 Wes Larson? Okay.
4:02 Mike Smith? Oh, man. Well, that was kind of a lobster.
4:06 Wes Larson? Okay, we got lobster and black bear are the two guesses. All right, well, let's get started on the story. So Noah and Connor Barth had a pretty perfect Sunday on August 4, 2013. These boys are pretty young. One of them's four. That's Noah. Oh, yeah. And Connor is six, almost seven. So when you guys were that age, like, we'll average their age, we'll say five. What does a perfect day for you look like as a five-year-old?
4:33 Jeff Larson? I'd probably wanna like finish it off watching WWE if Goldberg's wrestling.
4:38 Wes Larson? At five? You were into it when you're five years old?
4:41 Jeff Larson? Or wrestling, my dog.
4:42 Wes Larson? Alright.
4:43 Jeff Larson? You watched TV when you were five? What did you like?
4:46 Wes Larson? Not wrestling. I watched like DuckTales when I was five.
4:51 Wes Larson? Uh, mine gonna involve probably like a water park. My dad comes home early from work and we go to a water park. How about that? I like that. Let's go with that.
4:59 Jeff Larson? Wrestling's for adults, so I'll say, I like going to the park, you know, peeing on all the structures there.
5:09 Wes Larson? Being outside, playing with your family. Alright. Well, these brothers lived with their mom in the small city of Campbellton in northern New Brunswick. And from what I can tell, she was a single mom raising her boys. She had a boyfriend, but she was raising them alone. And in like a lot of smaller towns with close knit communities, she had a lot of support from her community. They were also helping her raise these kids. And one of the most supportive of her friends was this guy named Jean-Claude Savoy. And he owned a pet store and a farm nearby. And Noah and Connor loved visiting both of these places with their mom or other members of their family. And they'd spent countless hours at this pet store and the farm, playing with and looking at a lot of the different animals that Jean-Claude owned. And it helped that he also had a kid that was roughly their age, so they got along really well and these two families played together often.
5:54 Wes Larson? So, I don't know if that's like a big deal for kids anymore, but when I was growing up, having kids my age in my neighborhood was such a game changer to where there was just kind of always something to do. Like we would play street hockey in the cul-de-sac. We would go like catch frogs and turtles at the pond. There's, yeah, there's just always like some little activity going on in our neighborhood. I know Jeff, you had a like not quite as close of neighborhood friends, but you still had some friends that lived nearby that sometimes we would hang out with.
6:21 Jeff Larson? I had friends till I was like seven and then I got them.
6:24 Wes Larson? Not till you're what, like twenty, twenty-eight, twenty-nine? So that's kind of how it was for these kids. They had lots of neighborhood friends, pretty carefree life. And on August 4th, 2013, Noah was four, Connor was six, and they had spent that Sunday just having a perfect day on a sunny August day. They'd gone to the pool, Mike, kind of like what you said, spent a long time swimming and splashing, just soaking in the last few weeks of summer. Then they went shopping for some treats and they took those treats to Jean-Claude's farm. And at the farm, they both got to spend a lot of time around a variety of different animals.
6:58 Jeff Larson? Horse?
6:59 Wes Larson? Dogs and cats to llamas, goats and horses.
7:02 Jeff Larson? Oh, my gosh.
7:03 Wes Larson? They even got to ride and steer the farm tractor and play in the hayloft.
7:07 Jeff Larson? That's cool. The horses did?
7:09 Wes Larson? No, the kids. So for these kids, like, this sounds like a perfect day. You wake up, you go to the pool, you go buy some treats, then you go to a farm and you like ride a tractor and play with all these animals.
7:20 Jeff Larson? Yeah, riding a tractor is like a five-year-old. It's amazing.
7:24 Wes Larson? Yeah. And then they, both families went back to Jean-Claude's house and it was attached to his pet store. They stayed up late, talking and playing, eating food that they had bought and just having like a perfect end to their day. Then around midnight, Noah and Connor's mom went home and Jean-Claude went to bed and the kids were having a sleepover. His kid was asleep in that kid's room and then the two brothers were fast asleep in the living room upstairs. This is truly a picture-perfect summer day. The two boys got to experience this kind of carefree and just pure happiness that you really only feel when you're a kid. And that's something the family would do their best to focus on during the coming days, weeks, months, and even years, as they struggled to make sense of the unimaginable terror
8:08 Wes Larson? and violent death that both Noah and Connor were about to endure that night.
8:12 Jeff Larson? Shoot, I liked the story better before that.
8:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, it was very nice up until that point. If you've spent much time in the West, you know that every ski town has a brand that the locals are going to wear before the rest of the country catches on. In Jackson Hole, that brand is Stio. Stio is designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, right at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski, bike, climb, and fish there every day. I've spent a lot of time in Jackson Hole. I know that they deal with a lot of different weather there, a lot of different things. And so Stio really has to hold up in a ton of different environments. And they've been at it since 2011. 15 years in, it's the real gear that locals live in. It's made for the whole mountain day, beyond the summit, the first
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9:48 Mike Smith? This episode's brought to you by Rocket Money. So the start of the new year, always a good time to be setting new goals. I know that's a couple of months behind us, but you procrastinate like me and you're just kind of getting started on those goals. Now-
9:59 Jeff Larson? You're starting your new year's resolutions now?
10:02 Mike Smith? Exactly. I'm like on the Chinese New Year's calendar or something, maybe.
10:06 Wes Larson? You're late for that one, too.
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10:41 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
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10:46 Jeff Larson? I fancy that too, Mike.
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10:59 Mike Smith? Yeah. So it's a lot more than just canceling subscriptions. Uh, it saved over five million users, a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. We've covered a couple of those. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/claw today. That's rocketmoney.com/claw. Rocketmoney.com/claw. As these two boys slept, they definitely felt safe. They're inside, they're in a trusted friend's house. They're in a part of the world where young children really don't have too much to worry about as far as the natural world is considered.
11:41 Mike Smith? It's not like these kids are in a rural village in India in the early 1900s where a leopard might kill them in their house. You know, this is like, they're feeling pretty safe, especially.
11:51 Jeff Larson? For like the just social world too, probably like a pretty safe area. People don't need to leave the car running on a cold day type of neighborhood, you know?
12:01 Mike Smith? It is. It's like small town, New Brunswick. Exactly. And I think they're feeling especially safe because they're sleeping together, the two brothers together. But that illusion of safety was shattered when suddenly, in the middle of the night, a 12 foot, 53 pound African rock python broke through the ceiling and fell into the room with the boys.
12:20 Jeff Larson? What? I didn't know they had those there.
12:22 Mike Smith? They don't. Yeah. They had at least one, it sounds like. They did have at least one. So a little biology.
12:28 Jeff Larson? Snake on a plane?
12:29 Mike Smith? African rock pythons.
12:31 Jeff Larson? The one snake on a plane?
12:33 Mike Smith? No, it'd be snakes in, snakes in the main. Is that what we call it?
12:38 Jeff Larson? Kind of, yeah.
12:40 Wes Larson? So African rock pythons are the biggest snake in Africa. They're likely the fourth longest snake in the world, with reliable lengths up to 20 feet being reported for the species and verified weights up to 200 pounds. They have thick bodies covered in lots of dark colored irregular splotches that sometimes join together to form a broad stripe down the body of the snake. They're darkest on their back and those markings kind of fade to a white underside. So I think if you were to picture just a python, this is the snake that you're picturing. This is a very classic looking python with like the dark splotches, kind of an overall brown coloration.
13:18 Wes Larson? A very classic looking python. They have long triangular shaped heads and like all pythons, their jaws are lined with lots of thin, sharp fish hook like teeth that point backward and those teeth are primarily used for gripping prey while the coils are used for killing. So the benefit to having that type of teeth is that you can like latch into something. And because they're backward facing, it's really hard for the prey to pull away. So they kind of use that just to secure something while they wrap around it.
13:47 Mike Smith? How many teeth do they have?
13:49 Wes Larson? I'm not sure, but it's a lot.
13:50 Mike Smith? It's more than, because I always just imagine like the two, kind of the two big teeth from snakes.
13:55 Wes Larson? They don't, they don't have fangs. These are like lots of teeth. These aren't venomous snakes. So
13:59 Mike Smith? What the heck?
14:00 Wes Larson? They have lots of long tubular, sharp teeth. Yeah.
14:04 Mike Smith? That's so, I'm for the first time envisioning a snake's mouth full of teeth. I've just never
14:09 Wes Larson? Yeah.
14:09 Mike Smith? Had that memory.
