Bentho the Heroic Dog - News Stories Including Injecting Butterflies, a Fish vs. a Mermaid, a Whale Swallowing a Man Whole, and More

It's been a wild and unusual month for animal news stories, so the guys did their best to talk their way through a few and explain what we can learn from them. They then end things on a quick recap of their trip to India. ~~ 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.

• 0:13Jeff Larson?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw Podcast.

• 0:16Wes Larson?

  Hey Jeff.

• 0:17Jeff Larson?

  Hey Mike. Hey Wes. We have our news episode, this episode, and we have our bear biologist, who is once named top 10 hottest bear biologists in the United States, Wes Larson.

• 0:30Wes Larson?

  I don't remember that. I didn't give you my vote, but I am happy about it.

• 0:35Jeff Larson?

  And we have Mike Smith, who eats ass.

• 0:38Wes Larson?

  Hey. Alright.

• 0:41Jeff Larson?

  Finally, you got it. And I'm Jeff Larson.

• 0:43Wes Larson?

  You described me accurately.

• 0:44Jeff Larson?

  I finally got one right.

• 0:46Wes Larson?

  Top 10 ass eaters in the United States.

• 0:49Jeff Larson?

  He was voted top 10.

• 0:52Wes Larson?

  Hey guys, you guys feeling okay?

• 0:54Jeff Larson?

  You know what? I'm feeling a little bit sick, but I'm feeling better than I did yesterday.

• 0:59Wes Larson?

  That's shocking because you look great, actually. You would never be able to guess. We just got back from two weeks in India, and Mike and Jeff were feeling pretty sick on the way home, doing a lot of coughing.

• 1:10Jeff Larson?

  Well, you guys.

• 1:11Wes Larson?

  Like that Pokemon.

• 1:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. For people who aren't geologists, no geology, no, what, the maps?

• 1:17Wes Larson?

  Geographers.

• 1:18Jeff Larson?

  People who don't know the maps.

• 1:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah, cartographers. Cartographer.

• 1:23Jeff Larson?

  India has the Himalayas in it, and we were in the Himalayas, and that was pretty high up. My lungs are kind of like, dude, you just found out you have asthma and now you're coming to the Himalayas?

• 1:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we got up to 15,000 feet on this trip, which is pretty high, and we are camping at 13,000 feet, which is also pretty high to camp at, so. And a bad idea, in my opinion. Yeah, we're gonna get to that. We definitely, our categories are almost all about India, and kind of our experiences there, all of the trip, so we're gonna get to a lot of those details, but it was an amazing trip, in my opinion. Probably, I mean, wildlife-wise, I think it's the coolest trip we've done so far.

• 2:05Jeff Larson?

  You're spoiling.

• 2:06Wes Larson?

  I'm just gonna say it. I'm just gonna say it.

• 2:08Jeff Larson?

  You're spoiling.

• 2:09Wes Larson?

  I'm spoiling. We'll wait.

• 2:11Jeff Larson?

  We'll kind of bleep that part.

• 2:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah, bleep it. Anyway, we're all back at home now, and we're excited to talk about the news, right Jeff?

• 2:19Jeff Larson?

  Oh yeah, we've been building it up.

• 2:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I can hardly hold it anymore.

• 2:24Jeff Larson?

  I personally have a story that I thought was really a good story.

• 2:27Wes Larson?

  Okay, I'm excited for it. Great. Mike, do you personally have a story?

• 2:32Jeff Larson?

  I normally have bad ones.

• 2:34Mike Smith?

  We've been waiting four years for that.

• 2:36Wes Larson?

  We're not just hearing headlines.

• 2:38Jeff Larson?

  Well, you get some headlines, but.

• 2:40Wes Larson?

  All right, well, should we start it out?

• 2:42Mike Smith?

  Hopefully it takes place in the past couple of weeks.

• 2:45Wes Larson?

  Yes.

• 2:46Jeff Larson?

  I can't laugh.

• 2:47Wes Larson?

  Not a year ago.

• 2:47Mike Smith?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:48Wes Larson?

  Okay, then don't laugh.

• 2:49Mike Smith?

  No more jokes. This is gonna be a serious episode.

• 2:51Jeff Larson?

  If you shot me in the chest and you made me laugh, that's what you're doing right now.

• 2:56Mike Smith?

  It's tough because animal attacks are usually really funny.

• 2:59Wes Larson?

  Super funny. No, but we should start it out on a serious note. Well, if we don't want to laugh, we might as well start with something that's not very funny.

• 3:08Jeff Larson?

  Yes.

• 3:09Wes Larson?

  So.

• 3:10Jeff Larson?

  Demented.

• 3:12Wes Larson?

  Pretty much right around when we left for India, I think like a lot of people in our country right now, we are being bombarded by news. And a lot of that news was stuff that seemed pretty concerning to us. And one of the things that happened was we were reading the Trump administration was cutting a lot of funding from a lot of the agencies that that protect our wild spaces, our public lands. A lot of my friends personally lost their jobs, like bear management specialists, forest service workers, people that deal with like grant writing for for different wild initiatives. And it made us pretty upset, all three of us, I think. It's hard to be on a podcast where you talk about conservation and appreciating wild spaces and all these things.

• 3:55Wes Larson?

  And then in just a matter of weeks, seeing a lot of that rug kind of being pulled out from under your feet. And for me, like personally, the hardest part of it is seeing it being done by a billionaire who, you know, billionaires famously don't care much about other people. They mostly care about their bottom line and it's hard to see a thing that's bipartisan in our country, wild spaces, public lands, being treated as if it's like a profit-loss kind of scenario. Yeah. And so we just kind of want to say that sucks.

• 4:27Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, sucks. I, I was gonna actually do like a listener advice at the end.

• 4:32Wes Larson?

  Oh, oh.

• 4:33Jeff Larson?

  But I feel like it'd be repetitive now.

• 4:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Jeff Larson?

  But I want to shout the person out. Well, yeah, I think we had our wires crossed a bit.

• 4:41Wes Larson?

  It's alright.

• 4:41Jeff Larson?

  Cause that's what I was trying to tell you.

• 4:43Wes Larson?

  We'll combine them. Yeah.

• 4:44Jeff Larson?

  So yeah, shout out Daphne, just saying, she's like trying to get in the field of science, but is pretty discouraged by the Trump administration and wants to ask Wes how to remain hopeful as someone who's trying to get into a science and conservation-related field, which I feel like a lot of listeners probably have that same question.

• 5:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And like, we definitely got a lot of questions about it and how it was affecting me. And I'm lucky that I'm pretty insulated from it right now. I'm not currently working at Yellowstone. Uh, the podcast is really.

• 5:16Jeff Larson?

  What are you doing?

• 5:17Wes Larson?

  The podcast is pretty much a full-time gig for all three of us at this point.

• 5:22Jeff Larson?

  Oh, man. We get that question a lot. Is this what you guys do full-time?

• 5:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I guide and stuff too.

• 5:28Jeff Larson?

  I'm always like, I do, but Wes, no, he's like a.

• 5:30Wes Larson?

  Dior model.

• 5:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Wes Larson?

  I'm not a Dior model.

• 5:34Jeff Larson?

  I mean, technically you are.

• 5:36Wes Larson?

  I was. And now I, um, I also do a bit of biology. I'm still working with some nonprofits on some papers. But yeah, I, you know, our hearts go out to people that are feeling that kind of uncertainty. It's not fair, especially like the national.

• 5:50Jeff Larson?

  People that lost their jobs.

• 5:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah. The national parks, for every dollar that goes into the national parks, they produce $15. Like this is a profitable part of our country and it seems a, a strange place to, to do a lot of these cuts. For me, it's like we have.

• 6:06Jeff Larson?

  Is that from like all their oil reserves and they?

• 6:08Wes Larson?

  It's not from their oil reserves. It's from tourism and, and conservation. Tourism can lead to conservation. So it seems weird that we have, for me, the military industrial complex that sucks up billions and trillions. Dollars and they're targeting these kind of things that both people on both sides of the aisle love these places. That's not, it's not just left leaning people. It's not just right leaning people. Like, we all love our national parks. So this seems silly to me. It seems, it seems counterproductive. It seems like billionaire logic.

• 6:38Mike Smith?

  Yeah, for me, I know I try to stay maybe a little more agnostic than you two as far as political stuff is concerned. I just try and, and it's to my discredit, I think. I just think it's a shame because there's so much historical precedent that these kinds of people are actually really important, that we need to have people that are considering the environment and nature and animals like that be at the forefront of their minds. And we have people that are, that know what kind of disaster can ensue if we let those things fall by the wayside. I know I've brought it up a few times. It's getting a little weird how often it's coming up these days, but China's great leap forward. It was kind of in large part caused by an ignorant decision regarding nature. And I know we have experience to learn from,

• 7:22Mike Smith?

  but I don't know. It's just something that I, I think is more important than a lot of people might give it credit for. So that's, that's my two cents.

• 7:29Jeff Larson?

  Everything's connected.

• 7:30Mike Smith?

  Yeah, it's a huge conspiracy.

• 7:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And for me, like, the thing that feels kind of gross to me and a little crass is how much we talk about this from like an economic standpoint. And some of these things have value that goes far. Like it transcends money. You know, when you, when you're in the desert southwest alone, you know, in Red Rock Canyons, or you're like high in the Northern Rockies at an Alpine Lake, that's stuff that is invaluable. It's stuff that, that shouldn't be treated as, as a profit and loss. It's stuff that makes America like what it is, in my opinion. So it feels, it feels very tragic to me. And I, I think there's going to be a lot, a lot of things that we're going to have to deal with for a while. And hopefully people rally and, and do what they can. And I think it's easy to feel helpless,

• 8:17Wes Larson?

  but we do care about those things. We, and we wanted to make that known.

• 8:20Mike Smith?

  Well said, Wes. Clap.

• 8:22Wes Larson?

  All right. Well, and Jeff. Jeff, you know, me and Jeff talked about this a little bit and he really, I think feels very passionately about it as well. All right. Never mind. Credit goes to Jeff, like always.

• 8:35Jeff Larson?

  No, I don't know. I, I think it's good to question everything. I think it's good to question like all your political leaders and anyone who has control over your decisions. But I think I've talked to a lot of friends and people who like question climate change too. And it's just like, listen, if you think the world is more polluted and like less forested than it was 200 years ago, you believe in climate change. You just don't like the narrative around it because that's all it is. We're polluting the earth, you know? But anyways, enough of that. Hopefully we changed everyone's mind.

• 9:13Wes Larson?

  Elon's out there listening to this and he's like, you know what? I am an asshole.

• 9:18Jeff Larson?

  I mean, they listen to a lot of content, so they might be.

• 9:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah, who knows?

• 9:22Jeff Larson?

  But anyways, we got some stories for you to bum you out even more. So, yeah.

• 9:30Wes Larson?

  I got one that's, that's tragic, but also pretty funny. So, should we start with that?

• 9:36Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Wes Larson?

  All right. I call this one teen TikTok tragedy. And this is about Davi Nunes Moreira, a Brazilian, he's 14 years old, who recently died in a hospital in Planalto, Brazil, which is in the state-

• 9:50Jeff Larson?

  That is funny.

• 9:51Wes Larson?

  The state of Bahia. That's not funny. That's the tragic part.

• 9:54Jeff Larson?

  That's a really irreverent joke. I won't make that one again.

• 9:57Wes Larson?

  There's a lot of animals in, in Brazil that could potentially kill you. You know, you got lots of venomous snakes. You got some spiders that can even kill you. You've got jaguars. You've got a lot of things. There are sharks.

• 10:09Jeff Larson?

  Gorillas.

• 10:10Wes Larson?

  No gorillas. But there are, there are, there are some dangerous things in Brazil. And this teen was killed by a butterfly, which seems a little crazy. So what happened-

• 10:23Jeff Larson?

  How big was it?

• 10:24Wes Larson?

  Mothra? When, when it killed him, it was very, very, very small.

• 10:30Wes Larson?

  So in mid February, this kid went to his dad and said that, you know, he was vomiting. He was struggling to walk. He was getting really sick and his dad took him to the hospital. And on the way, he told his dad that what had happened is that he had injected a solution made of crushed butterfly into his leg. And obviously the dad was like, oh, why did you do that? And he said it was part of an online challenge and that's why he did it.

• 10:59Jeff Larson?

  Oh, no.

• 11:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So unfortunately, he spent a week in the hospital. He was in intense pain the entire time he was there. And then he did end up passing after a week of receiving really, you know, critical care.

• 11:13Jeff Larson?

  Like he got butterfly in his bloodstream or something?

• 11:16Wes Larson?

  So there's a few things that could have happened. It could have been an embolism, which is when you have some sort of foreign object in your bloodstream, like that can be a blood clot. It can be air. It can be anything, really. It can be a crushed up butterfly. It's not the vaccine.

• 11:33Wes Larson?

  It could be an infection that killed him. Like he could have had like a septic reaction to the, this butterfly bits or, or like even a toxic reaction to them.

• 11:42Jeff Larson?

  Bad needle.

• 11:43Wes Larson?

  Yeah, an allergic reaction. Yeah, maybe the needle was bad. Who knows? But something killed him. They're not really sure like how crushed up this butterfly was, but he died from it.

• 11:53Jeff Larson?

  So wait, people on Tik Tok are doing that?

• 11:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So that's the part I was like, okay, I gotta find out what this trend is. And every single article that reported on this said it was because of this viral online trend. I kind of think that's just what he told his dad to like, not seem so stupid. Because there's no trend.

• 12:14Jeff Larson?

  Being a dumb kid.

