Polar Bear Attack - A Violent Post-Party Polar Bear Encounter

In 2013, Erin Greene was on her way home from a Halloween party when she crossed paths with a polar bear. ~~ Miracle Brand: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/TOOTH and use the code TOOTH to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Goodr: Go to http://goodr.com/TOOTH and use code TOOTH for free shipping. Rocket Money: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to http://rocketmoney.com/claw today. Ollie Pet Food: Take the guesswork out of your dog's well-being. Go to ollie.com/tooth and use code tooth to get 60% off your first box! Mint: Ready to say yes to saying no? Make the switch at http://mintmobile.com/tooth ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Wes Larson?

  Hey everyone. I'm really excited to tell you about a podcast that's actually very near and dear to my heart. It's called Risk. And this is a podcast I started listening to in like 2014. I listened to it while I did bear work. I listened to it all the time, like hundreds and hundreds of hours of it. And it's a storytelling podcast where people tell really real stories they never thought they'd dare to share. For example, there's one about a young man that was kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel. There's one where a young woman discovered the guy she was planning kinky playdates with was her dad. There's tons of stories. And for me, this podcast was really important. It was during a time where I was really only hearing stories from my community. And it really helped me expand my worldview. And to be completely honest with you, there was a story on this podcast

• 0:44Wes Larson?

  that really helped me during a time where I was going through some difficult changes and I just needed to hear other perspectives. So for that reason, Risk has always been a really important podcast to me. I can't recommend it enough. I've listened to so much of it and I absolutely love it. So if you love hearing people tell real stories about their lives, listen to and follow Risk wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:18Jeff Larson?

  Hello listeners, welcome back to Tooth and Claw Podcast. You know, we may have lost a member, but you have the bloodline still here. So Wes Larson, our bear biologist. And then I'm his brother Jeff and Mike is out having fun in the Cook Islands right now.

• 1:36Wes Larson?

  He's doing some diving without us, seeing humpback whales.

• 1:39Jeff Larson?

  Wes, you, this is our first surgery episode where I'm not the one suffering from a surgery.

• 1:45Wes Larson?

  Yep. I, I had a surgery last week. It was a gum graft. So I had some bad gum recession because I used to brush my teeth way too hard. And our brother, our older brother Cyrus, who's a dentist, told me that I finally had to do it. So I did it. And they could either take gums from a cadaver and graft it onto my gums. So like a dead body.

• 2:08Jeff Larson?

  George Washington style.

• 2:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I would have asked for his gums specifically, or they could do it from my, the top of my mouth, like my palate and they cut your palate open and then take tissue from inside and then graft it. And Jessie said she would never kiss me again if I did the cadaver ones. And I didn't want the cadaver ones anyways. So they had to cut open my palate and my gums are full of stitches right now. So I, I've been wearing a retainer, but I took it out just for this. So if I start seeing blood, if you start seeing blood coming dripping down out of my mouth, just know I'm willing to go to that length, Jeff, just for this year.

• 2:44Jeff Larson?

  It's podcast. People think podcasting is easy. It's not literally bleeding out the mouth just to get you guys this information.

• 2:52Wes Larson?

  Well, and we're doing a spooky episode, so it might as well have some blood leaking out my mouth, right?

• 2:58Jeff Larson?

  Be something.

• 2:59Wes Larson?

  So we were, we were getting ready to record and I was finishing up my notes and I look out the window of my shed and I see Jessie and our neighbor just like running around trying to chase our pigs into a trailer. And Jessie's really good at this stuff and so was our neighbor. So I was like, I don't need to help them. But then I could see like they were in over their heads. And so I went out and I've been trying to, to, you know, rassle these hogs into the trailer for a bit.

• 3:22Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Wes Larson?

  Uh, if we didn't get them. So they're out in the yard right now, just eating our grass.

• 3:26Jeff Larson?

  Didn't get them. They won.

• 3:28Wes Larson?

  Nah, nah, they won. Um, so we need, we're calling in reinforcements. Yeah. And later we'll try again. But I said I wasn't going to help with the pigs, but here I am helping with the pigs. But I, it was kind of fun. And Jessie's worked really hard on them and they haven't been that bad. So it wasn't, it was fun. You would have liked it.

• 3:45Jeff Larson?

  I liked the videos she posted of you just shaking your apple tree for them to eat apples or, no, it was a imaging footage.

• 3:54Wes Larson?

  Imaging posted it. Yeah. Yeah. I do have to admit they're kind of cute. They are kind of cute pigs.

• 4:00Jeff Larson?

  They are big, fast.

• 4:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Speaking of cute, you got pink hair, dude.

• 4:04Jeff Larson?

  Speaking of pigs.

• 4:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Jeff Larson?

  Pigs are pink.

• 4:07Wes Larson?

  Pigs are pink. Mine aren't. But yeah.

• 4:09Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. You know, I have a good, people ask me like, why did I do it? I don't have a good reason. Just felt like.

• 4:16Wes Larson?

  I think it looks great.

• 4:16Jeff Larson?

  Thank you.

• 4:17Wes Larson?

  I liked it a lot.

• 4:18Jeff Larson?

  Went pink. I'm excited to see how it grows out, you know? I want to see like the whole stage of it. But yeah, went with some pink hair. I'm thinking maybe for Halloween, cause I think this is scary. Uh, I'll be the pink starburst. Cause I think it's scary to get two pink starbursts in your. In your wrapper. So yeah, maybe I'll do that.

• 4:40Wes Larson?

  That's really good. Yeah. And you're showing Mike, you're teaching Mike a valuable lesson on what it actually looks like to dye your hair because he was supposed to dye his hair purple and he did the weakest attempt ever.

• 4:52Jeff Larson?

  I think he's gonna go to my guy now. I think he's.

• 4:55Wes Larson?

  He should. Was this Chris that you went to or was it someone else?

• 4:58Jeff Larson?

  Nah, Chris can't do.

• 5:00Wes Larson?

  Chris doesn't do guys.

• 5:01Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. So I just went to someone. It's a lot more expensive than I thought. And they never told me. I was kinda surprised, but I sit down and he's like, did anyone go over pricing with you? I was like, no. He's like, well, it's like $250. I was like, oh.

• 5:19Jeff Larson?

  I guess.

• 5:19Wes Larson?

  What were you expecting?

• 5:21Jeff Larson?

  Like a hundred?

• 5:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I guess I would have had no idea either.

• 5:25Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. So I don't know if I would have done it had I known that before, but.

• 5:30Wes Larson?

  Well, it looks cool.

• 5:30Jeff Larson?

  I'm glad I did it. I'm, yeah, I think it's cool, you know, total lib now though.

• 5:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Wes Larson?

  You're not. All right. Well, yeah. So the gloves are off because Mike's not here. We get to do whatever the heck we want.

• 5:44Jeff Larson?

  Should we say, because when he's on, we don't want to be nice to him. Should we say our favorite thing about Mike?

• 5:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, let's say something nice about Mike. Sure. Why don't you go first?

• 5:54Jeff Larson?

  Like, I'd never say this to Mike's face type of thing.

• 5:57Wes Larson?

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 5:58Jeff Larson?

  But I probably the funniest person I know.

• 6:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I would have to agree with that. I think Mike's up there with funniest people I know too. I would just say that Mike is, puts on this kind of like prickly demeanor, but he is one of the sweetest people in the world when it comes to like treating, how he treats strangers and just people that he just met. I feel like he is very, very.

• 6:23Jeff Larson?

  I don't know if I agree with that.

• 6:24Wes Larson?

  Maybe not strangers, but like the people that come on our trips and stuff. I think they always.

• 6:29Jeff Larson?

  Thinking of the airport in India where those guys were just trying to do their job and he was getting really mad, but he's really, I think you mean like our travelers on our trips and stuff. He's so nice. Yeah.

• 6:43Wes Larson?

  So much more than I ever would have thought even. And, and I've always thought he was nice, but he even surprised me with that. So, all right. Well, now that we got that out of the way.

• 6:52Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, we'll never let him know that.

• 6:54Wes Larson?

  We're never, he'll never listen to this either. So it is October, like we mentioned in the Humboldt squid episode, we tend to do episodes this month that are either spooky or kind of revolve around Halloween. All three of us are big Halloween fans.

• 7:10Jeff Larson?

  Have you been having a hard time getting into the season?

• 7:13Wes Larson?

  It's been pretty warm here, which makes it kind of harder.

• 7:16Jeff Larson?

  It just doesn't quite feel, I always get into it like after Halloween.

• 7:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 7:20Jeff Larson?

  Because once Halloween comes, I'm like, oh yeah, I should watch spooky movies.

• 7:24Wes Larson?

  I've been getting into it because I've been watching a lot of horror movies already, but not as much as some years. And the surgery definitely knocked me back a step too. Because when I was on my painkillers, I didn't want to watch scary stuff. I just wanted to watch like cartoons and whatnot. But yeah, I don't know, I'm, I'll get more and more into it. And I'm coming to Utah soon to hang out with you guys and, and that'll get me in the, the spirit, the Halloween spirit.

