Pod Insights National Park After Dark Our Quarterly Tooth & Claw Collab About this episode Come for the animal stories, stay for the giggles. T&C and NPAD are reunited for another collab episode! Listen to Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks here, snag some fun merch here, and keep an eye on their upcoming trips here! For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to the week’s partners! Blueland: Use our link to get 15% off your first order. BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off. Cash App: Download Cash App Today! Use our referral code NPAD10 for our exclusive offer #CashAppPodSelectQuote: Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, and save more than fifty percent at selectquote.com/npad
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Transcript 20,900 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:27 Speaker 01 It's that magical time of year when Designer Shoe Warehouse becomes your Designer Shoe Wonderland and you become everyone's favorite gifter because you know that good things come in shoe boxes like cozy slippers, on-trend kicks, boots made for snow stomping, and party shoes that sparkle and shine. Plus, stocking stuffers that bring joy from head to mistletoe. Who doesn't love more joy? Find shoes for you and yours at your Designer Shoe Wonderland. Shop in-store or visit dsw.com. DSW, let us surprise you.
1:17 Cassandra Yahnian? Hello, everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. Today, we have a very exciting episode.
1:23 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, we're basically bullied into doing these, so welcome, guys.
1:27 Cassandra Yahnian? From our audience.
1:32 Cassandra Yahnian? Not from you guys, from our audience.
1:35 Danielle LaRock? Yep, so today, yeah, not yet. Today, we have the guys from Tooth and Claw. They hardly need an introduction because everyone is in love with you all. But for everyone who may be new, Tooth and Claw is an amazing podcast that we recommend all the time and we love every single one of you. So, Jeff, Mike, Wes, hello.
1:56 Speaker 04 In that order. Is that the order in which you love us most, the least?
2:00 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, probably.
2:01 Speaker 04 That's okay.
2:05 Danielle LaRock? That's how you're on my screen. So.
2:07 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:08 Speaker 05 I was telling Danielle, I was like, five people is kind of a lot. Are you sure you want Mike? And she insisted we bring Mike still.
2:16 Danielle LaRock? I fought for you.
2:17 Speaker 04 Could I have taken the day off somehow? I can still leave.
2:21 Danielle LaRock? Nope, you're in it now. Yep. So today we're going to do something a little different. It's a Monday episode, but we are going to do a Trail Tale version of Monday episode, but with a twist because we have all animal themed stories and each one of us will be sharing one. I tried to pick a different animal for everybody also. Um, which was kind of hard.
2:42 Speaker 05 Did you match it to us?
2:43 Danielle LaRock? Yours for sure, I think.
2:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:47 Danielle LaRock? I think mine's birds. So me as well. Yours is not birds.
2:51 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh no, mine isn't. Mine's sheep. Just kidding.
2:53 Speaker 06 I saw you gave Mike a boar. So it is, that's perfect for him.
2:56 Speaker 04 I could not be more excited.
2:58 Danielle LaRock? I actually think I might've done a good idea.
3:00 Speaker 05 Sheep get like too much hate for like, don't be a sheep. It's like sheep, like wild sheep are pretty cool and always climbing and like.
3:09 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, I like sheep. Yeah. I don't know. You're, I saw silly goose. I'm like, that's immediately going under Jeff's. And then, yeah, so I don't even know what the story is honestly about, other than silly.
3:22 Danielle LaRock? Okay, great. Um, does anyone prefer to go first?
3:25 Speaker 06 Uh, our listeners would think that I prefer to go first. Because of that, I'm not going to.
3:32 Speaker 05 Wes refuses.
3:33 Speaker 06 Yeah, I'm not going to go first.
3:34 Speaker 05 I can go first.
3:35 Speaker 04 Hold on, with sheep, if they're like so uncool, why are wolves always trying to dress up like them? Food for thought. We can go to you, Jeff.
3:42 Speaker 05 That's a good, that's a good point.
3:45 Speaker 06 It's not a good point.
3:48 Speaker 04 Well, we got one vote for and one against.
3:51 Speaker 05 Wes hates sheep.
3:53 Speaker 06 I'm not a huge fan of sheep.
3:55 Danielle LaRock? Really?
3:55 Speaker 06 That's true. I wouldn't say I hate them, but like.
3:57 Speaker 05 Bighorn sheep?
3:58 Speaker 06 Big horn sheep are cool. Yeah.
4:00 Speaker 05 Are they not sheep?
4:02 Speaker 06 Ah, but when someone says sheep, that's not what pops in your head. You're not thinking of a big horn sheep.
4:07 Cassandra Yahnian? My best friend in high school did four H and I used to have to go to like the four H events and help feed her sheep and take care of them. And I second that they're not my favorite.
4:17 Speaker 06 No, really? Jesse, Jesse told me today, oh, we should get a, a meat sheep is what she called it. So it's like a sheep that you raise for a year and then eat. And I know for a fact that's not what would happen. Like you would end up with a lifetime sheep. And so.
4:32 Speaker 05 Cause they're so cool.
4:33 Speaker 06 You might be able to eat it. We don't need a lifetime pet sheep.
4:37 Danielle LaRock? It'd be a lifetime pet sheep for like the next 10 year. How long do they live? Do you know?
4:41 Speaker 05 Yeah, right.
4:42 Speaker 06 I don't know.
4:43 Danielle LaRock? A lifetime 10 year sheep. Yeah.
4:45 Cassandra Yahnian? I will say my friend had like 25 of them and I saw these sheep like every day and every day they acted like they had never met. Eat me or her who they lived with.
4:55 Speaker 06 They're not a smart animal.
4:57 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. And they would trample us every time we would try to feed them. Like it was just, yeah. We fought for our lives a few times in that sheep pen. So.
5:07 Danielle LaRock? Okay, we're excluding all the sheep lovers. All five of them.
5:11 Speaker 05 Get out of here. I, I'm one of, I'm with them.
5:15 Danielle LaRock? Okay, wait. Oh, so Jeff, you're going first.
5:17 Speaker 05 Do you want me to go? Okay. I got some more sheep thigh if you want.
5:21 Danielle LaRock? No, it's okay.
5:22 Speaker 05 Okay. So this one's titled goose attacks. Uh, hello, hello.
5:28 Speaker 06 Hey, hello.
5:29 Speaker 05 I absolutely love the podcast. So thank you for doing what you're doing and making my long road trips between jobs a little more interesting.
5:37 Speaker 06 You're very welcome.
5:38 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Oh, also, yeah, I didn't edit out all the love for us. So this is a fun one. You're just like giving us admiration, which is great.
5:47 Speaker 06 Yeah, we need it.
5:47 Speaker 05 That is the best I've ever read a sentence, by the way, too. It's all.
5:51 Speaker 06 That was great.
5:54 Speaker 05 My name is Elena and I'm an interpretive park ranger in the North Cascades National Park this summer. So come say hi if you're in the area. What does that mean?
6:04 Speaker 06 Interp Rangers are like the, Interp Rangers are kind of the ones that just rove and do education and are like the rangers you'll bump into on like trails or boardwalks or around
6:14 Speaker 05 Yelling at people or not normally?
6:16 Speaker 06 Sometimes, yeah, but that's not, they're not like law enforcement rangers.
6:22 Danielle LaRock? They're not gonna arrest you, but they'll give you a stern talking.
6:25 Speaker 05 But if you're getting too close to animals, they'll be like, knock it off.
6:28 Speaker 06 Yeah, they'll tell you to back off. Yeah. I'm just kidding. You do have to listen to them.
6:31 Speaker 05 Anyway, that's not where our story is taking place today. We're going to the White River National Forest in Colorado, and more specifically, the North Star Nature Preserve right outside of Aspen. Let's set the scene. It's early May and my friends and I have just finished our winter season working in Aspen and the weather's been warm and sunny lately, so we decided to bust out the paddle boards and have a nice little float down the nature preserve before we all part ways for the summer season. The portion of the roaring fork river we would go down is pretty close to the headwaters, but we knew this water was fairly calm and we knew we couldn't get off our paddle boards inside the nature preserve anyway. Needless to say, we had no intention of getting in this ice cold water. Uh oh, something tells
7:16 Speaker 05 me they're getting this water. What do you think, Wes?
7:20 Speaker 04 No, they didn't have any intentions, so I'm gonna say they don't.
7:26 Speaker 05 Well, let's find out. Everything is going smoothly and we're having a lot of fun telling jokes and sharing stories from our season. You see a lot of interesting characters in Aspen. We turn around and this bend, there's a large male goose in the middle of the river. My friend, who was born and raised in Aspen, was in front and when he saw the goose, he decided to splash water at him. This was really funny at the time because this man had been on countless outdoor adventures, living in Aspen his whole life, and he thought a goose would be afraid of water? Hilarious.
7:57 Speaker 06 And I would have to say, like for people. Picturing this, this is probably a Canada goose. If they're an hasp, that's gotta be the species they're talking about. Yeah.
8:08 Speaker 05 Afraid, are they afraid of water, Wes?
8:10 Speaker 06 No, they're pretty, I mean, they like water, but I think if you splashed water at one, it would be like aggressive enough. It might scare it off still.
8:18 Speaker 05 So you don't find it hilarious?
8:20 Speaker 06 I, I don't think it was like a silly thing to do.
8:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, you think that would scare a goose off?
8:27 Speaker 06 It could, yeah.
8:28 Speaker 05 Sure. Well, let's see what happens. Once I looked up and saw what was happening, I realized the male goose was heading straight in my direction. I decided I'd stick close to the shore and give him plenty of space to go around me. What I did not realize was he was heading for the female goose who was sitting on her eggs next to shore. The same shore I decided to get close to. Okay, I think it's time for some backstory regarding my relationship with geese. Terrified of them. When I was about six years old, there were some geese living around the pond at my grandma's property. We would see them pretty often and I always tried to keep our distance.
9:07 Speaker 05 However, the male goose had no intentions of keeping his distance and would often walk up to the cars in the driveway. He would see his reflection in the cars and start getting really angry and territorial. This was all fun and games until we needed to actually use the cars. We would come up with ways to get around him, like everybody getting in the car on the passenger side, or even one person running into the car and moving elsewhere to pick everyone else up. As you can imagine, this got very old, very fast, but that wasn't the final straw. One day I was playing on my little swing set as toddlers do, and this goose was eyeing me. I was alone and there was my grandma cooking dinner and would periodically check on me through the window.
9:50 Speaker 05 She called to tell me dinner was ready and then she saw the situation I was in. The goose was right next to the swing I was on and there is no way he wasn't going to attack me as soon as I got off. I asked my grandma what I should do and she said I should make a run for it and she'd close the door behind me as soon as I got inside. I saw no problem with this plan because I was six and afraid. I jumped off the swing and ran as fast as my little toddler legs would let me.
10:14 Speaker 06 Is a six year old a toddler?
10:16 Speaker 05 I was just thinking, no.
10:18 Cassandra Yahnian? No.
10:19 Speaker 05 A six year old's a kid, like a, that's like.
10:21 Cassandra Yahnian? Like a young child.
10:22 Speaker 05 Have toddler legs.
10:24 Cassandra Yahnian? A toddler's like two or three.
10:26 Speaker 05 She's not a toddler.
10:29 Speaker 04 She's seventy two months old.
10:31 Speaker 05 Her legs had to catch up with her.
10:38 Speaker 05 I was not fast enough. The goose ended up biting the back of my leg. I still have a scar to this day. Wow. I eventually made it inside, scarred physically and emotionally. Later that evening, my grandpa ended up shooting and killing the geese for messing with his baby girl. That's East Texas for you, though.
10:57 Speaker 04 Glad we got that backstory. I didn't, I didn't read Elaine's autobiography before recording, so it's good to know.
11:05 Speaker 05 You gave this lowest reader like the longest story, I think. Okay, we're back on the roaring fork. I'm having fun. We're back on the roaring fork river in Colorado. And I'm twenty four now, still deathly afraid of geese. I heard the hissing from the female goose behind me, and that's when I realized what was happening. I was too close to the female and the eggs, and the male goose was coming to defend them. I feel like it's always the person who's most afraid who puts himself in like the worst situation and all of these. I was too close to the female and the eggs, and the male goose was coming to defend them. I wish I could say I was able to just paddle away from them and everything was okay. But this is not the case. The female goose was within arms reach of me, and at this point she stood up,
11:48 Speaker 05 wings open, ready to attack. So what did I do? I threw my paddle at her. I missed. And I jumped into the river, the freezing river. The one geese can very easily swim in. This reaction was not very park ranger of me, but I was pretty sure I blacked out, and this was purely instinct. I swam over to my other friend and hopped on her paddleboard, fully panicking and cold. What I did not realize at the time, but my friends told me later, was that when I was paying attention to the female goose, the male goose was already lunging at me from behind. So she's getting it like velociraptors.
12:25 Speaker 05 If I, if I would have stayed on the paddleboard for even a second longer, he would have bitten me. So maybe my instincts were on the right side this time. Who knows? I made our friend who was flashing the geese in the beginning, go retrieve my paddle and my board. He was not thrilled, but ended up getting them successfully. The sun had just fallen behind the mountains, so it's getting cold fast, especially since I was wet. Luckily, we were close to the end and I just tried to get to the car as fast as we could. I'm still traumatized, but at least I didn't get bit this time.
12:55 Danielle LaRock? They have teeth, right, Wes? Like little?
12:58 Speaker 06 So they have what's called conical papillae.
13:01 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
13:02 Speaker 06 And it's like they're made of keratin and they look like teeth, but they're not as hard or as sharp as teeth are. And it's just for like tearing up vegetation. So it's not, their bites aren't that bad.
13:15 Danielle LaRock? Cause she did say she still has a scar from one.
13:17 Speaker 06 I, yeah. I wonder, yeah, I wonder if the scar is from, cause what they can do is like bite and kind of tear away and that could like maybe open your skin. But from like everything I have seen and heard from people that own geese, it's more like a pressure bite than it is like a ripping, tearing bite.
13:36 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
13:37 Speaker 06 So you don't usually like have your skin getting broken or anything like that.
13:40 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
13:41 Speaker 05 Maybe like a kid has soft skin or something.
13:44 Speaker 06 Yeah.
13:44 Danielle LaRock? Cause she was a toddler, right? Yeah.
13:48 Speaker 05 Uh, and then it fishes. I do feel that Canadian geese often get a bad rep for situations like this, even though this was fully my fault. I don't know if it's fully her fault.
13:57 Danielle LaRock? It was the guy's fault.
13:58 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, he's the one who splashed and started this whole thing.
14:01 Speaker 05 Yeah. The, I mean, the goose did go straight at it. I do love all animals. Maybe geese just a little less, but I realized they have their own instincts and I was just in the line of fire. I'm not sure if this will make it onto the podcast. I think it will.