• 12:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah, there's no trend of like injecting butterflies into yourself. The thing I could find that was the closest was people painting butterflies on themselves or something. But

• 12:25Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Wes Larson?

  I think the trend is just like doing stupid shit on Tik Tok to try and get a bunch of views. Like that's the trend.

• 12:32Jeff Larson?

  It's just crazy too, that I'm more surprised that there wasn't a trend of that.

• 12:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Jeff Larson?

  You know, like I thought like, oh yeah, there's probably a trend. That's if he said that, there's probably a trend, you know?

• 12:43Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And I think pretty much Jeff, all the news outlets believed it too. And they're just like, yeah, this is a trend. Cause I think that's, that's kind of like the shark attacks in the summer and stuff. That's something they love to report on is saying like, oh, all the kids are doing this. It's like satanic panic in the eighties.

• 13:00Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, well, the kids nowadays are good at trolling too. I feel like the Tide Pod trend like.

• 13:06Wes Larson?

  Right, right.

• 13:06Jeff Larson?

  Most kids knew like not to do that, but they're acting like they're doing it. But then a few kids did it and got really sick.

• 13:13Wes Larson?

  And you know, those kids.

• 13:15Jeff Larson?

  Funny too.

• 13:15Wes Larson?

  Those kids are probably going either way, you know?

• 13:18Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Wes Larson?

  They're not, they're not long for this world.

• 13:20Jeff Larson?

  I think Gronk might have done it.

• 13:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, maybe baby Gronk, who knows? There are certain butterflies like monarchs, for example, that do feed on toxic plants. Monarchs will feed on milkweed and that can make them slightly toxic. But I would have to assume that you'd have to consume a really large amount of monarch butterflies to actually get sick from them. And then to die, I, it has to be like the embolism or an allergic reaction or something.

• 13:48Jeff Larson?

  Well, I mean, consuming is different than injection.

• 13:51Wes Larson?

  Than injection, yeah, true. That is true. This is a very different means of, of transport, but I, I still don't think it would be enough.

• 13:59Jeff Larson?

  We're definitely still gathering data on the injection, injecting butterfly.

• 14:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Jeff Larson?

  Science.

• 14:07Wes Larson?

  The nice thing is this kid did answer that question for us, you know? Like now we know.

• 14:13Jeff Larson?

  One result, I don't know. I think.

• 14:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's not a big data pool.

• 14:16Jeff Larson?

  Kids to test it.

• 14:17Wes Larson?

  No, I don't think you need to test this one anymore. I think enough data has been gathered.

• 14:21Jeff Larson?

  I think I could survive it.

• 14:23Wes Larson?

  All right, I don't want you to try, but I'm also, you know? One thing we've proved, Jeff, is I'm not good at stopping you from doing things, so. So I'm in a five star hotel right now in Thailand. I'm sitting on the bed. It's a great bed. It's amazing. I'm still dreaming of my bed back home and that's because it's a Brooklyn Bedding bed. I have the Sedona Elite from Brooklyn Bedding. I absolutely love it. Every night I look forward to just climbing into bed and going to sleep because it's such a good mattress. And that's because Brooklyn Bedding has been assembling top tier mattresses for over thirty years in their Arizona factory. There's no middlemen, there's no gimmicks, just top tier quality, honest pricing and real American craftsmanship for a better night's sleep.

• 15:06Wes Larson?

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• 15:10Mike Smith?

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• 15:54Mike Smith?

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• 17:23Mike Smith?

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• 17:28Wes Larson?

  Alright, that's my first story. What do you guys got?

• 17:30Jeff Larson?

  Mike, you go.

• 17:31Mike Smith?

  I wanna go, Jeff. Thanks for passing it to me. So, this is, uh, we got a little fish-on-fish crime, uh, in this one. Kind of. I have a little bit of a, I have a Russian theme going on both of my stories today. But yes, this first one does involve a mermaid, Jeff, you're right. So...

• 17:48Jeff Larson?

  I knew it.

• 17:49Mike Smith?

  For the 10 months leading up to when the story took place, 22-year-old Maria Zelenina, she's the main character of this story. She went by a stage name Masha. And she was having a great time just working as a mermaid. Uh, well, she's not a real mermaid, just to clear that up. She was in an aquatic show that was put on in the Primitive Forest Park in Shishuangbana, China. Well, her workplace morale was about to take a little bit of a hit. On Tuesday, January 28th of this year, when, um, during a solo performance, she was gracefully doing a little solo dance under the water. She was in the tank with a bunch of these aquatic animals at this aquatic park. Which is great. I just love this image. And there's videos, but...

• 18:34Jeff Larson?

  I'm already cracking up that you'd name this fish-on-fish crime.

• 18:39Mike Smith?

  What, you don't think mermaids are fish?

• 18:43Mike Smith?

  Anyway, so yeah, she was doing a solo performance under the water and she was, in my opinion, she was very gracefully moving through the water. And as mammals are wont to do, she was heading up to the surface to catch a bit of a breath before going back under.

• 18:57Wes Larson?

  We do, we do love breathing, don't we?

• 18:59Jeff Larson?

  Mermaids, not so much.

• 19:01Mike Smith?

  Yeah, but like I said, she's not a real mermaid. I think.

• 19:05Jeff Larson?

  She's a fish.

• 19:07Mike Smith?

  Right. Um, so she, when she was just inches away from the surface of the water, uh, there was a huge Chinese sturgeon just swimming gently, slowly overhead. When all of a sudden, it took issue with her being down in the tank with it. Uh, and I actually have a couple of pictures I wanna share real quick.

• 19:25Wes Larson?

  I saw the video. It's, it's crazy.

• 19:27Mike Smith?

  It's great. So, um, I'll share this one first.

• 19:31Jeff Larson?

  How big is this sturgeon? Holy, that looks like a shark.

• 19:35Mike Smith?

  Yeah, it's massive.

• 19:36Jeff Larson?

  They're like shark sized, yeah.

• 19:37Mike Smith?

  So, just a little bit about Chinese sturgeon for people who are uninformed. They're critically endangered, which is sad. It doesn't excuse this one's behavior, I'll just say that.

• 19:47Jeff Larson?

  I think it does.

• 19:47Mike Smith?

  They can grow to be up to 16 feet long.

• 19:50Jeff Larson?

  Wow.

• 19:51Mike Smith?

  And thankfully, in this case, they actually don't have teeth, but they're so big that their jaws, they're strong enough to exert a huge amount of pressure. So, it actually chomped down on her head. And this is the second picture. It's pretty amazing. It's like the whole head is in this fish's mouth.

• 20:09Jeff Larson?

  That's like Kirby.

• 20:11Mike Smith?

  Right. Yeah. It's gonna be, it's gonna have mermaid powers after this and be able to blow bubble rings or something.

• 20:20Mike Smith?

  So, in this, like, keep in mind, this is before she actually reached the surface to take a breath. So, she's like struggling to get it free and get some air. And as you can imagine, with a fish mouth over your entire head, its mouth actually ripped the goggles off of her face. And it left a pretty good scuff mark under her left eye and bruises all over her face. And in the video, you can hear the crowd, they do almost like the most stereotypical gasp of like shock and horror that you can imagine. Just like imagine like the stock shocked, shocked crowd sound. That's what it sounds like. A lot of children in the crowd.

• 20:57Jeff Larson?

  It was in China, you said?

• 20:59Mike Smith?

  In China, yes.

• 21:00Jeff Larson?

  So, I'm imagining like a lot of photos taken, a lot of cameras there.

• 21:05Mike Smith?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, she was rushed to the hospital immediately. She said she doesn't hold it against her employers. I saw a lot of like weirdly conflicting reports about how she was told to like keep it hushed if she could and they tried to pay her off, but also reports and direct quotes from her refuting all of these claims. It's a kind of a weird fallout of this story. It seems like her employers treated her very well and she actually really enjoys working there. And she's gonna get back in the water as soon, as soon as she's able. And I liked her quote at the end of the story and all the articles I read. I guess I should have said this. I first found this in USA Today, but it's a million different. Different places, you can find kind of the same story. She's dealing with it with like a really good sense of humor.

• 21:51Mike Smith?

  She is saying you can't take these kinds of things too seriously. Maybe it's a little embarrassing, but it's kind of funny at the end of the day. So just, just be cool about it and I don't know, I can't, I ended up liking Masha a lot.

• 22:02Wes Larson?

  It's a good story to tell.

• 22:03Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Wes Larson?

  It's a great video. It's not, it's not like something you'd expect from a sturgeon too.

• 22:09Mike Smith?

  No.

• 22:09Wes Larson?

  Pretty slow moving fish, not that interested in anything. Man, I watched this, I'm trying to remember what it was called. I watched this documentary series on Netflix. I feel like it was just like three or four parts. And it was all about mermaids in mostly Florida and how like competitive it is and how it's like a whole subculture that's not sexual. It can be sexual, but it's like a, this is something that people devote their lives to. Being mermaids and mermating and like going, I don't know. It's crazy. It's a great, it was a great documentary. I really liked it.

• 22:45Mike Smith?

  What does it mean to mermaid?

• 22:47Wes Larson?

  Like you travel, you go to parties, you like work in aquariums or bars or whatever else.

• 22:53Mike Smith?

  If it's on dry land, do you just like flop around?

• 22:56Wes Larson?

  Kind of, yeah. There's jobs and gigs that are like the holy grail of mermating.

• 23:02Mike Smith?

  Hmm.

• 23:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it was, it was a good documentary. I'll, I'll try to remember what it was called.

• 23:06Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 23:07Jeff Larson?

  It would be cool if she could add this in her act, you know, just every time.

• 23:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Jeff Larson?

  I'm a business man, so that's where my head goes.

• 23:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah, you're just trying to monetize it for, she probably made some money from the video. I'm guessing.

• 23:22Mike Smith?

  I wonder.

• 23:23Jeff Larson?

  All right, Mike, shut up. It's my turn.

• 23:25Mike Smith?

  I'm done. I thought you'd never ask.

• 23:28Jeff Larson?

  Wes.

• 23:29Wes Larson?

  Mer people is what that documentary is called. Sorry.

• 23:32Jeff Larson?

  What's like your fallback, like go to thing for our news episodes when you just need a story? What do you type in if you're just like, you know what, I need a, what's your old reliable?

• 23:43Wes Larson?

  Tiger attack.

• 23:44Jeff Larson?

  What'd you type?

• 23:45Wes Larson?

  Tiger attack. Tiger attack.

• 23:46Jeff Larson?

  You just type in tiger attack?

• 23:48Wes Larson?

  Uh huh.

• 23:49Jeff Larson?

  Maybe India?

• 23:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah, tiger attack India, sure. It's almost always in India, the last part.

• 23:56Jeff Larson?

  We were just in India, so I was like, you know what? I'm going to type in tiger attack India. Sure enough, you get a lot of results.

• 24:04Wes Larson?

  You do. It's kind of sad how many results you get.

• 24:07Jeff Larson?

  So we just got back from India and that's why I had it on the brain. I was just kind of like, you know what? We saw a bunch of tigers. There's a bunch of people living right by him. Wonder, wonder what's been going on, you know? So have you heard of Bandhavgarh National Park, Wes?

• 24:25Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Jeff Larson?

  Bandhavgarh?

• 24:27Wes Larson?

  That's not how you say it, but I also don't remember exactly how to say it, so I'm not gonna correct you. But that's definitely not it.

• 24:35Jeff Larson?

  I mean, there's a lot going on in the name of it.

• 24:38Wes Larson?

  Band? They're hard names.

• 24:40Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:41Wes Larson?

  I think it's Bandhavgarh, I can't remember, yeah.

• 24:44Jeff Larson?

  Well, in two thousand twenty-two, there were a hundred thirty-five tigers in this park, right? It's about a hundred twenty-five square miles.

• 24:52Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 24:52Jeff Larson?

  And they have, they have all that we had in our tiger park that we went to, plus Indian wolves. So they got like leopards, soft bears. They got a bunch of cool stuff, some guars.

• 25:05Wes Larson?

  And to like, just to kind of paint the picture for people, these tiger parks are like national parks. They're not fenced. This isn't like a safari park where it's like.

• 25:15Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah, I'll paint that, don't worry.

• 25:17Wes Larson?

  Okay, you got it.

• 25:18Mike Smith?

  Jeff's the Picasso podcast.

• 25:19Wes Larson?

  Okay, I'm sorry.

• 25:20Jeff Larson?

  So.

• 25:21Wes Larson?

  I will hand him his brushes.

• 25:22Jeff Larson?

  Shivam, well, actually, I'll paint it using you.

• 25:27Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 25:27Jeff Larson?

  So you're, you're doing the right thing. Just let me get to you, okay?

• 25:31Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 25:32Mike Smith?

  Avant-garde technique.

• 25:37Jeff Larson?

  Shivam Bhargarya in Barhut Village, Barhut Village, okay? So I got something right there, for sure. We're gonna just call him Shivam.

• 25:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 25:50Mike Smith?

  Painting is taking shape.

• 25:52Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, so he's right out, pretty much it's this village of like two hundred fifty people, like right outside this tiger park. So at the, we were just in, oh, man, I keep forgetting the name.

• 26:05Wes Larson?

  Tadoba.

• 26:05Jeff Larson?

  Tadoba. And I think it's pretty similar to the park that I'm describing right now.

• 26:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Jeff Larson?

  So Wes.

• 26:12Wes Larson?

  Very similar.

• 26:13Jeff Larson?

  How protected from tigers did the farms we saw seem to you?

• 26:18Wes Larson?

  Not at all.

• 26:20Jeff Larson?

  Really? So like the scarecrows out in the farms, you don't think would scare a tiger?

• 26:25Wes Larson?