• 7:48Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Wes Larson?

  Anyway, so we are gonna do a house.

• 7:50Jeff Larson?

  Into it too.

• 7:51Wes Larson?

  Oh boy, will this ever. I, I will say this, this, this species, so people ask me if I have like nightmares about animals and whatnot. This is the species that I do have the most nightmares about. It's a species I've worked with closely and when I was doing polar bear work, you know, the bear's in the title. I'm not, I don't need to hide it any longer. But when I was doing polar bear work, they are the bear that they're not as aggressive as grizzly bears. They're not nearly as territorial or whatever. But if one is kind of coming after you, it's, it's probably trying to eat you. So they're, they are the bear that in my work at least, we were the most kind of head on a swivel, always looking for them, always being careful in polar bear country. And because of that, that got into my psyche. So when I do have dreams

• 8:35Wes Larson?

  about polar bears, they tend to be dreams where the bear is trying to eat me. And I do, I enjoy them often. Like I wake up and had like a really fun dream. But it is always kind of this like immovable force that's coming after me that I can't do anything about. And I do, they are kind of that way in a way.

• 8:52Jeff Larson?

  It'd be a lot, there's that hypothetical of like, would you take a million dollars, but a snail is going to try to kill you? And if it touches you, you're dead.

• 9:03Wes Larson?

  I've never heard that one, but I like it. Yeah.

• 9:05Jeff Larson?

  Like its whole life is just. Going to be trying to get you. It'd be crazy to do that with a polar bear. It's like you get a million dollars, but one polar bear is just going to try to kill you.

• 9:16Wes Larson?

  Just like the kids and weapons.

• 9:17Jeff Larson?

  I guess though, we would, we would probably figure it out before it got too far south. So it's not as good. A snail can sneak through you anything.

• 9:25Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I like that though. That's a good hypothetical. Um, no, I, you know, the, the purpose of this show is to dissuade those myths. And there is that myth out there that like polar bears are one of the only animals that hunt humans and that, you know, were part of their food source. And that's not true. But what is true is when they do go after people, it is often based in predation and that can be kind of scary. So that.

• 9:51Jeff Larson?

  Twitter back and forth with someone a little bit recently where they put like polar bears are the, one of the only four animals that will hunt humans.

• 10:00Wes Larson?

  I think I saw your, your post.

• 10:02Jeff Larson?

  Well, that's not true. And they're like, oh, actually it is. I was like, well, actually I think I know more than you.

• 10:11Wes Larson?

  It's kind of fun to see you do that because I lost the energy for that online a long time ago, but you still have it.

• 10:19Jeff Larson?

  Weeds every once in a while, but then I'm always like, I wonder like what tooth and claw listeners just watching this in the background and like, why is he so?

• 10:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah, so adamant to attack this person. Yeah. No, but it's good. And it's good for the animals that, that people know that. So.

• 10:36Jeff Larson?

  What would you put on the list of animals that like hunt people?

• 10:40Wes Larson?

  Uh, I would put saltwater crocodiles and I would put, um, Bengal tigers. And I'd probably put leopards too. Lions, maybe. Yeah.

• 10:51Jeff Larson?

  I'd put lions if you're putting.

• 10:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'd probably include lions because they do. I mean, like usually when they attack someone, that's what they're trying to do, you know?

• 10:58Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Wes Larson?

  And polar bears, I'm not saying polar bears don't hunt people sometimes, but it's, it's opportunistic and they don't usually, it's usually, we'll talk about that in a minute. We'll get to that.

• 11:08Jeff Larson?

  Okay.

• 11:09Wes Larson?

  All right. Let's get into the story though. Late Halloween night of 2013 in the sub Arctic community of Churchill, Manitoba. Sixty nine year old William Bill Iote had fallen asleep in front of his TV.

• 11:21Jeff Larson?

  Sixty nine?

• 11:22Wes Larson?

  Sixty nine, dude. It's a great year. Uh huh. He fell asleep in front of his TV, but the sound of screams woke him up. And screaming on Halloween night isn't exactly unheard of. Or maybe his TV had drifted to a classic horror movie while he was falling asleep. But as he woke up, he realized the screams were not coming from inside of his house. They were coming from outside on the street. And they weren't the kind of screams you'd hear from trick or treaters trying to scare each other or friends at a rowdy Halloween party. They were shrill and guttural, the kind of sounds you hear when prey is being eaten by a predator. So Bill walks to the door and he opens it, not at all prepared for the horror that was unfolding on the road right in front of his house.

• 12:05Wes Larson?

  A polar bear was attacking a young woman and was shaking her limp body through the air. Bill didn't have a gun and he knew by the time the polar bear patrol got there, this girl would be dead. So he quickly looks around and his eyes fall on his heavy duty metal snow shovel, grabs the shovel, wraps his finger around the handle, and then just standing in just his pajamas and slippers, he says to himself, "Well, you're either gonna do something or you're not." And then he charges out into the night.

• 12:32Jeff Larson?

  Nice.

• 12:34Wes Larson?

  All right, so let's rewind a little bit.

• 12:36Jeff Larson?

  It's a tough situation. Not everyone would do it.

• 12:40Wes Larson?

  We're definitely gonna talk about that a bit when we get back to it.

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• 14:15Jeff Larson?

  When I'm going to bed, temperature is the number one most important thing to me. I like to be a little cold at first, warm and comfortable when I wake up. Kind of like a duck, I imagine. Actually, that's a big assumption about ducks. I don't know what it's like, but that's what I like. The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep. That's why I switched to Miracle Made Sheets. They're inspired by NASA technology and use silver-infused temperature-regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long. Hot sleeper? Cold sleeper? Doesn't matter. These sheets will help keep you in the comfort zone all night long. And thanks to their antibacterial silver technology, Miracle Made Sheets stay cleaner and fresher up to three times longer than regular sheets.

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• 15:40Wes Larson?

  All right, we're gonna rewind. So Aaron.

• 15:45Wes Larson?

  Erin Green had first come to Churchill in 2012 and immediately she was struck by how different it felt from her hometown of Montreal. People would say hi on the street. Everyone seemed to know each other. There was a strong sense of community built into the fabric of the town. And to Erin, it felt like the town of roughly 900 people was exactly what she'd been looking for.

• 16:06Jeff Larson?

  Because Montreal has a bunch of French people, right?

• 16:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah, also, she doesn't have to speak French anymore. Yeah.

• 16:13Jeff Larson?

  Well, they just don't say hello to anyone.

• 16:16Wes Larson?

  And when you don't speak French in Montreal, they're not happy about it.

• 16:20Jeff Larson?

  Really?

• 16:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they get a little snooty sometimes when you don't speak French. Sorry to all you Montrealers out there. I've been to Churchill and I felt the same way about it. It just felt like it was immediately this really warm, welcoming community. It's really different from anywhere I've been. You have to either fly in or take a train. There's really the only ways to get. You could also take a boat, but no one really does that. You either fly in or take a train.

• 16:46Jeff Larson?

  Could you drive a car?

• 16:47Wes Larson?

  You couldn't drive a car in. No, there's no roads. That's the main thing. There's roads like in the Churchill area, but no roads leading to the town. If you could drive a car in, it'd pretty much be like everywhere else.

• 16:58Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that's what I was trying to get to.

• 17:01Wes Larson?

  No. And then it's just kind of this, it's mostly flat. It's right on the shore of Hudson Bay. It's subarctic, but it does, it gets very, very, very cold. It feels like the Arctic. There's northern lights. There's really cool wildlife. It's just a really neat place.

• 17:18Jeff Larson?

  All right, I'll put it on the list.

• 17:19Wes Larson?

  There's beluga, yeah, there's beluga whales, Arctic fox. We'll probably do a tooth and claw trip there sometime. There's wolves, there's ptarmigan, there's all these different critters that call Churchill home. But the town is really famous for one thing, and that's polar bears. Churchill is commonly known as the polar bear capital of the world, and it's likely the easiest, or at least the most convenient place in the world to see polar bears. When I visited, I saw probably a dozen to two dozen polar bears in like a five day stretch. There's a lot of polar bears there during a certain time of the year, and we'll talk about that, too. So basically, and you know what? We'll talk about it right now. So Jeff, there's two kinds of sea ice. There's annual sea ice and multi-year sea ice.

• 18:03Wes Larson?

  So annual sea ice is the kind that's going to be melting and refreezing every year. So this is what Hudson Bay has. Every year, the ice completely freezes up to the shore and then it completely melts. And so the bears that are there have to come ashore and then leave back onto the ice as it freezes and melts, freezes and melts. Multi-year ice is ice that's going to spend, you know, multi, it's going to be multi-year. It's going to stay for a long time. And we're losing most of our multi-year ice. So when they say like, we might have an ice-free North Pole at some point, they're talking about multi-year ice. That ice that's there year after year after year. Sea ice is really important to polar bears.