14:10 Wes Larson? I think I've shown you a python skull before and they're
14:12 Jeff Larson? But Wes.
14:13 Mike Smith? Wasn't paying attention.
14:14 Jeff Larson? Because Steve O let a python bite him once and then he got tattooed and it's just two dots.
14:20 Wes Larson? Uh, that's, he maybe just had like two bites, but that's not what we're talking about here. Here, let's see if I can share Mike and I'll show you.
14:31 Mike Smith? Oh, I'm looking at pictures right now on Google. This is crazy.
14:34 Wes Larson? Good. I'm glad you're looking at some. So yeah, that's what python teeth look like. They're great at grabbing and holding, and they can do a lot of damage. Things bleed a lot when you get bit by python. They have sensitive heat pits near their lips that are used to detect warm-blooded prey, and they kill by constriction. And we've talked about this a bit with other pythons that we've mentioned on the podcast, but often that actual death comes from the blood pressure being so elevated that the heart stops beating, or, you know, heart vessels actually explode, or they die from brain hemorrhage because the brain vessels explode from this increased pressure. So I think we have the tendency to imagine constriction as always being death by
15:16 Wes Larson? asphyxiation, but sometimes it's actually cardiac arrest or brain hemorrhage that will kill whatever a python is squeezing. And what they do is as they squeeze, as the prey exhales, as they're breathing, the python will tighten its grip on each exhale. So it just gets tighter and tighter and tighter. Yep. So that's kind of how it works. And it's a very effective way of killing things. I mean, it's what they've evolved to do. They kill a wide variety of prey in Africa. They've been documented killing and eating everything from rats to impalas. In 2017, one was even documented eating an adult spotted hyena, which had never been seen before. So they kill a lot of stuff. They'll kill like baby lions, baby leopards, baby cheetahs.
16:01 Wes Larson? They'll kill goats. There's quite a few things that these snakes can take when they're big adults. There have been other attacks on humans, but not many. I think I'm going to save those for another kind of more dedicated rock python episode, like one that's actually in its natural habitat. But an interesting tidbit I wanted to add, this is going to be a shortened biology lesson. But unlike many of the other snakes, many of the other snakes in sub-Saharan Africa where they're found, the python is actually held, often held, in high regard, and even as a sacred animal in a number of different cultures throughout their range. So there's a lot of these different indigenous cultures that see the python as like a deity almost,
16:43 Wes Larson? whereas lots of other snakes are seen as evil or sorcerers. Pythons in different cultures, not just like one culture throughout sub-Saharan Africa, are seen as being kind of separated from all the other snakes in a beneficial way.
16:58 Mike Smith? Interesting. That's cool.
17:00 Wes Larson? Okay, so we're gonna get back to the story.
17:02 Jeff Larson? They wouldn't be honestly in my top five for like a snake I would choose to worship.
17:07 Wes Larson? What would be your number one?
17:08 Jeff Larson? For a snake I'm gonna worship?
17:10 Wes Larson? Yeah.
17:10 Jeff Larson? Maybe like that blue metallic colored one?
17:14 Wes Larson? Yeah.
17:14 Jeff Larson? You know, that like shiny blue, like a rainbow boa type of thing.
17:19 Wes Larson? Like an iridescent one, but that's still a constrictor, you know? You're still talking about constrictors.
17:23 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah.
17:24 Wes Larson? Yeah. I know anacondas.
17:26 Jeff Larson? I'm not saying constrictors.
17:27 Wes Larson? Like a lot of the indigenous people throughout the Amazon Basin see anacondas as like a very important god too.
17:34 Jeff Larson? I feel, yeah, I guess these are like good at killing you. I feel like I would want like my gods to be able to kill me, you know?
17:42 Wes Larson? Outside of venomous snakes, this is one of the only snakes in the world that's capable of killing a human being.
17:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's kind, yeah, you know what? I'll take it back. It's, this one could be a god.
17:53 Mike Smith? So you're more like, you're more a fan of Old Testament god than New Testament probably? Where he's just dashing kids on rocks and stuff?
18:01 Jeff Larson? I mean, I just don't think it's a god if it's not killing people, you know?
18:05 Mike Smith? True.
18:05 Wes Larson? Fair enough. Alright, so I purposely am keeping this episode a little on the shorter side as far as the biology goes. It's an animal I want to dig into more in future episodes, but that's some basic biology about African rock pythons.
18:19 Jeff Larson? Okay, yeah, Steve-O's tattoo had four spots too, so.
18:23 Wes Larson? Okay.
18:23 Jeff Larson? I have a correction corner here today.
18:25 Wes Larson? Alright, back to the story. It's hard to say exactly what happened next, but I've read as much as I can about this story. And I've read a decent amount about African rock pythons. And there's been a lot of opinions thrown out about what might have happened. And I'm just gonna kind of go with my own opinion and piece it together as best I can. But just so everyone knows, this is kind of my interpretation of a few things that could have happened in that living room. First of all, just to kind of backtrack a little, the pet store that was owned by Jean-Claude, and I didn't tell you guys this off the bat because I didn't want you to get a big hint, was focused on reptiles. It was called Reptile Ocean. He owned a wide variety of reptiles, everything from lizards to adult American alligators.
19:07 Wes Larson? And this rock python was kept in an enclosure upstairs on the same floors where the boys were sleeping.
19:13 Mike Smith? That's obstruction of justice, Wes. You can't withhold evidence from the jury. We gotta know that kind of stuff.
19:19 Wes Larson? We're playing with new formats.
19:20 Mike Smith? All right.
19:22 Wes Larson? And what had happened is that the snake had crawled into a duct on the wall that had a cover that had been popped off and had been off for a while, and it had managed to fit itself into this really tight air duct and then crawl into the wall and up into the ceiling over the boys. And this, this cover had actually fallen off a while ago, it had fallen off multiple times, Jean-Claude had seen it, but he, he just assumed this snake would not be able to fit. It had tried to crawl in before and had backed out, and there was like a right angle, not far in, and he just thought, there's no way this snake's gonna be able to get in there. So he didn't really worry about it. And that night, the snake proved him wrong.
19:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
19:59 Wes Larson? And navigated through-
20:00 Jeff Larson? Do you think it could like smell that there was kids in there, like-
20:03 Wes Larson? I do.
20:03 Jeff Larson? Like wanted to get to what it could sense?
20:06 Wes Larson? Part of it too, is these kids have been playing with farm animals all day, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still had a lot of those like scent particles on them. And I think there was something about those kids that really made this python curious, because it really had to force itself into that duct to get to them.
20:26 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Bruce Willis in Die Hard.
20:29 Wes Larson? Yeah. Right. As it navigated through these small vents and ducts, its weight became too much for it, and for the brittle ceiling tiles to hold, it fell and the ducting fell through the ceiling and into the living room. My guess is that things happened pretty quickly after that. I'm guessing the boys probably woke up to the sound of the snake crashing down into the room, and they probably were scrambling to get away. And I don't know if he was feeding this snake live prey or not, but if it was eating live prey, it probably was pretty keyed into movement as far as striking, and this could have triggered a predatory strike on either of these boys. Or it could have triggered a defensive strike, and then once it latched on, it decided to go ahead and coil up. Either way, it definitely struck out at one of the boys first.
21:13 Jeff Larson? Who do you think was like more confused, the boys or the snake?
21:17 Wes Larson? Probably the boys. The snake is probably just like, I live a weird fucking life. I live in this cage and people come by all the time. I think the boys were probably pretty scared.
21:25 Mike Smith? Falling through the ceiling, if you're not expecting it to happen, that's a real-
21:30 Wes Larson? That's a rude awakening.
21:32 Mike Smith? Yeah, but like, I'm thinking about the Lil Jon music video, the Turn Down For What? Where everyone in the room that someone crashes down into is more surprised than the person crashing down into it.
21:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
21:42 Jeff Larson? You know? I'm thinking of a tweet I saw of like, if dogs go in an elevator, they're just like, time to go in the world changer. Because it just like changes the world completely for them.
21:55 Mike Smith? Yeah.
21:56 Jeff Larson? Maybe that's how the snake was.
21:58 Mike Smith? Yeah.
21:58 Jeff Larson? But alright, anyways, we're at the good part, my bad.
22:01 Mike Smith? Well, it's not the good part, it's the bad part on this one, but um-
22:05 Jeff Larson? The climax, I should say.
22:07 Wes Larson? It, so I think the snake, in my, like, this is again, just total conjecture. I think it's likely that it probably struck at the bigger boy first, and I think their deaths were probably very quick. The, they ended up both being, um, the coroner that looked at their bodies said it was death by asphyxiation. So the snake wrapped around their necks and compressed the musculature of their necks, caused hemorrhages and stuff. So they probably passed out really quickly, like, you know, if you squeeze your neck, like, if you've done the pass out thing before.