  I don't think they would, no. In fact, the hotel that we were staying at was what, probably like five or six miles from the park and they pretty routinely see tigers and leopards near that hotel.

• 26:37Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Wes Larson?

  There's a village that we passed in the buffer area that literally sits against the park. And the only fence I saw was about waist high, which is nothing to a tiger, like absolutely nothing.

• 26:50Jeff Larson?

  And we saw like farm crops in sections right where we were seeing tigers.

• 26:56Wes Larson?

  One of my guides said the night previous, there'd been a tiger in that village because he lived there. And everyone had to go inside. So not very sheltered.

• 27:04Jeff Larson?

  So that field, that one like big field in the tiger park we went to, how would you feel working in there in the morning?

• 27:13Wes Larson?

  I would, I would be a little like, I would always be on edge, you know?

• 27:17Jeff Larson?

  You'd be looking around? Mike, would you be looking around at all?

• 27:20Wes Larson?

  No, not at all. I'm not afraid.

• 27:22Jeff Larson?

  Sitting there.

• 27:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I would. I'd put on one of those masks on the back of my head. He wouldn't be on the field to begin with. That's true.

• 27:32Jeff Larson?

  Shavam knew to be looking for tigers because he grew up there. He knew how dangerous they were. They've learned to live alongside tigers, but it's in no means like a situation where they feel safe from tigers. It's just something they've adapted to, you know, this is our life. So he's being cautious all the time. He's got to do it. It's his job. So he's out on the farm. And on February 26th, his heart stops when in the morning he sees a huge Bengal tiger come out of the jungle into his crops that he's working on.

• 28:12Wes Larson?

  That's bad.

• 28:14Jeff Larson?

  Pretty scary stuff, huh?

• 28:15Wes Larson?

  You want your heart to still be going in that scenario?

• 28:19Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. And you want the tiger to kind of be like looking a little lost, maybe wandering around? Not the case. The tiger's in like full stalk mode, crouched to the ground, kind of just eyeing him down, headed straight at him.

• 28:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that doesn't sound good.

• 28:37Jeff Larson?

  Not, not where you want to be. So Shavam doesn't really have any options.

• 28:44Jeff Larson?

  And he is just completely frozen with fear paralyzed, he can't move. And his mind's just like, this is it, I don't know what to do, this tiger's gonna get me. But against all odds, he survived, but is at the expense of his best friend and most loyal companion.

• 29:04Mike Smith?

  Not a dog.

• 29:05Wes Larson?

  No, no.

• 29:07Mike Smith?

  Dude.

• 29:07Jeff Larson?

  So, dog warning for, you know, all you dog heads out there.

• 29:13Mike Smith?

  Okay, I'll be right back.

• 29:14Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, but it's a really, really inspiring story. I, well, I don't know if inspiring's the right word, but it's like, just such a brave, cool dog. Yeah, it's just like, what a cool dog. So anyways, a lot of our listeners can relate to, especially Mike and Wes, like, we've all lost a dog. Mine, though, I don't know, it's kind of a little bit different, but Mike and Wes were really connected to two dogs that they lost more recently than mine. Mine was like, I was still kind of a kid. But anyways, Mike, this is especially gonna relate to you because the dog that Shavam had been raising for ten years was a German Shepherd named Bento.

• 29:58Mike Smith?

  Please.

• 29:59Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 30:00Mike Smith?

  That wasn't my dog's name, believe it or not.

• 30:05Jeff Larson?

  Yours was named Brock, like, the rock Pokemon trainer.

• 30:09Mike Smith?

  Or the, yeah.

• 30:11Wes Larson?

  Brock Lesnar.

• 30:12Jeff Larson?

  So Bento sees this tiger coming straight at his owner, who he loves so much, you know?

• 30:18Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Jeff Larson?

  And he interferes. He does what any good, huge dog would do. And this German Shepherd, without fear, goes straight at the tiger and catches the tiger kind of off guard. I don't think tigers are very used to animals like, really coming at them and like, wanting to fight them, you know?

• 30:40Mike Smith?

  One Swiss Family Robinson.

• 30:41Jeff Larson?

  Whoa, what is this? And then the tiger ends up, you know, putting out its claws, slashing up Bento and biting him by the neck.

• 30:52Wes Larson?

  Hmm.

• 30:53Jeff Larson?

  And then the tiger's still trying to go after Shivam and Bento digs his legs in and like stops the tiger again with its neck in its mouth.

• 31:05Wes Larson?

  Geez.

• 31:06Jeff Larson?

  And is just being as aggressive as possible in that situation. So again, the tiger has to like stop and reassess its situation like what is this animal doing? It's kind of big and it's like really putting a bend in my plan here. It's really taking my focus off of my prey. So the tiger lets go of Bento and just goes back into the jungle. It's like, you know what? Another day, another dollar. I'm just out of here type of thing.

• 31:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Jeff Larson?

  Another day, another dollar situation.

• 31:37Wes Larson?

  I don't think so. I don't know if that's right, but I, yeah. We get what you're trying to say.

• 31:44Jeff Larson?

  And Bento, such a badass dog, stands up and watches this tiger until it leaves into the jungle, like on all fours.

• 31:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 31:55Jeff Larson?

  Just like in between it and its owner. And then once the tiger is out of sight, Bento collapses. So then Shivam picks Bento up, carries him in his arms for 25 kilometers running to the nearest vet. But they get to the vet, Bento is in bad shape. I mean, a tiger just bit his neck really hard and it's a deep gash. So the vet tries for a few hours and isn't able to save Bento's life and his owner's obviously devastated. Um, he gives Bento full credit for saving his life. He raised him for 10 years as a pup and

• 32:34Wes Larson?

  Geez.

• 32:34Jeff Larson?

  You know, it's very tragic, but like I do think that's kind of, I don't know, it's too bad that they don't have like try bear spray or something in that area. Sounds like they kind of have a German shepherd as protection in those fields a bit, you know, like you need a better protection for you and your dog.

• 32:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Jeff Larson?

  Like I love Ben though for sacrificing himself. That's like such a badass way to go out.

• 32:59Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Jeff Larson?

  And a dog facing off with a tiger and getting it to stop what intentions were. It's just so cool. And, you know, really sorry to Shavam, but your dog's a legend.

• 33:13Wes Larson?

  Totally. For sure. Yeah. If there's a heaven for dogs, that dog's up there, you know? Eating lots of treats, chasing squirrels and rabbits, just doing its thing. Great story, very sad. Yeah.

• 33:28Mike Smith?

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• 34:13Mike Smith?

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• 34:48Wes Larson?

  I think I can speak for all three of us when I say life's been a little crazy lately. We've been doing a lot of traveling, recording more episodes. And one thing that's really been helping me unwind are Cornbread Hemp CBD Gummies. I've always been a fan of CBD. I do think for all the different things. For helping with stress, for helping just to relax. It's the one that does the most for me and doesn't really have any crazy side effects. Cornbread hemp CBD gummies are made to help you feel better, whether it's stress, discomfort, or just needing a little relaxation. They only use the best part of the hemp plant, the flower, which is the purest and most potent CBD. And for me, it's just important that I'm getting something that's organic, that's third-party lab-tested, to ensure that I'm getting something that's not only safe, but also really pure and ethical.

• 35:33Wes Larson?

  You know, we're big fans of ethics when it comes to exploiting natural resources. So I love that Cornbread Hemp Gummies are USDA organic. So right now, Tooth and Claw listeners can save 30% on their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com/tooth and use code TOOTH at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com/tooth and use code TOOTH. All right, is it my turn again? I think it is. It's my turn. Okay, so I'm gonna talk about bear attack. It's one in the US. It's not necessarily something you'd expect.

• 36:08Jeff Larson?

  My source was the Economic Times.

• 36:11Wes Larson?

  Okay, yeah, honestly, for almost all my stories, I consult like a bunch of different articles. So just take what you will with for that. If I ever just use one article, I'll let you guys know, but it's generally just a bunch.

• 36:25Jeff Larson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 36:25Wes Larson?

  All right, so on January 19th, Andrew Nier was enjoying a little, or Nyer, Andrew Nyer was enjoying a little walk in the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, when something you don't expect to see in January emerged from the woods and started following him. And that was a 200-pound black bear. So this is kind of in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania. It's a place where it gets really cold. So you wouldn't expect to have bears out and about in mid-January. That just isn't typical bear behavior. So when Nyer tried to run from this bear, it followed him, and then it got close enough to actually mount an attack and bring him to the ground. There's actually like CCTV footage of this where he kind of avoids the bear, and it just continues following him, and he does a little half-circle,

• 37:10Wes Larson?

  and the bear just follows right in that half-circle. And then he kind of stops and confronts the bear, and it just jumps on him. And luckily for him, his neighbor saw and heard the commotion and arrived with a handgun. And this neighbor shot the bear, which did release its grip and ran away and died in some nearby brush. And that same bear had been seen earlier in the day near the local market. And both its general behavior and the fact that it was up looking for food seemed pretty strange. And I agree with that. And when I watched this video, I thought, man, that's, that's like a predatory bear, but it's kind of odd. How casual it's being about this predation. It wasn't like stalking or really, it just seems strange to me when I watched it.

• 37:52Wes Larson?

  And I fully think this guy's neighbor saved his life. I think had this guy not shown up, the bear probably would have killed him. Anyway, one thing that I just want to talk about really quickly is that even though bears are hibernators. And you'll hear, especially in the past, you'll hear discourse about whether or not they're actually hibernators. Some people say because it's more of a torper they enter, it's not necessarily hibernation. But I do want to just make clear that most bear biologists, myself included. Do consider what black bears and grizzly bears do in the, in North America and throughout the northern hemisphere. We do consider that hibernation. Their metabolism drops to a level where, you know, it's, it's hibernation. There's different physiological processes that happen.

• 38:36Wes Larson?

  That happen in a hibernation. It's just something that we really consider efficient hibernation. Which means rather than like these other animals that essentially go into a coma. When they enter hibernation, bears can come out of it quite quickly. So they're really good at just kind of going in and out of these different phases. And when a bear comes out of hibernation in the winter, if it's warm enough outside. And if the bear kind of gets these, these context clues from the weather outside. Sometimes they'll actually leave the den and even go looking for food during that hibernation period. That's not unheard of. Um, me and Jeff had one really warm winter where we were trying to get into bear dens and, and kind of check their collars and whatnot.

• 39:18Wes Larson?

  And because it was so warm, we really didn't find many bears that were fully asleep. Almost all of them were partly awake and they would run away as, when they heard us coming. So it really can affect the depth of their hibernation and whether or not they're going to wake up or not. Anyway, that's just a little aside. Any questions before I continue, Mike?

• 39:36Mike Smith?

  It makes me think of the movie. The passengers or whatever where Chris Pratt wakes up what's her name?

• 39:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I never saw that movie.

• 39:43Mike Smith?

  You think any bears ever like, what did you think bears ever wake each other up and be like, oh, I don't know what happened, but

• 39:49Wes Larson?

  I suppose it's because they were bored and lonely because they were supposed to be sleeping, but they're not. Wasn't that movie supposed to be like unfathomably bad?

• 39:58Mike Smith?

  I'm not sure.

• 39:59Wes Larson?

  No. I feel like it got like some of the worst reviews ever.

• 40:02Jeff Larson?

  I feel like it was just like a, it didn't live up to the hype.

• 40:06Wes Larson?

  It was just boring, just mid.

• 40:08Jeff Larson?

  And it's like in retrospect, it's like actually not very romantic. It's more psychotic.

• 40:13Mike Smith?

  It's pretty, it's wild because she ends up kind of just, she figures out that he woke her up. Well, we don't have to get into this, but she falls in love with him anyway. And it's like, ah, I don't know if that's a good message, but whatever.

• 40:26Wes Larson?

  Persistence, man, you know?

• 40:29Jeff Larson?

  It's not even that.

• 40:30Mike Smith?

  That's one word for it.

• 40:32Jeff Larson?

  Making yourself the only option available.

• 40:37Wes Larson?

  Anyway, this bear's behavior is far from typical, even for a bear that's coming out of its den midwinter. And sure enough, when they autopsied the carcass, they did find that this bear tested positive for rabies, which makes it one of a small handful of bears to have been tested positive for the virus. Since 1999, there have been like five or six bears total in the US that have tested positive for rabies. So it's really not common. It's much more common in the eastern US than it would be in the western US. But still, they're not typical vectors for the rabies virus. Bats, foxes, raccoons, skunks, dogs, those are the kind of, or dogs are not really anymore either. They've kind of eradicated in dogs.

• 41:22Wes Larson?

  Those are the animals that you generally see it in bears. It's not typical, but it is possible. And pretty interesting, actually, that this bear was rabid. It really doesn't happen.

• 41:31Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Wes Larson?

  Nair was fine, or Nair, sorry, Nair was fine. Didn't blame the bear. Good interview with him where he just said, you know, these animals have to eat and that's what it was trying to do. But that was before he knew it was rabid, I think, so.

• 41:44Jeff Larson?

  No, I'm actually really glad you said that because I responded to a listener who asked like, hey, is it common for bears to be rabid? I was like, no, it's really not. But I was kind of like, I probably shouldn't have said that.

• 42:00Mike Smith?

  You got it right. Good job, dude.

• 42:02Wes Larson?

  All right. Who's next? Mike?

• 42:05Mike Smith?

  Yeah, let me take over real quick. So this is from W L B T dot com, uh, reported recently. This one-

• 42:12Jeff Larson?

  Ooh, I got one like that, too.

• 42:14Mike Smith?

  Yeah, one that was reported recently?

• 42:16Jeff Larson?

  From W W something.