• 18:46Wes Larson?

  They will go out onto the sea ice to hunt seals. And do you remember any of the different ways that they hunt seals on the sea ice?

• 18:54Jeff Larson?

  They'll like wait by a hole for a seal to come up, right? Because like they know that the seals need to breathe and they're under the ice.

• 19:02Wes Larson?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 19:03Jeff Larson?

  I saw a video of someone out on the ice in the Arctic recently that they were just filming a seal hole. Just because they thought it was cool. And then a seal came through it and they weren't expecting it at all.

• 19:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah. So seals maintain these breathing holes that they, they scratch with their flippers to get through the ice. And they just keep them open and that way they can pop up as they're hunting to breathe. They also make their dens in the sea ice and they'll pull themselves out to just lay on top of the sea ice. So polar bears hunt seals by, yeah, they make dens for their pups. Just for their pups. Yeah.

• 19:42Jeff Larson?

  Like how?

• 19:43Wes Larson?

  They kind of just like scratch a hole into the sea ice and then it gets covered up. It's kind of like a polar bear den almost. And their pups will be in that that little enclosure. They come, they scratch it through the bottom and like make a little cavity into the the sea ice.

• 19:57Jeff Larson?

  That's cool.

• 19:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah, so polar bears in the spring especially will cave in those dens to get at the pups. That's their best feeding time of the year. But then throughout the year, when there's sea ice, they'll wait by these breathing holes or they'll hunt the seals that have pulled up onto the open ice. So it's really important that they have sea ice because they can't hunt them when they're just free swimming or when there's no ice. That's what they need to hunt seals. That's why they are so tied to sea ice.

• 20:24Jeff Larson?

  It helps seals too, right?

• 20:25Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Jeff Larson?

  A lot of like little fish will go up to the sea ice and like seals can hunt better too or something.

• 20:31Wes Larson?

  The main thing is that it it is the base level for the whole ecosystem and that there's algae that grows on the bottom of it. There's little fish that eat that algae. There's bigger fish that eat those little fish. Seals eat those bigger fish and then polar bears eat the seals. So the sea ice is kind of the base level of that whole food web. So it's really, really important in many different ways. But every summer.

• 20:52Jeff Larson?

  Chain of food or something.

• 20:54Wes Larson?

  Exactly. Yeah. Every summer, many of the polar bears in Western Hudson Bay, that subpopulation, will leave the sea ice as it melts and they spend the rest of the summer fasting and waiting for the ice to freeze up again. In the fall, many of them will gather on the shores of Hudson Bay and wait for the ice to refreeze. And due to really specific geography and oceanography, the refreeze often first starts right around Churchill. So when the sea ice refreezes, they can head back out and hunt for seals. But if they don't have that sea ice, you know, as a hunting platform, they're simply just going to be fasting and burning their fat reserves. So when you visit Churchill in the fall, you're going to find a lot of bears that are simply waiting near the shore and taking advantage of any other food opportunity

• 21:39Wes Larson?

  that might pop up in the meantime.

• 21:41Jeff Larson?

  Are they looking pretty thin?

• 21:42Wes Larson?

  They look, they look thin. They look just kind of, they're not moving very fast because they're saving their energy. They're in this state that we often call walking hibernation where their metabolism has gone down and they're kind of just trying to save as much energy as possible until it freezes. But some of them do look for other. Their sources of food and that can lead to some conflict in Churchill. And these conflict bears are often darted and then taken to a bear holding facility, which is often called polar bear jail, where they spend the rest of their fast in a pretty comfortable cell. And it's a really novel way that they deal with these conflict bears that really can't be blamed for being a little bit hangry, you know?

• 22:21Jeff Larson?

  I saw, I saw a polar bear jail recently. It's like a huge warehouse. It looks like a Costco, but it's like for polar bears.

• 22:28Wes Larson?

  It's massive. They have these concrete cells. They give them water, but they don't give them food.

• 22:33Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Wes Larson?

  Because then they start to associate people with food and they, they wouldn't be getting food out anyways. So they're just, they finish their fast in jail. And then they're released as soon as the sea ice comes back. Uh, it's pretty neat. So after her first visit to Churchill, Erin makes the decision she wants to move there and work there seasonally as a waitress in one of the local bars. She would return to Montreal in the colder months and live in Churchill when it thawed out. By 2013, she'd already made a lot of friends in the little community, especially among the other seasonal employees. And more and more Churchill was feeling like home. That feeling of community was often strongest on Halloween night. Churchill always went really hard for Halloween and 2013 was no exception.

• 23:17Wes Larson?

  Erin's party hopping with her friends until late in the night while kids are out trick or treating in the small community. And this general really festive atmosphere was all made possible through years and years of hard work. Because you see, Halloween presents some particularly tricky obstacles for trick or treaters and partygoers in Churchill. And those obstacles are big starving polar bears.

• 23:41Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Wes Larson?

  So decades ago.

• 23:43Jeff Larson?

  I respect them still going for it.

• 23:45Wes Larson?

  I know, like trick or treating.

• 23:46Jeff Larson?

  I feel like most places have kind of stopped trick or treating for no reason at all. And they're just like, we're gonna keep doing it, even with polar bears.

• 23:56Wes Larson?

  This is like in the heart of, of polar bear season in Churchill too. Halloween is right when it's about to refreeze. There's lots of bears around. I was there on Halloween and we saw lots of bears. I mean, they are, they are around. So yeah, they could have just easily said, okay, we're not doing Halloween, but instead what they did is they, um, realized that Halloween specifically, you know, put their kids at risk. And they decided to start an intense polar bear patrol that was created on Halloween night. Both polar bear professionals and law enforcement will patrol the town in trucks and even helicopters to make sure that no bears cross paths with residents. So if they catch any bears.

• 24:38Jeff Larson?

  Make the kids dress up as like vegetables since polar bears only eat meat.

• 24:44Wes Larson?

  Yeah. What if you had a kid that just like really wanted to wear a seal costume? And you're just like, or you hate your kid and you're just like, hey, I got your costume for Halloween. You're gonna be a ringed seal.

• 24:59Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good point, though. Just put them in like, yeah, you're a concrete block this year. You are a carrot. Yeah. No, that wouldn't work. But this polar bear patrol does seem to work really well. And they've done a really good job of keeping bears out of the streets of Churchill on Halloween night. So on Halloween 2013, Erin goes pretty hard and so do her friends. It's possible that by the time she finally decided to head home on the hours, early hours of November 1st, I mean, this is like 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. November 1st, the polar bear patrol maybe had already called it a night. You know, they'd said, okay, we kept everyone out of trouble. All the kids are home. We're gonna go to bed. Or maybe a bear had just slipped their detection.

• 25:42Wes Larson?

  But whatever the reason, a 250-pound subadult polar bear was quietly walking the dirt roads of Churchill at the same time as Erin and her friends. And as they rounded a corner about five minutes from her house, the bear spotted them and it charged. Erin's friend Nikki was the first to see this bear and in a panic, she said, oh, my God, it's a polar bear. And the whole group started running in blind fear. So we know running isn't great. I, if I were in this scenario, if I'm with some people in a town and there's houses nearby and I don't have any deterrent and the bear is already running at me, I might run. I don't know if you have any other options. Yeah.

• 26:25Wes Larson?

  I might try and get to safety because I don't think stopping and trying to be totally like dominant with this bear would have probably stopped it. I think it probably would have kept going. I feel like it depends a lot on your surroundings.

• 26:39Jeff Larson?

  Like

• 26:40Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Jeff Larson?

  If there's anything nearby that you could put in between you and the bear. But if you're like in an open snowy road, then it's like I'd still probably stand your ground because like you're not going to outrun it.

• 26:53Wes Larson?

  Totally. They don't have any good options at this point is what I'm trying to say. Like we always say, don't run it.

• 26:58Jeff Larson?

  It's a huge mistake in this one.

• 27:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Wes Larson?

  We always say, don't run because it's a bad option, but all they have is bad options here. They don't have anything good. So they run and Erin and her friends who had both, you know, they'd all seen polar bears lumbering around the area in the past. They suddenly realized just how fast they can be.

• 27:17Jeff Larson?

  Drop their candy?

• 27:18Wes Larson?

  They should. Yeah, that's honestly, I probably would, but they weren't trick or treating. They were at a party. Um, they realized how fast these polar bears can be when this bear is on them in seconds. One of Erin's friends actually trips and falls, but the bear passes right by her. And the other friend, because it had already locked in on Erin. And bears do this sometimes. Sometimes they just get tunnel vision where they pick a target and that is what they're going to go for. And even if there's closer people or people that are more vulnerable, they're kind of just laser focused on that one target. And that's what this bear was.

• 27:53Jeff Larson?

  There's another reason that one joke everyone always says doesn't work. That I don't need to be faster than a bear. I just need to be faster than my friends.

• 28:02Wes Larson?