22:37 Mike Smith? Jeff knows all about that.
22:38 Wes Larson? Yeah.
22:38 Jeff Larson? It's, honestly, I was just watching UFC and someone just got choked out, but it's like, it's about blood, it's not about oxygen. It's like the main misconception. I think you just said that earlier, but like-
22:51 Mike Smith? Yeah.
22:52 Jeff Larson? Cutting off blood to the brain-
22:53 Mike Smith? The circulation.
22:54 Jeff Larson? Makes you faint. It's not like a, how long can you hold your breath situation.
22:59 Wes Larson? Right, yep. So with them, it probably cut off that blood to the brain and then they passed out. And then it continued strangling, so they died of asphyxiation of, you know, oxygen loss.
23:08 Jeff Larson? I'm just really confused how this is a whodunit.
23:11 Wes Larson? Well, because you, you guys were guessing what it was and up until I told you it was the snake, you didn't know.
23:16 Jeff Larson? And as a whodunit.
23:18 Wes Larson? No, no, no, no, no.
23:19 Mike Smith? Can we still tell?
23:20 Wes Larson? I'll tell you. No, now you know.
23:22 Jeff Larson? I was like, you know what, I think it's a python.
23:26 Wes Larson? So it's hard to tell like exactly what happened. It could have killed both boys at the same time. It's possible. There are snake experts that said.
23:35 Mike Smith? Really?
23:35 Wes Larson? It's this snake was long enough that it could have constricted both of them at the same.
23:39 Mike Smith? I guess that makes sense because one might have been able to escape if it was just focused on the other.
23:44 Wes Larson? And like scream or get out of there. Or it's possible that like it was quiet when it crashed in the room and it killed one of them silently and then killed the other one. It's really impossible to say.
23:54 Mike Smith? Man, can you imagine waking up or whatever, whenever the parents or the adults walked in on the scene?
24:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
24:02 Mike Smith? That's.
24:03 Wes Larson? Yeah, we'll get to that. I also, I do think it was probably predatory. And I think it, that's probably why it killed both boys. And that's why I tend to think it maybe killed the bigger boy first. Cause I think it maybe killed him and then realized it wasn't able to swallow him. So then it moved on to the other boy. I don't know though. Again, all conjecture, but it seems odd that it would kill both boys. Doesn't seem normal. This isn't at like, this isn't not normal behavior for a snake in any way. To attack and try and kill a person, I guess, like that's happened a few times with the species of python. But it's not typical. And to kill two boys in one night and not consume either of them is really, really weird.
24:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah, well, like a lot of times with pet stores, like we would used to go to one that would put huge pythons on our shoulders, you know?
24:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
24:53 Jeff Larson? So it's like a lot of times those snakes are like used to people too.
24:57 Wes Larson? Those are usually Burmese pythons and they're a much more mellow species of python compared to this one. This is a spicier species of python. This is one that strikes a bit that, and Burmese pythons, they think have killed people too. So it's impossible to say for sure. I think a lot of snake experts were also stumped by it. But the one thing that is for sure true about this is it was an unbelievable tragedy. One that devastated the family and the entire community. Just like really, really, people are still talking about this to this day. And when Jean Claude got up in the morning, one of the first things he did was open the door to the living room to check on the boys. And the room was dark, but he immediately. Noticed the hole in the ceiling. He followed that down to the broken tiles and the mess on the floor.
25:40 Wes Larson? Then he turned on the light and he's horrified to see blood everywhere and the two dead bodies of the boys. He searched the room. He found the snake curled up under something. He managed to pin it down and put it back in its enclosure. And then he ran to Noah and Connor's mom's house, which was nearby, woke her and her boyfriend up and told him, told them what had happened to the boys. The boyfriend ran back to the house, checked on the boys, but when he got there, their bodies were like blue. They weren't breathing. They knew they were dead.
26:08 Mike Smith? Man.
26:09 Wes Larson? There was a police investigation immediately. Responding officers said the snake was acting very aggressively, even inside of its enclosure, striking the glass. They euthanized it and the body was sent to experts to analyze. And all of the other exotic reptiles that required a permit were taken away from Jean-Claude and rehomed in different places. So his alligators, some of his other big snakes.
26:32 Jeff Larson? Like he didn't have permits for him?
26:34 Wes Larson? He did, but they, they weren't gonna let him keep him anymore.
26:38 Jeff Larson? I see.
26:38 Wes Larson? Almost immediately, there was a bit of suspicion on him, uh, both for a potential homicide and then secondary for, uh, general negligence, like criminal negligence. When he first talked to the boy's mom and the police in the morning, he did have quite a bit of blood on him, on his hands especially. But it's pretty reasonable to think that he would just get blood on him when he was trying to revive these boys. Or when he was dealing with the snake. So that wasn't like a smoking gun by any means, but I think just a lot of people that knew anything about.
27:08 Jeff Larson? But he was caught red handed.
27:10 Wes Larson? He was caught red handed. Yes.
27:12 Mike Smith? Uh, that's a good point.
27:13 Wes Larson? Anything that knew.
27:14 Jeff Larson? If you're gonna give your analogy, you can't forget that one.
27:17 Mike Smith? The jury, they don't like it when your hands are red.
27:20 Wes Larson? No. Uh, anyone that knew anything about snakes though, thought this was weird. So there immediately was some suspicion on him because it seemed too, too crazy to think that a one rock python would kill two boys at night. Not feed on either of them.
27:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
27:36 Wes Larson? But then a preliminary autopsy found that the boys had died from neck strangulation, asphyxiation, and that their wounds were consistent with snake bite from a large python. So pretty quickly, the suspicion of homicide was dismissed, but this negligence case would go on for a while. Cause I think even if you're like, I think even a really bad murderer wouldn't try and use a python to kill two boys. This guy knew a lot of-
28:00 Jeff Larson? One guy in India.
28:01 Wes Larson? Yeah, but he was using like Russell's Vipers and Cobras and stuff. This guy knew a lot about snakes. He'd been handling snakes his whole life. I don't think he ever would have suspected that his rock python would kill two boys in one night.
28:13 Jeff Larson? Also, like, I watch some serial killer stuff and like, listen to podcasts or whatever, but it's like,
28:20 Wes Larson? Yeah.
28:20 Jeff Larson? It's not like an adult would have some huge grudge or like real motive to kill two young boys. The only motive would be just like, he enjoys killing. He wants to kill. So then like, why would you have the snake do it? You know?
28:35 Wes Larson? That's an interesting point.
28:36 Jeff Larson? Like, there's not even really like motive for him to have killed two boys with a snake, I feel like.
28:42 Wes Larson? Totally.
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33:17 Wes Larson? you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O L L I E dot com slash tooth and enter code tooth to get 60% off your first box. Okay, so we talked about how this preliminary autopsy cleared Jean-Claude of the homicide suspicion, but it didn't clear him of the criminal negligence thoughts. And initially, the provincial government of New Brunswick and the Royal Canadian Mountain Police declined to press charges against Jean-Claude. Yeah, the Mounties. They rode in on their mooses and were just like, no, we're not doing this. They declined to press charges against Jean-Claude because they thought even though that he owned this snake and the enclosure it escaped from, this was just a terrible accent, accident that
34:02 Wes Larson? was awful for everyone involved. And they didn't see how pressing charges would fix or make anything better. It didn't seem like anyone wanted there to be charges against Jean-Claude. However, the Crown got involved. Which I think is kind of in a way akin to like their federal government and investigators from the Crown poured over this case and all the evidence for like seven months. And they finally decided to press charges against Jean-Claude for criminal negligence and he was arrested in February of 2015. The main piece of evidence that led them and which kind of sucks. That's like a year and a half after this happened. You kind of think you're like in the clear and then suddenly this new investigator is like, nah, I'm going to press charges.
34:46 Wes Larson? And the main piece of evidence they had to support this was the fact that the duct in the snake's enclosure wasn't covered. They had testimony from witnesses that had seen the snake try to enter this ducting before, but the snake would get stuck and back itself out. The duct had a cover, but the snake was repeatedly knocking it loose and Jean-Claude had stopped replacing it. So basically their whole case is he could have easily secured this duct cover and prevented the snake from escaping. And the boys died as a result of him not properly securing this enclosure. So off of that, what do you guys think? Do you think that's a good enough reason to take this guy to trial?