14:17 Speaker 06 It did.
14:18 Speaker 04 We'll see.
14:20 Speaker 05 Thank you for taking the time to read my story. Enjoy the view, but watch your back because there might be a goose attacking you.
14:27 Speaker 06 Jeff, that was some great reading.
14:29 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
14:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:30 Speaker 06 Good story. Yeah.
14:33 Speaker 05 I got a little burnt out by the end.
14:35 Speaker 06 No.
14:37 Danielle LaRock? You're like, I gotta go first.
14:38 Speaker 06 10 out of 10.
14:40 Danielle LaRock? I'm gonna fade back.
14:42 Speaker 04 Gotta go lay down, take a break.
14:44 Speaker 05 I think it's fine to like hate a few types of animals.
14:48 Speaker 06 Sure.
14:48 Speaker 05 Because if you love all animals, then like the really good animals don't get, it's like they're mixed in with the ones you don't.
14:55 Speaker 06 That's my, that's my problem. Everyone's always like, you say every animal is your favorite animal. We did, we did a goose subscriber episode and I just want to say they are like, it's an intimidation animal. It's not, there's no like real danger from geese. A lot of people are afraid of geese and there's those videos of them like flying at people and people stumbling over themselves to get away from them. I think your risk is so much higher getting hurt running from a goose than just like standing your ground and kind of taking whatever it is gonna try and give you. That's just my two cents.
15:29 Danielle LaRock? I mean, they do a great job of intimidating because I.
15:32 Speaker 06 Yeah.
15:33 Danielle LaRock? I don't know if I've ever been like, I don't know, maybe I have been attacked by a goose or whatever, but they do a great job.
15:40 Speaker 06 They do, but if you stand your ground, like it's, it's probably gonna stop. And even if it doesn't, all it's gonna do is like hate you with its wings and maybe nip at you. And it's gonna feel like absolutely nothing, but if you run in a panic, you might break your ankle or like run into a car or who knows?
15:58 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
15:58 Speaker 05 It is hard to just like not react.
16:01 Speaker 06 Window. Yeah, it is hard.
16:03 Speaker 05 When I was in Guatemala as like a Mormon missionary, there's this little house that had just the biggest goose ever. And it would like always try to bite me when I was walking up the stairs. I could have easily fallen down those stairs.
16:17 Speaker 06 Yeah. Domestic geese are different too, because they're like super habituated and can be a lot meaner.
16:25 Cassandra Yahnian? What about swans? I've heard that swans are really mean.
16:29 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's the same thing, though. Like, it's not actually gonna hurt you. You're gonna get a lot more hurt running from it than you would just like handling it, so. So just stand your ground.
16:39 Speaker 04 Yeah. They have such karate chopable throats. Perfect for a chop. Not like advocating animal violence, but if it comes to it.
16:50 Cassandra Yahnian? I'll keep that in mind next time I get chased by a goose.
16:55 Danielle LaRock? I don't know. We went, the last thing we were chased by were wild horses and Cassie freaked me the
17:01 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
17:01 Danielle LaRock? fuck out. I was so afraid.
17:04 Speaker 05 They chased you?
17:04 Speaker 06 Well, that could kill you.
17:05 Danielle LaRock? They weren't chasing us. They were walking quickly behind us and Cassie.
17:10 Cassandra Yahnian? It was a huge male.
17:12 Speaker 06 I'd be nervous.
17:13 Danielle LaRock? That was falling very close behind us.
17:16 Cassandra Yahnian? It wasn't chasing us, but it was following us very closely and I was walking very fast.
17:21 Danielle LaRock? She ended up running away.
17:23 Cassandra Yahnian? I didn't run. I walked fast.
17:24 Danielle LaRock? You almost, I had to jog and then you went through a fence and I was like, I think I should do it too.
17:30 Speaker 06 Running from ungulates isn't a terrible idea, though. Sometimes they just want you like away from them. It's predators you don't want to run from, but, and then also don't run from a goose. I just want everyone out there just to picture yourself not running from a goose and just do that over and that way when one finally flies at you.
17:47 Speaker 04 I can't do it, Wes. I can't imagine.
17:50 Cassandra Yahnian? Practice, train for it. When it happens to you, you'll be ready.
17:55 Speaker 05 If you really think it out, like what's the worst thing that's going to happen to you?
17:59 Speaker 06 Yeah.
18:00 Speaker 05 If you just stand there.
18:01 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's not gonna be bad.
18:03 Speaker 04 How about bear spray? Blast a goose in the face with some bear spray.
18:06 Speaker 06 That would work. Let me show you guys. This is the worst thing that can happen to you. Can you guys see that?
18:12 Danielle LaRock? I can't even.
18:12 Speaker 04 Oh, man. I don't want that, Wes.
18:15 Speaker 06 I don't think it'll let me zoom in on it. You can't even see it. That's what a goose bite looks like.
18:20 Danielle LaRock? But what if you're a toddler?
18:22 Speaker 06 Yeah.
18:22 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Do you have a little image of a toddler?
18:25 Speaker 06 Then I don't.
18:28 Danielle LaRock? I feel like Elena needs to defend herself now and send in a picture of her scar and then you can be the judge.
18:33 Speaker 06 I don't and and like I don't blame anyone for being afraid of a goose coming at him because I've seen grizzly bears run from geese like they can be very intimidating, but I'm just want people to focus on you don't need to be intimidated.
18:46 Danielle LaRock? Okay. All right.
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19:21 Danielle LaRock? Well, I can go next, I guess. Let's hear it.
19:25 Speaker 06 Let's go.
19:25 Danielle LaRock? Mine is titled, The Unexpected Company: A Thrilling Trip to the Outhouse.
19:31 Speaker 04 Oh.
19:32 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, they're always thrilling.
19:34 Speaker 06 Mike had a thrilling trip to the outhouse recently.
19:36 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. Every day, a new adventure.
19:40 Danielle LaRock? Do you care to share or do you want me to?
19:41 Speaker 04 Okay. Do you care to let me share?
19:44 Danielle LaRock? Maybe. Yeah. Let's get through this one first.
19:47 Speaker 04 We'll paywall. We'll paywall that story if you guys want to hear that.
19:50 Danielle LaRock? Okay, yeah.
19:51 Speaker 04 It'll be on Tooth and Claws Patreon.
19:57 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Hi, ladies. Longtime listener here. When I had a chilling encounter with an animal this weekend, I knew I had to send in my tale. I'm from Lethbridge, Alberta, and the story takes place at my grandma's cabin out on some land near Cardston, Alberta, also near Waterton Lakes National Park. My husband, brother, cousin, and I decided to do a quick overnighter at the cabin last weekend. By the time we started driving out there, it was starting to get dark. The cabin is located quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Down multiple dirt roads off the highway and through multiple barbed wire fences to keep animals out. In the winter, we usually have to hike in due to the massive snowdrifts on these backroads. This trip, we didn't expect too much snow, so we decided to drive the truck all the way up to the cabin. As we were making the trip in, we plowed through a couple small
20:41 Danielle LaRock? drifts of snow, but nothing major. As we turned a corner, we saw a huge patch of snow, but thought we could still make it. My cousin was driving, hit the gas and plowed through, but we quickly realized how deep the snow actually was. The truck high centered and after a good thirty minutes of trying to dig it out, it became clear it was stuck in the nearly four feet of powder.
21:00 Speaker 04 Oh, no.
21:01 Danielle LaRock? I'm like, what? I also don't know when this was sent in because we're, it's eighty degrees here and I know there's snow up there still, but I don't know. We weren't worried, though. My aunt was planning on coming out to the cabin the following day, so we planned on calling her in the morning to bring some gear to pull us out with her truck. We grabbed all our gear and made the short hike into the cabin. Once there, we got settled and sat around a bonfire for a couple hours. Around midnight, we decided to head in for the evening. The boys started grabbing some firewood to keep the fire going inside for the night, and I decided to make a quick trip to the outhouse before bed. The outhouse is located about thirty meters behind the cabin, down a short trail through the trees. As a child, I was always spooked by this trail,
21:42 Danielle LaRock? having to leave the safety and light of the cabin and wander into the dark forest alone, which I think builds character if you never have had to do that. It's why you're sensitive, you know?
21:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's why all the problems in this country exist.
21:56 Speaker 05 So it's why you're afraid of geese.
21:58 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, right.
22:01 Speaker 05 Sorry, that's mean. I feel like I'm being too mean to listen.
22:06 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, stop picking on her. I had a headlamp on, but the batteries were dying and the light was very dim, so I grabbed a bright flashlight at the last minute. I walked down the trail, opened the outhouse door, checking for any bats or little critters that have, that have sometimes gotten in before. All clear, so I shut the door behind me. I opened the toilet lid and my flashlight shines onto the face of a huge animal staring right back at me, only about two feet away from my flashlight. All I, all I could see before I slammed the toilet lid down in a panic were two huge green eyes, a very large head, much bigger than mine, with brown fur and a small snout.
22:44 Speaker 05 Bigfoot.
22:44 Danielle LaRock? It's gotta be, right? What else could it be?
22:48 Speaker 06 A black bear.
22:49 Danielle LaRock? I stood there completely frozen trying to figure out what to do. It was big enough that the only thing it could be was a bear or a cougar. I couldn't get a good enough look to tell for sure. I figured a bear couldn't possibly fit under the outhouse, so it was probably a cougar. There's a decent sized hole in the ground at the base of the side of this outhouse to scoop out the you know what? Which was how the animal got in. I was trying to hear if it had left or was still underneath me, but it was completely silent. Adrenaline was coursing through my body and all I could hear was my heartbeat pounding in my ears as I stood there motionless clutching my flashlight. It's like just walk out of there. Like, why are you still standing in there?
23:26 Cassandra Yahnian? I don't know if there's that hole that it can come in and out. Maybe she's worried if she leaves.
23:30 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah, that it like it's not gonna come out the toilet, maybe.
23:34 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
23:35 Speaker 04 I honestly think it's a little rude to not just go to the bathroom anyway. That bear obviously is waiting for you to.
23:41 Cassandra Yahnian? Mouth open.
23:42 Speaker 04 Give it some food or whatever.
23:45 Danielle LaRock? Oh, God. Oh, okay. Oh, I guess I could have just read one more sentence. I figured if it was a cougar and it had slinked out from under the outhouse, it's possible it could pounce on me if I ran back to the cabin. I dreadfully remembered that our truck was completely stuck and we have no way out and have very patchy cell service. If I had gotten hurt, it would be a very dangerous situation. I felt safe in the outhouse with the door locked behind me, but felt a rush of terror course through me, realizing a huge animal was right underneath me and could easily do some damage to me once I opened the door, which I would have to do eventually. There's a small mesh window on the outhouse door and I peered through it, trying to spot the predator, but could see nothing. I knew lots of safety tips on what to do if it was a bear, but I wasn't so sure if it was a cougar.
24:30 Danielle LaRock? Should I just book it back to the cabin? Should I scream for help and be big and loud? The boys had finished gathering wood at this point and we were and were inside the cabin. I knew my husband would come out eventually to see what was taking me so long, but I didn't want him to get too close if the animal was out there waiting.
24:48 Speaker 04 She's usually in there for 45 minutes, but it's been like an hour.
24:55 Danielle LaRock? I thought I had only been there for a few minutes, but later learned it had been closer to 20 of me just literally standing there completely frozen. I saw someone came, come out of the cabin in the distance and a light started walking towards me. Not wanting to risk someone else's life if this animal was out there waiting, I figured now was my chance. I fling open the outhouse door and sprint through the snow towards the cabin, not looking back. I flew past my husband who was confused and asked, are you okay? I said, no, get in the cabin quick. Once safe inside, I explained to everyone what I saw and we were all trying to figure out what it was. Are you sure it wasn't just a raccoon? My husband asked. I would the way I would. Don't gaslight me right now.
25:39 Speaker 06 Man explaining.
25:40 Speaker 05 She doesn't know what it was.
25:42 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, but she just described like a pretty. A huge animal. And then a raccoon face in a toilet is gonna be like this big, right?
25:51 Speaker 05 They are pretty recognizable to you.
25:54 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
25:55 Speaker 04 He's like, are you sure it wasn't a mouse?
25:58 Danielle LaRock? I couldn't say for sure what I saw, but I knew it was much bigger than a raccoon. It's a bear or cougar, I told him confidently. My heart finally stopped racing for some time and we all drift off to sleep. In the morning, we all decided to go out to the outhouse and check for any scat or tracks, not having anything to protect us like a gun or bear spray. We made use of what we had, which were hot dog sticks and a hatchet. Aren't hot dogs sticks like very thin?
26:25 Speaker 04 It depends on how big the hot dogs are here.
26:28 Danielle LaRock? That's right. Or are they metal? I'm thinking of just like, I guess, I don't know.
26:32 Speaker 06 I think you could have metal ones. I, I wouldn't feel at all confident with a hot dog stick. If there's a bear in an outhouse. So yeah.
26:41 Danielle LaRock? I stood back at the start of the trail, too scared to get any closer, watching as the boys slowly walked up to the outhouse and opened the door. My husband shouted out to me that the hole on the side of the outhouse was much larger than it was the last time he had seen it. My cousin slowly opened the toilet lid with the hot dog stick he was wielding, and with a flashlight in the other hand, peered inside. We didn't expect whatever it was to still be in there, but after several long seconds, I heard my cousin say, holy frick, bro, it's a bear. Who says frick? Holy frick. Holy frick, it's a bear.
27:13 Speaker 04 Did he just call his wife, bro?
27:15 Danielle LaRock? No, it was her, the cousin.
27:17 Speaker 04 Okay. Fell off there a little bit, sorry.
27:21 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, that would be a travesty. This approximately 300 pound bear had made the cozy underside of our outhouse into a den for the winter. He had dug deep down into the ground and made it bigger, along with the opening on the side that could now accommodate him to go in and out. The bear was completely silent once again, unbothered by the shocked faces peering down at him. The boys came running back to the cabin, all shocked to see the unknown animal I saw just feet away from me last night was indeed a massive bear. We left shortly after that, after another one of my cousins came out to pull out our truck. He also wanted to take a peek at the bear, and when he peered into the toilet, said, yep, that right there's a bear in the crapper, all right?
28:04 Speaker 06 That's what Mike would say.
28:06 Speaker 04 I don't talk like that. Never said anything close to that in my life.
28:11 Speaker 06 I feel like, I feel like you would do like your spangled toothed boar cat.
28:15 Speaker 04 Oh, I guess. If I'm putting on, okay.
28:18 Danielle LaRock? What's that?
28:20 Speaker 06 It's a, it's an animal Mike made up, but he says it so confidently that people constantly wonder if it's a real animal. But yeah.