• 42:19Mike Smith?

  Okay. Yeah, that's the W W W dot.

• 42:23Wes Larson?

  That's, yeah, anywhere page, Jeff.

• 42:25Mike Smith?

  Great. Um, so I'm just realizing now that I don't, I didn't really bring to the table many like true violent animal attacks.

• 42:33Wes Larson?

  That's okay.

• 42:34Mike Smith?

  I'm going for it anyway. This is a good one. So this one isn't so much an animal attack. I, I guess unless you consider a crossbow an animal.

• 42:42Wes Larson?

  I don't.

• 42:42Mike Smith?

  Probably don't.

• 42:43Wes Larson?

  Not at all.

• 42:45Jeff Larson?

  Is, so- Is there any argument that it is?

• 42:49Mike Smith?

  I can't come up with that.

• 42:50Wes Larson?

  Anyone out there?

• 42:52Mike Smith?

  So this one takes place at a little shop you guys might be familiar with. Birds by Joe Two. You ever heard of Birds by Joe Two?

• 43:01Wes Larson?

  I don't, no.

• 43:02Jeff Larson?

  I didn't know there was a second one.

• 43:04Mike Smith?

  I know, it's like a sequel kind of thing. Um, so it's in New Jersey and it's owned by Katarina Ruka, Ruka Vishnikova. So again, another Russian-

• 43:14Jeff Larson?

  By Joe.

• 43:15Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 43:15Wes Larson?

  No. Interesting name for her.

• 43:17Mike Smith?

  Odd. But, um, so this actually, the story takes place or starts on January 23rd of 2025. And this is when Katarina's-

• 43:26Wes Larson?

  Birds by Joe does have a little bit better ring to it than Birds by Katarina Vishnikova.

• 43:32Mike Smith?

  Birds by, Birds by Cat, I don't know. She maybe could have done a better job, but-

• 43:36Jeff Larson?

  Or is two like T O O? Like she's saying like Joe owns them too?

• 43:42Mike Smith?

  Nope, it's just the number two. Uh-

• 43:44Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 43:45Mike Smith?

  She really should have consulted you guys, uh, on naming the store. She seems to be doing fine with it though, so-

• 43:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Mike Smith?

  She didn't need us. So this is January 23rd, 2025. Katarina's bad luck starts on this, on this date. It started when a hooded man walked into Birds by Joe Two, started asking after an African gray parrot that the store had up for sale. And what do we know? What do we, we know they're smart, right?

• 44:12Wes Larson?

  Birds, they just talk a lot, yeah.

• 44:13Mike Smith?

  And the thing that really kind of threw her for a loop at first was he knew all the right questions to ask. He was like, I don't know, does it want a cracker?

• 44:21Jeff Larson?

  Polly want a cracker?

• 44:22Mike Smith?

  Yeah, if this bird's name was Polly, would it want a cracker hypothetically? Kind of thing. But so that kind of that put Katerina at ease. She's like, usually people who are causing trouble don't really bother to do the kind of homework that this guy seemed to have done. But all of a sudden, he grabbed the the bird, cage and all, it was still in its cage, and he just booked it out of the store. And this is like a $7,000 parrot. And she was so stunned at first. She was kind of motionless and she freaked out and probably pursued.

• 44:54Jeff Larson?

  Like the tiger.

• 44:55Mike Smith?

  To no avail. Yeah, right.

• 44:56Jeff Larson?

  Like the guy at the tiger.

• 44:57Mike Smith?

  Right. The bird. Yeah, right. Very, a lot of similarities now that you mention that. So he's gone. He he took off. She couldn't catch him. None of the authorities caught up with them, at least for a while. Thankfully, the store's cameras did capture what happened. And they were later posted to the Instagram account, and it was returned to her eventually.

• 45:20Wes Larson?

  All those parrots could be witnesses, too, you know?

• 45:23Mike Smith?

  True, yeah.

• 45:24Wes Larson?

  Just ask him what happened, and he'll tell you.

• 45:27Mike Smith?

  Actually, that makes it made me want to ask the question. I know the ownership of exotic animals is kind of a no-go zone. What do you what are your opinions on exotic birds, Wes? Is that more of a gray area? Or is that like, okay, is it cool? I just, I don't know.

• 45:45Wes Larson?

  For me, if they're like born in captivity, and they're given a suitable enclosure and like enrichment and all the things you need to give a pet, I'm okay with it. But I'm not okay with like, people taking them out of the wild, or doing it irresponsibly. So, yeah, take that for what you will. There's probably people that don't agree with me. That's personally how I feel about it.

• 46:07Mike Smith?

  Sure, okay. Well, like I said, an anonymous tip got the police to pursue and apprehend, not apprehend, actually, sorry, I misspoke. The suspect was a 24-year-old man named Onyx Calderon.

• 46:21Wes Larson?

  That's a good name.

• 46:22Mike Smith?

  The coolest name I've heard in a long time. He actually remains on the loose. They never caught him, but they did find the bird and return it to Birds by Joe 2.

• 46:30Jeff Larson?

  They know who he is?

• 46:32Mike Smith?

  Uh, they know his name.

• 46:33Jeff Larson?

  Seems like that's the hard stat. Catching him's easy now.

• 46:38Mike Smith?

  Really? Just because you know his name doesn't mean you know where he is. Maybe he fled to...

• 46:43Wes Larson?

  There's probably not a wide-scale manhunt for this guy either.

• 46:47Jeff Larson?

  Stealing a parrot?

• 46:49Mike Smith?

  If that's what it takes, yeah, maybe he's gonna try.

• 46:53Wes Larson?

  I think they'll probably forget about this pretty quickly.

• 46:56Mike Smith?

  Yeah, well, here's a variable that was inserted into the equation that might help him get away a little bit easier, because something much crazier happened at this same shop a couple of weeks later. So this is February 18th, about a month later. Cops responded to a call from Birds by Joe 2, and what they found on the scene was something that I would personally call unexpected, if you will. So Katerina, through a bloody mouth, told them that she had just taken a crossbow bolt to the face from a store regular.

• 47:31Wes Larson?

  Interesting.

• 47:34Mike Smith?

  It started when she heard, again, this guy was a store regular. His name is Raymond Carey. He was mumbling something in the back of the store. And since she knew him, she kind of bustled down the aisle and asked him to repeat what he said. Uh, but when she got close, he pulled a crossbow out of a little bag, so I guess it's like a mini crossbow, and like almost from point-blank just blasted her in the face with it. And it went through her face.

• 47:58Wes Larson?

  Raising Mike.

• 47:59Mike Smith?

  And, yeah, sorry.

• 48:01Wes Larson?

  It's alright.

• 48:04Mike Smith?

  So the the arrow went through her face and ripped up her lip and her tongue. But before he could get a second shot off, she knocked the crossbow out of his hand and he took off. She ran out to a nearby bike shop and asked for help, told them to call the police. And when they responded to the scene, this is what they saw. They rushed her to the hospital and she had like a bunch of her teeth on her lower jaw had to be removed. They're thinking probably some more have to be removed in the coming weeks.

• 48:32Wes Larson?

  That would be so surprising.

• 48:35Mike Smith?

  I know, like a guy you've known.

• 48:37Wes Larson?

  What's he pulling out of his bag? Oh, a fucking crossbow?

• 48:40Mike Smith?

  Crossbow, yeah, so. This this case was closed quite a bit quicker than the last one, believe it or not. So 1pm the next day, police found and detained Raymond in a small Jersey Shore town. And he's now being charged with attempted first degree murder. But just as he was found one day later, so too was Katerina found one day later back in the store working. She's just like all bandaged up and that's pretty sweet. I don't know, like when I think about Russian women, I think about like very hardy, like I'll take a crossbow arrow to the face. And that's not gonna even faze me kind of thing.

• 49:16Wes Larson?

  A shot of vodka is all they need.

• 49:17Jeff Larson?

  I think of the lady in Goldeneye who like kills people with their thighs.

• 49:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah, on a top was her last name. That's all I remember.

• 49:26Jeff Larson?

  That's who I think of when I think of Russian women.

• 49:29Wes Larson?

  I remember watching that pretty young and kind of being like, what's going on here?

• 49:34Jeff Larson?

  Oh, I was like, that was like one of my first like, oh, yeah, I got some feeling here.

• 49:41Mike Smith?

  Yeah, it's definitely where I like first kind of figured out that maybe I wouldn't mind having a girlfriend who could kick my ass. You know, when they're fighting in that little bathhouse thing.

• 49:52Wes Larson?

  Pain's not always a bad thing.

• 49:54Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Jeff Larson?

  Maybe I'd be into getting like dominated.

• 50:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah, sure. Girls, there you go.

• 50:04Mike Smith?

  At least be willing to consider it, yeah.

• 50:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah, guys.

• 50:08Mike Smith?

  Fanny Johnson, I think that's.

• 50:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Fanny Johnson, yeah. Arena on a top, is that her name?

• 50:14Mike Smith?

  I'm looking it up right now.

• 50:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that was a big movie for me. That also was some of my first awakenings, Jeff.

• 50:20Mike Smith?

  Xenia.

• 50:21Wes Larson?

  Xenia on a top, okay.

• 50:22Jeff Larson?

  The end when they're doing like the heat camera and he's like on top of her. That part I was like, whoa.

• 50:30Mike Smith?

  That was, that wasn't, was that Golden Eye? I thought that was the one with Christmas Jones.

• 50:34Wes Larson?

  Oh, that is, that's the one with Denise Richards.

• 50:36Mike Smith?

  Yeah, Tomorrow Never Dies.

• 50:38Wes Larson?

  Christmas Comes Twice is the line that I remember. Oh geez.

• 50:43Mike Smith?

  What does that mean? I never understood that joke, Wes.

• 50:46Wes Larson?

  Kids, don't worry about it. It's just James Bond. If you've spent much time in the West, you know that every ski town has a brand that the locals are gonna 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. Fifteen years in, it's the real gear that locals live in. It's made for the whole mountain day, beyond the summit,

• 51:27Wes Larson?

  the first chair, the school run, dinner out, the dog walk when it's cold outside. It's just made for every moment of mountain life. And those are people that are living through Wyoming winters, so they really know warm. The Hometown Down Jacket is 800 fill down, but it feels more like your favorite hoodie than it does a puffy. And for me, I am really excited about the men's Furnos Max Insulated Jacket. I'm constantly looking for a jacket that just ticks all the boxes, and this one really does. It's stretchy, it's breathable, it looks great, it keeps me super warm. It's just amazing. I just absolutely love this jacket. So ski season's almost here. Gear up

• 52:05Wes Larson?

  now the way that the locals do. Go to stio.com/tooth for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O.com/tooth. Stio.com/tooth. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.

• 52:21Wes Larson?

  This episode of Tooth and Claw is brought to you by Graza, which is my new favorite olive oil. It's fresh, it's never blended, and it comes from a single type of olive, straight out of high-end Spain, where over half of the world's olive oil is produced. Only one type of olive from one region means you have no mysterious blends. You have a traceable, fresher product without mixing in any lower-grade or unknown oils. One thing I really love about Graza is their super fun squeeze and spray bottles, which means you don't have messy tins or drippy spouts. I hate grabbing olive oil things when they're really just oily all the time. You just aim, you squeeze, and you go. And there's three types of olive oil from Graza for any task. Frizzle is their newest, which has a really high 490-degree

• 53:05Wes Larson?

  smoke point, which is perfect for frying, crisping, or grilling. And for me, when I eat something, I really like it to be crisp. It's things that are supposed to be crisp, at least. And this is perfect for that. They also have Sizzle, which has a 410-degree smoke point. It's great for an everyday cooking oil, roasting, marinating, and sauteing. And then they have Drizzle, which is a bold, punchy finishing oil. You can sprinkle on your salads, you can dip bread in, you can even top your ice cream with it if you want. It's just a really tasty, kind of last-minute thing that you can put on a lot of different types of food. I really like Graza because I'm an occasional cook, and they make it super easy to know which type of oil to use. And I really like their squeeze bottles,

• 53:44Wes Larson?

  just to make it fast and simple. So head to graza.co and use TOOTH to get 10% off your trio, which includes a Sizzle, Frizzle, and Drizzle, to get cooking on your next chef-quality meal. That's graza.co and use code TOOTH for 10% off. Thank you, Graza, for sponsoring this episode. Man, maybe Kat should get out of the bird business, you know?

• 54:08Mike Smith?

  Yeah, it's a tough stretch for her. It's really been a hard couple of weeks.

• 54:12Wes Larson?

  Jeff, what do you got next?

• 54:13Jeff Larson?

  All right, let's take a trip down south.

• 54:17Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 54:18Jeff Larson?

  How south can we go?

• 54:19Wes Larson?

  Pretty south, Key West.

• 54:21Jeff Larson?

  Until there's people. No, like, south?

• 54:24Wes Larson?

  Oh, south-south.

• 54:26Jeff Larson?

  Americas, yeah.

• 54:28Mike Smith?

  Sure.

• 54:29Wes Larson?

  Tierra del fuego.

• 54:30Jeff Larson?

  The most south you can think of.

• 54:32Wes Larson?

  Ushuaia, Argentina.

• 54:34Jeff Larson?

  Countries. Oh.

• 54:35Wes Larson?

  Argentina, Chile.

• 54:37Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. We're going to Punta Erres, Chile.

• 54:41Wes Larson?

  Punta Arenas, yeah.

• 54:43Jeff Larson?

  Punta Arenas?

• 54:44Wes Larson?

  Probably.

• 54:45Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, Punta Arenas, Chile, and Adrian Semancas. I thought I nailed it the first time, but then you sounded like you were correcting me.