35:22 Mike Smith? I actually do. I do. It seems like, I guess I can't know, but it seems like an easy thing to fix. And obviously I don't want my snake going into places, even potentially if there's a tiny, tiny chance of it getting to somewhere. I won't be able to retrieve it very easily. I think even just as a responsible pet owner or animal owner, you gotta fix that problem.
35:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I don't know. I think he's guilty of being negligent, but I don't think he deserves to go to jail because I think.
35:53 Mike Smith? He's paid the price already.
35:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah, and I do still think like it didn't seem possible to him, you know? It was like he, in his mind, it just wasn't a possibility type of thing.
36:05 Mike Smith? Yeah, I'm somewhere in between you two. I think like for me, I'm more, I think I side a little bit more with Jeff.
36:10 Jeff Larson? You're kind of like maybe cut off one of his fingers.
36:14 Mike Smith? No, I don't think that. I don't know about punishment, but I think I agree with Mike that like he needed to fix that ducting. And in my opinion, it's like, fine, he's seen the snake try and crawl.
36:25 Wes Larson? In there, he knows that that's a possibility that the snake could maybe get through there. So, fine, if you want to leave that, but if you're gonna have little kids, like four-year-old kids sleeping over at your house, then that's where it crosses into negligence for me.
36:39 Mike Smith? Yeah.
36:40 Wes Larson? If you're, if you're just risking your own safety or your pets, like your dog or your cat's safety or whatever, then, fine. But if you're having like your friend's kids sleep in your living room, when there's a tiny, a 1% chance.
36:53 Mike Smith? Right.
36:53 Wes Larson? Your, your African rock python that's 12 feet long might get out. I do think there is a case there. So I kind of, yeah.
37:01 Mike Smith? In my opinion, it's not unlike, there, there's certain key differences, of course, but involuntary manslaughter is a thing for a reason, you know? Like, a lot of times, people die, not because of malice, but just because of negligence or even honest mistakes that have been made. And I think there is wisdom in enforcing the law in those cases, just to make sure that people, other people can learn from that example and know that, like, take care of your stuff. Make sure, make sure there's not even a chance that someone can get harmed or potentially killed from your inaction, you know?
37:34 Wes Larson? Like, you, you think if this guy had some sort of source of carbon monoxide and he didn't have a carbon monoxide alarm, and those kids died from, you know, carbon monoxide poisoning, then I would say it's negligent. And it's like, he has a snake that can kill kids and he didn't fully secure it. So it's kind of, I don't know. Anyway.
37:52 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I mean, I agree that he's guilty.
37:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
37:54 Jeff Larson? I just, I just feel like we put people in jail too much as it is.
38:00 Wes Larson? Yeah. So he was put in jail, uh, in February of 2015. And it took a while for this case to go to trial.
38:08 Jeff Larson? Tattoo a map of the whole jail on his back, like the blueprints, so then he could get out.
38:14 Wes Larson? Brother also got arrested and when he showed up, he had the entire jail's blueprints tattooed on his body.
38:21 Jeff Larson? But then like one really bad guy finds out about it.
38:25 Wes Larson? Oh, boy. And then they end up in Panama for some reason.
38:29 Jeff Larson? If you're getting out, I'm getting out. And then that's a whole moral dilemma of like, well, I don't want this like murderer to get out.
38:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, that, yeah, it really goes for a weird ride and they based, they based a popular TV show off of this. It happens a lot. Yeah. So, no, the case was sent to trial and he was in jail for a while. The trial started on Halloween of 2016. It lasted for eight days, during which time there was testimony from snake experts, the family, coroners, many others. One of the more interesting testimonies was from a forensic pathologist that said he found 13 different bite marks on Connor's face and neck. Each of those bite marks consisting of four lines of puncture wounds, so consistent with the snake. So the snake bit him a lot. That's a lot of bite marks from the snake.
39:16 Wes Larson? And that does kind of go with my theory that I think the snake was maybe just readjusting over and over again to try and swallow him and it just couldn't do it. He found hemorrhages in their neck muscles that were consistent with strangulation. Noah had similar wounds and he agreed with the initial autopsy that the death was caused by asphyxiation from constriction. And the main argument of the defense, the people defending Jean-Claude, was that the Crown had to prove three things in order to establish criminal negligence. And those three things were the following. As the only adult present, Jean-Claude had the legal duty to provide care and protect the brothers from harm. And he failed in that duty, that he had showed wanton and reckless disregard for the safety of others in his actions.
39:59 Wes Larson? And that in failing his duty, he contributed significantly to the deaths of the brothers. And they said that if they couldn't prove those three things, they would have to find him not guilty. Cause that was kind of the definition of criminal negligence. Yeah, wanton disregard is a little, if they could prove that, I'd be real curious about what's happening. Kangaroo court a little bit. So you're right. Python court. Ultimately, the jury of 11 would find that Jean-Claude was not guilty.
40:27 Mike Smith? Oh good.
40:28 Wes Larson? And after the not guilty verdict was established, the crown decided not to appeal. Uh, Jean Claude cried openly in court. He, from everything I've read, this guy felt nothing but pain at this, this terrible, terrible thing that had happened. And the mom didn't want him to go to jail. No one really wanted him to go to jail. It was just a terrible accident that could have been prevented, but most accidents could have been, you know? That's like the case for most things.
40:55 Jeff Larson? You can't send the python to jail because it's kind of was already in the jail.
41:00 Wes Larson? They, yeah, they sent it to hell is where they sent it.
41:03 Mike Smith? You think? I think all snakes go to heaven personally. What was, was there any kind of penalty inflicted upon him?
41:11 Wes Larson? He lost, he lost all his animals for, I mean, for that reptile.
41:14 Mike Smith? So basically his career is.
41:16 Wes Larson? Most of them.
41:16 Jeff Larson? And he, how much time did he do in jail?
41:19 Wes Larson? Uh, he, I, it was unclear, but he was arrested in February of 2015 and the trial didn't start until Halloween of 2016. So I don't know if he was in jail that whole time or if he was on bail or what. But he spent a lot of time worrying about being in jail for a long time, you know?
41:37 Jeff Larson? I think, I think they should have cut like his pinky finger off.
41:41 Wes Larson? Sure.
41:42 Mike Smith? Yakuza style.
41:44 Jeff Larson? I think he would be happier than to like, he'd be like, oh yeah, I shouldn't have like, I should have covered that vent, but like I did get my pinky cut off, so.
41:54 Wes Larson? Yeah. What's, what's the maximum number of fingers you would lose to not have to do a five year jail sentence?
42:02 Mike Smith? Oh, all of them dude, 10.
42:04 Wes Larson? Really? I feel like you love jail, Mike. You could just like sit in a cell and read.
42:08 Mike Smith? It does sound kind of nice.
42:09 Wes Larson? Like work out.
42:10 Jeff Larson? If I'm negotiating with them?
42:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, if they were like, you're going to jail for five years or you can cut off this many fingers, what's the, the most that you would cut off? Yeah.
42:20 Jeff Larson? Man, maybe like three.
42:21 Wes Larson? Yeah.
42:22 Mike Smith? I think three was what I, my brain went to as well.
42:24 Wes Larson? That's about where I am too. Yeah. Five years is a long time.
42:28 Mike Smith? It's a long time. Well, I'm glad it wasn't. I mean, again, I know I kinda came to the side of like, he did need to be punished, but I'm glad it wasn't overly severe, because it was a mistake and he felt bad and paid a price.
42:42 Wes Larson? Sometimes just a trial in front of the whole world is punishment enough, you know?
42:45 Mike Smith? It's rough.
42:46 Jeff Larson? Especially like where the mom, who's, if anyone should want him in jail, it's her and she doesn't want him in jail. It's like.
42:53 Mike Smith? Yeah.
42:53 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
42:54 Wes Larson? I mean, ultimately, the two kids were the victims in the story. It's a terrible story. There's one that I heard about about a year ago, and it's kind of been on my mind ever since. So I'm glad that I can kind of exercise it and.
43:07 Mike Smith? Yeah. Hanging out with my nieces and nephews recently, it's just like, if anything happened to those kids, like, let alone the parents, I would be just absolutely devastated and wish I were dead, you know?
43:19 Wes Larson? Especially something this senseless and violent and just like, something that you would never in a million years think would happen. So.
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45:48 Jeff Larson? And if you get the sheets, tag us in a picture of your bed once you make it, because I think they look cool, so I want to see how it looks in your homes.
45:57 Wes Larson? We want to see your beds.
45:59 Mike Smith? Have someone take a picture of you while you're sleeping and send it to us.