28:28 Speaker 04 I can't, I'd lived in Georgia for a few years, so sometimes I put a little twang in the voice when I'm talking about the spangled toothed boar cats.
28:34 Danielle LaRock? Gotcha.
28:37 Danielle LaRock? Hopefully the bear just moves on once the warmer weather hits, but we will definitely need to seal up that huge hole it dug on the side of the outhouse to prevent our furry friend from setting up camp next winter. Needless to say, I now have a serious fear of outhouses and will be squatting in the trees from now on. Thank you for listening. I absolutely love the podcast and I'm thrilled to have my very own trail tale to tell from now on. I feel like that's probably one of the worst case scenarios for what's in the toilet.
29:04 Speaker 06 It happens more than you might think too. Like, there's a few stories of people getting bit while they're like going to the bathroom and outhouses by black bears.
29:14 Danielle LaRock? Do you think that it was so kind of docile and unbothered because it was in some sort of hibernation or what?
29:21 Speaker 06 I don't know. I, I have a hard time, like it could have been hibernating. Yeah, it just started raining.
29:28 Speaker 05 I heard you like mute it and then just bring it right back.
29:30 Speaker 06 You can hear it right now?
29:32 Danielle LaRock? It's ambiance. Yeah.
29:33 Speaker 06 Shoot, sorry. It just started pouring. It seems like it's gonna be really quick though. But, sorry, it's raining a little bit on my end. But, uh, yeah, I, I have a hard time believing that it was like fully hibernating in there, but they will sometimes eat human excrement. Um, just like when food is hard to find, they'll go into outhouses and like eat some of our shit. And that's my guess is it was just in there like trying to get a easy winter meal. Sometimes black bears will wake up from hibernation and just look for food and it probably found the outhouse and was like, oh yeah, I'll just dig into here for a little bit. It's possible it was hibernating in there if it's like not an outhouse that sees a lot of use, but I kind of think it was probably just looking for some food.
30:18 Speaker 05 Where its head was like out of the hole, right? When she lifted the lid up?
30:22 Speaker 06 Yeah.
30:22 Speaker 05 I feel like it wasn't like groggy or anything. It was kind of like alert.
30:26 Speaker 06 They can, they can come out of their hibernation pretty quickly. Like, it doesn't take long for, we call them very efficient hibernators because they can come out of it within a matter of minutes. But I agree with Jeff, it would take it a little bit longer to not be groggy and like be that kind of reactive. So, I, I don't, I tend to think this one wasn't fully hibernating.
30:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's kind of lucky for her that its head was like right in the hole. Cause I feel like you don't like wanna look down through the outhouse before you go to the bathroom.
30:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, right. That's true.
30:58 Speaker 05 So it could have been bitter. Could have been bitter. Yeah.
31:00 Speaker 06 Yeah.
31:00 Speaker 04 I like imagining this listener at like Coachella or something where there's just rows and rows of outhouses just freaked out of their mind.
31:08 Danielle LaRock? She's like, I can't go back.
31:10 Speaker 04 Serious fear of outhouses. Can't go to Bonnaroo this year. There's too many of them.
31:15 Speaker 06 They have a reoccurring dream where an outhouse is chasing them around the kitchen table in socks.
31:21 Danielle LaRock? I know it's not technically an outhouse, but remember that movie? It was like the Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but it was in India.
31:27 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. Slumdog?
31:28 Speaker 06 Yeah.
31:28 Danielle LaRock? Slumdog Millionaire. Oh, yeah. That scene that he like goes into all the shit at the bottom of the outhouse to like retrieve. I, I have been changed after seeing that scene. I hate outhouses and I know it's nothing like that, but it makes me like, I could probably throw up right now even thinking about it. Something about human shit is just, it's, it sends me somewhere else.
31:51 Speaker 04 So it affected you negatively? Like you don't like that scene?
31:55 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Yeah. I too have a fear of outhouses from Slumdog Millionaire.
32:02 Speaker 05 But.
32:06 Danielle LaRock? Like, what if I just fall in?
32:08 Speaker 04 Right.
32:09 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. But I have to go in there for something, you know?
32:12 Speaker 05 Yeah. If you like dropped your phone in there, would you just be like, I'm getting an iPhone?
32:16 Danielle LaRock? For sure.
32:17 Speaker 04 A bear probably like drops their phone on purpose in the shit and it's like, oops, gotta go back in the shit.
32:24 Danielle LaRock? Oh, my God. Okay.
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33:52 Cassandra Yahnian? Well, who's up?
33:53 Speaker 06 Wes.
33:55 Speaker 04 Me? Wes? What do you want to do, Wes?
33:57 Speaker 05 Mike, I think you're...
33:57 Speaker 06 Why don't you go? Sorry. It hasn't rained in weeks here. And then suddenly, there's just like a thunderstorm. It was bright blue skies when we started recording.
34:07 Speaker 04 Oh, it's a blessing, Wes.
34:08 Speaker 06 I'll just mute for like another five minutes, but it seems like it's about to pass.
34:12 Speaker 04 Okay, I'll go then. So the title of this story is Bored No More, B-O-A-R apostrophe D. A little teaser for what animal we're talking about there, Jeff. You can take a guess. Hiya, ladies. Love the podcast. Boy, do I have a trail tale for you. That's probably they're talking to me there when they say, boy, do I have a trail tale for you. I've always been a fan of solo hikes. There's something about being alone in nature, just you and the trees, that makes you feel like you've discovered a hidden part of yourself. That's why I found myself alone one day in Titusville, Florida, standing at the entrance of the Enchanted Forest Sanctuary. It sounds magical. Ready to tackle what was supposed to be a peaceful, serene hike. You know, what can go wrong in the enchanted forest? Everything was perfect until it wasn't. The trail wound through thick palms
34:55 Speaker 04 and cypress trees, the sounds of distant birds and rustling leaves creating a calming atmosphere. I was in my element, taking slow, deliberate steps, feeling like a rugged adventurer, ready to conquer the wild. The air was thick with humidity, the kind of sticky, swampy air that you only get in Florida. But I didn't mind. I was in my zone. That's when I heard it. A low grunting noise coming from the trees behind me. I turned just in time to see a large, snorting wild boar emerge from the underbrush. Now, I've seen my fair share of wildlife in Florida. Gators, raccoons, squirrels, that look like they've been hitting the gym, but this was different.
35:30 Speaker 04 I didn't expect that last part. Often go to the gym. This boar was built like a linebacker on steroids and she was staring right at me. I froze. I'd heard stories about wild boars in these parts, how they could be aggressive, how they wouldn't hesitate to charge if they felt threatened. But surely, I thought, this is some kind of Disney-like encounter where the wild animal would just take a sniff and move on. Not this boar, not this movie. She snorted again, louder this time, and turned her head to reveal something that made my stomach drop. What do you think? What do you think she saw behind this boar, Jeff? It's enchanted, right? Yeah.
36:04 Danielle LaRock? So it could be anything.
36:05 Speaker 04 Yeah. Yeah.
36:08 Speaker 04 Like a witch? Yeah, probably. Well, let me keep reading.
36:11 Danielle LaRock? A witch and her boar? Yeah, right.
36:15 Danielle LaRock? We are in Florida, so anything's possible.
36:17 Speaker 04 Right. Yeah, a bundle of meth. In the bushes behind her were a tiny, a handful of tiny wriggling baby boars. Baby boars. Whoa. Cute, right? Until you realize the mama boar is standing between you and the exit. Suddenly, the baby boars weren't so adorable. I did what any sensible person would do in that situation. I panicked. I panicked in a very dignified, composed way, of course, but still, it was panic. My first instinct was to slowly back away, trying not to make eye contact like I was some kind of boar whisperer who understood the delicate balance of nature. Unfortunately, Mama Boar didn't get the memo. Ah.
36:52 Danielle LaRock? It's like my toxic trait is thinking that every animal will pick up on my good vibes and not attack me.
36:59 Speaker 04 So far, so good, right?
37:01 Danielle LaRock? Right, yeah.
37:02 Speaker 04 Maybe, yeah, maybe. Except for that horse.
37:06 Danielle LaRock? That wasn't my fault. I was not alone. And I have a video of that horse and it's legitimately just walking behind us. Couldn't be walking.
37:16 Cassandra Yahnian? They didn't start walking until we walked past it. It's probably my vibes.
37:19 Speaker 04 That's how it starts, though. You know, it's gotta start somehow.
37:21 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
37:22 Speaker 04 Yeah. Did you have some alfalfa in your pocket or something? I'm not trying to victim blame, but.
37:28 Danielle LaRock? Well, we didn't do our research. We had no idea we were, uh, this is actually not a good, it's bad for the brand, but we didn't do any research into where we were going and we were shocked that horses were even there. We had no idea wild horses were even present.
37:42 Cassandra Yahnian? We Googled, are there wild horses here?
37:45 Danielle LaRock? After we saw.
37:45 Cassandra Yahnian? After we were already there. Yeah.
37:47 Speaker 05 That's cool.
37:48 Speaker 06 You had to wait. Are there wild horses here? Is there a horse behind you?
37:53 Danielle LaRock? Well, we didn't know if they were like, I don't know. We were going through everything.
37:56 Cassandra Yahnian? Sure.
37:57 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
37:57 Cassandra Yahnian? I kept saying they were wild, but they were like, I think a few people were like, I think they just let their horses roam free here. Cause we were in Patagonia and I was like, oh, I feel like these are wild.
38:07 Danielle LaRock? And she was right.
38:08 Speaker 05 That's cool.
38:09 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Anyway, the boar.
38:10 Speaker 04 Okay. The boar took one step toward me. Her beady eyes locked onto mine. I tried to keep calm, but my body was betraying me. My heart was pounding like it was trying to escape through my rib cage and my legs were moving in tiny nervous shuffles that felt more like a bad imitation of a moonwalk than an actual retreat.
38:26 Speaker 05 To actually moonwalk would be sweet. Isn't that like Nick Miller in New Girl? When he gets in like a situation he doesn't want to be in?
38:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
38:36 Speaker 05 And he just moonwalks out.
38:38 Speaker 04 The boar would be dumbfounded. Then came the grunt, the kind of grunt that sends chills down your spine because you know it's followed by a full on sprint. I didn't have time to think. I turned and started running. And now I'm no sprinter by any means, but I figured if I could make it back to the entrance, I could wave down a ranger or at least find a tree to climb because you know, wild boars can't climb trees. Right? Wes?
39:00 Speaker 06 That's true. They can't climb trees. It would be a good place to go if you're chased by a boar.
39:04 Speaker 04 Yeah. Shakira should have, was it Shakira who got attacked by a boar?
39:07 Speaker 06 Shakira got attacked by, Shakira's been attacked by like three animals.
39:11 Speaker 04 It's wild.
39:12 Speaker 06 Keep featuring Shakira in our stories.
39:14 Danielle LaRock? Her vibes aren't great.
39:16 Speaker 06 We should get her on a show.
39:17 Danielle LaRock? Bad vibes.
39:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Bad vibes.
39:20 Speaker 04 I'm not Shakira. If you're listening, I like your vibes. Just putting it out there. I glanced over my shoulder and saw her charging after me. Back to the story. This is the not me. This is not editorializing by Mike. This is the story.
39:31 Danielle LaRock? Or Shakira. Right.
39:33 Speaker 04 Neither one of us do. I glanced over my shoulder and saw her charging after me. Oh God, this is it, I thought. I'm gonna be the person who gets mauled by a wild boar in Florida and ends up as a cautionary tale on the show. I took a sharp turn around a tree and dove behind it, hoping she would lose sight of me. But as fate would have it, the tree was not large enough to hide behind completely, and I could hear the boar's hooves getting closer. I imagine just like doing the sideways stand and you're like not quite thin enough to be like
39:58 Danielle LaRock? Like half your body is still.
40:04 Speaker 04 But as fate would have it, the tree was not large enough to hide behind completely, and I could hear the boar's hooves getting closer. It was like a chase scene from an action movie, except instead of dramatic soundtrack, all I heard was my own panicked breathing and the rapid thumping of her hooves. Then, just as I thought I was done for, man, really feeling bad in this situation. Then, just as when I thought I was done for, something really unexpected happened. A small family of raccoons appeared further down the trail, waddling along without a care in the world.
40:31 Danielle LaRock? Oh no.
40:32 Speaker 04 Oh yeah. The mama boar, distracted by the presence of the little trash pandas, screeched to a halt.
40:37 Danielle LaRock? Wow.
40:38 Speaker 04 For a moment, it was like time froze. I could see the raccoons looking at the boar, the boar looking at the raccoons, and then me, still crouched behind the tree, trying to decide if I should make a run for it, or just stay put and hope the universe threw me a bone. Thankfully, the raccoons, who were clearly far more experienced in the art of distracting wild boars than I, waddled past the mama boar without a second glance. The boar, still grunting, turned and decided to return to her babies, completely ignoring me. This is a really funny mental image this is giving me. I waited another five minutes behind that tree before I dared to move. When I finally stood up, my legs were like jelly, and I felt a surge of relief that bordered on euphoria. I'd survived. As I slowly walked back to the entrance, now at a much more leisurely pace, mind you,
41:19 Speaker 04 I couldn't help but laugh at myself. Here I was, a seasoned hiker, nearly taken out by a boar who I thought was getting too close to her precious piglets. I can't say I'll never solo hike again, cuz let's be real, but I will be sure to keep a respectful distance from any wild boar families I come across in the future. Thanks again for creating the best podcast. Keep up the good work, ladies. Aiden. P.S. If you guys are ever in Central Florida, I own a restaurant called Sandbar in Satellite Beach, Florida, and would love to buy y'all lunch. Got great fish tacos.
41:49 Cassandra Yahnian? Great tacos. Boar tacos.
41:53 Danielle LaRock? Exclusively boar tacos.
41:55 Speaker 05 That's crazy that like, yeah, raccoons came out and the boar was just like, I'm kind of confused now.
42:06 Speaker 04 The raccoons just walked through like without acknowledging either the boar or Aiden. It's amazing.
42:11 Danielle LaRock? And the boar's like, I forgot. I forgot what I was doing. Yeah.
42:16 Speaker 05 Cute. Very relatable.
42:19 Danielle LaRock? I mean, they were in an enchanted forest. That seems like an enchanted encounter. Yeah.
42:24 Speaker 05 That's true.
42:25 Speaker 04 Very true.
42:26 Speaker 06 I will say with bears, like they, when a bear gets antagonized and it like wants to charge someone, they get like laser focused on one target. And a good way to, to stop it is to like have other people, you know, be like making noise and kind of trying to give it multiple targets. And so I wonder if that's kind of what happened with this boar where it was focused on this person. But then the raccoon coming out distracted it enough to where it was like, oh, too many things happening. So it just decided to bail.