  Exactly.

• 28:03Jeff Larson?

  It's like, well, look at this story.

• 28:05Wes Larson?

  She was faster than both of her friends and it still got her. Yeah. So shut the hell up with that joke.

• 28:11Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that joke's canceled.

• 28:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah. As the bear came up behind Erin, she knew that she wasn't going to be able to get away. So she actually stops running, stands still and just braces herself for the attack. The bear runs up behind her, stands on its hind legs and clamps its jaws down over the back of her head. Pulling her off the ground and whipping her through the air.

• 28:34Jeff Larson?

  That's crazy.

• 28:36Wes Larson?

  Yeah. She starts screaming and the screams coming from her body felt unreal. Like she didn't know she had the capability to scream like that. And then she's kind of back on her feet. The bear's paws are on her shoulders. Its jaws are still locked around her head and she could feel the teeth scraping against her skull and the claws digging into her torso. And she starts punk punching and kicking at the bear. She knew that its snout was probably a little bit more sensitive. But not surprisingly, these punches and kicks don't really do anything. And aside from maybe giving her like a brief pause in the mauling. But then when the bear starts mauling her again, it pushes her down on the ground. Pushes its paws against her shoulders.

• 29:19Wes Larson?

  I think she's on her stomach and it like puts her paws on her shoulders for leverage. Bites into her skull and starts peeling her scalp back.

• 29:28Wes Larson?

  So like you can picture it kind of like grabbing her by the head and like peeling it backwards. Yeah, it's not good. Check engine light, Jeff.

• 29:38Wes Larson?

  One of her friends is like frozen in place. The other had sprinted on hopefully to get help. But Aaron felt really alone as the bear continued to bite at her head. And she feels the warm blood spilling over her body in a constant flow on this cold night.

• 29:52Jeff Larson?

  You're gonna make someone faint on this one.

• 29:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And she knew, I hope so, it's a Halloween episode. Uh, she knew that that much blood meant that the bear was doing some real damage. And she could feel her strength fading. She'd stopped screaming, she thinks. And she suddenly has this realization that she's probably gonna die out there on this icy road. And she figures all of the commotion would probably draw attention. And sooner or later, the polar bear patrol would show up. But by then, the bear would have done enough damage to kill her. But that's when Bill Iote charges out of his house in his pajamas with his snow shovel.

• 30:29Jeff Larson?

  Nice.

• 30:30Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So Bill had been yelling at the bear, but it was ignoring him as it continued to shake this girl through the air. Tear her scalp off. So he made up his mind to use the shovel. Um, and again, like I said in the beginning, he was standing there and he's like, well, you're either gonna do something or you're not. You can't just stand here and think about it. And I think this guy just happened to be that like point zero zero one percent of the world that is willing to charge at a polar bear with the snow shovel to stop it from killing someone he's never met in his entire life.

• 31:02Jeff Larson?

  You think I would do that?

• 31:04Wes Larson?

  I think you would too. And I think I would because we've talked about it enough. But I don't think most people would. I, I, who knows?

• 31:12Jeff Larson?

  Not to discredit him. It's like incredibly brave, but I just feel like people do want to help other people and given the opportunity.

• 31:20Wes Larson?

  They do. I think me, like knowing polar bears and, and this guy, I, he's got indigenous blood. I don't know if he's full indigenous or not. But he's from Churchill. I think he probably knows these animals fairly well.

• 31:35Jeff Larson?

  Probably goes way.

• 31:36Wes Larson?

  And I think he probably knows that this isn't enough. Like a snow shovel is not going to stop a polar bear. It's probably going to piss it off. And you probably, if you know that, like, I would know that too. I would know that I'm about to get mauled. If I run up and hit a polar bear with the snow shovel, but it might stop this other person from being mauled.

• 31:55Jeff Larson?

  Was a heavy duty snow shovel.

• 31:57Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but it's not enough for a polar bear. And sure enough, he runs up and he just pulls this heavy duty snow shovel behind him as hard as he can. And just brings it down and slams it down on the face of the bear. And this does get the bear's attention. It drops Aaron immediately and turns toward William. Aaron doesn't waste a second. She gets up, she's focused on Williams, or sorry, Bill. I've been calling him Bill, but Bill's open door. Runs, his full name's William, but we're going to call him Bill. She runs into his open door, runs inside of his house. She's leaving a trail of blood the whole way. And when she gets in the house, she pulls out her phone and calls emergency services. There is a recording of her 911 call that we might put in here.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  There's a bear. Oh, there's a bear? I just got bitten by a bear. I just got bitten by a bear. Okay, do you need an ambulance? I just got bitten by a bear. I need help.

• 32:55Wes Larson?

  And then she looks up to see Bill's wife coming down the stairs in a towel and seeing just like this strange white woman covered in blood in her entryway. Like she doesn't know what's going on. She just knows there's a woman covered in blood.

• 33:09Jeff Larson?

  She's like, where's my shovel at?

• 33:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Wes Larson?

  I was about to go shovel the driveway.

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• 34:18Speaker 04

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• 34:47Mike Smith?

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• 35:31Mike Smith?

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• 36:16Mike Smith?

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• 36:22Wes Larson?

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• 37:05Wes Larson?

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• 37:43Wes Larson?

  Erin pleads for help. She says she's been attacked by a bear and Bill's wife, who was a nurse, takes her up to the bathroom. And this whole time Erin is holding her hand on the back of her head because she, that's where all the blood is coming from and she's trying to hold the blood in. The bear has mostly scalped her and what she didn't know is that several of her arteries on the back of her head had been severed, but she did know she needed to just be kind of holding everything together back there. She said she felt like if she took her hand off, her brains were gonna fall out.

• 38:13Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Wes Larson?

  So William's wife, or Bill's wife tells her that she wants to see the damage and that she needs to take her hand off. And Erin's like, I don't want to. And she's like, listen, I'm a nurse. I just want to see how bad it is. So Erin takes her hand off and blood literally sprays all over the back wall of the bathroom. And Bill's wife says, holy shit, and tells her to put her hand back on her head.

• 38:37Wes Larson?

  Meanwhile, out in the street, the bear had quickly turned its attention to Bill, and now the shovel is no longer any help. Bill turned to follow Erin back into the house, but the bear shot its paws out, grabbed him by the leg, trips him and knocks him to the ground, and then it climbs on top of him and starts biting and clawing at his torso and face. This is another kind of gnarly detail, but at one point, the bear bites Bill's ear and starts to tear at it. And he could actually hear the tongue of the bear as it was moving around in his ear. And then he could hear the ripping tissue of his ear as if it was torn off his head.

• 39:12Jeff Larson?

  Oh, man.

• 39:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but he wasn't really even worried about it. He was just worried about where the bear was gonna bite next. He knew that his ear is, is, you know, dispense, or what's the word? Why can't I think of it? When something is like dispensable, right? Yeah, dispensable. But like if it's biting his throat or somewhere else, he might die.

• 39:33Jeff Larson?

  To non-vital.

• 39:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah, non-vital. Um, by now, the commotion had woken up some of the neighbors and some of them are armed, but they're a little too nervous to fire directly at the bear while it's mauling Bill. So they fire into the air, they yell, they throw things at the bear, but nothing's really deterring it. And finally, one of the neighbors drives his truck straight at the bear and at Bill with the headlights flashing and the horn blaring. And Bill actually, like, in one of the interviews I read, he said that he thought he was about to get ran over. But luckily, the truck stops just in time and the bear does back off and the neighbors rush in to help him.

• 40:10Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Wes Larson?

  And the crazy thing for me is as soon as they pull him up, his first thoughts go to Erin and he's hoping that she got away safely and that she's okay. And then he thought, well, if this bear's gonna come back and finish me off, I at least want to be on my feet and die like a man. So he stands up, he tells his friends to help him up and they're like, no, we're getting you out of here. They throw him in the back of the truck and whisk him away to the local hospital.

• 40:35Jeff Larson?

  It's almost like that Monty Python, the knight that's like, it's just a scratch.

• 40:41Wes Larson?

  Come at me.

• 40:43Wes Larson?

  Yeah, this dude's cool. He's really good. Both of them are really cool. Actually, we'll talk about it a little bit more, but um, then he goes to this local hospital, the doctors stabilize him and they put him under. And then the next thing he knows, he wakes up, he's a thousand miles south in Winnipeg in a much bigger hospital. And the first thing he asks the doctors is whether or not Erin was okay. And they say, she's in the next room and she's fine. Bill ends up spending a week in the Winnipeg hospital where doctors worked on the lacerations to his eyelid, his face and his scalp, which included a laceration that was seven inches long. He had bite marks to his right shoulder and chest. And he had lesser abrasions and lacerations to his torso and his thigh.

• 41:27Wes Larson?

  He also underwent a four-hour surgery with a plastic surgeon to have his ear reattached. Kind of like me and my gums, you know, I'd have gums reattached.

• 41:36Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, yours is worse.