46:03 Wes Larson? There we go. All right, let's get to our categories.
46:07 Mike Smith? Wait, I had a couple of questions.
46:09 Wes Larson? Yeah, let's hear them.
46:10 Mike Smith? So for, I don't want to get too morbid here, but for a snake this size with a prey item this size, how, a python, how long do you think it's going to take for that death to occur?
46:22 Wes Larson? Death? Not very long.
46:23 Mike Smith? Not long at all, okay.
46:24 Wes Larson? I would say like a matter of minutes. I would, it's going to take it a long time to eat. They really, like, they have kind of elastic jaws almost, and they're just slowly kind of moving it down. And, but luckily, that's not what happened with these boys. Luckily, this guy didn't have to, like, slice open the snake and pull their bodies out. But, um... It is, it's fascinating. Like, I saw a photo of the actual snake and some of these snakes in the wild. And then the fact that they can kill like a goat or an impala or something like that. There's a crazy video recently that someone posted of one trying to eat an impala. And then it realizes it wasn't able to, so it starts backing off and the horns go through the snake
47:07 Wes Larson? as it's backing off and both of the animals died. It's pretty wild. Yeah, it's hard to watch, actually. What else you got?
47:14 Mike Smith? What was Jean-Claude's last name?
47:17 Wes Larson? Savoy, I think. S A V O I E.
47:20 Mike Smith? I was thinking maybe if it was Van Damme, he was just, he'd punch that snake.
47:24 Wes Larson? He could just grab it then, yeah.
47:29 Jeff Larson? Jean-Claude, do you think so like for his pet store? He probably didn't even think the rock python was like his most dangerous animal, or do you think he did?
47:39 Wes Larson? I doubt it, because he had a dhole alligators. I think he had a green anaconda. But people that own these snakes know that they're an aggressive species of python. Like, I think reticulated pythons even more so, but this is probably the next most aggressive large python that people own in captivity. So they're not a very popular pet snake, just because they are, like I said earlier, like a little spicier than some of the other big pythons.
48:05 Mike Smith? Do you think when these pythons are trying to get into auto erotic asphyxiation, they just constrict themselves, or do they use a belt like the rest of us?
48:13 Wes Larson? I don't know.
48:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
48:17 Jeff Larson? Well, what do you think?
48:18 Wes Larson? I actually have that pinned for the next African rock python episode.
48:22 Mike Smith? Say, we'll save that then.
48:23 Wes Larson? Yeah.
48:24 Jeff Larson? Yeah, because like you wouldn't really want another snake to do it, right?
48:28 Wes Larson? Well, maybe. No, then it's, then it's kind of weird.
48:30 Mike Smith? Then it's not auto.
48:31 Jeff Larson? More of a sex thing, yeah.
48:33 Wes Larson? Yeah. That's something you want to do in the privacy of your own closet, just like old David Carradine.
48:39 Jeff Larson? They like sent the snake to someone to like do autopsy on it?
48:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
48:45 Jeff Larson? That guy's like, yeah, she's a snake.
48:48 Wes Larson? This is, alright.
48:49 Jeff Larson? It didn't swallow him.
48:52 Wes Larson? They they matched it to like, because again, there was, there was some suspicion of homicide. So they had to match the snake's bite pattern to the bites and stuff. Because what this guy could have, I mean, if this guy was just a child killer, he could have killed these kids and then blamed the snake. But, you know, which is a possibility even, but I don't think that that's what happened at all. But like, that's why they had to do.
49:15 Jeff Larson? The boxes they were checking.
49:17 Wes Larson? Well, we'll move on to our categories. Uh, the first one, I was just thinking that if I were a kid and I had heard this story, I probably would develop an irrational fear of like a python breaking through my ceiling in the middle of the night, just because that's kind of how my brain worked. Even though I love snakes, I could see this kind of doing a number on me. So I'm curious for you guys, what's the most irrational fear you remember having as a kid? And then if you have one as an adult too, go ahead and share that as well.
49:45 Mike Smith? You should go first, maybe Jeff, my, I have a bad answer.
49:48 Jeff Larson? I was just really afraid my brothers would come in my room and kill me.
49:52 Wes Larson? That's not true. It's not true. All right. I was afraid of you killing me when you were a little baby because of the vampire story I read. But.
50:03 Jeff Larson? That, no, I, I don't know. The most scared I ever got was I, like you, Cyrus, mom and dad were watching, uh, Scream, the first scream on the upstairs TV. And I was too young, so they sent me to bed. And then I like hid behind the wall and watched for like another half hour. And then they caught me and like made me go to bed. So then I didn't get to like see him die.
50:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
50:28 Jeff Larson? And then I was like sprinting to my room at night every night.
50:33 Wes Larson? That's not really irrational though. I feel like that's a very rational.
50:37 Mike Smith? No, I like, that's a good answer.
50:39 Jeff Larson? Well, it's a little irrational to think that the ghost face is in your basement.
50:45 Wes Larson? Yeah. Okay, sure.
50:47 Mike Smith? So you never, you never knew.
50:48 Jeff Larson? I've never had like a one that's like a dumb one, like something that can't actually hurt me. I've never been afraid of anything like that.
50:56 Wes Larson? Mike, we'll save yours for last because yours seems pretty dumb from.
50:59 Mike Smith? You didn't, you didn't know Skeet Ulrich was the killer, Jeff?
51:03 Wes Larson? Hmm. I mean, that doesn't make it less scary.
51:06 Mike Smith? Little John wrote a song about that guy, right?
51:08 Wes Larson? Skeet, Skeet, Skeet.
51:10 Jeff Larson? See the guy get, like to see the guy die, then I'd be like, okay, I don't need.
51:15 Mike Smith? Yeah, no, I agree.
51:16 Wes Larson? That's how Gremlins was for me. Like, I was so terrified of Gremlins because I'd only seen the trailers. And I didn't realize how easy it was to kill Gremlins, you know? Yeah. But I just thought they were like these unbeatable little goblin monsters. Anyway, but that's not mine. I'm gonna pick, uh, there was once when mom and dad went on a date and we had a babysitter. And we watched some movie. I can't remember what the movie was, but before there was a trailer for the movie Leprechaun. And in that trailer, I can still remember it. The leprechaun, and maybe I've told this story already, but the leprechaun like shoots its arm out of a crate and grabs a guy. And the crate had like a four leaf clover on it or something that the guy took off.
51:57 Wes Larson? And that night when I went to bed, we had bought a new computer and the computer box was in my room. And it looked like a big crate and I was terrified of that computer box. And I refused to walk by it for like weeks because it just was in that room for weeks. And for a while I was terrified of any big box because I was sure the leprechaun was in there and was gonna shoot its arm out and grab me. So that was a pretty irrational fear of boxes that had leprechauns inside of them.
52:27 Mike Smith? I think Jeff's is just as, that's equally irrational. So. Uh, this one, you guys are gonna think this one's scary though. So I had.
52:34 Jeff Larson? I would say mine's more rational than Wes's. Like someone with a knife, like that's more possible.
52:41 Wes Larson? And I was afraid of the box.
52:42 Mike Smith? Yes, yeah, alright. Anyway, so I always had the concern when I went to pee when I was little, that I would pee too much and overflow the toilet.
52:55 Wes Larson? It lasted a good long while. Never even came close, believe it or not.
52:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's what's crazy is like
53:01 Wes Larson? I'd be so proud of myself.
53:02 Jeff Larson? Doesn't even come close. Unless like you're at like some urinal, public urinal. Sometimes when those like stop flushing or something, you're like, oh, man, this is really high.
53:13 Wes Larson? Alright.
53:14 Mike Smith? So rational, irrational? I don't know.
53:16 Wes Larson? It's irrational, but I like it.
53:17 Mike Smith? Okay.
53:18 Jeff Larson? You know what? I've, I mean, this one's rational, but I've always been afraid of ice skating ever since Wes's finger got all messed up when I was a kid.
53:26 Wes Larson? Me too. That was bad. Alright, the next category, what's the hardest thing you've ever had to swallow?
53:35 Mike Smith? So Jeff and I is good friend at his wedding, Nick's wedding. I had a little rice bowl. I forget exactly why we were eating rice at, I don't know, it was just the reception and for the first time in a few months, a girl that I really liked. And it'd kind of been like on and off, on again, off again, relationship Emily. I don't know if you remember her, Jeff, the piano player. She was awesome. She's really cool. And right as she was coming up to talk to me for the first time in a long time, and I still liked her, I inhaled a piece of rice and I could not stop coughing for like a half an hour.