• 54:54Wes Larson?

  Been to Punta Arenas, but.

• 54:56Jeff Larson?

  No, that sounds right. Punta Arenas. Adrian Semancas was kayaking with his father Dell in Bahia El Aguña. Aguña, I speak Spanish.

• 55:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Jeff Larson?

  Bahia El Agüa, near San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan. So, everyone knows where that is, right?

• 55:21Wes Larson?

  Eagle Bay.

• 55:23Jeff Larson?

  I think Magellan found it first.

• 55:26Wes Larson?

  Ah, not first, but yeah.

• 55:29Jeff Larson?

  Well, in like recorded history, maybe.

• 55:33Wes Larson?

  Sure, western colonial history. Yep.

• 55:36Jeff Larson?

  No, recorded. Yeah, okay, sure, yeah.

• 55:39Wes Larson?

  Some of these other cultures recorded stuff.

• 55:40Mike Smith?

  I'm sure they were recording things.

• 55:42Jeff Larson?

  I don't think they recorded straits in the ocean.

• 55:45Wes Larson?

  I think that's maybe selling them a little bit short.

• 55:48Jeff Larson?

  All right.

• 55:49Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 55:50Jeff Larson?

  Anyways, you know, I'm gonna give a little bit of credit to Magellan for finding this place.

• 55:55Wes Larson?

  Magellan did a lot. Yes, very important to that region.

• 56:00Jeff Larson?

  But you know who found it before him?

• 56:02Wes Larson?

  Who?

• 56:03Jeff Larson?

  Before any of us, Wes?

• 56:04Wes Larson?

  Seals?

• 56:05Jeff Larson?

  Humpbacks.

• 56:06Wes Larson?

  Humpback whales, all right.

• 56:08Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Jeff Larson?

  Humpback whales have always known about Magellan Strait before they even changed the name from what humpbacks had named it.

• 56:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they just call them.

• 56:19Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Jeff Larson?

  They can't even say Magellan, I bet. So anyways, father and son, they're kayaking, they're having a great time. It's beautiful, you know, Chile, you get the huge mountains with the beaches, beautiful place to be, beautiful place to be out in the water. They're just having fun.

• 56:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Jeff Larson?

  You know, well, you know, it wasn't so fun, Wes?

• 56:45Wes Larson?

  What?

• 56:46Jeff Larson?

  When Adrian was swallowed whole with his kayak by a humpback whale.

• 56:52Wes Larson?

  Sounds fun to me. Good call.

• 56:54Jeff Larson?

  Now that's a big mouth.

• 56:56Wes Larson?

  That is a big mouth.

• 56:57Jeff Larson?

  Like, we, I told a news story once where a lobster diver got swallowed for like thirty seconds by a humpback and then it spat him out.

• 57:06Wes Larson?

  In Boston?

• 57:07Jeff Larson?

  In Boston. But like, he wasn't in a kayak.

• 57:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Jeff Larson?

  This whale came out and swallowed the entire kayak with the kid.

• 57:15Wes Larson?

  Which there is some other videos that we've seen of that happening, but this one's one of the more compelling ones.

• 57:21Mike Smith?

  What color was the kayak?

• 57:23Jeff Larson?

  Yellow.

• 57:23Wes Larson?

  Orange.

• 57:24Mike Smith?

  Banana, probably thought it was a banana.

• 57:25Wes Larson?

  Was it yellow?

• 57:27Mike Smith?

  Oh.

• 57:27Jeff Larson?

  I think it's yellow.

• 57:29Wes Larson?

  I thought it was orange, but we also never agree on colors.

• 57:32Jeff Larson?

  Hmm, that's true.

• 57:33Mike Smith?

  Cantaloupe. It's the least important aspect of the story.

• 57:37Jeff Larson?

  Well, you needed to know, Mike.

• 57:39Mike Smith?

  I regret. I'm gonna just stop. Never mind. Listeners, I want you to know.

• 57:48Jeff Larson?

  Yellow. Very yellow, banana yellow.

• 57:51Wes Larson?

  I forgot, I was wrong.

• 57:53Jeff Larson?

  Oh, man. So yeah, that still doesn't make what Mike said true, though. It doesn't think it's a giant banana, necessarily.

• 58:03Wes Larson?

  No.

• 58:04Jeff Larson?

  You know, sometimes whales just don't see where they're going because they go a lot of places, you know?

• 58:11Wes Larson?

  I don't think that makes any kind of sense. I've seen the video and what I think happened, unless you were already gonna talk about this.

• 58:19Jeff Larson?

  I mean, you saw one with the orange kayak.

• 58:21Wes Larson?

  Well, I've seen a bunch. There's been a few of these. Compact whales are eating really small things. They krill, they, you know, all these things that are generally quite small. But they also can eat schooling balls of fish. And they're really good at kind of corralling those fish into a certain area and then they'll come up. And I forget what the name of the behavior is, but it's essentially they create a net with bubbles and whatnot. And then they come up through the, it's called a bubble net. I'm pretty sure that what's the behavior is. But they come up through the middle of it and they can consume a very large amount of fish in one gulp. And if you just happen to be kayaking over that spot, when that whale comes up mouth open, it would swallow you whole.

• 59:04Wes Larson?

  It would immediately spit you back out, which I assume is what happened here, but it would swallow you whole.

• 59:10Jeff Larson?

  Adrian was in there for a few seconds and he was pretty scared. He thought he was gonna die.

• 59:15Wes Larson?

  I'd be terrified. Yeah.

• 59:17Jeff Larson?

  And like, it's especially dangerous in this one compared to the lobster diver. Because lobster diver, you could just get blown out the blow hole, but with a kayak, that's not possible.

• 59:27Wes Larson?

  I agree with that, but.

• 59:29Jeff Larson?

  So like, he's stuck in there unless the whale spits it out. No blow hole. That's out of the equation. So, um, it spits him out and he's like, just panicked. Now he's worried about his dad. He's like, the whale's gonna go eat my dad. And the whale's like, the whale's done eating him, you know, it's gone. It's.

• 59:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 59:50Jeff Larson?

  And then he's like, I'm gonna get hyperthermia, but he's just in a panic state. And now what I liked is Dell, his dad was just recording everything. He was like, kinda chill about it. He like, didn't lose his like, focus with the camera. He kept recording. Praise to the cameraman. Good job. You know, you want like. And especially now, like, I'm sure he was scared for his son's safety, but like, especially now that his son's fine. I'm sure he's pretty happy that he got all the footage, you know? Yeah.

• 1:00:22Wes Larson?

  It's kind of funny because when they're getting out of there, he just kind of drags him and his boat.

• 1:00:27Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Wes Larson?

  It's not like he, he doesn't get back on the boat. The dad just drags him and the kayak away from the area.

• 1:00:33Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, no, you know, cool dad though. And that happened February 8th and then just because that one's kind of short. I have one other little coyotes be wild and headline here.

• 1:00:44Wes Larson?

  Let's hear it.

• 1:00:45Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah. So a new study off the coast of Fort Bragg, California, led by UC Santa Cruz. Uh, PhD student Frankie Garrity, her and her team recorded that harbor seal pups, that coyotes prey on harbor seal pups in that area. And you know, they had found some carcasses that were pretty torn up over the years. So then they put out cameras and did actual study and you know what coyotes be wild. Now everyone knows that they're just killing seals.

• 1:01:19Wes Larson?

  Clubbing baby seals out there.

• 1:01:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:22Wes Larson?

  All right. Sorry seals. Yeah, it's all right. There's plenty of seals. Okay. Yeah.

• 1:01:30Jeff Larson?

  You loved that seal commercial for the Super Bowl?

• 1:01:34Wes Larson?

  I didn't like it at all.

• 1:01:35Jeff Larson?

  You didn't?

• 1:01:36Wes Larson?

  I didn't.

• 1:01:36Jeff Larson?

  Where Seal was a seal? Did you get it?

• 1:01:39Wes Larson?

  I thought it was lazy. Yep. I sure did.

• 1:01:42Jeff Larson?

  Are you sure you get the joke?

• 1:01:43Wes Larson?

  I got it. Yeah. I, well, I guess I really didn't because I didn't think it was funny at all.

• 1:01:48Jeff Larson?

  Oh, no, it's because his name was Seal.

• 1:01:51Wes Larson?

  Right. His name's Seal and he's a seal. Yeah.

• 1:01:53Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Wes Larson?

  Uh, all right. On February 7th, a 55 year old Canadian woman was snorkeling and swimming off of Providenciales Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean, in waist deep water, when suddenly something bumped into her and then she was bitten on the thigh by a medium sized six foot shark. And the shark was never fully identified in any of the articles that I read. But based off the behavior, this bump and bite behavior, the fact that it's the Caribbean shallow water. I'm guessing this is a bull shark. If I was a betting man, which I am, I'd bet some good money that this is a bull shark.

• 1:02:30Jeff Larson?

  I thought by identify, you were like, uh, we know it wasn't Jim, Jim the shark out there.

• 1:02:35Wes Larson?

  It was, yeah, it wasn't. No, not the individual shark, the species of shark.

• 1:02:40Jeff Larson?

  Right.

• 1:02:40Wes Larson?

  And again, this is the reason why I think bull shark bite numbers are probably a bit underreported because they often are a hard shark to identify. They don't have markings like tiger sharks. They're not as universally well known as great whites. So often they kind of go unidentified as some sort of requiem shark. Anyway, I do think this was probably a bull shark. When she was bitten on the thigh, she put her hands out to try and either push the shark away or prevent another bite. And when she did that, the shark bit on to both of her hands.

• 1:03:10Jeff Larson?

  And like let go of it or die and bit her hands?

• 1:03:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and saw through them pretty quickly.

• 1:03:16Jeff Larson?

  Whoa.

• 1:03:16Wes Larson?

  While it was biting them, her husband ran out, got to her side, managed to somehow separate her and the shark. Some of the articles said he wrestled the shark away. Some say that, you know, just splashing out there was enough to discourage the shark. But he dragged her up on shore and there are some photos of people gathered around her, holding towels to her arms. And she was treated in a hospital on the island and then flown back to Canada for more treatment and surgery. She ended up having one of her hands amputated at the wrist and the other one about halfway up her forearm.

• 1:03:47Jeff Larson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:03:48Wes Larson?

  She lost both hands to the shark, which is super unfortunate.

• 1:03:52Jeff Larson?

  That's all you've got, I think.

• 1:03:54Wes Larson?

  Completely life changing. Yeah. And there's not really like, I think if you're being attacked by a bull shark in waist deep water on your vacation, out of the blue, there's no way that you can prepare yourself to really react to that, you know? But I do think the more targets you give an animal like that, the more you kind of have to be willing to sacrifice those parts of your body. So that's just something to keep in mind. If it's already focused on like your thigh or something, maybe that's just where you let it focus while you try and get to help or anything else. And again, I'm not blaming her. I think I would probably do the exact same thing. I'd probably try and push the shark off.

• 1:04:33Jeff Larson?

  I think it'd be almost impossible to not try to like do something with your hands.

• 1:04:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but that's the only thing I could think of. They are thrashing around when they're biting. They're hard to keep a hold of. I think we've done a number of stories where people end up with some. Pretty crazy hand injuries trying to fight off sharks. So if it's possible, try not to get your hands too involved.

• 1:04:54Jeff Larson?

  Stick your head in there instead.

• 1:04:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah, try and push it off with your head. Yeah, that'll work really well. One thing that I thought was unfortunate is there's this narrative online. A lot of the articles again that I found said that she was trying to take a photo of the shark and that's why it attacked. I didn't see any evidence for that. I don't believe it. I don't think a fifty five year old Canadian woman on vacation in waist deep water is trying to approach sharks. That just doesn't really add up to me. That's a judgment call on my part. And she could have been trying to get really close to it for a photo, but I kind of don't. To me, it feels like, and again, this is another judgment call. It feels like something maybe the authorities said to try and bring down panic levels for this particular bite. Cause this isn't an island that's known for shark attacks or shark bites.

• 1:05:42Wes Larson?

  So I think that when they do happen, it kind of creates a lot of media frenzy.

• 1:05:46Mike Smith?

  Conspiracy fest strikes again.

• 1:05:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Flat Earth. Got my tin hat on. I'm not a Flat Earther. Uh, moon landing, who knows? Just kidding. Uh, anyway, I looked up the Florida shark attack file for Turks and Caicos. They've had three attacks on record since like the seventeen hundreds pretty much. So this isn't a high frequency place. This isn't a place where you'd expect to run into sharks or getting bit by a shark. But there was one just a couple of years ago, it's same beach pretty much where a woman got her leg bit off. So there they have.

• 1:06:20Mike Smith?

  By a shark?

• 1:06:21Wes Larson?

  Little bit more frequency. By a shark. Yeah. Anyway.

• 1:06:24Mike Smith?

  It'd be nice.

• 1:06:24Wes Larson?

  Maybe that sharks collect building a Frankenstein person.

• 1:06:30Mike Smith?

  It'd be great if all of our body parts started off with baby versions like we have with our teeth. And you just lose them and you can grow the adult version. Like you just have baby hands until you get your adult ones. Then they'd grow back. That'd be great.

• 1:06:43Jeff Larson?

  Or like that Spider-Man villain who just wants to make us lizards.

• 1:06:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Kurt Kurt Connors. Is that his name?

• 1:06:50Mike Smith?

  I think. Sounds alliterative enough to be a Marvel name.

• 1:06:53Wes Larson?