• 41:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's definitely making this hard. Uh, sorry if I sound extra spitty this episode, but it's not easy.

• 41:45Jeff Larson?

  Nah, I'd rather have what he had than what you had.

• 41:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah, I had it pretty hard. I'm also kind of a hero.

• 41:55Wes Larson?

  Erin was diagnosed with a concussion. She was treated for puncture wounds to her shoulder, a torn scalp, and her ear was also torn. She had claw tears on her knees and her abdomen. At the time of these interviews that I watched and read, she had mostly recovered, but she was still suffering from a compressed spine and pain in her knees, her knees and her shoulders from the bear shaking her and whipping her through the air. But she was, she fully recovered as well. Yeah, it hit her pretty hard on the ground.

• 42:25Jeff Larson?

  Hmm.

• 42:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Jeff Larson?

  That'll do it.

• 42:27Wes Larson?

  The bear was killed that night. It was found to be a 250-pound subadult male, which do tend to be the polar bears that cause these kinds of problems. The subadults, and especially subadult males, are the ones that kind of haven't really figured out yet that any of the food they get outside of seals or marine mammals isn't really going to be enough to sustain them. So they're the ones that do tend to go into town and kind of look for other food opportunities. They, they do cause a little bit more problems than the adult polar bears that have kind of learned how to be a polar bear.

• 43:02Jeff Larson?

  Well, it's an important stage for them to get a lot of food too, right? Like, you need to get a lot of food to like have good mating opportunities and to be able to-

• 43:12Wes Larson?

  You want to be as big as possible.

• 43:13Jeff Larson?

  Get into like a big ol' bear.

• 43:16Wes Larson?

  Yep, yep. If you're a bear, you want to be big, big as possible. Big ol' bears.

• 43:21Jeff Larson?

  Big ol' bear.

• 43:23Wes Larson?

  And 250 pounds isn't very big for a polar bear. That's, it's really small for a polar bear.

• 43:28Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 43:28Wes Larson?

  I mean, we caught black bears.

• 43:29Jeff Larson?

  Tank was twice that size.

• 43:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 43:32Jeff Larson?

  It was a black bear, yeah.

• 43:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and Homer, our bear Homer, and Grandpa Glenn were both that bigger, bigger. So.

• 43:40Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So Erin really grew a lot from this experience. She's one of those people that I find really inspirational because rather than like never wanting to be in Churchill around polar bears ever again, her feeling of community in Churchill deepened really greatly. She knows fully that Bill saved her life and the two of them are friends now. And at least at the time of the interviews I watched and read. She was living full time in Churchill and she said that she wanted to live the kind of life that Bill would be proud of because he had kind of given her, you know, her life back. So she wanted to make sure that that wasn't in vain. Kind of like Matt Damon crying, like a little baby at the end of Saving Private Ryan, you know?

• 44:25Wes Larson?

  You know what I'm talking about?

• 44:27Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. He had to live for all of that.

• 44:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Jeff Larson?

  He had to live for all of those guys that died. That is crazy. It's like, I'd just kill me if that's what I gotta live for, you know?

• 44:40Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Do you think he has to do everything like 30 times?

• 44:43Jeff Larson?

  I think if he messes up, he's gotta feel bad for each one of those people that died. That's like, they should have lived. I should have, I should have died because they wouldn't have stolen that apple.

• 44:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's even harder than like thinking of Jesus seeing everything you're doing.

• 45:00Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah, dude.

• 45:02Wes Larson?

  I'd rather be him than like 30 Marines.

• 45:05Jeff Larson?

  Jesus had it easy compared to that. I shouldn't say that. Jesus had it hard.

• 45:10Wes Larson?

  Anyway, she, she does still live in Churchill. I looked it up on Instagram. She owns and runs a stand-up paddle boarding company in Churchill that takes visitors to see beluga whales, which is really cool.

• 45:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 45:22Wes Larson?

  So she's part of this community now. She's there full time and it seems like she's making the most of her life in the wake of a really traumatic event, which I just think is amazing. And then Bill was recognized for his bravery with the Carnegie Medal in September of 2015, along with receiving the Canadian Star of Courage from then, the then Governor General David Johnston. And he was inducted into the Order of the Buffalo Hunt in 2014, which I think is kind of a prestigious group for Indigenous heroes. He echoed the response.

• 45:53Jeff Larson?

  That's why he did it. The, he wanted those awards.

• 45:56Wes Larson?

  It's no, I was about to say, he echoed the response of many of these different heroes by saying, I never saw myself as a hero and I still don't. Your delta situation, you either respond or you don't do anything. The only thing I could think was if I don't do anything, she's not going to make it. And I think that's pretty impressive. He's.

• 46:15Jeff Larson?

  Like the Dwight Schrute quote where he's like, I don't see myself as a hero. To me, heroes are the everyday, ordinary people who behind the scenes put on a cape and can fly and save people's lives.

• 46:33Wes Larson?

  That's great. Yeah. You know, we've done a lot of these stories and I'm not going to say like this is the most heroic thing from any of our stories. Cause I honestly can't remember all of them. Uh, like Cindy Perilens, one that I think of with the woman who fought off the mountain lion for an hour to save her kids. We've had some really amazing heroes, but this guy's up there for me, like running out.

• 46:57Jeff Larson?

  I mean, if this isn't heroic, what is, you know?

• 47:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Hitting a polar bear with a shovel, knowing full well, that's probably going to make it target you instead of someone else that you don't know is, is like pretty fucking heroic. That's, that's hard to beat. So I really, I really respect this guy a lot.

• 47:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah. Good for him. Good job.

• 47:18Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Good for both of them.

• 47:19Jeff Larson?

  Good job, Bill.

• 47:20Wes Larson?

  You know, and I do think we'll go to Churchill at some point, whether it's with the toothy group or just us. So Aaron, if, if you hear this, we'd love to, to meet you and go out on your paddle boards.

• 47:31Jeff Larson?

  We should like give him a medal from Tooth and Claw too.

• 47:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we should make toothy medals. It's a good idea.

• 47:37Jeff Larson?

  Like, hey, Bill.

• 47:38Wes Larson?

  Toothy heroes.

• 47:39Jeff Larson?

  We saw your story and, uh, we just want to give you this Tooth and Claw Medal for bravery.

• 47:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Let's call it the old, old Matt Damon medal.

• 47:49Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Wes Larson?

  Do you have any questions about the story before we go to categories?

• 47:54Jeff Larson?

  Uh, I just thought maybe, I don't know if it's even so much a question, but it was interesting, like thinking about the black bears we worked with. It were the same size or even a little bit bigger and how they really weren't very threatening. And just like how this polar bear is like the same size and still a bear, but just like has that confidence in it or something. It does. I think it gives a little more validity to the argument that they hunt people and that it was not at all afraid of these people it saw, you know?

• 48:29Wes Larson?

  I think, I think like this is a situation where if you bump into a polar bear at night on the streets of Churchill where one shouldn't be, you know, you know, that bear's looking for food and that's a scary situation. That's when this is an animal that's hunting, you know, and it would probably decide to hunt a person. And so this is a really scary scenario. I agree, like, I was thinking about this and I was thinking about what my reaction would be for a black bear, a grizzly bear and a polar bear in the exact same scenario. A black bear, I'd sit there and watch it. A grizzly bear, I'd probably slowly back away to a safe distance and watch it. And a polar bear, I'd get to shelter as quickly as possible.

• 49:09Jeff Larson?

  And I guess part of what I'm saying too, is it just felt like it knew how to kill a person way better than a black bear that size would. Like a black bear, I feel like a lot of times they'll tackle the person and just start biting wherever. And this polar bear, it's like, I'm gonna bite their freaking heads. And like, they just seem like good predators, as I'm saying.

• 49:31Wes Larson?

  They are. I mean, this is our only bear that is purely carnivorous. Like, all they do for food is hunt. And our other bears hunt opportunistically. And depending on where they live, they may almost never hunt in their lives.

• 49:45Jeff Larson?

  They would get the candy instead of the people. The polar is still gonna get the people.

• 49:51Wes Larson?

  And that doesn't mean they don't have that built into their biology. They know how to hunt. Black bears know how to bring down prey. They know how to kill prey. So do grizzly bears. But for polar bears, they have to do it all of the time. And so, yeah, you're right. They are really good at catching and killing prey. And if it's a person, you don't have long. Um, once a, once a polar bear gets a hold of you, you're probably not going to survive very long if you don't have a way to intervene. So bear spray does work on polar bears. There aren't a ton of data points out there, but all the ones that, that has been used, it's shown to be very effective. So do carry bear spray in polar bear country. But I also, like I always say, if you're camping or

• 50:33Wes Larson?

  recreating in polar bear country where you don't have immediate access to shelter, you also want to have people with you that know what they're doing and are armed and have ways to deter polar bears. Because if they do, even though it's incredibly rare, incredibly rare, if they do decide to come at you, you have to stop them. And bear spray can do that. So, yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 02

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• 52:24Wes Larson?