54:16 Mike Smith? And I was like, this is the absolute worst time. And it was like really embar- I started coughing so hard. I started like sweating and hyperventilating. And she was just standing there waiting for me to like figure it out because she was like, she was cool. And you know, it wasn't like we were on bad terms or anything, but we were just, she probably just wanted to talk and catch up. And I was just hacking up a piece of rice that wouldn't come out for like probably more realistically, more like five minutes. It was insane.
54:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
54:44 Jeff Larson? That's really good.
54:46 Wes Larson? That's pretty funny.
54:47 Jeff Larson? No, I kind of had a zag on this one too, where it's just like more of a thought I had because like I just thought of some of like the really big pills I've had to swallow.
54:56 Wes Larson? Yeah.
54:57 Jeff Larson? But somehow it's like the tiny pills that are the hardest to swallow. I'll have to drink so much drinks and then it'll still be like stuck to my tongue and like dissolving into the most disgusting taste ever. And I'm just like, go down already. What are?
55:16 Wes Larson? The worst is when you
55:17 Mike Smith? Why do they taste so bad? What the heck is that?
55:19 Wes Larson? The worst is when you think you can dry swallow a pill and you immediately like, oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. And you start running for water.
55:27 Mike Smith? Yeah.
55:28 Wes Larson? Mine's a bit of a zag too, because the thing that I swallowed was actually really easy. But when I was in college, me and my friend Grant, and this is kind of, this isn't the nicest thing to do to a goldfish. And I'm, I regret doing this, but we, we were like, oh, let's swallow a goldfish and then see if you can puke it back up and it'll still be alive. Cause I think we'd seen it on Jackass or something. Yeah. And I did it. Uh, I swallowed a goldfish and then made myself throw up and the goldfish was still alive. And it was, swallowing goldfish is actually like surprisingly really easy, but puking them back up is really hard.
56:06 Jeff Larson? Do you think the snake was more confused falling into the room or the goldfish was more confused going into your stomach? And then coming back out?
56:15 Wes Larson? What happened?
56:17 Mike Smith? Well, that gold, goldfish didn't remember after like five seconds.
56:21 Wes Larson? No, I feel more, I feel more bad for the ones we swallowed and just swallowed. But anyway, you know, those days are behind me.
56:27 Mike Smith? Oh, you kept some down?
56:29 Wes Larson? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It wasn't on the first try that it worked.
56:33 Mike Smith? Oh, my gosh.
56:34 Wes Larson? Yeah, I've swallowed a lot of goldfish.
56:36 Mike Smith? Me too, but like the cracker kind.
56:37 Jeff Larson? Maybe they're still alive in there.
56:39 Wes Larson? It might be.
56:40 Jeff Larson? You drink a lot of water.
56:41 Wes Larson? A loud stomach all the time.
56:45 Wes Larson? Okay. Next one is a question for you or a quiz kind of. So I said that this was the fourth longest snake in the world. For every snake you guys can name that's longer, I'm going to bring you a special treat on the flight that we're about to have together. So this is a collaborative thing. I'm gonna, here's how we're gonna do it though. As soon as you get a wrong guess, you're done.
57:08 Mike Smith? Okay.
57:09 Wes Larson? Great. So you, there's three snakes that are longer than the African rock python. There's a bit of debate. Okay, anaconda, that's one.
57:16 Mike Smith? Down there in the Amazon.
57:18 Wes Larson? Green anaconda, I'm gonna give it to you. It's green and an anaconda.
57:20 Jeff Larson? I was gonna say green and.
57:21 Wes Larson? Okay.
57:22 Jeff Larson? That was my first pick. Uh, I'll go with the Burmese python.
57:26 Wes Larson? Burmese python, number two. Uh, you can get number three too. We've talked about it.
57:31 Mike Smith? Is it the reticulated? And this isn't my answer.
57:33 Wes Larson? Reticulated python. Three for three. I'm proud of you guys.
57:37 Mike Smith? We did it, Jeff.
57:38 Wes Larson? We did it. Alright, three treats. Yeah. Okay, good job. Alright, cage match. Haven't done a cage match in a while.
57:45 Jeff Larson? You'll probably bake or treat yourself on some tiny ass cookie sheet.
57:51 Wes Larson? I hate you guys.
57:54 Mike Smith? I promised I'd never bring it up again and I've held to it.
57:57 Wes Larson? You did.
57:57 Mike Smith? Jeff's been, yeah.
57:59 Wes Larson? Alright, cage match. We haven't done this in a bit, but if you were to put this animal in a cage match hypothetically, with all of our other animals that we've talked about, which animals is this winning against? And I think, I kinda wanna draw a line where I think if you take a coyote and everything's smaller than it, I think this beats most of those animals. So, pretty much everything we've talked about that's smaller than coyote.
58:23 Jeff Larson? I was gonna say like, the fight I would be most curious is a mountain lion.
58:27 Wes Larson? Yeah, and I, you know, mountain lions are pretty close to leopards. And from what I read, an adult leopard can kill a rock python.
58:36 Jeff Larson? Okay.
58:37 Wes Larson? But I do think there's probably times that goes the other way. If the python's quick enough to get around the leopard and whatnot, so I think that's a good fight. I do. I think the wolf is a good fight. I think our leopard, our mountain lion are good fights. I think anything bigger than them is killing this animal. And anything smaller, like really small, like the spiders and whatnot, are obviously very easy for this to kill.
59:00 Jeff Larson? Do you think for snakes, it comes in just with its size? Like it's the fourth best snake in a cage match?
59:07 Wes Larson? There are a lot of snakes that don't, that venom doesn't affect them. I don't know if this is one of them. Uh, cuz they do eat snakes sometimes, so I don't know. I don't know if this is one that's immune to, to some of the venoms of other snakes. If it is, then yeah, I think it's like a pretty formidable snake in our, in our list, but I'm not sure.
59:25 Mike Smith? That's a good word, formidable. In French, that means it's like, it's cool. It's actually pretty awesome. But formidable is also a good word. Nice double entendre kind of thing you did there Wes.
59:36 Wes Larson? It's perfect. Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to do.
59:39 Mike Smith? C'est formidable.
59:41 Wes Larson? Let's do a couple listener questions.
59:43 Jeff Larson? Should we do how much we like it?
59:44 Wes Larson? Yeah, we will. We'll get there. Okay, so this one's from Brittany, Britany. They say, "My question is, have any of you seen the snow leopard cubs at the Hoagol Zoo? Also, have you checked out the Wild Utah expansion? And what is your favorite animal at the Hoagol Zoo? Mine is either the polar bears or the cougars." So yes, we have seen the snow leopard cubs at the Hoagol Zoo, at least me and Jeff. Yeah, I went there. I saw them. They were sleeping.
1:00:10 Jeff Larson? Oh yeah, that's right.
1:00:11 Wes Larson? As far as my favorite, and the Utah expansion, which I really liked a lot. My favorite animals there are the three grizzly bears that were from the Soda Butte Creek attack in Montana. Those are my favorite animals at the Hoagol Zoo. Because I got to, I actually got to go to like a special meet and greet when those bears got sent there and meet them before the public did. And I just think they're cool grizzlies. They have a cool backstory. So they're my favorite animals at the zoo. Jeff, what are your favorites?
1:00:40 Jeff Larson? Was that the second part? What's your favorite part of the Hoagol Zoo?
1:00:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, because you've seen the other stuff.
1:00:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I've seen the snow leopard, probably like, the cubs, probably like, seven times. I go to Hoagol Zoo a lot.
1:00:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, we love the Hoagol Zoo.
1:00:54 Jeff Larson? The Hoagol Zoo Polar Bear Enclosures, my favorite zoo exhibit I've ever seen of any zoo.
1:01:00 Mike Smith? It's cool. Yeah, it's really cool.
1:01:02 Wes Larson? Mike, what's your favorite there?
1:01:03 Mike Smith? That's close to mine, actually. I, I could sit down and watch those seals. Or is it sea lions? I don't even know.
1:01:10 Wes Larson? They have seals and sea lions.
1:01:11 Mike Smith? Both. I could watch them swim around in that tank for probably forever.
1:01:16 Wes Larson? Alright. You should try it.
1:01:18 Mike Smith? Alright. Until they kick me out, or I pass away.
1:01:22 Wes Larson? This one's from Glacier Worm Faye. Uh, this one's for me. "What was the most challenging, unexpected part while studying to become a bear biologist? What kind of data do you collect in the field and analyze? And did you ever have to learn the program R to analyze data?" So I'll answer these quickly. I did have to learn R. I'm really bad at coding and with statistical programs. So I really struggled with R. I needed a lot of help when I did my papers from other students. The data I collected was wide ranging, mostly movement data and kind of with the polar bears, it was video data and we're looking at disturbances. And then the most challenging, unexpected part for me, I think it was the stats.