42:55 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, this one distraction was way too much.
42:58 Speaker 04 If you're out in bear or boar country, just take a raccoon along with you.
43:02 Speaker 06 Yeah, just always have a raccoon.
43:05 Speaker 04 Just toss it out.
43:05 Speaker 06 It's the deterrent we, we really recommend is having a raccoon. Yeah.
43:09 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. I don't know. I think aren't, don't wild boars actually do attack quite a number of people every year?
43:16 Speaker 06 That happens fairly often. Yeah.
43:18 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
43:18 Speaker 06 On our news episodes, we often come across boar attacks. Mike always covers them.
43:23 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
43:24 Speaker 05 Their tusks are like super sharp. Like they can do real damage.
43:29 Speaker 06 Yeah.
43:29 Speaker 04 And they can get huge. If anyone's curious how big they can get, there's pictures out there where a boar is just like weighing down the back half of a truck. Just like almost tipping it on its back wheels.
43:41 Speaker 06 Hogzilla.
43:41 Speaker 04 It's crazy. Yeah. Hogzilla.
43:44 Speaker 06 They're always named Hogzilla every time you see those photos. Yeah, I feel like we don't have the problem with it that some other countries do. We definitely have a lot of feral pigs, but as far as them like attacking people. But I, I don't think we're that far from it either. So.
44:00 Danielle LaRock? I don't think I've ever seen one. I've never seen one either.
44:04 Speaker 06 It's mostly in the South. I think the South is where they have by far the biggest issues with them.
44:09 Danielle LaRock? Well, when we go to the, what was it? Sandbar?
44:12 Speaker 04 Enchanted Forest. Oh.
44:13 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah.
44:16 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, maybe we'll have our moment. Wow.
44:20 Cassandra Yahnian? Moving on to the next story, I can tell one.
44:22 Danielle LaRock? Oh, about the sheep. Yes, we're on to the sheep.
44:25 Speaker 04 I like sheep. I'm excited.
44:28 Cassandra Yahnian? We'll find out if we all like sheep after this.
44:31 Speaker 06 They are.
44:31 Speaker 04 Okay. Yeah, I'll reserve judgment.
44:35 Cassandra Yahnian? This one is titled Counting Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Jumping Over the Moon or Over Me. Hi, Cassie and Danielle. Thanks for letting me write in. My name is Caroline and I heard about your podcast originally when y'all did a collab with Ash and Elena on Morbid. I proceeded to listen to all of your previous episodes and have been keeping up with every episode since. I love how you tailor so many of your stories to the macabre crimes in the outdoors and mysteries in the wilderness. I love to solo hike and backpack with my dog Lucy, so it might be counterintuitive to listen to creepy tales while alone on the trails. But y'all have kept my ears company on many a long trek around the country.
45:12 Cassandra Yahnian? Keep up the good work digging up interesting stories and bringing awareness to lesser known incidents and advocating for trail safety, awareness and intuition. I'm actually writing this after being inspired by Trail Tales 50 that featured some adorably smart dogs. Well, thanks for letting me gush over y'all and I may actually pass out if you read my story on the pod.
45:32 Danielle LaRock? Uh oh.
45:34 Speaker 04 Put some pillows under her quick.
45:38 Cassandra Yahnian? When COVID hit in 2021 and everyone's world was turned upside down, I had just graduated undergrad online during lockdown with my Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science, pre-med, when I decided to take gap years to work as a travel healthcare provider in 2021. My job as an EMT transitioned from transports to emergency vaccine administration to disaster response, think hurricanes, floods, natural disasters, et cetera, and then to a wildland fire medic. These adventures ultimately spurred my newfound passion for traveling, hiking, camping, and exploring this beautiful earth. I've since explored beautiful backcountry and parks across the US. I'm pretty introverted, so solo hiking and social distancing became
46:20 Cassandra Yahnian? super appealing. But when I can, and it's permitted on trails, I always try to let my rescue dog Lucy tag along. I adopted her in Colorado during a vaccine contract, and she's been my partner in crime ever since, helping me through mental health struggles, getting my master's degree in nursing, and of course, all of our outdoor activities. She's an Australian shepherd slash border collie mix who has always had way too much energy for her own good.
46:44 Speaker 04 Australian shepherds and sheep don't get along, do they? Aren't they always trying to hurt them?
46:49 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, good call. Oh. Oh, we. The foreshadowing. So letting her roam the trails with a special beeper, collar, or leash helps her enjoy life, keep me company, and stay safe in the wilderness. Rewind to our third cross-country trip in 2022. We were on our way back to California, crammed in my compact car after expeditions to the Tetons Glacier, as well as various forests in both Montana and Wyoming. This particular expedition was on Booth Creek and turned out to make my top five favorite hikes of all time. Honestly, you can't go wrong on a PNW hike with an Alpine Lake or two to make everything seem okay in the world. It's a pretty highly rated and popular
47:31 Cassandra Yahnian? trail in Vail, but to paint a picture, it's about a nine-mile out-and-back trail dotted with babbling streams. A mild scramble of small boulders and rolling meadows emerging after patches of lightly wooded areas, copious wildflowers, blanket valleys of green grass, and lush terrain up until you get to Booth Lake. At a 3,000 elevation gain, the lake is gorgeous and inviting, especially to my hot and panting doggo. After making sure Lucy's beeper collar was on and secure, I let her take a swim and run along the shore of the lake. I stayed atop a boulder for full view of the landscape and I could keep an eye on her as I rehydrated and munched some carrots and powdered peanut butter. Don't knock it till you try it. Wait, what is it?
48:11 Speaker 04 You snort it?
48:13 Cassandra Yahnian? It gets to your bloodstream a lot quicker if you snort it.
48:16 Speaker 06 Lines of powdered peanut butter.
48:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Don't knock it till you try it.
48:20 Speaker 04 I guess I won't.
48:22 Cassandra Yahnian? So apparently, as I was rummaging through my pack for my water bottle and snack, Lucy heard something. Now, this is usually super helpful if we're on a trail alone and it's kind of sketch, but there was literally nobody around or coming up behind us that I saw at the trailhead or at any point on the trail this far. But when I looked up, she had bolted. I saw a brief flash of black as she shot sprinting through the grassy brush at at least 50 meters and several boulders below me. I called out to her but lost sight of her again. Being the astute herding dog she is, when she sets her mind on chasing something, it's tunnel vision all around. I like to think it's just her animal instinct to herd rather than a blatant disregard for me calling her, although she does have a history of taking
49:05 Cassandra Yahnian? off right after I rescued her that I chalked up to possibly being a traumatic past. However, since then, she would always come back when I called her. I gave it a few seconds more until I stood up and scoured the terrain where I had last seen her. Finally, I spotted her sprinting below me back towards the boulder I was on. Not five seconds later, I see a massive, and I mean massive, rocky mountain bighorn sheep barreling straight towards me. There were some sprouting pine trees and some brush between the cracks in the adjacent boulders that could have offered a slight diversion. Being a six-foot-tall girl, though, I had literally two seconds to figure out how to either hide my body, Or straight up dodge a 500 pound beast with horns hurdling towards me at top
49:49 Cassandra Yahnian? speed with my dog chasing in quick pursuit. So as my life flashed before my eyes, I plastered myself as flat as possible to the ground and covered my head and neck as best as the beast leaped over me.
50:02 Speaker 04 Oh.
50:03 Speaker 05 Wow.
50:04 Cassandra Yahnian? The vision of that, just like looking up.
50:10 Speaker 04 Great mental image.
50:13 Speaker 05 Dude, big numbers on Instagram.
50:17 Cassandra Yahnian? It would.
50:18 Speaker 04 Try and recreate this.
50:20 Cassandra Yahnian? I could feel the wind swish over my legs as the sheep careened over me down the boulder and began scaling the adjacent mountains rock face. And of course, lagging in distance, but not in spirit, was Lucy, who proceeded. That's sweet. That is really sweet. Who proceeded to wholeheartedly channel her inner sheep energy and continued to pursue the animal. Let me tell you, I don't think my heart has raced that fast, nor have I seen a domestic dog sprint that fast in my life.
50:50 Speaker 04 So wait, Lucy didn't hurdle the body?
50:53 Cassandra Yahnian? Over her.
50:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, I wanted, I wanted the dog to jump over it too.
50:57 Cassandra Yahnian? That's what I was envisioning. It was the sheep and then seconds later it was her dog.
51:02 Cassandra Yahnian? Shortly after, I lost sight of both of them. Still spinning from fear but high on adrenaline, I grabbed my pack, Lucy's beeper linked to her collar and started sprinting down the rocks back to the trail where I had picked up in the valley below. Unfortunately, even after several minutes of whistling, pressing her beeper and calling her name, Lucy and the sheep were nowhere to be seen. This wasn't the first time she'd taken off on the trail, but again, she always found her way back. I don't know if she was just too excited to be back in her home state of Colorado where I adopted her, or if it was road trip jitters, but I really thought this time she just wasn't coming back. That must be it. She's like, I can, I can tell I'm in Colorado. Like home sweet home, I'm free. Out of here. Had nothing to do with prey drive and like, yeah.
51:47 Speaker 04 I thought she was from, I thought Lucy was Australian. Did I get that wrong?
51:51 Speaker 05 Australian shepherd.
51:53 Speaker 04 Okay.
51:54 Cassandra Yahnian? Close.
51:56 Cassandra Yahnian? Dejected, hot, and crashing from the intense adrenaline rush, I started making my way back down the trail through the valley, clapping as I went in hopes she would hear it echoing between the mountains. After what seemed like at least five to 10 minutes later, to my absolute relief, I heard rapid, heavy panting from behind me. I whipped around and there she was, happily trotting, tongue lolling as she came to be reunited with me. We finished the trail together and made it back to the trailhead safely. We only ever saw one or two other hikers too, and thank goodness, because I feel like I definitely look like a real noob clapping and yelling to an imaginary companion named Lucy. Since then, I think they probably got that you were calling for your dog.
52:40 Danielle LaRock? Think they got it.
52:41 Speaker 05 It'd be real crazy if you didn't put that together.
52:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Since then, I've kept a closer restraint on her, especially in areas where there have been recent animal sightings. I know how important it is to respect nature and the local inhabitants, and I've gained better perspective on what trails to bring Lucy on. I am actually headed to Solo Backpack near Yosemite, John Muir, Inyo National Forest, in the next few days before starting my first ever nursing job, and I'll definitely be saving and downloading the newest episodes of NPAD to enjoy during my treks. Lucy won't be there, but I'm counting on y'all to keep me company. Well, ladies, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this tale, and if y'all ever want to know how my dumb ass handled encountering a grizzly in the backcountry of Montana without bear spray, I'd be happy to share that embarrassing escapade as well. Until then, stay adventurous and watch your back. Caroline and Lucy.
53:30 Danielle LaRock? You should send that into Tooth and Claw, I feel like.
53:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, seriously. Yeah, I think it's kinda crazy you sent the sheep story in before the grizzly bear story.
53:38 Speaker 05 She got hurdled by it.
53:39 Speaker 04 That's true. This is pretty remarkable. Bears usually don't hurdle people like that. Not usually.
53:45 Danielle LaRock? That would be a view. I just can't help to think of all the places for that sheep to be. You had to go over me like this much space. I mean, like, what?
53:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, go around.
53:58 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, go around.
53:59 Speaker 05 Like, once you find your dog again, because she kinda thought maybe she lost Lucy for a sec. So like, I feel like once you're reunited, you're just so happy with like, pet her and be like, oh, and like. And then you kind of make her feel like she is a good dog for all of that. Yeah.
54:16 Danielle LaRock? I've been guilty of that.
54:17 Speaker 05 I'm so happy to see you. Yeah. And then it's Lucy's just like, oh yeah, she loved that. She loved that I chased that sheep.
54:28 Danielle LaRock? I've been in that situation with my, my dog Blue many times and then I would immediately get mad. It's like, I'm so happy to see you, but I'm also pissed at you. And then I would also, I would always be yelling his name, similar to, you know, her saying Lucy. But I would be yelling, Blue, come. And then I would just say it so much. I'm like, I feel like I'm just saying, Blue, come. Like screaming it out.
54:54 Speaker 05 See, that one I would think like this.
54:57 Speaker 04 Maybe there's something wrong with this person.
54:59 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, exactly.
55:00 Speaker 04 I'd be like, maybe I can help.
55:06 Danielle LaRock? Oh God, yeah. Well.
55:09 Speaker 06 I will say like recently in the news, there's been a lot of stuff in Colorado with moose and people, like their dogs antagonizing moose and then bringing them back to the person. And then the moose, you know, kicks or tramples the person and that can happen with a lot of animals. So it is like you're taking a risk if your dog's off leash around wild animals. There's a, a chance that it's going to make something really angry and then bring it back to you. So, um, yeah, it's just, it's something we talked about a lot with bears too.
55:38 Danielle LaRock? That feels like revenge of your dog.
55:39 Speaker 05 That was a crazy joke by Mike. Sorry.
55:44 Speaker 05 Sorry, I just hung up on Mike.
55:48 Speaker 05 I didn't mean to interrupt.
55:51 Speaker 06 What were you saying, Cassie?
55:53 Speaker 05 Yeah, sorry.
55:54 Danielle LaRock? I was saying, I feel like that's a revenge of the dog. Like you're, you do something to your dog that it doesn't like. And then it brings a moose to attack you.
56:02 Speaker 06 You're not going to give me your scraps, huh? Here's a moose.
56:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, no, it it. So my my mentor right now is writing a paper on dogs and bears and how they interact and and the safety messaging is really changing around them because we used to kind of say, oh, a dog can be a good deterrent for bears. And I think more and more we're learning that they actually antagonize much more than they deter. So
56:27 Cassandra Yahnian? Interesting.
56:27 Speaker 06 You gotta be especially off leash.
56:29 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, that's really interesting. We have a ton of black bears in my neighbor. I just saw one yesterday, actually. And now that it's like the season that they're especially up around me, the dogs, we used to go for all these walks. And now, because we have two of them, I'm like, let's stay in the yard a little bit more than we normally would, because I just don't know.
56:47 Speaker 06 We grew up, me and Jeff had a black lab growing up, and she was like, so passive and didn't bark at anything. Like, we constantly had deer in the yard, they didn't bother or whatever. And then we were with her once, and when she saw a black bear, and she lost her mind, like, was just barking and snarling and growling. There's just like an enmity there that is deep seated. And sometimes dogs will really go hard when they see a bear.