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• 53:08Wes Larson?

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• 53:50Wes Larson?

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• 55:41Wes Larson?

  All right, uh, should we move on to our categories?

• 55:44Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 55:45Wes Larson?

  Cool. So the first one, uh, your favorite unassuming pop culture hero. Because I don't think you would look at Bill and just say, oh, this guy looks like what we see as a hero. But he's very heroic. So your favorite unassuming pop culture hero.

• 56:00Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I went with Straw Hat Luffy on this one. I feel like he fits it pretty well and.

• 56:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good pick because he's just like a kid, like a gangly kid that you wouldn't think is a hero.

• 56:13Jeff Larson?

  And he just kind of like falls into spots where he like has to save the day, but he's not actively trying to.

• 56:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I had a lot. I kind of bounced around a lot with this one. I thought of Mad Mad Mad Madigan. Is that his name from Willow, like Val Kilmer's character? How he doesn't really want to be a hero, but he becomes a hero. But the one that I really just kept coming back to is Han Solo. Or Cass or Cassian and or either of those two from Star Wars. Where they're kind of, they have no business really with the rebellion. They don't really care. They're just kind of doing their own thing, but they get pulled in. And then once they're in, they become, they can't walk away from injustice and a fight. And they're, they're kind of like the biggest, you know, badasses in those, in those universes. So I really like those two for unassuming heroes.

• 57:05Wes Larson?

  If you haven't watched Andor, go watch Andor. It's so good. Just love it. If you haven't watched Star Wars, you should watch it as well.

• 57:13Jeff Larson?

  All of them.

• 57:14Wes Larson?

  All right, uh, maybe not all of them, but that's something we can say when Mike's not here. Go watch the prequels. All right, Jeff, what's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you on Halloween night?

• 57:25Jeff Larson?

  I didn't have a great one for this. I want to hear your answer more. But my freshman year of college, I did have on my floor, there's a Chinese student. And they didn't really like have Halloween over there. So like, he really wanted to go trick or treating. And like, he told us that. And my instinct was just to be like, oh, that's for kids. But then I was just like, yeah, man, we can go trick or treating. And a bunch of us just went trick or treating and every house was like, I think you guys are a little old for this. And we're like, just give us the treat, lady.

• 58:05Jeff Larson?

  You want a trick? I don't think so.

• 58:10Wes Larson?

  So I have two answers. One is definitely the weirdest thing. And then second's like just kind of a cool weird thing, but when I was probably like nine or 10, we, I went to our direct neighbor in the house that me and Jeff grew up in. It was the first house we stopped at because we'd left our house to go trick or treating. We went to his house. And his costume was just like, he showed up, I may have told this on the podcast before. He came to the door in just a trench coat. And then after he gave us the candy, he opened his trench coat. And he was dressed, but there was this fake dong that like popped out of his trench coat. That like came out and he thought it was really funny. And this was like in the nineties. And that was his costume was like a molester.

• 58:53Wes Larson?

  And he was doing it to like 10 year old kids. And I was just like, even at the time, I was like, whoa. It like scarred me, you know?

• 59:01Jeff Larson?

  That's a crazy first house.

• 59:03Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and.

• 59:06Wes Larson?

  Like luckily I had trick or treated a lot in the past and kind of knew.

• 59:09Jeff Larson?

  Did you tell mom and dad about that?

• 59:12Wes Larson?

  I don't think so.

• 59:13Jeff Larson?

  Because I would go swim at their house and they'd just hang out at the pool.

• 59:17Wes Larson?

  But it wasn't like he was just doing that for, that was for like every kid that, yeah. Which doesn't make it any better, but yeah, I know. I think it was either him or it was him or the next house. But I'm pretty sure it was him. Anyway. And then the other one was I was trick or treating one year and I was all the way up on the hill up behind us. There was this huge meteor that came all the way down through the clouds. And exploded like above the city that night and it was the first time I'd ever seen that. And it was really shocking and it was while we were trick or treating and that was really cool. So that's my other answer, my backup answer if we have to delete the dong story. All right. What's your favorite Halloween memory from when we were kids?

• 1:00:00Jeff Larson?

  This is just the candy for me. I thought it's, yeah, I feel like we were a little sugar deprived or something. We were all three addicted to sugar. And just having a day where like you could spill a whole pillowcase of candy on the floor was just the best.

• 1:00:18Wes Larson?

  Yeah, our parents were really careful about sugar because they both had sweet tooth. And I think they wanted to make sure we weren't just like overloading on it. So we were a little candy deprived especially. And I remember that too, just like the joy of having a pillowcase full of candy bars. And no limits on like they were really good about.

• 1:00:39Jeff Larson?

  Honestly, not a candy I didn't eat because it's just like so valuable to have candy.

• 1:00:45Wes Larson?

  There's definitely an order, like by the end I was down to like tootsie rolls and those like orange and black candies.

• 1:00:51Jeff Larson?

  Like those weird ones that only exist for Halloween.

• 1:00:55Wes Larson?

  Uh huh. Yeah, that, that was a, a good memory for me. It was just seeing how creative mom would get to like make costumes for us. That didn't cost any money whatsoever.

• 1:01:08Jeff Larson?

  That's so funny.

• 1:01:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we had some pretty, I was just a vampire for like four years in a row, but I loved vampires. But she would just like draw little things under my teeth and put a little bit of blood makeup in that. And then like, that was pretty much it.

• 1:01:22Jeff Larson?

  One of my favorite Halloween memories from not being kids was just us, me, you, Mike, and whoever else, just like sitting at the wall at BYU campus and just watching the students dressed up because like, you know, BYU has a high percentage of dorks and they really go for it for Halloween. But like, I'm saying that to their credit because it was really fun and like, they liked the attention we gave them is a common like, you're entertaining us, we're entertaining you type of thing.

• 1:01:56Wes Larson?

  My favorite would be if someone had just like the most obvious costume in the world and we'd always be like, hey, what are you? What are you? And they have to like stop and explain it to us. Yeah, that was really fun. It's a good memory.

• 1:02:09Jeff Larson?

  My favorite was just the girl who like, didn't really dress up, but then put like a paper bird beak on her face. And it's like, it's like, so silly.

• 1:02:21Wes Larson?

  The whole day you're just explaining that to people. All right. We kind of already did this. What costume do you want to be if you're attacked by a polar bear on Halloween night? What would you actually want to be? We said the seal thing, you didn't want that, but what would you actually want to have on as a costume if you're being attacked by a polar bear?

• 1:02:39Jeff Larson?

  I'd put seal as my answer. So I was mad when you said seal. Cause I want to see a bear, you know?

• 1:02:45Wes Larson?

  You want to go quick. Then they're gonna eat you quick. Yeah. I was thinking like a juggernaut from X-Men. You remember him? He's the one with like the big metal helmet that can just run through walls. That's what I want to have. Just want to have my full juggernaut costume.

• 1:03:03Jeff Larson?

  Like a knight just in chainmail?

• 1:03:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Or you're just like a concrete block or something. Yeah. Okay. All right. Next category is something you recommend this week, Jeff?

• 1:03:18Jeff Larson?

  Um, you know, I'm gonna go with the UFC fighter Alex Pereira.

• 1:03:24Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:03:24Jeff Larson?

  I just really like watching his fights and- He had one pretty recently. He's the most like electric person for not doing anything electric. Kind of like how Kawhi Leonard used to be, where he's just like, the lack of stuff he does is almost like adds to it, you know?

• 1:03:43Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Jeff Larson?

  But his only thing he ever says is Chama. And then his Chama. He's Brazilian. He doesn't speak much English, but all he says is Chama. I think it's his nickname. It is his nickname. So he just says Chama. And then he'll dress up as like a Brazilian warrior and do like a bow and arrow like right at someone's face. And be like, Chama. And this opponent he fought had beat him in March and this was the rematch. And the opponent in their press conference was like, no more Chama. And it made him so mad. So like, when he just won, he was like mocking the guy.

• 1:04:26Jeff Larson?

  And then when they eventually shook hands after he beat him, he is like, Chama, Chama. Like, he's like, the most offensive thing in the world to him was the guy saying, no Chama. So it's just very silly and like, his fights are fun though. He's like, his whole story total like, had nothing in Brazil, very poor upbringing. And then like he beat one of the best UFC fighters ever, Adesanya, in a kickboxing fight. And then Adesanya made it as a UFC fighter and everyone's like, actually, this guy has lost once, Adesanya, and it's to this random Brazilian guy. So then they brought him into the UFC and he's just been dominating. Yeah.

• 1:05:11Wes Larson?

  That is a cool story. I like that. Cool. Uh, mine, I'm gonna pick a sports one as well, actually, sports related.

• 1:05:19Jeff Larson?

  Oh, wow. Sports corner.

• 1:05:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah, sports corner. Uh, I really, I've been to a few Montana Grizzly football games this year already.

• 1:05:29Wes Larson?