1:02:04 Wes Larson? Like, I didn't realize how math intensive and stats intensive wildlife biology would be. And that was really, really hard for me and I definitely struggled with it. Okay, um, this one.
1:02:17 Jeff Larson? You can code.
1:02:18 Wes Larson? I can, I used to be able to code. I doubt I could anymore.
1:02:21 Jeff Larson? Can you hack?
1:02:23 Wes Larson? I can't hack. I'm not a hacker.
1:02:24 Jeff Larson? Like into like a different government or something?
1:02:27 Wes Larson? Um, no, unless they like had very, very lax security. So.
1:02:32 Jeff Larson? Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't tell us.
1:02:34 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, I wouldn't. So you're just gonna have to guess whether or not I can hack. Okay, this one's from Yash for all three of us. I'm turning sixteen in March. Happy birthday. I wanted to know what were the stupidest things you three did when you were sixteen? I already, I knew this one was coming, so I, I had mine ready to go. Uh, when I was sixteen, me and a friend up the road decided it was winter and we were really bored. And we took some tennis balls and we were dipping them in gasoline. We had like a bowl of gasoline each of us. And we'd light it on fire and we'd play catch with it. And because it was coated in gasoline, it'd be this flaming ball, but you could handle it for a second before it would burn you. So we were just out on the road, like playing with this flaming ball of gasoline.
1:03:20 Wes Larson? But then after a while, when you caught the ball, the gasoline would splash on your chest. So after a while, you would have enough gas on your chest that sometimes it would catch fire too. And then we would just run and jump in the snow to put out that fire. And it was really dumb and that was incredibly dumb, but probably the dumbest part of this whole thing is that when I went home, I just stink of gasoline and I really wanted to get the smell off of my hands because I didn't want to have to tell my parents about my dumb new game. And, uh, my dad had shown me before how you can use paint thinner to get gasoline or. To get smells off your hand or get paint off your hand or whatever. And I accidentally grabbed paint stripper instead of paint thinner, which is essentially acid.
1:04:02 Wes Larson? And I coated my hands in this paint stripper and got like second degree burns. From the paint stripper and my hands still stink like gasoline. So it was really stupid. Altogether, a stupid story.
1:04:15 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it's a good one.
1:04:16 Mike Smith? I don't, I'm not sure. I don't, I'm not sure if this happened exactly in my 16th year, but I remember. I still had my learner's permit, so I wasn't allowed to drive a car yet unless like my parents or whatever the rule is, they have to be in the passenger side. But I was like, you know what? I'm pretty good at driving, so I took my dad's car and we were gonna go see the Simpsons movie. Up like 45 minutes north and the only theater kind of north of where we lived that was running it. And just going like probably 50 miles over the speed limit and really was stupid. And I felt dumb in the moment and even stupider now, but like going way too fast in a car that wasn't mine. We did make the showtime though, never got pulled over. So I guess wasn't that stupid, right?
1:04:58 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:04:58 Mike Smith? No, it was really dumb. It was really dangerous and I, it's something I, I think about a lot and really regret doing.
1:05:04 Jeff Larson? I, I worked a construction job doing like cement pours. And we just listened to like country nonstop every single day in the summer. And so then once they let me drive to lunch and I put on the band Something Corporate. Yeah. And there's like a song that's like, I am a butterfly. It's just like these construction workers are just like, what the hell are you listening to Jeff?
1:05:33 Jeff Larson? I still think about that sometimes.
1:05:35 Wes Larson? That's great. That's great.
1:05:38 Wes Larson? All right. I think that's it for our subscriber questions. Jeff, do you want to do any listener ones?
1:05:42 Jeff Larson? Sure. Jed's nature asks, what's the best ass in Africa? We're doing, we're finishing up the ass themed.
1:05:51 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:05:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah, there's like, I, you know, I like a good tail, so I'm gonna go with a colobus monkey.
1:06:00 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:06:01 Mike Smith? I need to commune with Leia and Anastasia. They had a whole like little book. They wrote down scores every animal's butt that we saw over there.
1:06:08 Wes Larson? I, for, for me, it's probably giraffes. I'd like a big old long ass and they got like pretty muscular asses.
1:06:15 Mike Smith? True. Yeah. Uh, we did see a rhino in the safari, like that park outside.
1:06:21 Jeff Larson? Uh, wrinkly.
1:06:22 Mike Smith? Um, no, it was pretty fun. I liked that. Sturdy, real sturdy, thick butt.
1:06:27 Wes Larson? You love a child bearin' ass?
1:06:29 Mike Smith? Yeah, exactly. Wide hips, sturdy.
1:06:33 Wes Larson? That's where babies come from.
1:06:34 Mike Smith? The bum?
1:06:35 Jeff Larson? The ass. Yeah. Person's name, Chody Taint.
1:06:40 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:06:40 Jeff Larson? Ass, um, if I can poop out of both the holes in my ass. And nope, just the normal one still. The other one doesn't, doesn't do poop.
1:06:51 Wes Larson? Depends on what you consider poop.
1:06:55 Wes Larson? There's definitely stuff coming out of them.
1:06:57 Mike Smith? Right.
1:06:58 Jeff Larson? It is a drainage hole.
1:07:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:01 Jeff Larson? Um, alright, let's see. Oh yeah, Mike.
1:07:04 Wes Larson? You should say they asked instead of asked for these ones.
1:07:07 Mike Smith? That would've been funny, Jeff. We re, we can rerecord this.
1:07:12 Wes Larson? Whole episode.
1:07:13 Jeff Larson? Like, a few listeners asked, asked.
1:07:16 Wes Larson? Thank you.
1:07:17 Jeff Larson? If we're boobs or butt. We, you were getting really into this when we traveled last.
1:07:22 Mike Smith? Why is Mike the only one allowed to answer this?
1:07:24 Jeff Larson? Cause he kept bringing up like ass or.
1:07:27 Wes Larson? Okay, I'm answering two though.
1:07:28 Mike Smith? Did I? I don't remember.
1:07:32 Jeff Larson? Oh yeah, dude.
1:07:33 Mike Smith? No, I think you're trying to make me look bad.
1:07:35 Wes Larson? I think I should be able to guess for both of you and you tell me if you're right.
1:07:38 Mike Smith? Go for it, Wes.
1:07:39 Wes Larson? Mike, you're, you're a boob guy.
1:07:41 Mike Smith? Yeah, but only the left one.
1:07:43 Wes Larson? Okay. Jeff, you're an ass guy.
1:07:45 Jeff Larson? Well, does, can I, does personality count? Can we do personality?
1:07:49 Wes Larson? No, we're keeping that out of that. For, we're all three personality guys.
1:07:53 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna do personality as an option too, and I'll go with ass.
1:07:58 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:07:59 Mike Smith? I don't.
1:08:03 Wes Larson? I'm an ass guy.
1:08:06 Mike Smith? I don't, I don't care.
1:08:09 Wes Larson? Yeah, it doesn't. For all three of us, we don't actually care about this at all.
1:08:14 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:08:15 Wes Larson? Well, it's not.
1:08:17 Jeff Larson? We, we bring it up just because we think it's like the dumbest debate you can have. We like to just.
1:08:25 Mike Smith? We like to, we like to Josh.
1:08:27 Wes Larson? We like to play around on this podcast.
1:08:28 Mike Smith? We have fun sometimes.
1:08:31 Jeff Larson? Someone, oh yeah, someone asked if fish have butts.
1:08:35 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah. Like, it's so subjective what a butt is in the animal world, you know?
1:08:40 Jeff Larson? Ass, yeah.
1:08:41 Wes Larson? They have like their cloacal like folds that kind of go into their tail and you could probably say that's a butt.
1:08:47 Jeff Larson? But like, do they have cheeks at all?
1:08:49 Mike Smith? Doesn't seem like it.
1:08:50 Wes Larson? It's more like lips than cheeks, so I don't know. I don't think so.
1:08:55 Jeff Larson? They have a rectum.
1:08:57 Wes Larson? I would say that they don't have butts. If I, if someone held a gun to my head and said, do fish have butts? I would say no. And I would just say they don't pull the trigger.
1:09:05 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:09:06 Jeff Larson? Uh, yell, yell set. Alright, that's all I got.
1:09:10 Mike Smith? Thanks for elucidating, Wes. That's, that's an important one.