57:10 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, we have a black lab shepherd mix. And he hates bears. He's come across them a couple of times. Once, when we were camping, he treed a bear. And another time, what actually two different times, he saw them from the car when they were off the road, and he immediately snarling, growling, like lunging at the window. And we're in the car, we didn't even see the bear. One of the times at first, and we're like, what is happening? And we look, and there's just one dipping off the side of the road into the woods.
57:38 Speaker 06 Yeah.
57:39 Cassandra Yahnian? Like, oh, you really don't like bears.
57:42 Speaker 06 Yeah, and they can do it with sheep, too.
57:44 Cassandra Yahnian? I guess so. I guess so.
57:55 Speaker 06 All right. Do you guys want me to go?
57:56 Cassandra Yahnian? I think you're the last one up. What if we're just like, no, we're good. Let's go on to questions.
58:01 Speaker 06 Nah, we're good, Wes. Before I go, I will have to say, I want to apologize to our goose victim, because I think we were a little dismissive. And I did find some more photos that looked a lot worse than the one I shared with like, some bruising and and a little bit of torn skin. So they definitely could have a scar. Especially as a six year old, like toddler. Get some, yeah. It's a tiny, tiny baby toddler. Yeah.
58:22 Cassandra Yahnian? We apologize.
58:23 Speaker 06 You just apologized.
58:26 Speaker 06 Now you ruined it. Oh, I can't help myself. All right. Okay, this one is called, "Don't Put Bleach On It." Hello ladies, love you both, love the pod, let's get into it. I've been sitting on this one for a while now. This happened in March 2021, almost four years ago to the day that I'm writing this. Though this did not happen in a national park, it did happen outdoors, and I think it's worth sharing. This time of year, every spring break season, I think about what happened to me on Florida's Gulf Coast. Ooh, another Florida story. This could be anything, you know, it could be a python, it could be an alligator.
58:57 Cassandra Yahnian? There's so many things you shouldn't put bleach on. And all of those are on the list.
59:02 Speaker 06 For some background, I grew up going to Florida, going to Florida almost every year, visiting my grandparents for Easter break in the 90s and early 2000s. I was familiar with the Atlantic Ocean and its dangers, high tides, rip currents, jellyfish, sharks, et cetera. However, my older sister moved to Clearwater, Florida in 2016, and my eyes were opened to Florida's Gulf Coast. Clearwater Beach with its sugar white sand and clear, warm emerald water. It was so different from the Florida beaches I was used to. Okay, back to 2021, I was now a fan of the Gulf Coast. So when my partner and I were discussing potential spring break vacation destinations with his sister, this area was top of mind. At the time, his sister had a young child and another baby on the way. So our plan was to pick a less populated, more family-friendly beach on the coast.
59:48 Speaker 06 Clearwater Beach is extremely popular with the party crowd and understandably is packed this time of year. Jeff, have you been there? Have you partied in Clearwater Beach before? I haven't, to paint the scene. All right, I'll paint it, it's packed with party crowd. Picture that. Yeah, I watched it on TV a lot as a kid. Yeah. MTV gave me a good idea of what was going on. I paused many times just to really get the idea of what Clearwater Beach looked like.
1:00:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Especially like Adult Swim.
1:00:20 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah.
1:00:21 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
1:00:22 Speaker 06 The commercials, like at 2 AM, those commercials were lit.
1:00:27 Speaker 06 All right. They say not our thing. We ultimately landed on Treasure Island. Ooh, about forty five minutes south down the coast. It was perfect. Definitely still touristy, but less crowded and plenty to do in the area. Plus, the Muppets have been there. Treasure Island.
1:00:42 Speaker 05 How do you think?
1:00:42 Speaker 06 That's true.
1:00:43 Speaker 05 It's the name Treasure Island. Like, do you just have one person found treasure there?
1:00:48 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:00:48 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. It's all takes, really.
1:00:50 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:00:50 Danielle LaRock? Just once.
1:00:51 Speaker 05 I, I wouldn't assume I could find treasure there.
1:00:54 Speaker 06 No, but you might. You never know. If I were to go to any island to look for treasure, I'd go to Treasure Island.
1:00:59 Speaker 05 See, I think that's a mistake.
1:01:01 Speaker 06 Hiding the treasure on brown side.
1:01:03 Speaker 05 Saturated by that.
1:01:04 Speaker 06 All right. I'm, that's where I'm going though, still. Definitely still touristy, but less crowded, plenty to do in the area. We got a condo across the street from the beach with a grocery store right next door. I think this happened on the second or third day of our trip. I remember because we were already sunburned from day one. Did I mention we're from Ohio? So at this point in time, our bodies hadn't seen the sun in many months. It was a day just as beautiful as the previous one, sunny and eighty degrees with calm, clear water. My partner loves the water and is typically the first one in. I happily ran after him, following him in a straight line as he entered the water. I was following him pretty much step for step. The water wasn't even waist deep yet. And then it happened. Sudden, sharp pain in the bottom of my right foot.
1:01:45 Speaker 06 My foot never touched the sand on that step. I remember bringing it down through the heavy water when all of a sudden it was met with something that I pictured in my, in my mind to be a jagged shard of glass that went all the way through my foot. Jeff, you don't like that. That was like the Final Destination thing. Yeah.
1:02:01 Speaker 05 Glass injuries. Yeah.
1:02:03 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:02:03 Speaker 05 Hopefully it's not glass.
1:02:06 Speaker 06 I don't think it is.
1:02:06 Speaker 05 Fingers crossed it's not glass.
1:02:09 Speaker 06 Glass attack. I bet Quentin Tarantino hates that scene even more than you, Jeff. Seeing those feet get all mangled.
1:02:15 Speaker 05 I think he just likes any feet stuff.
1:02:17 Speaker 06 Yeah. Even with like glass poking all the way through them?
1:02:20 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
1:02:21 Speaker 06 Maybe it's been long enough that like, that's what he needs now.
1:02:24 Danielle LaRock? He's got to keep it interesting. Yeah.
1:02:26 Speaker 06 Yeah. He's a little desensitized to just regular feet.
1:02:30 Speaker 05 What was it, glass?
1:02:32 Speaker 06 Uh, I don't know. We're about to get to that, I think. I can't remember the sound I made, but I know I made one because my partner turned and immediately saw that I was not okay. I don't think it was a scream because I hadn't quite gotten the attention in the entire beach just yet. Yes, I said yet. A frowny face emoji.
1:02:50 Speaker 06 Maybe more of a reactive sort of yelp? I don't know. I immediately turned around and started walking or hopping back toward the shore. Have you ever had an injury that hurts so bad that you were afraid to look at it? I hadn't looked at my foot yet, but from the immediate and near paralyzing pain I felt, I thought that maybe my foot was going to be shredded, blood everywhere. A hospital stay in my future. I had no idea what just happened to me. Jeffrey recently had an injury that I didn't want to look at.
1:03:17 Speaker 04 Give us a choice.
1:03:19 Danielle LaRock? It's kind of weird. I'm like rolodexing in my mind. All of which.
1:03:23 Speaker 04 All of his injuries. I'll give you a clue. It's in his butthole.
1:03:28 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah.
1:03:29 Speaker 05 It wasn't easy to get a picture of that.
1:03:32 Speaker 04 It's impressive. You got a great angle, like very clearly showed it what the problem was.
1:03:37 Speaker 05 It's an interesting reaction. I feel like no matter how bad it is, I would like, want to make sure my foot's going to be okay.
1:03:45 Danielle LaRock? I would immediately look.
1:03:46 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah. An interesting reaction to just be like, if I don't look, it's gonna be okay. It's not real until I look at it.
1:03:56 Speaker 06 Yeah. I got to shore, my partner right behind me. And as much as I was afraid to look, I had to assess the situation. What were we dealing with here? One, two, three, I held my breath and flipped my foot over to see one tiny little cut on the bottom of my foot. I don't even remember there being much blood at all. But when we talk about this now, my partner insists there's plenty of blood coming out of the tiny wound.
1:04:17 Speaker 04 Oh, good partner.
1:04:19 Speaker 06 Yeah. I guess for me, what I saw just did not match the extreme pain I was feeling. It's the power of venom, you know? I sat there on the beach towel with my partner and his sister, and her husband gathered around me, asking me what had happened. I told them I had no idea. I must have stepped on something, but the pain was excruciating. We were all pretty confused, looking at this tiny wound and wondering how it could be as painful as it was. I'm generally an introverted person and I like my privacy when on vacation. I want to enjoy my time with the people I'm with. Don't like causing a scene or having attention on me, especially in such a public place where everyone is trying to enjoy themselves and have a good time. I also don't like asking for help. I recognize that I have a really hard time with that. So I continued to sit there on my towel, holding my foot, trying to breathe through it
1:05:04 Speaker 06 and hope that the pain would just magically dissipate, which it did not. It got worse. After about three minutes, I started yelling out in pain. People were starting to notice something was going on. My partner sat with me and after a few more minutes, I looked at him and desperately said I needed help. He had said that he noticed an ambulance down the beach and he would bring back help. He ran Baywatch style next to the ambulance that drove along the beach and parked close to where we were sitting. So he ran in slow motion then.
1:05:31 Speaker 09 Yeah, you gotta get there fast.
1:05:36 Speaker 06 I wish I could have focused more on my hot shirtless hero running down the beach, but I was so focused on breathing and moaning through the pain. I guess I haven't completely described it yet. Have you ever had a muscle cramp in the middle of the night in your foot or calf muscle? I call it a charlie horse, but not sure if most people are familiar with the term. Basically, it's an involuntary muscle spasm. That's the only thing that comes to mind to compare it to. The muscles in my foot contracting, combined with burning pain, going up into my leg muscles. Was it spreading? Was whatever this was going to kill me? I think it was not knowing what it was that was making me panic. We saw nothing in the water. If a shark had bitten me, we would have known pretty quickly what was going on.
1:06:15 Danielle LaRock? Do you have any guesses?
1:06:16 Speaker 06 I'm almost positive what it is and I haven't read this story yet. I would bet money it's a stingray.
1:06:22 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:06:23 Speaker 06 Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say to you.
1:06:25 Danielle LaRock? Just because of the action of like stepping down.
1:06:28 Speaker 06 Stepping and then like a little pinprick hole like that. Their barbs don't really do much damage, but it really hurts. Everyone that I know that's been stung by stingrays say it's an incredible pain. And just like.
1:06:40 Speaker 05 Shallow water like that.
1:06:42 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:06:43 Danielle LaRock? Versus.
1:06:43 Speaker 05 Like to hang out right there.
1:06:45 Danielle LaRock? Jellyfish or something.
1:06:46 Speaker 06 And a jellyfish wouldn't, there wouldn't be any bleeding or anything with the jellyfish.
1:06:50 Danielle LaRock? Oh, right.
1:06:50 Speaker 06 But no bleeding.
1:06:51 Danielle LaRock? Cause of the bleeding. We were, I was, um, I have good vibes. So I was not attacked by the jellyfish, but, um.
1:07:01 Speaker 06 Of course not.
1:07:02 Danielle LaRock? I know, but I was witness to it. And I was with my best friend, Nataia in Ibiza or Ibiza, whatever you want to say. And we were at this, uh, nude beach and we're like, this is so great. And like, we like go right in and like, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden we realized that we were kind of surrounded by a bunch of jellyfish.
1:07:23 Speaker 06 Oh, no.
1:07:24 Danielle LaRock? But we didn't, we weren't familiar with like.
1:07:26 Speaker 05 They're just trying to get a look.
1:07:28 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:07:28 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't start panicking because there were so many people in the water. And I was like, I don't know, it feels like people are chill with this. Like, I don't know. And immediately, all of a sudden she starts freaking out and like pushing the water away. And she's like, they're gonna, like, one is super close to me, but I can't see it anymore. And she starts panicking. So I start panicking and she's, oh, fuck, it got me. And I thought, worst case scenario, it got her tit. I'm like, oh no. What are we gonna do? But it got, she was like pushing the water away and it got her arm. And we had to like go up, there's a big restaurant, which was also kind of strange because there's a big cliffside restaurant just overlooking this nude beach.
1:08:11 Danielle LaRock? So people are like having salmon, like watching everyone. Yeah.
1:08:15 Speaker 06 There's a bunch of scopes mounted all on the.
1:08:18 Speaker 04 Insert a quarter.
1:08:20 Danielle LaRock? So we like, what, we had to go into the restaurant and ask for help. And I think they gave her vinegar or something to put on it. Yeah. But it was all red and swollen. I have no idea what kind of jellyfish it was, but it went down within a couple of hours.
1:08:33 Speaker 05 Boob, you would have got so much more help, I bet.
1:08:36 Danielle LaRock? I know. She couldn't like help.
1:08:37 Speaker 06 Twenty guys with cans of vinegar that are just like ready to go.
1:08:42 Danielle LaRock? Anyway, sorry. Okay. So we're thinking it's a stingray.
1:08:44 Speaker 06 All right. I'm ninety percent. Yeah.
1:08:47 Danielle LaRock? It's inception.
1:08:48 Speaker 06 I like it. The EMT arrived on the scene and was completely unbothered by what he saw. He was my age, early thirties or younger, and acted like he'd seen this a million times. Yep, looks like a baby stingray got you. A stingray? A baby? Did he have to include the word baby? I'm just, this is.
1:09:07 Danielle LaRock? Very strange.
1:09:08 Speaker 06 It's typed.
1:09:10 Speaker 06 He made me feel like I was overreacting. He told us this was common and to take some ibuprofen. He told us not to go to the emergency room. He said it would be crowded with spring breakers. There was nothing they could do anyway. Honestly, the way I took it was walk it off, bitch.
1:09:28 Danielle LaRock? Ooh, tough love.
1:09:30 Speaker 06 Yeah, he was gone as soon as he arrived. Our plan was to somehow walk me back to our condo and Google what to do. By this point, a scene was made. People were staring. I was sobbing. I tried my best to pull it together. My partner and his sister's husband pretty much carried me to the boardwalk. I tried to walk, but I ended up giving in and had to put all my weight on them. People were stopping us and asking us what had happened. We would mumble stingray and most people wished us luck. One drunk guy said, I seriously think you're supposed to pour bleach on it. I don't trust that guy. Like, why are you listening to him? Please tell me you didn't pour bleach on it. His wife hurried him along and said, do not listen to him. I agree with her.
1:10:11 Speaker 06 We got back to the condo and Googled what we were supposed to do in this situation. Warm water is what I think you're supposed to do, but I'm not positive. At this point, I truly knew almost nothing about stingrays. I knew one of them killed Steve Irwin. I knew I donated, RIP Steve.
1:10:24 Danielle LaRock? I know.
1:10:26 Speaker 06 I knew I donated money at the stingray exhibit the day before the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Oh, and then I got stung by one the very next day. The irony was rich.
1:10:35 Speaker 04 Seriously, that's messed up.