  And I think there's something really special about hometown sporting events. Like if you are living in a place that you have connection to, if you go to one of those hometown sporting events, there's a sense of community there and there's just like a sense of everyone kind of being excited for the same thing. Especially this time of year when it's not too cold yet at most of the places in the US at least. I recommend if you have like a local university team or high school team that you go for, that you that you support, go to a football game or go to a local game and just kind of like dip into that community feeling because it does make you realize that a lot of the crazy stuff that's happening in the world is still happening and we don't want to ignore that.

• 1:06:13Wes Larson?

  But sometimes it's just nice to remember that you also just have your local community that you can, you know, rely on and depend on. And I really like.

• 1:06:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, with the refs with everyone.

• 1:06:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah, you get to get some of that aggression out.

• 1:06:25Jeff Larson?

  Shout out refs for just taking it, you know?

• 1:06:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah. Shout out refs.

• 1:06:30Jeff Larson?

  The the Grizz went viral this week because their uniforms they're wearing this weekend are so cool.

• 1:06:38Wes Larson?

  Their throwbacks are so cool.

• 1:06:40Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, their old colors are way better. The Montana Grizzlies, it used to be copper, silver and gold were the team colors. And it's just like, ah, I miss it.

• 1:06:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they honestly, that their color switch, I think was one of the worst ones ever for like branding. And I get it, like maroon and silver is so much easier to sell, but copper, silver and gold is so cool looking. So yeah, look up Grizz throwback uniforms if you're interested and they are, they are sick. They're so cool.

• 1:07:09Jeff Larson?

  The bear logo on the helmets, awesome.

• 1:07:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right. Uh, some listener questions. I'll grab a couple here from Patreon. This one here is from Iceman TD7. Question for all three of you, but Wes, the candy lover in particular, I'm I'm be honest with you, Iceman. All three of us are huge candy lovers, not just me. This question is, have you ever tried Albany's gummy bears? I recall you three deliberating between Black Forest and Haribo, but no mention of Albany's. They're my favorite by far. Jeff, what do you think of Albany's gummy bears?

• 1:07:44Jeff Larson?

  I think that the bear cubs are delicious. That's like one of my, it's probably my favorite gummy bear is the tiny ones. But for like normal sized ones, I don't think they hold up.

• 1:07:57Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I I like the interesting flavors. I really like some of the weird flavors that Albanese has come up with. But for me, they're like a special treat every once in a while, but my stalwarts are still Haribo. I like Haribo the most, I think. So I usually go with them, but I do. I do think they're good. So Jeff, have you started Great British Baking Show yet?

• 1:08:20Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I'm like two episodes in.

• 1:08:23Wes Larson?

  I haven't, but so this question will be directly for you then.

• 1:08:26Jeff Larson?

  Mike's been talking about it, too.

• 1:08:28Wes Larson?

  What do we think of this season's lineup? What do you think?

• 1:08:31Jeff Larson?

  Mike, Mike was just complaining that his favorite person got out right away.

• 1:08:36Wes Larson?

  Yeah, spoilers. I haven't seen it yet. Don't spoil anything.

• 1:08:39Jeff Larson?

  I don't know if that spoils it too much, but yeah, it may be a little bit.

• 1:08:44Wes Larson?

  But the cast in general, you're enjoying them?

• 1:08:47Jeff Larson?

  I'm still like, I'm still trying to figure out a favorite for this season. There's no one like really stuck out to me as like a this is the person I vibe with the most.

• 1:08:59Wes Larson?

  I actually.

• 1:09:00Jeff Larson?

  And I haven't seen a bake that's really like knocked me off my feet yet either.

• 1:09:04Wes Larson?

  Okay, I save this show for early December when all the episodes are out. It puts me in the Christmas spirit, kind of. So I really it's because it's just so nice and like comfortable and warm. So I actually always save it for like the first couple of weeks of December. So that's what I'm doing, but I'm excited to watch. I love that show. I think it's like one of the purest shows on TV. One more from Holly. Holly says, will we ever get a hyena episode? So just a little bit behind our kind of workflow and how we do things here, we definitely will do hyenas at some point, especially spotted hyenas. We want to do this for a long time and part of that is like saving animals for for down the line because

• 1:09:47Wes Larson?

  we if we like get through every single animal immediately, then we're just going to be doing repeats for the rest of the show. And so it's kind of hard to like continue to save some of these animals that we haven't done yet. Like we have yet to do a full main feed episode on elephants on either species. We haven't really done Bengal tigers yet, which are a huge one. We haven't done hyenas. There's a number of animals we haven't done yet because we want to still have them to do in the future. So yes, we will get to them, but it will be somewhere down the line. I can't say if that'll be this year or five years from now, or who knows, but we will get to them. Jeff, you asked for some spooky questions on Instagram. You got any for us?

• 1:10:29Jeff Larson?

  I sure did. Uh, let's see. Uh, un Natalie asked favorite bat species.

• 1:10:36Wes Larson?

  It's vampire bats for me.

• 1:10:38Jeff Larson?

  Really?

• 1:10:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Jeff Larson?

  They're not cute enough for me. I don't know what, which ones are really cute.

• 1:10:44Wes Larson?

  The flying foxes, like fruit bats are the cutest.

• 1:10:47Jeff Larson?

  Nah, like a little one.

• 1:10:48Wes Larson?

  You remember that little flying fox we saw in Borneo though? That really cute one that like?

• 1:10:54Jeff Larson?

  That, yeah, that's a fruit bat, right?

• 1:10:56Wes Larson?

  That Kurt had never seen before. Yeah.

• 1:10:58Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Wes Larson?

  Fruit bats are usually the cutest. Yeah.

• 1:11:02Jeff Larson?

  I remember you're gonna, you're gonna get defensive here, but I remember telling you like, oh, there's the bat right here. Come look. And you came to look. And then you wanted to get a picture really close of it. I was like, don't get too close. It'll fly away. And you're like, it's not gonna fly away. And then it flew away.

• 1:11:25Wes Larson?

  I don't remember it that well, so I'm not gonna be defensive, but I can definitely see myself doing that.

• 1:11:33Jeff Larson?

  All right. Conservati- or wait, conservation Casey, favorite haunted house or hayride you've ever been to?

• 1:11:42Wes Larson?

  It's a really good question.

• 1:11:43Jeff Larson?

  Montana, we used to drive like 40 minutes to a haunted corn maze that was like,

• 1:11:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:50Jeff Larson?

  It's kind of scary to have just people with axe or with chainsaws hiding in the corn maze.

• 1:11:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah, there, there was for a little while, that one in Missoula too, the one where you got hurt.

• 1:12:01Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that one was a haunted though. The one in Victor, they had like people with-

• 1:12:06Wes Larson?

  They still do it, I think. But Utah, so when we all lived in Utah, Jeff and Mike still do. Utah's famous for haunted houses. They do haunted houses really good. And there used to be this one- One called Rocky Point that was just amazing to me. It felt like all of the rooms were like Hollywood grade. Kind of haunted house stuff. So that was probably my best one that I'd ever been to Nightmare on 13th is really good too.

• 1:12:31Jeff Larson?

  Which one did you say was your best?

• 1:12:33Wes Larson?

  It was called Rocky Point. It doesn't exist anymore. But I really liked Nightmare on 13th too. I think they do a really good job. I think it's way too expensive, but I think they do a great job.

• 1:12:43Jeff Larson?

  Um, here's a good one. Fleabitten Bren, are you guys scared for when Mike quits the pod?

• 1:12:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we are.

• 1:12:51Jeff Larson?

  I mean, he's, he loves traveling to like Asian. Well, I guess he's not really in an Asian country. But I'm just worried he won't come back from his trip right now that he's on. He'll find some way to just stay out there.

• 1:13:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Jeff Larson?

  I think though, we might have too good of a gig for him to ever really leave.

• 1:13:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Jeff Larson?

  You know?

• 1:13:15Wes Larson?

  I think, I, I do think if any of the three of us quit, it would really hurt our momentum and hurt our show. Um, but yeah, Mike's the one that threatens it the most, but he usually is just joking. I don't think he actually ever really wants to quit. Aside from maybe when we're doing normal episodes and the chimp crazy episodes. I think he did want to quit during those few. Yeah.

• 1:13:41Jeff Larson?

  Uh, CJ Turner 13 says, do you believe in animal ghosts?

• 1:13:46Wes Larson?

  Hmm. I guess I kind of have to because I believe in people ghosts. So I would have to believe in animal ghosts. So yeah, I think I do.

• 1:13:54Jeff Larson?

  I don't believe in ghosts. Ghosts can, I mean, ghosts if they're here. Get out of here. Like quit. I already got freaking Palantir spying on me and now I have ghosts spying on me. It's just like, leave me alone. Let me just be by myself. I don't want you guys watching me all the time if you are, you know? So I hope they don't. I hope they're gone. I hope they're gone.

• 1:14:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I hope so too.