1:09:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, good word. Okay, quick conservation corner. African rock pythons, there's two species. There's the Central African rock python and the Southern African rock, rock python. We're just gonna kind of treat them as one for ease of talking about it. Uh, they're considered near threatened by the IUCN.
1:09:31 Jeff Larson? Oh.
1:09:32 Wes Larson? The main threats to the snake are habitat loss, killings by-
1:09:35 Jeff Larson? I'm almost concerned for him.
1:09:37 Wes Larson? Fair enough. Killings by people that view them as a threat. So sometimes they just get killed because people are scared of them. And poaching for the international pet trade and bush meat.
1:09:48 Jeff Larson? Oh, really?
1:09:49 Wes Larson? Yeah, they have seen decreases throughout their range, but they are very adaptable animals. They have a wide range of prey that they can eat. So I'm not too worried about them either.
1:09:59 Mike Smith? You know who's adaptable is Nicolas Cage. You ever see Adaptation? Now that is a fine film.
1:10:04 Wes Larson? He is an adaptable actor. What did I watch with him the other day? Uh, Snake Eyes.
1:10:09 Mike Smith? Oh, right. Let's go, baby.
1:10:11 Wes Larson? Great.
1:10:11 Mike Smith? I'm ready.
1:10:12 Jeff Larson? The movie Face Off, he's the bad guy, but then in the middle of the movie, he's the good guy.
1:10:18 Wes Larson? And then he pulls it off.
1:10:19 Jeff Larson? He's, yeah, he has to like play polar opposites.
1:10:23 Wes Larson? Well, the thing for me too, is that when I watched that movie,
1:10:25 Mike Smith? How does he do it?
1:10:26 Wes Larson? I feel like he's also playing John Travolta's character. Like John Travolta is playing Nick Cage and Nick Cage is still playing Nick Cage. All right.
1:10:37 Mike Smith? Which is a funny way of saying John Travolta is actually better in that movie than Nick Cage.
1:10:42 Wes Larson? Fair enough.
1:10:43 Jeff Larson? I don't know, Nick Cage at the start is like, whoa.
1:10:47 Mike Smith? Yeah, I know, I know.
1:10:49 Wes Larson? There is breathtaking performer. A small population of African rock pythons in the wild in Florida, in a small section of Miami Dade County. So when you hear about the python problem in Florida, it's Burmese pythons, but there are some rock pythons there as well. But there's an active hunting program to try and get rid of them. All right, and then we'll do our claws, claw rating for the African rock python.
1:11:13 Jeff Larson? Wait, I feel like I had, oh yeah, if you were gonna like visit Africa to find one, where would be the best place to go?
1:11:18 Wes Larson? I would guess like Southern Africa, probably South Africa or Namibia, that part, but I'm not sure. I know they have them in the Serengeti, they have them in Nigeria, they have them in quite a few countries. But I'm not sure where the best place to see him is.
1:11:36 Jeff Larson? Okay.
1:11:36 Wes Larson? Botswana is probably a really good place for him too. All right, so our claw rating, one to 10 claws or zero to 10 claws. And Jeff, you'll have your overall rating, African rock python.
1:11:47 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna give him a six.
1:11:49 Mike Smith? Wow.
1:11:50 Jeff Larson? I don't know, I think green anacondas are my favorite, like huge snakes. And then I don't like that one killed these two kids, so that knocks him down a point.
1:12:01 Mike Smith? Fair.
1:12:03 Jeff Larson? But yeah, I don't know. I just like other snakes more. And overall, I'm going 675.
1:12:09 Mike Smith? I like these quite a bit. I think I'm gonna go with an eight. The camouflage pattern kind of look they have is just iconic to me. This is kind of what I think about when I think about a snake like that kind of, the splotchy design you were talking about. Design maybe isn't the right word, but yeah. Makes me feel like I could maybe pull off a camo look, but every time I try, I fail.
1:12:29 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:12:30 Mike Smith? Rarely does anyone pull it off.
1:12:32 Jeff Larson? Seeing these snakes, you're like, I should buy a camo outfit.
1:12:37 Mike Smith? I should wear more camo.
1:12:41 Wes Larson? This might be surprising to people. I'm also gonna go with the six. I don't really, I think they probably don't crack my top 100 snakes. And then when I was in, when I was working on that pangolin project, I was at a vet hospital and they brought in an African rock python while I was there. And I helped them handle this snake, which is a wild snake. And snakes do this musking thing sometimes where they like spray musk or they squirt, they like exude musk. And it's like this white kind of liquid and it smells awful. And the worst musk I've ever got from a snake was this African rock python. I smelled so bad and it was so hard to wash off.
1:13:23 Wes Larson? And I just kind of think of them now when I, I think of that musk when I think of them. So they're six, but I, that's hard for me to give a snake a six because I love snakes.
1:13:32 Mike Smith? I'm gonna call your bluff. Do you name 100 snakes you like more? Go.
1:13:36 Wes Larson? I can't do that right now, but.
1:13:39 Jeff Larson? He couldn't even name one.
1:13:40 Wes Larson? There's probably like four species. There's at least four or five species of python that I like more than this python.
1:13:47 Mike Smith? Yeah, alright. Now we're moving the goalposts.
1:13:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:13:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, you know, it might be a seven. I don't know.
1:13:55 Jeff Larson? My favorite snake's a python.
1:13:57 Wes Larson? Your favorite one? Oh, green tree python.
1:13:59 Jeff Larson? Green tree python, yeah.
1:14:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:01 Jeff Larson? But, uh, I was gonna ask, so like pangolins, I mean, I've been really impressed recently learning that like when they curl up in a ball.
1:14:10 Wes Larson? Like nothing.
1:14:11 Jeff Larson? They're impenetrable. Like even lions don't really like eat them if they're in their ball.
1:14:17 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:17 Jeff Larson? Could a rock python like crush it?
1:14:19 Wes Larson? I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah.
1:14:22 Jeff Larson? It's a good cage match just to see like.
1:14:24 Wes Larson? And they're probably.
1:14:25 Jeff Larson? How long a pangolin could just be in a ball?
1:14:27 Wes Larson? They're probably animals that come into contact a decent amount because.
1:14:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:14:31 Wes Larson? They're both burrowing animals. So, yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. I'll actually, I'll ask one of my pangolin researcher friends and see what they say, because I'm pretty curious about that.
1:14:42 Jeff Larson? Yeah, next episode, we should, we can.
1:14:44 Wes Larson? I'll try and give.
1:14:45 Jeff Larson? We can do a Wes's Animal Fact and you can just give that.
1:14:49 Wes Larson? Sure. All right. Well, thanks, guys. Uh, I know that's kind of, any story involving kids is always a little depressing, hard to hear. Uh, obviously, our hearts go out to this family. I'm sure they're still really suffering and feeling a lot of grief. So, can't imagine what that's like, and we feel terrible.
1:15:08 Mike Smith? Yeah, obviously. I think it should go without saying, but sometimes it does feel like the right move to just say that we, we feel, we feel the pain in the only way we know how to.
1:15:20 Wes Larson? And then also just a quick plug, as always, for our subscriber episodes, um, we just recorded a really fun one with Danielle from National Park After Dark. It's all about the, the animal bracket that Jeff created this year.
1:15:34 Jeff Larson? March Madness, baby.
1:15:35 Wes Larson? I, I had a great time. Uh, Danielle had a, a crazy thing happen to her this morning right before recording. So, if you want to hear about that.
1:15:45 Jeff Larson? Just like an insane animal to win that bracket too. Like, I don't know how that happened.
1:15:50 Wes Larson? I'm pretty excited about it.
1:15:51 Jeff Larson? Mainly Wes's fault.
1:15:52 Mike Smith? Yeah. I'm also pretty responsible.
1:15:55 Wes Larson? It's like a hundred percent my fault.
1:15:58 Jeff Larson? Well, we could've, we could've like blocked your route, but yeah.
1:16:03 Wes Larson? I stamped it twice, though. I mean, I protected it pretty well.
1:16:07 Jeff Larson? And also, just a reminder, Wes already said it, but if you're gonna sign up on Patreon, please do, but don't use Apple iOS because they're charging extra now. So just use a web browser and then you can still download it on Apple iOS. But if you put your payment on through the web browser, it's gonna save you 30% that would just go to Apple. And you know what? Apple probably really needs that money, but.
1:16:33 Wes Larson? They're struggling.
1:16:37 Wes Larson? Alright.
1:16:39 Wes Larson? Okay, love you guys.
1:16:40 Jeff Larson? Love ya.
1:16:41 Wes Larson? See ya.
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