  All right. And then my next story is another quick one. As you guys all know, as we've talked about a little bit on the podcast, early this year, there was devastating fires in Southern California, mostly around Los Angeles. Hundreds, if not thousands of people lost their homes. It was just crazy to behold, even from a distance, to see the kind of devastation and just truly apocalyptic sights coming out of Southern California. Just really quick before we launch in the story, our hearts still go out to those of our listeners that were affected by that. Such an insane tragedy, and we definitely were thinking about you this year. But someone that got pretty lucky during that whole thing is this guy named Sammy Arbitt and his family.

• 1:07:36Wes Larson?

  Seems like a genuinely lucky person because he and his wife had moved into a house in Altadena, California, not long before the Eaton fire destroyed large areas of that community. And his house was spared from the fires, but came within a block of being destroyed. Pretty lucky. He's also lucky because he had a 550 pound black bear denning in the crawl space under his house, which a lot of people might not think is lucky. I consider that pretty lucky.

• 1:08:05Jeff Larson?

  You have a little space for one in your place.

• 1:08:08Wes Larson?

  I do. We got a little crawl space, just like this.

• 1:08:10Jeff Larson?

  Love to have one in there.

• 1:08:11Wes Larson?

  Any bears out there that are listening, come den in my crawl space. Happy to have you. He and his wife had discovered this bear prior to the fires when they'd heard clanking sounds beneath the bedroom. They peeked in the crawl space and they saw a huge male bear. It had probably moved in while the house was for sale and unoccupied, and it seemed to be kind of settled in there. This is Southern California, so these bears aren't necessarily, unless they're pregnant, they're not really denning the way they would in other places.

• 1:08:38Jeff Larson?

  They probably have squatters rights.

• 1:08:40Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we'll actually get to that. They slow down a bit during the winter, but it's probably still going out for food and stuff. It's not in a full hibernative state. Anyway, so they tried to see what could be done. They learned that this bear had been fed by a neighbor, so it's food condition, not really afraid of humans.

• 1:08:58Jeff Larson?

  That's bad.

• 1:08:59Wes Larson?

  It's mostly quiet under their house, but sometimes it would bang into pipes and then their dogs would lose their minds. So they actually had to move where they were sleeping to a different room with the dogs to try and not have these nightly barking frenzies.

• 1:09:14Jeff Larson?

  That's crazy that they're just like, you gotta keep living with it.

• 1:09:18Wes Larson?

  Well, so they called animal control and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, but they were told there's nothing they could do and hopefully the bear would leave in the spring. It is crazy. That's very surprising to me. I don't think that would be the response here in Montana. I'm pretty sure they would say, oh yeah, we'll come get rid of that bear. Anyway, the fires then happened. They were forced to evacuate their home and the bear was still there, comfortably sleeping. When they got back to the house, their house was spared. Bear's still there. The gas company goes to turn the gas back on. Can't do it because there's a 550 pound bear in the way of the gas. So the difference now is that their house was in a recovery area following the fire.

• 1:09:59Wes Larson?

  So they were finally able to get the wildlife department to their house to remove the bear. This is a big bear. 550 pounds is huge for a black bear.

• 1:10:08Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So it's really too big to sedate and try and pull out there. So instead, what they did is they got a trap, placed it near the crawl space entrance. They baited it with a rotisserie chicken, sardines and apples smeared with peanut butter.

• 1:10:24Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that works.

• 1:10:25Mike Smith?

  That'd get me.

• 1:10:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Jeff, we've done some black bear trapping. How long would you guess it took for them to catch this bear?

• 1:10:33Jeff Larson?

  Uh, like right next to it a day.

• 1:10:35Wes Larson?

  Minutes.

• 1:10:38Wes Larson?

  This trap had been baited for minutes and this bear came out. And if this were a really wild bear, I think it would take days, if not weeks, to catch it. This is a food condition bear. So I think the second it caught whiff of that combo, which

• 1:10:53Jeff Larson?

  550 pounds is like the biggest black bear I've heard of.

• 1:10:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's eaten a lot of human food. So it immediately crawls out, immediately gets trapped. They put a GPS collar on it and took it into the Angeles National Forest and released it. And I would bet the farm, this bear will be back in Altadena within, it's probably back already.

• 1:11:15Jeff Larson?

  Minutes.

• 1:11:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's probably already there. Um, you have to relocate food condition bears a really long

• 1:11:23Wes Larson?

  Long distance for them not to come back like I think you'd have to take this bear hundreds of miles away for it not to come back. So unfortunately, these departments often don't have the money or the manpower to do that. So they took it to the closest wilderness area. And I would bet a lot of money it's gonna be back.

• 1:11:41Jeff Larson?

  Man, that's crazy. Just like.

• 1:11:44Wes Larson?

  It's a big old bear.

• 1:11:44Jeff Larson?

  Have a 550 pound black bear living under your house and you just gotta live with it? I kinda like it, but it's like crazy.

• 1:11:55Wes Larson?

  Pretty amazing. The biggest grizzly bear I ever caught was like that big and it was big. Like it was a lot of bear to handle. So yeah, that's huge.

• 1:12:06Mike Smith?

  What do you think? Do you think bears prefer smooth or chunky peanut butter?

• 1:12:11Wes Larson?

  Uh, probably smooth.

• 1:12:13Mike Smith?

  Really?

• 1:12:14Wes Larson?

  I doubt they really care much. Yeah.

• 1:12:16Mike Smith?

  Me too, but you're the expert. One is a 10 sexiest.

• 1:12:19Wes Larson?

  They probably don't care either way.

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• 1:12:38Jeff Larson?

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• 1:14:00Mike Smith?

  The last one, we'll end on a little bit of a downer. This one, it's an interesting one because it actually happened about a year ago, but we only recently learned about it because of some legal proceedings, legal developments. So, last May, Craig and Lisa Manders were on a 10-day tour through Zambia, when they're walking pretty close to a river, and the lawsuit goes that there was not adequate protection or warning issued to them to alert them to the dangers that a hippopotamus could pose, which, you know, like, a lot of people, I, for instance, four years ago would probably have lacked critical information, got myself into a similar situation, if the situation presented itself as such.

• 1:14:42Mike Smith?

  But a hippo came up from the river when it saw Lisa nearby. It kind of burst its head up out of the water and rushed right at her, and started just going to town with its mouth, munched on her, lifted her up off the ground, and quote, "shaking her entire body, crushing her head and body with its bite", which is just, I can't, and her husband was-

• 1:15:06Wes Larson?

  Unbelievably awful to have to see that happen to someone in your family.

• 1:15:09Mike Smith?

  Just can't even imagine it. And you're in a stranger in a strange land, and all of a sudden, I mean, there's, it was over so quick, I'm sure, like, she had no time to even really register exactly, or feel, yeah, I'm hoping, silver lining. It's a tragedy all around, but like-

• 1:15:28Mike Smith?

  It just goes to show that these animals are not to be trifled with. Males can get up to 3,000 pounds and they're fast. You know, they can move quick. They're not, they're not ungulate or cat speed or even bear speed. I think maybe like 20 to 25 miles per hour they can get up to.

• 1:15:43Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they are ungulates.

• 1:15:44Mike Smith?

  Yeah, they are ungulates. That's right.

• 1:15:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46Mike Smith?

  What do you, what do you think about their milk being pink?

• 1:15:49Wes Larson?

  Uh, interesting, you know?

• 1:15:51Mike Smith?

  Is that true? Did we decide that that was? Yeah.

• 1:15:54Wes Larson?

  I think it's true. Yeah.

• 1:15:55Jeff Larson?

  I think yak milk might be pink, right? That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:16:00Mike Smith?

  Well, anyway, another interesting wrinkle to this whole thing is the number I saw thrown around that the tour company, not even like the guides over in Zambia, they're being sued for $15,000. Which seems

• 1:16:14Wes Larson?

  That's not too much.

• 1:16:15Mike Smith?

  Really, really low.

• 1:16:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that does seem low.

• 1:16:18Mike Smith?

  And it's, it's a strange one. The debate's really been around whether the tour guide should have to, or the tour kind of middlemen that, that planned the itinerary, but really had nothing to do with what happened on the ground over in Zambia, whether they should have to assume any responsibility or not. Doesn't seem like it to me. Like they, maybe I guess there should have been a footnote or a bullet point saying like, watch out for the hippos, but that kind of seems like boots on the ground kind of information that the actual tour guides maybe should have been providing. I don't know.

• 1:16:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I, I do think there's some liability. I think that when you hire a company like this to, to do wildlife tourism and to help you through this, you know, these, this ecosystem you don't necessarily understand, you are placing some trust in them for your safety. And obviously they can't, you know, a safari has an element of danger to it. That's kind of what makes it exciting. But on one of our safaris, I remember in Zimbabwe, one of our guests kind of was getting close to a water hole, not close, close, like they were still probably 60 yards away. And our guide was like, stop and was very adamant that they come back because of crocodiles. And I appreciated that. I think that you do need to, as a guide, you need to have your head on a swivel. So there is some liability in my opinion.

• 1:17:32Mike Smith?

  Yeah, you need her to be like Linda Blair, just head spinning around.

• 1:17:36Wes Larson?

  Swiveling around, dude. Gotta sell that soul to the devil. All right, uh, well, let's go under our categories, because I want to talk about India. Are you guys ready to talk about India?

• 1:17:45Mike Smith?

  Let's go.

• 1:17:46Wes Larson?

  Okay, before we get into it, let's, let's give a quick shout out to all of our participants on that trip, like the rest of our trips.

• 1:17:53Mike Smith?

  Yeah, all of them.

• 1:17:54Wes Larson?

  I'm not gonna leave them out. Like all of our trips, we had really fun participants on this one. I just, I already missed them all. Yeah. I wanted to text them, but I don't want to be annoying. So, um, just, so, so everyone knows that went on this trip, we really enjoyed our time with you guys and had such a wonderful, memorable time.

• 1:18:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, everyone, thank you so much. All you were great.

• 1:18:15Mike Smith?

  This is amazing.

• 1:18:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah, those people were Ben, Kirsten, Jackie, Cassie, Chantel, Kristen, Cara, Julie, Lauren, Sarah, Sam, Haley, Andrew, Asha, Asha, sorry, Libby and Christine. We had a lot of K names. We had Kirsten, Kristen, Cara, Christine, got a little confusing. And then our guides, Nahal and Sora, just a great time.

• 1:18:41Mike Smith?

  Loved them.

• 1:18:42Wes Larson?

  Amazing. We had the best time. So, let's, let's talk about it a little bit.

• 1:18:45Mike Smith?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:46Wes Larson?

  Did love them. The first question, first category, we had some amazing wildlife experiences on this trip. I'm curious what your guys' favorite was? Your favorite wildlife experience while we were in India?

• 1:18:57Jeff Larson?

  Uh, my favorite was the first tiger I saw on my birthday. And it was a female with three cubs. And I saw her scare like fifteen deer out of the forest. And then they went in like some deep grass. And I think she saw where one went in, but she couldn't see it in the grass. Cause she like pounced into the grass and was like looking for it in the air. So that was really cool. And then a little baby like came out of the grass and was on the road. And the tiger was like right next to it. And I was like, turn around, turn around, because I'm a sicko.

• 1:19:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love a kill. I love a good kill. Mike?

• 1:19:38Mike Smith?

  Uh, tiger's been the top of my list of favorite animals ever since I can remember. It's a top of my kiss list, you know?

• 1:19:46Wes Larson?

  It's not even at the top right now, though, right?

• 1:19:50Mike Smith?

  Uh, what do you mean?

• 1:19:51Wes Larson?

  Isn't cheetah ahead of it?

• 1:19:53Mike Smith?

  Uh, no, as far as favorite animals, no, it's not even, it's still not even a debate. My favorite animal sighting probably goes to the cheetah that we saw in Kenya, but that's, well, that's different things. Uh, but on this trip, a couple of our cars had the really, really good fortune of encountering a gigantic male tiger. I forgot his name. I should have written it down.

• 1:20:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:15Mike Smith?

  But we were-

• 1:20:16Wes Larson?

  The biggest tiger in Tadoba.

• 1:20:17Mike Smith?

  It was huge and we were hovering over it for maybe thirty, thirty-five minutes, maybe even longer than that, but-

• 1:20:23Wes Larson?

  I think it was almost an hour.

• 1:20:24Mike Smith?

  It was amazing. It was so cool to watch it just kinda plop down, even like get in the water, take a little bit of a bath under the sun. Get up and move around a little bit more, but there was this moment when we were parked perpendicular to it. And it got up and it started walking directly towards our car. And it locked eyes with me when it was about fifteen feet away and it was really, really getting close. And it just clicked in my brain. Everyone else in the car had their cameras up and I, I know there's a little bit of a disconnect that happens when you have a device in front of your face. Uh, and you kinda forget like that spatial, what it means to be that close to an animal like that.

• 1:21:04Mike Smith?

  I didn't have anything between me and the tiger, so I started kinda making sound, nervous sounds about how close it was getting and people started laughing at me, but I was- It just made me realize that if this tiger wanted to, it very easily from that distance could have just pounced up and ripped my head off, you know?

• 1:21:21Wes Larson?

  Nothing's stopping it.

• 1:21:22Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Wes Larson?

  Our guides were getting pretty nervous too, like they kept trying to create distance between that tiger. So yeah, that was great. I, I echo that the tiger sightings were amazing. I counted and I saw 16 tigers, including nine cubs, which is crazy. It's a lot. And just, we did five safaris in Tadoba. My favorite was the snow leopard, though. We spent the first few days of the trip really looking hard for a snow leopard, suffering some pretty cold miserable conditions in the Himalayas. And when we finally found one, it was one that had killed a blue sheep the night before.

• 1:22:00Mike Smith?

  Blue sheep?

• 1:22:01Wes Larson?

  Are you kidding me right now?