1:10:37 Speaker 06 Yeah, that is messed up. That's, that's why I always say never donate money to animals.
1:10:43 Speaker 05 Maybe there is a huge one out there that was gonna steve Irwin her and this baby was like, don't go any further.
1:10:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:10:51 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah.
1:10:51 Speaker 05 He's helping her.
1:10:53 Speaker 06 She was helping us. Yeah.
1:10:54 Speaker 04 That's likely, I would say.
1:10:57 Speaker 06 All right. The next twenty, the next twenty four hours, I would read every single article or account I could find on, find online of someone who had been stung by a stingray. I read that most beaches don't or didn't at the time, put up signage warnings, beachgoers, because they were worried it would discourage tourists. We learned that the only thing I could, we learned that the only thing I could do was soak my foot in water as hot as the person can tolerate. That's what I've read too. We read that the pain would peak approximately two hours after the sting. What? Hours? My partner spent the next several hours alternating between the biggest mixing bowl and sauce pot we could find in the condo. I know this is pretty gross, but we were desperate. As soon as my foot entered the hundred and ten degree Fahrenheit water, I felt immediate relief.
1:11:40 Speaker 06 Apparently this helps inactivate the venom and promote blood circulation to the area. When the water would cool or I would put my, pull my foot out, I immediately felt the waves of pain again. My partner was rotating bowls for the next couple of hours until the pain subsided. This is a good boyfriend. I hope she hung on to this guy.
1:11:57 Danielle LaRock? From the Baywatch to the, yeah.
1:11:59 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:12:00 Speaker 05 Sounds like husband, right? Didn't she say?
1:12:02 Speaker 06 She just said partner. Actually, might have said husband. Yeah.
1:12:05 Speaker 04 He's hot. We know that.
1:12:06 Danielle LaRock? Sexy. Yeah, we do know that.
1:12:08 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:12:08 Speaker 04 Send pics.
1:12:13 Speaker 06 I called my sister that evening to tell her what had happened to me. Her first reaction was, oh, you didn't do the shuffle? What? The stingray shuffle? She said confidently. I had never heard of this. Apparently the locals know you're supposed to drag your feet along the sand upon entering the shallow water to let the stingrays know you're coming. I don't know if that's exactly right.
1:12:32 Speaker 04 I like the idea.
1:12:33 Speaker 06 You shouldn't drag your feet like, but you do kind of want to kick them in front of you.
1:12:37 Speaker 05 The sandworms.
1:12:37 Speaker 06 To like, yeah.
1:12:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:12:39 Speaker 06 Exactly.
1:12:39 Speaker 05 You gotta do a dance.
1:12:41 Speaker 06 The little dance. Yeah.
1:12:43 Speaker 04 Oh, I thought you meant kick the sand so you could tell when one of them was under the sand beneath you.
1:12:48 Speaker 06 I think if you're just dragging your feet around, you might be more luckily or likely to step on one. But, um.
1:12:54 Speaker 04 Shy, hello, or a stingray?
1:12:56 Speaker 06 I'm talking stingray now, not shy.
1:12:58 Speaker 04 Okay.
1:12:58 Speaker 06 Yeah. Um, they can feel your vibrations and will swim away. She told me she she had seen signage for this before, but I insisted this was the first I was hearing about it. The more research I did, the more I realized that stings were pretty common. They are. Why aren't they talked about more? I guess the pain can vary depending on where you got stung, how deep your wound is, how much venom is injected, and how soon you get your foot into hot water. I've also heard that some restaurants along beach boardwalks put buckets outside for this exact purpose. The last thing I learned was you absolutely should go to the hospital and get antibiotics ASAP because the wounds are usually deep and let in marine bacteria. I waited until I was home almost a week later to visit a surprise doctor in Ohio, who told me my wound was infected. Ooh, that's not good.
1:13:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, sand, right?
1:13:44 Speaker 05 No wonder she is so mad at that, the medical person.
1:13:48 Speaker 06 EMT. Yeah, the guy that was just like, get out of here.
1:13:52 Speaker 05 Yeah, you're fine.
1:13:53 Speaker 06 Yeah. We always, we, and we do marine stories and sand gets in wounds. Oh, boy, does that increase our, our ouchy rating.
1:14:02 Speaker 04 That hurt. It's like a 10 on the willies rating.
1:14:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:14:06 Speaker 04 Gives me the willies.
1:14:07 Speaker 06 I'm sharing my story because I am still shocked that I didn't know this was something that could happen to me in shallow water. Had I been educated on stingrays, I would have much less, I would have much less fear and would have been able to react properly and immediately get my foot into hot water. No, I'm not mad at the baby stingray after all. I forced myself to get back into the water the very next day. Oof, I was unaware of the infection risk at this time. And I understand this is just an intense defense mechanism that I was lucky enough to be on the business end of. Most people don't get to experience what venom feels like entering the body. I will never forget.
1:14:40 Speaker 04 It's a good way of looking at it.
1:14:42 Speaker 06 It is. Yeah, it's a cool experience.
1:14:43 Speaker 05 Very optimistic.
1:14:47 Speaker 04 Glass is very half full here.
1:14:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, I'm happy just learning about this one from other people. I attached a few pictures here to show the little cut where you can clearly see where the serrated barb entered my foot. Another of the shape the doctor circled on my foot to show where the infection was spreading up into my leg. It'd be funny if the next thing was like, and another of where my leg was amputated.
1:15:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:15:10 Speaker 05 Wes is gonna be like, oh, actually stingrays can't leave a scar.
1:15:16 Speaker 06 Let me show you what a stingray bite looks like or sting. Yeah.
1:15:21 Speaker 06 And lastly, my foot soaking in the bowls. I cropped out my puffy teary face. Anyway, I'm a longtime fan of you ladies and would be thrilled if you read this. Oh, too bad. I'm reading it instead. You probably don't know who I am.
1:15:37 Speaker 06 So the other folks don't have to experience the panic I did that day. Enjoy the view, but do the stingray shuffle. Jess. P S. Not one article mentioned anything about pouring bleach onto the wound. For the love of God, please don't listen to drunk men on spring break. I think that's great advice across the board.
1:15:54 Danielle LaRock? No matter what they're saying.
1:15:56 Speaker 06 Yeah. Yeah.
1:15:57 Danielle LaRock? Well, you knew pretty much everything about what to do and what it was.
1:16:01 Speaker 06 We've been like, we've been in a lot of places that have lots of stingrays and I do like, I'm always pretty nervous about them because there are, they are typically in pretty shallow water. And if you're not careful, like trying to scare them, you can step on them really easily. So, yeah.
1:16:17 Speaker 05 And as like someone who just likes to sprint into the ocean, much like the story, it is like a scary thing that you can just step on a stingray.
1:16:27 Speaker 06 Yeah. And it from people like our uncle got stung by one and he said it was the like the most intense pain he's ever felt and he had cancer. So.
1:16:36 Danielle LaRock? Wow. Yeah.
1:16:39 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think he said it before the cancer.
1:16:47 Speaker 06 We'd ask him, but he's dead. So unfortunately.
1:16:52 Speaker 06 Anyway, yeah, so do the shuffle, but I wouldn't so much drag your foot as kind of just like stomp in place and kind of wave your feet in front of you a little bit. And that should be enough to scare away stingrays in front of you. Yeah.
1:17:06 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:17:07 Speaker 06 Yep.
1:17:07 Danielle LaRock? Good to know. Yeah.
1:17:15 Cassandra Yahnian? Well, thank you guys for participating in all of our Trail Tales and reading everything from our listeners.
1:17:21 Speaker 06 It's fun.
1:17:21 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:17:22 Speaker 04 Thanks for having us.
1:17:23 Danielle LaRock? Well, you're not done yet.
1:17:24 Cassandra Yahnian? You're not done yet because our listeners were really excited that we were recording together. So they wrote a list of questions that they would like us to ask you on their behalf.
1:17:37 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, some of them. We don't have time for all 500. So.
1:17:41 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, there were a lot of questions, but we compiled a few of them.
1:17:44 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:17:45 Speaker 06 We want all of them.
1:17:45 Cassandra Yahnian? Okay, okay. We'll come back for the second episode, part two.
1:17:49 Speaker 06 All right.
1:17:50 Cassandra Yahnian? For the rest of them.
1:17:51 Danielle LaRock? Um, okay, the first one, who has the most unhinged childhood pet story?
1:17:57 Speaker 06 I don't like we, me and Jeff, we had a pond near our house where we caught a lot of different little critters at the pond. And we were allowed to keep them for a couple of days before we let them go. And the reason that rule came up is because we would take them inside and sometimes they'd get lost. And we had a snake get lost that was lost for like two months. And then later my mom found Jeff as a baby playing with it in the basement.
1:18:23 Speaker 06 And then she also found turtles underneath the couch cushions. And that's when she was like, okay, no more animals in the house. So I don't know.
1:18:31 Speaker 05 I do remember too, you wanted to bring some snakes you caught to show and tell.
1:18:36 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah.
1:18:37 Speaker 05 And mom wouldn't pick them up. And I was like two and she had me pick them up. And they were just like biting me in the second picture, me holding these snakes just biting me.
1:18:45 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:18:47 Speaker 05 What's his unhinged stories where when you were in like college that you had?
1:18:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, those are more unhinged.
1:18:53 Speaker 05 Then you met Hillary Duff because you had raccoons.
1:18:57 Speaker 06 Yeah. Yeah. But we don't need to get into all that.
1:18:59 Speaker 04 It pays off.
1:19:01 Speaker 06 There's another quick one that I had where I was, I was five and I was walking home with a snake. And my mom said, I just had blood running down my hand and the snake was biting me. And I was like, Hey, mom, this one bites. And it was like the first time I had gone bit and I was so excited about it. But yeah, anyway, those are mine.
1:19:20 Danielle LaRock? Okay. I don't know if I have one unhinged.
1:19:24 Cassandra Yahnian? Like, I don't have one that's unhinged, but my dad had an iguana growing up and I used to take it for walks down the road and it had a little leash.
1:19:31 Speaker 05 Cool.
1:19:31 Cassandra Yahnian? And people would always like, look at me.
1:19:33 Speaker 05 Would it like do well at on a walk?
1:19:36 Cassandra Yahnian? I mean, it was very slow walking and we didn't make it far and then we'd turn around and I'd carry it. But we went for like little, small walks and I was a child and the iguana was pretty big. So it was, I imagine it was pretty comical watching me at like seven years old, just carrying an iguana down the street with a leash on it.
1:19:56 Speaker 05 It's more just to like, show the neighborhood, like we are the coolest family.
1:20:00 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, yeah. Check out my iguana.
1:20:04 Danielle LaRock? Mike, do you have one? I don't, I'm not gonna.
1:20:07 Speaker 04 Oh, I mean, no, we had a scorpion. That's not really a spet, uh, pet, but it got loose in like the little Harry Potter closet underneath the stairs in our house in Nevada. Um, not sure what the resolution there was. I think it's just.
1:20:20 Speaker 05 That's its closet now.
1:20:23 Speaker 06 We don't go in that room.
1:20:25 Speaker 04 Right.
1:20:27 Danielle LaRock? Well, this next question is kind of geared towards you.
1:20:29 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
1:20:29 Danielle LaRock? If horses were carnivores, would Mike like them more or less? And, okay. And how do Danielle and Mike get along if Danielle is a horse girl and Mike is a horse hater? We never said we got along.
1:20:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, there's some serious tension.
1:20:45 Speaker 06 Bitter enemies.
1:20:49 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, this is like, this is draining for both of us.
1:20:52 Speaker 04 Right, we actually are all in the same city. We could have gotten to record together, but we needed to keep us in separate rooms.
1:20:58 Speaker 05 It's probably a relief to like, be able to put that out there now that.
1:21:02 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, I feel better.
1:21:03 Speaker 05 Pretend at all.
1:21:04 Speaker 04 No more, yeah. Don't have to keep up pretenses. Um, no, so here's the thing, I'm so happy for people that like horses and have horses and have those special kinds of relationships with them. Uh, that's just never gonna be me. I, they freak me out and I do not care for them and I don't respect them, but that's just a personal.
1:21:22 Speaker 06 Mike, Mike's very close to my girlfriend and she is like a certified platinum horse girl. So, yeah, and they're, they're very, they love each other, so.
1:21:30 Speaker 05 She got her certification.
1:21:32 Speaker 06 She did.
1:21:32 Danielle LaRock? Gotten past her.
1:21:33 Speaker 06 Big old plaque on the wall.
1:21:36 Speaker 05 Also, part A of that question, I feel like any change that you say Mike will like, like the horses more.
1:21:47 Speaker 04 Oh dude, wings, Pegasus. That's a sweet. That's not a horse though. That's a Pegasus.
1:21:52 Danielle LaRock? Right.
1:21:53 Speaker 04 I like Pegasus.
1:21:55 Speaker 05 He likes anything close to a horse.
1:21:57 Speaker 04 Zebras.
1:21:57 Speaker 05 Donkeys.
1:21:58 Speaker 04 Donkeys.
1:21:59 Speaker 05 Zebras.
1:21:59 Speaker 04 Giraffes.
1:22:00 Danielle LaRock? Giraffes.
1:22:02 Speaker 04 Pretty close. Just long neck horse.
1:22:05 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:22:07 Speaker 05 Dude, if you like donkeys, you gotta watch Shrek.
1:22:10 Speaker 04 Listen, Wes is the one that has a problem with Shrek. I am all in. I'm camping out for Shrek five. I'm at the front of that line.
1:22:19 Danielle LaRock? Um, okay. Out of all five of you, who has the best odds against a silverback gorilla?
1:22:24 Speaker 06 Well, it's you because you got good vibes.
1:22:26 Danielle LaRock? It is me.
1:22:28 Speaker 06 Cuddle with you.
1:22:29 Speaker 05 Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say me because I'm, I'm like, have the most confidence.
1:22:35 Speaker 04 Fight confidence. Yeah.
1:22:37 Speaker 06 Jeff is the most confident he can be a prime, or the most confident he can beat a primate in a fight. So.
1:22:44 Danielle LaRock? Confidence does take you far.
1:22:46 Speaker 05 Uh, silverback, none of us have any chance. A chimpanzee, I'm giving myself.
1:22:50 Speaker 04 No way dude. I'm going with Cassie on this one because you guys, you're familiar with King Kong, right?
1:22:56 Danielle LaRock? Yes.
1:22:56 Speaker 04 Tayla, is it Tayla, Taylaoni? Or no, who's the?
1:22:59 Speaker 06 No, it's um, it's what's her face.
1:23:01 Speaker 04 From Ring, The Ring, right?