• 1:14:22Jeff Larson?

  And then animal ghosts? Like all animals, they'd be so bored as a ghost, you know?

• 1:14:30Wes Larson?

  My allergies would be twice as bad. Yeah, I hope there's animal ghosts, though, because I I think like of everything or like every person or animal that I've lost Bryce would be the one I want to see the most again. So I would love to see.

• 1:14:44Jeff Larson?

  But don't you think like Bryce as a ghost would just want like scratches and you can't scratch her? Like, what do you think of Bryce? What's Bryce gonna do as a ghost?

• 1:14:55Wes Larson?

  Maybe I'd kill myself then, so I could give her ghost scratches.

• 1:15:01Jeff Larson?

  Alright.

• 1:15:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah. You got any more?

• 1:15:07Jeff Larson?

  Let's say, what's the best scare you've ever given someone?

• 1:15:12Wes Larson?

  Best scare I've ever given someone? I don't know. That's like a hard one for me to think of. I my mind goes to like scaring you as a kid. Because that was pretty easy and I definitely got you pretty bad a couple of times. But just because I was five years older than you, it was like a very like easy big brother thing to do. But that doesn't really, I don't have anything specific.

• 1:15:37Jeff Larson?

  I can't think of one. That wasn't a scare as much as just like surprise. But our cousin Brent to me, I was driving and he was in the backseat of a car that I was driving. And I hadn't looked in my mirrors for like forty minutes. And I just glanced in the rearview mirror and he's just like staring straight at me through the mirror. And he'd been waiting for so long just to like get me to look at him in the mirror. And it really surprised me that like he was just staring at me the one time I looked. Like, it's like, how long have you been waiting to do that?

• 1:16:21Jeff Larson?

  That's the ones that get you are the ones where they like really wait for a long time.

• 1:16:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah, some of my favorite ones online are the ones where people are driving behind a truck that's like dragging another car and that car's facing forward and their person, their passengers fall asleep and they like scream to wake them up because it looks like they're about to get hit by something. Those are really funny.

• 1:16:46Jeff Larson?

  Those are really funny.

• 1:16:47Wes Larson?

  I can't think of a better one, a better answer though. I don't know.

• 1:16:51Jeff Larson?

  All right, well, uh, should we just call it?

• 1:16:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah, sure. Uh, we're gonna do conservation really quick. This is, uh, so Hudson Bay, Western Hudson Bay is a subpopulation of polar bears. That's where you find these Churchill bears is in that subpopulation. And this is one of the subpopulations that seems to be getting hit the hardest by climate change because it is really southern as far as polar bears are considered. And the sea ice dynamics in Hudson Bay are very, they're kind of very variable. So just for like some quick numbers, in 1987, they thought there's probably about 1,200 polar bears in this subpopulation. By 2004, that had fallen to about 935. And then the most recent survey was in 2022, it was published.

• 1:17:39Wes Larson?

  And they guessed it was about 618. So in roughly 50 years, we've gone or less than that, about 40 years, less than 40 years, we've gone from 1,200 bears to around 618 bears. So a 50% loss within my lifetime, which is pretty crazy for a subpopulation of polar bears. And the main thing that's happening there is just as the sea ice becomes less and less dependable, they have to fast longer and longer. And we're not necessarily seeing big die offs in adult polar bears, but what we are seeing is much poorer recruitment. And what that means is that they're not really having as many cubs and their cubs aren't surviving to adulthood. So there's less and less bears

• 1:18:24Wes Larson?

  every year. And we will get to a point where we'll start to see die offs in adults as well as we push that fast, longer and Longer every year. So it is, it's kind of death by a thousand cuts and you will see that there are years. Like, I'm pretty sure twenty twenty two was a really good year. For for polar bears where the ice kind of changes and there's weird polar vortexes and stuff. That suddenly they have a really good year. But the general trend is that every year they have less and less ice and that trend continues because of climate change. So this is one of the subpopulations that is at most risk.

• 1:18:59Jeff Larson?

  Are they getting like dumber too? Like only the dumb bears will have kids. The smart ones know that the sea ice is melting.

• 1:19:07Wes Larson?

  It's not like an idiocracy kind of situation. No, no. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

• 1:19:15Jeff Larson?

  What would you say to someone that says like climate or? Yeah, climate change is just a big government conspiracy.

• 1:19:23Wes Larson?

  To be honest, I don't even engage with those people anymore. I think at this point. If you still got your head in the sand with climate change, like something that's just been proven. To be happening now for decades, like there's been consistent good science.

• 1:19:37Jeff Larson?

  But like what source would you send them to?

• 1:19:39Wes Larson?

  I wouldn't. I would just say like, I would, they've seen it already. Like these people that are still denying climate change have seen. Plenty of articles and data and everything to prove that it's happening and they choose to ignore it. And so at this point, I don't engage with climate deniers. That's just where I'm at. I don't have the energy for it. I think for me, and this is getting more into my personal views now. I think that as long as we let unfettered rampant capitalism run the way that it's running. We're never going to be able to tackle climate change. I think we need to get at the source of the problem. And that's these huge corporations and billionaires that are kind of destroying our planet. So that's, that's how I see it.

• 1:20:22Jeff Larson?

  Well, I mean, did you know billionaires have donated more money to climate change than any other group of people?

• 1:20:29Wes Larson?

  I'm sure they have. Yeah, but it's not. Yeah. It's not enough. They're not doing enough. So.

• 1:20:36Jeff Larson?

  It's like shooting someone three times and then paying for their medical bill.

• 1:20:42Wes Larson?

  Right, right, exactly.

• 1:20:43Jeff Larson?

  It's like, yeah, you did pay for my medical bill after you shot me three times.

• 1:20:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think the overall like people know that it's happening. And if they choose to ignore it at this point, I don't think you're going to convince them otherwise. I really don't. That's just.

• 1:20:59Jeff Larson?

  Too bad polar bears can't talk, you know, we gotta talk for them.

• 1:21:03Wes Larson?

  Yeah, there are one thing that I if if people bring up polar bears specifically, they almost always reference like one or two. Biologists that are like on the oil industry's payroll. That are purposely kind of saying that polar bears are doing fine and I'm quick to defend, you know, that science. Not their science, like the science that proves those guys are wrong.

• 1:21:26Jeff Larson?

  Dude, how much would it take for you to get on there?

• 1:21:30Wes Larson?

  I I don't have a price for that. I wouldn't do it.

• 1:21:33Jeff Larson?

  You don't have a price, a billion dollars, you wouldn't say, yeah, polar bears are doing fine.

• 1:21:38Wes Larson?

  I don't want to be a billionaire. No, I wouldn't do it.

• 1:21:41Jeff Larson?

  If you could use that billion dollars to save polar bears.

• 1:21:44Wes Larson?

  Jeff, I could do that. Like, I could reach out to the, I couldn't use it to save them. But what I'm saying is I could reach out to oil industry right now and probably be a millionaire. By by doing that and I won't do it. Like, I'm not going to. That's not worth it to me. So.

• 1:21:59Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, but if you ever are a billionaire, we can be like, wait a second.

• 1:22:03Wes Larson?

  Probably know how.

• 1:22:05Jeff Larson?

  Let's connect some dots here.

• 1:22:07Wes Larson?

  Here's, yeah, my opinion is that if anyone's a billionaire, they've done something. To exploit someone else or something else to get there.

• 1:22:15Jeff Larson?

  Besides Taylor Swift.

• 1:22:17Wes Larson?

  I think Taylor Swift also has, but that is also my opinion. Um, all right. Anyway, we're getting in the weeds here.

• 1:22:26Jeff Larson?

  They you. Travis Kelsey's penis is as big as she said.

• 1:22:31Wes Larson?

  I'm not talking about that. I'm just not getting into it at all.

• 1:22:36Wes Larson?

  Jeff can do his own little side podcasts to talk about it, but.

• 1:22:42Wes Larson?

  Thank you everyone for listening. If you have been kind of debating whether or not to sign up for our subscription episodes, and if you're a fan of all things spooky, this is a good time to do it. Me and Mike have been running back some horror movie stuff. We've had some really good recent subscriber episodes. Mike just did one on Amelia Earhart. Jeff, what was your last one again? It was really good.

• 1:23:04Jeff Larson?

  Um, I did, I did, uh, what's it called? The Kenya capital.

• 1:23:10Wes Larson?

  Oh yeah, we talked about Nairobi and kind of some of the attacks. Yeah, for our listener that asked about hyenas, listen to that subscription episode. So yeah, there's some really fun content coming out. It's 10 bucks a month. You get access to our whole library of, of extra episodes, subscriber episodes. So it's really a great deal. And, uh, yeah, you can either do it on Patreon or on our Apple Griz Club, whichever you prefer. All right?

• 1:23:38Jeff Larson?

  All right. Love ya.

• 1:23:39Wes Larson?

  We love you. We'll be back with Mike next time. We miss you, buddy. We'll see ya.