• 1:22:02Mike Smith?

  My Kate said.

• 1:22:04Wes Larson?

  Was kind of just hanging out on the mountain, just waiting for the cover of darkness to go back down and feed again. And for me, it was kind of a dream because I'm the person that wants to leave last from a good wildlife sighting. I really like staying for a long time to observe behavior. And our guides were pretty much like, okay, we're here until dark. We got there at first light and we were there until it got dark. And for me, that was such a dream to know that we weren't leaving and that I got to just watch it all day. And we did, we watched it for like 13 to 15 hours that day, which was amazing. And happened to be the day I had diarrhea, which was poor timing.

• 1:22:43Wes Larson?

  Had to dig a lot of little holes around that area.

• 1:22:45Jeff Larson?

  You started making a lot closer trips by the end.

• 1:22:49Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah. At first I like wandered really far for privacy and then I was just like crouching down behind cars at the end.

• 1:22:56Mike Smith?

  It's really lucky. You, you told me I'd get deli belly. I didn't. Still yet to have any diarrhea ever in my adult life. I'm sorry. All right. Okay. Uh, let's go on to our next one.

• 1:23:08Jeff Larson?

  Also, should we shout out what we saw? We were like camping with a pack of wolves, which was really cool. Saw Himalayan lynx.

• 1:23:19Wes Larson?

  Eurasian, Eurasian lynx.

• 1:23:21Jeff Larson?

  Really hot up there.

• 1:23:23Wes Larson?

  Dole.

• 1:23:25Jeff Larson?

  I think Mike know to correct me there. You guys, how did you know?

• 1:23:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he just pays, paid attention.

• 1:23:32Mike Smith?

  Yep.

• 1:23:32Wes Larson?

  We're gonna get into that, though. We have another category. List your top five mammals and top five birds.

• 1:23:37Mike Smith?

  Oh, yeah. Shut up.

• 1:23:38Wes Larson?

  It's all right. All right. Next one, though, is favorite place we visited in India. We also saw some really cool places. So what was your favorite place we went to?

• 1:23:47Mike Smith?

  I loved the Buddhist monastery that we visited in Ladakh. It, I, I think it's just a byproduct of having grown up around Christian iconography and infrastructure. And I love just visiting other spiritual places. And there's, there's something to be said for, you know, more typical cathedrals, churches, whatever. But I just don't have that experience all that often to visit like a Buddhist or a Sikh or a Hindu. Or even a mosque, you know, we visited kind of a little bit of all of those places. But the Buddhist monastery in Ladakh was pretty amazing to me. It's just monks living there full time. It was just such like a pervasive.

• 1:24:28Wes Larson?

  It was built into the mountain, like on top of a peak. It was really neat.

• 1:24:32Mike Smith?

  And I could just feel the peace like sinking into me. It was great.

• 1:24:35Wes Larson?

  Totally. That was my pick too, but I'll do a backup, which was also a Buddhist place.

• 1:24:41Jeff Larson?

  It was really hard to like climb up it because we were in the high altitude.

• 1:24:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Jeff Larson?

  Upwards climb.

• 1:24:48Wes Larson?

  That was my day that I was feeling like the best, though. So I, that one for me was like an easy one, but later on I really felt it. Roombach Village where we were camping, there's a tiny little village above us. Where sometimes they let people stay in like in homes and stuff. And it just had this really quaint villagey Buddhist feel to it. And we kind of got to interact with some of the locals there, a kid with a dog, some, a lady that was selling these like wool snow leopard dolls that she made. It's just a really neat little tiny village that we got to go to a couple of times that I really fell in love with. So that, that was my backup answer. It was Roombach Village in the Himalayas of India.

• 1:25:30Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, no, those were, that's my answer too, just because the people there were so cool, like in both of those. Ladakh was just, I don't know, I really liked it. But since you guys said him, I'll go Hindi temple. I got my new number one favorite fountain show I've ever seen.

• 1:25:46Wes Larson?

  Top of the list.

• 1:25:48Jeff Larson?

  Passes Bellagio, passes Kuala Lumpur's fountain show. Really, really just top notch stuff, using laser lights in the fountain. Pretty awesome.

• 1:26:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, pyrotechnics, like projections.

• 1:26:04Mike Smith?

  It was amazing.

• 1:26:05Wes Larson?

  We weren't allowed our phones, which made it even better.

• 1:26:08Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Wes Larson?

  Cool. All right. Next one is most memorable, or if you choose dumbest argument that we had while we were in India.

• 1:26:18Mike Smith?

  Wes, I want you, you should go first since.

• 1:26:20Wes Larson?

  Okay, I'll go first. We had some dumb ones.

• 1:26:22Mike Smith?

  Obviously.

• 1:26:23Wes Larson?

  We went down some pretty dumb threads. But the one that I think I got, for whatever reason, like the most incensed about, was when we were talking about fast food. And I can't remember which of you two it was, there's vehement that In-N-Out's not fast food.

• 1:26:41Mike Smith?

  It's not.

• 1:26:42Wes Larson?

  I'm okay to be the minority in this one.

• 1:26:45Mike Smith?

  It's, it's not.

• 1:26:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And so for me, I feel like there's different levels of fast food. But something is quantified as fast food by like having a drive-through and being fast.

• 1:26:57Mike Smith?

  It's not. When's the last time you went to In-N-Out and the line was less than like eight hours long?

• 1:27:01Wes Larson?

  There's like fifty million cars. It's still built to be fast.

• 1:27:05Jeff Larson?

  Get through the line, the cars fast.

• 1:27:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah, each order is processed very quickly.

• 1:27:10Jeff Larson?

  They do.

• 1:27:10Wes Larson?

  And I agree with you that it's elevated fast food. Like it is a higher quality than your McDonald's or Burger King or whatever. But it is the quintessential fast food restaurant to me. It, it's like, it's stylized in a fast food manner.

• 1:27:25Mike Smith?

  Is Cafe Rio fast food?

• 1:27:27Wes Larson?

  No.

• 1:27:28Mike Smith?

  Why not?

• 1:27:29Jeff Larson?

  I think it can be.

• 1:27:30Wes Larson?

  It could be. I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't die on that hill.

• 1:27:33Jeff Larson?

  One in Salt Lake.

• 1:27:34Wes Larson?

  But, well, to me, like.

• 1:27:36Mike Smith?

  Looks like that line's drawn a little bit differently.

• 1:27:38Wes Larson?

  A restaurant that you come into and you like pick out what you want isn't necess- well, I guess Subway though, and I would definitely say Subway is fast food. Yeah, I think it's a fuzzier line, but for me, like In-N-Out is easily in the fast food category. So that was one of my favorite arguments we had.

• 1:27:53Jeff Larson?

  There's no real big difference besides quality of food between it and McDonald's.

• 1:27:58Wes Larson?

  Right. That's it. It's just quality of food.

• 1:28:02Mike Smith?

  Right. And I have that. That's a big deal to me.

• 1:28:04Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 1:28:04Mike Smith?

  Fast food tastes like garbage. In-N-Out doesn't.

• 1:28:07Wes Larson?

  See, that's where I disagree.

• 1:28:08Mike Smith?

  It's a definite line.

• 1:28:09Jeff Larson?

  But then like, when I say, what's everyone's favorite fast food burger? And where someone says like, I really like In-N-Out. You're like, I don't even think that's fast food. It's kind of like, well, come on.

• 1:28:21Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Well, that's exactly how the argument went.

• 1:28:24Jeff Larson?

  I know.

• 1:28:24Mike Smith?

  It's pretty close.

• 1:28:26Wes Larson?

  That's not far from it. Yeah. What, Mike, why don't you go next?

• 1:28:30Mike Smith?

  I'll go. So that was actually my first choice too, but a very, very, very close second was.

• 1:28:35Jeff Larson?

  From the other side.

• 1:28:37Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Right. Again, I'm willing to be in the minority and it is a hill I'll die on. Uh, but this, this one is after we landed in, um, Nagpur. I tried a bite of a sandwich that they're handing out on the in-flight meal for the in-flight snack. And I was asked to rank it on a scale of one to 10. And I said, well, the bite I just took tastes like nothing. So I guess like a four. Um, and to like fill in the gaps on this one, Wes, because you're kind of the main opponent on this one.

• 1:29:11Wes Larson?

  And then you said, then you said, what would be the number for neutral?

• 1:29:15Mike Smith?

  And that's not, no, I never use the word neutral.

• 1:29:18Wes Larson?

  You did.

• 1:29:19Mike Smith?

  No, I did not.

• 1:29:19Jeff Larson?

  You did.

• 1:29:20Wes Larson?

  You did.

• 1:29:20Mike Smith?

  That's ridiculous.

• 1:29:21Wes Larson?

  And then I said, oh my.

• 1:29:23Mike Smith?

  I said, are you, no one trusts Jeff.

• 1:29:25Wes Larson?

  Are you kidding me, Mike?

• 1:29:28Wes Larson?

  No, because I clearly remember saying, Mike, are you joking? Like five is nothing.

• 1:29:33Jeff Larson?

  Wes was like, what are you talking about?

• 1:29:36Wes Larson?

  Five is clearly neutral. It's in the middle of one to 10. Like there's, like by definition, that would be neutral, would it not?

• 1:29:44Jeff Larson?

  But then I said, I don't think that's always neutral because sometimes like if you like way more food than you don't like, then the line might be like three or four.

• 1:29:53Wes Larson?

  And that makes absolutely no sense to me because five is still neutral no matter what.

• 1:29:58Mike Smith?

  Doesn't have to be.

• 1:29:59Wes Larson?

  Like if you, even if you, even if you.

• 1:30:01Jeff Larson?

  Three is in the middle.

• 1:30:03Wes Larson?

  Even if you.

• 1:30:03Jeff Larson?

  Like if have, have more ones and two, like if you have like half of your food are ones and twos.

• 1:30:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah, let me set up an experience here, though. Let's say you have a thousand different foods and you have to rank that those thousand foods and almost all of them are six, sevens or eights. That means that you just like a lot more food, but if you were to say, what number should I assign to one of these foods that's neutral? It would be five, like there's no doubt there. Five is in the middle. It's halfway between terrible and the best. It's neutral.

• 1:30:37Mike Smith?

  Sure. I just want to make this very clear. I specifically remember to everyone in the group, because the whole group was sitting there listening to us. I I promise you I never use the word neutral. It doesn't even matter, though. I remember.

• 1:30:51Jeff Larson?

  What did you say?

• 1:30:52Mike Smith?

  It tastes like nothing. That's what I said. It tastes like nothing.

• 1:30:56Jeff Larson?

  You asked us what number would represent nothing?

• 1:31:00Mike Smith?

  Yeah, nothing. Like, what would you give something that tastes like nothing? And I I think there's a lot of different things, like Jeff already touched on it, like presentation or mouth feel. There's a lot of things I say. Something that tastes like nothing could be like a four or it could be a six, depending on all the factors.

• 1:31:17Wes Larson?

  We did. We did like.

• 1:31:19Jeff Larson?

  You know, I'll I'll take my statement back. I'm not sure if he said nothing or neutral.

• 1:31:25Wes Larson?

  Right.

• 1:31:25Jeff Larson?

  I do know he asked like, what number would represent?

• 1:31:28Mike Smith?

  I did. I did ask that.

• 1:31:30Wes Larson?

  And then I did ask you, what number would you say is neutral? And you've kind of balked on like.

• 1:31:36Mike Smith?

  I said five. I settled on saying five, but I knew what you were trying to do because you're a manipulative little devil.

• 1:31:43Wes Larson?

  Oh, you were. I was appealing to your logic. You're a logical man. All right.

• 1:31:48Mike Smith?

  And yeah, not not so much, it turns out. All right, Jeff.

• 1:31:53Wes Larson?

  This is a fun category.

• 1:31:55Jeff Larson?

  Mine was more, I don't know, I can't think of like a really funny one, but me and Wes got in an argument about if lions are the king of the jungle or if tigers are the king of the jungle.

• 1:32:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:08Jeff Larson?

  And I think we both had some good arguments. Wes, of course, I ended up doing like the I'm a wildlife biologist line somewhere in there.

• 1:32:18Wes Larson?

  That's not a line like it's true.

• 1:32:20Jeff Larson?

  I think we're gonna prep a, I mean, it's just kind of like.

• 1:32:25Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Jeff Larson?

  I feel like you lot like you just pull that out when I say a good point.

• 1:32:31Wes Larson?

  No, but it's like if you if we got an argument about basketball and I was like, no, no, no, I was arguing something. You could easily say Wes.

• 1:32:40Jeff Larson?

  I don't think I would win.

• 1:32:42Wes Larson?

  Basketball than you do.

• 1:32:43Jeff Larson?

  I don't think I would be right in every argument we have.

• 1:32:46Wes Larson?

  I don't. I don't think I'm right in every argument.

• 1:32:49Jeff Larson?

  You were.

• 1:32:49Wes Larson?

  I don't know. But I do. I do respect that you know, you know, volumes more about basketball than I do. I'm not going to argue Pokemon cards with you. I'm not going to argue basketball with you, you know?

• 1:33:02Jeff Larson?

  I mean, okay. I don't know. I so I think we're going to do a episode where I argue the case for lions. And Wes argues the case for tigers being like the ultimate king of the jungle.

• 1:33:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I posted a I posted a video of that tiger, the big one that Mike brought up and said, like, I don't agree that people say lions are the king of the jungle. Got a lot of comments. People were very, very passionate about this.

• 1:33:30Jeff Larson?

  Lion that was in the zoo somewhere that got to like eight hundred pounds.

• 1:33:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Lots of short, lots of short kings out there.