1:23:03 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:23:03 Speaker 04 Anyway, you look the most like her, that actress. And I think the gorilla would just fall in love with you and wanna like carry you up to the top of buildings and stuff.
1:23:11 Danielle LaRock? That would be pretty cool.
1:23:12 Speaker 04 You could like push it off the edge.
1:23:14 Speaker 06 Naomi, what's?
1:23:15 Danielle LaRock? If we're on the same team, I'm not pushing it off the edge.
1:23:18 Speaker 04 Well, we're like talking about winning a fight. I'm saying if you wanted to beat it.
1:23:22 Speaker 06 The question wasn't a fight. And that's why I think either the girls have a better chance. It's just who has the best odds against a silverback gorilla.
1:23:29 Speaker 05 Cassie teams up with it, then like we're all in trouble.
1:23:32 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:23:32 Speaker 06 Exactly. I think Jeff has.
1:23:35 Speaker 04 That doesn't happen.
1:23:36 Speaker 06 The worst odds, because he's gonna go in there like fists flying, you know?
1:23:40 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Yeah, that's probably true.
1:23:46 Danielle LaRock? Okay, how does your current career compare or differ from what you imagined you would be doing?
1:23:53 Speaker 05 Ever since I was like three years old, I wanted to be a podcaster.
1:23:58 Speaker 06 He had little toy microphones. And neon signs.
1:24:02 Cassandra Yahnian? So it's going well. It's pretty comparable.
1:24:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:24:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Okay.
1:24:07 Speaker 06 I, I dreamt about being a wildlife biologist, like my whole childhood. And then when I went to college, I decided it wasn't like practical and thought I would be like a doctor or something. And then just got like sucked back into being a wildlife biologist. So I think, I do, I do feel proud to say, I do think I'm one of those like few kids that got to live their childhood dream and be like exactly what I wanted to be as a kid.
1:24:31 Cassandra Yahnian? Very cool.
1:24:32 Speaker 04 Good for you, dude. Who cares?
1:24:33 Speaker 06 Thanks, man.
1:24:35 Speaker 04 Not me.
1:24:37 Speaker 06 I know.
1:24:37 Speaker 04 Very proud of you, Wes.
1:24:39 Speaker 06 Thanks. Yeah. The podcasting thing's the new element.
1:24:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, it is. I don't really know what I wanted to be. I never had a good idea, even right up until I quit my full-time job and started doing podcasting as my new full-time job. I was always kind of hopping from one place to the last and I was in information security and that's super boring. So the less said about that, the better. But let's just say, uh, life's taken a real upward turn.
1:25:06 Cassandra Yahnian? That's good.
1:25:08 Speaker 06 Good for you, Mike.
1:25:09 Cassandra Yahnian? It's positive. Cassie's thriving. Yeah, I am thriving. I never want to clock in.
1:25:15 Speaker 04 I do keep saying, if the podcast ever goes under, I'm gonna just go to the 7-Eleven down the street and get a job there because they have the self-checkout stands. And those guys don't have to do anything. They just watch other people do their job for them now.
1:25:28 Speaker 05 That's just with you because you do self-checkout. If you worked there, you would have to do small talk all day long.
1:25:34 Speaker 04 No way, dude. I'd be pretending to stock the Hostess donuts and stuff all day.
1:25:38 Speaker 05 Wait, why is Cassie living or what?
1:25:41 Cassandra Yahnian? She's living the dream. Yeah.
1:25:43 Speaker 05 Thriving, yeah.
1:25:43 Cassandra Yahnian? Loving her dream. Yeah, I never want to clock into another workplace again. I love having my own schedule. I never dreamed of working, but this is pretty comparable to.
1:25:56 Speaker 05 But you both still like introduce yourselves as vet techs, right? And not podcasters?
1:26:03 Cassandra Yahnian? Sometimes if people ask what we do for work and they don't know, like if I'm just meeting someone randomly on the street and they're like, oh, what do you do for work? Cause that seems to be a very common question to ask. I always say I'm a vet tech or I'll say I work in marketing.
1:26:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, I like that.
1:26:22 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, I'm in a full blown lie with my masseuse. Like I am deep in this lie. Like I couldn't be like, I'm making up fake work schedules with mine.
1:26:38 Danielle LaRock? I'm like, oh, I gotta be at the hospital. That won't work. That time won't work for me. Just because I said one time that I was a vet tech and he just keeps talking about it and I just can't get out of it. But yeah, it's, it's good.
1:26:51 Speaker 05 I'll always say like, I'm a podcaster, like go check out my podcast and give all these like episodes to listen to. But then if I'm with Mike doing that, Mike will like actively try to get them not to listen to it.
1:27:05 Speaker 05 Mortifying.
1:27:08 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, I mean.
1:27:09 Speaker 06 Jeff is our hype man for sure.
1:27:11 Speaker 05 It's good.
1:27:11 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Well, you gotta have one. And unfortunately for me and Cassie, neither of us are it.
1:27:17 Cassandra Yahnian? I.
1:27:18 Speaker 05 I hype you up.
1:27:20 Cassandra Yahnian? I'm so opposite of a hype. I need to be more of a hype because I was out walking on a trail and I was wearing a National Park After Dark sweatshirt. And I forgot that I was wearing it, but I walked by a girl on the trail and she was like, she said, oh my God, I have the same sweatshirt. I love that one. And I said, cool. And then I just.
1:27:41 Speaker 06 100% what Mike would do too. Except he wouldn't say cool. He would just ignore them and keep walking.
1:27:48 Speaker 05 He'd be like, I don't know what this sweatshirt is. Put it on next year.
1:27:55 Danielle LaRock? If I had my way, I mean, when Jeff and I were in San Diego and I was wearing a Tooth and Claw sweatshirt, someone recognized Tooth and Claw and not the person wearing it. And they're like, I love, I love that sweatshirt. And I was like, oh yeah, well Jeff's right over there. And I was never gonna say anything about me. Like, that was it, you know, and immediately.
1:28:15 Speaker 06 Jeff.
1:28:16 Danielle LaRock? Now it's a hard drive to dark. I'm like, supposed to be a secret. I'm a vet tech. Um, okay. Next. This one's really quick. Cougar, puma, and mountain lion. What's the difference?
1:28:28 Speaker 06 All the same cat.
1:28:29 Danielle LaRock? Great.
1:28:29 Speaker 06 Yep. What other ones are there? Uh, there's Catamount, Mountain Screamer. Uh, man, there's a, they have so many names, like Red Devil. Yeah, I had the whole list once, but there's a bunch. Puma is what they're mostly called in like Central and South America. That's like the most common name for them, but it's actually my favorite name for them because their, their scientific name is Puma concolor. So I think it like makes the most sense for that to be the universal name. But, um, yeah, it's kind of like regional things. Panther is another one that people call them, but yeah, anyway.
1:29:05 Danielle LaRock? Ever since we started talking about it, Cassie, I keep seeing, um, I don't know if it's getting further along, but I think they're pushing forward the reintroduction into Vermont.
1:29:14 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, are they?
1:29:15 Speaker 06 Oh, cool.
1:29:15 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:29:16 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, they've been, I haven't paid much attention to it, but they have license plates with a Catamount. It says like Vermont Catamount on it. And they've been talking about reintroducing them for a while. Yeah.
1:29:29 Danielle LaRock? Okay. I know feeding wildlife is a no-no, but where do bird feeders factor into this? Is this a problem because the seeds in the bird feeders aren't what they typically find? What's the deal?
1:29:39 Speaker 06 That's a, that's a tricky one. I think people, people ask that a lot and like, I think it's kind of a gray area. I think if you can give them wild feed, that's the best. And if you're not attracting, like other nuisance animals, like if you live in a bear area, you shouldn't have bird feeders out. So that's a really good way to, um, food condition a bear. But I, I put out suet feeders for our neighborhood birds. I feel like it just gives them a nice little boost and it's not like changing their natural behavior. So I don't know. I'm personally okay with it, but I think there's probably people that would argue against that too.
1:30:12 Cassandra Yahnian? Have you seen, the one thing I've seen with bird feeders is that you have to be careful about birds that migrate because if you keep their food out, then they might stay in the area. Is that true?
1:30:24 Speaker 06 I've heard that, but I don't personally, I don't think I've ever seen that like happen in action.
1:30:29 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:30:29 Speaker 06 I think like the will to migrate is stronger than the will to like get some food. But I don't, I don't know. Maybe if you're like right at the tail end of their migration or something, but for our birds that migrate, they're like the place they're migrating to is such a stark difference from like where they are, that I don't think I could stop them from migrating with like a suet feeder, but I'm not going to say that definitively because I'm, I'm not sure.
1:30:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, if you tried hard enough, you could.
1:30:53 Speaker 06 Yeah, if you put a little cage over them, you can probably stop them from migrating.
1:30:57 Danielle LaRock? I mean, Jeff tries to get them in his house.
1:30:59 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:31:03 Speaker 06 Tries and succeeds.
1:31:07 Speaker 05 I just hang my, I have like a hook that's right by the window where my bird feeder normally is. So when they're just going crazy on it, sometimes I'll put my bird feeder inside and they'll come in.
1:31:22 Danielle LaRock? What color M and M is the best?
1:31:24 Speaker 05 Oh man, to eat blue, but of the cartoon characters, green.
1:31:27 Speaker 06 Green.
1:31:30 Danielle LaRock? Why?
1:31:32 Speaker 05 But I like the old.
1:31:33 Speaker 06 I like her personality.
1:31:34 Speaker 05 The woke, the woke green. No, that's not for me.
1:31:38 Speaker 06 Oh, did Eminem snowflake out?
1:31:42 Speaker 05 What was it? They just gave her like tennis shoes instead of heels or something. And the right was all like.
1:31:48 Speaker 06 I like that. A little change, image change. Does a girl good.
1:31:52 Danielle LaRock? Is there an actual difference in flavor? Is that a stupid question?
1:31:55 Speaker 06 No.
1:31:56 Danielle LaRock? Okay. I'm not a big M and M person.
1:31:59 Cassandra Yahnian? I have a friend who swears that yellow M and M's are the best flavor. And if you give her a handful of M and M's and she closes her eyes, she can tell you every time which one is the yellow one because she says it tastes different. And even when I went to, I went to the M and M store, I think it was in Vegas and she was like, just get the yellow M and M's. And it was a thing. They had whole bags of just yellow M and M's that you could buy.
1:32:22 Speaker 06 What? Really?
1:32:23 Cassandra Yahnian? I can't tell the difference. She swears by it.
1:32:26 Speaker 06 Did they have whole bags of all the different colors that you can buy though?
1:32:29 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:32:29 Cassandra Yahnian? Not that I remember, but maybe I was just focusing on the yellow.
1:32:33 Danielle LaRock? Things of all the colors.
1:32:36 Speaker 04 Like the Harry Potter point counters?
1:32:38 Speaker 06 Huh?
1:32:39 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
1:32:39 Speaker 06 I want you to bring your friend on the show and make her prove that. Yeah.
1:32:44 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. Okay.
1:32:45 Speaker 06 Cause I'm, I, I have a hard time believing that one.
1:32:48 Cassandra Yahnian? I've seen her do it twice and she was correct.
1:32:51 Danielle LaRock? Two out of two.
1:32:52 Cassandra Yahnian? Two out of two.
1:32:53 Speaker 04 Okay. What do you have to say to that? Doubting Thomas?
1:32:56 Speaker 06 I am.
1:32:57 Cassandra Yahnian? I can bring her on the show if she could do it.
1:33:00 Speaker 06 Yes, we'll have her on as a guest too.
1:33:02 Cassandra Yahnian? I'll let her know.
1:33:05 Speaker 04 A little outside the purview of our show, but this is important.
1:33:07 Danielle LaRock? No, it's pertinent. Yeah. I don't know. Growing up, that was my favorite thing to do to my sister. I would blindfold her and feed her random stuff, but it, and make her guess what it was, but I was so mean and I always, and it was never great. It was like cat treats and like dog food and like hot sauce and some, it was torture, mild form of torture. It's like, it'll be so much.
1:33:32 Speaker 05 Not a hard thing to guess either. It's like, yeah, that's dog food.
1:33:37 Speaker 04 I don't know if I'd be able to identify dog food.
1:33:39 Speaker 06 This burning thing must be hot sauce.
1:33:41 Danielle LaRock? Hot sauce. Yeah. And one time she freaked out and I was trying to keep her calm and she was trying to rip the blindfold off her face. And I had, um, you know, the fake like lemon container that lemon juice is in.
1:33:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:33:55 Danielle LaRock? And it looks like a lemon. That's what I was trying to put in her mouth and it got in her eye. Right before my parents were coming home because I was babysitting. What a babysitter. And she was losing her mind. I had to bribe her to not tell them that that's what had just happened. Oh, good times. Maybe we should do that Cassie for a live stream.
1:34:16 Speaker 04 From the eyeball.
1:34:18 Speaker 05 She's like, lemon juice.
1:34:20 Speaker 04 Like next is Tabasco.
1:34:21 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Okay. Uh, cage match Danielle versus Cassie.
1:34:27 Speaker 06 Oh.
1:34:27 Speaker 05 Ooh.
1:34:28 Speaker 06 Huh.
1:34:30 Speaker 05 Well, you have that like super like marathon runner's kidney, right, Cassie?
1:34:36 Cassandra Yahnian? I do.
1:34:36 Danielle LaRock? Yes.
1:34:38 Speaker 06 You're a cyborg.
1:34:39 Speaker 05 Maybe, maybe it's like two V one, like he, he gives you a little bit of extra power. So.
1:34:45 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. It is something to consider.
1:34:48 Cassandra Yahnian? It is. He does ultra.
1:34:49 Speaker 06 I'm gonna put my money on Cassie, but I think it's a good fight.
1:34:52 Speaker 04 Danielle's gonna vibe out and that's gonna really change the energy in the cage.
1:34:56 Speaker 06 Vibe is too good.
1:34:58 Speaker 05 Go with Danielle because of the story she just told about her.
1:35:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:35:02 Speaker 06 That's true.
1:35:04 Speaker 04 Got a little.
1:35:06 Speaker 06 It's a good one.
1:35:06 Speaker 04 Psycho energy.
1:35:07 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, the thing is Cassie's strong and capable and powerful.
1:35:11 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:35:12 Danielle LaRock? But I'm, I'm feisty.
1:35:14 Speaker 06 Angry.
1:35:14 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a pretty good, that's actually a really good question.
1:35:19 Speaker 06 Yeah, I'm no good odds either way.
1:35:22 Speaker 05 Seems like a good fight. We can make that happen.
1:35:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, let's, let's do this.
1:35:27 Speaker 04 Your next live show. Every, every new stop on the tour, you gotta fight at the end.
1:35:33 Speaker 06 We invite them on our show and just say, okay, now fight.