• 1:33:39Jeff Larson?

  Save those.

• 1:33:40Wes Larson?

  Saying that. But I did wanted to say like one thing really quickly. When when we say like king of the jungle, that's just like a phrase. We don't think that lions are like jungle animals. They can be. There are jungle lions out there. There's lions in the jungles of Gere, India. There's lions in the Congo in the jungles. There's forest lions. But we do understand because there are so many comments on my post that said this. We do understand lions are mostly in grasslands. Tigers are in dry forests and jungles. That's understood. So don't come at us with that.

• 1:34:16Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 1:34:17Jeff Larson?

  Exactly.

• 1:34:18Wes Larson?

  Now that we're all heated, let's move on. I'm too pissed. We gotta take a break. All right, uh, let's do something you watched on the plane, just real quick. A little break from wildlife, something you watched on the plane that you enjoyed or didn't enjoy. You can talk about whatever you want.

• 1:34:34Mike Smith?

  I started watching, rewatching The Anime Monster, Naoki Yurosawa, single-handedly lending the anime scene, manga scene mostly, but by proxy, the anime scene some credibility. Masterful storytelling. It's about, it starts off as like a medical drama, quickly turns into pretty wild, psychological and fairly violent thriller. Recommend it to anyone who's kind of thinking about maybe getting an anime, doesn't know where to start. A lot of Western sensibilities are being sated, I would say. Just really fun story. It's great. I love it.

• 1:35:09Jeff Larson?

  Wes and Mike got to choose one of my movies because of that. I didn't say negative 120 degrees.

• 1:35:20Wes Larson?

  We got you.

• 1:35:22Jeff Larson?

  I ended up watching Conclave and I thought it was really good. I like movies where, like, I like when people question things. I like someone like devout to a religion questioning it. So I thought it was pretty good and I really like Rome, so it's cool.

• 1:35:39Wes Larson?

  Uh, I'm gonna say Devil Wears Prada. I'd never seen it. Uh, and it felt like a gap. It felt like something that is in the cultural lexicon that I had never seen. And so I felt like I had to see it, didn't really care for it that much, thought it was kind of boring.

• 1:35:53Mike Smith?

  Really?

• 1:35:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:55Mike Smith?

  Oh, wow. I thought you would like it.

• 1:35:56Wes Larson?

  I thought it was well acted, but I just didn't feel like there was really any drama or much that really happens. It just seemed like kind of boring to me, but I get why so many people love it. So that's what I watched. All right, what was the hardest part of this trip for you guys?

• 1:36:11Jeff Larson?

  Uh, breathing.

• 1:36:13Wes Larson?

  Breathing, just respirating.

• 1:36:15Mike Smith?

  Cool.

• 1:36:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I had a really hard time breathing enough air.

• 1:36:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, uh, for me, it was definitely, it was our first dinner in Ladok where we just kind of ate in this mess tent together. And I just, for whatever reason, came to that dinner pretty unprepared for the cold. And I feel like that was our coldest night. And I remember my toes were getting super cold and I was just kind of miserable. And we knew that we still had like, yeah, like three or four nights ahead of us there. And that was probably the low point for me. But then it got easier after that.

• 1:36:49Mike Smith?

  Yeah, the first night for me as well, the sleeping bags were not quite built for some, and I'm not like a huge person.

• 1:36:57Jeff Larson?

  They were kinda small.

• 1:36:57Mike Smith?

  They were small and I didn't fit in them very well. I hadn't quite figured out exactly how it was gonna work out for me the, uh, the following nights. I remember just laying there. It was like 3am and I hadn't slept at all. Just desperately longing to be home. I remember probably saying out loud to myself, I would do anything to not be here right now. And this is before any like interesting sightings or anything fun that happened. We didn't know the group very well yet. And I was just like mad. I was so mad to be out there.

• 1:37:27Jeff Larson?

  Literally meanwhile, we're in our tent like laughing because I was like, Mike told us he doesn't like camping and we brought him to the fucking Himalayas and made him like camp in this like cold ass tent. And he's just never gonna like camping now.

• 1:37:45Wes Larson?

  13,000 feet. Yeah. That's the, the next question was actually, oh, Jeff, did you do yours?

• 1:37:51Mike Smith?

  Yeah, breathing.

• 1:37:52Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. But also shout out to those bathrooms in that camp. They dug like a six inch hole.

• 1:37:58Wes Larson?

  Put two rocks next to it. Uh, the rocks were sometimes slippery with frozen pee on them.

• 1:38:04Mike Smith?

  Oh, man. I saw those tent, the bathroom tents and my bowels just shut off. They're like, nope. Yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna hold everything in for the next four days. So the next category was funniest part of the trip and for me it was actually laughing at Mike. No. Having to camp in the. It's not funny.

• 1:38:23Mike Smith?

  But what do you guys think? Did you guys have anything for that? Funniest moments on the trip?

• 1:38:28Jeff Larson?

  I actually think our so everyone's I saw two sloth bears, but most everyone else saw one sloth bear. But the first one I saw, I hardly saw it. And then the second one we saw, we saw it really well. And it was like in the forest and then I was watching it. I was waiting to like get a shot of it. Once it came out of all the brush obscuring the view, you know, and for, I don't know, five minutes we're watching it. And it's like about to go into the road and like get this clearing and I'm like ready to get the shot. And the second it comes out, our driver, there's a car parked in front of us the entire time, hasn't moved at all.

• 1:39:14Jeff Larson?

  And our driver just like drives straight into it. Like the second this bear's head is out of the trees, we just ran the car ahead of us. And like, it would take a lot for me to lose focus of this bear. I completely lost focus of the bear. And turned around and was just like, what is going on right now? Did we just get in a car crash? And then by the time I looked up, the bear was like halfway across the road.

• 1:39:44Mike Smith?

  Like it got startled and ran.

• 1:39:47Jeff Larson?

  There's a really funny video. I'll post on my Instagram of it once this comes out.

• 1:39:52Mike Smith?

  The funniest thing that happened to me is still Cassie, one of the girls in our group. She fell asleep with a couple of hard boiled eggs in her pocket.

• 1:40:02Mike Smith?

  That's so funny. And she tossed and turned and rolled around in her sleep and the next morning she woke up. And they were unbroken, like unfazed and they were warm. And she was like, wow, wow, look at that. I got something to eat. I remember when I heard that, I was like, I was like, what?

• 1:40:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Oh, man. Another shout out is Libby bringing a Nikon Coolpix from like 2006. And when you had to pay for cameras in Tadoba, she went to like, go pay for it. And they're like, no, you don't have to pay for that. You can just take that.

• 1:40:39Wes Larson?

  Like three megapixels.

• 1:40:41Jeff Larson?

  Sara too. So you guys don't know this one, but she's from Colombia. She's awesome. And she's in the United States the last couple of years, but like she's Colombian.

• 1:40:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:51Jeff Larson?

  And she's like, teaching English, I think, or teaching Spanish. I don't remember. But anyways, you guys could have a million guesses before you guess what her favorite movie is.

• 1:41:03Wes Larson?

  Man.

• 1:41:03Jeff Larson?

  Black Hawk Down.

• 1:41:05Wes Larson?

  Wow. There's no possible way.

• 1:41:10Jeff Larson?

  I just thought that was so funny. And like really just like doesn't fit her at all, but kind of fits her because it doesn't like you never know what to expect with Sara.

• 1:41:20Wes Larson?

  That's great. All right. Let's move on to our last category. We're gonna say our, each of us quickly, our top five mammals we saw. Just your top five animals. If you want to put birds in there, throw some birds in there. Great.

• 1:41:33Jeff Larson?

  Top five animals plus one bird.

• 1:41:35Wes Larson?

  If you want to add a bird as a, as an honorable mention, go for it. Okay. My top five, the snow leopard was number one. Earlier, I did say the bearded vulture was number two, but I do think I have to say the sloth bear was number two. Then the bearded vulture at number three.

• 1:41:51Jeff Larson?

  That was another funny argument.

• 1:41:53Wes Larson?

  At the time it was.

• 1:41:54Jeff Larson?

  Mike got mad at you and was like, no, it's not your second favorite.

• 1:41:58Wes Larson?

  I got really, really excited. He is now, but at the time it was still the bearded vulture. It was. It was. I love that, like they only eat bones. Fine, I'm going back. The bearded vulture's number two. Sloth bear's number three. And then I'm gonna go, I got lucky to see some doles, uh, which are a wild dog hunting sambar deer. Which was really cool. And then my final one, I'm gonna say the tigers, just all the tigers. We saw the male tiger specifically, but the females with cubs too. So yeah, that's my top five.

• 1:42:36Jeff Larson?

  Alright, uh, yeah, I would go tigers and then sloth bear and then probably the wolves. Just because I thought is really cool how they were like camped right by us the entire time we were there.

• 1:42:50Wes Larson?

  That was cool.

• 1:42:50Jeff Larson?

  And then, uh, the Himalayan lynx.

• 1:42:54Wes Larson?

  Nope.

• 1:42:59Jeff Larson?

  I mean, honestly, what's gonna stick in my mind the most is we saw a crocodile rip a deer in half.

• 1:43:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that was cool. Mugger crocodile. Have you said the snow leopard or is it not in your top five?

• 1:43:10Jeff Larson?

  I didn't say snow leopard.

• 1:43:14Wes Larson?

  It's not in my top five, that's for sure.

• 1:43:16Jeff Larson?

  Wow, I would probably have to put it, what was my fourth one?

• 1:43:20Wes Larson?

  I don't know.

• 1:43:20Jeff Larson?

  The lynx is out, lynx is out, snow leopard's in at four.

• 1:43:24Wes Larson?

  Okay, what's your bird honorable mention?

• 1:43:26Jeff Larson?

  Uh, the hoopoo, hoopoe.

• 1:43:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:29Jeff Larson?

  Hoopoo. Those things are sweet, just like.

• 1:43:31Wes Larson?

  They're cool birds.

• 1:43:32Jeff Larson?

  Aus- yeah, Austin on our Africa trip found one first, but they got like mohawks and I don't know, I just really wanted to see one. Literally everyone had seen one but me and then at the last second I got one.

• 1:43:45Wes Larson?

  Nice. Alright, number one for me is taiga, number two is sloth bear, number three is gonna be, I like that nightjar a lot. It was just sitting on the ground like a rock.

• 1:43:57Jeff Larson?

  It was grouchy.

• 1:43:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Wes Larson?

  Uh, number four, let's go with the Eurasian lynx, just cuz like, it was just such an elusive little spotting that we had. And we were like a billion feet up in the sky. I felt like, well, it was, it was tough to be up there, even for just like 20 minutes. Uh, and number five, ooh, this is gonna be tough.

• 1:44:18Mike Smith?

  I'm gonna go with the paradise flycatcher. It's this really beautiful, white, long-tailed bird. And its behavior was really interesting. It was like dipping up and down into the water, just really quick. I thought it was just one of the most amazing.

• 1:44:31Jeff Larson?

  No snow leopard.

• 1:44:33Mike Smith?

  Nope, nope. If we'd only been looking at it for like two hours, it would have been up there. But 15 hours of a snow leopard.

• 1:44:39Wes Larson?

  Too much for you.

• 1:44:40Mike Smith?

  Too much. I decided I do not care for snow.

• 1:44:43Wes Larson?

  I do find that my enjoyment is often based on the amount of time we have to spend looking for it. And the fact that we really put in time for that animal made it worthwhile.

• 1:44:52Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that's true. No, they're great. Snow leopards are amazing. Yeah.

• 1:44:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Well, just wanted to say again, thanks to like, thanks to everyone that joined us for all the people that helped us on that trip. Our guides, Vana safaris, natural's journeys that put it all together. We had an amazing, amazing trip. For me, it's one I'm gonna think about for a long time. It blew my expectations out of the water. So I'm really, really just super chuffed about it, you know? Just chuffed to the max.

• 1:45:25Jeff Larson?

  You left your mark all over it.

• 1:45:27Wes Larson?

  Yep.

• 1:45:28Mike Smith?

  Yeah, there's a lot of my poop out there in the middle.

• 1:45:31Wes Larson?

  Especially. All right, well, you guys got anything else before we wrap this up?

• 1:45:36Mike Smith?

  No, thank you.

• 1:45:37Jeff Larson?

  No, I think I'm good.

• 1:45:38Wes Larson?

  Okay. If you want more content, check out our Patreon or Apple Grizz Club. Mike, I think you just did one of our funniest episodes ever with your ancient guys. Episode.

• 1:45:49Jeff Larson?

  The donkey drinking wine. That's a good joke.

• 1:45:53Mike Smith?

  All-timer.

• 1:45:54Wes Larson?

  Jeff had a really good one too, right before that. I'm struggling to remember what it was, but it was a good one.

• 1:45:58Jeff Larson?

  Ooh, that's not convincing.

• 1:46:00Wes Larson?

  No, but it was. I remember that it was good, so.

• 1:46:03Mike Smith?

  How was it? New Zealand?

• 1:46:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, the New Zealand one was super fun.

• 1:46:07Jeff Larson?

  The moa birds.

• 1:46:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So check us out. It's 10 bucks a month, which any, you know, that's like three eggs these days, so.

• 1:46:16Jeff Larson?

  Do you love comparing it to food, dude?

• 1:46:19Wes Larson?

  I do, you know?

• 1:46:20Jeff Larson?

  It's like one egg these days.

• 1:46:22Wes Larson?

  Serious. My birds are out there laying gold. All right, love you guys.

• 1:46:28Jeff Larson?

  All right, love ya.

• 1:46:29Mike Smith?

  See ya.

• 1:46:30Wes Larson?

  Bye.