1:35:37 Cassandra Yahnian? It's like betting stations. Yeah. Winner takes all.
1:35:43 Danielle LaRock? Uh, does Wes have a favorite hike to do in western Montana area? Specifically Wes, nobody else.
1:35:49 Speaker 06 Yeah, we should have Jeff answer this one too, because I live here now, but Jeff also grew up here. I, you know, I do, and it's kind of a boring answer because it's in Glacier, but the Grinnell Glacier hike in Glacier National Park is my favorite hike in western Montana. It's just like, almost every time I do it, I see bears. It's a beautiful hike the whole time, like the entire time you're hiking, you're looking at like a beautiful vista with the lower Grinnell Lake below you. And then you get up to another really beautiful lake that has remnants of a glacier in it. So it's just, it's kind of like 10 out of 10 for me. It's not super easy, but it's not like really hard either. Jeff?
1:36:29 Speaker 05 Sure. Yeah, I'll just go with Glacier. Or no, I'm gonna go, does Yellowstone count?
1:36:33 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:36:33 Speaker 04 Well. So western?
1:36:35 Speaker 06 Part of it, a tiny bit of it is in western Montana. Yeah.
1:36:38 Speaker 05 I just like old faithful boardwalk. Go guys are watching.
1:36:43 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:36:43 Speaker 04 I'll go with the trail that Jeff literally built. I hiked that once.
1:36:48 Speaker 05 That is a good trail.
1:36:50 Speaker 06 It is a nice trail.
1:36:51 Speaker 05 Thanks for only crediting me for.
1:36:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:36:55 Speaker 06 It's alright.
1:36:56 Speaker 05 And Wes both built two trails to my soul, but I'm glad you view it.
1:37:01 Speaker 06 And Brent.
1:37:02 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:37:03 Danielle LaRock? You dug it out with your bare hands?
1:37:06 Speaker 05 A little bit.
1:37:07 Speaker 04 Not even his human hands.
1:37:10 Danielle LaRock? Um, okay. Do the toothy boys have any trail tales, spooky stories or weird occurrences?
1:37:16 Speaker 04 Oh, gosh.
1:37:17 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:37:17 Speaker 04 Wes.
1:37:17 Speaker 06 Mike.
1:37:19 Danielle LaRock? Mike is outside a lot, so.
1:37:22 Speaker 06 I, I have a lot of stories, a lot of like animal stuff. And then I do have one spooky story. Yeah.
1:37:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:37:30 Speaker 06 I do have one really spooky story, but it's a whole story in of itself. I like.
1:37:34 Danielle LaRock? Have you told it on your show?
1:37:36 Speaker 06 I have, yeah, on a Halloween episode. Um, but it was the like really quick version of it is that I was doing some bear research. I was staying in a very kind of remote area, a tiny little forest service cabin. And I was taking photos in the night sky and in one of those photos, there are suddenly some shadows in the window of my cabin that looked very much like, um, some of like the pictographs and stuff in southwest Utah. And it was very, for me, it was really scary. Mike and Jeff are very tired of hearing the story, but it, it like, the picture is pretty crazy. So, yeah, that's my story.
1:38:14 Danielle LaRock? Spooky. Did you go back into the cabin, have to stay the night?
1:38:17 Speaker 06 I did. I had to go back in and there was a bunch of flies in the window when I went back in, which also scared me. But, um, I'm just trying to give as few details as possible so that I can avoid Mike's ridicule right now.
1:38:29 Danielle LaRock? Well, if anybody wants to hear the whole.
1:38:31 Speaker 06 I'll show you guys the photo just on the video here.
1:38:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, what episode number is that?
1:38:36 Speaker 04 I think it's a subscriber episode, actually.
1:38:38 Danielle LaRock? Oh, even better. You're gonna have to. Plug in the.
1:38:40 Speaker 06 Another plug for a subscription.
1:38:44 Speaker 06 Do you guys have any, Jeff and Mike?
1:38:46 Speaker 04 Pretty sure my mom is haunting my house right now.
1:38:49 Danielle LaRock? Oh, that's fun.
1:38:51 Speaker 04 When she died, we threw away like 70 throw pillows that you put on like couches all over your house. She had a real unhealthy obsession with these things. And every once in a while, there will be more that pop up that I swear we did not have before. And they're just, they keep appearing out of nowhere on there. I hate these pillows, man. There's so many of them.
1:39:09 Speaker 06 There's the window with the spooks in it. So.
1:39:13 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah.
1:39:13 Speaker 06 The ghouls. Yeah. So it was, it was creepy.
1:39:16 Danielle LaRock? Creepy.
1:39:18 Speaker 06 Yeah. This was it. In like all the other photos, that's what it looked like. But then in that one photo.
1:39:24 Danielle LaRock? There's the two.
1:39:25 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:39:26 Danielle LaRock? That is scary.
1:39:28 Speaker 05 The last time we were on here, we told my best like trail story. Uh, you know, I went, I went to like one of the most haunted places in America and I touched a little boy ghost. But I didn't realize it. The guide just told me like, oh yeah, you're touching like a little boy right now. I was like, what?
1:39:48 Danielle LaRock? That was wild. He wasn't even telling us. He's like, swing your hand.
1:39:52 Speaker 05 No.
1:39:53 Danielle LaRock? Swing your hand. Do you feel that?
1:39:55 Speaker 05 He's like, the hand just went through a little boy's head. I'm like, what? That's crazy.
1:40:02 Danielle LaRock? Oh my god. We actually, there is, I didn't include it on here, but we did get a question that is pertinent. Would, it was specifically to you. Would you ever go on another ghost tour again?
1:40:13 Speaker 05 I don't know. I was pretty scared by that.
1:40:18 Danielle LaRock? We also did get an email that, I can't include it on Trail Tales, but it was more of just like a heads up and somebody wrote in and said, I was like, shitting my pants because as soon as you guys were describing that ghost tour, it was, I've been on that exact tour. I know the exact guide you're talking about. I know everything. Like, it's so funny. It's similar experience. And we failed to mention that guide also came out of like the bushes in a dark abandoned park to meet us in plain clothes alone. He was just like, hi, I'm Joe. We're like, oh my god.
1:40:54 Danielle LaRock? Tips for bear safety this year during summer hikes, especially with less park staff. And a follow up, Yosemite doesn't allow bear spray. So what's the next best option for preparation?
1:41:04 Speaker 06 Yeah. So the, the three tips that we always say are carry bear spray, know how to use it, hike in groups and just make plenty of noise are like for, those are the tips for kind of preventing anything bad from happening. If you see a bear, if a bear is approaching you, group up, get your bear spray out, slowly back away. Those are, I, we like to keep it really simple just because we don't want a ton of things running through people's heads. So that's ma, that's basically it. Those, those things are going to really help you decrease your chances of having a negative bear encounter. Um, as far as Yosemite is concerned, I think they've just had so many more problems with people not knowing that bear spray is like bear spray and not bear per, like, um,
1:41:45 Speaker 05 Just accidents with bear spray and misuse and.
1:41:49 Speaker 06 Or they're like spraying their kids with it because they think it's like, um, repellent.
1:41:53 Speaker 05 Their kids are bears.
1:41:55 Speaker 06 Yeah. And so they, and they haven't had any bear attacks for, forever.
1:41:59 Speaker 05 So it must have worked.
1:42:00 Speaker 06 Yeah. Personally, I think they, they should allow bear spray in there. I think there, it's a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later, someone's going to get attacked. They only have black bears, but, um, just being in groups, like being with multiple people is 99.9% of the time enough to deter a black bear. So that would be my next best, best option is don't solo hike if you're nervous about bears.
1:42:23 Speaker 05 Hot dog, pokers?
1:42:25 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:42:25 Danielle LaRock? Or that.
1:42:26 Speaker 06 A hot dog roaster. Make lots of noise, but yeah, be in groups.
1:42:31 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Shark bans with a Z. Do they actually work? It's supposedly a shark deterrent. I don't even know what that is.
1:42:39 Speaker 06 Yeah. I've done a tiny bit of research into it in the past and I think, I don't think it's like that effective. I think they can work. I think what they're supposed to do is disrupt the electrical signals because sharks are really like, they have ampullae of Lorenzini and they have a lateral line and because of that, electrical fields are really attractive or disruptive to them. But from what I've heard, it's not like something you should bet your life on. That's really all I know.
1:43:03 Danielle LaRock? You just hold it out. Isn't it a risk ban? Yeah. You just like hold it out. Like the vibes are high.
1:43:09 Speaker 04 Chris Pratt does that in the Jurassic World movies.
1:43:11 Speaker 06 It's more than enough. Stops a velociraptor.
1:43:13 Speaker 05 I feel like if they worked, like seals would be using them.
1:43:16 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:43:17 Danielle LaRock? I feel like if they worked, everyone would have them.
1:43:20 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:43:20 Danielle LaRock? Okay, last two. What's a time outside or traveling when you felt totally in awe or just very thankful to be there? We're all silent. We're like, that doesn't apply to us.
1:43:31 Danielle LaRock? Crickets.
1:43:32 Speaker 05 Uh, we went, our last like Tooth and Claw trip was India and we had a couple really crazy.
1:43:39 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:43:39 Speaker 05 Safari. Oh yeah, two trips ago. Couple of really crazy like safari days where it's just like, man, nice job.
1:43:47 Speaker 06 Being in the Himalayas. Yeah, like just being in the Himalayas and looking around just felt really surreal to us too. Like this is crazy that we're here and camping. Mike wasn't quite as happy about it.
1:44:00 Speaker 04 No, that's, that shit sucked. I will say scuba diving, every time I go scuba diving, I have those feelings where it's just like, I'm kind of in a really special place where I'm like pretty privileged to be able to observe and be a part of that world. So yeah, if anyone has even the slightest interest in scuba diving, I fully, full chestedly encourage pursuing that.
1:44:22 Speaker 06 This is gonna sound like a little pretentious, but for me, it was just at my house recently. Like it was so beautiful in Western Montana and we just had like, we have these long evenings in the summer and the grass is green. And it just felt like really peaceful and nice. And it just made me feel really lucky to live here.
1:44:39 Danielle LaRock? That doesn't sound pretentious. It sounds like you're grateful for.
1:44:42 Speaker 06 Yes.
1:44:43 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:44:44 Speaker 06 All right.
1:44:44 Danielle LaRock? Just gratitude. Yeah.
1:44:45 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:44:46 Danielle LaRock? Okay, last but not least, this was, uh. The most asked question. Most asked question, uh, for sure. Are you planning any National Park After Dark and Toothy Group events or trips? Is this a possibility in the future? And this was asked in about 40 different ways.
1:45:02 Speaker 05 I think you two are way better at planning than us three.
1:45:06 Speaker 06 You're gonna have to do it.
1:45:07 Speaker 05 Like if you wanna plan something and invite us, like we're all for it. I tried, I tried to do like a big cruise and I feel like it's not working.
1:45:16 Danielle LaRock? I've just been waiting to hear back. You're like, we all had, yeah, so for to answer that.
1:45:22 Speaker 05 Something.
1:45:23 Danielle LaRock? To answer it is.
1:45:24 Speaker 04 We should do like a live show somewhere. Yeah.
1:45:26 Danielle LaRock? That would be really fun. We have considered it. And doable.
1:45:29 Speaker 06 Or a trip. Honestly, like we both work with the same trip operator. It wouldn't be hard for us to do a combined trip.
1:45:35 Danielle LaRock? I think it would just be like.
1:45:37 Speaker 06 Super fun.
1:45:37 Danielle LaRock? Getting the amount of guides we would need.
1:45:40 Speaker 05 Maybe someone listening just has like. A place would be.
1:45:44 Speaker 06 Yeah. Does anyone have like a basement? We can hang out.
1:45:46 Speaker 05 If anyone has like a cruise ship.
1:45:50 Speaker 05 You have like a cruise ship.
1:45:53 Danielle LaRock? Does anyone have a yacht that we could do a private?
1:45:58 Danielle LaRock? A small intimate. Gathering. Gathering. Yeah. Three hundred plus people.
1:46:04 Danielle LaRock? We have, so the answer is yes, we've been working on it.
1:46:07 Speaker 05 I wanted like everyone who wants to go to be able to go, so I was maybe thinking too big. I was like.
1:46:12 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:46:13 Speaker 05 We need spots for at least.
1:46:16 Speaker 06 I know.
1:46:16 Speaker 05 Thousand people.
1:46:18 Speaker 06 We, we talked to that operator though, and they said we could do like a Southeast Asia one that would be cheap that we could have like a hundred people at. So it'd be fun to do it with, with you guys. So, yeah.
1:46:29 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah.
1:46:30 Speaker 06 We should talk about it. We'll talk about it more.
1:46:31 Danielle LaRock? We'll talk about it off air. Yeah. Yeah.
1:46:34 Speaker 06 For, in the meantime, shut up, all you listeners.
1:46:38 Speaker 06 So invasive.
1:46:41 Speaker 05 I want you to speak up and.
1:46:43 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:46:43 Speaker 05 Just tell us what to do.
1:46:45 Speaker 06 Yeah. Do it for us, please. Yeah.
1:46:48 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, we'll do it, but we're just tired, you know, like. It's a lot of work planning.
1:46:52 Speaker 06 It is.
1:46:53 Danielle LaRock? Yep. But anyway, all right. Well, that's it. That's that on that. And thank you so much for being here and.
1:46:59 Speaker 06 Thanks for having us.
1:47:00 Danielle LaRock? Of course, we'll do this. I think we do it like once a year. That's our cadence, right?
1:47:05 Speaker 06 Yeah, and we'll have you guys on ours again soon too.
1:47:08 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Be fun.
1:47:09 Speaker 05 Well, Danielle came on kinda recent, but it's.
1:47:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's true. She got back from Antarctica in a fever dream.
1:47:16 Speaker 05 Just, but it's an easy one. You just had to say what animal is the cutest.
1:47:21 Danielle LaRock? I don't know. You've sprung the bracket on me. I've never seen a bracket before in my life. And I was like, I was supposed to fill this out.
1:47:28 Speaker 06 Plus you had a dead possum on your porch.
1:47:30 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, that's true. There's a lot happening, but.
1:47:34 Speaker 06 Working through a lot.
1:47:35 Danielle LaRock? Maybe we can bump it up to once a quarter.
1:47:36 Speaker 05 Good job.
1:47:37 Danielle LaRock? Thank you.
1:47:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, we'll have to have you both on.
1:47:39 Speaker 06 Yep.
1:47:40 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Bye. Bye.
1:47:45 Speaker 06 See ya. See ya.
1:47:47 Danielle LaRock? Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Patreon subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark book club, live streams, Discord, and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X at National Park After Dark.
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